Brave Volunteers (Chapter)

Clutching a seashell, Armin tells the story of the island's first contact with the outside world. Three years earlier, a Marleyan survey vessel nears the coast until the Attack Titan surges out of the water beneath it and slams it onto the beach. Hange greets the terrified crew with mock hospitality, and when the captain raises his gun, one of his own soldiers, Yelena, shoots him dead. She and Onyankopon identify themselves as Anti-Marleyan Volunteers following Zeke Yeager's instructions, devoted to Eldian liberation, and cheerfully accept Hange's invitation to tea.

The defectors describe Marley's overwhelming strength, roughly a million troops and three fleets of battleships, and explain that only the nation's many other wars have spared the island. At a military assembly, Zeke's conditions for cooperation are debated. Eren validates the plan's core by admitting he briefly commanded pure Titans after touching Dina's Titan, a secret he withheld to keep Historia from being weaponized. The Military Police call for Yelena's execution, but Hange argues the islanders cannot afford to refuse her technology and manpower.

Guided by Yelena's radio intelligence, Armin ambushes the next survey fleet as the Colossus Titan, and in the years that follow he and Eren capture or sink every ship Marley sends. At a firing range, Armin admits he can find nothing useful in Bertolt's memories and wishes aloud for a peaceful path; Eren counters that the world still treats Eldians as monsters and resolves to keep moving to buy the island time.

In the present, the airship lands and Sasha is buried with the other dead while Gabi and Falco enter Military Police custody. Armin confesses that he no longer truly understands his oldest friend, and his listener is revealed to be Annie inside her crystal, from whom he begs any kind of response. Outside, Levi coolly promises to ship Zeke back to Marley in pieces, and Eren, washing alone, resolves to fight on until every battle ahead is won.

Eren's Attack Titan grounds Marley's first scouting vessel before it can land on Paradis.

Yelena executes her captain and defects alongside Onyankopon as the Anti-Marleyan Volunteers.

Eren reveals he once directed pure Titans through contact with Dina's Titan and hid it to protect Historia.

Armin's Colossus Titan ambushes the second survey fleet, beginning years of captured Marleyan ships.

Back in the present, Sasha is buried, and Armin is shown narrating everything to the crystallized Annie.

Brave Volunteers closes volume 26 as the 106th chapter, published June 9, 2018 in Japan during the Marley arc. Its magazine printing carried the shorter title Volunteers, and the anime adapts it in an episode of the same name. It bridges Assassin's Bullet and Visitor.