Outmaneuvered by Maria Albert

Full Summary:
On their latest mission, the Survey Corps is ambushed and decimated by a coordinated Titan attack. Seemingly unshakeable Commander Erwin Smith is devastated to learn upon regaining consciousness that Captain Levi is among the sixty percent casualties. Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert, who had refused to accept the loss of the Captain, without irrefutable proof that he is dead, have gone AWOL, setting out on an unauthorized search and rescue mission to retrieve Levi or recover his remains. Now they too are MIA. Will "humanity's last hope" and his friends be able to find and save "humanity's strongest warrior" or has the indomitable Captain Levi truly finally fallen on the field of battle?

Attack on Titan, Shingeki no Kyojin: Erwin, Levi, Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Hange, and Pixis, with Levi x Erwin and Eren x Mikasa. Point of view alternates between listed characters. Rated T, some individual chapters rated M for violence, profanity and sexual overtones. Drama/Adventure/Suspense/Humor/Hurt/Comfort/Romance.

A/N:
This story takes place after the first season of the Anime, just before the final scene, and includes references to characters and events from both the Anime and the first issue of the No Regrets Manga depicting Levi's backstory.

Chapters of this fanfiction are between two and nine pages long, with most at four to eight pages. A number of chapters have been prewritten. A new chapter will be posted every two days until the story is complete. Different chapters are in the points of view (POV) of the following characters: Erwin, Levi, Eren, Mikasa, Armin, Hange, and Pixis. A POV change or time change within a chapter will be marked with "0 0 0". Reviews, favorites and follows are appreciated.

These characters are under copyright by Hajime Isayama and/or Kodansha Comics or others. This is a work of fanfiction, for no monetary gain. If you like this story, you might also like my original published work, the four book high fantasy series, Descent of Kings, by Maria Albert, available on Amazon and through the publisher, Dreamspinner.

Chapter 1 – Ambush

Commander Erwin Smith and the few riders within his sight in their complex formation scanned the horizon around their horses continually, looking for Titans or the colored smoke which would indicate them, in what was so far a benignly clear blue sky. At first the lack of Titan activity had been reassuring, but it was becoming almost eerie. Where were they?

It was inconceivable that they could stage a foray so far from Wall Rose and near Wall Maria and the fallen district of Shiganshina without seeing a single one of those monsters. The lack of enemy sightings had Erwin unusually on edge. Instinctively, his eyes panned right, searching for a glimpse of Captain Levi, even though he knew he would not be within visual range.

Erwin snorted almost silently in self derision. Was he actually becoming as bad as his men, or the civilians they protected, seeking comfort merely from catching a glimpse of his phenomenal subordinate? He sighed softly. No. It wasn't his own lack of confidence he was seeking to assuage: it was Levi's.

To an outsider, Levi still looked as cool and haughty as ever, he still sounded as snide and self-assured, but those who knew him were able to see that the loss of his entire Special Operations Squad, of four of his closest friends in the world, had gutted the once unwaveringly confident man.

Günther Schultz, Petra Ral, Eld Jinn and Oluo Bozado's deaths had hit Levi and Eren Yeager equally hard. Each sought to bear the burden alone, privately blaming himself and publically exonerating the other. Both were strong men, but both were hurting.

Erwin sighed again. The problem with strong men was that sometimes they broke instead of bending under the weight of what they perceived to be their mistakes. Thankfully, Yeager still had Ackerman and Arlert, his lifelines, his anchors. Levi, on the other hand, had no one, save, perhaps, for him.

Levi did not make friends easily or lightly. This had been the second time Levi had lost everyone he had cared for: Isabel Magnolia and Furlan Church had been the first. This might well be the last time Levi opened himself to that kind of pain. And therein would lie the true tragedy: the day Levi ceased to care was the day he would cease being human.

Erwin's eyes widened as a galloping horse approached from the left. Why was Hange breaking formation? She might be crazier than the rest of them in at least one regard, but she wasn't insubordinate or stupid, and there wasn't a trace of smoke in the sky, or a sign of a Titan anywhere.

"Commander, something's wrong," she reported breathlessly.

"Then why didn't you hold position and signal with your pistol? Is it malfunctioning?" he asked, readying his own, in anticipation of whatever message she was trying to relay.

"No, that's just it. It's not that kind of message. The problem is, I didn't see anything. It's what I'm not seeing that makes it wrong. We need to abort the mission," she said, serious having replaced schizophrenic in her eyes.

Damn it. So she sensed it too, only stronger, apparently, due to her bizarre bond with those monsters. Of all of them, she knew best how they thought. She was one of the first to realize they actually did think. "Just when I was hoping I was getting paranoid in my old age," Erwin muttered, opening his smoke grenade case. At that moment, a stream of red, orange, yellow and black flared at the front of the formation.

"Oh shit," Hange whispered, eyes widening in anxiety instead of the anticipation she usually showed when they were about to encounter a Titan, apparently feeling the same chilling sense of foreboding he was.

They'd changed their smoke signaling system for field operations outside the Wall after discovering Annie Leonhart's betrayal. The new coding was:

Red - Aberrant or unique size or type
Orange - Titan, equal to or under 7 meters tall
Yellow - Titan, above 7 to 15 meters tall
Green - Veer right
Blue - Veer left
Violet - Move forward
Black - Fall back

The signal they saw now meant that at least three Titans were in front of them, an Aberrant, a little one and a big one, and "little" was relative.

Before they could react, a red, orange, yellow and green smoke trail shot up from the left flank. Simultaneously, a red, orange, yellow and blue smoke trail shot up from their right. Heart pounding in sick certainty, Erwin hauled on the reins and spun his horse around to face the rear, in time to see the dreaded rising red, orange, yellow and violet smoke trails streak into the sky.

They'd waited too long to be suspicious enough to act, but even after seeing both Yeager and Leonhart transform and act with intelligence, they'd never dreamt the Titans were capable of launching a synchronized attack. They were surrounded. This wasn't a simple random attack; it was apparently a carefully coordinated ambush.

The last thing they wanted was to follow the commands of those smoke trails, to pull together, to form a tight knot, a Titan buffet on a silver platter. Erwin slammed a violet smoke grenade into his pistol chamber, even as he barked an order to the alert and fortunately remarkably level-headed young scientist. "Hange, green and blue. I've got violet and black. We need to scatter our forces, try to dodge around the incoming enemy before they can compress us into a single tight mass target. We'll worry about regrouping later."

"Got it," she nodded, popping a green grenade into the chamber, even as Erwin let out a rare curse, as his own grenade somehow jammed in the pistol and failed to launch. They didn't have time for equipment failure!

Then, unexpectedly, from the right flank, four streaks of green shot up almost simultaneously, just as Hange's own green flare shot up.

"Don't fire the blue!" Erwin quickly countermanded his previous order, as he tossed her one of his own greens. "Levi must have seen what was happening too. It looks like he and his squad might have already taken care of their opponents. Or maybe it's because the forest is that way. It doesn't matter. Even if we're about to charge headlong into a Titan army on the right flank, we're mounted dinners if we stay where we are. We need to reinforce the swing right."

Hange had shot up the second green as he spoke, and gratifyingly, from their left, Erwin saw others taking up the signal, moments before the first of the Titans from the forward position reached the rider in front of them. Erwin had already snapped two blades into place as he'd been speaking, and he let out a string of curses he'd seldom before voiced aloud as he saw over a dozen Titans running towards their position from the front of their formation, a full third of them fifteen meters tall, and not one but two Aberrants with them. Then he was airborne, his grappling hooks imbedding in the bicep of his first opponent, a seven meter tall one, as he used his momentum to carry him towards the sole vulnerable spot at the back of the monster's neck.

That Titan went down gratifyingly quickly, but Erwin saw to his horror that there were now not a single dozen but multiple dozens of other visible targets, of varying sizes, with Aberrants scattered throughout, that each of his men had at least one opponent to fight unassisted. "Veer right! Head for Levi!" he roared, reinforcing the smoke's message, even as he attacked again, doubting anyone would either be able to hear or obey, but then he faintly heard others take up the call over the chaotic sound of the battle. As his blades cut into the back of the neck of a fifteen meter Titan, he prayed the knowledge that they had even a rudimentary plan to help them survive this nightmare might give at least some of them a fighting chance.

Flying, spinning, grappling, slashing, hacking, he carved a steaming path of destruction through the horde of monsters around him, ignoring the sometimes ominously still and more often screaming, writhing and crawling bloody human forms he swung over, bodies and pieces of bodies, a disturbing number of their horses lying amidst the carnage.

The Titans had never targeted their horses before. Was it by accident or intent that so many lay dead now? Had there merely been too many trampling feet? Without their horses, they were dead. No one could outrun a Titan on foot. Few could evade one, even with sufficient cover, and there was none here. Damn it! Where the hell is Yeager? Why isn't he…?

As if he'd summoned him with his thoughts, the muscular, green-eyed Yeager Titan loomed before him, ripping the back of the neck off the fifteen meter Titan he'd been about to face with his teeth. In his wake, a tiny black-haired shinigami felled a seven meter tall Titan. So, Yeager and Ackerman at least were still alive. He wondered if Arlert was somewhere behind them as he swung around to dispatch the Titan he was currently grappled to.

Yeager had been on the inner part of the left flank. Did that mean that what had been the middle of their formation was now the left? There was no way to tell how much his own position had shifted toward the right in the flow of battle. He hadn't had the luxury of directing his movements, other than to avoid the grasping hands and mouths that threatened him. He'd lost track of Hange half a dozen opponents ago.

An enormous hand flashed out unexpectedly from within the column of steam of the vaporizing fifteen meter Titan, directly in front of him, in the path of his swing, not giving him even a split second to react, to dodge. He was backhanded instead of grabbed and crushed, but the force of the agonizing blow ripped both his grappling hooks out of the Titan he was anchored to, along with steaming, bloody chunks of flesh, and simultaneously dazed him.

Erwin fought to reorient himself, in a desperate attempt to control and direct his fall, but saw the onrushing ground only meters overhead and realized it was already too late. In a final act of desperation, a split second before impact, he flung both forearms across his face to cushion the blow, keeping hold of his swords, in a frantic effort not to behead himself or sever his own limbs, as his world shattered.