Levi stood on the hill with his fists clenched. This was the correct location, as the spent smoke shell attested, but there was no sign of Petra. He spoke quietly, almost to himself.
"If you spotted one from here, why didn't you fire a second round when you reached it? And if you met one here, why is there no blood?"
"Hoof prints on the ground sir," Eld said. "Heading west. From their depth, she took off at a gallop."
The other squad members breathed a sigh of relief. It didn't mean she was safe, but at least she hadn't died here.
....
"So are you mapping terrain, monsters, or both?" Ainzo asked conversationally.
"Both. Why?"
"Because there's two more of them over there."
Petra halted the horse; this time she did crane her neck to look at the boy. He seemed totally unperturbed. Then she followed his gaze.
"Where? I don't see them."
"One's behind that rock and the other is just below the rise. But they are both coming towards us."
"How do you know they're there if you can't see them?"
"I have a really high Search skill."
A head appeared over the far side of the hill. Ten meters. A second one came out from behind the rock, this one six meters. She wasn't sure her horse could outrun them carrying double, but with no backup, no buildings to use her ODM gear - and the kid having no ODM gear at all - running was their best bet. "Hold on tight!" She spurred the horse into a gallop. The uneven ground, rocks, and shrubs made looking away even for the few seconds it took to load the gas flare a risky proposition. Looking up and down between the broken field and the canister supply caused the first canister to not lock into place firmly and it fell off the gun when she raised it. "Shit!" She said. She didn't have an unlimited supply. For the next one, she took the risk and looked down, jamming the gun onto the shell. She felt it click solidly into place, raised the gun, and fired. She looked back up just in time to see the horse stumble on a half-hidden rock and then almost recover, just to drop its hoof in the rabbit hole. With a sickening crack of its left front leg, the horse went down.
.....
Hange and two of her squad came up the south face of the hill. "What do we have?"
Levi said nothing, just stared with cold fury at the unanswering western horizon.
"We don't know yet," Eld answered for him.
"Red smoke sir!" Oruo called out, although it was unnecessary. Everyone on the hilltop had seen it.
"Shit," said Gunther. "That's a ten, maybe fifteen-minute ride from here."
"Then quit flapping your jaws and get moving," Levi snapped. He turned sharply towards his own horse only to have Hange grab his sleeve.
"You wouldn't be so cruel as to deny me a chance to observe a living Titan up close, would you?"
"I would absolutely be that cruel," he glared at her as he swung himself into the saddle.
"Unfortunately, you outrank me."
A jubilant "Woo-Hoo!" Escaped her lips before she turned to her squad members. "Keiji, head back to camp, fill them in and double the patrols. Nifa, report to Commander Erwin. Everything we know so far."
"Yes ma'am!"
Hange mounted her horse and took off after Levi who hadn't bothered to wait for her.
.....
Ainzo felt, more than heard, the horse's leg snap. The animal let out a terrified whinny as it tumbled forward. He jumped free but his companion was not so lucky. Petra's foot got tangled in the stirrup. The horse instinctively twisted to protect its head, rolling to the side, shoulder hitting first, followed by the entire weight of its body coming down on Petra's trapped leg.
Ainzo ran over to her. He considered the horse. It had broken its neck in the fall. Odd that it hadn't vanished. Must be considered a food item. His strength parameter should allow him to shift the weight of the horse, but how to do it without further injuring her leg? He could hear the monsters - what had she called them? Titans? - getting closer. He might have to risk the injury.
"Don't bother," she said.
"Just get out of here. I'll buy you whatever time I can."
"Don't worry. I know how to fight"
He turned to face the approaching Titans, unsheathing his swords as he did so. "Injuries slow them down, but only the nape of the neck is a kill strike, right?"
"Yeah," she gasped out. "You could take the entire head, but if you miss the nape, it'll just grow back."
"Got it."
Petra watched him charge towards the Titans without hesitation. He puts the entire 103rd Cadet Corp to shame.
.....
The ground shook as the Titans came at them.
Ainzo ran at top speed, dodging the giant hand that reached for him. He laid his sword out flat, slicing the tendon on the front of the Titan's ankle, then used the resistance and his own momentum to swing around the back side and slice the Achilles' tendon with the other sword. The monster fell forward on its face. For good measure, he brought the sword in at an angle for a second strike, taking a chunk out of the back of the ankle to slow its regeneration. The six-meter Titan lumbered past, ignoring him in favor of Petra, trapped underneath her horse, clearly easier prey.
....
Ainzo needed some altitude, so he swung up onto the fallen ten-meter calf and ran up the leg, across the back, timing it so he reached the oversized head just as the six-meter passed. He flipped the swords around into a reverse grip then stabbed into the Titan's back. It immediately arched its back in surprised pain but stopped moving towards Petra. It reached, one hand down over the shoulder, one up from the waist, trying to get to that one spot on the back you could never quite touch. Ainzo twisted this way and that to avoid the grasping hands until the upper came close enough. He stabbed the sword into the hand and when the Titan jerked it away, Ainzo rode with it, giving him the altitude he needed. He pulled the sword out, dropped to the shoulder, and sliced the nape as Petra had told him. The Titan crashed to the ground, and, his support gone, Ainzo was dumped unceremoniously onto the ground on his butt. So much for looking cool. As it turned out, battle healing could do nothing for your pride.
He'd have to ask Petra how she did that riding-to-the-ground thing.
The ten meters was dragging itself along the ground, still trying to reach Petra.
Ainzo doubled back to the 10-meter whose legs were starting to heal. He ran in front of its eyes, distracting it from the trapped Petra. It was now crawling towards him as he was the closer target. When it reached out, he raised his sword and sliced through the palm of the hand. Then he dodged around the arm, leapt back up on the nape of the neck, and cut it. The Titan began to steam and slowly disappeared. He jumped down and went back over to Petra.
"You OK?"
"Better than I would've been."
Ainzo simply nodded.
"This is probably going to hurt some."
He put his back onto the dead horse and began to push it up and away. "See if you can pull your leg out." She let out a grunt as she crawled, and pulled the leg out rather than moving it, attesting to the damage. The ankle was severely messed up.
Should I give her the healing potion?.. No It will cause problems. Because the people of this world know nothing about magic. It would make me suspicious of them. But I have to do something
Ainzo began looking through the nearest stand of trees searching for one that was reasonably straight with a diameter of about 10 cm. He tapped the tree lightly to make sure it wasn't an immortal object before unsheathing his swords. He made a clean horizontal cut at shoulder height then rolled the blades around while waiting for the tree top to tumble off, followed by three parallel vertical cuts and finished with another horizontal cut at hip height. Four boards fell off the newly made stump. He picked up the two center boards and brought them over to Petra.
"Sorry, my woodworking skills are bad, so this is the best I could do."
She stared at the boards. "What are you talking about? You sliced up that tree in single pass cuts and the boards are exactly the same size."
"That's Sword Skill, not Woodworking Skill. Do you have anything we could tie these on with?"
"In the saddle bag." Her voice sounded matter-of-fact but she wondered again who was this guy? She watched him rummage around in the bag "grab those smoke canisters, and see if you can find where I dropped the flare gun."
He picked out what was needed and began tying up her leg.
"There are three more coming in from the west. They don't seem to have noticed us yet. Do these things travel in packs?"
She wondered if he was talking to distract her from the pain of setting her leg. "More like waves. They don't seem to interact or act in any coordinated manner, but we can go weeks without seeing any, and then we get a bunch all at once."
He gently released her leg and stood up. After a quick scan, he walked directly over to the gun.
"Ok, that Search thing you do is a really useful skill." She loaded the canister into the gun and fired into the air.
.....
"Purple smoke!" Oruo called out.
"Distress signal," Eld said at the same time.
"Keep moving!" Levi answered. "If she's still firing signals, she's still alive."
They altered their destination to match the origin of this third signal.
.....
"No wait!" Ainzo called out, but it was too late. The smoke signal had already left the gun. He watched for a few seconds.
"I don't know if your party saw the signal, but the Titans did."
"Well, I'm not outrunning them this way."
Petra looked at her leg and then over at the nearby trees. "Maybe the ODM gear can get me high enough they can't reach."
But the trees weren't that high. They might save her from a six-meter, but they wouldn't do anything against a ten or above.
"So what happens if one of those Titans grabs you, anyway?"
"They eat you."
"That sounds unpleasant."
"Even worse, because they don't have digestive systems, they spit out the body parts like a cat hairball."
Ainzo frowned
On the other hand, one the first time, two the second time, three the third time. Twisted but not imaginative. However this time, they were not all coming in from the same direction. That upped the level of difficulty considerably. One from the southwest, one from the west, and one from the north by the northwest. The middle one would get there first. If he cut the ankle like he did before, that would leave two, but they would be coming from almost opposite sides.
Petra struggled to get up on her one good leg.
"You can't walk; that leg won't hold weight."
"No," she said,
"but once it gets close enough, I can use the ODM gear to get airborne and it won't matter as much."
"You'll be flying right up his front. Won't he just grab you and eat you?"
She click the sword blades into the hilts. "He can try."
He looked at her for a second and nodded sharply with a short grunt. "Take the northwest. I'll keep the other two off of us." Northwest would arrive last. If he was fast enough, he could knock the other two out in time to help her. But he would have to be very fast.
.....
The Special Operations Squad galloped past a half-evaporated Titan corpse. Eld glanced over at Oruo. "Looks like her dating life is not as dead as you thought."
"Oh, bite m-ahh," Oruo called out as a small spurt of blood came out of his tongue.
"I'm not even going to comment on the irony of this moment," Levi said under his breath.
"Captain!" Gunther called out.
Ahead they saw two dead Titans, and a mile further on three live ones - a twelve meter and a pair of ten meters- converging on two people: a man in black with mismatched swords and Petra. She just stood there, awkward and unmoving, while a Titan charged her down.
"What the...?" Levi said under his breath.
"It's her leg!" Hange said.
They glanced down. Petra was balanced entirely on one leg; the off leg was immobilized in a splint.
"Damn," Levi said. "Eld, Gunther, take out that Titan. Oruo, get her out of there. I'll get the other two."
"Yes sir!"
Levi hadn't waited for the acknowledgment before he broke formation. He headed directly for the twelve-meter coming up from the southwest. Sensing a larger collection of people to target, it turned to face the squad and began lumbering towards them.
Levi kicked his feet free of the stirrups and launched himself at the Titan. He lodged his grappling hook into the Titan's chest then fired the ODM to swing wide. He fired a second grapple into the back, released the first hook, and reeled in hard, using the momentum and torque to increase the force of his strike, cleanly slicing the nape. The first contact to kill was less than ten seconds. He turned to the second, aimed the grapple, and prepared to fire when the Titan sunk to his knees. The guy with the mismatched swords had cut one ankle and completely removed the other foot. Levi adjusted his trajectory downwards, fired the line, and reeled himself in when he heard Hange yell "Don't kill it! I want to cut into it!"
Levi gave an exasperated sigh at having to alter his tactics twice for the same Titan. He severed the shoulder muscles on both sides, rendering the arms useless to prevent the crazy woman from getting eaten while she studied it, then for good measure, slid down the back and severed the spine midway. It crumpled forward.
"Woohoo!" Hange practically jumped out of her saddle in excitement. "You're the best, Levi. Throw me your knife so I have two for the dissection."
"Whatever," Levi said in a bored tone. "Just don't lose track of time so it regenerates, gets up, and starts killing us again." He walked over to talk to the man.
"Who's the guy?" Oruo asked Petra in exactly the same tone Levi had just used.
Eld nudged Gunther in the ribs and nodded toward Oruo and Petra. Oruo had a crush on Petra, but she found his constant imitation of Captain Levi to be annoying. Plus the kid had obviously just saved her life. Oruo might be a phenomenal Titan slayer, but he had a lot to learn about women. Eld and Gunther stood back to watch.
"His name is Ainzo and he's so powerful," Petra snapped. "He got two solos and two assists without ODM gear. Would have been three solos if he'd known about the nape on the first one. And probably five solos and one assisted if you hadn't shown up when you did."
Levi narrowed his eyes. Petra was generous, but she didn't usually exaggerate. "Suppose you tell me exactly what happened."
Ainzo shrugged. "The horse went down and she was injured. We couldn't outrun them so we had to fight."
Levi just looked at him. "Hey, What the hell were you doing out here in the first place. Also why are you wearing a mask?"
" My face was damaged in a fight so I wear the mask"
....