The air in Trost District tasted like copper and burning hair.
I pushed the heavy iron doors open.
The smoke immediately stung my eyes.
I stepped out onto the blood-slicked cobblestones.
Behind me, the rest of the 104th slowly crept out of the supply depot stairwell.
They were holding their blades with trembling hands.
Their fresh gas canisters hissed faintly in the quiet afternoon.
But the silence didn’t last.
It was shattered by a sound that defied all biological logic.
A massive, guttural roar ripped through the streets.
It wasn’t the mindless, high-pitched screech of a standard Titan.
It was a battle cry.
It was pure, unadulterated fury condensed into acoustic vibrations.
The cobblestones beneath our boots trembled violently.
“Look!” Armin gasped, pointing a shaking finger toward the main avenue.
I was already looking.
My threat-assessment radar had painted the target in glowing, blinding red three seconds ago.
A fifteen-meter Titan was standing in the middle of the street.
But it didn’t look like the others.
It was entirely devoid of the grotesque, disproportionate fat that characterized the normal swarms.
It was a masterpiece of raw, predatory musculature.
Its physique was lean, heavily defined, and built for explosive kinetic violence.
It had dark, shaggy hair that hung over its face.
Its jaw was completely fleshless, exposing a terrifying row of jagged, interlocking teeth.
And its eyes.
Its eyes were a brilliant, burning, toxic green.
I recognized that shade of green.
I had spent the last twelve years watching those exact same eyes glare at bullies, scream at the sky, and fiercely promise to murder every single Titan on the planet.
‘Well,’ I thought, my deadpan completely masking the sheer shock in my chest.
‘Looks like the idiot actually meant it.’
A standard seven-meter Titan lumbered toward the new anomaly.
It reached out with its stubby, grasping hands, entirely lacking any combat strategy.
The green-eyed Titan didn’t hesitate.
It didn’t shamble.
It didn’t grab.
It dropped its center of gravity, pivoting flawlessly on its lead foot.
It threw a devastating, mathematically perfect right cross.
The fist connected solidly with the seven-meter Titan’s jaw.
The sheer kinetic force of the impact sounded like a cannon firing.
The smaller Titan’s head literally tore off its shoulders.
It flew through the air in a spray of boiling blood, crashing through the roof of a nearby bakery.
The headless corpse crumpled to the street.
The 104th cadets standing behind me gasped in collective, paralyzing horror.
“Did…
did it just punch another Titan’s head off?” Jean whispered, his voice cracking by a full octave.
“The kinetic transfer of that right hook was slightly inefficient in the follow-through,” I noted aloud, my voice flat and analytical.
“It over-rotated the shoulder.
But the sheer mass and velocity entirely compensated for the poor form.”
Jean slowly turned his head to stare at me.
“Are you critiquing its boxing technique?!” Jean yelled, completely losing his mind.
“It’s an Aberrant!
It’s going to kill us all!”
“It hasn’t looked at us once, Jean,” I corrected him, pointing a steel blade down the avenue.
The muscular Titan let out another deafening roar.
It charged directly into a cluster of three more Titans that were swarming a local bell tower.
It didn’t bite them.
It tackled the first one, driving it into the cobblestones, and began aggressively, violently stomping on its nape until the spine was entirely pulverized.
It was a creature driven by pure, homicidal rage.
“It’s fighting them,” Armin whispered, his blue eyes widening with a sudden, impossible realization.
Armin looked at the Titan.
Then he looked at the severed arm lying on the distant roof.
Then he looked at me.
His brilliant, analytical mind was rapidly connecting the dots that completely defied human science.
I gave him a subtle, almost imperceptible nod.
Armin’s breath hitched.
A fierce, desperate light ignited in his tear-stained eyes.
“We need to help it,” Armin declared, stepping forward.
The rest of the cadets looked at Armin like he had just suggested we all eat glass.
“Help it?!” Connie shrieked, clutching his head.
“Are you insane, Arlert?!
It’s a monster!”
“It’s an anomaly that is currently operating as a massive, heavily armored wrecking ball,” I interrupted, projecting my voice to cut through the panic.
I stepped to the front of the group.
My Adrenal-Stim syringe was burning through its final few minutes.
My vision was starting to tunnel slightly at the edges.
I needed to wrap this up before my central nervous system crashed entirely.
“Listen to me,” I barked, channeling the absolute authority of a veteran commander.
“That anomaly is entirely focused on hostile Titan targets.
It is clearing the evacuation route.
But it lacks situational awareness.”
I pointed my blade toward the brawl down the street.
The muscular Titan was currently wrestling a twelve-meter class to the ground.
But two smaller, four-meter classes were slowly creeping up behind it, aiming for its exposed hamstrings.
“If those smaller hostiles sever its Achilles tendons, our wrecking ball goes down,” I explained coldly.
“And if it goes down, that entire swarm turns its attention back to us.”
I turned to look at the terrified faces of my classmates.
“We are going to provide close air support.”
“You’re out of your mind, Yeager,” Jean muttered, though his grip on his blades tightened.
“I am aggressively pragmatic, Jean,” I countered.
“I am not asking you to fight the big ones.
I am asking you to clear the ankle-biters off our only ticket out of this district.”
I didn’t give them time to argue.
I fired my anchors into the nearest brick wall and launched myself into the sky.
The wind hit my face, cooling the sweat on my forehead.
‘Two minutes left on the adrenaline,’ my brain warned me.
‘I need a contingency.’
I mentally opened my inventory while swinging through the air at forty miles per hour.
I selected the Minor Health Recovery Serum I had pulled in the basement.
The small, thick glass vial materialized in my left hand.
I pulled the cork off with my teeth and spat it into the wind.
I downed the glowing green liquid in one massive gulp.
It tasted absolutely horrific.
It was a mixture of battery acid, stale mint, and pure chemical adrenaline.
But it worked.
The moment it hit my stomach, a warm, soothing wave washed over my burning muscles.
The micro-tears in my shoulders instantly knitted themselves back together.
My heart rate stabilized.
The impending crash of the Adrenal-Stim was forcefully delayed.
“Time to go to work,” I muttered, tossing the empty vial away.
I swung around the corner of the avenue, coming in high above the brawl.
The Rogue Titan was currently ripping the arms off a fifteen-meter class.
But the two smaller four-meter Titans were closing in on its blind spot.
They opened their jaws, lunging for its calves.
I bypassed my gas restrictor.
I squeezed the right trigger.
My gear detonated, launching me into a vertical dive with the concussive force of a bullet.
“Looks like you brought a bite to a blade fight,” I quipped, my Leon persona bleeding heavily into my speech.
I didn’t aim for the nape.
I aimed for the optics.
I shot straight past the face of the first four-meter Titan, dragging my left blade cleanly across both of its unblinking eyes.
The Titan shrieked, its hands flying up to its ruined face.
I used the momentum to pendulum swing completely around its body.
“Jean!
Take the nape!” I roared.
Jean Kirschtein came swinging out of the smoke exactly on cue.
He didn’t hesitate.
He drove both of his blades deeply into the blinded Titan’s neck, carving out a massive chunk of flesh.
The Titan collapsed, dissolving into steam.
“I can’t believe I’m taking orders from you!” Jean yelled, launching himself back into the air.
“My tactical brilliance is undeniable, Jean!
Just accept it!” I yelled back.
I fired my anchors, pivoting mid-air to engage the second four-meter Titan.
But I didn’t have to.
A silent, dark blur of pure violence shot past me.
Mikasa Ackerman had entered the fray.
She didn’t blind her target.
She just killed it.
She spun like a drill, her blades slicing through the Titan’s nape with such terrifying kinetic force that it nearly decapitated the monster.
She landed gracefully on the slanted roof of a nearby building, her eyes locked intensely on the muscular Titan roaring in the street.
The Rogue Titan threw the mutilated corpse of its opponent aside.
It let out a victorious, earth-shaking howl.
Then, it looked up.
Its glowing green eyes locked onto Mikasa standing on the roof.
It didn’t attack her.
It just stared, its chest heaving with exertion.
For a fraction of a second, the raw, homicidal rage in its eyes flickered.
It was replaced by a strange, almost human sense of recognition.
Then, two more fifteen-meter Titans turned the corner.
The Rogue Titan didn’t wait for them.
It charged blindly, throwing itself back into the meat grinder.
For the next twenty minutes, Trost District became an absolute slaughterhouse.
The 104th Cadet Corps didn’t run.
Under my strict, mathematically precise logistical commands, we operated as a lethal, highly efficient support squad.
We didn’t engage the massive threats.
We let the Rogue Titan handle the heavy lifting.
Whenever a smaller Titan tried to blindside our anomalous ally, we swooped in.
We blinded them.
We severed their hamstrings.
We carved out their napes and immediately retreated to the rooftops.
It was a flawless symbiosis of human mobility and Titan brutality.
My unified mind was running at absolute maximum capacity.
I was charting vectors, tracking gas reserves, and barking orders with a terrifying, deadpan calm.
“Marco, your right anchor is slipping on the clay tiles!
Adjust your entry angle!”
“Sasha, stop looking at the bakery!
There is a seven-meter approaching your six o’clock!”
“Connie, if you cross my flight path one more time, I will personally cut your wires and let gravity sort you out!”
We cleared the plaza.
We secured the perimeter around the Rogue Titan.
The surrounding streets were completely littered with evaporating, steaming corpses.
The air was so thick with steam it felt like we were breathing underwater.
I landed on the edge of a high brick chimney, my boots sliding slightly on the soot.
My gas canisters were completely empty.
They hissed a final, pathetic puff of air before dying entirely.
The effects of the Minor Health Recovery Serum were finally wearing off.
The Adrenal-Stim crash hit me like a physical blow to the back of the head.
My knees buckled.
I dropped heavily onto the brickwork, gripping the chimney to keep from falling off the roof.
My vision swam.
My lungs burned with every ragged breath.
“Kai!” Armin yelled, landing on the roof next to me.
He rushed over, grabbing my shoulder to steady me.
“Are you okay?
You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I am currently experiencing a catastrophic biological shutdown,” I wheezed, my lazy persona finally returning in full force.
“I have exceeded my monthly quota for physical exertion by roughly ten thousand percent.
I am officially retiring.”
Down in the street below, the battle was finally over.
The Rogue Titan had just ripped the throat out of the final fifteen-meter class.
It stood in the center of the plaza, completely surrounded by the decaying bones of its enemies.
It was heavily damaged.
Its right arm was severed at the elbow.
Half of its face was torn away, exposing the steaming skull beneath.
It looked up at the sky, letting out one final, broken, triumphant roar.
Then, its massive legs simply gave out.
The anomaly crashed face-first into the cobblestones with a deafening thud.
The earth shook.
A massive cloud of dust and steam plumed into the air.
The surviving cadets landed on the surrounding rooftops, panting heavily, watching the fallen giant.
“It’s down,” Jean muttered, wiping sweat and blood from his forehead.
“Did we…
did we actually win?” Connie asked, his voice trembling with sheer disbelief.
I didn’t answer.
I forced myself back up to my feet, my muscles screaming in violent protest.
I completely ignored the pain.
I ignored the exhaustion.
I stared intently at the steaming nape of the fallen Rogue Titan.
The flesh was bubbling.
It was splitting open like a gruesome, biological cocoon.
“What is happening to it?” Mina whispered, taking a frightened step back on her roof.
I didn’t wait to find out.
I didn’t have gas.
But I didn’t need gas to understand gravity.
I stepped off the edge of the roof.
“Kai!” Armin screamed, reaching for me.
I plummeted thirty feet toward the cobblestones.
I hit the ground hard, executing a flawless, painful tactical roll to absorb the kinetic impact.
I ignored the agonizing flare of pain in my shoulder.
I stood up and walked directly toward the steaming, decaying nape of the Titan.
Mikasa landed right next to me a second later, her blades drawn, her dark eyes wide with cautious terror.
We approached the steaming mass of flesh together.
The muscle fibers on the back of the Titan’s neck were peeling back.
And slowly, agonizingly, a human figure emerged from the boiling steam.
He was unconscious.
He was attached to the Titan’s flesh by thick, red, muscular tendrils connected to his cheeks and spine.
His uniform was partially dissolved, but the military jacket was intact.
His brown hair fell over his pale face.
His left arm and left leg, which had been cleanly severed just an hour ago, were perfectly, completely whole.
Mikasa dropped her swords.
They clattered loudly against the cobblestones.
She didn’t speak.
She didn’t scream.
She just sprinted forward, plunging her hands directly into the burning, boiling Titan flesh.
She ripped the muscular tendrils away from his face.
She hauled him out of the nape, falling backward onto the street, clutching his unconscious body to her chest.
She buried her face in his neck, and for the first time in years, Mikasa Ackerman openly, violently wept.
I walked up slowly.
My boots crunched softly on the debris.
I stood over them, looking down at my idiot twin brother.
He was breathing.
He was alive.
He was currently the most dangerous, highly illegal biological weapon on the entire planet.
The duct-taped box in my mind finally cracked open.
The crushing, agonizing grief that had been threatening to drown me completely evaporated.
It was instantly replaced by a profound, overwhelming wave of pure, unadulterated relief.
And then, entirely predictably, it was replaced by deep, existential annoyance.
I dropped to my knees next to Mikasa in the dirt.
I reached out and placed two fingers firmly against Eren’s neck.
His pulse was strong.
His body temperature was impossibly high, but he was stable.
I let out a long, exhausted sigh.
I looked at his peaceful, sleeping face.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve dying on me, Yeager,” I whispered, my voice thick with emotion I aggressively tried to suppress.
“Do you have any idea how much structural physics I had to violate today just to keep these people alive while you took a nap?”
Eren didn’t answer.
He just slept, entirely oblivious to the apocalyptic mess he had just created.
Armin landed in the street a moment later, his boots slipping as he sprinted toward us.
He saw Eren.
He collapsed into the dirt right next to me, grabbing Eren’s hand and sobbing uncontrollably.
I sat back on my heels.
I looked up at the surrounding rooftops.
The rest of the 104th cadets were staring down at us in absolute, paralyzing horror.
They saw Mikasa crying.
They saw Armin sobbing.
They saw me, covered in blood and ash, sitting next to a boy who had just emerged from the neck of a monster.
They didn’t see a hero.
They saw an anomaly.
They saw a threat.
‘Tactical analysis,’ my brain whispered tiredly in the back of my mind.
‘The primary objective has shifted.
The Titans are no longer the immediate threat.’
‘The Garrison regiment will arrive within ten minutes.’
‘They will execute him.’
I closed my eyes, rubbing the bridge of my nose with a dirty, blood-stained glove.
My life was a complete logistical nightmare.
I had spent three years meticulously cultivating the perfect, invisible Rank Eleven persona.
I had engineered absolute mediocrity.
And now, I was sitting in the middle of a destroyed city, guarding a human Titan, completely surrounded by witnesses.
My cover was entirely, irrevocably blown.
“System,” I muttered under my breath, opening my eyes to glare at the fading smoke in the sky.
“I am going to need a lot more Duck Tales tape.”