In Between The Ends

Chapter Fifty One

The eyes in the trees have finally come out to play.

It was relieving to know that their worries had not been completely unjustified. Though, pinned down as she was in the crumbling doorway of a building being torn apart, Annie was thinking that it didn't really matter if they had anticipated it or not.

At least this time around I won't have to hear about it from someone else.

Still feeling the thrill of panic Mikasa's cry had sent tearing through her body, Annie sprinted through the trembling structure, darting around a corner and down a long hallway towards a secondary outer door on the South side of the building. This entrance was tucked under a large balcony and had taken much less damage because of that, though even the additional cover did nothing to keep the dust in the street from pouring in, offering her the same wall of dizzying smoke as her previous vantage point.

Mikasa's warning had given them an edge, small as it was; the advantage of not being shredded by the munitions that were now raining down from the sky in every direction. The noise was incredible, tearing through the muffled calm of the forest like shattering glass, blowing holes in the decaying stone as if it were paper. Billows of dust and debris clouded the streets in a thick smokescreen, turning the overwhelming greenness of the forest floor a dingy, clotted grey.

Taking away the Jaegerist's element of surprise had been necessary to their survival, but now it was painfully clear that they were trapped, spread out between the dilapidated structures that preceded the temple. This was by design, Annie figured, shielding her face as another volley of projectiles tore down the street and across the face of the building to her left. A tactic to keep them separated, unable to fire back.

How the Jaegerists had known where to find them was troubling, but it hardly mattered now. They had been found, like it or not, either by tailing them or by some other means that weren't quite as obvious. Gabi's look of terror as they bolted for cover hung in her mind, and Annie prayed that the rest of them had found equally sturdy walls in hide in while they waited out this barrage.

The waiting was the hard part for her, now. Stuck on the ground with no way to ascertain information on the enemy ship's whereabouts or the condition of the others made her feel less than useless, and the brief glimpse she had of the three Jaegerist vessels didn't give her much to go on.

But even with their aerial weapons, this attack didn't have the numbers it needed to completely wipe them out in one go, not if their only force was aboard the three ships, and there was a limited number of bullets that each artillery gun could fire before needing to reload. It was hard to pinpoint where the planes were hovering – a feat that was both incredible and deeply concerning – but she was sure that the closest to her position was somewhere off to her left, gliding above tree line and peppering the ground between where her building stood and the main entrance of the temple. Annie was also sure that they were surrounded by now, all avenues of escape closely watched.

If the enemy was smart, they would stagger their assaults, ensuring that at least two ships were always firing while the third had the chance to restock. There was no way of knowing if this was the case over the explosion of noise, but there would come a moment where the ship nearest to her would fall silent; that was when she would make her move.

She had to hand it to Jean, it was a pretty solid plan to come up with in less than a minute. Fanning out the way they had was risky, yet as far as she could tell it had paid off. As long as there was at least one person close enough to the underside of each plane, the second its gun stopped firing they would have a small window of opportunity. That's if could survive until then.

Straining her ears, Annie did her best to single out the ship closest to her from the rest of the assault, listening hard to bang after bang, metal scrapping against metal as the gun sprayed bullets down upon them, biding her time.