The Hunter

Chapter 20

On the eves of the massive forest, mist weaved through the wall of trees, lit up by soft beams of cold morning light. The swirling fog wavered and spread out its reach, cool and wet.

A small robin dropped through the beams of illuminated mist, spreading it out further as it swooped through the thick press of trees, to alight on an object on the forest floor. The bird tilted its head, briefly considering the object beneath it; its black, beady eyes shining briefly with red, before it dismissed it as irrelevant and focused instead on the cloud of flies buzzing around it.

The little creature soon made to move again, looking towards another of those objects surrounded by insects, but quickly drew back as a flash of black rushed overhead.

The shadow was quick- unbelievably quick- intent and terrifying. The bird was frozen in place, but it slowly began to move again as it recognised it was no prey of that creature. The shadow was after something else. Not that the bird was interested in this, all its focus was now on its own prey. It ignored the red stained objects littering the forest floor and began its hunt once more.

"They weren't eaten. The female Titan didn't eat any of them. Why?" Armin asked, eyes distant and teeth clenched.

Mikasa turned to look briefly at her friend before turning back to stare into space, instead of at that monstrosity tangled in a thick tangle of wires not a hundred metres before them. Mikasa didn't care. Well, no, she did, but there were things she cared for more than the oddities of this Titan who would be killed shortly. Namely Eren, and how they had found him and were now standing on a stupid tree watching the capture of an irrelevant Titan rather than doing what they needed to do.

Armin was well aware of this, carefully containing a similar bitter feeling within, but despite this, he found himself observing the Titan before him with a deep sense of curiosity.

Why hadn't it killed him? As they had shot through the forest to approach it, the giant had spotted them and started chasing after. The thing obviously had no inhibitions with killing, snatching countless soldiers out of the air and grinding their bodies into the forest floor as it ran. But, as the bloodied hand had reached for Armin, he looked back and it hesitated. It actually hesitated. Huge, shining eyes had fixed on Armin's face and the hand had drawn back.

The Titan slowed in its pursuit after that but its course still led it into range of the wire cannons. The cannons that Mikasa and Armin now knew to be for Eren.

Armin came back to the present with a hitching intake of breath, exchanging a look with Mikasa. They needed to find Eren, before anyone else did...but... Armin turned to look at the Female Titan again. It was looking at them, at him, with a sharp focus, blank but for the odd intensity there. It was intelligent. Armin felt the sharp burn of realisation choking at his throat, firing out a pained exhale of breath from his constricting chest.

It was like Eren.

The Hunter felt the bark of the tree trunk he was attached to splinter and crack underneath his hand, but gave it no mind. Instead he stared down from his vantage point, immobile but for the fast-paced rise and fall of his chest.

The female Titan stood a good distance away, hunched, straining and full of metal cable ,which were deep into her flesh, holding her tight. Her eyes were frozen wide, no longer strangely intent on the humans before her, a desperate sheen to them as blood beaded down the wires embedded in her body. As he stared at her, the Hunter's rage fizzled out into a cold horrified certainty: