Libertas ↠ AOT

III

Hanji was in the process of gathering up her squad members for the meeting that was going to be held in order to figure out their plan of action and ensure that everybody knew what was happening. Antheia stood in the meeting room with Levi at her side, Eren and his two friends standing a few feet away from them and making the finishing touches to their gear.

"I assume you won't be coming?" Antheia asked Levi, observing how he hadn't changed into uniform and equipped ODMG like the others had.

"Not this time," he answered, subconsciously resting his hand against his injured leg. "Are you sure you're up for going?"

"Yeah. As long as I don't push myself too hard I should be okay," she reassured him.

Levi hesitated for a fleeting moment before nodding, showing her that he ultimately approved of her decision and trusted her not to be careless with her own life. Hanji then entered the room with the rest of her squad in tow.

The others gathered around while Hanji took the time to read the document that was given to her, a troubled expression on her face while she occasionally hummed to herself.

"Section Commander, is something wrong?" Eren asked after a few minutes of watching her.

"Oh uh, well I was finally able to get my hands on the background report I requested for Annie Leonhardt."

"Annie?"

"Yeah. It took longer than I was hoping for. The paper trail's a bit of a catastrophe at the moment. Bureaucracy huh? Anyway, according to this there were two other cadets in the 104th who hailed from the same region. I have their names."

"Well? Don't leave us in suspense," Antheia chimed in, anxious to find out.

"One Reiner Braun and Bertholdt Hoover."

Sasha, Eren, Armin, Mikasa, and Antheia all looked extremely shocked at the revelation. Afterall, Bertholdt had always been rather quiet and nervous while Reiner was nothing but helpful and understanding, it was hard to come to terms with the information that they could have been working with Annie this entire time.

Hanji gave them all a moment to digest the news before continuing. "Not much survives in the way of records and thanks to the chaos five years ago, what we have on them is unreliable. However, we do know that during the long range scouting formation their unit was given false intel. They were among those intentionally misled into thinking Eren was in the right wing."

"Wait just a minute, that's the section Annie attacked," Armin interjected.

"What? What does that mean?" Sasha asked, whipping her head around to look at Armin.

"Well, it's entirely possible they told Annie where they thought Eren was."

"Why would they do that?"

"Where are you going with this, Armin? You can't just accuse—"

Eren's brash voice was abruptly cut off by Hanji. "I totally agree. Coincidence doesn't establish relationship. Bearing that in mind, I'm curious to know how the three interacted while training. What can you tell me?"

The 104th members explained how the three didn't seem to talk with one another. Annie had never been particularly social in the first place and there were no signs that Reiner and Bertholdt were friends with Annie in the slightest—the only peculiar thing that was spoken of was when Sasha mentioned that she heard Annie liked sweets. Eren then interrupted them all, arguing that they were their comrades and mentioning how Reiner was like a big brother to everybody, there was no way that he was capable of lying to them.

Armin then moved on to explain how Annie had only changed her course in the 57th expedition once she had attacked Reiner, heading straight to where Eren was located after Reiner had carved Eren's position into her hand. He had purposefully asked Armin where Eren was.