Chapter 26: Terrible error

"How the hell..." murmured Klemens as they found themselves in front of Bertholdt in a deserted alley, ten meters away from them.

They came out of the tunnels by taking one of the few exits and then randomly went around the city and just as Liesl told him, they found Bertholdt, or better yet, Bertholdt found them.

"Told you"

"Hey Liesl, Klemens, long time no see, would you mind releasing Reiner?" asked Bertholdt with a casual look on his face, it would have even fooled them if not for the cold swat on his face.

He was anxious and how could he not be?

He was now alone in enemy territory, Annie made no attempts on searching for them, from what they knew she might have already been captured even if there hadn't been any proofs on them being part of the same group, at this point they couldn't leave out any possibility, not even the slightest.

He had been trained on how to handle certain situations, but the current one was not among them, they needed to stay on the accursed Paradis Island for a few months more before the other Marleyan warriors came to take them back, but at this pace they will be annihilated before that time arrived.

"Yes, we do mind, why would we release a traitor so easily?" asked Liesl, they were effectively at a stalemate, they couldn't attack outright as they feared that by pushing Bertholdt too far he would transform, killing the entire city in the process.

And he couldn't make one more step as Klemens was holding Reiner by the neck and he knew that with his strength, snapping that neck would barely be an inconvenience.

'But why aren't they attacking me? They could just come at me and put me down, they don't know I'm a titan shifter so they wouldn't have anything to fear... Unless...' the thought that came to his mind gave him shivers, but at the same time a ray of hope of saving Reiner.

"You two know, don't you?" asked the tall young man.

"I know many things, Bertholdt, you should be more specific" replied Liesl as she stood in front of Klemens who was holding Reiner by the neck.

"You know that I'm a titan shifter, just like Eren, and that Reiner is one too, isn't that right? That's why the two high and mighty Stars of Freedom aren't taking little old me down, right!?" asked Bertholdt, half shouting.

Both Klemens and Liesl were shocked at seeing him admit to the fact, it seemed that they put too much pressure on him, so much that he broke, and a broken enemy was a dangerous one.

"You two are too distant, even if it's the two of you it will take me less time to transform into a titan than it would take the two of you to apprehend me, and let me tell you if you don't already know, I'm the colossal titan, and given that the two of you don't even have the omni dimensional gear or swords on you, even if it's the two of you, you wouldn't survive me transforming right here.

So give me Reiner right now, I don't mind destroying another city" stated Bertholdt giving them an ultimatum.

"Why did you kill Marco and tried to kill Eren?" asked Liesl ignoring the ultimatum.

"What do you mean?" replied the startled Bertholdt.

"Why did two titan shifters betray one of you friends and killed him feeding him to the titans?"

Bertholdt hesitated, he seemed to regret his past action, but he eventually replied "He heard me and Reiner talk, we had to kill him to maintain our secret"

"Oh wow, so the two of you betrayed the trust and killed one of you dear friends just to keep a secret that came out right after anyway? That must suck, doesn't it, Bertholdt?" taunted Liesl.

"Shut up!" snapped right back the tall young man "Now give me Reiner before I raze to the ground this city!"

"We will give you Reiner after escorting outside of the city, were you can't hurt anybody" stated Klemens, talking for the first time since they started this conversation.

"So that the two of you can take us down more easily, I don't think so" replied Bertholdt.

"As you already noticed, we don't have our gear to kill titans and we don't have a horse to follow you, so just take up my offer and the two of you will leave with no problem"

Klemens was still on his toes as to how they were going to handle the situation, he still feared Bertholdt just going all in and transform just to kill them, destroying the city in the meantime as an extra.

He was so focused that he didn't realize that Reiner had woken up, communicating with bertholdt by blinking, he didn't realize as that was all Reiner had done since he had woken up, not moving even a muscle other than that.

Bertholdt seemed to be looking at nothing in particular as he focused on nothing in particular, seemingly pondering on Klemens' offer, while actually interpreting Reiner's message.

After a bit Bertholdt eventually answered "I accept, but first I need to go to a place to take back the money we hid, we will need them to get a horse to escape from you if you decide to send the army after us, won't we?"

Klemens and Liesl really wanted to put an end to this situation, it seemed like they earned nothing from the entire endeavor, but now they had a pretext to inform the army of the existence of other titan shifters and the identities of two of them, this will help humanity a great deal even if they had to wait a bit more to take the two of them down.

Eventually they accepted and followed Bertholdt to the place were he supposedly hid their money.

It was an abandoned house half broken in certain places.

As they watched Bertholdt enter the house, Liesl told to her friend "I have a vary bad feeling, like something awful is about to happen, I'll watch the house on the other side if Bertholdt wants to escape from a window for whatever reason.

Klemens put down the supposedly unconscious Reiner to be ready at any moment for the possibility of Bertholdt running away, but that was an enormous error stemmed from a mix of anxiety, inexperience and overconfidence.

An error that will cost them a lot.

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The moment Klemens put Reiner down and turned away to face the house, Reiner opened his eyes a bit down on the part of his hand near his thumb so hard that a lot of blood was spilled.

But that wound didn't remain open for long as a golden light with golden lightning came down from the sky, leaving in its place the enormous fifteen meters tall body of the Armored Titan.

The transformation right between a cluster of old and already damaged house sent a great number of splinters in every direction breaking houses and impaling people alike.

Klemens wasn't excluded, he didn't get struck by the splinters by he was far to close to the point were Reiner transformed, he was launched like a cannonball to the building that he was looking at and almost fell unconscious.

Reiner screamed and lounged his hand at the door of the broken house were Bertholdt stepped on, the two of them then left destroying every building in their wake.

Nobody thought of the possibility of a titan appearing from out of nowhere and start destroying everything.

Many buildings were razed to the ground and even more innocent people died, still not understanding what happened or having the slightest idea of why it happened.

By the time that the Garrison soldiers in the district were finally ready to tackle the titan it was useless, as it had already climbed the wall and all they could see was its disappearing back from behind.

One of the first things they did once they saw that the armored titan was running away was search around the area from where the titan had erupted from to find any clue on how the fifteen meter tall monstrosity appeared in one of the central districts of Wall Sheena.

What they found there was that the titan appeared in the middle of an alley where all buildings had collapsed, other than that they found two young people on the verge of death.

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Klemens woke up with an extremely heavy headache and with his whole body hurting from head to toe.

At fist his mind was hazy, he barely remembered what happened, but as soon as he made heads and tails of what happened only one thought inundated his mind.

And that was to try to find out were Liesl was.

He tried standing up to no avail, he could barely muster enough force to speak, forget about standing, so he did the next best thing.

He shouted from the bottom of his lungs "Hey! I'm awake!"

Fortunately, a few seconds later a woman he guessed to be a nurse from the outfit she wore, when she saw that he had indeed woken up she told him "Mr. Ackerman, please lie down and rest, you took an extremely heavy injury" she said slowly.

But he cared not for what she said "Where is Lie" he asked.

"Lie? You mean miss Stark? She is also heavily injured and has yet to wake up, I'm not allowed to give any details, but I can say that there is no danger to her life at the moment" she said genuinely sorry for not being able to tell all the specifics, so she said as much as she was allowed after seeing the fear in his eyes.

She had seen that fear many times in the eyes of the families of patients in really bad conditions, many of them turned in despair once she replied that their loved ones didn't make it.

Fortunately this one wasn't the case.

Klemens, reassured by the words of the nurse, passed out once again, startling the nurse and making her worry for the worse.

Fortunately, he only passed out.

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Liesl opened her eyes to a heavy headache and a throbbing pain to her lower abdomen.

She felt pain as soon as she tried to move so she decided against doing so before getting a bit better.

She felt calm, she thought that it would take far more than that to put down Klemens for good, she had faith in that, so she didn't worry too much about him.

What she did worry about was the number of casualties caused by her moronic idea of roaming in the dead of the night in a lair of criminals just to have some fun caused to the once happy city.

'I'm so stupid, this is all my fault' she thought, but she managed to shake the thought away once she saw a nurse entering the private room.

"Oh, Miss Storm, I see that you're awake, how do you feel?" asked the nurse.

"I have a headache and feel pain in my lower abdomen, how did you know my name?" asked the girl.

"Yes, once the armored titan disappeared the first place the guards controlled was the place where the titan appeared at, they found you and Mr Ackerman at the location, from there an investigation started on your identities, I have to say that neither of you is exactly a low key individual, so the investigation didn't take a lot to bear fruit" said the woman with a slight chuckle to ease the tension.

One of the many things she learnt doing this job was that she had to keep patients at ease to let them have the most favorable condition to recover in.

"How is Klemens?" asked the young woman, although she was optimist that he was fine she wanted to know his exact condition from the mouth of one of the people taking care of them.