The Experiment (Attack on Titan // LeviHan) (Part 1)

A Tribute of Blood, Sweat and Tears

Thousands of people. Laughing, shouting, chattering, drinking alcohol and eating delicious smelling greasy things. Like it was a holiday and not a curfew.

"Impressive," Erwin remarked, taking a good look around the natural arena made from stone that was getting fuller by the second, with ever more people pressing in through the entrance behind them. Far above, a hole in the roof of the gigantic cave even provided some natural light, the golden glow of a long day that was about to end shining briefly on its forgotten children underground.

"They're insane," Mike sounded in awe. "Look at the women and children! Don't they care at all about breaking the law so blatantly?"

Zoë wasn't sure he had addressed the question to her. But she sure had an answer.

"Not crazy," she said quietly, the memory of how the underground had burst into song when the curfew had gone into effect bringing a strange feeling of pride, "... a cage is not a cage if you choose to ignore the bars; a man will not be kept below if he reaches for the stars."

"Okay," Mike said with a grimace, "Erwin, I think we need to put Zoë in bed. She is beginning to babble incoherent things again."

"It's a song," she smiled up at him. "They sang it when the curfew went into effect. 'Ye who come to press us down will be the ones to fail - the stairs will not forget your sins and we will countervail...'. The people down here are people too. All they want is to live."

Erwin nodded and made a sweeping gesture at the bustling scene before them. "I warned Nile Dok months ago. You cannot keep putting pressure on something and not expect it to explode."

"Good call to change into civilian clothing," Mike nodded, looking down at the trousers he was wearing - they were much too short, revealing a good part of his impressive calves. "Can we trust whoever is in command down here not to do something stupid?"

Erwin threw him a look that clearly answered that question in the negative.

Zoë shuddered. If the MP moved in... A civilian bloodbath. Escaping from this place was almost impossible: There were two entrances that you reached by climbing up on the outside, which were also the only exits. Even though she had never seen it in action herself, she knew the MP trained with riot gear and didn't doubt for a second that they would use it with little hesitation.

Erwin seemed to consider options. "I'll send someone to the Commanding Officer with an urgent message. They will get what they're after but they need to hold off. What e..."

He froze in mid-sentence. Zoë followed the direction of his eyes and gasped. Hange livery in the crowd below them!

"Your father," Erwin stated the obvious. The Hange house guards moved through the tightly packed crowd like an arrow, forcing spectators to make way for Council Hange who walked behind his soldiers leisurely like it was a natural thing that he would come to an illegal fight in the underground during a curfew.

"Interesting," Erwin added.

Interesting!? Cold sweat had broken out on Zoë's face at the sight of the black guards. She quickly wiped it away with her sleeve, feeling ashamed that the sight of her father could scare her that much. Then, she saw Oliver.

"Goddammit," she gasped. "That traitor!"

Oliver was obviously waiting for her father at the front, in an area currently empty of spectators before the rope that seperated the crowd from the ring, pulling nervously at his white, unruly hair.

"That's a guy called Oliver there," she told Erwin, pointing at the old man in outrage, "he's a poison specialist and he stole an important document from me! I suspect he sold it to my father."