The Hunters: Training (AKA: The Founding)

Training
“And we shall know no fear, for we are fear incarnate,”
-Codex Astartes by Roboute Guilliman

Eighteen shots between the three of them, that’s all they started with. After the ordeal they went through, only two shots. The woods they were in betrayed the senses, the heat of summer caused the smells and sights of the woods to change drastically.
“Fuck, we are so fucked!” Joseph whispered “This is insane, we’re gonna die,”
“Shut up, we can still get through this. Let’s just get our wits about us,” Israel was blowing smoke, he knew they didn’t have a chance. They were pursued for the past half hour until they were weak, out of breath, and scared.
They settled in a small clearing that was barely the size of a bedroom, sitting down and trying to relax and get it together. All was silent until it was broken by Tristan,
“We only have two shots…how the hell are we going to get through this alive with only two shots?”
As if on cue, a figure struck Joseph from behind and sent him stumbling, allowing the foe to relinquish his weapon. The butt of Joseph’s weapon caught Israel in the center of his chest knocking him down. Tristan was tripped as he attempted to spring into action, releasing his own weapon to be grabbed by the attacker, who now stood over Tristan and Israel. The guns were pointed at the back of the boy’s heads, obvious in intention. Joseph was still stunned but could see what was unfolding, he and his friends had lost.
“Boom. Headshot!” *POK* *POK* the paint ball guns Saren held blasted into Israel and Tristan’s scalps, who in turn doubled in on themselves, writhing in pain.
“AH! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Aaaaah!” Tristan was screaming from the welt on him head
“It that-? Yes, that is my blood that is a lot of my blood!” Israel was panicking about the dark red paint that he mistook for blood.
“Shut up you pansies, bullets hurt a lot more,”
“Fuck you maniac, this hurts like a bitch, which you are!” for his comment, Tristan caught a small, playful kick to the ribs.

Joseph and Saren helped their partially wounded friends back to the cabin they were staying at and laid them down on the furniture. Joseph asked the obvious question
“Saren, what in the holy blue fuck was that!?”
“Training, what else?” she replied, “If you can’t toughen up then we’re all screwed, you guys did better than I thought you would, by the way,”
“That isn’t much of a consolation, considering,” said Israel with an icepack on the back of his head. “Also considering that you just threw the paintball guns at us and said we had a five minute head start before you came after us, odd seeing as how we were only out there for three minutes before the first spike pit,”
“How’s this then? Next week, I’m taking you guys out to take down a low level vampire,” Saying such sparked off a symphony of cheers and whoops in approval.
“So, no more training exercises?” asked Tristan “Because I, personally, can’t think of anything else for you to try to kill us with,”
“No more training exercises, you learn on the job now,” They didn’t know, or care about, the horrible implications of that statement they were presented with. “Now let’s get in that lake, I’m cookin’!”
They ran and jumped into the lake, laughing and splashing each other.
This continued for about thirty seconds until Saren shouted
“Get out of the water! Now! Don’t ask, just move!” The others rushed to the shore on their orders and looked into the water at what Saren was concerned about. A large serpent-like fin rose from the water and shrunk back into the depths
“What the hell was that?” Asked Joseph
“That was…a leviathan. Specifically a dwarf pygmy leviathan,”
“Wait. Dwarf pygmy? So that’s a miniature one of those things? It’s huge!” Joseph was right seeing as how the beast was about as big as an ambulance.
“Well, we’d better deal with it, come on, I’ve got the gear we need back at the cabin,”
“Wait, did you bring guns into my grandparent cabin?” Israel asked
“Yeah. So?”
“They can smell the gunpowder for months. They’re old, they can do that. I’m not going to be allowed back here,”
“That is the least of our concerns. If we can’t kill this damn thing then who the hell’s going to hire us? Now stop being a bitch before I slap you like one and get that boat of yours into the water,”
In a matter of minutes they were armed and in the water with Israel driving and loading his newly acquired Colt single action army revolver.
Saren had her customized nagant revolver loaded and ready, trained at the water, looking for anything resembling a fin.
“Saren, stop with that, you’re making me just a little uncomfortable,” Said Tristan racking the slide of his Beretta 93 after loading.
She cared little about what he said. Her top priority was the monsters head on a silver platter, her comrades personal discomfort was secondary.
Joseph was busy admiring his ‘dirty harry’ S&W Model 29 to focus on much besides the size of the holes the .44 magnum was going to make when the water’s surface was broken with a roar.
“There! Two o’clock low!” Israel shouted as he cocked the hammer of his revolver and fired, missing the first few shots and hitting the beast twice in the body as the others began a hail of rounds upon the leviathan, managing to hit it with two nagant shots, three from the beretta and a single .44 magnum before it sank beneath the depths again.
“Israel, circle round! If we’re lucky we can kill this thing on the next round,” Saren barked
“You’re scary when you’re in the zone,” Was all Joseph could say before the beast resurfaced.
“Twelve o’clock! Wait, is it going to ram us!?” Israel wondered out loud as he fumbled to reload his pistol
“Kill it! Open fire!” Saren ordered as she and her friends rained hell down of the leviathan in the form of around thirty pieces of copper wrapped lead, tearing the creature’s head to pieces before the boat came to a stop close enough to touch the corpse.
“Okay then…You boys grab all the casings that aren’t in the water.  I’ll cut the sellable parts from the leviathan so we can at least break even from the ammo we used,” Saren cut the intact spines, horns and scales from the corpse and placed them in the boat before cutting out the swim bladder and letting the body sink to the bottom of the lake before they returned to the shore.
“Do we need to worry about the police? People would have heard the shots,” Tristan inquired
“Trust me. If I know anything, it’s how to make our work undetectable. In this case, the skeet shooting competition will explain the shots, our guns can’t be traced and I’ve already bribed the right people,”

An hour later in the car back home

Israel being his typical malcontent self was asking a prevalent question,
“Don’t we need a name? Just for trademark reasons,”
“I’ve worked this trade for most of my life and I never needed a sign that it was me,”
“That was singular, this is a team,” Tristan chimed in from behind the wheel.
Saren was quiet in thought for a moment
“…Voyevoda. It’s our team name now, no arguments,”
“Warlord. I like it, Russian,” Israel said before slouching over and cleaning his gun for the trip home.

Thus ending the first real kill and naming of Voyevoda