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Kaya brings the runaway pair to a farm run by Sasha Blouse's parents. Falco does the talking, presenting himself as "Ben" and Gabi as his sister "Mia," and Artur Blouse welcomes the supposed runaways for as long as they need. Gabi, thrown by the man's accent and bristling at Lisa's kindness, swats away a friendly pat on the head before Falco smooths things over. In the harbor, Kiyomi Azumabito congratulates Darius Zackly on the strike against Marley and shows off Hizuru's covered aircraft, the world's first flying boat and the first machine to burn iceburst stone for fuel.

Hange, mobbed by reporters demanding answers about Eren's imprisonment and the evacuation orders in Shiganshina, deflects everything to the Military Police and assures Flegel Reeves the Corps still acts for the Eldian people. Inside, Hange confronts the four soldiers who fed the story to the press. Floch argues that Eren's attack on Marley and the promise of the Rumbling are the only guarantees of Eldia's survival; Hange counters that the assault painted a target on the island and that nothing proves the Rumbling will even work, then has the dissenters jailed. Escorting Louise to a cell, Mikasa hears the girl explain that watching her fight in Trost inspired her enlistment, and when Louise asks whether Eren once saved Mikasa the same way, Mikasa shuts the conversation down while privately remembering the night he rescued her from her kidnappers. Pixis, meanwhile, visits Yelena and lays out his suspicions: her theatrical cooperation, Floch's changed behavior after guarding her at a Trost banquet ten months earlier, and the likelihood she secretly met Eren just before he went rogue.

Back at the farm, Kaya calmly reveals over lunch that she knows the two are Marleyans, prompting Gabi to grab a pitchfork before Kaya covers for the outburst. Leading them to her ruined village, she explains that Titans devoured her mother in front of her and asks what a woman born on Paradis who never harmed anyone could have done to deserve it. Falco admits her mother died as part of Marley's experiments to gauge Eldia's defenses and apologizes, ignoring Gabi's protests about leaking secrets. Kaya then recounts how a girl with an axe once shielded her from a Titan with her own body, and, wanting to live up to that example, offers to bring them to a Marleyan named Niccolo who may be able to get them home.

Gabi and Falco go to ground at the Blouse family farm under false names. Kaya exposes their nationality but chooses to protect them, and Falco's honest apology about her mother's death wins her help reaching Niccolo.

Hange arrests Floch and three other soldiers for leaking Eren's imprisonment to the press, an early sign of the Yeagerist faction splitting the military. Pixis connects Yelena to Floch's radicalization and to a probable secret meeting with Eren ten months before.

Hizuru's flying boat, powered by iceburst stone, is introduced in the harbor. Kaya's story identifies the axe-wielding girl who saved her as Sasha, the very soldier Gabi later killed, though Kaya does not yet know it.

The chapter's title refers to those who steer others: Kaya guiding the candidates toward Niccolo in Sasha's memory, and by contrast Yelena and Eren quietly steering Floch and the dissenters. Hange's flashback to Djel Sannes's warning, that someone must always play the torturer's role, marks how far the Corps has drifted into the machinery it once fought.

Released September 7, 2018 in Japan and a day earlier in the United States, this is the third chapter of volume 27. Its material is adapted in the anime episode "Deceiver", and it sits between "A Sound Argument" and "Counterfeit" in the War for Paradis arc.