Searching for happiness (Attack on titan X Fairy Tail Crossover)

Chapter XX - Crying and laughing at the same time

Short note: My goodness, already the 20th chapter and 400 reads! Thanks a lot to all of the diligent readers. As a small special, this chapter is accompanied by a little surprise at the end. I hope you like it and enjoy reading! ;-)

Annie and Bertholt, these two were among the three persons who had accompanied Wendy. I had a bad feeling about it from the beginning, and now that they were showing up here without Wendy, it just confirmed my suspicions. Everything in me immediately struggled to jump up and attack these two there. I wanted to know where Wendy was, what they had done to her! And why did they come here so calmly for a long walk? And what did those two actually do in a place where we had actually supposed to meet Kenny? Was there a connection? I felt my muscles cramp at once, but I was forced to rest inwardly. I must not lose my head and just rush on them, because that would have been very unwise.

"There's someone else coming.", Gray whispered very quietly and alarmed my head shot in the opposite direction of Annie and Bertholt. From a forest road there came actually a third person. Was that this Reiner? This third person, however, seemed eager to hide the appearance, for this human wore a long, dark brown coat that blurred any body contours. The fact that this person also wore a wide hat, which was drawn deep in the person's face, made it impossible to tell whether this human was a woman or a man. However, I could almost be sure that this was definitely not Kenny, because he would not have completely masked himself.

Right at the parting of the ways, the ominous person and Annie and Bertholt met each other and stopped. With lowered voices they started to talk and unfortunately so quietly that we could not understand it anymore. After nodding, the person handed the man named Bertholt a light brown envelope, which he immediately stowed away. Shortly thereafter, the masked person made already back around and walked back into the forest, while Annie and Bertholt were gazing silently.

For a moment, I wondered if we should split so that we could spy on the unknown, but it would be stupid if we were to divide this already rather small group even further. Besides, we would certainly learn more about Wendy if we listened to these two here.

"Now that that's done, we can indeed return to Reiner.", Bertholt muttered now. The blond woman next to him nodded and without another word they turned almost synchronously around and walked the way back they just had come.

"Where Reiner is, is certainly also Wendy.", I hissed to Charle and Gray, who nodded immediately, "We must pursue them, but under no circumstances they mustn't notice us.".

We gave them a little head start before venturing out of hiding and running after them as inconspicuously as possible. Since we were still in the forest, the trees offered us pretty good shelter and luckily they did not even turn around. They were probably too sure they were alone here. After a while, the two started talking again, even though most of the time the man took over speaking and the little blonde often grunted in agreement or dropped a few words.

"Say, after all this effort, do we have to go back to this annoying guild?", Annie asked at some point and seemed to want to give up her silence. Bertholt shook his head.

"No, you know he said we should go back to him then.", he answered and I frowned.

Who was he? Maybe even this M. from Kenny's letters? The fact that we had met those two at this place finally suggested that there was some connection between them and Kenny. But I just could not explain what that should be.

"It was about time!.", Annie mumbled mischievously, "They were all out of their minds. Talking about friendship and camaraderie and all the shit all the time ...". I heard Bertholt sigh softly and it seemed he was already used to such comments.