Mikasa was wandering around the simulated jungle, tightening her grip on the scabbard that her mother's katana was tucked into as she heard a hoar a minute ago.
'What was that sound?' Mikasa thought. 'What monster did Sasha choose? Judging by the volume of that roar, it's not too far away from my position.'
Mikasa jumped on a thick branch of a large tree to get a better view but it was just an endless field of vines and trees. She sighed as she sat down on the branch and looked at the katana, slowly pulling out her sword and looking at her reflection on the bright silver coloured blade, wondering if her mother would approve of this, knowing that her only daughter was risking her life and going to use her sword to potentially hurt others. Mikasa slowly sheathed back the blade and stood up and another roar echoed throughout the jungle. Mikasa jumped off the tall branch and ran towards the source, blitzing through bushes and hopping off trees to locate the source of the monstrous roar.
'If I can't find the switch, I'll just have to kill the monsters to stop the simulation,' Mikasa thought as she ran faster, dodging trees and jumping off rocks.
She stopped as she felt a small vibration coming from the ground, making the pebbles shake and jump up before landing back down in rhythm. Mikasa carefully walked towards the sound before a pair of arms grabbed her black shirt and pulled her into the big green bush.
"Get off!" Mikasa said, throwing a punch.
"Wait! It's me, Sasha!" she dodged, wheezing a bit luckily not to be on the receiving end of that punch.
"Oh, It's you, Sasha. Sorry for almost hitting you."
"No, it's my fault. I should've used a better way to get your attention," Sasha apologised.
"Why did you randomise the simulation?"
The brunette shrugged. "I wanted to be a surprise. It's not like we can die from the monster."
"Do you have your phone?"
"No, I left it with Connie."
"And my phone is in my hotel room. How can we keep track of the time? We don't even know how much time is before the next test."
"What do you mean?" Sasha asked, tilting her head.
"The next test is at 12:30.Last time I checked, it was 11:45 last time I checked and we don't know how long we've been here," Mikasa said.
"Ooooh…. So you're saying that the test could've started by now?"
Mikasa didn't reply. It took a minute before Sasha's eyes grew and she placed her hands on her head and walked in circles.
"Oh shit! I didn't think of that! We're so screwed! I'm sorry Mikasa! We could've missed it by now!" Sasha said, panicky.
Mikasa grabbed the brunette by the shoulders. "Sasha, relax. We need to find the beast and kill it. If we do that, the simulation will stop and we can leave."
"What about Eren and Armin?"
"They'll be fine, they could take care of themselves. Although, it would be favourable to find them." Mikasa said, letting go of Sasha.
"Well if we need to find the boys, we're halfway there," Sasha looked up and pointed at a large winged animal. Mikasa turned around to see a large black-blue feathered pterodactyl with sharp teeth. As the dino-bird-like creature flew in their direction, the sounds of someone screaming were getting louder. Mikasa squinted to see a blonde-haired teenage boy hanging by the sleeve of his blue shirt which the creature was biting.
"Help!" Armin shouted, clinging to the sleeve of his shirt.
"How can we get him down?" Mikasa looked around for anything to throw until Sasha picked up a rock, closing her eyes briefly before she opened them revealing her yellow-orange scope-like irises, threw the rock and hit the flying creature's jaw causing it to open, freeing Armin. He started flailing around as he headed towards the ground until Mikasa sprinted and jumped catching him in time and putting him down gently.
Armin slowly curled up into a human ball. "I wanna leave…"
Sasha snickered. "Armin, how did you end up like that with a Zoldys?
"A what?"
"A zoldys. That's what that creature is called. It's a type of bird wyvern. They are very attracted to things that mostly share their shade of blue, seeing them as one of its own, so that's probably why it picked you up,'' Sasha explained.
"Gee, thanks for the info," Armin sighed as he adjusted his glasses.
"Armin, have you seen Eren?" Mikasa asked.
Armin shook his head. "No, I haven't seen him at all. It worries me a little, but Eren is strong so I think he would be fine."
"Well, for now, let's find the monster and kill it," Mikasa declared.
"Still, we would have a much better chance if we had Eren," Armin added.
The trio began their search of finding the monster using its large footprints to aid them. Armin nearly got taken once more by a Zoldys until Sasha pushed him into a bush causing the wyvern to be confused and fly away.
"I think you need to take off your shirt for now," Sasha advised. "Unless you want to be reunited with your bird mommy."
"I agree. We can't keep being distracted by that thing," Mikasa added.
Armin sighed. "Fine."
Armin took off his shirt, revealing his slender, fair-skinned upper body, his abs are slightly toned but that's because of his slim frame rather than the result of working out. Armin rolled his shirt into a ball as the trio continued the trail. After a while, Sasha sighed and slumped into the ground.
"We've been walking for so long, I wish…there was…another…way…" Sasha said as she slowly turned her head towards Armin. She suddenly jumped up and yanked Armin's shirt from him before putting it on and began to wave her arms around and make high-pitched screams.
"What are you doing?" Armin asked.
"Getting the Zoldys' attention!" Sasha said before she continued her shrieks. "Grab onto me, hurry!"
Mikasa and Armin looked at each other and shrugged before they grabbed Sasha. The bird wyvern began to shriek as it dove down to the trio and picked them up. Mikasa began searching for the beast, taking advantage of the bird's eye view.
"Sasha, that was a great idea using its behavior to our advantage!"Armin complimented.
"I know, right? My father was a Hunting Adventurer, studying and hunting a variety of monsters until he lost his leg and was forced to retire," Sasha explained with her eyes closed.
"uh, Sasha, why are your eyes closed?" Armin asked, noticing his friend.
"Whaaat?My eyes aren't closed, they're just tired, that's all."
Mikasa looked around to notice a monster flailing around, rolling left and right as if something was on it. The beast had very muscular arms with black fur covering all over its body except for its chest and stomach with dog-like hind legs with sharp claws at the end long yet curved black horns on the sides of its head, protruding lower canines forming an underbite with beady red eyes on its ancient primate looking face and slender tail with a ball of black fur at tip.
Mikasa looked closely to see Eren on its back, laughing with his arms up.
"I see Eren! He's fighting the beast right now!" Mikasa told her two friends.
Armin adjusted his glasses and looked at the unknown beast in confusion.
"What the hell is that?"Armin said as the beast continued to flail around.
Eren looked at them and began to wave his hand before the beast flung him off his back causing him to be flown in their direction with Mikasa noticing Eren coming closer and closer.
"Uh, is it me or Eren heading towards us?" Armin asked, panicky.
"It's the latter!" Mikasa shouted before Eren hit the wyvern, making it let go of the trio and falling. The quartet screamed in fear as they fell from 50 feet with the now unconscious wyvern. Mikasa fell through some branches, hitting and breaking them as she got closer and closer to the ground. She hit her head on a thick branch, breaking the branch before hitting the ground hard. The raven-haired teen slowly opened her eyes with her vision being blurry and her body feeling numb, She was able to move an inch and her ears were ringing as if she was in front of a hundred of high pitch gongs but in a dozen seconds, her senses went back to normal. Mikasa got up carefully and looked around as she picked up her mother's katana off the ground.
"Armin!Eren!Sasha!" She shouted as she stumbled around the area.
But then an arm popped up and then another one and then a head popped up.
"I'm good!" Eren climbed out of the bushes.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine but that was a long fall though. I mean, I fell from buildings before but not from that height," Eren said as he did some stretches.
"You fell from buildings before?"
"Yeah, I do parkour for fun to get around places most of the time and I messed up a few times, falling onto and sometimes into dumpsters and shit. But hey, practice makes perfect," Eren explained as he took leaves out of his hair. "That thing is crazy, but I was riding it like a mechanical bull. I've always wanted to do that."
'Perhaps, I should do some parkour, practising more on my agility,'
In her junior high years, she remembered how Eren, Ymir, Annie and Sasha were some of the best at being agile. Krista wasn't as agile as them but she was fast and always put a lot of effort into her agility and flexibility. Mikasa put in effort as well, but she never put that into actual use outside of school.
"Hey look it's the bird thing you guys were on," Eren noticed.
Mikasa turned to see the Zoldys not moving, hanging on a group of vines. She wanted to take a closer look at the monster, so she cut it down from its vine prison. When she kicked it, it didn't react at all.
'Is it dead?' Mikasa thought, turning to see Eren sitting down with his eyes closed.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to find them by sound, filtering the sounds around us to hear their voices."
Mikasa sat down across from him, waiting for him to locate them. Mikasa wished her senses were as good as his. Back in junior high, he and Ymir had the best senses to the point that whenever someone lost something, people would ask them for help, although for a fee Eren was more lenient, putting at a discount for people that he likes and close friends like her and Armin for completely free. Mikasa sat by a tree leaning on it while keeping her sight on Eren waiting until he opened his eyes and grinned.
"Follow me! I hear Armin and Sasha in the distance!" Eren ran southwest from her. Mikasa got up and ran to catch up to her dark-haired friend. He was fast, like really fast to the point that Mikasa had to almost sprint to catch up to him.
"Hey-"
He suddenly muffled her voice using his right hand and put his left index near his lip, signaling Mikasa to be quiet before Eren sneaked behind and pounced on the auburn-haired girl with the two laughing as they wrestled on the lush grass. Sasha was on top, putting Eren in a headlock but he easily slipped through her grasp and wrapped his arms around her waist as he stood up and started to spin around.
"I give up! I give up! I'm gettin' all dizzy now!" Sasha said, laughing.
Eren put her down as Sasha got her long brown hair out of her face.
"Where's Armin?" Eren asked. "I heard his voice here."
"There you two are," Armin said, tangled in vines like the Zoldys. "Now, Mikasa…can you help me down? Because someone refuses to get me down!"
Sasha continued to giggle. "I'm sorry, I saw him like that and I couldn't help but laugh."
Eren saw his tangled friend and started to chuckle as Armin continued to struggle in vine-made prison before Mikasa grabbed the black handle of her katana, exposed the blade out of its black sheath before jumping and doing a quick slash before landing back on the ground and placed her sword back into its sheath with the vines splitting apart, freeing Armin, the blonde started to fall but Mikasa caught him before he hit the ground.
"Armin's free!" Sasha exclaimed.
"No thanks to you two!" Armin shouted leading to Sasha and Eren laughing. Mikasa couldn't help but chuckle as well.
"Alright, let's track down the monster. Eren, find its scent and track it down."Mikasa said as she let go of Armin.
"I can't track it."
"Why?"
"Because the monster doesn't have a scent. I can't precisely track it down if I don't have a scent."
"But you were able to track me down," Sasha said.
"Yeah, because you are a real person. The monster is just a simulation, it's not real so I can't track it down. Plus, every person has a unique scent so it's easy to find people I know," He replied.
"So, what do I smell like?"Sasha asked.
"You smell like a mix of tree bark and lemon."
Sasha nodded. "Makes sense. Wait, what did the monster look like?"
"Black fur, big arms and horns, thin tail," Mikasa described the beast.
"Hmm, I think that monster was most likely a Rajang, a large fanged beast that's highly aggressive and territorial. They can live in a variety of areas from jungles to volcanic fields. They're able to use electricity using a specialized organ called a Thabita in their bodies and mixing it with its fur can create friction which produces electricity. They're highly resistant to lighting and similar elements that burn like fire."
"Guess my fire is out of the equation," Eren sighed.
"Although none of us have any ice-related abilities, we could do it the old-fashioned way and beat it to death."
"Or cut it to death," Mikasa added.
"Okay so we know what the monster is but, we're back to square one…" Armin said, defeated.
The quartet heard another roar echoing throughout the jungle, making flocks of birds leave the area.
"Not necessarily," Sasha said before she began to go to the source of the sound while the others followed suit.