"Didn't I teach ya that never turn yer back to yer enemy?"
After falling into the ambush of the anti-personnel interior MPs, Levi Ackerman confronts the man who raised him, this time as an enemy, and barely makes it out alive. But the ulterior motiv...
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Out in the open, Levi's squad was sitting around a campfire, beaten and knackered, watching how the dancing flames turned the wood into ashes, casting a faint glow of light on their moss green cloaks and worn-out faces. They were surrounded by sparsely growing deciduous trees, half-naked bushes, and vegetation that stuck out of the arid and otherwise plain ground. Pitch-black darkness had descended over the lands, shadows engulfed every spark of light in sight except for the glowing embers that kept the six warm.
"We'll wait till night until we set off. Each one of you must take a firearm. There are no other ways to fight the interior MPs." Levi's blunt words were followed by dead silence excluding the crackling of the campfire. The losses they bore reflected on his fellow comrades' eyes, drowned in the suffocating murky fog of sheer hopelessness. There was no ray of hope. Seeing their despair, Levi felt the urge to speak up and stir up their fighting spirits but his tired mind couldn't come up with a persuasive pep talk. "Also, rest if you need to," he added lamely. "Though, I doubt if anyone can sleep in this smelly old dump."
Nobody seemed to realize that their Captain had cracked a half-joke which, after all, wasn't supposed to be one. Mikasa's charcoal hair was falling over her dark eyes that were deadly cold. It was no use telling what kind of murderous fantasies were going on in her mind, behind the curtain of hair and woolly blood-red scarf.
Armin sat next to her with hunched up shoulders, dwelling on his own misery. Every sign of him was screaming evidence of what the battlefield in his mind looked like.
The tension was skyrocketing. Jean and Connie were on the other side of Levi, both looking dead serious. The warm shades of red, orange, and yellow washed away years from their faces and giving them a softer look. The one Levi had seen when they had freshly entered the Survey Corps. The past months weighed heavily on them, chipping away at their venturesome nature and leaving the regret to eat the remaining bits.
Despite everyone's energy was running low, to his surprise Connie who sat next to him opened his mouth: "Where do you think they have taken Eren and Historia, Captain?"
Levi hated the truth that he had no idea. "I don't know."
The boy attempted a new approach, voice rising half an octave. "Do you think we'll be able to get them back, sir?" he asked.
"The MPs were trained to kill humans. They are equipped with anti-personnel ODMG." A short pause followed his response when waiting to let everything sink in. Holding back vital information would cost a lot but Levi didn't want to cause panic either. "There's also an MP named Kenny," he started, choosing his words carefully. He could still feel the kiss of danger on his skin. So close to death. "He's like me but far more skilled and perilous. With this assembly, I'd say our chances are pretty slim. But we have to act now. We have no other choice."
Nobody welcomed the new prospect with a smile. If possible, their faces fell even more. But one of them seemed to be already down in the mud. The Captain spotted Armin who was clearly on the verge of mental breakdown. "...What's wrong, Armin?" Levi asked even though he had a nagging feeling that the boy suffered from the indelible stain on his conscience because he had acted against his surprisingly high moral sense. He was one of those rare and pure ones with a bit of humanity left. This cruel world would eventually hunt them down and make them pay the cost of their life with others' blood.
