The Titan Queen - Levi X Reader

Chapter 11 - The Change

"You arrogant, selfish son of a –"

"Is that really any way to speak to your headmaster, Miss Magnolia?"

Isabel caught herself before she had the chance to leap forward and break Pixis's nose. Instead, she wound the reigns of her horse tightly around her fist and pulled Strawberry away from his stallion. The school was now in sight, the tall walls creeping ever closer on the horizon. The sun was setting now, the sky transformed into a canvas of orange and yellow and pink.

"You're telling me," she said, her voice dangerously close to breaking into a yell, "that we came all of this way for nothing?!"

"You've got Eren Yeager back," Pixis replied, his eyes on his precious school. "Not to mention, Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert. Surely you'd agree that they aren't nothing?"

"I came for Y/N L/N; I will not be satisfied until I have her. I will not stand by while you allow that army to take her into their stupid army camp for no suitable reason... She is not a test tube, something to poked and prodded!" Isabel snarled, knowing that her emerald eyes were sparkling in pure wrath. Pixis turned his warm gaze towards her with a small smile, and she felt her anger boil in her stomach. "Don't you dare laugh at me."

"I wasn't laughing," Pixis said, although his irritating smile was still very present. "You haven't seen the girl yet, have you?"

"I - I wasn't sure that I was allowed," Isabel stammered, her anger dropping like a stone in her gut.

Pixis looked like Isabel had just told a very refreshing joke. "You thought that you had to wait for permission?"

Isabel was more than ready to curb her horse around and canter towards the carriage near the back of the retreating army that she'd been carefully keeping an eye on. Before she had the chance, however, Pixis spoke again. "Have you not thought about why she might be taken to the Scouts in the first place?"

"She knows things," Isabel replied, the muscles of her lower back straining with the effort of her tensing, ready to head towards the topic of their conversation at a moment's notice. "They'll probably want to know everything in her head, the possible castles that the titans might head to."

"We can interrogate her for information like that at our own school," Pixis said, flatly. "Try again why they specifically want her."

Isabel blinked. "She – she's grown up around titans, maybe she knows more about the operation?"

Pixis smiled, but it was not a kind smile. It was the smile that you drew on a monster after being told to sketch your nightmares. "One could say that she knows the process intimately, I suppose. You're getting warmer, Magnolia. Maybe I'll only give you three months of detention after this."

Isabel's mouth went dry. "Do they think that she's a titan, now? After everything that she did for us?"

Pixis sighed, and she felt a flash of victory in knowing that she'd gotten him to break. "They think that in her time truly acting as the titan princess, one of the beasts took it upon themselves to truly turn her."

"They wouldn't! They thought that she was a titan, too – why would they doubt her?"

"Perhaps one of the titans saw too much humanity in her and thought to be cautious, and do the operation again," Pixis shrugged, eyes resting once again on the school – the school that would not accept Y/N unless Isabel Magnolia had anything to say about it. "After all, you can't exactly be made into a titan twice, can you?"

Without another word, she whipped Strawberry's head around - brutally, but efficiently - and galloped her mare to the back of the small army, causing a ruckus as the soldiers were forced to make way for her. Strawberry had grown in the year that Isabel had ridden her; she was now larger, broader in muscle. Her chestnut hide shone in the dying light, and her hooves delivered punches to the ground with such power that no soldier would dare go against her. That along with the fact that Isabel was riding her was enough to ensure that they went without confrontation.