Chapter 45: A blond woman.

"What happened, we don't need to train anymore?" asked the hopeful Sasha, she still had breath to spare, but the idea that she wouldn't have to postpone her lunch was great news for her.

"Not now, we have our first mission and it's an extreme emergency." replied the black haired teen with an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face.

Seeing the usually relaxed and laid back Klemens they were used to suddenly turn serious, coupled with what he said abut an emergency, made them realize that something awful might have happened.

"Start your preparations, we need to depart as soon as possible, I'll explain the details as we go." he explained before darting away to fetch his companion and make his own preparations.

The three started immediately doing as he had said, they resented him a little for not at least explaining what kind of emergency it was, but if even he thought that they needed every single second possible, then it must have been really important.

Barely twenty minutes later they were already on their horses and going to the place the messenger had indicated them.

"Titans have been found inside of Wall Rose, there must be a breach somewhere, we have gotten heavy casualties, our mission is to eliminate every titan in the area." explained the teen as he galloped on his horse with perfect posture.

"What about the breach, long has it been since they found the titans and how far is it from here?" asked Liesl, sure enough, she was more worried about the potential area affected by the incident.

"Finding the breach is not our mission, that's for other teams to do, the titans were appeared yesterday, fortunately the place is not that distant from here, we'll be there by tonight if we push the horses a bit."

'This direction... Oh no.' "Klemens, please, tell me that Ragako village wasn't affected?" asked a trembling voice from behind the teen.

It was Connie who spoke, Klemens took just a look at the shorter teen to understand just how much he was affected by what he said.

He was slightly trembling, his knuckles were white by the strength we was using to hold the horse's reins and it was obvious that he was clenching his jaw.

But those eyes were what he was most impacted by, there was hope in them, but at the same time fear.

He knew why he asked that question as he had to read the dossiers of every member of the team, but even without that detail it would have been easy enough from the context, Ragako village was Connie's home village.

That was the place where he lived, where his family and friends lived, it was the place where he spent his life before coming to the army.

Klemens looked at him straight in the eyes and answered with a voice softer than normal, but still powerful enough to be heard as they sprinted on their horses, "I don't know for sure, Connie, hope for the best, but be ready."

There were no further questions as an uncomfortable silence descended on the three recruits as they imagined what the situation must be like for their friend, but there was no time to wait and their orders came.

"First of all, remember that me and Kle are the main slaughter force, whenever you find yourselves against a high amount of normal titans or against one or more abnormals shoot the black signal flare, we'll get there as soon as possible to wipe out the threat." explained Liesl while making sure that they understood the order.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the three behind them weren't really focusing on their words, especially Connie, and Klemens was the first to realize this.

"Listen cadets, this are not suggestions, these are orders." he told them with a tone filled with finality, the three still saw the two of them as their peers, which was not a bad thing per se as the two wanted the team to be a close knit group, but they had to know how to answer orders.

"we aren't cadets like you, we are your direct superior, do not make a mistake and follow our orders, our team is meant to be the best and we will make absolutely sure that our objective is accomplished."

The three gulped, "Yes sir."

They still weren't used to their new superiors, after all it had just been a day since their two friends adopted them into the newly made team and getting used to the fact that two people they had trained with until just a few months before were now their superiors would take a bit of time.

Time they didn't have, so Klemens had to do something he didn't enjoy doing, be serious and make them aware of the difference in their ranks, he and Liesl were their superiors and the three of them had to follow orders.

Liesl sighed only, understanding that it was necessary, but that didn't mean that she liked it, but she could at least make things a bit better, "Connie, how distant is Ragako village from our current position?"

The teen took a second to register her words, but was soon overjoyed as he understood the meaning behind them, "Not much, at our current speed we'd reach there by dinner time, maybe a bit later."

"Good," answered the red haired captain, "make way."

"Yes, Captain!"

But unfortunately, by the time they reached the village, there was no person to be seen, but the few smashed buildings that could be seen were a telltale sign of what happened.

"No..." murmured Connie as he took his horse and went full speed in a specific direction.

"Wait, Connie! It's dangerous!" shouted Jean at the retreating back of his friend, he didn't follow him though as he turned to look at his superiors.

'This is a good first step.' thought Klemens to himself as he issued to him and Sasha the order to follow Connie and to keep an eye on the situation around the village.

In that state Connie might do something stupid in case that he did meet a titan.

"I want one of you to come to the middle of the village to report in twenty minutes to report the situation, the other has to stay with Connie, now, go." he ordered.

Jean and Sasha didn't talk further and directly jumped on they horses to follow their friend.

Klemens and Liesl remained behind and he started talking, "That's a start, Jean waited for my order before following him, it seems like my speech before was useful."

"Yeah, I have to admit though, you were veery cool back then, captain Kle." she replied with a teasing smile on her face, fully intent on taking advantage of the situation that presented itself to her.

"Fuck off, let's take a look around, there might still be some survivor around here."

But it took them only a few minutes to realize that something was wrong, very wrong.

"The building are broken from the inside." stated Liesl as she looked at the rubble around the houses.

The vast majority of it was outside the houses, something that wouldn't have happened if they were broken from the outside, as the rubble would be inside in that case.

"There is also no blood anywhere, this is very weird."

"Let's keep searching, we might understand more if we find something, what worries me the most is that we still haven't found a titan, this might go very badly if they've all already left."

But the next few minutes of search didn't bring any fruit, just more confusion, it looked as if the titans came from inside the few broken houses...

The two looked at each other in horror as a possibility came to their minds, a possibility that they would have never wanted to think about.

But just as Liesl was about to utter the terrifying possibility, they heard a male voice calling for them, "Captains, we found a titan, but it's not a threat at the moment."

The two looked at their team member with puzzlement, but figured that he must have a good reason for his words and followed him.

But when they got there, what they saw confirmed their most horrendous hypothesis, they saw a malformed titan, with arms and legs far too small to actually permit it to move.

It had a head with blond hair and was laying on its back, atop a destroyed house.

"This..." muttered Liesl as her eyes widened.

"This is Connies house, when we got here he almost went into a rampage, we managed to calm him down by telling him that there is no blood anywhere around the village.

We think that the inhabitants managed to evacuate before the titan's arrival, it's just that..."

"That?" incentivized Liesl.

"That this titan is unable to move at all, we can't figure out how it managed to get there in that position." he finished with puzzlement in his eyes.

The two symbols of hope for humanity's struggle looked at each other with complex emotions filling their eyes, a bit less in Klemens' case, but he was still unsettled by the situation.

Annie's stories about the outside world told them that they had a way to turn people into titans, but unfortunately, she didn't know how they did that.

But seeing this situation with their own eyes was a whole different situation.

Liesl sighed and gave her order, "There are no remaining people in the village and no titan to be seen, we'll give Connie a few minutes to get back and ready then we'll depart for the next place, we need to find the titans who caused all this."

Jean looked at his friend, who was no longer his peer, but his superior, and thanked her sincerely, he knew that Connie needed a bit of time.

"Where is he?" asked Klemens.

"We brought him a bit further back, we couldn't let him see his demolished house and risk him get even more stressed."

"Good thinking," complimented Liesl, "Go there, we'll look around a bit more, we'll look around here a bit more."

"Yes captain."

"This is terrible." stated Liesl as soon as Jean was too far to hear.

"Yes, let's give a look around this one." replied Klemens while entering the broken house from a particularly demolished part of the wall.

The titan remained there, unmoved, because it could do nothing other than following them with its eyes that revealed no sign of intelligence at all.

"Do we kill it?" asked Klemens.

"Her," corrected his companion while showing him something, "it's a her."

It was a portrait, with an adult male and an adult woman, a woman with blond hair.