Everyone was running for their lives. When one person moved against the flow, every eye found him.
Levi's mount had the best stamina in the Survey Corps. Unlike the others, he knew that on open plains the warhorse mattered most, so whenever they hit forests he'd dismount, switch to ODM gear, and fight Titans up close.
Retreat wasn't in his vocabulary.
So when he cut upstream through the crowd, his horse devoured ground—and soon everyone noticed.
"Is he crazy?"
"What's he doing?!"
"Does he have a death wish?"
Doubt filled their hearts—until they saw the face of the man riding against the tide.
Levi Ackerman.
Memory snapped back: in countless close-quarters scrapes with Titans, there was always one soldier who made ODM gear sing—darting through giants, flipping and carving, lifting napes clean and finishing the kill.
To them he was an army by himself—speed and power without equal.
Then they saw what he was holding. Calling that thing a "steel blade" was generous. It was a steel stick, chewed full of notches—useless scrap, more like it.
Killing Titans with that?
Might as well gnaw their ankles with his teeth.
"He's lost it!"
"He's dead."
"What a waste…"
They muttered, sighed, ran.
And then someone caught up to Levi—joined the one moving upstream.
Mike.
Levi flicked him a barely-there smile.
He remembered this guy—the soldier whose nose could smell Titans.
What stuck with Levi was his movement—light, fast—and the ruthless, seasoned way he handled Titans.
Having a man like that on his flank eased his mind.
"Left three are mine. Right two are yours."
"No problem."
With that settled, they hit the Titans and went to work.
One peeled left, the other right—clean division of labor.
They were, in truth, going to die.
Levi had a "fire poker" for a sword; Mike…
Had no blades at all.
Mike had guessed as much the moment he spotted Levi.
Even with superhuman skill, Levi couldn't down five Titans with a single blunt blade.
So Mike meant to shoulder part of the load.
Even if a Titan ate him, so be it.
He was ready to dedicate his heart to the Walls.
But he'd underestimated Levi.
Yes, Levi held a "fire poker." So what?
He fired the ODM, flashed through the steam, and downed a Titan in a heartbeat.
He'd overestimated the blade, though.
The "steel stick" snapped on the kill.
With less than an inch of edge left, if Levi wanted to kill another Titan, he might as well use his teeth.
On Mike's side—
His horse, wrung dry from overuse, collapsed mid-gallop and pitched them both.
The animal heaved for breath, thick sweat slicking its hide, eyes fluttering.
"I'm sorry. You did well."
Mike closed the horse's eyes, then sprinted for the open.
But no man outruns a Titan. It caught him quickly.
"Ha! Come on, eat me!! I'm not afraid of you!! You— you filth, lower than animals! Trash! Maggots!!"
He screamed himself hoarse.
Lying in the Titan's palm, he wavered.
Staring up at that face, he wondered if they, too, had some shred of thought—like Roger.
"I… I'm sorry…"
He whispered, disgusted with his own weakness.
Everything went quiet.
As if—
The world had died.
Levi spurred hard, racing for distance.
The Survey Corps had fallen back to a defensible position.
They stared, stunned, at the two men buying time for the column—and tears ran hot.
And then—
Roger appeared.
The Jaw-Armored Titan erupted into being—
And thundered to a halt before the remnants of the Survey Corps.
"If crying fixed anything, why would this world still have injustice and war?!" Roger roared. "Stand up! No crying!!"
The Titan's voice carried his words as a sky-rattling bellow that shook every chest.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom!
He drove the Titan forward in pounding strides.
"It's the boss!"
"Boss is charging!"
"Let's go too!"
A roar went up. The Scorpio Corps surged to answer, swung into their saddles, and cut straight through the Survey Corps' center.
Their clean uniforms and crisp ranks made the Survey Corps flush with shame.
"So that's the strength of a Titan shifter?"
"Whatever else you say—Roger really is the strongest out there."
"This is his unit?! How are they this terrifying?!"
The Scorpio Corps poured across the field. The pressure they threw off surpassed even the Titans'.
Roger drove the Jaw-Armored Titan right up to the five. He stamped.
The ground boomed and shuddered—then lanced upward with a forest of spikes.
Shk! Shk! Shk! Shk! Shk!
Five spears, exactly—draining the last of Roger's stamina, even the energy from that apple he'd eaten.
Titan chests skewered, they hung in the air, thrashing, pinned.
Levi took the opening and, with a casual snatch, ripped a fresh pair of blades off a passing Scorpio soldier's rig.
"Big bro!!"
Isabel, the girl who'd long followed Levi, waved at him, thrilled.
"How many times have I told you—stop charging in with your head empty."
Levi snapped, then grabbed Farlan's outstretched hand, sprang to his horse's back in the same motion, fired his lines, and rode the cables into the Titans to take their napes.
One cut.
Another.
And another.
The smallest—a three-meter Titan with huge eyes—fell on the third stroke.
At almost the same moment—
Out on the edge of Paradis, the Beast Titan opened eyes that had only feigned sleep.
"What is it, Warrior Chief?"
Pieck asked. On the Cart Titan's back, Marley's latest machine-gun bunker was being bolted into place.
"A little one just died… and it looks like it stumbled on something big."
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