Small Blade: The Struggle for Trost, Part 3

The supply headquarters in Trost has been overrun, cutting the stranded cadets off from the gas they need to escape over the Wall. Captain Kitz Woermann abandons the building over his subordinates' protests, and inside, one hiding soldier loads a gun only to turn it on himself. On the rooftops, Jean Kirschtein sees no way forward: too few soldiers, no gas, no leader. Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie, and Marco are the only ones keeping their composure when Mikasa Ackermann arrives searching for Eren. She finds Armin Arlelt instead, sobbing out the names of Squad 34's dead.

Mikasa refuses to mourn. Declaring herself strong enough to carve through the Titans alone, she shames the paralyzed cadets as cowards and launches herself toward headquarters, and Jean, galvanized, rallies the rest to follow her. But Armin sees the truth in her flying: she is burning gas recklessly, numbing her grief through violence. Her tanks run dry and she crashes into the streets below. Sprawled in a market tent, she reflects that despite the world's ugliness her life with Eren was a good one, and she lets her blades rest as a Titan reaches for her. Then her body moves on its own, severing the Titan's finger. Dodging blow after blow, she remembers a child's voice commanding her to fight, and she raises her weapons, refusing to forget Eren by dying.

The killing strike never lands on her. A second Titan hammers the first with a punch that caves in its jaw, then stomps it to death. From a nearby roof, Mikasa, Armin, and Conny watch the impossible: a fifteen-meter Titan that ignores humans and wages war on its own species, beheading another attacker with a single blow to the neck. Armin swaps his nearly full gas canister and spare blades to Mikasa, and when he quietly plans to keep one broken blade for himself, she hurls it away and promises he will not be abandoned. Looking back on the rogue Titan's appearance, Mikasa describes it as rage itself given form, the embodiment of humankind's fury.

Woermann deserts the supply headquarters, leaving the cadets without a resupply route as Titans swarm the building.

Armin tells Mikasa of Eren's death along with the rest of Squad 34's casualties.

Mikasa's defiant charge shakes the cadets out of paralysis, with Jean taking up leadership behind her.

Out of gas and ready to die, Mikasa recalls Eren's childhood command to fight and chooses survival.

The mysterious rogue Titan debuts, killing other Titans while showing no interest in humans.

Armin gives Mikasa his gas and blades; she throws away his broken blade rather than let him sacrifice himself.

Small Blade is the seventh episode of season one, produced by Wit Studio and Production I.G. It adapts the chapters Small Blade and Roar, directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa with a script by Hiroshi Seko.

The Japanese premiere was May 19, 2013, and the US broadcast June 14, 2014. Crunchyroll titles it The Small Blade, The Battle for Trost (3).

The information segment diagrams the omni-directional mobility gear: wire spools and twin independent axles in the main unit, with compressed gas injected from canisters through the controller.