Once we were right on top of them is where the real battle started. We couldn't barricade both sides of us not without missing some parts and risking some of us getting killed. We needed to fight because they weren't about to move out of our way now.
"Now?" Sasha asked from behind me as we took the last few steps to close the gap.
"Now," I whispered back.
We all stopped walking as Mikasa came face to face with them. One of them must have had a death wish. He decided that since the bullets wouldn't work that maybe punching her in the face would. When she didn't even move from the impact of the punch is when his face went white.
"That was awfully rude of you," I heard her whisper to him right before she returned the favor but rather than a punch to the face it was an elbow to the gut. Even the bulletproof vest couldn't block the blow that had him doubled over in pain dry heaving.
"I will be nice and give you guys one more chance to get out of our way, but if you refuse then just know we will not hesitate to do whatever it takes to get past you safely, even if that means killing you." Her tone was cold and I could tell she really didn't want to ask again, but with whatever cameras are on us we have to show that we gave every warning, every possible chance to let them walk away unharmed. Whether they listened to them or not wasn't our problem.
Looking around a few more people seemed unsure of standing their ground but no one budged. I decided to try and talk. Maybe now they will listen. "Please think this through, you are outmatched, if you leave now we won't have to hurt you," I said looking around.
"If you're worried about your fellow soldiers shooting you we will protect you until you get out of their way, please just think about this. We don't want to hurt anyone if we don't have to. Peer pressure isn't a reason to put your lives on the line," Levi said next to me. I'm assuming he was reading some of their thoughts. "You don't have to do or say anything, just think it, I will hear you."
I watched as Levi waved down Pixis and pointed at 3 different people, "they want out," he said and Pixis put force fields around them.
"Walk with the force fields," Pixis said as they walked off to the side of our barricade. We waited until they were out of the line of fire; only two of them had guns. Pixis took his force field off of them but we made sure we were still barricaded on the side they were standing. We had them put the guns on the floor before we fully lowered the barricade near them. Once they were on the floor Erwin portaled them away.
"Now I suggest getting out of here," Alastair said motioning for them to go. "It might get messy." One of them turned to walk without any hesitation. Without looking back they walked away. The other two seemed hesitant but followed the first one's lead.
This most definitely won't happen the farther in we go. I think the only reason we got these people to turn away is because they were rookies, they weren't as brainwashed and determined as the rest of the people we will be facing today.
"Now that we got that taken care of," Mikasa said looking around, "where were we?"
"Go now," I whispered to Sasha. I watched as a bunch of doubles appeared and started jumping the barrier. They instantly started shooting at her doubles, not that it did any real harm. Once they realized they stopped wasting their bullets. Sasha's doubles instantly started trying to disarm as many as they could. Connie vanished before our eyes once he realized he should be helping. The only sign he was there were that guns were in people's hands one second and gone the next.
"How can I help?" Petra asked, walking up to me, "I can't fight, but I can do something," she said looking at me.
"Could you liquify their guns from behind here?" I asked. She gave me a determined nod and then got to work. I watched as Hanji took a deep breath and then started using her vines to try and rip weapons away from them. Mikasa was just walking up and either ripping the guns out of people's hands, or she would just bend the barrel and make them unusable. Annie jumped the barrier her skin crystallized and she started fighting the guns out of their hands.
"You ready?" I asked, looking at Levi. He gave me a nod and me and him got to work pulling guards off their feet. Levi was using his power to push the people who were disarmed away from the people who were still armed while I pinned the people who were already disarmed with a gravity field so they couldn't get back up. I had to keep them in place until everyone was disarmed and Rico could knock them out.
We haven't had to use pure violence just yet, but I know that we can't just disarm every guard we come across. We can only do it here since we had already disarmed a good portion of them at the start. We had told the few guards that had joined us to fight to hold off for now, hopefully, they can help us when disarming and incapacitating wasn't an option anymore.
I didn't even realize Mina had joined the fight at first until I saw her unconscious on Franz's back. I looked around and sure enough, a few of the guards were just dropping their guns and walking into my gravity field one by one. Hanna was busy overloading people's minds as they were knocked down and the others had an easier time disarming them.
Quinn and Alastair's teams were also doing their part to take down the guards closer to them. Quinn had made several guards drop their guns in favor of covering their now bleeding ears as her sonic scream ruptured their eardrums.
Alastair on the other hand was keeping his team safe using his wings to block some of the people who needed defending while using his shadow manipulation powers to restrain some guards and disarm some of them. So far everything was going smoothly, a little slower than we would have hoped for, but once we get through this group hopefully we can give our powers a small break before we have to fight whatever reinforcements they had on their way.
I saw a few of Alastair and Quinn's team incapacitate some of the guards on their end. I guess they had a person over there who could render someone unconscious with a single touch, or something along those lines. I watched as they walked around and touched a few of the guards before they slumped over. I was sure they weren't dead because I could still see them breathing.
We had mostly disarmed everyone and as the last few were disarmed Rico jumped the barrier. Thank god I can already feel my wrists aching a little. She walked over and stood in the middle of them. It was hard to use my power cause I had to split it into several different gravity fields to keep them all pinned so she wouldn't get pulled down too.
I watched as she just stood there and eventually all of the guards laying around her were unconscious. I don't even know what gas she decided to use. All we knew is she said they wouldn't be waking up for a long while. It was best not to ask questions especially since we might not want to know the answer. I'm just glad we specified a non-deadly gas because she looked more than ready to wipe out every last one of these guards. Not that I can really judge. I'm pretty sure that the grenade I threw back at them caused a good deal of deaths as is.
"They are all taken care of," Mikasa called out, "if your power is not mandatory or one that suffers from overuse then don't use it," she said looking back at us. "We will keep pushing forward."
Good, she's following the instructions I gave her. Don't stop unless you have to and remind everyone not to push themselves. The last thing we need right now is someone whose power is giving us cover to fail and give out mid-fight.
We started walking forward stepping over the unconscious guards as well as a few body parts from the grenade explosion.
I could tell some of us were already exhausted, but we just barely started. We have a long fight ahead of us. We just need to make it to the center of town. That is where everyone is supposed to meet up so we can fight our way into the government building. Even if they evacuated the people in it we still needed to take it over, the information in there is what will give us the win.
We started walking and the farther in we got the more I realized something was off. I thought they would have evacuated the whole town, but as we walked down streets I saw eyes peering at us through windows, they didn't even bother to evacuate the civilians. Either they were cocky that we wouldn't make it past this point, or they didn't care enough about the civilians to actually tell them to get out of harm's way.
Either way, you look at it they have no real concern about their citizens to even warn them they may be in harm's way let alone get them out of said way. No, even worse they are the ones putting them in the most danger. Our powers are easy for us to control and we can make them peaceful or deadly, whereas they have bullets which are never peaceful and are very deadly.
"Maybe they didn't warn them on purpose?" Levi said, looking at me.
"Why would they do that?"
"Well face it, every time there have been civilians in our way we do everything we can to focus our efforts to get them to safety. I think they are counting on that so they can keep us distracted as they pick us off one by one," Levi's voice was quiet but confident that this was the case. I couldn't even fault his logic; this probably is their way of thinking. What sick bastards would risk hundreds, thousands of people's lives rather than just realize that they might be wrong.
"People are stubborn, they would rather move a mountain with a shovel and their bare hands than admit that they are wrong. Any solution you try to give is just an outrage to them because they don't think there's any problem to start. They've blinded themselves with their own beliefs and refuse to change regardless of the facts." Levi blinked at me realizing he was rambling, "what I'm trying to say is that we can stand here all day wondering why they are so fucked up but it's not going to do anything. In the end, we are just as stubborn as they are, though we might be doing it for a good cause, it doesn't change the facts. We will do anything by any means necessary to get the outcome we want."
"You say anything, but we aren't the ones risking innocent lives. We have given every opportunity for peace, we risk our lives, the mission, all of it to save the innocents that get involved. That's what makes us different from them. We still know that human lives matter above all else, even the mission, on the other hand, they value the mission over human lives. Yet they are the ones assigned to protect the people? How does that make any sense? It doesn't, and that's exactly why we are fighting here today. We want change, not just for us, but for them."