The bell tolls through the city as a sign that everyone can withdraw and the gate is closed. Mikasa seemed to come back at this moment and I stood up, stretching my shoulders.
"That's it, we're done. Now scale the wall." The soldier spoke, and I was about to follow him.
"I should help the vanguard withdraw, sir." Mikasa suddenly spoke, and the soldier and I looked at her like she was crazy.
"Ackerman waIT-" she had shot off before he could finish.
"Damn it all." I huffed. "I'm going to go make sure she doesn't get herself killed. Please stay safe sir." I scowl and follow Mikasa. I was so going to throw her off wall rose when this was all over.
Admittedly, I wanted to go. Not for her, but to make sure Bertholdt and Reiner were okay and no suspicions were rose about them.
I didn't want to admit it, but I needed those two. I'd commit genocide alone if I had to for them.
If I had to, even without a titan form, even without my quirk, even without magic, I would destroy everything within the walls all alone to protect Reiner and Bertholdt.
I landed beside Mikasa, but saw the titan-swarmed headquarters before she did. In fact I pointed it out to her.
Would either of them transform to protect themselves if it came to it? Or would they let themselves be ate to protect their secret? I had no clue and that scared me.
And if soldiers couldn't get gas, they couldn't get over the walls. It'd be a death sentence trying, you'd either fall to your death or get grabbed by a titan at the base.
Mikasa and I landed on the rooftop, Mikasa immediately jogging to Annie and shouting her name while I sprinted to Reiner and Bertholdt, tackling both of them (I was lucky they heard Mikasa call for Annie, because then they saw me and could brace themselves before I could accidentally tackle them off the roof). They both embraced me back for a moment before I pulled away and smiled at them.
"Thank god you're both safe" I smiled, before listening to Mikasa talk to Annie.
"We found Armin, he's over there" Reiner pointed his thumb towards Armin, who looked absolutely traumatized. I swore under my breath, guessing what had happened.
Mikasa jogged over to Armin while I abruptly hugged onto Bertholdt, feeling him hug me back close. I was so glad everything had gone well so far.
I listened to Armin speak the names before saying that they'd fought valiantly. His words confirmed that they were dead.
I thought back to the few times I'd definitely seen small bits of steam from Eren's injuries.
Unless a titan got real lucky, that boy wasn't dead.
I listened to the other graduated cadets speak fearfully, and I pulled out of Bertholdt's arms. Mikasa made an assessment and Marco confirmed.
"I guess so, sure, but there's too many out there, even with you and Shigaku on point." Marco was nervous as he spoke, and I let out a small scoff as I walked towards Mikasa and unsheathed my blades.
"Mikasaaa, you've got so much damn stamina. If I oversleep tomorrow, you're taking my punishment." I hum playfully, checking my swords to make sure they were sharp. They'd damn need to be if I wanted to leave this near suicide mission alive. Mikasa looked at me with a grateful look before turning back to Marco.
"We can do it." Mikasa unsheathed her swords as well. "We're strong. Real strong. None of you come close, you hear me?" I snorted at that statement, turning my head to the side for a moment before turning back and letting out one last amused huff. At least I was included on the strong side of this little speech.
"We are warriors. Know this, we have the power to slay all of the titans that block our path. Even if we have to do it alone. As far as I am concerned, I am surrounded by a bunch of unskilled, cowardly worms." Mikasa pointed her sword, which had been pointed in the air, at out fellow graduates. "You disappoint me. You can just sit here and twiddle your thumbs and watch how it's done." Mikasa was so damn serious about all this, I didn't even bother hiding that I rolled my eyes.
"Wait- Mikasa are you out of your mind?! That's crazy!"
"You can't be serious! Trying to take them out by yourselves?!"
"There's no way you can hope to beat them!"
"If we can't beat them, then we die." Mikasa retorts to the denying comments. "But if we win, we live. And the only way to win, is to fight." Mikasa jumped off the building, launching off with her ODM gear.
I snicker and stick my tongue out at our fellow graduates before falling off the building backwards and following suit. "Come on worms!! We got some titans to kill!" I shout, grinning as I followed her.
I heard several shouts behind us as well as some ODM gear, and my grin only got bigger.
I may not like all this work, but I damn sure loved killing a little too much. Titan, human, octopus that can travel at Mach 20, the spirits of opponents I couldn't actually kill, I didn't really care. I just liked it. So I was happy to follow suit as apparently the only person Mikasa considered on her level (out of the people that were there anyway).
"Hurry up! Follow Mikasa and Shigaku! Avoid fighting if you can! And get to hq before you run out of gas!" Jean's shouts filled the air, like a real commander!
"Mikasa stop wasting your damn gas!" I yelled, right behind her out of momentum. I rolled my eyes when she fell to a roof, and I made the quick decision to continue to lead the others to headquarters with Jean.
We stopped on a roof, and I watched flatly as three people got themselves killed. I sighed and walked behind Jean, hitting the back of his head with my fist. "Don't beat yourself up for that shit. Your words wouldn't have stopped them and you don't have the gas. They threw themselves away." I speak, my face empty of emotion.
I don't care at all about the clearly disgusted looks I received from my apathetic words.
"What..?" Jean looked more confused than anything now.
"I said don't mind their deaths. If you can't look death in the face a little and continue, then you're pathetic." Even Reiner and Bertholdt looked at me shocked, and I scoffed at the look Jean gave me.
"You're more craz-" Jean's words stopped as soon as we locked eyes, he could've sworn the 'looking death in the eye' thing was looking me in the eyes right here and now.
An inhuman scream reverberated through the air from behind me and I scoffed, turning away and standing at the edge of the roof as I briefly inspected my blades and checked my gas.
"We're heading to headquarters now while they're distracted." Jean came back to his senses and commanded, and we were off towards headquarters again.
I sighed as someone got wiped out, but Jean and I both crashed through the windows of headquarters, followed by some of the rest of the graduates.
Jean and I both noticed what was left of the supply team but, while he began to scold them with Marco holding them back, I just gave them a sharp glare before walking around the room. I immediately took notice of the body of a man who'd chosen suicide and I sighed again, closing his eyes.
I've been sighing a lot.
God this was all so damn stressful and totally unfun when people were being stupid. They could at least be entertaining like Mikasa scolding them.
As one of the walls was blasted through, I watched with Jean as seconds later a titan fist punched the two titans who'd been looking through. I smirked, watching as Connie, Armin, and Mikasa all crashed in.
"Welcome back" I spoke, before Jean asked if he were dreaming. Connie praised Armin before standing.
"Check it out! We found an abnormal that has a bone to pick with it's own kind! And the best part, he couldn't care less about us!" Connie spoke with a grin and I pat his head as if ruffling hair. "Yes, you heard me! This beautiful big s.o.b is out ticket outta here!"
I let the others talk while I walked to the hole and leaned out a little, watching the "abnormal" fight. That was most definitely Eren and I was enjoying the view of watching him, with whatever his titan type was, fight.
From there, we moved inward in the building. We listened to Armin talk about his plan of taking out the seven four-meter titans in the basement so we could get gas.
Of course I was one of the ones who'd be nape-slashing, along with Mikasa, Connie, Sasha, Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie.
Armin began degrading his plan, but stayed as silent as I had been since we entered the building. I felt.. off?
"Worse comes to worse, you can always just shove one of these up their ass" Reiner said, showing his sword. When Connie and Sasha both fell for it, I snorted.
"Come on, knock it off Reiner, you want your final words to be an ass joke?" Jean scolded, which only made me snicker more.
We got into position carefully, nearly kneeling on the support beams.
As soon as the gunshots sounded, we were off.
I ran down the beam I was on, towards a titan no one else was going for. Slashing it's neck was child's play at this point.
Five titans fell and I yelled "damnit" as Sasha and Connie both missed. Luckily Annie and Mikasa were quick on the case.
Reiner and Bertholdt praised Annie and I found myself scowling, turning away and heading towards the empty gas canisters and grabbed some to fill for myself. I wonder if they think I haven't noticed they've been hanging out with her a lot.
I hate it. It made my chest hurt like hell.
I pulled out my empty ones and threw them both angrily at the wall, not caring about the looks I received.
As soon as my canisters were full, I walked out out of the basement and used my ODM to get me on a roof. I waited, alone until Mikasa joined me, and watched as Eren was ganged up on.
As I stood with Mikasa, Armin joined us on the rooftop and they both looked panicked.
"Can he not regenerate like the others?" Armin asked, fearful. If we lost Eren's titan, we'd have to face the normal titans again. And I'm pretty sure most of us were too worn out for that.
"This may sound stupid but I was hoping he'd be the key for us. That he'd help man kind break the cycle, turn the tide just long enough to give us a little ray of hope." Mikasa looked sadly down at the titan. She was speaking like Eren.
"She's right. He's too valuable to just let die. There's too much we can learn from him. I think it'd perfectly clear our priority should be to ward the scavengers off him. He's no good to us picked apart." Reiner spoke. But when I looked over, Annie was there again.
I was half tempted to feed her to the damn titans. I immediately turned away and gripped my swords tighter, feeling my face twitch in anger.
I didn't make a single comment as they all talked. Not until Annie commented.
"Think about it, having an abnormal as an ally would be an incredible advantage, right? A cannon's got nothing on a titan who likes to rip apart his own kind." Annie spoke up and I let out a huff and a hollow smile towards her.
"It's not like he's the only abnormal we've seen act weird. Why don't we recruit the colossal or the armoured, hm?" My words were harsh and Reiner and Bertholdt looked at me like they couldn't believe I said that, and even Annie looked caught off guard. I just scoffed and walked toward the edge of the roof, letting them continue their stupid conversation.
I watched as Eren's titan let it's arms be ripped off and bit the nape of the titan that, according to Armin, ate Wagner. Eren used the titan as a weapon, swinging it at one titan and then at another.
He screamed into the air before collapsing.
"And our titan ally just collapsed. Amazing weapon we got here." I said sarcastically, listening Jean speak. Mikasa jumps off after a moment, and I just stand and watch.
We head to one of the towers of headquarters after getting Mikasa to get off the ground and somewhere safe.
While Mikasa and Armin were processing that Eren was even alive, Jean looked over at the titans.
"So Eren.. did all this?" He spoke, and I looked over the wall at the fallen titans.
"Seems like it. Wonder if he knows how to control that ability of his." I spoke, leaning against the wall.
"You say that as if you aren't shocked?" Jean asked, and I stood straight and looked him dead in the eyes before giving him a dangerously sweet close-eyed smile.
"Listen Kirstein. You, nor anyone else here, knows the extent of what I've seen. 'Kay?" As soon as I stopped speaking, my smile fell again and I turned and leaned back on the wall, looking out on the city. "We need to get onto wall Rose soon, they don't know if we're dead or alive and we have no flare gun to tell them we're fine." I change the topic, not giving Reiner or Bertholdt a single glance, and definitely not giving Annie a single strand of my attention. She could scream my name while getting chowed on my a titan and I wouldn't care less.
After my point, we got over the wall, only for Eren, Mikasa, and Armin to be cornered by Garrison.