Humanity was never meant to fly.
If we were meant to launch ourselves through the air at sixty miles per hour, suspended only by thin steel cables and pressurized gas, evolution would have given us wings, or at the very least, motion-sickness-proof stomachs.
Unfortunately, evolution had given me a highly squishy, entirely mortal digestive tract that was currently at war with my newly upgraded Omni-Directional Mobility gear.
“Listen up, you miserable excuses for soldiers!” Commandant Shadis roared, his voice echoing through the dense, towering trees of the training forest.
“Today, we separate the wheat from the chaff!
You will navigate this forest canopy using your ODM gear.
You will strike the Titan targets.
And you will try not to splatter yourselves against the bark like absolute insects!”
The 104th Cadet Corps stood at attention at the base of the massive trees, clutching the handles of their gear.
Most of them were trembling with a mix of adrenaline and terror.
I was just trembling.
‘The ambient humidity is sixty-four percent.
Wind speed is negligible.
Optimal anchor trajectory requires a forty-five-degree launch angle,’ my integrated Peter Parker intellect calculated effortlessly, painting the entire forest with invisible geometric lines, measuring the tensile strength of every visible branch.
‘Check gear seals.
Maintain situational awareness.
Watch for intersecting flight paths from panicked allies,’ my Leon Kennedy instincts chimed in, automatically adjusting my posture to lower my center of gravity.
‘I shouldn’t have eaten that extra piece of bread for breakfast,’ my Kai Yeager brain concluded miserably.
“Begin!” Shadis barked, firing a flare gun into the sky.
The forest erupted into a chaotic hiss of pressurized gas.
Dozens of cadets shot into the canopy, yelling in panic and excitement as their steel cables bit into the massive tree trunks.
I took a deep breath, mentally preparing my internal organs for the trauma they were about to endure, and squeezed my heavily modified triggers.
BOOM.
I had completely overhauled my gear the night before.
I had replaced the standard trigger springs, lubricated the spools with my magical WD-40, and bypassed the factory-standard gas regulators.
I had wanted deployment speed.
I had wanted tactical lethality.
I had vastly underestimated the laws of physics.
Instead of a standard, smooth 1.2-second deployment, my anchors fired in 0.4 seconds.
The gas released with a concussive, deafening crack, propelling me off the forest floor with a forty percent increase in kinetic velocity.
I didn’t just swing into the trees.
I was violently launched like a cannonball.
The G-force hit me like a physical punch to the chest.
The air was violently sucked out of my lungs as the forest blurred into a terrifying smear of green and brown.
I was moving faster than any cadet in the history of the 104th.
I was rocketing through the canopy at a speed that would have snapped a normal person’s neck.
But I didn’t have a normal brain anymore.
As I hurtled toward a massive, lethal cluster of thick branches, my Leon S.
Kennedy survival reflexes violently hijacked my nervous system.
My body twisted in mid-air with impossible, terrifying grace.
I contorted my spine, slipping through a gap in the branches that was barely wider than my shoulders.
My Parker intellect instantly calculated the exact millisecond to release my left anchor and fire my right, maintaining a flawless, high-velocity pendulum swing.
To anyone watching from the ground, I looked like a god of the sky.
I was a dark blur of tactical perfection, seamlessly weaving through the dense forest, my blades drawing in a flash of silver as I effortlessly sliced the napes of three wooden Titan targets in under ten seconds.
I looked like the ultimate soldier.
Internally, I was experiencing the most profound, agonizing motion sickness of my entire life.
‘Oh god, my stomach is still three trees behind me,’ I thought, my vision swimming as the intense G-forces compressed my un-mutated, average-guy organs.
‘I don’t have radioactive spider blood!
I have the circulatory system of a twelve-year-old!’
I needed to stop.
Immediately.
I fired both anchors into a massive, sturdy branch high in the canopy, venting my remaining gas to execute a perfect, momentum-killing tactical brake.
I landed on the thick wood in a flawless three-point crouch, my blades reversed, my head bowed.
It was the ultimate, dramatic superhero landing.
‘[Parker Template Integration increased to 38%.
Leon Template Integration increased to 25%.
Mid-air CQC mobility achieved.]’
I stayed frozen in my dramatic crouch for exactly three seconds.
Then, I violently gagged, dropped my swords, crawled behind the thickest part of the tree trunk, and aggressively projectile vomited my breakfast into a patch of moss.
I stayed there on my hands and knees, wheezing, spitting out bile, and utterly hating my life.
“I am going to die,” I rasped to the empty air, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve.
“I am going to die of aerodynamic nausea.”
“Did you just throw up?” a flat, completely unimpressed voice asked.
My Leon paranoia spiked.
I whipped my head around, my hand instinctively reaching for a blade I had just dropped.
Annie Leonhart was standing casually on the edge of my branch, her ODM gear hissing softly.
Her cold blue eyes were fixed on me, one eyebrow raised in mild disbelief.
She had clearly followed my flight path, probably trying to figure out how I was moving faster than the instructors.
Instead, she had found the phantom menace of the 104th retching into the foliage like a seasick sailor.
I slowly sat up, resting my back against the tree bark, trying to salvage whatever shred of dignity I had left.
“It was a tactical purge,” I lied smoothly, my voice raspy but deadpan.
“I was carrying unnecessary gastrointestinal weight.
It was negatively affecting my aerodynamic drag coefficient.”
Annie stared at me for a long, agonizing moment.
She looked at the puddle of vomit.
Then she looked back at me.
The corner of her mouth twitched.
It was the faintest, most microscopic ghost of an amused smile I had ever seen.
“Right.
Aerodynamic drag,” Annie repeated, her voice dripping with dry sarcasm.
“You move like a demon, Yeager.
But you have the stomach of a civilian.”
“I am a civilian, Annie.
I just happen to be heavily armed,” I sighed, leaning my head back against the bark and closing my eyes.
“Please don’t tell Shadis I puked.
He’ll make me scrub the mess hall.”
“I won’t tell,” she said quietly.
There was a sharp hiss of gas, and when I opened my eyes, she was gone, already swinging gracefully back into the canopy.
I spent the rest of the training exercise sitting in the tree, utilizing my [Nap Anywhere] passive skill to sleep off my motion sickness, perfectly content to let everyone else do the heavy lifting.
Later that night, the barracks were filled with the groans of exhausted, sore cadets.
I sat on the edge of my bunk, sipping a cup of water, finally feeling like my internal organs had returned to their proper places.
Across the aisle, Eren was aggressively massaging his shoulders, complaining loudly to Armin.
“I don’t understand it!
I used up my entire gas canister in the first twenty minutes!” Eren vented, looking furiously at his gear belt.
“The triggers feel incredibly sluggish.
By the time I deployed my anchors, the targets were already gone!”
Armin sighed, rubbing his forearms.
“My problem is the grip tension.
The triggers are so stiff, my hands were cramping up.
I barely managed to hold on during the swings.”
I listened to them in silence, my integrated brain automatically translating their complaints into mechanical diagnoses.
‘Eren’s gas release valve is factory-standard, meaning his aggressive, heavy-handed trigger pulls are dumping forty percent of his gas into the atmosphere without converting it to kinetic thrust,’ my Parker intellect deduced easily.
‘Armin lacks baseline physical strength.
The heavy iron springs in the standard grips are exhausting his flexor tendons, reducing his combat effectiveness to near zero,’ my Leon tactical analysis added.
I took a slow sip of my water, a profound sense of dread washing over me.
‘If they fail, they die,’ I thought grimly.
‘And if they die, I have to deal with the emotional fallout.
Furthermore, if my squadmates are incompetent, it statistically increases the probability that I will have to exert actual effort in combat to save my own life.’
I set my cup down with a heavy sigh.
A lazy man’s greatest asset in a warzone is a highly competent, self-sufficient workforce.
If I wanted to take naps during expeditions, I needed my friends to be lethal enough to cover my shifts.
I waited until the barracks went completely silent and the rhythmic snoring of fifty exhausted teenagers filled the room.
I slipped out of bed, moving with the absolute silence of a shadow operative, and retrieved my red Master Mechanic’s toolbox and a small flask of WD-40.
I snuck back out to the equipment shed, picking the lock in three seconds flat.
I walked down the rows of hanging ODM gear, finding Eren’s and Armin’s rigs.
I didn’t give them my extreme, high-velocity modifications.
If I gave Eren gear that deployed in 0.4 seconds, he would immediately launch himself headfirst into a brick wall and shatter his own skull.
No, they didn’t need lethal velocity.
They needed absolute, idiot-proof reliability.
I popped open Eren’s primary housing.
Using my precision screwdrivers, I installed a makeshift gas-flow regulator I had built from a scavenged brass pipe fitting.
It restricted the maximum gas output.
No matter how aggressively Eren panicked and slammed the triggers, the gear would only release the optimal amount of gas required for propulsion.
It would effectively double his flight time.
I closed his casing and moved to Armin’s gear.
I carefully removed the heavy iron tension springs from the handles.
Using my pliers, I heated and reshaped a set of thinner, highly elastic copper coils I had hoarded, installing them in the grips.
I applied a single, magical drop of WD-40 to the firing pins.
The result was a hair-trigger mechanism.
It required less than half the grip strength to fire the anchors, meaning Armin wouldn’t fatigue his arms during prolonged aerial maneuvers.
I moved down the line, stopping at Mikasa’s gear.
Honestly, she didn’t need my help.
Her physical coordination was already monstrous.
But I did her the courtesy of completely dismantling her wire spools, soaking the bearings in WD-40, and realigning her gyroscopes.
Her gear was now completely, terrifyingly silent.
She would be able to swing through the air without making a single sound.
I spent four hours in the shed, covertly modifying the gear of my immediate circle.
I even tweaked Sasha’s gas pressure so she could launch slightly faster—mostly because she owed me half a potato, and I wanted to ensure she lived long enough to repay the debt.
When I finally finished, my hands were covered in black grease, and I was running on exactly zero hours of sleep.
I locked the shed and snuck back into the barracks just as the sun began to peek over the walls of the training camp.
‘[Parker Template Integration increased to 42%.
Covert technological support role established.]’
I collapsed onto my mattress, completely ignoring the blue text floating in my vision.
‘I am the only person in the world who works an eighty-hour week specifically to avoid doing work,’ I groaned internally, pulling the thin blanket over my head.
But as the morning bugle blew and my friends woke up to discover their gear magically operating with pristine, effortless perfection, I allowed myself a tiny, exhausted smile.
Let Eren be the loud, suicidal hero.
Let Mikasa be the terrifying prodigy.
I was perfectly content being the unseen, heavily armed mechanic in the shadows, quietly keeping them all alive with a toolbox, some duct tape, and a terrifying understanding of structural physics.
Now, if only I could figure out how to invent motion-sickness pills before the next training exercise.