All around houses and stores were set ablaze.

Men were dragged into the streets being slaughtered by the dozens.

Women and children were tossed into cages then pulled inside bullheads which were waiting on stand by.

Anything not nailed or tied down was theirs to take.

Worst of all was that he was alone watching it all playing out.

The little boy was already terrified and crying but it helped him for comfort to have-

"Big sis!?" The little boy cried out as he looked around frantically looking for her, a giant tank of an ursa roared behind him and in that instant he bolted into the back end of his burning neighborhood. "Sister, where are you" he cried out in terror.

unfiltered dread coursed through his being running through fires in houses to escape grimm and bandits alike the latter of whom were violently cut down by the grimm that chased him down.

He was nothing to this world and the world intended to prove it by raven branwen. He watched as she'd killed his father, tortured his mother.

Looking over to the house he spotted rayla being dragged in the house rayla in their disgusting hands she was crying and they laughing, that's when his rage powered through and in that moment he felt at his worst and the storm came crashing down on top of his head and glassed the surrounding area and blackened the ground beneath his body.

"Someone, please help!" He wept as he curled up into himself. "It's so cold here; im sorry, gods im so sorry for the things I did, I tried to be a good person but it was over before it even started!"

"Thats because your a killer through and through" yang said angrily on his left.

"Shut your mouth" he yelled at her as he threw himself up to his feet clenching his fists.

"Even I wouldn't be low enough to love you" Weiss smiled toothily on his right.

"Shut up damn it" he whipped to her face eyes burning with tears.

"I should never have trusted you" Ruby spat standing behind him next to yang.

"Shut up just shut up" he grabbed a fistful of his hair.

"You're a monster, a thing" Blake sneered

"I said-" he sank to his knees holding his head in pain

In unison ren and nora spoke directly infront of him. "Your worthless"

"Shut-"

Behind him stood jaune, he could practically feel him smiling. "Hehehe, you were never that strong; just living is an embarrassing act"

"Shu-"

Pyrrha said nothing, but she did laugh at his continuous pain ridden face with tears threatening to spill.

"Just shut the fuck up, stop talking!" he teared up again but didn't bother suppressing it.

Then, like a breath of fresh air in the winters of vale a beautiful woman donned with silver chains and jewelry adorning sapphires on her dress and anklet, wore a half emerald pendant with a phoenix on the back.

"You've endured quite the burden haven't you" the woman said more than asked.

The woman knelt down to grasp his cheek on his scarred side but he recoiled

"Son, it's me" she reached out and pulled him in a hug.

Looking up he saw her in all her loving splendor and his adoptive mother Ezra valentine, his pain and despair turned on its head and all his hope was brought back a bit and not even so much as a minute passed and he sobbed holding onto her like a life line. felt her kissing the top of his head. "I know sweetie, mommy's here for you"

The look on his face turned sour when she looked him in the eyes and she was crumbling to dust in his arms and in a desperate attempt to hold onto her she pooled in his arms like a bag of black flour.

Witnessing this happen he took the deepest breath he had ever taken, grabbed her ashes and clutched them close to his chest. "Nooo, no, no, no, no, no. MOM, MOM, COME BACK"

The breath he took in was like gathering all the pain he could into one act and screamed his heart out in anguish, pain was all he felt and begged to let it end and hoped it was a quick one.

Everything he'd endured flooded into him all at once and his turn came, his body fell apart as he screamed for a few measly seconds and then his nightmare ended.

"Maybe this is the end, heh...bout time too"

Heartache...anguish...rage...love...and familial warmth. these were cole's emotions just as he began to open his eyes to a haze of red and clear swirling around his eyes like syrup, oil or maybe even alcohol in a glass.

he reached over to try feeling the liquid around him, the act of doing so he froze when a black arm with cracked white bone armor resembling his old armor before he ended up in this situation, and weird enough he brought his blackened appendage to inspect it but the act of doing so was weak and sluggish.

Moving his arm around he examined all of what he could clearly see. and the arm horrified him; white bone plates on the back of his fingers and hand, nails were inch long thick but heavily cracked claws, plates of bone armor on every part of his fingers, even the back of his hand had bone plating. Taking a look further up himself he noticed there were three electrodes stuck to his scarred chest and a mask fastened over his mouth and nose feeding him air.

Grabbing the wires he tried his damnedest to rip them off his chest and did so, after he had done that he gathered himself mentally for just a moment and tried to push against the wall of glass separating him from the rest of the area that was almost impossible to make out.

How long he had been in there he didn't know but he didn't care. He. Needed. Out. RIGHT. NOW!

Flexing his fingers he took note that the claws were sharp but didn't pierce his skin. 'let's see just how sharp they are' he thought feeling a bit of determination. his body told him not to but his will to escape and the desperation of freedom overruled his body to just deal with it. Raking the claws across the glass created thin fissures along its surface, 'too weak' he thought as he swiped again. Still too weak. Too slow was a better explanation seeing as he was in a tank of red liquid.

Next he tried stabbing at his liquid-y prison and he did so with a frantic tempo of irrationality and fear. But the glass proved stronger than his claws and soon all five white claws snapped with a muffled crunch sending pain up his arm as black filled his sight but the pain forced him to push even harder letting rage for his current state fuel him to ball up his hand in a tight fist and slammed his fist into the glass barely cracking it

"you're the strongest boy I've ever met cole"

Hitting it Harder a large crack spread over the surface.

"you have to keep living, if not for me then do it for yourself"

Next punch was a bit faster and harder this time yelling in anger.

"I know its hard, but that's when you fight the hardest, and you'll prove them all wrong"

More rage fueled punches dented and cracked the glass this time he saw the liquid slowly draining out by the movement of the oily swirls moving toward the cracks and that alone gave him hope.

"cole it's me Weiss, I need you...please"

With one final punch his wavy red world gave way as he slipped through the hole with the pain of glass cutting his legs, back and left side of his ribs. His mask was torn off halfway through the hole and by pure instinct he accidentally took in a hefty breath of the red liquid and hit the hard marble floor hard.

Struggling to breathe he let out a violent coughing fit so loud and hard releasing everything in his lungs he could hear himself echoing in the room.

"I am not going to die here!"

Stale cold air filled his lungs, the sound of ragged breaths filled the area while struggling to so much as stay up on his hands and knees. Thankfully his only concern was staying higher than the soiled floor.

He noticed the cuts that raked across his body had blood leaking a good amount from his wounds as he crawled over to a wooden table and grabbed a large bottle of Atlesian vodka, at first it was his smartest option since his other was potentially getting an infection so he quickly dumped it down his back and side cleansing his wounds for now anyway, unfortunately it didn't stop the agony from setting his nerves on ablaze. In doing so forced himself to stifle the screaming while he started punching the ground cracking the tiles with a few tears falling from his eyes but this cut his fist making him dump more all over his hand and he screamed out without restraint.

The initial agony faded and sank into himself to a numb stinging pain and using that to focus he changed his attention to the area around him.

"cl-cl...othes" he rasped out looking around spotting a large coat hung loosely from the desk chair. Dragging himself over to the coat he felt just how atrophied his muscles were and in five long and painful minutes later he grabbed the edge of the desk pulling his body up to shakily stand up practically throwing himself into the chair he yanked the coat over his nude form wrapping it tightly around him.

Taking a moment to rest he put his arms and head on the desk huffing and puffing from exhaustion. Cole coughed a bit more as he took in his surroundings but nothing seemed noteworthy enough, it honestly looked like a normal desk and computer with supplies for paperwork.

"seems like ozpin and whoever is in charge here shop at the same boring supply shop" he croaked with a tired smile.

Patting the coat down he searched the outer and inner pockets and found an id and a phone. He tossed the phone away and ripped the lanyard off tying it around his hair putting it in a long ponytail and said ponytail reached his lower back. Wet or not he knew he needed to cut it sometime and when he touched his face his fingers met a greasy but full beard that met his sideburns and in bulk felt at least three inches long.

'I look like that old man from the woods' he thought as he looked around...or at the best of his abilities since it was really blurry.

putting the id back where he found it he turned his attention to the keyboard in front of him. He lightly tapped a random key watching it hum to life. Grabbing the mouse he moved the cursor to a file marked sigma II and another marked alpha knight, 'what is this?' he thought as a plethora of pictures and notes pulled up revealing himself in videos and a large list of samples taken from him and which floor they were on, the samples he read ranged from blood, sperm -fucking eww- hair, skin and much more. with every file he read the more disgusted and horrified he felt both feelings had washed over him and he fought to not puke or drink what remained of the vodka, hell or both.

After a few moments an idea wormed it's way into the back of his head knowing full well he wouldn't be able to leave just yet, but still, he couldn't push the nausea out of his mind so he let it sit with him while he read the files.

'what's going on here' he almost didn't want to know but he couldn't stop reading, but thankfully his file was only a few dozen files large containing his medical history and the tests he'd had undergone without his consent, while sigma II was denser and had more covering it and even more detail on him was documented.

Clone wasn't the word he'd use considering the other subject was 100% faunas in the gene department, but her looked like his perfect opposite and it enraged him how it was so easily made possible.

Sigma production showed that only one of what he was had been successfully created but was missing and the original recipient -him- had been named alpha knight but was not ready for departure to some woman named S. the original cole valentine foster was seen as too precious to dispose of when his DNA proved too unstable to replicate so plans to send him to the 'S' woman wasn't happening so the man who had the clone went to renaming naming him sigma hoping to return to replicating grimm to be rid of him once and for all. He himself was kept as a trophy and given that he was in one piece made him glad he'd not been dead.

"I going to be sick" he said feeling so disgusted he almost fainted on the desk.

Knowing he couldn't walk, he felt it was better he'd wheel himself over to the door, when he grabbed the knob he grabbed the card and swiped it in the id in the card slot opening it to an even colder hallway.

Quickly rolling out to a hallway he found they too were filled with red sludge, every tank were full of other hims, the horror was he tried to look away focusing on getting out of wherever he'd woken up in.

"I need to try recharging if im going to have any chance of moving around better around here in one piece" he took in his surroundings again and said aloud to no one, "security will probably be heavily fortified but you can't be too careful" he said trying out his energy location ability and saw everything light up like one giant fiery gold light that died out as it spread through the area like a wave.

"well I'd better just drain something" he shrugged pushing himself to the back of a huge septic tank and found a power box draining what little he could and ended up draining too much and shut down the entire corridor.

Every clone of him woke up and had begun to drown in the tanks thanks to the loss of air in their masks, all around him he watch rotting and deformed versions himself die slow deaths.

"it..it isn't me, I'm not a clone. I'm me- I'm the real cole, I'm real god damn it!" he mumbled shaking and shivering like he was stuck out in the Atlesian tundra. as he tried to stand on his own he realized he still couldn't stand on his own so he opted to just keep riding the chair towards the large doors behind him.

In the next room cole saw grimm of all types drowning just as his clones had but much slower and it seemed a few were trying to escape like he had done. Claws and feet of every type fighting to stay alive but quickly started dying one by one until suddenly, his worst fears came true. a loud shattering of glass came to his ears and just as he thought it was just faulty equipment a near demonic screeches echoed throughout the corridor.

The world around him looked like it was in fast forward seeing so many tanks burst open throwing dead and rotten grimm to the floor, all of it left with him hyperventilating struggling in trying to move somewhere safe to hide and quick.

The sudden shatter of glass across from him snapped him out of it giving him enough initiative to throw his dead weight behind the septic tank closest to him, one with a beringal inside it already dead and disintegrating from view filling the tank with black mist revealing him standing behind the red fluid he was in not an hour ago.

Swallowing his fear for a few seconds he pulled both hands over his mouth a six legged wolf dog the size of a horse ran down the hall snarling towards the corridor of dead clones unknowingly leading more grimm to an extremely short lived feast. Cole hoped they were distracted long enough with each other while he fled, but doubts threw his hopes out the window. as fast as his weak and trembling body could move from his hiding spot, he forced his legs out of the chair sprinting towards the doors on the far side of the floor and as close as it was cole thought he'd been running for longer than ten seconds.

Just as he got ten or so feet from the door he slipped on the red liquid slamming into the floor falling hard on the floor and slid to a painful stop hitting the door back first. just before it opened up, all the grimm that were awake thirst for his blood seeing as he was the last source of food in the corridor. All of them had a level of rushed him to feed off his barely worthy flesh. with mixed sounds from them charging him he felt it was the only thing he had to do.

Fueled by desperation simply just to live and adrenaline flooding his system, he shot all of his energy at them blowing a few apart and destroying the tubes behind them creating shrapnel that flew in every direction while just barely harming the furthest ones from the explosion which was looking like such an ultimately fruitless effort on his part releasing everything he had all at once. "That was a big-" he said aloud when he froze mid sentence and gasped for breath and collapsed to the ground choking for a breath. Cole had stupidly shot all his energy in an attempt to ward off trouble but all he did was quicken his chances of dying.

Shifting his body he made his second escape attempt and despite the black spots swimming his eyes he forced his body to move. Trying to push himself to his feet despite slipping around for a few seconds he stumbled past the quickly closing door and dared looking back only for it to have been a grave mistake, the large grimm hound from earlier was quick to race towards him. already a few feet from him roaring as it leapt at him to rip him apart, he closed his eyes screaming and held it by the insides of its cheeks furiously chomping mere inches from his face, franticly moving away from its maws snapping at him he realized it was really the doors holding it in place not him.

Between his screaming and the doors slowly closing, he never even heard the emergency alarms go off as a giant thick metal door came down and chopped the beast in half crunching bones and severing its spine from its hind legs leaving the rest to disappear while also trying to kill him.

As its other half began to slow its jaws stopped halfway from biting him in half and choked on its blood spewing a bit onto him -which was absorbed into his arm but he missed it- as it began to disintegrate, he sat there feeling his heart furiously beat against his chest, pounding blood and oxygen into his body he felt how bad his breathing was ragged and frantic and his mind desperately trying to grasp that he was still alive. Watching the canine fully disappear was probably the most satisfying thing Cole had ever witnessed in a long time.

Considering the fact that he was weak and a security door is what saved him he was sent mentally spiraling; insanity was his assumed mentality as Ezra and Weiss came to mind and the hope had didn't bother having had forced its way into him, coupled with all that happened also came the realization that he was going to survive was enough that it broke him and tears fell like heavy rain and hysteria giving way to psychotic laughing and crying at the same time. he laughed feeling relived that he had actually survived that. But even still, he was so wound up with a cavalcade of emotions he just kept bawling his eyes out hoping someone could or at least would save him and take him away from this hell he woke up in, dying would be a savior but he knew better than to hope anymore.

regardless of weather or not cole was a twenty four year old man he had feelings and if someone thought otherwise, they had failed the simple job of being decent.

After a few more moments it hit him, no one was coming for him and he couldn't hope for it when he was clearly alone again. "no matter how often I hope for happiness- am i always doomed to suffer?!"

After an hour he calmed enough to breathe right without hiccupping and just as he was calmer he had realized that despite the obvious holes in his memory he could still clearly remember losing his mother and sister, yelling at ezra, beating his old friends, hurting weiss and ruby's family and now disappearing for however long he'd been gone "that's right, im alone...no one is coming- i hate how it feels to be alone" he said standing up stumbling back through the corridor full of dead hims and grimm "I have to save myself this time around!" he exclaimed opting to hope whoever left him there had his things...or at least something that could help him in any way.

Hope ya'll love that I did this cause I was asked to 'finish what I started' and I guess it's worth a shot but as usual I need to use more characters and with ice queendom out I guess I could take a crack at nightmare topics and other characters need a good kick to the ground before getting up and cole isn't the only one.