Levi looked at Eren Yeager’s broken body with distaste.

  “Don’t worry,” Miche said as he tended to Eren with a bloody rag. “You’re not the one who has to clean him up.”

  The unsanitary sight which Levi could still smell was only a small bother compared to seeing the straightened nose on Eren’s face; not twenty minutes before, it was bent and out of shape thanks to a solid punch from Miche. There had also been the teeth that regrew after Miche knocked a couple out of the kid. It wasn’t like the healing done by Imperial bacta. This was real Titan regeneration happening on a human body.

  Eren Yeager really was a Titan

  And if that was the case, how many more human/Titan hybrids were out there?

  The girl, Mikasa Ackerman, probably wasn’t a Titan. She carried her bruises and bandaged cuts with stubbornness as she wiped the blood off Eren’s face, but Levi doubted she was willing herself not to heal, if Titan Shifters were even able to do that. Mikasa still didn’t trust Levi or Miche, but any surprise attacks on one of them would leave her exposed to the other who’d give another beatdown. If she had enhanced healing, it was a trump card she’d be using by this point to get herself and Eren away from them.

  “Again,” Erwin said as he walked into the private room provided to the Scouts after the trial, “you have my sincere apologies.”

  As Levi expected, the girl ignored him in a sullen defiance.

  “It was the only way to secure custody of you and Eren,” said Erwin, still using a carefully apologetic tone. “The people believe Eren is adequately controlled by the Scouts. While his unique power can’t be understated, I expect him to serve as faithfully as anyone else under my command. I will treat both of you with the respect you deserve as soldiers.”

  Mikasa wasn’t having it, letting Erwin be the latest target of her fierce glare. “We’re supposed to forget about your thugs beating us half to death?”

  Levi scoffed, earning himself reinvigorated ire from the girl. “Would you rather the MPs or the Imperials get their hands on your boy?” Levi asked her.

  “I’d rather no one try to beat us senseless again, pipsqueak.”

  Already with the height insults. Working with these rookies was going to be fun. “We live in a cruel world,” Levi remarked. “A small world. Knocking the snot out of teenagers was never something I sought to do by joining the Scouts, but none of us get the luxury of freely choosing when we have to get our hands dirty. Not with an Empire full of thousands of worlds coming to the Walls sooner or later.”

  Admittedly, Miche could have taken it easy when putting on the show for the crowd against Eren. Levi had needed more precision and speed than he had anticipated to keep Mikasa down. Meanwhile, Eren was a wet noodle in comparison who was out in seconds. The severity of Eren’s wounds was making Mikasa more noncompliant than what was convenient for their post-trial discussion. Not that Levi’s own knees to the face and kicks to the gut against Mikasa ingratiated himself to her any. Still, input from the self-proclaimed Scout Regiment admirer could have helped Mikasa realize the bigger picture they were dealing with.

  “You saw how the MPs were ready to burn Eren at the stake,” Levi reminded her. “Miche gave him a bloody nose that’s already healed. Now Eren gets to back up his talk about ‘fighting for us.’ If it wasn’t the Scouts taking you brats in, it would be the Empire. How long do you think you’d last with them?”

  “You’re working with the Empire,” Mikasa spat out.

  Miche snorted – which Levi still thought was just his way of discreetly taking a whiff of the air to gauge the mood of the room. Miche liked to be thorough like that. “Key words are working with,” Miche said. “Not working for, or fighting against. I don’t like your chances if you wind up doing the latter.”

  Levi suppressed a sigh. He could see none of their words were going to reach her, so he sent a pointed look at Erwin. Let him get to the meat of things, start the real pitch to get the girl on board with the Scouts.

  “We are not your enemy,” Erwin said before Mikasa got in another verbal jab at them. “The Military Police presented themselves as your enemies, and the reasons why were explained by Commander Jir and Eren himself.”

  Mikasa bit back a growl and genuinely thought on Erwin’s words. “The MPs were afraid, and they wanted to remove the source of their fear… instead of working with Eren.” Her understanding of the situation didn’t completely distinguish the fire in his eyes, however. “You think you can control us. Fine. Eren always wanted to join the Scouts, and I can follow the military’s chain of command that I can respect just fine. Our training wasn’t for nothing. But why am I still here? I know I was at the top of the top ten in my cadet division, but is the real reason I’m here because I’m good leverage to keep Eren in line?”

  Extortion and blackmail weren’t unfamiliar to Levi, though they weren’t the methods Erwin had decided to pursue with the cadets. “You don’t know the significance of your last name,” Erwin said. “Do you?”

  “My… last name?”

  Levi leaned back on a couch as he let Erwin get through the spiel about the Ackerman Clan.

  The King’s disgraced clan of super soldiers had been one of the more… educational things to learn about the Walls after Levi left the Underground. Erwin had learned about them after becoming Commander of the Scout Regiment. He had told people like Miche, Hange, and Levi about the Ackermans after they proved they were trustworthy. They all picked up on more details about them over the years. With the Scouts and Garrison striking an accord in the wake of Trost and the arrival of the Empire, Dot Pyxis had also informed Erwin about his own knowledge on the clan.

  Ackermans in the past had failed or insulted the Fritz family for the last time, launching a period of quiet persecution that drove the clan out of the Interior and to the furthest edges of the Walls. From what records were available on Mikasa’s immediate family, it was almost like something out of a folktale, for an Ackerman and one of the last known Orientals to start a family together before their lives were tragically cut short.

  A part of Levi wondered if a certain scoundrel from his past was tied to this bloodline, but no source could definitively confirm it. Levi will only get his answers if he ever found Kenny again, and the chances of that…

  Levi shook those thoughts out of his head. Back in the present, Mikasa cooled down and was thoughtfully contemplating on the revelations to her family name. “Triton Squad took blood samples of me and Eren,” she muttered. “They said being an Oriental didn’t distinguish me from being a Kyojinite Human in any way that mattered, but is there something in my blood to mark me as an Ackerman?”

  Of course, a blood test with Imperial tech could probably show if Levi and Mikasa were related, but like hell Levi was going to let them pick and prod him or the girl any more than necessary. “Ackerman or not,” Levi said, “you’re a Scout now. If the Empire is willing to play along and let us keep a Titan Shifter in our care, then letting you stay with us if they know there’s something biologically unique to you isn’t surprising.”

  Mikasa looked at Levi with less bloodthirst and more inquisitiveness. “Play along. You people don’t trust the Empire either, but you don’t think the Scouts can take them in a direct fight, so you’re playing along with the Empire’s talk about joint task forces and relief efforts.”

  “Kid, be honest. Do you really think even a completely united Wall Military, no more Regiment rivalries, can take down the Empire? Get them off our planet while keeping the Walls intact?”

  “... No,” Mikasa finally admitted. “Their flying machines alone… can turn our entire island into ash.”

  The fire in Mikasa started fading, but it was still burning, Levi could tell. She understood better now that safeguarding the Walls and their people was going to take a lot more tact than Mikasa’s single-minded rebellious attitude.

  “The Empire is powerful,” Erwin agreed. “A single Legion, the five-hundred-and-first, is only a fraction of a power that we can only speculate on from what the Imperials let us see. Which is why I want you, Mikasa, and Eren with the Scouts, to show the Empire we aren’t merely submitting to them. To show we have capable, abnormal soldiers they can’t easily anticipate. Make the Legion think twice about undermining us, and consider the losses they will suffer if they overtly take arms against us.”

  Suspicion returned in Mikasa’s tone. “But the Empire in the trial helped you take custody of us. Their Commander mocked and humiliated the MPs.”

  Miche clicked his tongue. “It’s all part of the game we’re playing. You two stay in the Scouts, then you stay in the Joint Task Force, where the Empire is investing a lot in, instead of letting Eren get dissected by the MPs or you discharged from the Military entirely.”

  “Why would the Empire make enemies with the Regiment closest to the King?”

  “Think it through, Acerkman. They’re playing both sides.”

  There was a knock on the door. Levi had a good idea who it was. Eager to get more work done with actional information than to keep trying to sell the Scouts to Mikasa, Levi marched across the room to let her in.

  “Scout Staff Officer Ilse Langnar, reporting, sir!” announced the freckle-faced scribe who entered the room with a rigid salute.

  Familiar with the dutiful soldier, Erwin greeted her with a welcoming smile. “At ease. Illse, this is Mikasa Ackerman and Eren Yeager, the Scouts’ latest recruits. Feel free to speak in front of them. As I’m sure you’ve put together, time is a precious resource we shouldn’t waste.”

  Trusting Mikasa with Ilse’s intelligence update? Levi was surprised at how forthcoming Erwin was being but didn’t object. Ilse’s hesitation as she glanced at Mikasa was quickly put aside. “Yes, sir.” Ilse consulted her notes, written in the code she, Hange, and another Scout had developed a year ago. “I can confirm two days ago, Premier Darius Zachary, Dimo Reeves of the merchant company of the same name, regional nobleman Lord Wald, and others of note attended a live demonstration of Imperial weapons at a site hosted by Stormtrooper Commander Daine Jir in the western half of Wall Sina.”

  Ilse was one of the Scouts’ most valuable intelligence operatives. She still joined the Scouts on expeditions into Titan territory, keeping her Titan-killing skills sharp, but the bulk of her work after a particularly brutal expedition shifted toward skulduggery, snooping in the night to help keep Erwin and his cabal aware of backdoor dealings and underlying sentiments relevant to the Scouts. She had a great attention to detail matched by a natural lust for knowledge, almost comparable to Hange. Levi appreciated that Ilse lacked the same disturbing enthusiasm for Titans as her.

  With Eren mostly cleaned up of blood, Miche started putting away the medical materials into their kit and looked to Ilse. “Did a courier misplace the Scouts’ invitation?”

  “No, Premier Zachary was the only Wall Military representative at the demonstration. No one from the three Regiments was invited.” She tapped a page in her book. “Separate from the Empire, private contractors handled security. I got in as one of them, wrote down the names of the faces I recognized, and copied the invitation list I found.” Ilse tore off the sheet and handed it to Erwin, who gave it a cursory once-over.

  “So Daine Jir secretly courted Zachary,” Erwin surmised, “while also collaborating with the Scouts. They invested in two possible avenues for Eren to remain a soldier, yet neglected to inform us of their business with the Premier.”

  “Zachary’s playing politics, too,” Miche said, “just like everyone else. He gave us custody without showing too much bias for the Scouts. Dawk will be pissed about Jir getting away with firing his blaster in the middle of the trial, though.”

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  “Dawk would have been incensed regardless as long as he lost the trial.” Erwin nodded at Mikasa. “Our latest recruit here made a good point about the Empire risking damage to their relationship with the MPs. Ilse, what else do you have on recent developments in the Interior?”

  Ilse flipped to another page. “Right. With the Legion basing themselves at Trost, the Empire has General Rouse Ziering and his people in the Interior. They’re schmoozing the aristocrats, distributing foodstuffs to the outlying villages who contribute resources to the inner districts, scouting the terrain for the…”

  “The source of the disruption field,” Levi said, not bothering to clarify the particulars for Mikasa. Let that stew in the back of her mind for a while. They can’t just drop everything and explain each minute detail to the new blood. It would spoil her.

  “Yeah, that. Stormtroopers and Army Troopers follow Ziering’s staff. I’m not sure if the Stormtroopers are five-oh-first or belong to Ziering’s… I think the term they used is Battlegroup, not Legion.”

  Miche raised an eyebrow. “Ziering is still subordinate to Vader, isn’t he? Triton Squad told me General is one of the highest ranks in the Imperial Military. Maybe Ziering’s Battlegroup is supposed to be separate from Vader’s Stormtroopers, if Commander Jir is supposed to be Vader’s man leading the Legion.”

  “Vader must be roughly the equivalent to a Premier,” Erwin deduced. “Everyone answers to him, and they all ultimately want to go home back to the Empire, but there should still be inter-branch conflicts we can play to our advantage, just as well as the Empire will do to us.”

  Levi noticed Mikasa looking lost, being subjected to territory out of her depth for a rookie soldier like her. Things were easier when she defaulted to seeing everyone around her as an enemy. She knew things were more complicated than that, and she was having trouble keeping track of how the Scouts were navigating all the rivalries and scheming that had always gone on behind closed doors, only ramped up by new players in the Empire.

  But if she was some super soldier Ackerman, then Mikasa will learn fast, get into the swing of things soon enough. Levi hoped Eren will be able to keep up.

  Wanting to contribute, Mikasa blurted, “Janek Sunber. He was the Lieutenant who helped the 104th cadets get to safety during Trost. My friend Armin–”

  “Armin Arlert,” Erwin said with an acknowledging tilt of his head toward Mikasa. “I’ve spoken with them both, briefly.”

  “Sunber is – well, friendly with Armin. He acted like he genuinely cared about saving us, and he made it a point to try subduing me without killing or severely injuring me when I fought the Imperials. He clashed with Sheckil when the Stormtroopers pointed their blasters at us at Trost HQ.”

  Erwin was a nice guy, so he indulged Mikasa and followed her train of thought. “You think Janek can serve as an Imperial ally to the Walls.”

  “He’s someone who doesn’t want to be our enemy, at least.”

  Our enemy. Good. Get that mindset locked in early. Unfortunately, a grunt of disapproval came from Miche. “How can you make that judgment when you’ve been saddled in a cage for the past–”

  Another argument was about to break out with Miche’s objection. Levi cut it off before Mikasa resorted to ineffectually glaring at people again. “Ilse,” he said, bringing everyone’s attention back to the Scouts’ favorite scribe, “the weapons demonstration with Zachary was two days ago. You got the latest on Ziering and the Interior…”

  “Yesterday,” Ilse finished.

  “Tell me you and your lesser half got something useful while the rest of us were dealing with the trial today.”

  Ilse sheepishly grinned. “Well, he’s still working on it. I was barely able to get into the weapons demo last-minute, and most of the nobles are hiding in their estates deciding how to handle the Empire. Not a lot care to open their doors for–”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  No one jumped at the sudden voice. The Scouts present, and even the inexperienced Mikasa, were too disciplined to be startled by the slithery guy opening the door and speaking with a surprisingly deep voice for someone his age.

  It took Erwin a second to place his name. Levi already spoke with him, but the last time Erwin was in the same room as this Scout was probably the younger man’s wedding. “Ah. Dirk. It’s been a while. I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

  With a tired smile, the dark-haired, one-armed Scout sauntered inside and gave a half-hearted salute with his available limbs.

  Dirk Reiss had joined the Scouts around the same time as Ilse. His reward for his service was an arm getting chewed to bits by a Titan. The tradeoff he got in return was for Ilse to avoid getting chomped herself by that Titan, and he eventually got to play the role of house husband for her.

  It wasn’t the worst ending for a Scout. Far from it.

  But for someone from a family who had a seat on the Royal Assembly to fall so far from grace, joining the ostracized Scouts and falling into obscurity from the noble class…

  “So the Ackerman gets to hear my life story, too?” Dirk asked. She didn’t squirm, but Mikasa clearly didn’t look happy at the way he coldly regarded her, contrasting the smile he was still wearing. Old habits must die hard for him.

  Ilse elbowed Dirk. “Hey, you knew what you were getting into,” she lightly rebuked, “when you said yes to Captain Levi’s offer. Show some manners.”

  Dirk rolled his eyes but was cowed enough to reel back the icy air he exuded.

  “Mikasa,” Erwin said as he gestured to Ilse’s lover boy, “this is Dirk Reiss. His brother, Ulklin Reiss, is a Lord who sits on the Royal Assembly.”

  The distrust sparked instantly in Mikasa’s eyes. Levi assumed Eren shared a similar prejudice against nobles, but Mikasa’s distrust dissipated swiftly. To Levi’s satisfaction, she caught on fast and focused on the details that mattered. “You know about… the persecution of my family?” Mikasa carefully asked.

  Dirk may have been born in a noble family, but in the brief time Levi’s worked with him, he was a Scout, through and through. As such, he had his own maverick quirks, so he neglected Mikasa’s question and pulled Ilse in an embrace that left her flustered. “A whole week we had to be apart, and the second we’re back together, we need to do more work? See, this is why I left the Scouts.” Sharing a sense of humor with him, Miche chuckled.

  “I’m sorry, Mikasa,” said Erwin, ignoring Miche’s and Dirk’s byplay, “but you can inquire Dirk about your bloodline at another time. Dirk, I take it you were able to make contact with your family?”

  “Not quite, unfortunately.” After another affectionate squeeze shared between Ilse and her boy, Dirk dropped down on a chair to rest his legs. “If the Ackerman is here, should I give her some context?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Sure.” When he shot the cold smile at Mikasa again, Dirk got his ear flicked by Ilse. “Alright! So. Ackerman. I was with the Scouts till I retired, for obvious reasons.” He wagged his stump up and down. “My brother’s apparently a fan of the Empire, so Commander Erwin here pulled me back in to see if I could learn more.”

  Donning her eternal frown, Miaksa asked, “Your family has a large influence on the Royal Assembly?”

  Levi held in his own sigh when Dirk let out an overly dramatic one. That was something he hadn’t missed when Dirk was still a Scout. “My father once had the ear of the King,” Dirk said. “Then five years ago, a murderer tore his head off and wretched out the throat of my mother.” Mikasa didn’t let herself look phased. Levi commended her discipline when she wasn’t whining about Eren. “The killer was never caught. The oldest son, Ulklin, the prick that he was, decided to cut off loose ends. He gave what was owed to the rest of his siblings instead to the nobles who could keep him in power; they gave him father’s Assembly seat. My sisters and I had to start new lives outside of the Interior…”

  Rubbing Dirk’s back, Ilse added, “Only Dirk kept his family name. We haven’t been able to find his sisters.”

  Erwin asked, “Were you not able to speak with Ulklin today?”

  Dirk shook his head. “I had a couple childhood friends from my rich-kid days who took sympathy on ol’ one-armed Dirk. Plus, they know I’m a Scout. People in the Capital may not like the Scouts, but they can’t deny we’ve got fighters. Folks are doing the same thing my brother is: making investments in potential allies from the unlikeliest of places.”

  Levi scoffed. “You promised your nobleman buddies the Scouts would back them if the Empire starts trampling their pretty gardens?”

  “I told them the Scouts would think about it if the pay was any good.”

  Miche belched a hearty laugh. “You should have made them promise to have their cooks spruce up some fancy meals for us. With meat.”

  Dirk shared the laugh. “The point is, this entire week, I wasn’t able to speak with Ulklin directly. The people around him say he’s putting all his time cozying up with the Empire. Sorry, Commander. I can only confirm what you already know.”

  Levi would be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed, no matter how unlikely Dirk could have been able to pull something out of his ass. Erwin of course hid any of his disappointment, keeping up the strong, determined image in front of the troops. “That’s alright,” Erwin said. “Your input is still valuable as the only one of us who has ever personally spoken with Ulklin Reiss. We know he has shown a preference for the Imperials, voting to support Kyojin’s status as a client state of the Empire. The Assembly has always been traditional hardliners, yet they immediately changed their tune when Ulklin spoke up. Why does he believe he can make the Empire serve the Walls?”

  Dirk gave a useless shrug. “I’d call it arrogance more than anything. He thinks he’s hot stuff bringing the Reiss family back from the brink, even if the only family left in it is himself. The Empire just gives him more opportunities to show off.”

  Sounded like Dirk was letting his bias cloud his judgment. Miche saw it, too, saying, “You really think it’s the folly of youth that makes him think he can control how the Empire treats us?”

  Levi could see the wisecrack coming a kilometer away, so he chimed in before Dirk did. “Eren over there and the Imps during the trial talked about the MPs being too afraid to do anything substantial about the Titans. Back in the first meeting we had with the Assembly, the Garrison, and the Empire, nothing about Ulklin was afraid. There has to be something more he has up his sleeve to be so confident the Empire will do what he wants.”

  It wasn’t even arrogance that Levi would describe what was motivating Ulklin that day. There was no overconfidence like in the rich merchants who believed they already made it big in life, or the indignation from the fat noblemen by being intimidated by the Empire’s superior power. It was… peaceful self-assurance. Faith. Like the true believers in the Church who honestly would let themselves get eaten by a Titan with a smile. Because they were so immersed in their belief that the ‘goddesses’ in the Walls were orchestrating a grand destiny for them, no matter what happened. Ulklin had faith things would turn out well, but it can’t solely be delusion driving him if he was able to get the Assembly to follow his lead.

  The MPs were the Royal Assembly’s lap dogs. The MPs wanted Eren dead… but did the Assembly have more people like Eren in their control? More Titan Shifters hidden as regular humans? Was that Ulklin Reiss’ play if push comes to shove with the Empire?

  “If he’s got a secret army of super soldier Ackermans hiding in his basement,” Dirk said with unbidden sarcasm, “no one can say, least of all little ol’ ex-communicated me.”

  Erwin was undeterred. “Then that will be your job. Levi, the cadets here are your charges now. Miche, keep in contact with Triton Squad if you can. Ilse will continue tracking the Empire’s dealings in the Interior, and Dirk will continue uncovering anything he can about his brother and the intentions of the rest of the Assembly.”

  Mikasa was going to hate Oluo the second he opened his mouth. Levi resigned himself to the future headaches.

  “Pulling me out of retirement full-time, Commander?” Dirk asked with a joking grin. “Ilse’s mom will get sick of babysitting the kids before the month’s over.”

  Ilse playfully shoved him. “Dirk, come on. She loves our little tykes.”

  “Hey, if I’m technically a Scout again, does that mean I can get a metal prosthetic the Empire’s been giving away?”

  Levi bristled at the mention of those strange appendages put into soldiers hurt at Trost. Of course Hange was all for them, which Levi approved only to a point. They knew nothing about the Empire’s cybernetics and only had their word they weren’t more invasive than necessary. What if the Empire implanted listening devices like comlinks in them? And the soldiers had to rely on Imperial doctors for any maintenance on the prosthetics, or complete replacements if the younger cadets grew bigger over time and weren’t as compatible with the current metal attachments they were given.

  Cyborg limbs were too much of an unknown already put into the people of the Walls that didn’t sit well with Levi. Ilse shared his doubts. “Hey,” she said to her husband, “you don’t need – We still don’t know how those things–”

  “Give it another week,” suggested Miche, “for Hange to get around to playing with a prosthetic. She can give it a certified Zoe seal of approval.”

  Levi noticed Erwin reading over Ilse’s list of attendees at the Imperial weapons demonstration one more time before pocketing it. Erwin turned his attention to Mikasa, the girl sitting quietly as she observed the Scouts around her.

  “Mikasa, do you understand now?”

  “You’re making use of every resource you can get your hands on. Whether it’s me, Eren, an amputee, your dog, or the pipsqueak.” Levi crossed his arms but said nothing. She’ll need to get more creative with her insults to get a decent rise out of him. “Eren will fight for the Walls, his home, no matter what. I’ll fight for him, no matter who our enemies are. If that means working for the Scouts, and as a member of the Joint Task Force with the Empire, then I’ll do it.”

  So she was convinced. “Glad to see we’re all on the same page,” Levi said dryly.

  Dirk nodded his head and flashed another toothy smile. He was probably going for an arrogant, predatory angle to taunt Mikasa. “It’s nice to see the Ackermans finally repay their debt to society in something meaningful.”

  Levi was happy to know his squad won’t be working extensively with Dirk for the coming days. Settling the cadets with the current members of Levi Squad was bad enough. Listening to the back-and-forth between Dirk’s condescension and Ilse’s reprimands wasn’t a dynamic Levi would have enjoyed regularly re-experiencing. Ilse was already at it again, saying, “Dirk, you don’t know this girl. She can’t be held responsible for–”

  “True, I don’t know her. I can only hope she has the will to follow her convictions, unlike the last Ackerman my family had the pleasure of working with.”

  “... will…”

  By virtue of being right next to the boy, Mikasa reacted faster than Levi at the mumble leaving Eren’s lips. She was on her knees and caressing Eren’s head lying on a couch cushion. Levi walked bristly toward them, and saw absolutely no trace of Miche’s beating on Eren.

  And he supposedly could regrow entire body parts, not just teeth. There just had to be an unseen clock counting down for when the Empire seized another chance to take Eren for themselves and learn all about how a biological human developed the ability to heal like a Titan, at rates even faster than their miracle paste in the bacta.

  Eren suddenly sat up, eyes hysterically wide as he gasped for air. “Will! Need to follow… follow the will…”

  Mikasa was babying him already. “Eren, it’s okay. You’re safe. I’m here with you.”

  Not the words of reassurance Eren was looking for, clearly. He looked at Mikasa only once before turning his ragged gaze around the room.

  Eren’s next words made Levi realize why the Empire let the Scouts keep Eren.

  “I need to see Darth Vader,” Eren said with a fierce resolve drawn straight from the heart.

  Yeah, reining in the rookies was going to be fun.