Chapter 41: Hot potato.

"Do you have any idea why we've been called by Erwin again?"

"Maybe they have a new mission that's too difficult for anybody else," hypothesized the corvine haired male, "but I guess we'll know soon enough."

"I guess."

Soon they reached the office, which they entered after politely knocking and waiting for a response.

"Hello captain, how are you?" asked Liesl with her usual nonchalant expression.

"I'm great, thank you Liesl, but let us get to business, all three of us are busy people after all." he said.

'Busy? Who? Is he talking about us? We've done nothing except training for several days now...' thought Klemens to himself.

"Indeed we are commander, so please go ahead." replied the red haired girl, who, as usual, didn't have a single gram of shame in her body.

"Liesl, Klemens, I'm going to ask you this only one time," said the man while setting up a heavy mood, "Are you, or are you not enemies of the people of the walls?"

"What? Why would we be?" replied Klemens completely confused by the question.

Why would the two of them be enemies?

Had they done something wrong or suspicious that caused the commander to ask this question?

It took the two young people a second to process what their commander asked.

Even if Liesl partially understood that he was doubting of them for some reason, this question really came out of nowhere.

"Of course not, after all we've done you doubt us? Why?" asked the girl in outrage, "Everyday for twelve years we've trained with the only objective to bring freedom to our people without the need to fear the titans, and now you dare to suspect us?!"

Even if she knew they doubted them, it still stung, a lot.

She was someone who wanted nothing other than helping the people she loved to live in a world without the constant fear of a swarm of titans coming from nowhere and devouring them.

Klemens was looking at the commander coldly, he didn't care about being suspected, but seeing his best friend and companion this hurt made anger rise within him too.

But to stop everything, Erwin bowed his head, "I recognize that the two of you have been unjustly suspected, the problem lays in the fact that the two of you came in strange times and were always in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Oh yeah, you want to talk about the wrong place at the wrong time? How about when we saved every inhabitant of Trost from being devoured when you were sitting on your ass doing nothing useful?

When Trost was breached the first to come was commander Pixis, not you!" she coldly told Erwin.

"It is my duty as the commander to investigate the potential risk any individual could bring to humanity, I did the same with Levi, then with Eren and with you two, I'm doing my job."

After hearing those words Liesl's anger deflated, he was right.

She had to watch the situation from others point of view too.

Suddenly, two extremely good recruits appear from nowhere and start racking in merits one after the other, had this been the military police they would already have been sabotaged by envious superiors.

Meanwhile in the scouts they were given almost complete autonomy to act in the best way they believed.

Eren was watched every second of every day while the two of them were barely under surveillance, this already was a sign of trust.

If the commander didn't trust them at least a bit then they would have already been detained and would be under a strict interrogation, well, if they managed to take them in.

They wouldn't be taken down without a fight, neither of them.

Klemens was silent, but he was even more stubborn than Liesl in certain matters, and his freedom was one of them.

After all, growing up with a girl that preached every day that freedom was the most important thing in life was bound to influence a person after a long time.

"Well, did you get those pesky doubts solved?"

"Not really, no," he replied and after seeing the rage in Liesl's eyes resurface he finished his sentence, "Would you believe on their words two people who you suspect of being spies?"

"Nobody can lie to me, so if anyone lies I would find out."

"I have a living lie detector by my side all the time, if she says so then I'd trust the devil himself."

Erwin's eyes opened slightly more than normal.

"Maybe I chose the wrong example, but I do not have a lie detector to run the two of you through so the only thing I can work with are your facial expressions.

And I have to say, if you indeed are spy than you're the best liars I've ever seen."

"Oh, trust me on this one, he sucks at lying." even in this kind of situation, as long as an opportunity showed itself, Liesl would always chose to take a jab a her friend.

"Was that really necessary?" asked the boy with a wry smile.

"Don't act as if you wouldn't have done the same if you had the chance of mocking me."

"I totally would have, but I would have been more subtle about it."

"Oh, in which way?"

"I don't know, a hushed comment under my breath only loud enough for you to hear?"

"Weak."

"Ok, I know, sorry." slumped the boy on his chair, he was still tired from their second big and official intoxication the night before, so he blamed that.

"What were we talking about?" she snapped back to Erwin as he was as confused as them.

'These two are really confusing people' thought Erwin, they changed in less than a minute from being angry for his suspicion on them to mocking each other.

'These are really weird times, titan shifters and weird incredibly powerful people, had they been enemies too, this would have been much simpler, but it seems that it's this generation in particular bringing trouble.'

"We were talking about my newfound trust in you, and about that, I was thinking about giving you two your own teams to lead, what do you think?" he offered, partially to regain their trust in him and partially to have two new and very capable captains.

"No way." replied Klemens immediately.

"I like it, but I want him as my subordinate." she said pointing to the boy.

"Seems fair."

"No it isn't, I don't want to be her subordinate."

"Why?" she said with fake sadness in her voice.

"You'd abuse your authority to mess with me, same rank as her or nothing."

"Aw, too bad, I would have done exactly that, you know me so well."

Erwin was confused again, but he decided that it would be like that with the two in front of him, normally people in the scouts were very serious and focused, but the two in front of him were very passionate.

In this they reminded him of Hange, she'd always manage to lighten the mood among her subordinates with jokes, he thought that they had the possibility of becoming great captains one day.

Maybe in the future, it seems that they had to mature more in this area right now.

"I'll move the two of you from the Levi squad and put you under captain Hange, she'll decide if she wants to promote you or keep you officially as normal recruits."

"Sounds cool, but what about Eren? Weren't we there to protect him?" asked the raven haired boy.

"You were, but seeing that you don't seem to be around him very much I find it more fitting to move you to a different team, one more thing, you weren't the only ones in the Levi squad, the other there are more than enough to protect Eren from most threats."

"Well, if you say so..." she said while having a realization in her mind.

She had never treated anyone other than her companion by her side as a peer, other people were only there for her amusement and entertainment, but only for the person next to her would she fight the world.

She looked at him warmly after having that thought, this, however, greatly confused the boy who thought this was the start of a prank.

So he run away at top speed, rushing to the place Erwin told them to go to, where they were going to report to Hange about his decision of shifting them.

"You can run, but you can't hide!" she shouted at him as she sprinted to reach him while producing an evil laugh.

And run he did, the people near the two running people even felt a slight breeze after they passed running at top speed.

Klemens had no problem keeping the lead and reaching the door to the office of Hange's squad.

"Safe zone, take that moron!" he told her with a cocky grin on his face, but immediately regretted doing so as she punched him on the arm with more than enough strength to hurt.

"Why did you run?" she pouted.

"You were looking at me weird, plenty enough reason for me to run away, now shut up and be professional, we need a good first impression."

She knocked on the door and said, "Hello, we're two recruits sent here by commander Erwin." by altering her voice a bit so that even if the person inside knew them they wouldn't recognize them.

"Really?"

"It was plenty professional." she shrugged her shoulders, just to mess with him.

"Come in." said a feminine voice from inside the room.

"Hello! It's us, the commander sent us to join your squad."

"Oh wow, this is fantastic. Why?" she didn't seem that happy at the thought of the two joining her, but it had to be just an impression.

After all, who wouldn't want to have two more strong and intelligent teammates?

"He said that we weren't needed in team Levi and that we'd be more useful here." she paraphrased.

"Great, go meet Moblit, I sent him to talk to someone from the garrison, he should be done by now, you'll be under him until I figure out something more permanent, shoo"

She then proceeded to literally shove them out of the door.

"Well, that was... fantastic!" said the girl.

"She didn't seem to like us very much."

"That's what is fantastic, I'll have so much fun messing around and making her go crazy!"

"Lie, no, bad girl."

"Shut up moron, you're a bad girl."

They saw some guy dressed in the Garrison's uniform leaving a room slightly farther away, so they deduced that it was exactly where they were supposed to go.

They entered the room after knocking normally, Moblit was still their superior.

"Hello, vice captain Moblit, from now on the two of us will be your trusty subordinates, please, don't hesitate to let us loose against any poor man or titan that stands in your way, we'll shred them."

Those were words that the vice captain wanted to hear the least today, he already had an headache from thinking about what to do with the new weapon, it was completed, but it was going to be a disposable.

And now the two greatest wild cards in the corp, even bigger than that titan shifter guy, appeared in front of him.

"Why?" he asked with dread in his eyes.

Wherever these two appeared at, disaster would follow, first Trost, then Stohess and then they fought every titan shifter and came back to tell the tale.

"Well, we went to captain Hange to report after Erwin sent us to her, and she then sent us to you, so here we are!" she replied with a smile.

A smile that told him his beloved captain wanted to punish him for whatever reason.