A/N: A little late posting this one, but it's less than a week late so I'm still gonna call it a victory for me. Another chapter by SirMandokarla, this one about a team of huntsmen that I unfortunately didn't spend much time fleshing out in RU. So Mando has done me the favor of fleshing them out a bit for me.

Enjoy

Title: Fallen Huntsman

Author: SirMandokarla

"Let us in!" The sound of his fist against solid wood rattled through Cardin Winchester, but he just raised his voice until he could hear himself again. "Father! Let us in!"

He kept hammering on the door as he looked back at his team. Dove and Russel were holding up Sky, who was barely standing, even though he was bleeding less than Russel. Russel's arm looked like it was nothing but ribbons of blood. They were all covered in it by now.

The door finally opened and Cardin's knocking almost punched the man opening it in the face.

Instead of apologizing, Cardin pushed his way in, all but dragging his team along with him. "Father, we need a doctor. Sky, there's-"

"What are you doing here?!"

Cardin turned to face his father. Even hulking over the man in a suit of armour, Cardin shrank away from the man instinctively. Then he drew himself up and snarled. "My team is in trouble! They need help."

"You ran? Like a coward?"

Cardin's team hesitated. They didn't know where to go in a house this size. But helping them would mean ignoring his father. The man wouldn't let him get away with that.

"We didn't have a choice." Cardin put up his hands as if he could ward off his father's glare. "The Grimm were everywhere. Sky and Russel are out of Aura!"

"Isn't that what I sent you to that academy for in the first place?" his father demanded. "What was the point of all those years and Lien if you can't stop this?"

"We're just students," Russel protested.

"Get out."

Cardin stared at the man. His father barely came up past the student's shoulders, but he was hard-edged and stood so straight he seemed taller than he was. Stronger than he was.

"What?"

"You heard me." Cardin's father pointed at the door, sweeping his gaze around at the four of them. "You and your pathetic weaklings, get out of my house."

"You can't-" Cardin started, but cut off when his father smacked him across the face.

"Don't ever talk back to me," the man said. "There's no place in my house for somebody who can't carry his weight."

But what he said didn't matter, because Cardin realized something. He still had his Aura. He'd barely felt that hit, and the sting had gone in a moment. There was something else, too. His team was here. If they left, they were going to die. They all needed time to recuperate, to build up their Auras. They needed bandages and hopefully an actual doctor. They couldn't leave.

The others had already started moving for the door, but Cardin stopped them with a word.

"No."

Cardin's father whirled on him, but Cardin just ignored the man's punch, reached forward, and picked his father up with one hand.

"I said, no, old man," Cardin snarled. "I'm stronger than you, now, understand? This is my house and my team. They stay."

He drew his hand back, but didn't punch. When his father flinched, that was enough. The man grunted when Cardin dropped him to the ground, and turned to his team. He wished he could call them his friends. "The kitchen is at the end of the left hall. Dove, get the first-aid kit from the kitchen, third door down that hallway. I'll call the doctor."

His team split up. Cardin gave one last look at his father.

Maybe if Jaune had ever looked at him with that kind of hate, it would have been easier to respect him.

Cardin stared into a mug he'd barely touched, willing himself to drain the rest of it. It was so hard to get drunk as a Huntsman. With Aura constantly trying to heal the slightest pain and injury, somebody his size had to be drinking almost constantly to keep a proper glaze on his thoughts.

His father called it weak, said Cardin was running away from his problems, that he should be out there with his two teammates who could still walk or hit the road with the refugees like the cripple had. The old man talked a lot, but he never did anything and Cardin never hit him for the words. Why bother? After all, the old man was right.

Cardin was weak. He could beat up on an old man, but he couldn't stomach the thought of fighting one again or the knowledge that he was sitting there while people fought for his home.

So he didn't think at all.

The once-Huntsman raised his mug to his lips.

The door slammed open.

"Cardin!"

The boy dropped his mug and swore, but turned to look. It hadn't been his father's voice. It hadn't even been Sky's, the only member of the team who'd chosen to live with him.

It was Russel, arm amputated now. Russel, who'd sworn he'd never speak to Cardin again when Cardin told him he wouldn't go back out there to fight the Grimm. Russel, standing in his kitchen doorway, bleeding and gasping for air.

"I need your help!"

Cardin started to open his mouth, to try to explain again, but Russel cut him off.

"Sky's in trouble! A building collapsed, there's Grimm everywhere, the rescue teams can't get in."

"I… can't-"

Russel crossed the room in three strides, reached down, and pulled Cardin from his chair.

"You think I'd have come here if I had a choice?" Even as Russel snarled, he looked Cardin up and down, only holding hard enough to keep the bigger boy from falling over. "Sky needs you. There's nobody else."

That moment proved to Cardin that he'd never been friends with Sky. Friends used each other. The weaker friend served the stronger friend. He'd always thought that was what CRDL was to him. A Group of his friends. He must have been wrong, though, because he nodded and said, "I'll get my armour."

"Get off!" Cardin growled, slamming his mace into the skull of a Beowulf on top of him.

"Cardin!" Russel yelled.

Cardin's return yell was incoherent even to him, part acknowledgement, part anger, mostly fear. Still, he did as planned and turned his back on the horde, knelt down, grabbed a piece of rubble, and lifted.

The yell that had trailed off rose in volume as Cardin's whole body strained to lift that weight. He strained and gasped. He could hear the Grimm close enough to touch, smelled their breath. He almost broke and ran.

"Cardin!"

Sky.

Cardin put everything he had into shifting the debris, and at first he barely managed to keep his grip.

The weight shifted.

Then he heard Sky grunt and the wall lifted away, Sky and Cardin heaving it into their shoulders, then pushing it aside.

"You came." Sky gasped the words, panting for breath opposite Cardin as civilians poked their heads out of the basement. He didn't seem nearly as surprised as Cardin was about that idea.

But Cardin was. Almost stunned. He'd saved Sky, and more besides. Because he'd come, people were alive who wouldn't have been, otherwise.

Maybe he could help. Maybe he wasn't too weak.

Maybe his father was wrong.

Sky's eyes went wide. "Behind you!"

Truth be told, Cardin almost panicked, almost dove for cover and ran instead of acting like a Huntsman should. When he heard the growl, though, he remembered that day in Forever Fall.

Cardin's grip on his mace tightened and he spun, swinging his weapon with all his strength.

If that runt could kill an Ursa, so could Cardin Winchester!

Cardin swung down, squishing a creeper flat, and looked around.

That had been the last of them. Now the area contained nothing but black smoke, three Huntsmen, and dozens of dead bodies.

They hadn't been fast enough. Again. When Russel first came for Cardin's help, weeks ago now, it hadn't even occurred to him that a collapsed building had been the only thing that bought them enough time to save the people within. Without Scrolls, even the cars they so often stole weren't fast enough.

He walked up to a pair of bodies. One man had tried to cover another with his body. A Beowulf's claws had torn right through him and into the second man.

A detached part of the young man thought that, just a month ago, he'd never have imagined recognizing a Grimm by its claw marks.

He heard rubble shift nearby and looked up.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Looking," Russel grunted, putting his bad shoulder into half a wall, "for survivors."

"There aren't any," Cardin sneered. "There never are, not when we're this late."

Too slow.

Too weak.

"Cardin-"

"No," Cardin interrupted Sky and started walking away.

"Cardin!"

He didn't turn around. All he did was call back, "I'll be home… find me when you need me."

Another day, another fight. Cardin had come back. All it was doing was proving him right.

"Into that building!" he roared at the civilians. "Now!"

They did as they were told. Not that it would make any difference, he thought as he readied his mace for the next wave.

They were coming in waves now. Hundreds of people living in fear attracted Grimm like flies. People Cardin thought he'd already saved, already made safe, were dead because…

Because they knew he was too weak to protect them.

He roared and slammed a Beowulf into two Creepers, then readied again while Sky covered him. A Grimm slipped past; Russel barely stopped it before it killed a woman. There were too many. They were all going to die.

About time, Cardin thought darkly, before Sky was nearly overwhelmed and there was nothing to do but charge forward and fight.

He tried to keep moving, to stay out of reach of the Grimm and still hit them hard enough to put them down in one strike. It didn't work, not with so many Grimm. Cardin took hit after hit, his Aura dropping in bits and pieces, then in one massive chunk when an Ursa barreled into him through the horde.

Cardin rolled across the ground and the world kept spinning even after he stopped moving.

Russel was holding the door with two knives, trying to make his almost-healed arm work properly. Sky was missing amid the Grimm. The Ursa was coming for Cardin. His mace was gone.

"Don't you dare!" yelled Sky, even over the sound of the Grimm and the screaming and the ringing of Cardin's ears. The other armoured boy came flying through the air, halberd helicoptering over his head.

It would have been heroic, if a Nevermore hadn't swooped down and knocked Sky to the ground in a flash of failing Aura.

Russel looked between them. Cardin knew what he was thinking. He could protect the civilians, save Sky, or rescue Cardin. One of the three. Or he could run, but he'd done that before and never forgiven himself.

In the stories, this was where the heroes would discover their Semblance. Something incredible, fitting, that had been inside them all along, waiting for the right moment to show itself.

That didn't happen.

In the stories, somebody did something brave and brilliant and stupid, turned the tables, saved the day.

Sky had tried that. He was holding off a Nevermore with the haft of Feather's Edge. About to die.

In the stories the cavalry came at the last moment, shining and powerful.

But there was nobody-

A deafening hail of bullets cut through the Ursa, the Nevermore, the dozens of Grimm on ground and in the air. More Grimm than the three Huntsmen could ever have fought, felled by more bullets than Cardin had ever imagined existed. And he'd seen Coco Adel fight.

In seconds, the world was nothing but black smoke. A few seconds later, it cleared to reveal a squad… platoon… large group of soldiers, all in red armour that covered everything but their mouths.

"Two through seven," called the one at the front, "secure the building. Nine through twenty, secure the perimeter. Eight, twenty-four, thirty-two, secure and triage the Huntsmen. Everybody else, search and rescue."

There was a little milling about as the soldiers sorted themselves, but soon enough everybody seemed to be going where they'd been told, including one soldier in white armour who knelt by Cardin. He ran a medi-Scroll past Cardin and nodded.

"Still got your Aura," the medic grunted. "Didn't go down during the fight?"

Cardin shook his head, a little self-conscious. "Mine doesn't recharge that quickly."

The medic grunted again. "Mm. Don't know what you were doing on your ass, then."

Cardin opened his mouth to retort, but the leader was walking up to them with with Russel and Sky in tow.

"You Huntsmen were damn lucky we got here when we did," the big man said. "I heard your lot were supposed to be legendary fighters, kill a swarm like this before breakfast, barehanded."

He laughed and Sky had to cut in before either Cardin or Russel got into a fight.

"We're just trainees, sir," said the blue-haired boy quickly. "Students from Beacon."

The leader nodded, gesturing for his medic to run off and rubbing at his chinstrap. "Students, eh? That might be alright, then. You boys got a Scroll on you?"

Two of the team shook their heads.

"Lost mine."

"Ditched it."

But Cardin fumbled around inside his armour for a few seconds and pulled out his Scroll.

"Turn it on," the man urged, gesturing vaguely. Completely at ease despite how many Grimm had been here minutes ago.

"Why? The system's-"

"Just one of of news you haven't heard out here, kid. Turn it on and hear the good word."

So Cardin turned in his Scroll.

The first thing he heard was the voice of hope.

"People of Remnant. I stand before you on the blood and ashes of countless individuals…"

"Avus-"

"That's Lt. Halia to you, kid!"

"-on your right!"

The Advent officer barely even turned, just tilting his head to glance at the oncoming Grimm before four of his soldiers riddled the thing with bullets.

Cardin tossed a Beowulf aside, knocked down a crowd of various Grimm, and tackled a Creeper before it reached a white-armoured Advent "Priest". A Stun Lancer took the like thing down as it hit the ground.

In minutes, the Grimm were dead. Every one, from a crowd easily thirty strong.

"Alright!" Lt. Halia called. "Perimeter and final count for the boys!"

"Three," Russel whispered, sidling up to Cardin.

"Six," Sky added, though he shot a look at Russel when he said it. With only one working arm, the other Huntsman never quite kept up with them anymore.

"That makes sixteen," Cardin said, turning with a grin to the Lieutenant.

"You don't get to count them multiple times!" Lt. Halia was telling a group of his soldiers. "If four of you were shooting it, it still only counts as one."

"But then who gets the kill?" one soldier whined.

"It's not about who, it's about Advent," Lt. Halia reminded them. "This is for Remnans and Lady Fall. Remember that."

The soldiers nodded and Cardin found himself nodding along when the Lieutenant turned towards them.

"Fifteen, once we figured out how to teach these bucketheads math," the man said with an easy grin. He scanned the trio, then the perimeter.

"Sixteen!" Russel replied, almost defiantly.

Cardin grinned. "Looks like we-"

He cut off as a thunderous roar filled the street. Screams filled the quiet as the noise echoed away.

Lt. Halia snapped to look in the direction three of his soldiers were running from. "What-"

In unison, the soldiers and remains of team CRDL yelled, "Ursa!"

They were right. The beast that came around the corner was the largest Ursa Cardin had ever seen.

Lt. Helia stepped back and, honestly, Cardin wanted to do the same, to break and run and leave this block to the monster. Even with his team, somebody was bound to get hurt, maybe killed.

"Tell you what, kid." Cardin looked to see his friend actually smiling. "Double or nothing. Take the Ursa, take the win. One condition: one of mine takes first shot at it."

Cardin stared. "Are you nuts? You can't send one soldier against that thing. He'll be killed!"

"I'll take that bet," the Lieutenant said, and gave a piercing whistle that attracted the Ursa's attention. "Corporal Noon!"

"Yeah, boss?" called a soldier in bulky green armour.

"Do you see that Ursa?"

"Sure as shit, sir."

Halia grinned even as a pair of his soldiers dove through a window to escape the Ursa's swinging paws. In the tone of a man signing a death warrant, he concluded, "I don't want to."

The woman returned his grin and grabbed a Stun Lance each from two other soldiers. Without another word, she charged.

"Wait!" Russel yelled, but Lt. Halia put a hand on his shoulder.

"Hold up, kid. I've been waiting to show you this."

When the Ursa turned on Corporal Noon and swung a massive paw down at her, Cardin thought that would be the end of it, proof that Lt. Halia had lost his mind. Except that Noon slid underneath and stabbed at both the beast's ankles on the way through, cackling madly the whole time.

What followed was not something Cardin would have normally called impressive. At Beacon Academy, superhuman feats had been there norm. There were even a few first-years who could have defeated this thing. But this was an Advent soldier. Just a grunt, as far as Cardin knew.

As the woman wove around slashing claws and the raging Ursa tried to bear down and bite her, Cardin managed a dumbfounded, "she's Huntsman trained?"

The officer shrugged. "Nah. Doesn't even have Aura. She's part of this new enhancement project Lady Fall's got going on. Most of the benefits of Huntsman training, none of the baggage or drawbacks. You know, like years of training."

He glanced away from the fight, at the three of them. "I've been thinking, that's all well and good, but not all Huntsmen've been indoctrinated yet. Few good apples in the bunch. I've been asking myself what it might do for someone like you kids to have those sorts of enhancements. I figure you'd be strong enough to wrestle that thing if you needed to."

As if you punctuate the words, Corporal Noon somehow managed to knock the Ursa to the ground. She got on top of it and aimed her lances at its eyes.

Cardin noticed the counter attack first.

"Look out!"

Noon noticed the Ursa's swing too late to dodge. She barely managed to throw herself to the side fast enough to negate most of the force of the hit. Still, she flew through the air and landed badly on the street.

"Ooh." Lt. Halia winced. "Not perfect, though. Go help her, boys."

CRDL charged.

They weren't a full team of Huntsmen, neither fully trained or a full team. The others tried to distract it so Cardin could get close enough to cripple it, but the beast was smarter than most. It seemed to know Russel couldn't hurt it and Cardin was as slow as it was. CRDL made no progress except tiring the Ursa out until they heard a crackle of lightning and a crazed laugh.

"Round two!" shrieked the Corporal as she sprinted past Cardin, Stun Lance in one hand and the other arm trailing uselessly behind her.

The Ursa must have been as surprised as Cardin, because it didn't react nearly in time to stop the woman from jamming a Stun Lance into its knee. It roared and hit the ground again, just in time for Cardin to reach it and crush its other knee to pulp.

It was all over shortly after that. The Grimm struggled, but couldn't escape its end.

As the Ursa disappeared into smoke, Corporal Noon finally looked down at her arm and summed up her thoughts on the matter.

"Ow."

"Did you see what she did?" Cardin asked his team later, for the fifth time. "We need that."

"I don't know," Sky mumbled, though Russel was clearly considering.

"C'mon." Cardin gestured to the window, where they could see the ruins of Vale by the light of Advent's perimeter stations. "It's Advent. It's not like we'd be letting XCOM toss us in a tank of sci-fi goop to see what comes out. We've seen what their enhancement does."

"Yes," Sky replied evenly, "and Ursina Noon is nuts."

Cardin shrugged. "Okay, so the power went to her head. Avus says she was always a little weird."

Sky still looked skeptical, but Russel added, "the Lieutenant said it might even let me use my arm again. You know, properly."

The green-haired boy held up his ration bar, which trembled so violently that the wrapper crackled.

Cardin nodded, sure he'd just gotten Russel on board. "Vale needs this. We're just students. With the enhancements, we could finally be what were training to be. Real Huntsmen. We could help retake Vale."

Sky looked out the window, too. There was another outpost in sight, just before the horizon. Advent, clearing small patches of territory. Some of those outposts across Vale grew constantly. More volunteers, maybe even Huntsmen, but especially the Advent enhanced. That was what was making the difference, according to the Lieutenant. That was what made the difference between the other outposts and their own stagnant home.

Sky had seen how they were barely holding on. Seen the Grimm attacks grow stronger even as CRDL scraped what little advantage they could get out of their experience with this trial by fire.

Advent had reports of what happened to outposts that took too long to grow and connect with the other outposts. They'd had survivors of those fighting retreats tell the stories even here. The hopelessness grew, and so did the Grimm, and inevitably it cost dozens or hundreds of Advent lives to break a path for the civilians to reach a stronger settlement. That was, when they made it out at all.

"Okay," Sky said with a heavy sigh. "I'm in."

"Me, too," Russel said, more enthusiastically.

Cardin grinned at his team and stood. "I'll go tell the Lieutenant."

"Alright, Mr. Winchester, we're going to have to put you under. The procedure is extensive and Huntsmen tend to take time to, ah, react to the anesthesia. May we begin?"

Cardin rolled his eyes and nodded. Huntsmen had surgery all the time. They'd taught him the drill back in prep school. That wasn't important.

This, the procedure itself, was what mattered. By tomorrow, he would be something better. His whole team would.

He felt the sting of the reinforced needle. In a few minutes, he'd be out.

Cardin let his mind wander, thought about what it would be like, after.

He'd be stronger, faster, and to deal with pain more easily. CRDL would cut a path through the Grimm and finally help Advent retake Vale.

He'd track down that little cheat, Jaune Arc, and give him a beat down so hard the runt would never think about being a Huntsman again.

Would the enhancement work on Dove? His legs had been so mangled. But with Aura and the enhancement… well, a chance was better than nothing, and Cardin could probably use his new influence to convince Lt. Halia to spend the resources to try.

They'd save Vale. Maybe Cardin would get to meet Lady Fall. Gods, that woman was hot, and a real hero. Who wouldn't want a chance at that?

He wondered where Sky was. He'd still been nervous when they arrived.

Cardin felt his Aura finally give out. As his eyes flickered closed, he smiled. When he woke up, he'd show Advent what a loyal Huntsman could do. He'd show his father. He'd show the whole world a team of heroes.

He'd be strong.