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The Survey Corps headquarters breaking dawn was a miserly grey, offering no warmth, only a cold light that exposed the scars of the night before yesterday. The air, usually crisp with discipline, was thick with a palpable mixture of anxiety, exhaustion, and the lingering, foul scent of spilled chemicals and something… other. In the courtyard, where squads typically assembled with brisk efficiency, grim, murmured conversations had replaced the usual quiet focus.
Inside the main mess hall, converted into a briefing room, the tension was a physical weight. Scouts huddled around tables, their postures rigid, their eyes shadowed by a lack of sleep and the memory of a monster's roar. At the front, Nanaba stood, her face a mask of stoic composure. With section commander Mike pulled into the Commander's inner circle, the duty of briefing his squad fell to her.
"Listen up!" Nanaba's voice cut through the low din. "The operation is straightforward. We proceed to the Southern 103rd training grounds and liaise with the Garrison as soon as the previous team have come back with reports of confirmation. Our objective is investigation. We question instructors and senior cadets about any unusual occurrences; missing livestock, strange sounds, anything. We do not, under any circumstances, engage the target. Is that understood?"
A chorus of grim "Yes, Ma'am!" echoed back, but it was followed by restless shifting. A scout named Sam, who had been part of the initial group that cornered the beast in the storage hall, stood up. His face was pale, the memory of those five burning blue eyes still fresh.
"Section Commander," he began, his voice tight. "This plan feels… thin. We're basing this on a deliveryman's route. What if the beast just jumped on his wagon by chance? It could be fifty miles from here by now! We're stretching our lines thin on a hunch while one of our own, Rykker, is in the infirmary with his arm nearly torn off because of this thing."
Another scout, a woman named Lya, chimed in, her arms crossed. "He's right. And what about the expedition? We're supposed to be preparing to go beyond the walls, not chasing fairy tales inside them. Every resource we pour into this is one we don't have for the Titans. Shouldn't this be issued to the entire military? Let the MPs and Garrison handle their own backyard. The Commander should reconsider the priority."
Nanaba held her ground, though the questions struck a chord with her own private doubts. "Your concerns are noted," she said, her voice firm.
"The expedition is critical. But a threat that can breach our headquarters, evade Captain Levi and Mike, and vanish is not a 'fairy tale.' It is a vulnerability that could cripple us more surely than any Titan. If it attacks a cadet corps, the political fallout would end us. We operate on the best intelligence we have. And right now, that points to the cadet grounds. We resume operations. Dismissed."
The scouts filed out, their skepticism not erased, but buried under duty. Nanaba watched them go, hoping the intelligence was right. The alternative was chaos.
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In his office, Commander Erwin was a study in shattered normalcy. The room was orderly, the map of the Walls spread across his desk, but the scene was wrong. He sat perfectly still, his gaze fixed not on the map, but on his right hand, which ended just below the wrist in a heavily bandaged stump, resting on a crisp white pillow. The phantom sensation of crushing teeth and splintering bone was a constant, gnawing echo.
But all he could think about was the plan he had arranged the previous day.
A day ago, Few Hours After the Attack…
The war room was lit by guttering lamps, the shadows deep and dancing. Erwin, his face pale but his voice steady, addressed a small group of his most trusted scouts, including a grim-faced Mike, Levi and a still-shaken Hange.
"The initial teams have been dispatched to the three main Cadet Corps sites in the southern region," Erwin stated, his left hand resting on the map. "Their orders are to alert the instructors, nothing more. We must tread carefully; causing a panic among hundreds of cadets is as dangerous as the beast itself."
A junior officer, bold with fear, spoke up. "Sir, with all due respect, why focus there? The creature could be anywhere. The delivery route was long. This seems… speculative."
Erwin's eyes fixed on the man, not with anger, but with an unnerving intensity. "Speculation is built on a foundation of facts," he replied, his voice low. "Fact: The creature exhibits high intelligence and evasion tactics. It did not simply run; it sought concealment in a supply wagon. Fact: It came from the direction of the training grounds. Fact: Its behavior, while feral, is not random. It targeted Hange's lab; a place of science; with specific fury."
He leaned forward slightly, his presence filling the room. "We are not looking for a mindless animal. We are hunting a soldier, a wounded, cornered, and highly dangerous soldier. A soldier retreats to familiar territory, to a place where it knows the lay of the land and the patterns of its enemy. In this case, the predictable movements of cadets and Garrison troops. The training grounds offer space, resources, and a degree of anonymity. It is the most logical, and therefore the most probable, point of origin and current refuge."
He straightened up, his gaze sweeping the room. "We will not storm the grounds. We will seek clearance for a quiet, thorough investigation. But we must be positioned to move the moment that clearance is granted. I want scouts ready for monitoring duty; to watch and wait. If the beast is there, we will know. And we will be ready."
Present…
The door creaked open without a knock. Levi stood in the doorway, a cloth mask over his nose and mouth, another tied around his forehead. He reeked of lye soap and antiseptic.
"The storage hall is a damn biohazard I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy," Levi stated, his voice flat. His sharp grey eyes went immediately to the bandaged stump, then to the pile of dispatches Erwin was attempting to navigate with his left hand. The sight ignited a cold, quiet fury within him.
He stepped in, letting the door swing shut. "What the hell are you doing?"
Erwin didn't look up, his left hand moving with clumsy determination over a report. "The work does not stop, Levi. There are dispatches to sign, reports to the Interior—"
"Bullshit," Levi cut him off, his voice a low, dangerous whisper. He strode to the desk, planting his hands on it and leaning forward, his masked face inches from Erwin's.
"You should be in the damn ward, unconscious and healing. Not here, pretending you're fit for duty. You lost a hand, not a fingernail."
"One hand is not a hindrance," Erwin replied, his voice dangerously calm, though a sheen of sweat on his brow betrayed the pain. "Not when lives are at stake. The strategic picture has not changed, only my method of engaging with it."
Levi's eyes narrowed to slits. The rational part of him knew Erwin was right about the stakes. The part of him that had seen a friend mutilated wanted to break both of Erwin's kneecaps just to force him to lie the hell down and recover.
"You're a liability like this," Levi hissed, the words meant to sting, to provoke any reaction other than this infuriating, stoic acceptance. "You can't hold a sword. You can barely hold a pen. You think you're projecting strength, but all anyone sees is a wounded commander stubbornly clinging to a desk. It reeks of desperation."
He straightened up, his gaze sweeping the room with disgust. "I should drag you to the infirmary myself. Tie you to the bed for extra measure."
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Erwin's lips, gone in an instant. "You could try."
The two men locked eyes, a silent battle of wills waging between them; Levi's protective, pragmatic fury against Erwin's unyielding, almost fanatical sense of duty. The air crackled with the tension.
"The scouts are scared," Levi said finally, changing tack. "They think we're wasting time. They think you're making a mistake."
"I know what they think," Erwin said, his gaze finally returning to his work, his left hand picking up the pen once more. "And they are entitled to their opinion. But I have seen the alternative. A threat like this, left to fester in the dark, is how empires fall. This is not a distraction from our mission, Levi. It has become the mission."
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Across the headquarters, in a temporary workspace that was already accumulating the chaotic energy of its former occupant, Hange was a whirlwind of manic grief and scientific fervor. The initial, soul-crushing wails had subsided, replaced by a frantic, desperate need to reconstruct and understand.
"Carefully, Moblit! That stack contains my notes on dermal plating variations!" she directed, her voice hoarse. She sifted through a crate of salvaged, slightly-damp papers, her glasses magnifying the red rims of her eyes. Moblit, looking utterly exhausted, dutifully sorted the scraps.
Hange's focus, however, kept returning to a single, small vial on her new desk. Inside, the glob of black, purple-sheened ichor seemed to pulse with a malevolent life.
"It's not blood, Moblit," she murmured. "Not as we understand it. The molecular structure is… all wrong."
Her eyes, wide and unblinking, scanned the mental image of her destroyed lab. The path of destruction wasn't random. The ODM gear racks were destroyed; a practical move for a beast. But her desk… her desk had been the epicenter. It wasn't just overturned; it was obliterated, torn apart with a fury that felt personal.
'What did I have on my desk?' she thought, her mind racing. 'Reports… sketches… my lunch…'
And then it clicked.
'Obsidian's shard.'
The small, green crystalline fragment had been right there. The main shard was found amidst the wreckage, but the small one… it had been flung away, as if swatted aside in a blind rage.
A wild, improbable theory began to form. The creature's attack wasn't just a territorial panic. It was targeted. It had a distaste for something in that room. Was it the Titan samples? The science? Or was it… the shard itself? The shard from the one other being in this world that defied all known biology; the Crystal Titan, Obsidian.
"Could they be connected?" she whispered, a giddy, terrifying thrill cutting through her grief. "Two impossible beings, appearing within months of each other? One of crystal, one of shadow and phase-shifting flesh… It can't be a coincidence."
She hugged herself, a shaky, almost delirious smile touching her lips. "This is going to be something else entirely," she breathed, her gaze locked on the vial of alien blood. "If we can just get our hands on it… Just think of what we could learn."
The horror of the attack was now inextricably tangled with the irresistible allure of the unknown. The hunt for the "Demon Dog" was no longer just about containment. For Hange, it had become the most fascinating puzzle in the world.
Unknown to her, the vial's content was sizzling slightly.
Chapter 25-31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.