#5thrank

Eren.

Humanity's hope.  A Titan-shifter.  Such a thing made Hange's heart flutter with pure excitement.  His existence was a miracle to her, and yet, she barely had the chance to speak to him, let alone even think of tests or experiments.

She's been watching his MonoTwitter profile for a few days.  She's notified of every tweet he makes, and she's even made the effort to browse his profile in case she missed something.  And oh, did she miss something.  The female Titan.  He had shifted.  He shifted!  Lost control, even!  Such thoughts brought a flush to her cheeks as she let out a shaky breath.  

"Time to go see him..."

With her gear on, Hange would quickly move towards his dorm.  She'd memorized the number by now, yes.  She'd also done a bit of research on his roommate, Jotaro Kujo.  They were in a relationship, it seemed.  Maybe he would have something to do with Eren's ability to shift?  But he had also recently been killed... perhaps because of Eren?  Interesting thoughts.

By now, she's there, and she's just gonna knock on that door, a wide smile on her face as if she's a Trick-or-Treater on Halloween.

Typing along as he went in the woods, trying to find a sign of Petrel or Nate, he groaned as the snow drifts went up to his knees.  His body felt freezing.  He didn't know how people could survive in this weather, much less sleep in this kind of cold.  The snow from last night covered up any sign of foot prints, land marks, even rocks and stuff that he slipped on in the snow.

"This is stupid, why didn't they come home, they should have come home."  Grumping along the way, he found himself tripping on a rock under the snow, falling up into a snow bank.

A hole opened up under hardened snow, and he felt something hard under his hand, but moving it, it looked like...

"Is that an arm?"  His eyes widened as he dug out the snow from the hole, one hand covering his mouth as he looked at the scene before him.

A beautiful girl, fair features with jet black hair, lay dead in the snow.  Her clothes probably did little for her against the cold and snow.  She probably died overnight.

Oh gods, he could barely believe it.

Shaking his head, after a minute or two of discussing his find, he straightened himself, and bent to pick her up.

She was surprisingly heavy, and it took him a minute to get situated with her in his arms, carrying her princess style.  Her skin was taut and tinted blue, her lips a deep purple from the cold.  Her hair and eyelashes were coated with frost and ice.  Gods.  He really felt horrid for her.  Poor thing.  What was she doing waiting in there?

Carrying it back down to the lodges, he came up to the back entrance, right where Eren was waiting.  There he is.

(Just one more. If I can have just one more, I'll stop.)

With one hand braced against the wall for support, he rummaged through a cabinet in the infirmary. Medicine bottles clattered together and containers of pills rattled as he took them by the fistful, setting them down elsewhere as he sought his precious painkillers. Deep down, Squall knew this was wrong. The pills numbed the pain, but they fogged up his mind. Reika had expressed her concern over the habit with words, and apparently action too, because the pills had suspiciously disappeared from the infirmary entirely.

His chest throbbed, and he winced as the wounds flared up from sudden movement. He needed to find those pills, and he needed to find them now, before the pain worsened. Desperation drove his fingers to curl around the handle to the next cabinet. He was seconds away from pulling it open, praying his painkillers would be behind the door, when he felt the heat of another's gaze on the back of his neck. Squall froze. Was someone else here...?

He supposed it wasn't a surprise. Rummaging through the room probably made quite a racket, now that he thought about it. Squall hesitated, then slowly turned on his heel, eyes coming to settle on an unfamiliar classmate wearing a familiar uniform in the doorway. He knew immediately that this boy was part of the Scouting Legion: the brown coat with emblazoned wings made that much obvious. Although Squall had seen this soldier around, the mercenary didn't have a name to put with the boy's face. So he took a defensive step forward, an attempt to block the mess of bottles from the stranger's sight. "If you're looking for something here, come back later." His voice was low, rife with irritation from the continuous exposure to pain. "The infirmary's closed."

Her attention was caught by another student, one who she'd never spoken with before. Why would he come to her and confess something now? He had quite the serious expression on his face, though she hadn't a clue why. Pushing her slightly confused thoughts away the petite green haired girl listened to what he had to say.

After his confession, the petite remained silent for a while. Honestly, she could relate to what he was saying. Her gaze fixed at the ground while in thought. She was going to let herself die once, she was ready to give up and let them win. She remembered being told to live. When seeing those around her fighting, Nozomi couldn't just sit back and watch even if they were protecting her, she wanted to help. She wanted to stop giving up. "...I see" she didn't know what else to say.