Underground (Levi x Reader)

Practice

"Corporal! 15 meter titan coming in from the East!"

I shot up onto a large tree branch using my 3DM and steadied myself, looking off toward the direction the cadet was pointing, his voice frantic. A grin split my face as I saw the large titan sprinting wildly toward our squad. Perfect practice for the new cadets. I glanced over at the frightened cadet and stated calmly, "All right, Cadet. It's your time to shine. Take care of it."

The young man's eyes widened as he looked to the titan barreling toward us and then back to me, unsure whether I was joking or not. "C...Corporal?"

I raised an eyebrow at him. "This is what we've trained you for, cadet. It would be a waste of your skills if I killed every titan that came our way for you." I motioned toward the incoming titan with one of my swords. "Now get going. I don't want to lose half my squad today due to your hesitation."

The cadet swallowed hard and bracing himself, shot to another tree using his 3DM, drawing his swords as he did so. I watched carefully as he jetted to another tree, coming in behind the titan that was bearing down on the group. He hesitated for just another brief moment and then, shooting out his 3DM gear to the tree across from where he was standing, he swung outward on the line, sword raised, and sliced into the back of the titan's neck as he flew past.

The entire squad had stopped in what they were doing, all eyes glued to their fellow cadet to see if he would succeed or fail in his first time in the real field.

Blood sprayed from the wound in the titan's neck, but it didn't go down, instead, it continued to push toward the group, growing nearer and nearer as the cadet landed in his target tree and looked to me with frantic eyes.

I rolled my eyes and let out an exasperated sigh between my teeth. "Why do I always get the idiots?" I muttered under my breath, hooking my 3DM gear out to another tree as I left the branch I had been watching from and flew toward the incoming titan. Swinging in a wide arc on my lines to get a good view of the titan's neck from behind, I dropped down and swiped my blade across the shallow cut the cadet had made in the monster's neck. Blood sprayed again, flicking across my face and uniform, and the titan went crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust and tree branches at the feet of my squad.

I unhooked my 3DM lines and dropped lightly to the ground beside the fallen titan, wiping the blades of my swords on my pants as I looked up toward where the cadet still stood, eyes wide as he stared down at the titan I had killed.

"Johnson. Get down here." I flicked one of my blades at the wide-eyed cadet. He sheepishly dropped down to the ground beside me, averting his eyes from my gaze as I said sternly, "You didn't slice the neck deep enough. Wounding a titan won't do anything to it. You have to cut into their center if you want to take them down, and giving them a shallow scratch won't accomplish that." I directed my gaze to the rest of the cadets, who stood on branches in various trees above us and called out, "Let this be a lesson to all of you. Watch what you're doing, or you'll end up as titan fodder." I walked past the cadet and smacked him on the back of the head as I passed him, still addressing the entire squad. "And thanks to Johnson here, you'll all be doing an extra hour of drills tonight before you get your dinner. It appears I haven't worked you hard enough, you're all still clumsy and making amateur mistakes that could cost lives."

I heard a few groans come from the group above me, but ignored them. I hooked my 3DM lines up around another tree and flew into the air, landing on another large branch as I glanced back in the direction we had come, toward the wall. I could see a few other squads off in the distance, all on their separate missions that had been assigned to us for the day, and wondered what his squad had been assigned to do.

I hope he's alright.

"Corporal! Another incoming!"

The call from one of the cadets broke me out of my thoughts and I pulled out my blades again. "Alright, you idiots. Who's going to test out their skills this time?" I motioned one of the girls forward to stand next to me. "The best case scenario would be if you could actually take down the titan, but with you lot, I'll settle for the worst case scenario, in which you just make it out alive."