So it is done

Mistral

Leonard Lionheart always holds a position that is 'somewhere in the middle'.

Somewhere in the crowd of officials, somewhere in the middle of the achievement list, somewhere in third position in the phone book. Not bad, not great, but exactly what people called 'average'.

Leonardo Lionheart was the most 'ordinary' of all humans and faunus you can imagine. The same 'Hunter' from the general list of all possible and existing Hunters that ordinary people imagine. With slightly obscure features, 'some' kind of weaponry and 'some' missions on his belt.

Leonardo Lionheart presented himself as the most ordinary Hunter that could ever come out of Haven. A Hunter License proudly proclaiming that four years of studies, and years of prep school, had not been in vain. He upheld his certificate like a badge, or like a ticket to a bright future full of expensive wines, beautiful women and mind-blowing adventures.

Excluding the fact that, Leonardo Lionheart was always painfully aware that he was an 'ordinary' hunter.

The reason Hunters were trained in a batch of a dozen, two or, if they were lucky, three dozen a year in Haven was that there were very few prospective Hunters in the first place. There was only a small percentage of people who were capable of shooting huge monsters with their electric torch swords while twirling acrobatic pirouettes, not forgetting to flash their white-tipped smiles at the same time.

The ivory tower of society that is already more than the ordinary human of Faunus. Hunters are powerful warriors and powerful modern-day miracle-workers, darlings of the public, men, and women alike.

When you don't just think you're stronger than everyone around you, when you really are the strongest man in hundreds of thousands. When you possess the ability to single-handedly take over a small settlement, and when you're promised a hundred thousand lien rewards for a week or two of work. It's not hard to start losing touch with reality.

To look away from the harsh, dangerous work into the beautiful dreams of your third mansion and fifth yacht waiting for you on a private island dock.

But the problem with reality is that it is heartless to the dreams of the young and naive. One mistake, and instead of dreams of yachts, come dreams of the time when the number of your limbs was the same as the one you had at birth.

Sometimes, after a mistake, Hunters didn't dream of anything at all.

That's right, Hunters Academies trained their wards desperately, but some things cannot be learned within the confines of textbooks, lecture hours or even practical training. Half of the graduating teams of Hunters did not survive their first year, and another half of the remainder did not survive the first five years.

Those who survived the five years on the job were the Hunters that ordinary people imagined. Supporting the charming smile or even a serious frown, an existence straight out of the scary and beautiful stories, carrying the scars, and charm of veterans of terrible battles.

Those are the Hunters who lived up to it and became models for magazines, TV show stars and other prominent members of society, enticing young lads into their profession, posing for posters around.

Most of the Hunters, on the other hand, simply didn't live to see the other side of the heroic life of the 'super-humans', they had burned out in their early years. And never wanting anything more to do with either Hunters, Grimm, or even other humans.

There lies the crux of the problem. Freshly graduating Hunters rarely think of the worst, and far more likely, outcome, guided as they are by the gilded posters and the years of training they'd lived through. And as harsh as training at the Academy was, some things couldn't be prepared for at all.