Daz

Anxiety is written into Daz's face, where premature lines crease the skin around his mouth. Spiky, light-colored hair sits in a short crop on his head, and during his trainee years he wears the standard issue of the 104th Training Corps.

By 854 the creases have deepened, his hair is trimmed even shorter, and he appears exclusively in the redesigned Survey Corps uniform adopted by the Yeagerists.

Fear governs almost everything Daz does. Certain that catastrophe is always close, he confesses to feeling nothing but relief while watching Titans devour his comrades, and during the Trost campaign he attempts both desertion and suicide to escape another encounter. Yet a streak of selflessness survives underneath the panic: once he grasps that abandoning the defense would doom his own family, he walks back to his post.

Age steadies him somewhat. The Daz of 854 still lives on edge, but his outbursts have largely given way to quieter nerves.

During a brutal endurance exercise in harsh weather, Daz pushes himself past collapse trying to raise his scores, and Ymir secretly resorts to her Titan form to haul his unconscious body to safety after Krista refuses to leave him behind.

The Battle of Trost nearly destroys him. Placed on standby, he breaks down at the memory of earlier fighting and tries to end his own life before Marco Bott wrestles him under control. When an officer threatens execution for desertion, Daz retorts that a firing squad beats being eaten alive. Dot Pixis defuses the standoff by pardoning any soldier who leaves, while reminding them all that walking away condemns their families to the same terror, and the words send Daz back into the ranks.

In 854 he guards Paradis Island's harbor as a Yeagerist alongside Samuel. The pair initially let Armin Arlert and Connie Springer approach the flying boat, and a relieved Daz even disarms the explosives rigged to it. Floch Forster's announcement that the two are traitors changes everything. Daz begins rewiring the charges, threatens the wounded Armin, and dies when Connie grabs Samuel's rifle and shoots him through the head. Aboard the flying boat afterward, Connie mourns having killed two friends who believed they were saving the island.