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Chapter 56 - Chapter 27.2: Purge-Part 3 (II)

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Present…

 

Mike moved through the now desolated outskirts of the quad like a ghost, a massive, silent shadow in a world of fire and noise. He'd departed from Hange for a while now, trying to find the cadets he could save, guided by his nose and his keen sharp senses. His mission was simple: find, extract and retreat. 

 

He'd already gathered two groups; thirty cadets in total, shell-shocked and trembling, hidden in a dry creek bed. He'd given them terse instructions: stay put, stay silent. Now he was searching for more.

 

The scent led him to a secluded area; ozone, blood, fear, and something else. And the sound of... silence where there should be screams. Surrounding the place, were the remains of a Forever Knight squad. One man pinned to a tree by a diamond slab, whimpering. Two others in a crystalline cage, struggling weakly. A fourth with his head encased in a giant diamond, lying on his back like an upturned turtle. A fifth... well, the fifth was lying dead a few meters away. And two others were rendered unconscious.

 

…And the ground was littered with emerald crystal shards.

 

Obsidian. 

 

Mike kept going, soon finding a storage shed around the rounded a collapsed wall and froze.

 

About fifty cadets were clustered together, most injured, some supporting others. In the center, organizing them with a frantic, desperate efficiency, was Petra Ral.

 

"Don't move!" Mike's voice, a low growl, cut through the murmurs. The cadets jumped, some reaching for broken weapons.

 

"It's a Scout!" someone yelled.

 

Mike stepped into the flickering light of a burning timber, his green cloak unmistakable. "I'm with the Survey Corps. What's your status?"

 

Petra though wary answered. "We were attacked by our instructors. They... they were killing us. The crystal... thing... saved us. Told us to get as far as we can. We gathered as many as we could find along the way."

 

Mike's eyes widened slightly. So it really is helping. He shook his head.

 

"It's a long story," Mike grunted, "but your instructors weren't who you said they were. They're impostors. Part of a... very strange fanatical group. Their plan tonight was to kill all of you. A purge."

 

A boy with a burned arm let out a bitter, half-hysterical laugh. "No shit! They were doing a pretty good job of it!"

 

"What about Obsidian?" a girl asked, her voice small. "Is he... really on our side?"

 

Mike hesitated. "I don't know what side a crystal titan is on. But right now, he's the only thing between you and those bastards. We need to move. Now."

 

Relief washed over them, mingled with exhaustion. "Thank the Walls," Tina whispered, leaning on her crystal staff.

 

Mike helped them up, guiding the now 80 cadets toward safety. 

 

He was about to usher them toward the creek bed when it hit him.

 

A wave.

 

Not of sound, but of feeling. It washed over him, through him; a torrent of pure, alien emotion that made the hairs on his neck stand on end and his stomach clench. PAIN. OLD PAIN. BETRAYAL. A HUNGER SO DEEP IT WAS A VOID. And beneath it, a feral, titanic rage that swallowed reason.

 

He'd smelled fear before. Terror. Despair. This was different. This was a psychic stench, the emotional equivalent of a rotting wound on reality itself. It came from the north, from where the demon dog had last been.

 

"Get down!" he barked, though the wave wasn't physical. The cadets cringed, feeling it too on some primal level. One girl vomited.

 

"The hell was that?!" Henning gasped, clutching his head.

 

Mike's blood ran cold. Bad. This is very, very bad. The creature wasn't just enraged. Something had broken inside it. Something fundamental.

 

"Forget it! Move! Now! Due east, double time!" He all but shoved the nearest cadet into motion. The group stumbled into a ragged run.

 

Then a cadet near the front pointed, his voice cracking with new terror. "Fire! The whole tree line is on fire!"

 

Mike looked. The northern forest, where the psychic wave had originated, was now a wall of flame. Orange and red claws climbed into the night sky, and the wind was shifting, carrying burning embers and the promise of an inferno toward them.

 

The group veered, hearts pounding. Mike glanced back, seeing retreating shadows…Knights fleeing. Anger surged. "Where the hell do they think they're going?!" He was about to pursue when a figure burst from the smoke.

 

"Mike! Don't!"

 

Hange crashed into the clearing, not with grace, but with the frantic, stumbling energy of a wounded animal. She was carrying Moblit over her shoulders, her own side a mess of blood and burnt fabric. Moblit was unconscious, head lolling.

 

"Don't bother with them!" Hange gasped, lowering Moblit carefully against a still-standing tree. Her glasses were cracked, one lens missing. "We have bigger problems! Literally!"

 

"What happened?" Mike was at her side in an instant, checking Moblit's pulse, it was faint, but steady.

 

"The demon dog!" Hange's voice was a screech of frustrated, horrified scientific passion. "It's not just mutated, it's evolved! Or devolved! Or... something! And it just... it broadcasted that! Did you feel it?!" 

 

"Yes," Mike said grimly. "And now it's lighting the forest on fire."

 

"To make matters worse," Hange continued, her hands fluttering as if trying to grasp the concepts out of the air, "NO, I DIDN'T GET TO SNIFF OBSIDIAN! "I WAS THIS CLOSE TO A LIVING SPECIMEN, AND NOW IT'S A FIRESTORM PARTY! WHY IS THE WORLD THIS CRUEL?!"

 

Mike blinked, understanding her stress. He was frayed too; blood loss from his wounds making the world tilt slightly. "Focus, Hange. There are children in need of rescue here."

 

She cut herself off, slapping her own forehead. "Sorry. Didn't mean to scream. Stress. Lots of stress."

Mike placed a massive hand on her shoulder, grounding her. "Understood." Even for him, his nerves were frayed wires. The stench of blood, fire, ozone, and now this psychic residue was a cocktail of sensory overload. "Is Obsidian still engaging?" 

 

"How am I supposed to know! I lost visual after the big roar and the feeling-like-my-brain-was-being-scrubbed-with-rust event!"

 

Hange's eyes then snapped to the cadets; about seven dozen of them, gathered from Mike's rescues. "This is all you could find?" Then she noticed something peculiar…

 

"Wait, they have ODM gear, why aren't they—?"

 

"Damaged," Mike interrupted, ticking off reasons on his fingers. "By the knights. Or they're injured. Or they're too traumatized to function." He nodded toward a corner of the group where a boy was slapping his friend's face lightly.

 

"Snap out of it, Dav! We're not dead! Look, we're not dead!" The friend, Dav, was rocking back and forth on the floor, muttering, "We're gonna die... saw him fall... body twisted..."

 

Hange's manic energy deflated, replaced by a profound, weary anger. She looked at the scared, injured children, at the burning world, at her unconscious assistant. "What did they achieve? All this death... for what? A 'cleanse'? Of children?"

 

Mike processed this. Three heavy variables, whatever the demon dog was has become worse, now it's causing a fire in this place, Obsidian is missing, and there are about eighty traumatized kids with a wall of flame at their backs.

 

"Priority is extraction," Mike stated, the soldier in him taking over. "We get them to high ground. The rocky ridge to the southeast. It's mostly bare stone. The fire might not climb it."

 

"Right. Right, yes." Hange nodded, shaking herself. She tried waking Moblit, shaking him. "Wake up, assistant! Crisis mode!"

 

Moblit groaned, his eyes fluttering open.He blinked at the chaos; flames roaring, bodies strewn, cadets sobbing. "S-squad Leader...? What... the ceiling is on fire..."

 

Hange explained in a rapid-fire torrent: "Impostors! Purge! Demon dog evolved! Crystal Titan real! Fire everywhere! Understand? Good!"

 

Moblit nodded dazedly. "Uh... yeah?" 

 

"Not the main issue now," Hange said, turning to the cadets. She put on her best, most reassuringly unhinged Squad Leader face. "Alright, listen up! Fun's over! We're playing a new game called 'Escape the Apocalypse!' Rules are simple: you see fire, you go the other way! You see a man in instructor gear other than us, you assume he wants to wear your intestines as a scarf! Easy peasy! Who's with me?!"

 

The traumatized cadets stared blankly. One started crying. Hange's "pep talk" wasn't helping; her manic energy clashed with their shell-shock fresh trauma, making some flinch.

 

Mike sighed. "Hange... tone it down."

 

Hange deflated slightly. "Sorry. Stressed. Let's move."

 

Mike took point. Those cadets who could still use their ODM gear; about twenty strong; took to the air, sticking close to the ground group, acting as scouts and flank security under Moblit's pained but professional direction. The rest; the injured, the shocked, the simply broken; formed a ragged column, with Mike at the front, Hange in the middle also helping to corral the rear.

They moved like a wounded animal through the burning night, a trail of green-cloaked scouts and uniformed children limping and stumbling toward the dubious safety of stone and altitude.

 

 _________________________

 

The forest was dying in fire and fury. 

 

Eren in his aerophibian form cut through the smoke like a living missile, his sleek, red-and-black form a streak of alien precision against the inferno. His wings, vast and membranous, beat with controlled power, each downstroke generating a gust that shoved back walls of flame and sent embers spiraling into the night sky. Mikasa clung to his shoulders, her arms locked around his neck, legs braced against his armored torso. The wind screamed past them both, whipping her scarf like a banner of defiance. Below, Hannes swung on his ODM gear in tight, practiced arcs, Armin secured against his back in a makeshift harness of straps and belts. Armin's face was pale, his knuckles white on Hannes' harness, eyes squeezed shut against the blur of speed and fire. 

 

"Left! Veer left!" Hannes shouted over the roar, his voice hoarse from smoke. He fired an anchor into a burning oak, swinging wide around a collapsing section of canopy. Armin yelped as the sudden turn pressed him tighter against Hannes' back.

 

Eeren banked sharply, wings slicing the air with a low, thrumming hum. A massive branch – aflame and falling; tumbled toward them. Eren's visor glowed. Twin beams of neuroshock energy lanced from his eyes, striking the branch mid-fall. The wood exploded in a shower of charred splinters and sparks, the neuro-energy disrupting its structure like a localized EMP. The path cleared. Mikasa tightened her grip, her breath hot against his neck.

 

"You're getting better at that," she said, voice steady despite the chaos. But her fingers dug into his armor a fraction harder, the only sign of her tension. Can't blame her after their...previous 'graceful' landing.

 

"I'm telling you, I've got the hang of it now!" Eren's voice buzzed, filtered into a resonant, alien hum that nonetheless carried his trademark indignation.

 

From over Hannes's shoulder, Armin yelled back, his voice strained from the heat and motion. "The last 'hang of it' resulted in you embedding us in a pine tree, Eren! My trust is in your intentions, not your tactics!"

 

"He has a point!" Hannes grunted, firing an anchor and yanking them around a plume of fire that erupted from a stand of pines. "Kid, you fly like a drunk bat! Just focus on the path!"

 

Eren grumbled internally but obeyed. His new eyes scanned the nightmare landscape. The fire was a living beast, consuming the forest with a roar that drowned out all but the closest screams. And there had been screams. Now, there was mostly the crackle of flame and the groan of dying timber.

 

That was the worst part. The silence where life should have been.

 

For nearly twenty minutes, they had been a desperate search party in a furnace. To Eren it was odd, he hasn't reached cooldown since when he had gotten this new form, but that was the least of his concerns chucking that to the back of his mind. Following Hannes's lead, they had swept along the fire's eastern flank, the young aerophibian's powerful wings beating back the flames in great, gusting WHUMPS to create temporary corridors. They'd called out, their voices raw. They'd found signs of flight; torn uniforms, a single discarded boot, a trail of blood that ended at a scorched patch of earth; but no living souls.

 

The dead, however, were plentiful. 

 

Eren's enhanced vision picked out the details he wished he could unsee. A cadet curled behind a rock, uniform smoldering and skin blackened. A Forever Knight, half-crushed by a fallen tree, his helmet mask cracked and his real face frozen in a final snarl, a small sense of vindication filled Eren's heart. That one got what was coming for him.

 

However as he passed each deceased cadet, they were a hammer blow to his spirit. 'Was saving those few worth this? Did I even save enough?'

 

"Hannes!" Eren buzzed, swooping lower to fly alongside the swinging soldier. "We're not finding anyone! The fire's moving faster! We need to start the backburn now, or we'll lose the chance!"

 

Hannes's face was a mask of soot and grim concentration. He glanced at the raging wall of flame to their north, then ahead to the dark, rocky silhouette of the ridge; their destination and the planned firebreak line.

 

"Not yet, kid! We're not in position! If we light it too close, we'll just add fuel to the party and cook ourselves! That ridge is our line in the sand. We reach it, we get a vantage point, then you play with matches!"

 

"But what if there are people between here and there? We're not seeing them!"

"They might have already made it out, or…" Hannes didn't finish, but the grim alternative hung in the smoky air. "Or they're in pockets we can't see. We can't scour every square foot. Our job now is to stop this thing from becoming a Wall Rose furnace spot. We save who we can on the way, but the mission's the mission!"

 

Armin, jostled against Hannes's back, added his logic, though it was edged with pain. "He's right, Eren. A controlled burn requires control. We need the high ground to see the fire's spread and the wind direction. A mistake could kill everyone both here and spread outside!"

 

Eren let out a frustrated vent of air from the gills along his sides; a hissing sigh. He knew they were right. But the helplessness was a poison. He was a creature of action, of raw power, and here he was, forced to wait, to follow, while the everything was still burning around him. 

 

 

Finally, the ragged line of the rocky ridge loomed before them. It was a stark, skeletal finger of stone clawing out of the forest, one side lush and burning, the other sloping down towards the dark, vulnerable farmlands.

 

"There! The flat area at the crest!" Hannes pointed, changing his swing to ascend.

 

Eren beat his wings as he aimed for the flat expanse Hannes had indicated. And then, his newfound confidence faltered.

 

A sudden, violent crosswind, funneled by the ridge's geometry, slapped into him like a giant's hand. He over-corrected, his left wing dipping sharply.

 

"Eren!" Mikasa's grip tightened.

 

"I got it—whoa!" He flapped hard, trying to right himself, but his trajectory was shot. He was coming in too fast, too low, and at a bad angle.

 

Hannes landed with a skilled roll, setting Armin down gently. He turned, eyes widening. "Kid, pull up!"

 

Eren tried. He flared his wings, but the rocky ground rushed up to meet him. In a last-ditch effort to spare Mikasa the worst of it, he twisted his body.

 

CRUNCH-SCREEECH.

 

The alien's streamlined form hit the stony ground not with a landing, but with a crash. He skidded, sending sparks flying from his carapace, his long tail whipping wildly. Mikasa, reacting with preternatural speed, didn't wait for the stop. The moment she felt the impact, she pushed off from his shoulders, tucking into a perfect forward roll that dissipated her momentum. She came up on her feet in a low crouch, unscathed but for a new layer of dust.

 

Eren wasn't so lucky. He plowed face-first into the unyielding stone of the ridge with a sound that made Armin and Hannes wince in sympathetic pain. The rock cracked under the force. For a moment he hung there, visor pressed against the stone, wings splayed awkwardly. Then, slowly, he peeled backward and toppled onto his back, limbs sprawled, the impact sending a small avalanche of pebbles skittering down the slope.

 

Mikasa was at his side in an instant, helping him sit up. "You okay?"

 

"Ugh…" Eren groaned, pushing himself up. He rubbed the side of his head where the impact had jarred his skull. "Define okay."

 

"That looked painful." Armin said in sympathy.

 

"It was," Eren muttered, pushing himself to his feet. The Aerophibian's body was built for speed and impact, but the landing still rattled his teeth. "Next time I'm sticking to the ground." 

 

Hannes chuckled despite the situation. "Smart choice, kid. Now let's—"

 

A sound cut him off. Voices. Human voices; panicked, urgent, coming from the far side of the ridge. Footsteps crunching on rock, the faint clink of ODM gear. 

 

Hannes reacted instantly. "Hide!"

 

He grabbed Armin and pulled him behind a large boulder. Mikasa hauled Eren up, half-dragging him toward cover. Eren stumbled, still rubbing his head, his new form's balance off from the crash. They crouched low, hearts pounding. The voices grew closer; a mix of orders, gasps, and the unmistakable tone of someone trying to maintain control amid panic.

 

"…saw something glowing and crashing! Like a boulder!"

 

"Could be a survivor with a flare – or that crystal thing!"

 

"—I see movement on the ridge!"

 

"—don't fire until we confirm!"

 

Hange's voice cut through, high-pitched and frantic. "If it's the Titan, we need to make contact! Moblit, Mike, flank left! Cadets, stay behind us!"

 

Mike's massive frame appeared first, sword drawn, nostrils flaring. Moblit came in next. Then a cluster of cadets huddled in their wake, wide-eyed and soot-streaked.

 

They had heard the crash. They were coming to investigate.

 

Hannes hissed, "Stay hidden. They don't know who we are. If they think we're with the Knights—"

 

Hange burst into view, glasses askew. She froze mid-step, staring at the boulder where Eren's group was hidden. 

 

 

For a long, suspended second, there was absolute silence, broken only by the distant fire. The shock on the faces of the cadets was absolute. They stared at the new, winged horror that had just crashed into their refuge. Moblit looked like he might faint again.

 

Eren's group saw the fruit of their desperate search; survivors, so many of them; but also the wary, frightened, and armed faces of the military.

 

Then Hange's jaw, which had been hanging open, snapped shut. Her single remaining lens magnified an eye blazing with a torrent of emotions: shock, scientific avarice, dawning, manic comprehension. Her hands came up to clutch the sides of her head.

 

And she screamed.

 

It wasn't a scream of terror. It was a high-pitched, sustained shriek of pure, unadulterated, ecstatic revelation. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

 

The sound echoed off the stones, startling crows into flight and making everyone; Mike, the cadets, Hannes, even the dazed Eren jump.

 

Mike's response was immediate, he surged forward as his hands tightened around his sword hilt, body coiled for violence. "Identify yourselves!"

 

Hannes slowly raised his hands, stepping slightly in front of the kids. "Easy now! We mean no harm!"

 

The cadets behind them froze, some whispering in fear, others gripping broken weapons. "What the hell is THAT?!" One cadet rang out what was in everybody's mind at the moment.

 

Meanwhile Hange was undeterred. "CAN I TOUCH IT? MOBLIT, GET THE NOTEBOOK—oh, it's back at the gate. DAMMIT!"

 

She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, pointing a trembling finger at the young aerophibian, all fatigue and stress momentarily forgotten in the face of a new, shiny mystery.

 

Moblit groaned and covered his face with his hand. "Squad leader please."

 

Mike did not share her enthusiasm. His grip tightened on his sword. "Hange. Stand down."

 

"STAND DOWN?! MIKE, ARE YOU BLIND? THAT'S A LIVING, BREATHING, CRASH-LANDING SPECIMEN OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN! IT'S COMMUNICATING WITH THE CIVILIANS! THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT BIOLOGICAL FIND SINCE… SINCE TITANS! NO, SCRATCH THAT, MORE IMPORTANT!" 

 

Petra and the cadets watched this surreal exchange with a mixture of confusion and terror. The monster wasn't attacking. The mad Scout was yelling at it like an excited child. The giant Scout looked like he wanted to murder everyone. 

 

Eren, still rubbing his head, looked at Mikasa, then at Hannes. His filtered voice buzzed, low and for their ears only. "What… what do we do?" 

 

Hange's scream would have nearly broken the tableau. Mike's focus didn't waver from Eren for a second, but his nostrils flared. He wasn't just looking; he was scenting. And his eyes narrowed, darting from the alien form to the three humans beside it. 

 

"HANGE!" Mike's voice was a whip-crack, but she was already taking a stumbling step forward, utterly entranced.

 

 

"Wait! Don't!" Hannes yelped, throwing himself between Hange and the still-dazed Eren, his hands up in a placating gesture. "He's with us! He's not hostile!" 

 

"He?" Mike's gaze snapped to Hannes, then to Mikasa and Armin. His brain was working at terrifying speed. A new alien creature. Two children and apparently a Garrison with it. Association. The symbol… his eyes dropped to the creature's chest, where the Omnitrix emblem glowed a steady, pulsing green. A cold suspicion crystallized in his mind. 

 

'The same symbol. The hourglass. Obsidian had it…This winged thing has it too.'

 

"You," Mike said, his voice a low growl directed at the young Aerophibian. "Where is the crystal being? Obsidian. Are you its keeper? Or is this," his eyes flicked back to the symbol, the pieces connecting with chilling logic, "Your true form? A shapeshifter?"

 

The accusation hung in the air. Mike was terrifyingly close to the truth. The tension was a physical wire stretched to breaking. The cadets behind him whimpered. Moblit looked pleadingly at Hange, who was still vibrating with excitement, caught between scientific curiosity and the imminent violence.

 

Eren, finally finding his footing, straightened up to his full height, his wings giving an irritated rustle that made Mike's grip tighten on his swords. The filtered voice was wary. "He had to leave. Chasing down those… impostor knights." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the retreat. "He asked me to help anyone I could in his place." 

 

It was a half-truth, skirting the edge of their secret. Mike's eyes narrowed. The story was too convenient. The shared symbol was too specific.

 

Hange couldn't contain herself any longer. She sidestepped Mike, ignoring his warning growl, and got perilously close to Eren's face, peering at his visor. "Fascinating! Such a strange anatomy. And the wings… can I touch them? What's the wingspan? Can you actually achieve sustained flight or was that crash indicative of— MMPH!"

 

Moblit had lunged and clamped a hand over her mouth, dragging her back a step. "Squad Leader, please! It has… claws!" 

 

Mike's attention, however, had fully turned to the humans. The creature's words had momentarily stayed his hand, but the mystery of the children remained. His piercing gaze settled on Hannes.

 

"And who are you?" Mike's question was a blade pointed at Hannes. "Garrison. Off-duty by the look of you. And these children?" His eyes bored into Mikasa and Armin. "Are you their captor? Or did you kidnap them?"

 

Hannes, sweat pouring down his face, held up his hands in a placating gesture. "Whoa, hey, easy there, big fella! Name's Hannes. Just a humble Garrison man caught out in this mess!"

 

He put a hand on Armin's shoulder. "My… niece and nephew. From Jinae. Their parents… didn't make it after the breach. I'm all they've got. We were… visiting the outskirts when all this hell broke loose. Got separated from our wagon. Then he," he jerked a thumb at the Aerophibian, "showed up. Scared the piss out of us, but he hasn't hurt us. Seems to want to fight the same things we're running from." 

 

"Your 'niece and nephew' are children in the middle of military training grounds and standing protectively in front of an unknown, potentially hostile creature," Mike stated, his tone flat and disbelieving. "And your 'friend' shares a marking with the entity that fought the knights and possibly the demon dog at large. Explain."

 

Before Hannes could stammer out another weak lie, Hange interjected, finally prying Moblit's hand from her mouth, though her eyes were still glued to Eren. "Mike, wait! It hasn't attacked! It said it's helping! And look!" She pointed a finger at the burning forest, which chose that moment to deliver a punctuation mark to the crisis.

 

With a deafening, groaning CRACK-ROOOOOAR, a massive, fully-engulfed pine tree on the edge of the clearing gave up its fight. It toppled, a falling pillar of flame, crashing through smaller trees and sending a tsunami of fire and embers rushing toward their position. The wall of the main blaze was now terrifyingly close, the heat becoming a physical pressure.

 

"We don't have time for this!" Hange yelled, her scientific fervor momentarily swamped by survival instinct.

 

"She's right," The creature's voice buzzed, urgent. He took a step forward, ignoring Mikasa's slight restraining touch. "The fire. It will consume this entire sector. We have a plan to stop it. A control burn. But with you people here, it would be a problem, we must get to safety beyond this ledge before that," he jabbed a claw at the advancing inferno, "cuts you off."

 

Hange gasped, realizing what he's talking about. "A controlled burn? In this wind? With that fuel load? It's insanity! It's brilliant! How?"

 

It doesn't matter how," Mike stated, finally, slowly, lowering his swords a fraction. The creature was talking strategy. It was focused on the larger threat. It hadn't attacked, even when vulnerable. "What matters is it's our only shot. This ledge won't hold if the fire crowns." 

 

He looked back at the eighty-odd exhausted, injured cadets, at his wounded squadmate, at the strange creature and its suspicious human companions.

 

"What are you suggesting?" Mike asked, his voice still guarded.

 

Eren's visored face turned toward the cliff, then back to the fire, then to the huddled mass of humanity.

 

'Time is not on our side, and I can't risk changing to Blitz, it would cause more alarm than necessary. But-'  

 

The young aerophibian looked at his own, still-untested newly discovered wings. He'd felt the power in the blasts. But he also felt something else; a tremendous capacity for speed, for cutting through atmosphere. A thought, reckless and desperate, formed. 

 

'Could this do the job for me?'

 

It was all they had. 

 

He pointed a claw not at the base of the cliff, but at a point halfway up the steep face; a narrow, rocky ledge, beyond that it leads to an expanse of dry land. A perimeter outside the 103rd second quadrant cadet corps headquarters.

 

"We don't go to the top; that's just a dead end." Eren said, the filtered voice gaining a strange, calm certainty. "We go there. All of us. Now."

 

Hannes blinked. "Kid, there's no 'we' climbing that. It's a sheer face! And there are too many—" 

 

"We're not climbing," Eren interrupted. His wings unfolded to their full, impressive span, casting a long, ominous shadow over the group. The green symbol on his chest pulsed brighter. 

 

Mike's eyes widened slightly. "You can't carry…"

 

"Not carry," Eren said. He turned his glowing green gaze directly on Mike, then on Hange, and finally on the terrified cadets. The neuro-energy receptors around his visor began to glow with a vibrant, dangerous light. 

 

"I'm going to move you."

 

Armin looked at the narrow ledge, then back at his best friend. His face then paled. "Oh no…" 

Chapter 28-31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.

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