dance of the dead ˚ aot

➤𝐋𝐗𝐈

Himari sucked on her front teeth as Hange raised one of the hand-held guns to their good eye, peering down the barrel of it, which was pressed right up against their goggles.

Himari was tempted to tell them to try not to shoot themself in the eye, considering they only had one good one left, but decided to stay quiet, not wanting to seem unprofessional. The sheer wonder in Hange's voice, however, blew all hopes of keeping up their appearances.  

"Ahh! I see! THat's how it shoots a bunch!" The familiar click, click, click of bullets moving around in the chamber caused Himari to tense, her shoulders rising instinctively. She folded her arms over her chest, copying Levi sitting beside her in an attempt to mask her discomfort around the guns. Misreading Himari's expression as interest, Yelena gestured to the gun on the table in front of her.

"Please feel free to pick it up and have a look if you're curious. The safety is on, so pulling the trigger won't bring you any harm. I would advise against doing it anyway, however." 

Himari resisted the urge to look over at Levi for permission. Instead, she reached out and picked up the gun, running her hands over the smooth, black exterior. She popped open the chamber and counted the number of rounds in it, before snapping it shut and peering down the butt of the gun.

"Interesting..." she murmured, before lowering the gun once more. "So the revolving cylinder automatically moves the next bullet into place for you, then?" 

Onyankopon nodded.

"That's right. You only have to reload the gun once it's empty."  

It was a far cry from the clunky, military-grade rifles that they had been using on Paradis for the last one-hundred years. Marleyan weaponry was much more advanced than what they were used to. Himari knew that they would be able to pump them full of lead before she even had a chance to knock a bullet into one of their own guns if fighting ever broke out.

"That's standard-issue in Marley," replied Yelena, who lifted a white, porcelain cup full of steaming tea to their lips. "The Marley army has twenty-thousand soldiers per division. With fifty divisions, that's one-million soldiers."

Himari rose an eyebrow. Compared to the branch of ten that the Survey Corps had once been, having a military force of over one million soldiers seemed almost impossible. 

"There's also the navy with three fleets, each comprised of twenty-one battleships. They've made tremendous progress in new weapons and aerial warfare as well."

"Aerial...?" Hange trailed off, a nervous lilt to their tone that Himari privately agreed with. Levi, however, only clicked his tongue irritably. Himari heard the faint sound of leather colliding with leather and knew that he had kicked Hange under the table.

"In other words, mobile weapons that can go beyond seas and walls, allowing the enemy to appear from the sky." Hange pushed their chair back and slammed their hands down on the table with shock. 

"Huh?! From the sky?!" 

"Oi." Levi's warning went ignored.

Himari glanced over at the dark-haired man beside her. She didn't miss the apprehension that glittered in his dark, gunmetal-grey eyes as they exchanged a hidden look of concern. 

She knew that their worry was coming not only from the sheer size of the Marleyan military, which outranked the survey corps over a thousand to one at this rate, but because they both understood just how severely lacking they were when it came to modern technology and weaponry. Their ODM gear was good, but swords would do nothing against weapons that could shoot ten bullets at once without reloading.