Once In A While

Chapter 9: Behind The Shadows

"Anyway, we can discuss your utter failure at a later time. Eren, Hange is anxious to get your experiments under way."

"Right, yes sir." Eren complied immediately.

----

Watching Eren trying to transform time after time was in fact, gruesome and exhausting; every time he just grew weaker and weaker, and everyone was starting to feel pessimistic about this.

"Eren, what's wrong with you? The future of humanity depends on you goddamnit!" Hange snapped, watching from the top of the cliff along with captain Levi, Moblit, Armin, Historia and I.

"Third time, and his form changed again. He's not even ten meters tall and some of his body is lacking muscle. Plus, Eren's scrawny ass is hanging out." The captain pointed out, unfazed.

"I can see that! Eren, think you can still move? Give us a signal or something, will ya?" Hange called out in a moment of desperation.

"Eren!" Mikasa cried out, abandoning her post, in order to attend to Eren.

"Mikasa, wait up!" Jean tried calling out to her, but to no avail.

"Great, the brat's at it again. Off to the rescue. She never learns, does she?" Levi exhaled.

"There's no response. We're done here!" Hange quickly said and jumped off the cliff.

The scene before us was, chaotic, to say the least. The section commander was pulling Eren, who was bleeding profusely, Mikasa losing her temper almost, and Moblit trying to stop the situation from climaxing.

"This didn't go the way we thought. We have a long way before we'll be able to use Eren's power." The captain said to us.

"Yes... It's true that all this time we've been placing our hopes on preverbial straws." Armin confessed.

"The plan is strategically simple; all we need is to get Eren there. This could still work, but it all depends on him." He stated, and silence fell around us again, after Hange declared the ending of the experiment.

"You go back to the house with Eren and the others. I'm going to Trost with Hange's group." Levi turned to me.

"Yes sir." I shook my head in agreement.

----

"What are you doing? You should still be in bed!" Mikasa said, surprised by Eren's sudden appearance in the kitchen.

"I'm fine. I already slept through the whole day. Besides, it's my fault the plans fell through, so the least I can do is help." Eren said lazily, picking up a knife from the counter.

"Don't beat yourself up too bad. You just need to work on your abilities. This is all foreign to you still." I told him, picking up my rifle, and exiting the house; it was my turn to replace Sasha for the look out.

"Hey there." I said to her, waving my hand as a greeting once I reached her.

"Thank God you're here, I was starving this whole time! And Jean over there didn't even let me swing by to get a potato or something to munch on..." She said, exaggerating, grabbing my hands in hers.

"Yeah sure... Just don't eat too much, we don't have a lot of food left. If you do, we'll have no other choice but to eat you for dinner." I said on a serious note.

Her eyes went wide at my crude remark, dropping my hands instantly.

"Relax, I'm only joking. Go on now." I smiled softly at her.

"It's not like I was going to let you eat me anyways!" She said as she hurried off towards the cabin.

I let out a sigh, admiring the view from my post; tall trees extending to the horizon, the sky a peach color. It was hard to believe that such beautiful sceneries could exist in a world like ours, where tragedy and cruelty prevailed.

I noticed Jean at his look out post, and waved at him. After a moment, he returned the greeting, with an almost confused look on his face. I couldn't help but laugh; he looked just like a child, and I don't know why, but I was amused.

-----

The news we received were no good at all; pastor Nick had been assassinated, tortured even, by the interior MPs. Luckily, according to Levi's train of thought, he wouldn't have confessed of our knowledge of the Reiss family; still, we had a price on our heads.

That was when Nifa barged in, giving a letter from Erwin to the Captain. He read it through quickly, and announced that we were to flee from the cabin immediately, leaving no trace of our staying there.

"That was close... What if they had caught us?" Connie said, as we all peered down the cliff, seeing an horde of MPs raiding the hideout.

"How did the commander know they were headed here?" Armin asked.

"The government has passed down some new orders. There's been a freeze in all scouts' activities. We're to hand out Eren and Historia." Levi told us.

Nifa then explained that Erwin Smith was taken in by some MPs. Captain Levi suggested that we move Eren and Historia to Trost, demanding that Hange lend him some of her squad, which she did, only taking Moblit with her to go after the Commander.