Despite facing down the guns I decided to go with the one backup plan that made the most sense. I was hoping the other two caught on as well. I lifted my hands as they asked, but when My hands rose my knives quickly came out all in front of me pointed towards the wall of gunman. I cracked the most convincing smirk. "Now do you really think we wouldn't be able to protect ourselves," I said with as much cocky energy as I could. Pixis quickly put force fields around all of us. The only problem was that my knives were in the force field with me. If they were on the outside then they would have fallen to the ground. We were safe in these for now but I knew those only lasted so long. The second they start to fade is the second we are all dead.

"Guns down, Guns down," a single voice yelled from behind them. A much smaller unarmed man walked out in front of everyone. I started to understand what was happening but the only way to know for sure was to have Pixis drop me out of the force field.

"Pixis release mine," I whispered, earning a horrified look from both him and Eren. "please."

It took him a moment of hesitating before finally letting the force field around me vanish. Once again I could hear the thoughts of everyone in the room. Especially these new guys. Instantly lowered my knives keeping them floating in front of me as he walked closer to me.

I saw out of the corner of my eye as Pixis had to fight against himself to put another force field around me. Eren just looked confused. He had realized that they weren't hurting me but no words had been spoken between us yet so he was wondering how I was already so calm about this stranger approaching me.

"How are you doing that?" the man asked in pure fascination as he reached his hand out waving it all around the floating knives looking for any strings.

"It's one of my powers," I stated calmly. When he moved his hands away I put the knives back in all of their holsters.

"And those bubble things?" he asked looking at the other two.

"His power," I said pointing to Pixis.

"That's amazing," he said almost hypnotized before shaking his head and reaching a hand out for me to shake.

"I'm Hassam Dziri," he introduced himself, "I'm so sorry about the rude greeting, but we had to make sure you weren't guards coming to kill us or make us disappear."

"I understand, I mean we both have as much to lose here as the other. If we get caught we're dead, and I'm assuming the same goes for you guys."

He just nodded before furrowing his eyebrows. "How did you know I wasn't a threat before I told you?"

"My other power," I smiled, "I can read minds and your thoughts, emotions they seemed too genuine for this to be a trap."

When Pixis realized that we weren't in any danger now he dropped the force fields around Eren and himself. I turned around and gave Pixis and Eren a smile motioning that they step forward and out of the doorway. Nanaba had done it. She found a genuine person who just wants to help.

"Was that nice man one of yours?" he asked and I turned back around to face him.

"Nice man?" I asked for some clarity.

"Well a few days ago I was having lunch with my friend and he ended up going to the bathroom. He came back awfully quick and then they were acting weird. They asked me some questions he should have known already and then said he left his phone in the bathroom. When he came back the next time he was normal again and didn't remember anything about the interaction. He told me that it wasn't him who I was talking to.

Nanaba I thought to myself before nodding, "yeah, that was our friend. She's the one who set up this meeting."

The man blinked for a moment as he tried to process what was said. "Well she was very kind," he nodded and I realized that he thinks she's trans.

"She's a shapeshifter," I said, clearing up some of the confusion.

"Oh, that makes sense of why she looked exactly like my friend," he nodded. He went to speak again but closed his mouth before looking around the room at the men who were still holding guns. They had them pointed at the floor but it still wasn't a comforting sight.

"Why don't we go to a more private room," he asked and we all agreed that it was probably for the best.

When we got in the room he let out a sigh of relief. "Sorry about them, but with all the activists just disappearing or "accidentally" dying I figured it was better safe than sorry to have some guns for hire. All of them have been background checked and vetted by me personally, but I still don't trust them, not fully.

"That's understandable," Pixis finally spoke up. "Money is a hell of a motivator, but it doesn't guarantee loyalty."

"Exactly," he nodded happily as he felt understood. He shook his head and tried to get back on track. "Anyways, we should all take a seat I'm assuming we have a lot to talk about?"

"We do," Pixis said with a nod.

I looked over at Eren who took a seat awkwardly next to me. He was still on edge about all this. Especially because of the gunman in the next room with the questionable loyalty.

To be honest, I wasn't crazy over that either, but I can't fault the guy for being scared for his life. I mean hell we all are. We were planning our deaths not even 10 minutes ago, and I can assume he was doing the same.

"I'm Pixis by the way," he introduced himself and it actually caught me off guard to hear him use his real name. Then again we are trying to form trust here. We have to look at this person as a valuable ally, not an enemy.

"I'm Levi," I said following Pixis's lead.

Eren opened his mouth to talk but the words caught in his throat. He looked at me for help. The panic was stopping him from actually talking.

"This is Eren," I said grabbing his hand and giving him a reassuring nod. "He's a little panicked," I said hoping that he wouldn't take his silences as rudeness.

"Oh, well it's nice to officially meet you all," he smiled and shook each of our hands. He looked at Eren and gave an understanding nod, "it's okay this is all pretty scary and stressful."

Hassam started asking questions to get to know us a little before starting with the actual interview. He picked up a notepad and asked if we were more comfortable with starting. We all nodded. "And you're okay if I write this down correct?" he asked double-checking,

"Please do," Pixis nodded.

"Alright, what stories do you feel comfortable telling?"

"All of them," Pixis said so casually. I'm glad he's the one who did this and not me. I wouldn't be able to tell mine so casually without reliving that trauma and breaking down.

"Well what story do you want to tell first?" he asked with a spark in his eyes. I could tell he really enjoyed this job. I mean he did say he worked as a journalist before all this with the sole purpose of telling the truth and helping people for the better.

"Well, I wanted to tell my story, about how I lived up to my code name that my family gave me," he said smiling at us.

"What's your code name?"

"The protector."

"Oh?" The way Hassam's face lit up with joy hearing the code name made me smile. He knew he had a story he could definitely work with from that alone.

"Well, before all of this happened I was a principal. I ran a high school and college for people who had powers. Despite having hundreds of students I made sure to learn all their names and talk to them whenever I could. Most of the kids lived in dorms on campus after being thrown out or losing their parents. Those kids had been to hell and back. It broke my heart that most of them would latch onto me for no other reason besides the fact that I took five seconds out of my day to ask them about theirs. I made sure to learn as much as I could about all my students, their favorite color, the foods they liked, the ones they didn't, hobbies, everything."

"When they started passing all these laws I knew how things were going to turn out. I knew things were going to get worse. I came to the hard decision to close down the school knowing that if they came looking for powered people then my students would be a big target. I couldn't endanger them like that."

"That's smart," he nodded as he finished writing that down, "considering what we know now that is probably the safest thing you could have done for them."

"That's what I thought. Until I saw some of my kids die in front of me," Pixis said lowering his head. Sorry, I'm skipping some parts," he said clearing his throat and getting back on track.

"So, when I closed the school I knew not all of them would have a place to go, so I offered to take them with me, all of them. I had a place to lay low hoping that things would die down waiting it out and keeping them safe was my top priority. That night after people cleared out I walked in to see how many decided to stay, including myself there were 26 of us. Teachers and students alike. Even the parent of one of my kids came with us despite her having no powers."

"She doesn't have any powers and still decided to go with you?"

"Her and one of our teachers, both of them powerless, but insisted on sticking with our family, and I couldn't be happier that they did. They keep us all sane and hold the group together when things get rough."

"Not to mention mom isn't afraid to tell us when we are being reckless and stupid," I laughed.

Pixis smiled and pointed, "she's his parent, kinda."

"Kinda?" he asked.

"We're kinda getting off track," Pixis said, not sure if I was okay with talking about it.

"That's okay I can make the explanation quick," I said letting him know I was okay with it. They nodded and let me continue. "Well, she was one of my best friend's mom. She raised me more than my own mother. She lost her daughter which is actually how I got one of my powers. The trauma of losing her especially after just losing my other friend was too much."

"She always made sure I knew that I was loved and she would always be there for me if I needed her. Even if I felt too guilty to see her most of the time. A little before all this started I got back in contact with her and she refused to leave my side again and I'm so glad she stayed. She's held me together through all this."

Eren's hand went to my back and started rubbing small circles into it as I took a deep breath. I didn't want to break down, but now that I know I'm going to make it out safely and get to see her again I can't help but feel so relieved.

"Sorry to derail your story," I said to Pixis hoping that he can get back on track now.

"Right," he smiled trying to find his train of thought, "well, after taking everyone in we kept our head low for as long as we could, but laying low wasn't working. Things were just getting worse and all we could do was sit back and watch. Watch as the world crumbled around us. Watch as people started to turn against us for things we can't control. Watch as people like us started getting gunned down in the street for just being us. We started getting tired of waiting for the world to change. So we decided to get out there and change it ourselves."

"How did you go about that?"

"We started with just trying to go on missions getting information, trying to clear people out of buildings and get them relocated to safer places. Next, we would try and save people who were getting taken to camps, other exiles, even civilians."

"Camps?" he asked.

It clicked to all of us that they weren't aware of what exactly was happening. They knew people were going missing, but not what they were doing to them.

We took a moment to explain what these places were and what they did to the people in them. The look on this man's face was fear and disgust. "I never knew," he whispered.

"After we ended up getting some information about where a camp was located we found out that someone we knew was in there. One of my kids for the school. We ended up raiding it and freeing all the prisoners in it, or at least that's what we tried to do. There was some complication while we were getting everyone out of the building and some people ended up getting shot."

"Your kid?"

"She didn't make it," he said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

"I'm so sorry."

"Despite this, we kept going." Pixis continued trying not to dwell on the sadness, "we found two more camps and ended up raiding them at the same time knowing that was our only chance. We knew once we raided one it would be impossible to raid the other without them increasing the guards too much to the point we would be overwhelmed. One of the camps went perfectly, with no issues getting people out. The second one not so much, a few people got shot, but no one died."

"That's good," he nodded.

"We did all of this without killing any of the guards, we used non-lethal methods and did our best to not hurt them too badly. Our intentions were never to harm but to help." Pixis cleared his throat. "That was until the last mission we went on, the mission before this."

"It ended up being a trap. Two people went in, they were ambushed and only one came back," his voice shook and he tried to clear his throat to hide it. "The one that lived had ended up killing a guard to try and save the other one of our guys, but he was too late. When we were extracting our guy one of the guards stuck his head through a portal we had made to get to and from the base. It took his head off killing him. It was never our intention to hurt them, but we had no choice."

"Sounds like you did all you could to keep your family safe," he said reassuring Pixis.

We went over a few other stories, some power triggers, some more in-depth explanations of things. We even told him how when Reiner died he left Berthold behind. We didn't use names of course, but we went through all of the stories we could.

Eren and I told some of our stories too. We gave him as much information as we could and when we went to finish the last story I heard something that made my blood run cold. Was that a gunshot?

"Get down!" Hassam yelled as more gunfire started to ring out in the room next to us.