When you awoke in the early morning you felt the direct sun on your face for the first time in what felt like ages, although it had only been a week and a couple of days.
You've had plenty of time to think about your predicament and come up with a plan.
Your best bet was to finish the fight before it started, trying to finish her before she could transform. After all the patch of metal on her nape was still in your way.
If that wouldn't happen, and that chance was pretty large, then you'd probably have the largest chance of surviving by destroying the reservoirs of the blue liquid and cutting through the wires.
The remnants of 3DMG left behind by your comrades had allowed you to refill your sheaths with blades, and you still had some grenades left to do some of the major damage.
Your backpack carried food and your water bottle was filled. You were ready to continue the hunt.
After a short breakfast you set off. Following the markings in the tree to catch up with your target. Your trained eyes carefully spotting one mark after the other until it became a second nature.
The gas canisters were still surprisingly full thanks to your idea of carrying a second set in your backpack. You expected that your companion in this forest wasn't doing as well, judging from the amount of gas you spent already.
You were quicker in catching up to her than she was leaving her trail, although she still had a week's head start.
So it continued for two more days. You filled your supplies when you could, only granting yourself the comfort of a camp fire when you needed to cook food so you could package it up and store it in your backpack for later.
The amount of food you had made sure you had to go hunting relatively often, but you knew you'd have to be in a good physical state to win this fight.
At the end of the second day you knew you were catching up quickly. You estimated maybe half a day before you'd be caught up, so you slept early that night, making sure you'd be well rested for the fight ahead.
The past week of constant pressure and stress had left you mentally exhausted. The continuous uncomfortable ground to sleep on didn't help your physical state either although you pulled through with it.
Your estimation had been slightly off. In the morning you could hear the distant zipping noise of 3DMG. Apparently you had been closer than you expected.
First you travelled up, she probably couldn't hear the noise of your gear over her own and you still had the element of surprise going for you. You were going to make as much use of that as you could.
You followed her from above, and soon she entered your sight. Deciding this place was as best as the next, you started phase 1 of your plan.
Using just a little bit more gas than usual to propel yourself forward even harder you allowed yourself to dive through the maze of branches and leaves that had started to turn colorful because of the season.
Jieun's first sign of surprise was when she had seen a hook appear in a tree a couple of meters from her position. Only then did she realize the sound of a second pair of 3DMG besides her own.
For less than a second she froze in shock. Barely in time to move out of the way of your deadly blades.
She had been the one hunting you, and although she knew you were searching for her too she never expected to become the prey, your prey.
You swiftly dodged the swing of her blades she hastily threw your way in surprise. Following the wires of your gear you swung through the air, releasing the hooks in your highest point and using the speed and momentum to turn in the air and shoot off the wires again to go in for another attack.
This time Jieun had recovered from the surprise as she shot off her own hooks as well, firing at you. She quickly dodged underneath you in the air and your blades clashed against hers as result. The sound of metal sliding off each other echoing through the forest.
She decided to be the first to take this fight to the ground, painfully aware of the state her gas cannisters were in right now.
You followed her swiftly, attempting to hack your blades down on her neck as you flew over her. Once more she was barely in time to press herself against the ground and escape the sharp metal of your blades.
You landed as well, although you continued to use your wires to plant the hooks in nearby trees and propel yourself towards her.
The hard part of doing that is stopping mid air, and you fastly became painfully obvious of that flaw in your technique. Jieun seemed to catch up as well, deciding to dive whenever you passed her but attack your exposed back as soon as she got the chance.
It resulted in a nasty cut on the back of your shoulder, so you decided to leave that tactic for what it was. Instead you tried to catch Jieun herself in one of your hooks, although that wasn't a success.
In the end you decided on your old but familiar way of dealing with these kind of situations. You moved closer to her and similarly to your fight in the basement the two of you hacked away at each other.
Blades clashed against each other, driving the other back when you got the chance.
Your breathing came out labored, "just stay- the fuck- dead this fucking time!" You panted out as you delivered a particularly hard swing that forced her to give in and resulted in a cut on her upper arm.
"Not without dragging you into hell." She brought out, hacking away at your defense as she forced you to step back.
You sighed as you started to attack more offensively as well, "unoriginal fuck." You mumbled under your breath as you decided to make a risky move. You suddenly dropped to the ground and stabbed your blade in her foot. Your originally aimed for her leg but she moved and this was the most you could get out of it for now.
Instead of pulling back, you simply twisted it around and yanked it out through the side, forcing the female in front of you to scream out in pain.
The cut on her upper arm had healed already but this couldn't be repaired so easily.
Now that she was struggling to move around you used the hooks and wires of your gear to speed up your movements and circling around her. You tried to get a clean shot at her nape, although you couldn't get to through the defenses of the woman in front of you.
When you finally saw a chance you weren't close enough to get a precise enough slice in to prevent regeneration.
You fired your second hook right in her shoulder, making her scream out one more as you pulled her towards you.
Right as your blades were about to make contact with her nape, light engulfed her and you saw her arm in front of her face. She had resorted to biting in her wrist as she transformed into her titan form.
Immediately you fired away, landing on a nearby branch as you saw the transformation happen. A shiver ran down your spine at the sight alone, you had expected this would happen but the sight in front of you was more disgusting than you remembered.
The titan formed around her as the reservoirs of the fluid broke through the skin and hot steam escaped the sides. The metal like scaling over her spine that led up to the metal plate covering her nape seemingly growing over the skin.
You cursed silently as you prepared yourself to go into a full offense. The light had yet to fade but you already shot towards it, careful to hook your wires into the still forming flesh as it formed limbs. You couldn't permit yourself to make mistakes, for the flesh to grow over the hooks and trapping them.
Wires hung from it limbs, reconnecting to other parts of the flesh.
You were fast however, your training of the past weeks with Levi coming to the surface as you twirled and spun through the air, blades hacking at the formed flesh as it finished it's transformation.
Immediately the titan tried to grab you, the movement obviously instinctively at first, but you were able to dodge it's movements barely.
It tried to grab at the hooks and wires of your gear, forcing you to speed up and keep your attention on the surfaces your hooks latched onto.
It forced you to keep changing the surface of your hooks and keep retracting them and shooting them again. Because of that you ended up unable to move out of the way of a punch that was fired at you.
You twisted your arms so that your blades stabbed straight into the titans balled fist as it made contact with you.
Black covered your vision for multiple seconds as you felt yourself fly through the air and get hit by what you could only presume to be the small branches at the end of trees.
When your vision returned you hung by your wires in the air, they had latched themselves into a branch by accident, but thereby probably saved your life.
You hung upside down, but as soon as you opened your eyes, they stared straight into the ones of the titan who stood staring at you with what you could describe as a satisfied look. It's metal eyes bore through yours as it moved closer, never breaking eye contact with you.
You released the hooks, shooting straight back at the titan, hand moving towards the pouch with the grenades inside. At this point it was a miracle they hadn't exploded in the pouch already.
You shot straight over the head of the titan, pulling out the pin of the grenade and allowing it to drop down on it's nape.
Curious of the effect I'd have on the metal, and hoping that the bottle with the blue liquid that was semi close to it would pop as well.
The effect was instantaneous and satisfying as the reservoir of the liquid broke and splattered over the titan. It seemed to burn the creature, and it's painful shrieks brought a sadistic smile on your face.
It created a curtain of smoke, and you hung against the base of a tree to observe the progress.
When the smoke cleared you could easily see the effect of the grenade and for a moment you were in aw. The grenade had burned through a couple of layers of the skin of the titan, but the liquid had resulted in the real damage. It seemed to be some sort of strong acid now that you looked at it. It had burned away through the flesh and had even burned through the metal spine partially. Splatters also seemed to have damaged the top layer of the metal covering it's nape.
You had four grenades left.
It then became easy to decide on a follow up strategy.
The titan had fallen on its knees in pain and it's hands buried in dirt.
You wiped away some of the blood that had started to come out of the small cuts that the branches from before had made, and that had started to seep out of wounds that had reopened after your wild movements. Although you were too high on adrenaline to feel any of the pain.
You flew off, hooking your gear swiftly on newfound points as you swung through the air.
The blades had started to loose their edge and you decided to switch them out. The new fresh set was sharp and clean, and you immediately sliced them right through one of the wires you passed.
You tried to delay the healing of the titans body by making each incision larger than the last.
Ripping another grenade from the pouch you threw it full force at one of the reservoirs. It hit it's target and scorched the titan once more.
Although most importantly, it had freed the nape enough for you to get a fatal cut of it.
The titan stood up, it ripped two wires loose in the progress that connected at both it's wrists.
Nightmarishly the being twitched at it stood up, heavily shaking from ripping the wires loose. The sight made you gasp, it looked like it came straight out of the depths of hell. The area was misty from the steam that still escaped it's body.
Barely in time had you seen what was coming as it grabbed the wires that hung loose from it's wrist and used them as a whip. It slashed them towards your form and you barely managed to move out of the way in time.
It was quiet, only the noise of the wires that slid through the surrounding air reaching your ears. It let out a cry as the reservoirs got drained from their content when it's hit missed you.
Another loud cry escaped the being as its current wounds grew closed.
Its arm moved backwards and lunged forwards, you could see it wouldn't hit you, so you simply crouched down on the branch you stood on for stability.
The wire wrapped around the branch you stood on and the titan yanked it forward. The branch you stood on ripped off the tree, and you fell through the air. Your reflexes allowed a quick escape as you hooked your wires into the tree and flew through the air.
The creature whipped the wires at you as you moved. You narrowly avoided them each time.
That was until the titan switched it's tactic. It aimed for your wires, forcing you to smack into a tree, face first, more than once. Each time it tried to catch you with the other wire but you were gone too fast.
When you got close enough you threw a grenade in it's face, using the smoke as a disguise to throw one pair of blades in it's eyes, you equipped your last set of blades.
The noise was horrendous. Metal scraped over metal as the blades pierced the only part of the eye that wasn't covered it in.
You hooked your gear in its flesh, as long as you were this close it couldn't use the wires as whips.
Your blades hacked away at every single part of flesh that it could reach. Trailing it's arms you cut off the wires from it's wrists one by one.
The metal of your blades barely left the titans body as it desperately tried to catch you in it's blindness.
The mist from the steam becoming so thick you couldn't see far around you. The thickness of the trees didn't allow for it to escape into the free air.
The titan moved to rest both hands over it's nape as it fell to it's knees after you cut through the muscles behind it's knee.
You started chipping away the the muscles around it's shoulder, hoping to hit one that would bring the entire arm down.
A loud screech made you lose your balance in the air as you hurriedly covered your ears in pian. You cursed loudly, moving back towards the titan as soon as it stopped.
You couldn't shake a feeling of familiarity at the sound but you pushed that towards the back of your mind.
You continued your work, cutting through the muscle tissue.
The silence of the forest was now replaced, you could other noises. You still couldn't see anything because of the mist but the loud footsteps were a dead give away of an army of titans.
Had she managed to call other titans to help her? How did that even work?
You had two grenades left.
Wanting to keep one as a back up for the journey back you ripped the pin of out of the other with your teeth. You flew to it's back where you threw it as precise as you could at it's hands.
It hit.
As soon as you saw the steam erupt from it's hands you shot closer and sliced right through it's nape.
Not the way you had seen Levi do it to Eren before. He preserved the nape of Eren when doing that. This was a clean cut straight through.
The titan started to fall over, your hooks ensuring you stayed on it as it hit the ground.
You cut the body free from the flesh when the titan started to decompose. Being as fast as you could with the titans you could still hear approach.
Taking it to a nearby branch high enough out of reach for any titans you looked one last time at the body. Marks signalled where the muscles had attached themselves to her body, some still hanging on.
The gear around her waist made you scoff. Her gas was depleted and her sheaths were empty.
Her jet black hair pooled around her head as you bent forward, ripping the dog tag from her neck as you looked at it. "Jieun."
After all this time you hadn't even known her name.
You raised your arms above your head, the blades still in your hold. You had to be sure. This wouldn't, it couldn't, happen again. You barely managed to survive now, let alone if she managed to survive.
You brought the blades down upon her neck, cleanly slicing straight through it. Grabbing the decapitated head by it's hair you looked at the group of titans that had started to form on your battlefield. If she wasn't dead before, she for sure was now. Not a single sign or recovery as you slit through the skin of her arm to make sure.
Glancing at the face you spat on it, before throwing down to the titans which were feasting on what was left of her titan body. The dog tag was still in your other hand and you pocketed it. It was your personal trophy.
You released a breath of air, this was it. You had finally managed to get rid of her.
But above all, you could go home.
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