With both hands and an embarrassing amount of effort, Kuno pulled himself free from the brick wall. He fell to the floor as the world swirled around him before shakily getting back up to his feet. He was no stranger to getting punched in the face, his training for the interior Military Police had been brutal and emphasised all forms of combat.
All that being said, Kuno was quite certain he'd never been punched in the face that hard before.
He felt like his whole skull was rattled and there was already a clicking in his jaw that he felt would be there for quite some time. He watched Gohan stalk towards him, his eyes full of fury and hate. Kuno blinked in disbelief, this was… this was not who he was supposed to be. Gohan was strong absolutely, but everything they'd seen of him said he was purely protective in nature, that he would never be the first person to use violence.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Kuno spat, standing himself up straight and raising his fists defensively. "I told you, if you want to see those two again then you need to do what I tell you. If I don't pass along the right message by the right time then those two are going to have their throats slit."
Gohan stopped just in front of him. He said nothing, showed nothing, leaving Kuno entirely unsure whether Gohan was at all affected by his threat. He got his answer when in a quick flash, Gohan reached past his hands and grabbed the side of Kuno's face, flinging him across the length of the brick wall and carving a deep indent the size of his head.
"Gohan…?" Mikasa whispered, worried at the sight of his cold fury.
"I'm fine Mikasa." He continued stalking towards Kuno. "I'm going to find them, I'm going to save them. So you can either tell me now, or I'll find out shortly."
Kuno's eyes widened as the full realisation of what was about to happen set in. This wasn't just Gohan being angry, and Kuno wasn't just risking being smacked around, Gohan looked murderous.
"Shit."
Kuno charged towards Gohan, risking the offensive rather than trying to block any of Gohan's attacks. He threw a series of punches, each one blocked by Gohan with ease. Kuno's attempt at a kick was caught in Gohan's arm, he had time to let out the barest of yelps before he was lifted off the ground and swung into the wall again.
His time he went through the bricks and inside of the building, a tool storage shed that was showing signs of crumbling from the damage to its walls. Gohan punched out the corner and sent the rest of it tumbling inwards.
Gohan looked over the rubble as it settled. He walked over it, stepping over broken bricks and shattered wooden beams as he made his way towards the energy he sensed. Kuno was tough but had grievously underestimated Gohan's skills… and his rage. It felt like he was facing down Cell again. That righteous anger, the hatred, the grief he felt over the pain that the man had caused.
The pain, that Gohan had enabled him to cause.
Gohan would right that wrong. He would save Mrs Jaeger and Hannes, and anyone else that would be threatened. He had told Kuno that the man didn't know even a fraction of what he was capable of. It was time to prove that. It was risky to try something he'd not fully done before, but it was necessary.
After all, his father was excellent at copying techniques when he'd only witnessed them.
Gohan plunged his hand into the rubble and lifted Kuno free, the MP's face bloodied and dazed. He took a breath as he steadied himself and flexed his hand, gently placing it on Kuno's forehead. The man was still too dazed and weary to resist as Gohan's fingers gently rested, and his mind reached out to probe.
Gohan's psychic training had been limited, but so too had his fathers. His father had managed to learn and put this technique into action without any practice, so he hoped that he could do the same. A combination of Ki energy and psychic power pushed into Kuno's dazed mind as he probed within, searching for the answers to where Mrs Jaeger and Hannes had been taken.
At first there was nothing, then only flashes. Snapshots of random and disparate memories, the sights of Kuno's childhood and casual days, he saw streets and homes and people he didn't know. As he focused though, things became closer. He saw other MP's, almost three dozen of them, all gathered around together in a cave of glowing crystals. He saw a woman standing above the rest as they bowed.
He heard orders, a plan to divide and conquer the Scouts and Gohan himself. He heard their plan to take Mrs Jaeger and Hannes, to force Gohan to bend the knee to their will. He heard of their willingness to kill, their plans to attack Commander Erwin and the others. They knew of some connection between him and Petra and were willing to kill her.
Fear gripped his heart but he forced himself to press on, unable to risk losing his chance to find out where they had been taken. He remembered the fight, the way Kuno had beaten Hannes and dragged Mrs Jaeger from their home. Orders, more orders…
"Take them to the underground. And watch for any followers, I'll send word from the Church when I'm done."
The church… he saw it from Kuno's memories and traced the path in a mental map. It was inside of Wall Rose, just North of Olbd on the opposite side of the nation. With the underground beneath Mitras itself, the realisation that whatever they'd had planned for Commander Erwin in the capital had already happened snapped him out of his mind reading. Kuno groaned in his grip before falling silent as Gohan threw one final punch that knocked him out for good.
"I found where they were taken. They're in the underground city, beneath the capital."
"The hell!? How do you know that? What did you just do?" Neither Eren nor Mikasa had seen anything happen beyond Gohan placing his hand on Kuno's forehead and scrunch up his face in concentration.
"I… read his mind. It's hard to explain the specifics of it but I saw my dad do it a few years ago and I tried to replicate it."
"And that… worked?" Mikasa asked, more stunned by how casually Gohan had apparently just tried and succeeded than the ability itself. Gohan could do so much that she thought impossible that mind reading barely seemed to surprise her anymore.
"Yeah that's also something my dad could do a lot. If he saw someone do something, then he could probably do it too. But listen, this is a lot bigger than just a kidnapping."
"What do you mean? Are they going to do something to mom!?" Eren was desperate for an answer, his eyes practically pleading with him for some good news.
"No, she'll be fine. We'll save her. But this isn't just about bringing us to heel, they're launching a coup against the entire government to get rid of the Scouts and anyone else who could stand against them."
"Who is it? Where are they!?"
"It's…" Gohan hesitated. He knew the answers, but they hardly made sense in his mind. He may not have been as versed in the politics of Paradis but a secret government controlling the nation was quite the stretch given all he had previously known. But, it was what Kuno had seen, and it had been the truth. "The king you know is only a puppet. The government is secretly controlled by a family of nobles, with one woman in charge of them all. The true Queen… Frieda Reiss."
The two leaned back in shock.
"Reiss?" Mikasa asked perplexed. "As in… Historia Reiss?"
Gohan nodded. "Kuno didn't know the relationship between them, but Freida gave specific instructions that Historia wasn't to be harmed."
"She said that she never knew her father," Eren remembered, "only that she was a bastard who was sent away. How old was Frieda? Could they be sisters?"
"It's possible."
At the feet, Kuno moaned in his sleep. The three of them eyed him in fury but held off on doing anything more to him.
"So what do we do now?" Eren asked.
Gohan reached down and grabbed Kuno by the scruff of his neck, dragging him up to bring with them. "First we give Kuno to the Garrison here, then we regroup with the Scouts before the next move is made against them."
"Maybe we should just kill him." Eren said, eyes locked on the man he knew had helped kidnap his mother. "The Garrison is useless, they won't be able to hold him. Besides, he deserves it."
"Eren, I understand what you must be feeling right now." Gohan held up a hand to calm him. "I can only imagine what I would do if my mother was taken from me. But Eren, this isn't what your mother would want you to do."
Shame. Eren looked away as he considered Gohan's words, but far more importantly what his mother would say. He may have been a rebellious child, they had argued far more times than he could ever remember, but he knew something like this would be different.
Eren wanted to kill the man, he truly desired it… but more than that he wanted to be able to look his mother in the eye again, and he didn't think he'd be able to if he went through with it.
He stepped aside, not saying a word as Gohan dragged the unconscious man past. Mikasa laid a gentle hand on his shoulder in silent support, and he placed his atop hers in appreciation. They took their moment to be there for each other, before moving to follow Gohan as they headed to the Garrison Headquarters.
Marco was alone by the time he reached the hideout he had chosen for the Scouts. He had sent Marlo and Hitch ahead of him so that they could have plausible deniability if the worst happened. They could lie much more convincingly if they genuinely didn't know where he had gone to. He would be in trouble for showing up late, and perhaps it would seem suspicious given he had never been one to do that, but he'd told them to claim he had needed more time to prepare his report, claiming a drunk had spilled ale on his papers and ruined them, needing a rewrite. It was a convincing enough story if nobody pressed further, but he would need to be more convincing if he wanted his plan to actually work.
As he knocked on the door of the small and out of the way house, he took a deep breath to mentally prepare himself. The door opened to a beautiful woman, a woman who's looks were not at all diminished by the immediate and intense scowl she threw his way.
"Hey Carly."
She may have been a few years older than him, but he was taller than her by a fair margin. Not that it mattered as she immediately stepped forwards and jabbed a finger into his chest.
"What the hell are you doing here? I told you, I'm never making that stuff again, I swore it."
"And I believe you." He held up his hands to plead innocent. "I didn't come because I thought you were, I told you I trust you. I gave you a chance to turn things around for a reason."
She eased back a little and her scowl subsided somewhat, but she still wasn't fully calmed. "Then what? You hear to ask about my dad? I don't know where he went."
Marco blinked in surprise. "Your dad…? Wait, he's meant to be in jail."
"Yeah, meant to be." She rolled her eyes at his apparent cluelessness. "Dad paid off the first guys to come arrest him and took off. Some other MP's came looking for me and asking where he might have went, if I'd seen him. Said I hadn't, that I took off when I found out he was selling coderoin to locals. They bought it, said that matched with what you told them."
She looked away from him in shame. "Thanks for that… I know I didn't deserve the second chance you gave me."
In truth, he almost hadn't given it to her. She knew that of course, that was part of why she had been so driven to prove that he hadn't made a mistake. When she'd met him, he'd been through hell trying to find her and was in something beyond a foul mood. Her story certainly wasn't sympathetic to most, and she imagined it hadn't been enough to convince him of her change of heart. But Marco's foul mood had left him reflective of the attitudes of the Military Police and how little they seemed to truly care about the people they were meant to protect. A desire to do something to help, a sob story from a beautiful woman, and the bitterness of wanting to spit in the face of the institution had been just enough to convince him to let her go with the promise to do better.
The next day had been a nightmare for him, waking up and second guessing his decision whilst also being too worried about the consequences he would face if he admitted what he'd done. Fortunately, Carly had sent him a letter within a few days and told him about the changes she had made. Plus with his report implicating her father, it was enough for him to consider a good deed to have been done.
"You're a smart girl, and I know you genuinely cared about the people here." He told her, just the same as he'd told her the day he'd found her. "This place needs all the help it can get, and I thought you could do something to improve things. It would be better than being left to rot in a cell while the rest of the police let it all fester."
"I have done something." She insisted, eyes looking at him for approval. "I went to the apothecary, got a job there trying to increase medicine production efficiency."
"I know, I heard the results. You did good Carly."
She blushed, honest to goodness blushed as she looked away again. She was far too experienced and jaded to be smitten with his good boy virtue, but maybe there was something appealing to it all.
"Thanks Marco… so, is there any other reason you came by?"
Now it was Marco's turn to blush and look away. She had said the words with what Marco could only describe as a purr as she teased him. Yeah, she was a few years older than him, and he knew she wasn't actually interested in him that way, but it had been a very long time since he'd actually been shown any interest by the opposite sex.
He saw her smile and drop the flirty façade as she laughed at him.
"Listen, I need you to help me out with something."
She stopped laughing as she saw how serious he looked. "What is it? Is it something to do with all the raids that's been going on today?"
"It does. I hate to put you in this kind of a risk but… I need you to look after the people that they're looking for."
"W-what!? You want me to look after fugitives! Do you have any idea what will happen if they find me with them!? They'll hang me for treason!"
She was worried, already fearful that just by talking to Marco she might be implicated in this all somehow. He put his hands on her shoulders to calm her down, taking deep slow breaths to encourage her to do the same.
"I know it's dangerous, but I know these people. They're innocent, I'm sure of it, and they'll absolutely make sure that they aren't found with you. But please… I need help with this."
She didn't look at him as she hesitated, stuck between the immense danger of what he was asking as well as the desire to repay him for the second chance he had offered her.
"Fine… I'll do it."
He sighed in relief, reflexively pulling her into an appreciative hug. "Thank you Carly, this means a lot to me."
"Y-yeah well, don't get me killed and you're welcome. But you'll still owe after this."
He pulled away from her and looked around. "I'll go tell them. Thank you again Carly."
She grabbed his shirt before he walked off, pulling him back closer. "Not just yet. People might have seen us talking, need to give some time to lose any suspicion. You go tell them to wait a few minutes, and I'll put a candle in one of the rear windows. Have them come in through the back, less likely people will see."
"Oh, oh yeah that's smart. Good thinking Carly."
"Hey, out of the two of us I was the actual criminal after all."
She let him walk away with a teasing smile, one that dropped away when his back was turned and he disappeared from sight into an alleyway. She stepped back inside her small home and closed the door, slumping as she could already feel the emotional weariness of what she was about to do.
It was stupid, a stupid risk that she would have never done before. All on the promise of helping some people he told her were innocent? But that had just been what her life was before him, using all her wealth and opportunities just for her own miserable benefit. She couldn't exactly say she was happier now, she did miss her life of luxury and getting drunk at bars, having her pick and choose of any man she saw… but Marco had taken a stupid risk too. A stupid risk to help her, and now she felt the need to do the same.
She spent a small amount of time busying herself. Washing dishes, tidying up her furniture, and putting away the anatomy textbook she had been reading before she finally went and grabbed a small candle and headed to the rear door windowsill. She lit the candle and unlocked the door, stepping back as she held her breath and waited.
It was over a full minute before a man stepped inside, a tall blonde man who despite his tense expression and the seriousness in his eyes, greeted her with a thankful smile.
"You have our thanks Miss Stratmann." He walked inside with two others in tow, the last one locking the door behind him and blowing out the candle.
"Just Carly is fine, and I'm doing this for Marco, not you, so save your thanks." She jerked a thumb behind her towards the living room. "You three can sleep downstairs, bedroom is mine only. Upstairs on the left is the toilet, don't make a mess."
She left them to their own devices and walked upstairs towards her bedroom. She would spend a few hours reading by herself and making sure none of them tried anything before she finally went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, a small group of men and women walked down the stone streets of Wall Sina, just north of Ehrmich. It was the temporary location of the Scout Regiments new headquarters and was being shared with the Garrison troops in the area, however those who approached were neither Garrison nor Scouts.
The MPs who moved down the street may have been dressed in their regular uniforms, having removed their anti-personnel harnesses, but each one of them was still a thoroughly dangerous individual. They had taken the time to rest and recover after their battle in the centre of the capital, as well as to count and remove their dead and wounded.
The tally had been… humbling.
At the head of their group walked Kenny, a man who seemed entirely at ease with the demise of so many of his soldiers. He had personally trained with them, studied the notes that Caven and Kuno had brought from their firsthand experience, and taken to it with a fervour that made him seem decades younger. But despite the training he had done with them, despite his position as their leader, it had always been apparent that he had little care for any of them.
His loyalties, if he truly had any, were to the Reiss family alone. The MPs were his pawns and he cared not for whether they lived or died. Following the attack in Mitras he had seemingly only cared about how many Scouts had been killed rather than what he had lost.
Three dead to more than a dozen of their own.
Caven had mourned their losses in her own way, she did not cry who give a speech but she had genuinely been concerned about their course of action. As the interior MPs now marched on the Scout headquarters, the potential for more violence and death seemed inevitable.
It was why she had made the very difficult decision to go over Kenny's head and send a message back to the Reiss family, advising them of the danger. Kenny might not forgive Caven for that, and she would have to be careful that her throat was not slit the next time she wandered too close to a dark alley. However, the results for now had been very welcome, as in the middle of their group walked their Queen.
Frieda Reiss did not speak to them much, she would not involve herself personally in the fighting unless she truly needed to. She had neither the interest in fully assisting them nor even in pretending to be one of them, as she walked down the street in a very fancy trench coat. Favouring her personal comfort over any form of disguise.
The hope was that violence would be minimal however. Along with overwhelming firepower, they were bringing the numbers as well. Reaching the end of the street they came face to face with the local Garrison commander, one who had been briefed on the order to arrest the Scout regiment in its entirety.
He had been hesitant, but the orders had been clear and signed by the king himself, and so he had gathered a large number of his men and readied weapons to surround the headquarters in case of resistance. The local Military Police had also provided support, but they were being kept further back to control the public if need be.
"The troops are ready sir." The man addressed Kenny, who smirked underneath his new hat. He always found it entertaining whenever he was addressed so formally.
The contrast to his previous, and current, days of slashing throats made the forced respect and obedience so endlessly amusing.
"Well then boys and girls, time to give everyone a wakeup call."
The commander turned and gave the signal, as soldiers moved up to their various assigned entrances and began to kick down doors.
A few soldiers used their ODM gear to head up to the roof and secure the area, but most of their forces were entering at ground level. Kenny joined them alongside most of the MPs, keeping a few in reserve to protect the Queen even though he suspected she didn't need it.
The ground floor was mostly quiet, the barracks residing on the upper floors, however a few scouts were present and performing some simple gear maintenance or playing cards with each other. They had little chance to put up a resistance as they were slammed to the ground and cuffed.
Kenny was almost racing up the stairs as the soldiers streamed in. Teams had been pre-assigned for sweeping each of the floors and they had been briefed about who was expected to be where. The majority of the scouts were contained to three floors in shared rooms, all were rudely awakened as doors were broken down and they were pulled from their beds. Some had been alerted enough or were simply quick enough to fight back, as more than a few of the Garrison soldiers received punches or kicks in response.
But the Garrison were many, and they had both the element of surprise and the complete confusion of the Scouts as they were surrounded and subdued, all resistance was minor and short lived.
The exception had been the fifth floor, where the Scouts officers had been located. These veterans had been granted private quarters and were the last to be disturbed, but they were also the fewest in number. Section leaders and other high-ranking personnel put up the most fight in spite of everything, particularly at one bedroom where despite his eagerness, Kenny arrived in time to see three Garrison soldiers already splayed on the ground in various states of consciousness.
Mike and Ilse may not have been fully dressed, but they had shown little hesitance in beating those who had come to grab them in their sleep. Something which Kenny had been certainly hoping would be the case.
"By order of the King, you are hereby under arrest for treason. Stand down or face justice." The words were schmaltzy, and Kenny put enough disdain in them that he hoped the two of them would resist.
They were confused, scared for each other, and their adrenaline was pumping for a fight. It was just what Kenny wanted, but thanks to the crowd of eyewitnesses around him and subduing other Scouts, he at least needed an excuse for it.
They looked to each other, hesitated, and dropped their fists.
Kenny's frown was like that of a child as he stepped aside and let them be arrested.
"Can I at least put on some more clothes!?" Ilse barked as she and her boyfriend were being pulled from the room in her underwear. Kenny was disinclined to do so however given his now foul mood, as their arrest was completed as boring as it was efficient.
The only spot of excitement he had was when Mike jerked free of the soldier holding him, but all he did was grab a cloth blanket and wrap it over Ilse as they walked. With a sigh of boredom, Kenny followed the lot of them down the stairs.
The arrest of the Scouts had been complete.