Smoke hung over the city of Vale like an oppressive blanket. The fact that most of it came from the Grimm did little for the defendants. Most of them didn't even notice the smoke, either caught up fighting for their lives or escorting civilians to the parts of the city still standing. The last time Cardin saw them, his team was in the latter group, holding beacon's courtyard as a field hospital for wounded students. He had tagged along with an older group of hunters, making progress through the city. The Grimm hadn't breached the wall, at least not the first waves. They had simply climbed over the wall when the automated defenses gave out and the Atlesian knights turned on the populace. Cardin shook his head, reminding himself to send that General something nice if they both made it through the night.
"Eyes up rookie," An older man said to Cardin, bumping him on the shoulder as he passed. Stirring, Cardin looked around to realize they were at the edge of the city. They stood atop a low wall, maybe fifteen feet tall, that overlooked a fifty foot stretch of bare ground between it and the real perimeter wall. Apparently, when the city was first being built, it's engineers had thought that the expanse would provide a sort of killing field that machine gunners and artillery could hold against the grimm. Of course, the world had changed, and the armies once responsible for the defense of the city gave way to hunters and automated turrets stationed atop the wall. The field was still useful mind you, it gave the hunters plenty of room to maneuver and fight, as they were usually lightly armored and focused more on dodging than defending. That being said, their specialization was now coming to bite them in the ass, as they stared down a breach almost twenty feet wide in the wall, caused when the atlesian airship had opened fire into the city.
"Alright , here's the plan," Their de facto leader said, as the dozen or so hunters huddled around him. They hadn't stopped to introduce themselves, having snowballed their way to the wall, picking up any fighters they came across. This man appeared to be in his late forties, which for huntsmen made him almost ancient, and wielded some kind of mecha-shifting polearm. "Geeks 1 and 2" The two technicians from Amity squaked in protest. "Say they can get our guns back on the walls. If we can do that, we might be able to clear the city and drive them off. To do that though, we need to buy them time." The leader pointed to a pair of huntsmen, one holding some kind of large caliber firearm and the other with a bow. "You two get them up top and cover them." The group of four nodded, before heading off to the nearest elevator. "The rest of us assholes," A couple of chuckles broke out among the older fighters. "We get the fun part. The guns have a hard time bearing on anything down at the bottom of the wall, which means that unless we plug this whole, they get to keep waltzing in." All the chuckles stopped at this point. "That's what I thought. This is gonna suck. We've got to fight those coming in, those going out. Once we get there, we won't be able to retreat. And we won't have any back up until all the civies are safe." The guy gave one last look around. "I know some of you have families back in the city. I know you would rather be back with them. But our coworkers are out there rescuing them right now. Hell, we've got kids doing our jobs for us." Cardin got a few slaps on the back for that."But they can't fight forever, and the Grimm keep coming. So we've got to hold long enough for them to wrap things up. Let's get it done." Standing up, the leader lept the wall, having felt he said enough. Cardin must have agreed too, he was the next one over the wall. The 8 of them charged across the open field, screaming their defiance against the horde.
Ironically, the old man with the polearm was the first to die. He apparently had some kind of minor flight semblance and, while beating everyone else to the breach, ran straight into a Goliath. The remaining seven were able to put the elephant-like creature down, but not in time to save their comrade. Cardin, being the youngest and least experienced, was allowed to just go nuts. His armor and size made him the best bulwark they had for the Grimm to break themselves on. The more experienced men and women filled in around him, covering his flanks and rear. These men and women had fought beside dozens of different huntsmen and huntresses in their careers. For every Grimm Cardin crushed with his mace, they killed two or three. Whenever Cardin pushed too far out, one of them pulled him back between the walls. Whenever he stepped to the side to cover one of them, another would flow into the space he left to hold the line. Any student of Beacon would be amazed at their teamwork. Cardin missed it all, being too caught up in the heat of battle. The world seemed to go dark around him, and any conscious thought was lost, his body acting on basic actions and impulses.
… … … … … … ...
Swing. Block. Reset.
Swing. Swing. Reset.
Block. Swing. Reset.
… … … … … … ...
Time seemed to behave weirdly around the little group of defenders. It moved too quickly when the Grimm came. It seemed like the next wave would arrive before they had finished the first one. It moved too slow when once of their numbers, a huntress with some kind of tail, was shot in the back by some white fang who had stumbled across them. It moved too fast again when they didn't have time to set her body aside, Cardin having to resort to kicking the still warm corpse aside while grappling a beowolf that had tried to pounce on them from felt a little surge emotion when the group of terrorists were trampled by a beringal charging out from the city, a vicious snarl spreading across his face. The snarl went away as the beringal charged them, and he had to step up to meet it's monstrous strength. He could feel the joints of his armor giving out as he fought it. Cracks covered his elbows, knees and stomach by the time it was down. One of the others had slipped behind it, cut both hamstrings before cutting off it's head.
Cardin couldn't have told you how long they fought. It felt like too long. However long it was, only three of them still stood. Cardin took the middle, his mace acting as much a crutch as a weapon. His aura had long since broke, a boarbatusk earlier had managed to get its tusks in through a crack near his waist, nearly disemboweling him. He couldn't feel his legs anymore, which he supposed was a good thing. The pain might have taken him from his feet. As it was, he felt he wouldn't have to worry about it much longer. After whatever that flash of light from beacon was, they no longer had Grimm coming into the city. Instead, they had to fight all the ones leaving. If they could have, they would have left the breach and let all the Grimm flee, but Cardin's legs were locked, one of the survivors had lost his wits and was crying into the corpse of one of the fallen, while the other had lost her leg below the knee. The fact that she had tied her own tourniquet before propping her back against the wall and firing into the Grimm as they came. She was unconscious now, the blood loss gettting her.
Cardin stood all but alone in the breach. The horde of the Grimm had ground to a halt twenty feet from him in the killing field. The younger ones had charged headlong at him, and the last of his strength killed them. The ones left, older Grimm with some basic intelligence, were weary, waiting for Cardin to fall. The only reason he hadn't yet was that the joints of his armor would no longer bend.
As the first traces of light began to color the sky, Cardin smiled beneath his helm. That oppressive smoke had lifted, so hopefully that meant the Grimm really had been retreating, and not still chasing the citizens through the streets. It's not like it really matters Cardin thought, watching the horde slowly creeping forward. As the lead Grimm bellowed at him, Cardin closed his eyes, letting his mind go toward that blissful silence of sleep, or perhaps death. He was too tired to tell which it was at this point.
Had he stayed awake, he could have watched the Grimm horde start to get torn apart by a minigun.
… … … … … … ...
Epilogue: 25 years later.
Velvet sat beneath a tall willow in the late summer, enjoying the shade and the quiet. Three tombstones sat to her left, closer to the trunk of the tree. While the dates were a little too small to read from this far away, "WHEY" was proudly emblazoned on the top of each one. She smiled to herself as a breeze fluttered by. She hated the story she had found all those years ago, but at least they were all together here. A slight mechanical whir came from behind her, as well as the crunching of grass.
"I still think it's a little creepy you spend more time out here than me," A deep voice said from behind her.
"Then perhaps you should spend more time out here with me," Velvet said, standing before turning around. Cardin had always been rather tall, at least when he wasn't near Yatsuhashi. Now, well into his middle years, the wheelchair he rode around in couldn't take away from that. He had a presence about him that made everyone feel as if they couldn't quite stand up to him.
In the wake of the fall, the people of Vale had been reeling and in pain. Many people had died, many more had lost their homes. The negativity had been climbing non-stop, making the job of the huntsmen and huntresses all the more difficult. When the council needed something to help bring the people together, they had sunk their teeth into Cardin Whey, the brave boy-hero who had held the wall alone for 8 hours during the fall, as it would come to be called. Of course, it was all over-exaggerated, but of the three who had been left at the end of the fight, one had succumbed to her injuries, and the other had moved out to a frontier town, never to be seen or heard from again. Whenever asked, Cardin would always sing the praises of the others who had gone to the wall with him. After the fight, he had personally looked up the names of the other 7, gone to their families, and had spent time grieving with each to let them know that someone cared. Still, being one man against the entire forces of the political engine and media, he couldn't help being swept up. He rode it out, helping organize and train huntsman teams. By the time the novelty of his story had worn off, he was a respected handler in the huntsman community. Byt the time team RWBY's tale was being told, he had become a professor at Beacon, replacing an old, but no less loud Professor Port.
"Don't you have a class now?" Velvet asked in a teasing voice.
Cardin scowled in mock annoyance. "The brats weren't paying any attention. All caught up about some field trip their combat instructor is taking them on." He shot a look at Velvet. The rabbit faunus, to the surprise of many of her friends, had indeed replaced Miss Goodwitch at beacon, teaching her class when the living legend had passed away in her sleep. Everyone thought Velvet too nice for the role, but her students had the same fear and awe of her as Cardin and Velvet's generation had for Miss Goodwitch.
"Oh, I'm supposed to tell you that if you skip out this friday, Coco will, and I quote, 'kick his metal as so hard, it becomes attached." Velvet said.
"I don't know, I'm still not sure how I feel about the guy," Cardin said in mock consideration. Coco had been trying to nail down everyone on their team to meet her new fiancee, a civilian designer she had met at a coffee shop. "Besides, we have so much paperwork to do!"
Velvet giggled a little, "She's already got Yats to drag me along. If I'm going, you are too."
"Misery loves company," Cardin agreed. The two shared a laugh, and when they were able to get a hold of themselves again, he spoke again. "Alright, I guess we need to see if this guy's the real deal. I can't believe you made the last guy cry Velvet, it was hilarious." Velvet blushed a little at that, before muttering a few choices before storming off to her classroom. Cardin smiled, turning down a different hallway to prepare his next lecture. Whatever you said about beacon, you could never say it was boring.
Hello reader. Thank you for sticking with me this far. I know I wasn't the best about keeping this story up to date, but to those who left me all those positive reviews, thank you. It's because of you that I was able to drag myself into finishing this. Now, I'll admit, the ending was a little rushed, and I didn't give it the time or effort it really deserved. The truth is I was in a difficult place when I started writing this (if the dark subject matter didn't give it away), and every time I went to go back to finish it, it just dragged up a bunch of painful memories, and the story suffered for it. That being said, I would like to invite to invite all of you to have a whack at it. I may not have done the story justice, but you guys might. If you want to re-write it, or take ideas from it, go ahead. Nothing would make me happier than if my story helped someone else with their own. As for me, I'm going to start working on Grimm-born again, writing a few more chapters for it, and maybe work on another project that's been bouncing around in my head for a while. If you have any questions for me, feel free to send me a message. I'll answer them whenever I can. If you liked the story, feel free to favorite it. If you have any thoughts or suggestions you'd like to share, feel free to leave a review. Until next time, I wish you all a pleasant journey.
Peace.