I'm creeping further behind schedule. In fairness, that's because this chapter ran a little longer than normal and I've had a busy week. Next week, however, I'll have all the time in the world.

First off, the cover art's done! I just posted it, so instead of having to look at my avatar's ugly mug, this story has a proper cover. Big thanks to maggie_bmblb over on Twitter for taking on the commission. She's got commissions open, so if you like what you see, consider giving her some patronage as well.

As for the story itself, it just occurred to me that it's been fourteen chapters since the last round of the Vytal Festival. Yikes. I had planned on there being a few, but not nearly that many. The Weiss chase thingy was supposed to happen after this round, but it just sort of happened ahead of schedule.

Chapter Forty-Six: Semifinals

As Cardin strapped on his armor, checked the Dust phials at his hip, and hefted his mace in his hand, he reflected that, though it had been less than a week since the first singles round, it felt like a lifetime ago that he picked himself up off the ground and went over to Yang for a handshake.

Memories of the past few days drudged themselves up in reverse order, from the scolding he had received from his father just that morning for supporting a local Faunus charity with his contact in the Commerce Committee, all the way back to the Seer and the visions it showed him. His hand shook as the room around him vanished, replaced by the dining hall in the lonely castle.

Before he could see what lay behind the mountain of food, he shoved the flashback back into its little box at the corner of his mind, forcing it shut by reminding himself it was not real, it was just a nightmare the Grimm had showed him to try to break him, that there was no Queen of the Grimm dangling him over a pit of liquid death and forcing him to pledge his soul away.

Dove came into the room, cramming toast in his mouth with one hand and swiping at his Scroll with the other. He glanced at Cardin as he sat down, leaning forward so the crumbs fell on the floor.

"Isn't it a bit early?" he asked.

"I have some people to talk to, and I'd rather not have to come back. Tell the others I'm heading to Amity on my own."

"Sure," Dove grunted through his toast. "I'll save you a seat."

When Cardin left the room, he found Penny waiting right next to the door, staring straight ahead at the wall. Her eyes snapped towards him as he walked by her.

"Salutations Cardin!" she called. "I am finally ready to be your bodyguard again."

Cardin examined the side of her head, which had been kicked in while he was being abducted, and found no trace of the injury.

"Did your creator fly in?"

"What, for that?" Penny asked, touching her hair. "No, my Aura took care of it."

That little tidbit went under the long list of information scraps with interesting implications. Ever since he found out about Ruby's eyes, he couldn't help but feel a conspiracy in every weird detail he observed, whether it was a total blackout of Scrolls in Ozpin's office right when he had left, Nelly Poltan's inconsistent eye color, or the talk of Relics and Maidens rattling around his head any time he had his flashbacks.

And, of course, just thinking about the flashbacks brought on another one, which he mechanically crammed back into the box. It was getting a little cluttered in that box, between the chills he felt anytime Cinder flashed a cold, menacing smile in his direction and the burning anger that smoldered anytime someone mentioned the soup kitchen, to the aloofness and inaction of his father in the face of his impending crisis, along with the standard distrust of every food and beverage given to him, every person lurking out of his line of sight, and every word spoken that he couldn't overhear. If he could do something about it, he did, and if he couldn't, it went in the box.

If he could just keep that box closed for a little while, maybe he'd get to enjoy winning the semifinals.

So, to that end, he went downstairs and knocked on Jaune's room. Each knock felt like the tap of a pistol's muzzle to the side of his head, the turn of the knob the spinning of the revolver's chambers, the opening of the door the hammer's descent.

Ren's face poked out from behind the door. The hammer fell on an empty chamber.

"He's out," Ren replied absently. When Cardin didn't move, he added, "Good luck in the Festival," and started shutting the door.

"Wait," Jaune called out, "Is that Cardin? It's alright, let him in."

Ren sent a withering look behind him and opened the door. Cardin waited at the threshold, looking for any sign of Nora or her oversized hammer, before warily stepping inside.

As if reading his mind, Jaune said, "Nora's at the cafeteria. It'll probably be a while."

"And I was just about to join her," Ren said, with an inquisitive note to his voice.

Jaune looked Cardin up and down and said, "Just go. I'll be right behind you."

Ren slipped past Cardin without a second glance and vanished down the hall. Once they were alone, Jaune motioned for Cardin to sit with him on the bed. Cardin did so, leaving as much distance between them as possible.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" Jaune asked.

Cardin looked around, scrambling for any way to break the ice. He couldn't straight up ask him about what he and Sun were talking about, but he couldn't think of anything else to say.

His gaze fell on Jaune's nightstand. Behind the alarm clock sat a plastic bag filled with metal shards. The hilt of Croeca Mors sat at the center of the pile, sitting upright in the pile like a tombstone.

"Did you get all the shards back?" Cardin asked, gesturing at the bag.

Jaune gave him a surprised look and took the bag. He jumbled it around and said, "I haven't tried to put it back together or anything, but I think so."

"Have you thought about making any improvements? There's plenty of mecha-shift options, and you could use something with range."

"I'll think about it." Jaune's eyes didn't quite meet Cardin's. "So, um, there's been something that I've been wanting to ask you lately."

Cardin cursed himself for not steering the conversation towards Jaune's Semblance, but he smiled and nodded. Jaune said, with many pauses to lick his lips and take deep breaths, "You remember how I got into Beacon? For the longest time, I felt like I didn't belong here, that I should leave before I got myself killed by a Grimm. And, you know, I felt like I deserved to have you harassing me. After all, you could only do it because I was a wimp and everything about me was fake."

Cardin was torn between trying to shift the focus away from his harassment of Jaune and letting him continue, but he decided to nod, not trusting his words. Jaune nodded back and said, "When that Ursa came after you, I thought about running away. I thought that, by trying to save you, I'd only get myself killed."

"If it wasn't for Blake, you would have."

Jaune smiled for a brief moment before he grew serious again. "I should've left after that, knowing that I couldn't save someone no matter how hard I tried, but then Blake offered to help me train." He shrugged. "She didn't really know how to use a shield, but we made it work. Then my dad came, and, well, that was the worst month of my life, but because of that, I was finally able to fight. I could kill Grimm. And when I beat you in the ring, when I made it to finals in the Vytal Festival, I knew I could be a Huntsman. I might not be the best at it, but I had lots of Aura, a good Semblance, and a sword I knew how to use."

"Is this a question?"

Jaune chuckled nervously. "I'm getting to it. So, first round of finals, that happened." He held up the shards of his sword. "Turns out, my Semblance destroys any weapon I touch. If I keep fighting with it, my weapon could break on me at any moment, and that moment could kill me. Heck, my shield probably can't take much more either. I'd either have to re-forge Croeca Mors over and over or carry around a bunch of swords.

"You could fight without using your Semblance," Cardin pointed out.

Jaune snorted. "I'm alright without it, but I can barely take an Ursa, even after all my training. With it, I can slice Alphas to ribbons. But that's not the point. After losing Croeca Mors, I realized there was a better way to use my Semblance. I could be a doctor. I mean, I already saved your life, and I fixed Sun's leg. Imagine how many Hunstmen I could save with my Semblance. It seems like a much better use of my ability than making Aura slashes until my sword breaks."

"I'm still not hearing that question."

"Do you think I can be a Huntsman?" Jaune asked.

"Well, yeah. You beat me, after all."

"You were holding back," Jaune said, gesturing at Cardin's mace. "You could've used the chain to reach me, but you didn't."

"I was keeping it a secret for the tournament. It's the only reason I won."

"And by that logic, I should've kept my Aura slashes a secret as well. You would've won if I did that, I think. I mean, you beat Pyrrha."

"That was all luck," Cardin admitted. "I managed to trick her, but once she got serious, I was getting creamed. If my Semblance didn't counter hers so well, I would've gotten thrown out of the ring."

"Well, how about this? You didn't think I could be one back then, right?"

"Before the prelim match we had? Nope. I was surprised you hadn't gotten kicked out the moment you walked through the door. Honestly, I thought it was some kind of scheme Ozpin cooked up, since he had to have helped you with the forgery."

"Wait, what?"

"Well, yeah. How much did you pay for your fake transcript?"

Jaune glanced out the window and said in a low voice, "Ten thousand."

"As I thought. A proper fake requires adding records to either Beacon academy's practical exams, which are difficult to fake, or an outlying prep school, which means you'd have to bribe the Headmaster there along with Ozpin himself and the government official overseeing your records. That would take hundreds of thousands, even millions of lien to pull off, unless you're Ozpin."

"Because Ozpin can just make all the records for me," Jaune said, thoughts wrinkling his face.

"Exactly."

"So, that whole time, Headmaster Ozpin knew about my fake transcripts?"

"I'm pretty sure of it."

"He let me get into school with zero qualifications and a near-certain chance of getting eaten by a Grimm." Jaune said with a deadpan expression.

"Looks that way."

"He had me launched off a platform when he knew full well I didn't even know what Aura was, much less have it unlocked."

"Wait," Cardin said, suddenly wheezing with suppressed laughter, "You didn't even know what Aura was?"

"Pyrrha unlocked it for me after she saved me from getting my neck broken." With a flash of anger, Jaune asked, "Why? Why did Ozpin let me do any of that? Did he know I would be able to get as strong as I did?"

"I thought it was to make Ruby stand out less. People wouldn't pay too much attention to a student that got in two years early when there's someone with forged transcripts and zero combat history to wonder about."

Jaune stared at him with an aghast expression. Cardin shrugged and said, "You could ask Ozpin yourself, but I don't think he'd give you an honest answer."

The anger melted off his face as Jaune looked down at the broken sword. "No point, I'm leaving anyways."

"You're leaving? Why, you think you can't be a Huntsman?"

"It's not that. It's just good to know I could be one, if I wanted to. Makes it easier to leave."

Cardin pondered Jaune's words for a moment. "Nope, I don't see your logic."

"Well," Jaune said, "I always wanted to be a Huntsman, since I was a kid, but my dad said that I didn't have what it would take. I could barely hold a sword without cutting myself, and anytime I tried to train, I'd end up getting hurt." Jaune chuckled sheepishly. "I was a very clumsy kid. Broke a tooth tripping on the front porch." His smile drooped, and his shoulders hunched forward. "I failed when I applied to Ansel's prep school, and by the time I stopped tripping over my own feet, I was too old. So, when I was old enough for Beacon, I left home with the family sword and all the lien I had, bought some forged papers from a guy I found on the internet, and applied."

He patted the bag of shards and ran a finger over the hilt of Croeca Mors. "Getting accepted was the happiest moment of my life. But then, I found out exactly how unprepared I was. I should've died many times over, and I only made it because of my teammates. It felt like I was dragging them down, at least, until I got some real help. Now, if I leave Beacon, it won't be because I failed, because I wasn't good enough like my dad said. It'll be because I can do better with my Semblance. I'll be a doctor and save lives that way, and save the killing Grimm part to Blake and the others."

Cardin nodded. "Well, if that's what you want to do, go ahead. You'll probably get paid better anyways, not to mention you won't have any Grimm tear you limb from limb."

Jaune let out a nervous laugh and said, "Yeah, I'll just have to sit in a stuffy office every day."

"Really? I figured you'd be more like a field medic, going out with Teams to patch them up."

Jaune perked up. "You mean, I'd be going out on missions? Working with Huntsmen?"

Cardin caught the sudden enthusiasm in Jaune's voice and followed the thread of it. "You're not going to do much good for Huntsmen from some office in Vale when they're bleeding out halfway across the continent, so you might as well go with them."

Jaune's face brightened before it fell again. "But they'd have to protect me if I don't have a weapon. I'd just slow them down."

"Is that what it's all about, your weapons breaking when you use your Semblance?"

"Well, yeah. I'm not much good without my Semblance, I can't hit a Beowolf from twenty feet with a shotgun, much less a sniper rifle or something like that, and I don't have any other ranged options. Up close, I'd get crushed by most Grimm unless I used my Semblance."

"Try talking to Ruby about it. I'm sure she'd be able to make you something."

Jaune gave him a confused stare. "Don't we have to make our own weapons?"

Cardin hefted his face, unscrewed the top, and gingerly removed the chain, taking care to make sure it didn't come unwound from the intricate gears that held it in place. He slid out the dust chamber and firing pin, spread out the parts on his lap, and slapped them back together.

"They tell us that so we know how to maintain our weapons, but they don't expect us to make them from scratch. Unlike the rest of us, Ruby built hers out of scrap metal. If anyone knows how to make some crazy weapon that works with your Semblance instead of crumbling under it, she's your best bet."

Jaune smiled and jangled his bag of broken sword bits. "Cool, so I get to be a Huntsman and help save lives. It's kind of funny, how I was feeling awful about not wanting to be a doctor."

"Wait, so you didn't want to be a doctor?"

Shaking his head, Jaune said, "I never liked going to hospitals, and I don't think I'd want to just heal people. It feels good, killing Grimm, even if it is scary."

Nursing a growing headache, Cardin asked, "Let's see if I have this correctly. You want to be a Huntsman. To do this, you forged your papers, survived the initiation and other missions that would've killed most ordinary people, let me harass and blackmail you for months, and got your ass beaten in class more times than I'd care to count. And now that you actually have a reasonable chance of making that dream a reality, you were planning to throw that away because your sword broke."

Jaune reddened and looked away. "Blake thought it was a good idea."

"Of course Blake thought it was a good idea. She's the sort of person to think that communism would be a good idea."

"Well, she made some good points."

Cardin got up and went to the door. Leaning out the doorway, he said, "Go find Ruby. The sooner she gets you your new weapon, the harder it'll be for Blake to talk you out of it."

Before Jaune could say anything else, or before Cardin could remember he had never gotten what he had gone in there for, he went to the Bullheads with Penny. He was halfway up to Amity before he realized his mistake. The pilot wouldn't turn around, even when he insisted that he had forgotten a phial of Dust back at his room.

The moment he stepped off the Bullhead and onto Amity stadium, he was met by Professor Goodwitch, who regarded him and Penny with an irritated scowl.

"You're late," she said as she led him towards the arena. "The other two are already lined up."

"I had something to take care of first." The professor didn't seem to hear him. Before he could say anything else, including the question he had about outside interference, she left him in front of the arena entrance. Penny went ahead of him, lining up next to Sun and the With no choice but to step forward, Cardin joined the other three remaining competitors. Once he arrived, their names and faces were brought up on the hardlight displays, and the crowd roared with excitement.

Working off the assumption that Cinder was still tampering with the tournament, he could only see two possible matchups. With the cavalier from Mistral as the obvious weakest competitor remaining, anyone who went up against him was guaranteed to be in the finals, while Sun wasn't exactly strong, but enough of a wildcard to win against anyone. Whoever got pitted against the student from Mistral would be Cinder's target during the final round, the victim of the final stroke to Cinder's plan, whatever it was.

Cardin hoped to be that target. On one hand, he already knew Cinder wanted him dead, and he could prepare if he knew the tournament would once again be the scene. However, if Penny was her object, whatever tampering she did could fracture relations between Vale and Atlas, strained as they were already by Ironwood's excessive show of force, which could in turn cut Cardin off from the SDC.

He shook the thoughts away. Cinder had already made her move against him, and if she played that illusion trick too many times, people would catch on. More likely, she'd pit him against Penny right away, force him out of the tournament before he could use publicity to turn the tables on her and the other Dukes.

The crowd held its collective breath as Professor Oobleck started the roulette. Sweat trickled down Cardin's neck as he waited for his fate to be decided. A hand went to the Dust Phials at his hip, gently shaking the one with Gravity Dust to ensure it still had its contents.

The Mistraili student's face stopped first. Some of the tension left Cardin's shoulders, as he knew Cinder would never let him have it that easy. Penny, or Sun? He held his breath with everyone else, looking up as if at the executioner's axe, waiting for it to fall.

Penny's face slid to a stop in the second slot.

The crowd's reaction was muted, propped up by a wall of silence and disappointment. After the reveal of Penny's identity, public approval of the robotic contestant had plummeted, and no one seemed please that she had been all but given a free pass to the final round.

As the two fighters stepped towards opposite sides of the ring, showered with the hollow cheers and applause of the crowd, Sun and Cardin left for the waiting room. The waiting area felt cold and empty, its television tuned to the current match, lockers flung open and the dressing rooms deserted.

Cardin sat down and put his feet up on the table. Sun pulled up a table and matched his posture. Together, they sat back, arms crossed behind their heads, watching the opening skirmish between Penny and her opponent.

"I'm glad I'm not that guy," Sun said as Penny's swords darted towards the Mistraili like homing missiles. A few tore into his vest but only took a pinprick of Aura.

"Don't think I'll be any easier to beat."

Sun grinned and pointed at the screen. "Look, I know you're tough, but I'd take you any day over the walking fortress of top secret Atlesian weapons."

As he said that, Penny's swords, which had formed a spinning circle in front of her, fired a green laser that cut a swath across the ground. Moments before he had his Aura vaporized, the Mistraili struck his spurs on the stone, igniting Lightning Dust in his boots. He sprang forward, leaving showers of sparks with each step as he unloaded both pistols at Penny. The bullets ricocheted off her metal surface, but the hardlight displays showed a dip in Penny's aura.

"Damn," Sun said, whistling at the display of acrobatics. "Maybe he'll win it after all."

"Don't count on it. He's got three minutes before he's empty."

The cavalier made the most of his three minutes, circling the stage in flashes of brown and white, always a step ahead of Penny's swords, firing and reloading constantly with nimble fingers. He fired a couple hundred rounds in those three minutes, which took Penny's aura down to a third, while his was at a solid eighty percent. However, when his Dust started running out, he stumbled, his feet could no longer able to keep up with the rest of his body. As he wobbled, Penny's swords caught him. Her eight swords swooped and dove like hawks, gouging his Aura with each strike. The Mistraili tried to block with his pistols, but with every stroke he deflected, two more found their mark. Unable to reload or get a sight on Penny, the cavalier was forced to fight a losing defensive battle until his Aura dipped into the red.

Sun stretched and went to the door. Cardin listened to the commentary for a few minutes, which was very careful not to mention Penny as a robot, before following his opponent out the door.

The crowd exploded the moment he came within view of the camera. Waves of people in the stands chanted his name. At the deluge of praise washing over Cardin, an involuntary smile crept on his face. Perhaps this would be enough, to be Vale's last hope at winning the tournament, the contestant that struggled on even after receiving near-fatal wounds.

His smile vanished as he reflected that, even with a story like his, to lose would be to be forgotten within a week. He would have to win it all, beat Sun here and now, and beat Penny two days from now, for his struggles, blackmailing Blake and Jaune, bribing Ren and Nora, manipulating Goodwitch and the other teachers, sabotaging Pyrrha, spying on Weiss, the broken nose, Cinder, all of it, to mean anything.

It would all come down to the phial of Gravity Dust at his waist, and whether or not he could dodge lasers that could slice a Bullhead in half.

He had almost missed the start of the match. A blur of red caught his eye, the twirling of Sun's nunchaku as he sprinted towards him. Before he could flick the weapon forward, firing shotgun shells at his chest, Cardin unfurled the chain, swinging the spiked steel ball in a wide arc. Sun vaulted over it, merging the nunchaku into a staff as he hurtled towards Cardin. The chain retracted, and Cardin brought up his mace to meet Sun's blow.

With his Semblance, Cardin made Sun and his staff lighter. Sun's Aura pushed back against Cardin's Semblance, draining them both, but the slight change in weight threw Sun off balance. He pitched forward as Cardin shoved his staff back, and as Sun tumbled behind him, Cardin turned and swung his mace at Sun's back. Aura flashed as Sun rolled across the ground. He slid onto his feet, rubbing his back with one hand and propping himself up with the staff.

"Not bad," Sun said, "But I'm just getting warmed up."

He clasped his hands together, and two glowing copies of him leapt out, racing towards Cardin. With the few seconds Cardin had, he unclipped a phial that felt warm to the touch and snapped open his mace's Dust chamber. Once it was full, he unfurled the chain, blocking the two clones. Rather than dodging away, the clones grabbed onto the chain and pulled, leaving Cardin without any slack to defend himself.

"Got you!" Sun said as he used his clones' shoulders as a springboard, fired two rounds from his nunchaku, and fused them back into a staff for a reckless finishing blow from above. Lowering his face so the rounds wouldn't hit his nose and shrugging off the blows with his shoulders, Cardin pressed the trigger on the mace's haft. Flames danced across the links and seared the two copies, banishing them in a flash of light.

Sun's eyes widened as Cardin lightened his chain and whirled it overhead in a protective shield. Sun struck the chain with his staff, using the new momentum to steer away from the burning chain.

"Funny, I'm just getting warmed up too," Cardin said. His voice, magnified by the stadium's microphones, prompted a riotous cheer and laughter from the crowd.

Cardin swung the chain in a circle, surrounding himself with a ring of flames. Sun tried to get close, leaping over the chain, but embers flying in the air landed on his clothes, setting alight small patches of fabric. As his Aura crackled, fending off burn damage, Sun backed out of the smoldering cylinder of air and stripped out of his shirt and shorts, to much cheering from the crowd and jokes from Port and Oobleck.

Sun twirled his staff, facing down the whirling ball of flame in nothing but his underwear. He fired round after round from the safety of the space outside Cardin's reach, but at that range, the shotgun shells lost much of their firing power. Cardin felt his Aura dip, but nowhere near enough to force him out.

Sun leapt forward, but Cardin let out the chain a touch and snapped it up. The chain slapped Sun's ankle, forcing him to land awkwardly. He rolled, just missing the chain as it dipped lower, and fired two shotgun shells from his staff. The scattered shot peppered Cardin's legs and armor, but he kept his hands steady on the chain.

As the fires flickered, Cardin let the chain fall. It draped over Sun's shoulders, reddening the exposed skin as it burned through more Aura. Before Sun could roll out from under it, Cardin retracted the chain, pulling the red-hot metal across Sun's back. The ball whipped around, drawn towards the spot where the chain dragged on Sun, and knocked him on the head.

Sun reeled onto his feet, dazed, clutching his head as he waved his staff in front of them. With a swipe of his mace, Cardin knocked Sun's weapon aside. The second swing caught Sun in the gut, hurling him back as the last of his Aura shattered.

Oobleck announced his victory and the crowd cheered loud enough to make his ears ring. Cardin watched Sun warily, helping him onto his feet even as he prepared himself for a sudden attack, but Sun just smiled, clapped him on the shoulder, and told him he had enjoyed the fight.

With burned shoulders and clad only in his underwear, Sun beamed up at the crowd, posing under the jeers and catcalls of the front row, joyous even in defeat. Cardin felt cold dread inside as he went back to the break room, wondering what Cinder would try next.