Chapter 3 – Too Early for a Title Drop

In which Cardin Winchester loses his cool and wins a new friend.


He must've gotten unlucky and chosen the worst bullhead possible, because the low fuel indicator came on before he'd even crossed the ocean. Cardin hadn't been sure if he'd make it to Mistral City or not, but he'd at least hoped he wouldn't have had to swim.

Unlike the locker, though, which had never been meant to carry a passenger or be tampered with, this wasn't to be some horrible crash landing. Airship designers knew that ocean landings were a possibility with cross-continental flights, so it shut off engines and auto-pilot at 2% Dust capacity and prompted Cardin to manually glide into the sea. The ship floated, and it even had the ability to retract its wings, deploy a rudder, and extend a sail. Well, it extended a mast and had a compartment inside the ship with a sail, forcing Cardin to climb up top out the hatch and rig it up himself, but he was too happy with the knowledge he wasn't going to be dying to care.

The 2% Dust remaining wouldn't have taken him all that much closer to Mistral, but it was enough to keep the navigation systems going. That meant the airship was autosteering him to the nearest coast, adjusting the rudder and mast accordingly without Cardin having to do anything.

Miss Pickpocket – Emerald, as it was – had been generous enough to donate him enough food to last him, provided Cardin was willing to eat nothing but junky snack foods – which he was. The ship told him that it would auto-sail him for three days to the northern coast of Mistral, where he could make the trek on foot to the nearest city. All he needed to do for now was sit back and relax.

He tried to ruminate on what that whole castle situation had been, but nothing obvious came to mind. Cardin at least had the wherewithal to write down everything he remembered about the place and its peculiar residents on his scroll, so that he could accurately report fresh details on the thing to the authorities when he got back to Beacon. Mr. Mustache was probably trapped without any airships to get him out, but it wouldn't hurt for ol' Ozpin to round up some troops and storm the place. Or besiege it – that's what you were supposed to do for old timey castles, right?

When that got boring, Cardin checked out the nav system for tips. It was telling him that he needed to go to a techno-city place called Argus, catch a train there, ride back to the heart of Mistral, and fly back to Vale. It sounded like a lot of different modes of transport, but apparently Argus wasn't big on commercial flights. Something about a local military base owned by some Captain Caroline who wasn't big on passengers trespassing into the controlled airspace – the computer didn't have much on file.

Cardin downloaded the maps onto his scroll, memorized the directions just in case, then turned off the scroll and the onboard display screen to conserve power. It didn't hurt to play things safe.

Without anything else to do, Cardin read the student ID for Emerald Sustrai from cover to cover three times. She was a second year, part of a team called Chimney. Her and her friends bunked at Zosa Hall, she was female, and – oh, that's right, she also had an apartment in the Grimmlands. Cardin also would have to turn her in when he got back to Vale.

Maybe I should pass the time by writing my memoirs about how I braved the Grimmlands and struck a devastating blow to their infrastructure. Now that I'm out, it's no longer too early to celebrate being the first person to make it in and back.

Nah, never mind. I might need the scroll battery.

The easiest thing to do would be to call for help when he landed, but Cardin hadn't exactly filled his scroll's contact info with Emergency Services in Mistral. Besides, he didn't have an international plan that covered Anima, meaning it wouldn't be able to if he had. It wasn't useless – scrolls were essential pieces of tech for a lot of reasons – but calling for help was out of the question.

S'probably better this way. A real man doesn't call for help, and ain't no one gonna say Cardin Winchester's anything less than a real man.


He was back in his parent's old room.

There was about an inch or two of water on the floor, enough to just submerge Cardin's ankles. Every step he took was a small splash. The same bed as before was in front of him, but it was empty this time.

It was nighttime, or so he assumed, but the room was well lit. The moon and its scattered pieces glowed maroon through the opened window. A breeze sprinkled some stray droplets of rain from the storm outside onto Cardin's forearm.

"Don't forget to wake up."

He swirled around to see that old Faunus man, the one on Arc's team, munching on some oyster crackers. The man had a large metal tin of them and was greedily dipping his paws into it to scoop them out by the handful into his trap. Spittle and mashed bits of crunched up crackers flittered down into the water.

"You better wake up, Cardin."

Cardin reached for his mace, but it wasn't at his side. With no other option, he raised his fists.

"Come on, then," Cardin challenged. "Come on."

The old animal just chuckled. The empty tin flew out the window as he swallowed the last of the oyster crackers. Cardin tried to throw a punch as he took a step closer, but his arm was frozen in place.

The Faunus got close enough to rest a hand on Cardin's shoulder, crunching mouthfuls of mashed food as he spoke.

"If you don't wake up, you're going to die, boy."


Cardin jolted awake, nearly falling out of the chair as he did. His hands reached out frantically, trying to grab his mace or repel the Faunus' advances towards him, but he stopped as reality gradually sank back in.

I'm on an airship. I ran low on Dust, so I'm merrily floating down to…right, got it.

The screen said he was on his first night of the voyage, meaning that the afternoon after tomorrow, he'd be on dry land. At the moment, a vicious storm was raging outdoors, beating against the ship's frontal glass shield. Outside the ship, clouds had gathered, but weak moonlight shone through it. Cardin was very glade to be inside right now, safe and cozy.

Panicking as the memories of his dream came back to him, Cardin quickly assuaged his fears checking his feet. He was fine – it really had just been a dream. The airship hadn't sprung a leak, and he wasn't standing in pooled up water or anything like that. It must've just been the sounds of the storm that tricked his sleeping mind into thinking he was on flooded floors.

His adrenaline was still flowing, preventing him from going back to sleep for a while. Maybe a quick snack before bed would–

Cardin froze.

The Centinel, the stupid thing he'd taken with him like an idiot, was probing its feelers into a wrapper of cookies. Beside it, empty bags of chips, soda bottles, popcorn crumbs, punctured juice pouches, shredded jerky wrappers, and all other scattered remains of what had once been packaged food and drinks remained. The Grimm, unaware that it had been seen, manipulated a cookie into its mandibles and began to crunch down on it.

It took herculean strength to hold back his tears. This Grimm, this retarded thing he'd taken on a whim because it was a good belt and was kinda a funny joke, had killed him. The food wasn't a problem, but without the drink, he'd die. Cardin had no desalination units and he had no means to produce his ocean water from the ocean. A huntsman like him knew that the seawater would torment his mind before it killed him if he even tried it.

It was too much to keep in. He started to cry.

This just wasn't fair. He was only seventeen, still just a kid. He'd never even gotten to try life. Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it have been someone else? Arc deserved this, and maybe his Faunus fart of a partner, but not Cardin!

"WSSSSWSSSSWSSSS!"

The Grimm joined him in crying, though it was crying out in pain, not sorrow, as Cardin launched it across the room. The little thieving gremlin landed upside down and started flailing around like a dying fish, but Cardin pinned it with one hand by the throat.

"You don't even eat, you useless – argh!"

Picking it up, he swung the Centinel onto the arm of his pilot's chair like a whip. It let out a pitiful chitter, but Cardin wasn't feeling any mercy. Two more slams, and the chittering grew weaker.

"I should've killed you when I first laid eyes on your disgusting carapace…"

He wasn't going to use The Executioner. This little monster had decided to starve Cardin out, so he would repay the favor by making it suffer as it died. There were so many ways he could do it. He could pluck its legs off, one by one, making sure that he waited until it had calmed down before moving on to the next. He could choke it to death on its own tail. He could rip it open and see if the food and drink inside its stomach were still there.

The Centinel was powerless right now. Cardin had all the power.

He'd never felt so powerful.

His rage must've set off its Grimm senses, because it began to squeal like a rabid animal and flick its tail pincers up against his arm. It was feeding off of Cardin's negativity, and Cardin was feeding off of its aggression. The cycle would just grow and grow until something broke – and that something was going to be this puny little demon's throat.

Before he could enact any of the multitudinous ways of maiming it that he'd dreamed up, the thing stopped thrashing about and went limp. It was weird, and completely a unexpected event. Cardin would've thought he'd killed it, but Grimm dissipated when they died, and his ex-belt was still there.

Its head turned to the pile of wrappers, bags, and bottles that it had ravaged just seconds ago, and then back to Cardin. Those tiny glowing red eyes followed Cardin's arm up to his wrath-filled sneer, and then they blinked just once. The Grimm's head flopped back.

"What?" growled Cardin. "What's that supposed to mean? You sorry?"

The Grimm offered no further resistance.

"You're a Grimm. You don't get sorry. You're gonna get dead."

If it was trying to beg for mercy or something, it wasn't working. Cardin was going to turn this thing into mashed potatoes with his bare fists if he had to.

"I'm gonna make you pay."

Cardin tasted blood and realized he'd clenched his mouth so hard, he'd nearly worn down the aura around his tongue and bitten into it. He was furious, and righteously so. This Grimm had killed him, even if it was going to take a few days. Even if it hadn't, it was a monster, one of the hundreds that Cardin had already killed. The bloodlust Cardin was feeling was fully justified.

So why wasn't this Grimm reacting to his anger?

Did I break it? Are its brains fried?

He absentmindedly asked the Grimm this question and received no answer.

Why am I talking to a Grimm? Weird or not, this little thing has doomed me to shrivel up in the middle of the ocean from thirst. I have no reason not to kill it.

He was a huntsman, and a damn good one at that. Killing Grimm was what he'd signed up to do.

The Centinel remained unmoving, its backside pinned to the chair as Cardin held it down. Its measly attempts to free itself before hadn't amounted to anything, but the sudden change in its demeanor was just…wrong.

It wasn't able to break free before…

Oh.

"You're waiting for me to kill you. You've realized I'm gonna squish you like a bug no matter what, so why fight back?"

Cardin looked down at the Grimm and realized he was spot on. The thing must not have been as stupid as he'd thought, because it had decided to throw in the towel. Cardin had the drop on it with his superior size and aura, and he could waste it at his leisure.

It was already dead, and no amount of raging opposition on its part would change.

Kind of like Cardin.

He released his chokehold that was pinning it to the chair and held it closer to his face to get a good look at it. It had suddenly changed its behavior, but it physically didn't look any different.

"USSSSUSSSSSUSSSSS!"

"Relax, you little creep. I'm not gonna step on you."

Cardin didn't let it down, lest it regain some of its warrior's spirit, but he did ease up a touch on squeezing it.

It was his pride that saved the bug. Cardin refused to be stupider than a stupid Grimm. He was dead, and getting angry and having a temper tantrum like a diaper baby wasn't going to change that. If a Grimm could control itself, so would he.

Not like killing one Grimm is going to change my circumstances.

No miracle was going to save him. He could probably weather out the hunger, but unless the skies parted, and fresh water started…pouring…out…

Cardin looked up at the storm above him and dropped the Grimm to the floor. It let out what he assumed was an indignant hiss, but he was already out the hatch before it could react further. The storm winds were strong, but Cardin was stronger. Grasping hold of the mast, he…

Retreating back into the airship, he quickly grabbed some of the punctured bottles and empty bags. Pinching, sealing them, or otherwise repairing them as best he could, he angled them so that their contents wouldn't spill out and raised them up to the storm.

It was slow going, and he learned from trial and error that had to do it one at a time, but after just a few short minutes, Cardin had clean, drinkable liquids again.


He had to get some sleep, so he hooked the Centinel's teeth around its back pincers like he had when it was a belt and locked it in the glovebox for the night. It kept chittering, but he wasn't going to just let it sabotage him again in his sleep.

No weird dreams this time – that was a good sign.

When he awoke, the skies were clearer, but it was still windy. That was a good sign, as his sail powered vessel would hopefully be making it to Mistral that much faster.

Cardin released the Grimm from the glovebox with his weapon drawn, just in case it had spent the night planning an ambush. He had no idea why he was anthropomorphizing a Grimm, but he wasn't going to be taking his eyes off of it when it was out and about, lest it try and sabotage his stores again.

It didn't try anything. Cardin saw it climb up walls, so it could probably easily make its way up the walls to the cabinet where he'd stashed the rainwater (it was where the sail-tarp had come from), but it didn't even attempt to. He knew not whether that was because the Grimm wasn't feeling thirsty or because it was actually different in its behavior, but it didn't matter to him. As long as it was on his best behavior, he would let it live.

"S'not like there's any other entertainment on the S.S. Trainwreck."

He'd considered naming his floating hunk of scrap metal the S.S. Shipwreck, but that felt like tempting fate.

The Grimm was acting really weird now. Well, actually, it was acting normal, but normal for a bug or an animal, which was weird for a Grimm. It behaved not like a mindless monster hellbent on killing all intelligent life, but more like the actual centipede it was supposed to resemble. It skittered around, tried to climb his leg, didn't bite his aura, and crawled all over him.

I'm sparing it so that I don't lose my mind from boredom.

If he were being honest with himself, it felt like there was some other reason – something about how killing something with the same hopeless look he'd had in his own eyes would bother him – but he just fixed that problem by not being honest with himself.

It's fun to watch – like a scroll video on RemnTube of some dumb cat or dog making an ass of itself.


The Grimm offered a disturbing lack of resistance when the next night came and it was hooked and forced back into the glovebox. Grimm weren't supposed to have minds, so that fact that it's eyes and feelers pointed in the direction of the glovebox when he hooked it had alarm bells ringing in Cardin's brains. After all, if it was smart enough to recognize patterns and shiz, it was probably smart enough to be planning something.

Cardin propped his mace up against the glovebox, jamming it shut and preventing his little stowaway from trying anything that night.


Cardin knew from all the survival training he'd undergone that the human body could survive three weeks or so without food, but it really sucked to actually be there. There had to be something to cure his munchies when he got to Mistral, but with his stomach growling now and nothing but Long John Silver to take his mind off of the pangs it was feeling, it really just sucked to the max.

Yeah, he named the Grimm. It was really stupid (his choice to name it, not the Grimm) but it wouldn't do to just call it the Centinel or belt all the time. It kept up his pants, so Long John sort of fit. Plus, the surname Silver had a color, satisfying that stupid law everyone was always on about. 'Sides, there was no way in hell he was going to call it Long John Winchester. This was a pet at best, and that was more being generous than a nun in an orphanage.

The skies were clear on their presumed-to-be last day at sea, so Cardin had hopped to the roof of the bullhead to enjoy the calm seas and balmy sun. Long John had followed him out the port, gliding right past the sealed water Cardin had collected without even trying anything. Cardin had watched him like a hawk, and he had no idea what to make of this absolute absence of murder.

"You grow a conscience or something? I'd expect that of a cricket, not a centipede."

"TSSSTSSSTSSS!"

Long John just crawled over Cardin's chest as he reclined against the mast. The huntsman boy was no fool and kept his aura raised, but since that night where LJ had gotten into his food, it hadn't been necessary.

Cardin's stomach growled, and he winced as he clutched it in pain. He'd only been a day and a half without food, but this was getting really bad. There was nothing to be done about it, so he just tried to take his mind off of it.

There wasn't anything in sight for miles, meaning sightseeing was off the table. Scroll games were a no-go, not when his survival was on the line. He tried playing with the Grimm like a chump, dangling an empty chip bag to see if it would jump for them like a cat, but it didn't seem interested.

Seems like it isn't THAT smart.

Fishing might have been nice, both for the distraction and for the haul of edible meat, but he lacked the means to do so. Maybe he could have rigged a line if he cut the mast up, but Cardin wasn't willing to risk damaging his only means of catching the wind if something went wrong, not when he was so close to shore. Besides, he didn't have any bait.

"The computer says we'll be reaching the coastline sometime tonight. I don't know about you, but I think I'll stay up here until we see it. You sticking around?"

"HSSSSHSSSSHSSSS!"

"I'll take that as a yes." Cardin rested his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. "Guess it's just you, me, and the tuna, eh, Long John?"

Splash!

His eyes shot open at the sudden noise, and his hands reached for his mace only for him to remember that he'd left it inside the ship. There was no danger, however. Long John must've gotten restless, because he'd launched himself into the ocean.

"Jeez, didn't realize my company was that offensive to you, LJ."

He watched it with curious eyes as it swam around. All the twenty legs it had moved in unison like tiny little paddles, letting it glide through the water with ease. Cardin had heard of snakes that could swim through the water by slithering, but this was far more fluid. The length of LJ's body undulated up and down, giving it increased propulsion. Centinels were made for land-based motion, but evidently they were just as good if not better at swimming.

"Hey, where you goin'?"

Without warning, Cardin's pet Grimm ducked into the water. It was visible up to a distance beneath the tranquil waves, but it disappeared from view after a moment. Cardin wasn't worried that his new buddy was sinking or anything – it was clearly swimming downwards intentionally – but he truly had no idea what its intentions were.

A curious, stray thought passed through Cardin's mind. It was said that some Grimm got old and became elders or something. Usually it was reserved for big guys like Goliaths or particularly large instances of mammalians like Ursai or Beowolf Alphas, but it was supposed to be potential for any type of Grimm.

That couldn't be it for LJ, though. Grimm like that were ancient, having outlived generations of humans and learned from their experiences. Unless LJ were secretly some gray-haired old man (he doubted that given how tiny it was, even for a Centinel), it couldn't be more than a few years old, and Cardin was probably its first example of human interaction.

Maybe it's because he's so small. Blue whale skulls at museums say that they have mega-sized brains compared to humans, but people are smarter. If Grimm have something similar, then perhaps smaller Grimm get that elder-intelligence boost faster 'cause they have less gray matter to level up.

If that were true, it would sort of explain its sudden boost in intelligence the night he'd nearly killed LJ. It was no longer fighting him because it realized that it simply couldn't, and throwing its life away against him was meaningless.

I can't get complacent, though. It's not fighting me because it can't get past my aura. If it came across defenseless civilians, it would kill them. I had better turn it to mincemeat when I come ashore, especially if it's growing clever in its young old age.

Another weaker splash grabbed his attention back out of his thoughts. This wasn't something submerging into the water, though; it was the opposite. A rather fat fish had popped out from beneath the surface of the ocean and was now floating sideways in the water.

Bingpot – dinner!

Cardin was about to go below decks and scrounge around for something to tether himself with when he went to recover it when it started bobbing towards his ship. He watched in utter amazement as the fish – a tuna, of all things – came closer. Two things quickly became apparent, the second far more notable than the first.

One: there was a hole in its body where fresh blood was seeping out.

Two: Long John Silver had grabbed hold of it with its hind pincers and was swimming it towards the ship.

When it came close enough, Cardin reached a hand down into the water and hoisted the midsized tuna onto the top of the ship in front of him. LJ detached its rear claws when he did so and crawled onto the ship of it own free will.

"You brought this…for me?"

No, it hadn't. Cardin felt stupid as soon as he said it, and Long John disproved that theory nearly instantly as it began to chow down on the raw seafood. It had killed it to feed on it, and the S.S. Trainwreck was the only solid ground for miles to feast on the juicy reward, so it had dragged it back.

LJ didn't seem to mind when Cardin tore off a chunk of fish meat and popped it in his mouth. In fact, as long as Cardin didn't reach too close to the part of the fish that LJ was eating, it didn't even seem to mind his presence.


The two of them reduced the fish to a bloody skeleton over the course of about half an hour. Cardin stopped there, but Long John actually began to grind its mandibles against the bones themselves.

"Why do you even eat?" Cardin asked.

"KSSS-rrr-KSSS-rrr!"

The abnormal noise it made was caused by its mouthpiece gnawing against a particularly large ribcage, but Cardin hadn't been expecting a real answer either way.

"Maybe you got a taste for human delicacies after trying out all of Emerald's snacks," Cardin mused. "Guess I'll never know the real answer."

The sun had set, but the moon wasn't out just yet. Cardin scanned the skyline for signs of land, knowing they should be coming up to it soon, but there was nothing there yet.

Long John decided to give up on the rest of the skeleton. In the end, Cardin didn't actually know if it had been trying to eat it or just sharpen its teeth against it. He couldn't help but notice the parallels between his pet Grimm eating fishbones and how most pet dogs chewed on dog bones.

Just to test his boundaries, Cardin rested a hand on the Grimm. It hissed angrily at first, and for a second he was worried it would snap at his fingers. However, a few seconds passed, and when it became clear to LJ that Cardin wasn't trying to hammer him with a fist, the hissing stopped.

"Our first step towards peaceful human-Grimm coexistence," Cardin snorted sarcastically. "How special."

Long John responded by slipping up Cardin's arm, crawling down his shoulder, and snaking its way around his waist like a belt. It didn't hook its front and rear mandibles together like Cardin had used to, meaning that it could come undone at any time of its own free will, but the message was clear.

"So, I guess I have a pet Grimm now. The boys back home'll never believe this one."


Whoever invented seeing land from a ship deserved to be thrown off that ship and eaten by an octopus. Well, no one really invented that, but all those movie shots where the sailor shouted 'Land Ho' were baloney. Cardin saw land just before dawn, but he wasn't actually ashore for nearly another hour. The computer had either lied or not been smart enough to compute the extra half day it took in addition to the initially predicted three.

It took him another hour or so to unload off the S.S. Trainwreck anything he could consider valuable enough to warrant carrying on his person. This included as much water as he could, the remaining Dust from the airship's engines, another tuna that LJ had scrounged up while deep sea diving, and the sail from the tarp, folded up all neat-like into a nice little backpack that he could tuck into his armor, then unfurl to make a sleeping bag-tent kinda thing when night fell.

Then, there was only one thing left to do.

Ride.


Cardin's motorcycle roared like a lion as he kicked it into a higher gear and tore past the deep brown tree trunks. His hair was whipping in the wind like a stallion's mane as he hollered in excitement at the vehicle's top speed. Long John's screeched like a maniac from his side car as his thorax flopped about in the wind, and Cardin took that as encouragement to turn on the turbo and see how fast this baby could really go.

Okay, fine, fine. He didn't actually have a hog, but wouldn't that have been so cool? He could've cruised through the jungle on a wild bike ride, moving down stupid shrubs and sticks as he zoomed his way to Argus. Cardin began to salivate as he imagined the theoretical epic moment.

I so wish I had a motorcycle.

In reality, he set out on foot in the direction of the port city. Once he'd supplied up, he abandoned the useless airship and began the trek, LJ crawling about his shoulders. He was actually moving away from his final destination of Mistral City, but Argus was far closer in distance, by nearly a factor of ten. Cardin was travelling north, along the eastern edge of the continent of Anima. The trek was supposed to take him a few days (eight according to the computer), but he imagined that might change if he picked up the pace or slowed down to sightsee. Once he got to a certain point, he would have to venture into the jungle, but for now he could hug the beaches and nearby jungles.

Unlike the boat trip, water was readily available in the jungle. Cardin actually emptied out all but one of his rainwater bottles (just in case) when he found a clean stream, figuring that a lighter load would speed up his travels. He could just fill up on drinks when he found a natural water source. He also dropped the tuna, because it started to stink up his backpack in the hot sun.

For food, Cardin considered hunting, but he found that foraging along the way was a much smarter move. Hunting meant he needed to track down prey, and that would only prolong his already too long trip. Gathering, on the other hand, just required him to pause to collect the berries, nuts, carrots, fruits, or whatever other edible grub he found along the way. Now, Cardin wouldn't have said no to downing a juicy deer or rabbit if he saw one, but they simply weren't as frequent.

Or if they are, they know to run away at the sight of a manly Winchester. Guess that makes 'em smarter than a wild banana tree.


tl;dr Look at me. I'm the Cardin now.


Next Chapter: Laws of the Tribe

In which Cardin Winchester finds a community and realizes we live in a society.


Author's Notes

It was never going to be a mystery why the title was what it was, but now we know. Hooray.

Cardin isn't the most noble being to spare a Grimm. He literally just kept it around for laughs and giggles and because he wanted to prove to himself that he was in control of his emotions. However, he now has a hunting companion who's more than proving its worth, so Long John Silver, the You in You, Me and the Tuna, is here to stay.

The majority of this tale takes place in Mistral, with 3 of the 4 major arcs here; we're officially done with the Grimmlands arc, with Cardin having finally escaped it and shed all reminders of its presence.

This was quite the lonely chapter – no one but our boy, his boy, and the murdered fish they consumed. Don't worry, we'll be getting new friends next update.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!