I'm still alive; just hope you enjoy the read and comment if you liked it...or whatever

Walls of ice and stone shattered and splintered like glass, people of all races and monsters alike; none were capable of escaping the eternal frost and the wild hunt that led it to all corners of the continent and unfortunately no one survived after the portal eradicated itself after geralt leapt through and to make matters worse yennifer was the only one that survived long enough to only take the leader out with every drop of magic she could muster and went too far by sacrificing her life to turn him into a puddle just as she was stabbed through the chest pinning her to the brickwork of a destroyed tower.

"My beloved geralt, my sweet ciri, and yes…even you triss-" she shuddered and trembled in despair but then took all of her heart's pain and let out a scream as she unleashed a literal storm of hellfire.

"Everything you have ever felt; everything you have buried…" she heard the old voice of her past rang out and in that instant, her radiant and golden fires became white and pink funneling her life's worth of pain into her magic.

"She's no daughter of mine"

"You horrible useless bitch!"

"Do you actually have what it takes"

"FOR ONCE IN MY PAINFUL LIFE, I AM SO SORRY I DIDN'T LOVE YOU ENOUGH"

Voices spoke to her from different points of her life that were most painful, and she felt like this was her last stand, so she dug deeper.

"You're just angry because you lost your chance to be beautiful!"

"Do you actually have what it takes?"

"Shatter your bottle; let your chaos burst free!"

Accepting her fate, she let her flames burn one last time. "I love you al-" she cried out as her flames were slowly suffocating in the unyielding cold and after a moment of warmth it was quickly snuffed out, freezing her over and shattered against the sheer force of the cold.

"YEN!" ciri yelled out as she sat up, reaching out for nothing in a cold sweat and tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Same nightmare?" geralt asked, poking the fire with a stick wearing a look of concern for her continued lack of a proper night's sleep.

"Yeah, but this one was different" she replied but felt no need to explain any further.

The transition to this weird world was a difficult thing to manage but seemed to get by fine, as long as you don't consider the fact that their training to fight monsters with spells, potions, and poisons was now useless made them a bit upset but not impossible.

"Hey ciri, I think I heard something in the forest's edge" geralt said grabbing his sword and walked off leaving her to herself, and she'd have stayed put if not for the sound of lightning and something exploding over the tree line and screaming followed suit.

"geralt, wait for me!" she said, taking off in a dead sprint towards the scene of something she hoped wasn't what she feared since geralt was unresponsive to her calling out to him in time.

Weaving through fallen trees, rotting Grimm and apparently remnants of a small RV ciri found a boy- no a man no older than her perhaps older- unconscious and battered with his left arm mangled and shattered and worst of all his bodysuit was covered in massive dents scratches and gashes all over as well as dirt and blood.

"There's no time to save his arm; amputation is his best bet if he's going to avoid blood rot and severe fever" geralt said grabbing and tearing off the armor and looked at ciri "I need your help"

"Why my help, his armor shouldn't be too hard to cut into" she replied, sitting the man up against a fallen tree.

"This rubbery suit under his armor won't allow me to cut it off, but I know what will" geralt said grabbing his arm to inspect the arm portion and added "magic of your caliber will no doubt work perfectly"

She sighed, unsheathing her blade and said, "how much of his arm is broken?"

"From the elbow down but-" he tried to say but watched her sword slice right through his arm severing it at the top of his elbow and immediately went right to closing the wound with magic and wrapped the stump to help stop the bleeding, geralt took notice of the material and noticed she was wrapping it in straps of her old white shirt without thinking, but since it was an emergency, he didn't say anything.

Just before geralt could ask about her skills in medical attention, a man about the exact age as this unconscious man they found stepped out of the darkness wearing all black sporting a white fang mask and red hair with two black horns growing from his head and pointed his blade at them "are you friends of his or enemies?" he asked glaring at them brandishing his crimson blade with murderous intent.

Ciri put a hand on geralt's chest and sheathed her sword to show the man they weren't bad nor had ill intent.

"We heard an explosion when we were camping out at the edge of the woods, we meant no harm" she explained briefly calming the man greatly, but he stayed on guard in case a threat came by.

"His arm was shattered and mangled, so I cut it off, if you know him, then you're his best bet at survival" she added handing him over to the strange man and left with geralt in tow.

She didn't know what the white haired guy was, but he was cute and looked too dangerous to just be some civilian who got hurt; people who were being hunted wouldn't be out there in the wilderness, there was a reason she found him but who's to say that maybe it was purely coincidence.

two weeks ago*

Cole had spent the better half or more of his time training, studying, and trying to bond with a few teams, but instead he quickly began to notice how little they actually cared for or even about him (save for Ruby, Weiss -kind of- and a few of the teachers), but when someone as paranoid as Cole found out why, something in his heart snapped, like a twig under a boot his attitude went from looking into every single contingency to see where it was going wrong, and eventually, he'd figure it out but was just hoping he was wrong by the end of it all.

He overheard that out of all the student body of beacon, Weiss and ruby were the only ones to defend his name while the others weren't even trying, not even the professors got involved as per his request to ignore it since he'd even tried to, and Cole couldn't find an answer to why he was ignored, but it no longer mattered when penny one day said that she went over all the data compiled on his life and she herself said, "he's nothing more than a beast in a breaking cage waiting to break free, just be ready when he does" and when he heard those words he decided to only talk to those that took time out of their day to talk to him, and he appreciated the silence.

Half of his time in the halls and in classes he was slowly realizing he was getting his name dragged through the mud and accused of things that he was innocent of; being seen as less than what his reputation once was- considering all the good he'd done- to be a relatively respectable person, the almost immediate perspective shift pissed him off.

At one point Cole had caught wind of when and why everyone changed how he was viewed and until last week the rumors got to the point that he was training harder for longer hours of the day, and it started to make Glynda, a few other teachers, Ruby and even nora and Ren worry about him. When he talked about it with Ruby a few fourth year students confronted him and told him that it was normal for people to talk about others when they had either nothing better to do or were jealous of what he had and that they didn't have it whatever that it was didn't matter when it only got to the point where he was slaughtering Grimm hordes on his own with ease now that Ruby had helped train him with using a weapon, and it was scary to watch him go from blowing off some steam to maniacally laughing at the adrenaline rush it gave him when he let all control go to just fight until he fell unconscious.

Today proved to not only be a bad day, but made it to have been his worst. Since he was genuinely trying to improve in many ways Cole tried meditation with Ren, power control with yang, combat with Ruby and Pyrrha, and extra studying the more advanced school work was for Weiss' time but after a while they mostly told him no or made excuses for why or why not, eventually he stopped asking all together.

His temper would Soon get the better of him when the first and second years had purposefully pushed him over the edge, so he decided to ditch training with jaune and his friends like they'd planned -mostly as an apology because of Weiss and ruby- to train alone since he was starting to like the alone time to reflect on who was worth his time.

It was better that Cole didn't come anywhere near them, cause if he fought them outside of class he'd hospitalize if not kill the seven of them (including a few other students) and he'd rather not do it to people that didn't matter to him anymore.

Standing at the center of the room, Cole was a bit preoccupied with suiting up in the experimental bodysuit Ruby had helped him develop in secret -Cole hated people knowing anything he was doing- she'd told him before he left with it for testing to not break this version making Cole chuckle at the memory.

two days ago*

"don't get over reliant with this suit Cole, we may have created this together but I'm the one that had the plans"

She walked over to the far side of the room and gave him a duffel filled with either clothes or snacks, something he wouldn't be that surprised with.

"I know Ruby, we already talked about this" he said rolling his eyes after he stretched his body in every way possible eliciting a loud groan and a few loud cracks in his neck and back, "this is a bit early for you, and it's Friday late at night."

"I'm just being careful, this is a secret only known by the two of us so pay attention" she said mildly glaring at him to make sure he was paying attention but quickly caught herself staring at him having a light blush on her face, but because it was the forge room it wasn't odd to be red and sweating he couldn't fully tell.

"Okay, so here's the rundown, it's built with a type of crystalline gel-filled layer underneath a thick black ballistic armored bodysuit, both work in tandem to keep you evenly protected and properly temperature controlled in any environment"

Y'know ruby what I'm surprised with is that you got the gel layer that regulates temperature and can reactively change its density…it's almost like it's illegal to have made this" Cole said sarcastically. "Who's your contact and should I be concerned?" somewhere at some random store, a white heiress sneezed like Pikachu.

"I tested it with my sniper rounds, so you should be fine. -that sounded like a threat- this inner lining is like a thick polyester suit, but this one's made of a moisture-absorbing synth material that redistributes said moisture to keep you from needing to clean yourself for weeks…but I wouldn't advise it since that's just- blugh" he chuckled as she shivered in disgust.

"im surprised it doesn't react to my lightning" he said, hoping to change the subject.

"I designed it like that, so it doesn't lock up if you fire off some of that powerful juice of yours, so there's a step in a better direction; power armor fueled by your lightning is tricky but I'm not sure if it's necessary" she retorted with a poke to his chest only to switch to rambling ideas to herself.

"Either you have no idea why or you used a type of lightning dust crystal cloth to help pass the energy passively through it" he replied, removing and packing it away in a duffel bag piece by piece.

Cole smirked at her and thought to himself" if it weren't her, Weiss would have been the one at his side building this suit with him. His smile died at the thought of Ruby now behind the design and construction of something deemed illegal and untested.

Looking over to the armor plates and helmet Cole noticed she had changed his original style, the outer armor was a wasp-like helmet with a Heads-Up-Display, built in cooling system and a targeting system Ruby recently created and installed. The rest of his armor was a segmented chest piece that went past his diaphragm, vambraces, and plated boots. In the vambraces were slots where his swords could lock onto when split in two and used like long claws. Both hands had been plated on the backs, while the rest of the glove was lined with silver Nano threads that helped for better and more efficient conductivity. (apologies for the inconvenient details, I know it's a bore, but I wanted to)

"Student ID 315125 please choose your preferred method of combat training and difficulty setting" a feminine robotic voice inquired.

"Oh, yeah umm, let's go with an A rank for difficulty and make the combat uhhh…and a variation of everything." He replied lazily wanting to start as soon as possible "and if you'd be so kind, please just call me Cole"

The area immediately changed from a grid tile floor to an abandoned parking area with parts of broken overhangs, rebar jutting out of the walls and floors, and a large hole in the floor. "You'd think if they were showboating, but this is just an everyday thing" He muttered just as a training bot wielding a great sword with heavy armor with a smaller sword on its belt hills from a platform in the ground.

Sorry I'm late to publish I've been going through some shit and haven't had a chance to publish anything about this but now that I have ill be publishing on a better schedule

Comment anything you think could be worked on at:

H6pp1n355_in_misery.

Criticism is appreciated