Paradis Island.
She didn't know how long they'd been running. Even the Cart Titan—famous for its stamina—couldn't keep going. Pieck decided to stop, settling down beside a narrow, winding stream.
Disengaging from Titan form, Pieck let Annie down and all but tumbled from the Cart Titan's nape, hitting the ground.
The Cart Titan lay prone, pouring off steam, its venting body giving the two of them cover.
Collapsed in the smoke, Pieck stared weakly up at the sky, the cool ground seeping into her bones.
Annie looked around, rinsed her hands and face in the stream.
"Are we really going back to Marley, Pieck?" she asked.
Pieck shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "If Bertholdt is truly dead, then the Colossal Titan might not reappear inside the Walls—might not be in their hands at all. If we return, there's still room to maneuver."
"And if the Colossal is reborn inside the Walls?"
"Then we're traitors to Marley."
Pieck managed that last line and had no strength left for further thought.
She closed her eyes and rested.
With Annie on watch, she felt safe.
But before they'd rested long, a mass of Titans came charging from afar, moving at frightening speed, almost as if trained.
Annie woke Pieck and told her to transform and run.
Pieck opened her eyes and the sight rattled her to the core.
As they bore down on them, those Titans shouted from their mouths and kept a blistering pace, a tidal wall that filled the heart with despair and dread.
"What is that?!"
It was Pieck's first question.
As her partner, Annie couldn't explain it either.
"Maybe they're Abnormals," she said.
Seeing Pieck struggle to rise, she grabbed her hand and hauled her onto her back.
At the same time, she slipped the tiny hook from her ring, pricked her finger, and summoned the Female Titan.
She hadn't been hauling loads like the Cart Titan on a long trek, but she'd been transforming all day, so the fatigue was real. If they didn't run now, they'd likely die without even a corpse left behind.
"We have to live!"
Annie steeled herself. The Female Titan raised high, slotting Pieck against the nape.
"Hold on," she said, then drove her legs, throwing everything she had into a dead sprint in a single direction.
But something was off. Normally, even Abnormals give up once they can't close the gap—the fixation fades or the body fails. Yet Annie had run as the Female Titan for a long stretch, and still they didn't slow.
"What's going on?"
Curiosity flared through her.
For a moment she remembered the words she'd spoken in the Cart Titan's wooden passenger crate, when they invaded the Walls—words to Reiner.
—"We'll all become devils."
If they were already devils, then being torn apart and eaten by Titans was only fitting.
A death well deserved.
And yet…
"Are we really going to die here?"
Annie refused to accept it, but she was out of strength.
"Annie, put me down," Pieck said, curled into the Female Titan's collarbone.
The Female Titan said nothing.
Annie said nothing.
"Put me down, Annie," Pieck repeated. "This way, at least one of us might live. Otherwise, we both die."
At that, the Female Titan halted. Annie fell silent.
After a long beat, she turned and set Pieck down by her feet.
"All right, then—"
"Pieck," the Female Titan spoke, Annie's voice coming through. "If you get the chance… please be kind to my father."
Before Pieck could process or object, Annie drove the Female Titan straight at the horde.
"Annie!!!"
Just as she had once saved Annie from the jaws of many Titans, Pieck screamed herself hoarse, tears spilling and pattering into the dirt.
Last time, she'd had the strength to haul Annie out.
This time, she didn't.
She could only watch her comrade die.
In a daze, Pieck remembered something she'd said:
"Compared to Marley, she'd rather trust comrades worth entrusting her life to."
In a blink, that, too, looked like smoke.
The Female Titan never slowed. Annie charged without a flicker of doubt.
As always, she stared blankly down the tunnel vision of the Female Titan, ran blankly, died blankly—blank upon blank.
And yet, for some reason, something like tears traced from the Female Titan's eyes.
"How…?"
"Clearly,"
"I'm not crying."
Perplexed, Annie cast one look back at the small figure that was Pieck.
She felt like she was running from her past, from her lies.
"Maybe that's progress too, Dad," she said, plunging into the Titan crowd—into a loneliness softened by a brief, foolish kindness.
She closed her eyes, ready to meet the pain of death.
But it never came. Minutes passed. She was unharmed.
She opened her eyes, wary—and found every Titan around her standing in a peculiar posture, all of them unified at roughly ten meters tall, all of them staring at her in unison.
"What is this…?"
She was completely lost.
She looked around, then back at the solitary Pieck.
Suddenly, a Titan far taller than the rest strode forward, roughly shoving aside anything in its path, and stopped before her.
Annie looked it up and down.
It was ape-like, matted in thick hair, with long limbs and an expressive face.
"Zeke?"
She checked.
The Beast Titan smiled broadly and held its arms wide in welcome.
"Welcome back, Annie."
As it spoke, it snatched up the head of a ten-meter Titan beside it, squeezed, and crushed the skull to pulp—kneading flesh and bone together into a single blood-ball.
Then it raised the mass high, gathered its strength, and hurled it like a pitch far into the distance.
Whoosh!!!
The blood-ball sailed cleanly past the Female Titan and smashed into a true Abnormal that had been tailing her.
Thud!
On contact, the Titan detonated into gore and collapsed, painting the ground red.
"Ah-hah! Great pitch—you're out!"
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