Chapter 16: A Story

"Hey.... this... right choice?"

It everything was black, but Annie could barely hear some words uttered by a male voice, one she knew very well.

"Obviously, when have I ever made the wrong choice?"

Even with a splitting headache tearing apart her mind, she was gradually able to understand more of the conversation between two people she had been together for years.

"Yeah, but if someone finds us, it'll be difficult to explain" said a manly voice.

"Nah, it'll be easy" replied the female voice "We'll just say that this is a weird kink of hers and we're having a threesome or something"

At those words, both Annie and the owner of the male voice let out an annoyed groan.

"With you everything has to be sexual, hasn't it?" the male seemed to ignore Annie's groan, bringing her to hope that they didn't realize that she was awake.

"What's the fun in doing things if I can't sexualize them? Isn't that right Annie?"

With that, Annie's already small hopes were thoroughly extinguished.

"You're just an idiot, isn't that right Annie?" replied the male and even if it wasn't his intention, to the girl that was bound on legs, arms and eyes seemed to be mocking her.

"I think that you're both idiots, would you mind why the two of you would something like this to me of all people? Couldn't you kidnap someone else?"

Annie was genuinely confused by the situation, even if she refused to admit it, even to herself, she trusted Liesl, even if she was an idiot sometimes.

The moment she woke up she thought that she had been kidnapped by someone else, but the moment she heard the voice of the person that was probably her only friend spouting her usual dumb stuff considerably relaxed her.

'It's probably just a prank' thought Annie.

She had loosened her guard enough to not let her realize that her special ring was gone from its usual place on her finger.

"Na ah, Annie, my dear, this is not a prank, this is an intervention" said Liesl, in her usual teasing and slightly mocking tone.

"A what?" replied the girl, not really understanding what Liesl meant with intervention, she was pretty sure that she had no major problem.

"Let me tell you a little story" Klemens kept quiet as per their plan, in situations like this Liesl, who was able to read any change in a person's mood and react accordingly, was much more useful in things like interrogatories.

She had derailed Annie's attention to non important things, like calling this an intervention, from the important things like the lack of her ring.

Moreover she managed to put Annie at ease and made her put down her guard slightly thanks to her bickering at the beginning, she had understood since the very moment that she woke up that she was faking being asleep, so she sent the signal to her friend and they started with their acting.

"Once upon a time, inside the big bad walls, there was one tiny girl next to two burly boys, the tiny girl was a blond and cute girl, she wanted nothing more than to meet her family again, but she couldn't"

This story was made up of the very few details that Annie had shared about her life with Liesl, she had never told her friend that her father was alive, but her desire to return to him again had transpired.

"When the tiny girl joined the army, she met the great and beautiful Red Lady, the two soon became very close friend even if the tiny girl tried to keep the Red Lady as far away as she could, the tiny girl never managed to get rid of the very insistent girl.

But the Red Lady could feel that deep down, the tiny girl wanted nothing more than to find friends and family, but at the same time was scared of forming bonds with people because she was scared she would have to leave them eventually"

Liesl didn't know many, if any, of the details of what made her friend what she was now, but she didn't need to, she knew how to read people, she could see the look in her eyes when she mentioned her father who taught her martial arts.

She was also deliberately derailing the story to make her friend wander were she was going with this absurd story, the bound girl tried to open her mouth to ask something, but two smooth and soft fingers pressed her lips together before she could do so.

What the blue eyed girl wanted was to bring the girl in a sense of security, and eventually...

"But the girl had a big and very important secret, a secret so big that she was scared of sharing it with anybody, even with the Red Lady.

The tiny girl and her friends could become big bad monsters, but only because they had been used by some very bad people to do some very bad things"

Annie's pupils shrinked into dots at the mention of transforming into monsters, she had absolutely no idea how Liesl came to know this and was even more terrified once she finally realized that her ring was gone.

The two had no idea what the ring was for, they just figured that a weird metal ring from which a razor blade could come out of was pretty suspicious, so they just took it off.

The girl had also worded her story to be as vague as possible, as neither her or her friend had any detail of what was actually going on behind the scene, but wording it like that would make Annie think that the two knew much more than they actually did.

And her plan was a complete success, taking the ring off had just been icing on the cake that sent Annie's brain into overdrive, but unfortunately, she could see no way out of this.

Her reaction, the tensing of her jaw's muscles, involuntary twitches and heightened heart rate unfortunately confirmed the other girl's suspicion, they may have been unnoticeable to many, but for Liesl, reading Annie was a piece of cake, even more since she had being doing so for the past few years.

Liesl, who was behind Annie, suddenly hugged the girl who was still bound, she needed to show her trust in her if she wanted her to share everything they wanted to know.

Liesl had never liked the normal method of interrogation, torture both physical and psychological, she thought that having the person spill the beans on their own volition to be much more productive, coupled with her ability to instantly see through lies made her method much more effective.

She was even capable of manipulating Klemens into saying things she wanted too, even if she rarely did it to him.

She slowly took of the blindfold from Annie's eyes, the girl rapidly blinked her eyes multiple times to get used to the sudden light, but it didn't take long as the room wasn't brightly lit in the first place.

The first thing she did was to analyze the people in the room, seeing that there were only Klemens and Liesl made her breath a sigh of relief.

The room was a normal room, in a normal house, there was a window, a bed and a few chairs, the only problem was that the room was slightly covered in dust, indicating that it hadn't been used in a relatively long time.

"What are you two going to do to me now?" she basically admitted that what they said was true, which might have seemed stupid if it weren't for the other girl in the room.

She tried numerous times to lie to Liesl to have her leave her alone, but she was always seen through instantly, no matter what she said or did, so she just decided to make this easier for both her and her captors.

"Good girl" replied Liesl as she patted Annie's head "Now I'm going to release you, but only if you promise to not run away or attack us, deal?"

Liesl raised a pinky, intent on making a pinky promise, but she 'remembered' that Annie was bound, therefore she couldn't do the same.

Annie thought for a bit, but eventually decided to just comply with their demands, she knew perfectly that the two were monsters, five her couldn't match up to a single one of them, so she had to bide her time until a situation were she could escape came.

They had to leave eventually.

Liesl proceeded to unbound Annie at both hands and feet, leaving her able to leave if she managed to do so from in front of the two, but such a feat was incredibly hard.

"Now what?" asked Annie once again, she had absolutely no idea how the two would deal with her she half expected them to just let her leave and half expected them to just kill her a moment later.

Liesl had completely thrown her mind into a disarray, letting her think that the only way out of this was through their mercy, which wasn't very far from reality.

"Now, we'll tell you about how this situation came into being, then we will ask you a proposition, okay?"

Annie saw no way out of this other than nodding, so she did so.

"Good, now let's start with the sad things, your friends and comrades, Reiner and Bertholdt, stripped Eren Yeager and Marco Body of their equipment, they then threw them in the mouths of some titans"

Annie's pupils shrinked once again, but Liesl didn't care and kept going.

"Unfortunately, Eren Yeager transformed into a titan and survived, he was then brought back in friend territory from the survey corp after he came out of the titan, unfortunately, Marco had long since been dead and Reiner and Bertholdt have escaped together.

The cause of such acts is unknown, they abandoned you, Annie, they left you here in our hands to rot and be tortured to reveal their secrets"

Annie struggled a bit, but eventually let out the words "What do they have to do with me?"

"They have all to do with you, my dear, the three of you and Eren all feel the same scent of dangerous, and if one became a titan, than it is more than enough to suspect the others of the same"

"Just that?" Annie opened her eyes widely, she thought they had who knows what proves of her involvement, but that's all they had?

A speculation built upon a feeling she had?

At this Annie felt stupid for having jumped right into the trap that Liesl had set for her.

"That is enough" replied Klemens, speaking for the first time since the opening act of their acting, he had started feeling a bit lonely after being ignored for so long, but he didn't show it on his face.

"After that we set up our plan and decided a modus operandi, I'm really sorry Annie, but manipulating you was the only way to make sure that we could understand the actual situation"

At those words Annie let out an empty laugh "Why are you even apologizing, we are the enemy, not someone you should sympathize with"

"You're wrong Annie, you're not the enemy" said Liesl as she put her hand on Annie's chin to lift her heard up to look at her in the eyes.

"You are my friend and this is were the proposition comes up, you tell us your story and we will grant your deepest wish"

Annie didn't believe they could do what she said, but her answer was obvious nonetheless.