What Should I Do Now?

Rain hammers a weighted march as Armin falls behind under his pack. Reiner lifts the burden from his shoulders, only for Armin to snatch it back, refusing to let anyone else carry his load. Instructor Shadis observes it all, building his mental ledger of the class: Reiner's muscle and iron will, Armin's weak body offset by a strategist's mind. The forest exercise with maneuvering gear extends the catalog. Annie's cuts are flawless but she works alone; Bertolt has talent with no initiative behind it; Jean maneuvers superbly and decides fast, dragged down by an abrasive streak; Connie balances beautifully and thinks slowly; Sasha's speed and animal instincts collide with any kind of organized action; Mikasa masters everything at a level without historical precedent; Eren pairs hand-to-hand polish with a sense of purpose that outstrips his classmates. At camp afterward, Eren notices Marco barely scored a kill and hears his reasoning, playing decoy so others could strike, and declares him natural leadership material. Later, alone with Jean, Marco says what he really thinks.

The narrative jumps to Trost, two days after the breach was sealed. Assigned to corpse recovery, Jean rounds a corner and finds Marco, half of him gone into a Titan's stomach, with no witness anywhere to his final moments. Numb, he recites his friend's name and unit to the medic logging the dead. Elsewhere Sasha stumbles onto a mound of regurgitated bodies and learns Titans vomit what they cannot digest, while Annie whispers an apology over a corpse and Reiner tells her apologies change nothing. At the mass cremation, Marco's words return to Jean, that a man who knows weakness makes the truest leader, and Jean announces to his friends that the Survey Corps will have him.

Eren surfaces from a three-day coma to find Erwin and Levi at his cell. They recount the mop-up after the sealing, a full day of cannon fire and two Titans taken alive, then Erwin produces the basement key and asks what Eren wants. Remembering everyone the Titans have taken from him, Eren answers that he wants them all dead. The reply amuses Levi, who vouches for the boy on the condition that any betrayal ends with Eren killed on the spot, and welcomes him into the Survey Corps.

Instructor Shadis privately evaluates the 104th trainees, establishing the defining strengths and flaws of each future graduate.

Marco explains his decoy-based tactics, and Eren identifies him as a born leader.

Jean discovers Marco's half-eaten body during corpse cleanup in Trost, with no record of how he died.

At the memorial pyre, Marco's words about leadership push Jean to choose the Survey Corps.

Eren wakes from his coma, declares his intent to kill every Titan, and Levi sponsors his entry into the Survey Corps under threat of summary execution.

This chapter concludes volume 4 as its fifth entry, standing 18th overall, published in Japan on February 9, 2011 and in English on March 26, 2013. It closes the 104th Training Corps arc, and the anime distributed its material across The Night of the Closing Ceremony: Humanity's Comeback, Part 2 and What Needs to be Done Now: Eve of the Counterattack, Part 3.

The captured Titans mentioned by Erwin, later named Sonny and Bean, become the subjects of Hange's experiments. Jean's pivot from self-preservation to leadership, born at Marco's pyre, sets the trajectory his character follows for the rest of the series.