Chapter 28: On the roof

The escort was made up of three people, as more weren't necessary, nobody really thought that they would try to escape and it was more for their protection as it hadn't been long since their injuries, but Erwin would rather prevent than cure.

The first was Armin Arlet, sent because of his intellect and quick thinking in the case that some emergency popped up.

The second member was Mikasa Ackerman, sent there as she was among the few who could restrain the two other than Levi.

And the third was Annie Leonhart thanks to her close relationship with Liesl who was the one more likely to cause something among the two.

"Nice to see you guys again, it seems that the scouts have some great recruits this time" said Klemens.

He wasn't really surprised that the three of them joined the Survey Corps, Annie joined as she had made an accord with the two of them and had to join the scouts so that they could keep an eye on her.

She thought at times to just escape and leave everything behind, but having Marley know that she failed the mission would have terrible consequences for her father, on the other hand if they had the marleyans believe she was just caught she could protect her father while they promised that they would bring him to safety.

But if the place of safety that they promised was inside of the wall's she wouldn't have accepted and they knew it.

The more they learned about their enemies and the magnitude and the scope of their power the more they thought that their chances were slim so they knew that taking her father inside the walls would be dangerous and almost impossible logistically.

So they promised that they would in some way just bring him to a different country, after all nobody could know that he was a descendant of Ymir in a place where nobody knew where he came from.

Their plan for doing so was also pretty solid.

They would kidnap him and take him away.

But obviously they didn't tell her the plan coined after a lot of thought by Liesl, they were cocky, not stupid.

Annie was one matter, but Klemens had almost no doubt about Armin and Mikasa joining the scouts, they followed Eren like moths to a flame since young after all, and the suicidal dumbass was under custody of the Survey corps.

"Long time no see" replied Mikasa.

"Yes.." said Annie before being hugged by a flying Liesl who jumped at her.

"Klemens, what happened that day? The commander only told us that the two of you had been injured when the armored titan appeared inside the city, please, Klemens, tell me, is the armored like Eren?"

Klemens looked at Armin straight into his eyes, Mikasa was also paying very close attention to the conversation as it had a relation with Eren's situation.

"Yes, Reiner is the armored titan, Bertholdt is the colossal" replied Klemens, he directly skipped the next obvious questions that Armin would ask him, he couldn't be bothered with replying five different questions when he could answer them all at the same time.

"What?!" answered Armin.

"Exactly what I said"

"Reiner and Bertholdt... Traitors is one thing, but this...But... But how?"

At this point even Liesl stopped playing around with Annie, she now had a heavy expression on her face once again, Annie was the same, but for a different reason.

Liesl cut into the conversation and said "Let's stop this heavy conversation, we need to go and protect your little friend, how is he doing?"

"Eren is doing well, the repopulation of Trost is also going as planned, thanks to that the claim that the Survey corps has on Eren got more solid, the problem is the emergence so soon of another titan shifter, someone may use that to imprison Eren, or even..." put him down, Armin didn't want to finish his words.

Reiner and Bertholdt's emergence as titan shifter, both being from the same cadet corp as Eren and them being former friends of Eren bought the doubt that the three worked together, but Klemens wasn't really worried about that.

He was confident that even if someone tried something they would be able to deal with it.

"Don't worry about that Armin, Eren closed the breach in Trost making the argument that they worked together shaky at best, there is no need to let anxiousness cloud your judgement" said the green eyed young man.

"Yeah, you're right, now let's move, it'll take us two days to reach the rest of the team's position"

After those words they all mounted their respective horse and began their journey.

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"I'll name him Poppy" said the red haired girl.

"What's the point of naming a horse that we'll probably never see again after this?" replied her black haired friend.

"That's were you're wrong Kle, unlike you who changes horses like you change shirts, I treasure my horse, he's my partner" she replied in a mocking tone.

"You're stupid, it's just a horse" mumbled the boy with a slight pout on his face.

"What, Kle, are you jealous? Are you really jealous of a horse? What are you? A child?" said the girl with an even more pronounced mocking tone.

Klemens knew that she would never let this die down, he wasn't jealous, he just didn't like her calling a mere horse her partner and not him, that's not jealousy!

"I'm not, dumbass, it's just a horse" replied the boy.

"Eheh, a really cute horse" she said while patting her horses snout "You're a really good boy, aren't you? Yes you are!"

They currently were getting ready to rest for the night, the afternoon of the day after is when they'll reach the rest of the teams position.

Not far from them, near a fireplace Armin, Mikasa and Annie were currently watching the two bicker as they did usually.

"When I look at them like this, it's almost as if thing are back to normal" said Mikasa with a slight fondness in her eyes, reminiscing about times that are long gone.

"Yeah, but they are very different to how we were at the time, these two seem happier then we have ever been, I envy that" replied Armin.

"Did you know them before the training?" asked Annie from out of nowhere, even if she was Liesl's friend, neither of them was a fan of talking about their pasts so they left it unsaid, she had long since forgotten about the boy and the girl she met that day years before.

"We only saw each other a couple of times, but it didn't stop Liesl from adopting Mikasa in Klemens' family, she kept calling her sister until not long ago" chuckled Armin.

"They come from Wall Maria, just like us, but they apparently reached safety around two weeks after us, initially we thought that they were relatively near Trost, as two lone children shouldn't be able to survive in the titan infested lands, but we learn long after that that their village was just near Shiganshina" said Mikasa explaining to Annie one of the most curious things she knew about them.

Even to this point she wondered about how could two ten year old children survive right near the breach from which wave after wave titans kept pouring into Wall Maria.

Annie kept her silence as she looked at her friend 'They were there...' she thought to herself thinking about something that only she knew about.

"Oh yeah Annie, talking about the past, how did you and Liesl become such close friends? She is the only one you seemed close to at the training camp" asked Armin.

Annie had no reason to keep silent and Liesl has long since tried to convince her to be more sociable so she decided to answer "It's a stupid reason, really, she saw that I was good at fighting hand to hand, so she appointed herself as my sparring partner and in the meantime she kept talking about stupid things, gradually she became part of a routine of sorts and suddenly I couldn't get rid of her anymore, so here we are" replied the blonde girl.

"That does sound like her" spoke Mikasa, the girl had been doing the same with her even if with less intensity so the answer came from experience.

"Are you close to Klemens too?" asked Armin, he never had any chance to get really closer than casual acquaintance with the young man and was curious about others.

"No, from what I've seen, he doesn't like interacting much with other people, Liesl is always saying how he should make friends other than her, he apparently is a caring and kind person according to her"

"Him? Klemens is caring and kind?" asked Mikasa somewhat incredulous about her words, to anyone Klemens had always been a cold and distant person so hearing him being described in such a manner felt weird.

"Her words, she didn't tell me why he doesn't like to make friends, but apparently there is a reason" said Annie before standing up and saying her goodbyes and going to her tent.

'Not that I am any better' she thought to herself, if not for Liesl throwing herself into her life, literally at times, she would still be a loner with no reason to live other than someday meeting her father again.

Liesl was what made her realize that there was more to life than blindly following an objective, this revelation thought, had made her betray her home country in favor of following a girl she had known for less than three years.

Annie sometimes still felt stupid about the decision she had made, but there was no turning back and even if there was, she wouldn't do so.

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"We've finally arrived Poppy, now you and your friend Kei can rest, later I'll find both of you some nice mare to have many cute children with" said the blue eyed girl with a happy tone.

Her friend refused to elaborate his current feelings, he had given up trying to stop her from getting close to their temporary horses, she had even named his, calling it Kei, she called it like that so that him and his horse could have similar names, Kle and Kei.

When he heard her reasoning he ran after her until Kei and Poppy got tired of running, so he had to resort to trying to throw Armin at her, which ended poorly as Armin's horse was less tired than his.

He didn't want matching names with a horse he'll soon say goodbye to!

But he eventually gave up as trying to stop her from doing things to annoy him had always been useless at best and counterproductive at worse.

"Look at that, such a nice house, wait, what is that?" said the girl.

"That what?" asked Armin from behind them.

"Is that Eren cleaning the roof?" said Liesl, the group turned to look at the roof of the cottage were team Levi was currently residing to watch over Eren while the commander was preparing for the next expedition to Shiganshina.

"Yes, that is indeed Eren" replied Klemens "I knew he was dumb, but cleaning a roof like that is a new level of dumb"

"Hey guys! You're finally here!" they heard a shout coming from nearby.

They jumped off their horses and greeted their senior, Petra Ral, a short woman who was very kind to her juniors who tried their hardest, but a menace to those that slaked off.

"Hi Petra!" replied Liesl followed by the greetings of the rest of the group.

"Why is Eren on the roof?" asked Klemens, he couldn't remain with the curiosity for much longer.

"He slaked off on the cleaning and captain Levi punished him with cleaning the entire roof, tile per tile" replied the light brown haired woman.

"Wow" replied the young man.

"Yes, so you guys better not do the same, but for now, welcome to the team, it's great having you guys here"

With that, they officially became part of team Levi.