"This is really convenient." murmured a certain newly promoted captain as he watched the blood swiftly evaporate from his clothes.
He had bathed in titan's blood for what was probably the twentieth time that night alone, every fight ended instantly before the titan ever realized his presence, but the fact that there were so many caused him to panic internally.
"If there are so many here, what about the other places? How many have already died?" where questions that passed through his mind all the time.
But there was one thing he could sigh in relief about, the one he had just killed was the last one from what he had seen, and no titan had emerged in the last hour.
They had just emerged as a wave at the very beginning, at least fifteen titans coming to attack the castle simultaneously, there was no way it was a random attack.
They had attacked only after they had reached the castle, not before, and they had all attacked at the same time.
These made him think about only one possibility, the titans were being commanded to do as they did by something or someone, the one thing that cemented this belief was that after the first wave, one titan came every single hour, like a clock.
Every time it was an anomalous titan with vastly superior speed and height above the ten meters class, it seemed that they weren't even bothering with trying to make it seem like a coincidence.
But this meant that maybe it was an attack specifically on them, maybe other places where less affected, he could only hope.
He sat back on the bastion he claimed as his lookout post and looked at the horizon where the sun was showing itself, indicating the end of the night and that his team would wake up at any moment now.
"Good morning, Kle." he heard a voice coming from behind him.
"Morning Lie." he replied while yawning slightly.
"Sleepy?" she asked with a hint concerned, which melted away at his next words, "Yeah, it was a boring night, if we're still around tonight then you take the lookout."
She chuckled a little in response, "Showoff, but sure, I don't mind a bit of target practice either.
So? A report of what happened?" after a bit of friendly banter, it was time to finally get to the serious talk.
"After the first wave they sent an anomalous ten meter each hour, they seemed intent in not letting me rest well."
"Are you sure they've been sent by those guys? Couldn't it have been a coincidence?" she asked just to make sure.
"A highly unlikely coincidence if it was, they looked too coordinated to be normal, plus the fact that they could move at night, I rather believe they were ordered to do so by those guys."
"What a pain, any idea of why they would go out of their way to tire you out?"
"Maybe they're trying to keep us away from where the real action is going on, after we killed that woman they must have grown wary of us in particular."
She sighed heavily, "What a bunch of cowards, we should reunite with another unit, but this should have been the place with others."
"Should we move or wait here? The commander should know that this was our destination, if we stay they might send someone with further orders."
"Yeah, but..." she was about to say something when her eyes focused in a particular direction.
Right at that moment they saw a soldier in a green cape on a horse coming in their direction, "It seems we don't have to wait anymore."
They both jumped down the building, causing the soldier who had spotted them to almost have a heart attack, but they used a jet of gas at the last moment to slow their fall enough to not hurt them.
"Insane as always..." mumbled the soldier looking at two people that always managed to send her in a panic by doing crazy and dumb stuff.
"Hey Liesl, Klemens, I really don't think you should waste gas like that, especially in such a situation." said the woman with a concerned tone as soon as she dismantled from her horse.
"Long time no see, Petra, how are you doing?" asked Liesl to the newcomer, before turning to her fellow captain and asking him to wake up their team members.
"Hey Petra," he greeted before turning confused to the girl, "why didn't you do it before coming to me?"
"Because I wanted a little 'us' time, you know?" she replied flirtatiously, to which his answer was a resounding, "Bullshit." as he left.
This left the two women alone, one more confused than the other.
Petra asked, "What was that about?"
"The moron still hasn't understood that I love him, as in, more than friend type of love." replied the girl with an exasperated sigh, something she seemed to be doing more often than normally today.
"Eheh, still dense as always, isn't he?"
"The problem is that I know that he loves me too, and I'm pretty sure I've been more than obvious about it."
"What have you done?" asked the smaller, but still older woman thirsting for the gossip of her ex team members.
"Every possible thing, a few days ago we were in our bed and I stripped completely naked saying I was feeling hot, he then told me to stop snuggling with him in that case," she said as if that was the most normal thing ever, "can you believe it?!"
"Wait wait wait," replied a, very, confused Petra, "so you two sleep together?"
"Yeah? You didn't know?"
"How? Normally, the rooms are divided in male and female dorms for recruits."
"We have privileges, captains, remember? We have two rooms reserved for us, but we use only one though."
"Oh, yeah," she replied, still envious about their incredibly swift promotion to a rank higher than her own, "what else have you done?"
"Every possible thing, when we bathed together, after scrubbing his back as usual I offered to clean his front too, but he replied, 'No, I can do it on my own.' that dumb idiot."
"You bathe together too..." mumbled the woman with a tone too low to be heard over the rumbling of the younger girl, still going on and on about her list of normally outrageous things from a normal standpoint.
"Wait," she interrupted, "So you bathe together, sleep together, train together, live together, what could you possibly want more? Aren't you two basically married already?"
"I want smoochies! And other embarrassing things, like h*ndholding!" she replied instantly.
"...What?"
"Yeah, I want to do the lewd stuff!"
And it was at that moment that Petra understood, that the two had never received a sexual education in their lives.
'Now it makes perfect sense, they were orphaned at ten and then to the army at twelve, the army doesn't do sexual education classes, maybe Klemens doesn't even understand what Liesl wants in the first place!'
"After this ends, you, me and Klemens need to have a really important discussion, okay?" so she took it upon herself to teach them all they needed to know!
"Okay? What about?" but interrupting the confused Liesl about the sudden change in demeanor from the older girl was another voice coming from behind them.
"I woke them up, I gave them ten minutes to get ready and have a light breakfast, here." said the boy as he passed his fellow captain and Petra a bit of jerky and his satchel with water, while keeping some as his own.
"Perfect, thanks, Petra, how's the situation out there, have the titans reached the cities?" she asked before starting to munch on her breakfast.
Petra, who didn't refuse the jerky, answered, "The major cities are safe, the titans didn't leave the area and most have already been killed, but we lost a lot of people in exchange, team Levi was nearby, so captain sent me here to check on the castle while the rest of the team goes to the wall in search for the breach.
He told me to bring as many people as I can and then regroup at the wall, but the castle looks awful, how many survivors from the troops stationed here?"
A wry smile appeared on the two's faces, "When we arrived there was no survivor, only corpses."
"Oh..." exclaimed Petra as for a second a sad expression flashed on her face before disappearing the next second, she had grown far too used to death, "Then, will your team join our in our patrol or would you rather wait here?"
There was no way Petra could order their team to go with her, it wasn't possible even if Levi himself was here as the two had a rank equal to his, and having people in the castle was equally important as they could work as an information relay for other teams.
But remaining away from the action was in no way what their team was created for, they were a spear in the fight against the titans, even if made up entirely of new recruits, it was probably one of the most lethal teams in the history of the fight against titan by virtue of Klemens and Liesl alone.
They had already reached and maybe even exceeded captain Levi's titan kill count, reaching the peak of what any soldier had ever achieved.
"We'll join you, the situation with these titans is way too weird, they're probably being controlled by the enemy's titan shifters to operate the way they do." explained Liesl.
"What?!" exclaimed Petra startled, but she immediately regained her bearings, "Sorry for the outburst, are you sure about what you're saying?"
"Absolutely, more than that, the enemy seems keenly aware about our teams movements and has tried to trap us, any other team would have died already." replied the black haired captain and unfortunately, he wasn't overselling himself, the first wave of titans was filled with more abnormal titans then not.
The smaller woman inhaled sharply as her eyes dilated slightly, "In that case, I'm happy that your team will join us."
Team Levi still hadn't lost members since they took their mission as under Levi's leadership they had evaded most of the troubles and protected Eren to the best of their abilities, but having two more incredibly skilled fighters was never a bad thing.
The two teens shared a heavy look, knowing that was about to come was probably going to be one of the heaviest battles in terms of both casualties and significance in their entire lives.
Just the knowledge that the enemy knew where they were was weighing on their minds, but knowing that they were probably going to fight numerous titan shifters again, this time with many more people around made the weight on their backs heavier than ever.
They had been blessed with incredible talent, but it unfortunately came with the curse of feeling that they could always do more, that they could have saved more people if they just tried a bit harder.
And now, they were once again jumping in the open mouth of the titan, hoping to come out unscathed.
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