Power to Strive

Forest of Giant Trees

Everyone was suddenly staring at him. Armin's eyes shifted left and right. "Well," he licked his dry lips and cleared his throat. "I...may have a guess."

"Who is it?" Eren demanded immediately.

"Is it someone we know?" Connie asked.

"Well, um..."

"Spit it out," Levi snapped, earning a glare from Mikasa.

He took a breath. "I think it's...Annie."

"What?!" Eren stared at his best friend, gobsmacked.

"No way!" Connie cried out. "I don't believe it! She wouldn't do that!"

"It can't be Annie!" Sasha gasped. "I, I don't believe it!"

"But...why?" Christa's eyes were impossibly wide in disbelief.

"Makes sense to me."

Now all eyes were on Ymir. "You can't be serious!" Sasha gasped.

"You think that too?" Christa frowned.

Ymir held up a finger as she listed her reasons, "Let's see: she's blonde, she has blue eyes, she's not part of the Survey Corps so she could easily infiltrate and move around without raising suspicion—it would've raised a lot of flags if she was the only survivor while the rest of her squad and the squads wherever she'd been told Eren was had been annihilated."

She was interrupted before she could finish. "That's bullshit!" Eren glared. "She's fucking blonde? Are you serious?!"

"Yeah," Sasha nodded. "That's just...I don't think it's her. She's our comrade."

"She wasn't invited," Erwin said.

"But neither were Reiner and Bert," Sasha pointed out. "And the other members of Squad Levi."

"Candy doesn't like her either." Petra recalled Annie saving Jean, whom Candy had claimed was her favorite, yet their host still expressed dislike of her.

Ymir nodded, "She did almost turn Jean into a pancake just now."

"No! It isn't her! It isn't Annie!" Eren insisted. "There has to be a mistake!"

"Are you really that dense, Yeager?" Jean demanded. "Or are you just that in denial you can't even see the obvious?" He hated the fact as much as anyone else of the 104th class, but that didn't make it any less true.

"I have to agree with Eren," Connie said. "Annie saved my life. She could've let that Titan kill me if she really was a traitor."

"She's my friend! Annie is our friend!"

"Armin, are you sure?" Mikasa ignored the male Shifter's babbling. She wasn't a fan of the girl. But she wasn't quick to condemn a comrade either. Then again, considering who the accusation was coming from...

"I'm pretty sure," Armin answered, not happy. "It wasn't just the things that they said that convinced me. Specifically, it was when the Female Titan froze when I yelled she had killed 'that Suicidal Bastard' on the right recon flank. She stopped because she thought she'd accidentally killed her target and was calling my bluff. But..."