The Birth of Freedom

Sparhawke

AURORA

Four months had blazed by since Rian, and I had joined the scouts and to say we had been put through our paces would be an understatement. I had thought that the cadet corps workout regimes had been a gruelling experience, but Walls was I wrong. My body ached in ways it never had before, but as time passed, I felt myself becoming stronger. Section Commander Miche ran us through ODM drill after ODM drill to ensure maximum efficiency from his unit, countless hours spent performing the same manoeuvres and tactics until they became seared into my muscle memory.

The day had come when during another ODM drill when the Miche squad had performed our offensive without needing direction. It had been as effortless as breathing; my body knew exactly what to do and how to do it without my brain needing to decide anything. It had tasted like freedom.

Commander Erwin had observed us himself that day and had decided it was time we ran a mock expedition to Wall Rose with Section Commander Hange and Captain Levi's Squads, and that's where we were heading today. The aim of today's mission was to cross the lands between Headquarters and Wall Rose using the long-range scouting formation. 'Titans' had been erected around the landscape to make the exercise as realistic as possible. All going well, we would then learn how to scale Wall Rose with ODM gear. This was all in preparation for the real deal in a month when we would be attempting to establish a supply line from Trost district to Shiganshina. The Ultimate long-term goal was to find a way to plug Wall Maria and reclaim the land we had lost three years ago. No easy feat.

Miche had spent the last week hammering home every last detail about the Long-Range Scouting formation, from smoke signals to our positions, he left nothing to chance. Our rookie status meant little to the scouts, Miche was the tip of the spear for the vanguard's centre rank, his extraordinary sense of smell literally made him a walking Titan detector. His job was to alert the formation to Titans before ever encountering them, and as such he was the lucky bastard first into the fray when it came to entering Titan territory.

Of course, being a member of Miche's unit meant I also was to be another rank in the vanguard. The forward centre right flank to be exact, Rian was to be the forward centre-left. We would be on Miche's wings in the formation. Gelgar was to be the far forward right and Nanaba the far forward left, if Miche was the tip of the spear, we were its head. After that, it was the right- and left-wing spotters who would make the flanks for the entire formation.

When it came down to it, we would be responsible for alerting the rest of the formation to any head-on threats, and more importantly, we were the first line of defence for Erwin's command squad who would be the next rank behind us. Without them, the entire formation would collapse, and we would be helpless beyond the safety of walls. No pressure.

Evasion was the aim of the game, when we saw a Titan, we would send up a red flare alerting the rest of the formation to its position and move on. Once Commander Erwin had a decent read of our surroundings, he would fire a green flare and change our route accordingly. Of course, today's training wouldn't be able to account for Abnormals. Titans that did not follow the typical behavioural pattern of the average Titan, they often ignored a lone human in favour of larger groups, greedy bastards. In the formation the centre ranks and the command squad held the higher human density, making abnormals a problem. If one or more reared their ugly heads, then they would have to be engaged and being in the vanguard, it put me at a higher risk of having to be the one doing the engaging. Lucky me.

We had all geared up this morning after Erwin had deemed the weather today to be the most advantageous to our training and I had dressed and had eaten breakfast on the go heading towards the stables. Miche had been waiting for me to arrive and went over the plan with Gelgar, Nanaba, myself and Rian one more time before ordering us to mount up.