Rico Brzenska

Thin-framed spectacles define Rico's look; bands loop behind her head to hold them steady so that hard aerial maneuvers cannot shake them loose. Cheek-length hair in a dark blonde shade frames a pair of brown eyes.

She stands on the short side, compact but solidly put together. Her working outfit is the ordinary Garrison uniform, worn over a white shirt that buttons up the front, and on a later deployment she adds her branch's green cloak.

Two currents run through Rico: hard pragmatism on the surface, buried feeling underneath. When word spreads that Eren Yeager holds a Titan's power, she openly favors executing him together with Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert, an attitude that reads at first as a lack of sympathy.

Combat strains that composure. Watching Titans grind through her comrades chips away at her calm, yet she keeps giving orders and even carves out a Titan's eye when the beast interferes with Eren hauling the boulder. Once Trost is secured she finally lets go, weeping among the corpses for the dead and for the first battle humanity has ever won against its enemy.

Regarded as one of the Garrison's finest, Rico earns a leadership slot in the elite unit formed to shield Eren during the push to reclaim Trost. She initially sides with Kitz Weilman's call to execute the transformed trainee and his friends, a plan cut short first by Eren's own Titan and then by Dot Pixis. Pixis assigns her, Ian Dietrich, and Mitabi Jarnach to guard Eren while he plugs the breach with a boulder, placing Ian in overall command. Rico voices her doubts but complies, warning Eren that soldiers will be dying on his behalf before firing the green flare that opens the operation.

The mission nearly collapses when Eren loses himself in Titan form and strikes at Mikasa before going limp. Rico and Mitabi push for withdrawal, but Ian demands they hold until Eren recovers, and Rico cannot name a better path to victory. Overrun and falling back, the survivors suddenly find Eren awake and carrying the rock; Rico's soldiers cut a corridor through the Titans for him, and when the hole is sealed she fires a tearful signal of success, declaring humanity's first true win. She then slices Eren free from the Titan flesh fused to his body, and the Survey Corps' timely arrival saves the group from the closing horde.

Her honest report of Eren's rampage later surfaces at his tribunal, where she tells an upset Mikasa that hiding the truth would serve nobody. During the Wall Rose invasion she holds the eastern defense line, retorting to a boastful comrade that a larger horde would break through and sensing something wrong in the invasion's pattern. She afterward brings water to a parched Historia Reiss while showing concern for Connie Springer, and she waits atop Wall Rose with fellow Garrison members as the mission to reclaim Wall Maria unfolds. By the year 857 Rico has pledged herself to Eren's cause, celebrating the founding of Paradis's new army among the Yeagerists.