AS YOU CAN SEE, I AM NOT DEAD!

good to see people reading this still

Hope yall enjoy. _

Everyone watched as Cole blew away a bolt of red power with no effort and quickly turned when they all heard a decrepit old man in the bushes suddenly appear in the camp sparking red lightning on his forearms just like Cole was doing, but his was orange gold.

"I did some research on you and your little group, you people are so disorganized it's pathetic" the cloaked figure walked toward Cole deliberately taking their time watching him.

"it's adorable to see children think they have all the answers and assured that their solving the problem they find more unanswerable questions than they find plausible answers" he said stopping a few feet from Cole and said calmly "I know why you run child; you never stopped running from your problems so don't blame me for losing your home because you did to yourself"

Cole furrowed his brows and asked, "who the hell do you think you are, I'm not running from anything-"

"You ran from your father when you broke his nose trying to defend your sister, you ran away after you stole a small pie from the village pastry chef's store, you were the one who brought down the lightning storm killing everyone left in Lanka, you ran from the breach after Ezra died, you ran from beacon when everything stopped going your way, and now your running away from the woman you love, and her friends are hunting you; you've been running your whole life" the cloaked figure grabbed the edge of the hood and pulled it back revealing an old man's face, but something was off about him, he was pale, breathing raggedly, his face was covered with blood and large claw marks.

"Cole…" he said, looking up at Cole with blurred orange and red eyes that looked dim and tired. Looking down at his feet, he said, "I'm here to bring you home so I can-"

Cole shot forward grabbed the man by his throat and held him up a foot from the ground squeezing hard and dug his fingers in the man's throat.

"You don't know me! How could you possibly be on my side when you shot that blood lightning at me!" lowering him a bit, he pulled his arm back like he was gearing up to toss the man, but instead he took a step forward and choke slammed him into the ground.

The man was left coughing on the ground as Cole gripped his throat tighter and began to strangle the man while using his lightning to strengthen the muscles in his arm.

"As far as I know, you're just going to kill me or sell me out" he glowered as he strangled his assailant.

He grabbed Cole's wrist trying to remove it choking out "I came…to bring you…home…son, you lost…so much already; your sister wouldn't want this….of her little brother, would-ACK!"

"SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!" when he tried speaking again Cole cut him off "JUST STOP TALKING" Cole roared with tears streaming down his face at the mention of his family.

"My father was killed by bandits, mom and rayla died in that storm; I didn't do it" he said pulsing more power into his head, so he could pull out something resembling akin to a nerve system out of his body making the man scream and thrash around trying to stop Cole from taking it but doing this had Cole thinking this thing weighed a ton straining to pull it out any faster than a snail's pace.

'Oh my gods, why is this always so difficult?!' he thought to himself, but snapped out of it to focus on the task of killing this random man.

"You don't have the right to use my dead sister to preserve your fucking vanity, you know nothing about me, mom, Ezra, or them!" he spat as he kept pulling with every ounce of strength he could muster but was interrupted when large shadowy hands grabbed the man causing Cole to let go and watch the shadows pull him into the ground quickly disappeared.

The same feminine voice from his dream said, "you really don't know, do you? Of course not, how could have you? Well, it's no matter, you'll find out soon enough" the voice disappeared from his head, leaving him wondering why all that happened.

Walking over to Cole Adam smiled at him as he put a hand on his shoulder and said "not to cut this short, but it's time for your surgery Cole follow me" Cole smirked said back "I'm not getting a robotic arm am I? because my power will just fry the thing to a crisp"

Adam chuckled at him when he opened the tent flap and said "it's not a prosthetic but I did promise you a new arm" Cole raised an eyebrow at his response as Adam patted the operating table and said "just lie down on this table and relax, this might take a while" Cole gulped as he walked toward the table and climbed up but was stopped by a man with an imperial beard and mustache dressed in elegant clothes, "you might want to disrobe young man"

"Why the hell for?" Cole asked, feeling uncomfortable with the man's presence.

"Because you're going under for surgery and I doubt you want blood all over your clothes"

"sorry but I'm not taking my clothes off old man, I need answers and I doubt you can or even should help me" Cole replied turning to walk out fed up with today

He looked at Cole and sighed with exasperation before driving a syringe into his neck and injected him with some kind of black fluid, Cole's eyes went wide in shock before quickly closing as he collapsed in Adam's arms. "I'm not here to help you child, I promise you the truth, but you needn't be awake with what's going to happen next" watts looked up and motioned for them to start.

"Get him prepped for the experiment; that serum only lasts an hour or so, work quickly and make sure he doesn't escape; we don't have time to waste on capturing another knight" he said before leaving the tent.

Adam put Cole on the table looking at the doctors "you heard him, get to work as quickly as possible"

Adam's stomach twisted in disgust and guilt, but forced it out as he walked out the door. "I'm sorry Cole, this was out of my hands the moment your face showed in this camp" he said before walking toward his tent to clean the black bodysuit Cole had worn for however long before he found him. "I should at least do this much for him"

Machines whirled alive as small mechanical hands grabbed six vials of black and red tar-like slime that were transferred into syringes, the six needles injected the slime into his left bicep that now sat exposed to allow both the arm and needles to exit effortlessly. After all six syringes were pulled out and away, after a moment Cole's unconscious body violently convulsed and shook against the restraints while large blobs formed and moved underneath his skin changing the density and color of his skin and back to the original condition it was in until the slime stopped at his left stump and began growing an elbow joint, then the forearm, next a wrist, a palm, fingers next.

The bones cracked and snapped as they were forming and as the bone came so did the veins, capillaries, cartilage, ligaments, tendons. Muscles then came thick black skin and finally bone armor that looked like his old armor.

His skin went from as pale as the dead to a more warm and peachy tone, the temperature of his body stayed the same, but the flesh of the arm alone was black with sharp claw-like fingernails and even sharper than his sword, bone armor cracked and grew spines looking like a collection of razors and hooks.

"Wrap his left arm in bandages and try to file down his bone armor" Watts said before leaving the tent and left the camp in a one-man aircraft no one had seen before.

Adam looked up after an hour of cleaning the bodysuit and muttered to himself, "he needs to leave as soon as he wakes, if he asks tell him he can't stay long and that his friends are tracking him or something, just make it sound…convincing" leaving the tent Adam ordered the entire camp to pack up and get ready to leave as fast as possible.

After an hour of checking his weapons, Ilia began to fell a wave of regret and shame wash over her when she realized what she had done to a possible ally, but ultimately, she had pushed it to the back of her mind but couldn't shake the knot that twisted tighter in her gut. "Maybe Blake was right to leave, I just wish she didn't leave me here as well" a tear rolled down her face as her skin turned blue and gray.

"This is for the best col- human, I'm sorry It had to come to this, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me" he mumbled while sharpening his red chokutō with a whetstone.

Ilia looked up from her hands and went to the Smith to see if Cole's armor had needed repairs or not, 'get it together ilia you're a fang member not a sniveling child' she admonished herself.

Cole knew something was wrong when he woke up holding his head because of a huge headache, he was wearing a tight medical bodysuit and a mask feeding oxygen to his lungs. He instinctually used his left hand to rub his eyes and in doing so, he saw his left arm was wrapped with bandages and felt like leaving it alone cause as far as he was concerned he still had an arm and that was all he cared for.

When he caught the sweet scent of strawberries, roses, and chocolate, he didn't know where it was coming from nor why he could smell it, but it called to his nose greedily inhaling the heavenly scent.

Old memories of his family washed over him, the happiest moments were of his mother and sister, but while good, the worst festered the hysterical, gut-busting laughter and pure happiness away into a rageful drunk, the agonizing loneliness when his sister and mother died, and tears that never stopped flowing and never wavered, the people he hurt, stole from and almost killed. No matter how many tears he wiped away, more resurfaced until his pain made his heart turn to broken pieces of glass.

Ten years of killing people and Grimm, scavenging for supplies to survive, drinking to get a decent night's sleep, and eating food he stole when the occasional person let him stay for a few hours to sleep (regardless whether or not he left money to replace the food and clothes he stole) the guilt he carried with him thinking he killed his mother and sister made him hate his very existence.

"I'm so sorry rayla, I failed you- " without expecting it his thoughts went to Ezra too "you weren't supposed to die; remnant, it isn't worth saving is it?!" he said floating in his mental void until he heard a faint voice "how many….going….tell you Cole?" The strange woman said, tenderly hugging Cole's floating body as close as she could. "You aren't the one that killed mom or me" he looked at her and noticed the atmosphere and world around them shift to the river where they used to play when they were younger.

"But- I created that lightning storm when they took you, i… I was so terrified of losing you that I tried killing raven but ended up killing you all!" he said, choking on his words and looked up at her, unable to contain the grief he had bottled up all those years ago.

"I killed people to survive, stole from families, hurt my closest friend, and now I'm on the run from the world for a crime I committed because-" she grabbed him and hugged him tightly in her arms while stroking the back of his head.

"Look who the hysterical one is now. Were you blamed for hurting Ruby's friends? Yes, did you hurt Ruby? No, not physically anyway. You ran to escape, but that's the choice you had made. Cinder and her band of dysfunctional goons helped you escape, you didn't do anything except leave beacon academy."

He looked up, expecting the sister he lost so long ago to be there, only to see his reflection on a glossy black slab.

His eyes glimmered a radiant blue and green glow, his face was relatively the same except this time he noticed his face looked a bit like a geist, but the mask was more triangular than round and gave off a demonic feeling, his skin was black and stronger than metal, his canines were sharper longer and shimmered like polished pearls dripping with drool, his figure topped out at 6'10, his hair reached the lower parts of his back and looked like fluid flowing quills. His fingernails grew into 4 inch long claws, and finally where the scars he got from the lightning storm were the same except they flashed an orange-gold light with every beat from his heart.

His armor was replaced with white bone plates on his forearms, shoulders, torso, and thighs. The knees had triangular plates pointing upwards by half a foot, his feet had been replaced with plated boots with three dragon like toes and sharp claw-like nails, vein like cracks formed on his mask to make way for the larger maw he had. The only thing that proved he was Cole was his eyes and only his eyes, but in his heart it disgusted him.

He was becoming a monster like he's never seen before in all of Grimm history that he knew of, and yet here he was among the ranks as a human-grimm

"You are neither human nor Grimm, but something new" the woman reappeared in front of him and said "you are still a beautiful creature and I will love you, no matter what" she smiled and added "as far as I know, this form will only manifest if you're nearly dead, if you're rage boils over the edge or you -although its unlikely- figure out how transform and control it" the dreamscape melted away just as Cole woke up feeling heavier than lead. Minutes passed slow as quietly as he lazily got himself out the tent, upset he had passed out three times in a day.

"im so hungry I could eat a whole stable of horses" he said as he knelt over a barrel of water and dunked his head inside and gulped down as much water as he could before pulling his head out, soaking the rest of him in cold water with a smile as wide as it could go.

'Ahhh, that's much better" he said to himself as he got his armored bodysuit on, strapped new plates over the suit and put his swords on his back, both covered with a dark gray cloak to cover himself up. Walking toward ilia, who sat next to a fire cooking a pot of food "something smells good" he said before yawning,

"that's seriously all you have to say? Not "where is everyone" or "are my friends still hunting me like an animal?" Cole stared at her blinking in confusion and said "maybe just the first one, I all my friends are now enemies and my potential girlfriend hates me"

"Adam took everyone on an all out assault on the Atlesian military base off the coast near Vale's shores, but instead of taking me he left me to watch over you" she turned to him and saw him already packing six metal lunch boxes, a blanket, two large canteens of water, and Adam's old jacket.

What bugged her was the fact that he also took Adam's old phone and broke his before walking over to her and said, "goodbye ilia, I really do wish we'd met on better terms" she simply scoffed at his words as she watched him leave.

"I'll just tell Adam he disappeared before i could find him" she muttered before testing the meal in her pot, "needs more seasoning"

Cole let his friendly façade go with a sigh scowling "only problem is i can't get caught, gods only know what Ruby would do to me if she catches up with me" he said before pulling the backpack on and started walking out of the campsite and what he didn't notice was that after a dead ursa quickly disintegrated and the black smoke it was quickly absorbed by his arm and spread up his bicep then morphed under the bandages to match his other hand to look just as muscular and not skinny and boney.

After an hour of walking he heard his stomach growling at him but ignored it considering Ruby and her friends were looking for him, and he needed to get to Mistral and hopefully start a new life as a mercenary or a bounty hunter.

His thoughts were interrupted when Ilia sprang out of the tree and walked up to him and said "I'm coming with you" he set his pack down and sighed before walking into the woods and spent a few minutes gathering wood, twigs, and rocks but said nothing when she asked "so, where are you- uh, we going anyway? I doubt you know where you are"

Suddenly a bolt hit the pit, startling her and glared at him when he went on not knowing or caring about it as he tossed a few twigs in to feed the flame.

While the sky dimmed he ate half of his meal and packed the rest away, opting to get some sleep and before long he slowly drifted off while Ilia just gave him the stink eye.

As she ate her meal, she wondered why he was so distant yet so kind…like a broken man forcing himself to keep moving forward with a smile. "It doesn't matter what he's like or why he is the way he is" she thought before tossing her makeshift bowl in the fire and watched it burn up and turned to ash. "The moment we get to a town, I'm ditching him".

While Ilia slept sound and peacefully, Cole was a different story and for some reason the Grimm that found the slumbering duo they just left them be, as well as the wildlife near them.

They could practically taste the negativity considering Cole now had nothing taking up space to focus on such as schoolwork, temporary guard duty at the borders of small cities and towns, and he didn't need to hang out with everyone and tolerating the façades they put up -except for Ruby, Glynda , and...well, technically he had no one else, so they had to trust each other for now.

"Please, Cole, help us!"

"Cole do something!"

"P-please! Stop!"

The screams of Ezra and his sister reverberated around inside his unconscious mind.

"Mom!" the words barely left his mouth before he received a boot to the ribs from one of the captors.

He received one more hit in the chest, one more scream from his mother and his sister, a clap of thunder and lightning struck before his vision went white.

He'd lost control, never had Cole ever contemplated killing someone as a child, excluding those who made it their goal to hurt him and bad mouth his mom and sister, But this time…well, half the village had felt the hate and pain emitted by the young man.

His mother and sister crying on the floor. "Cole, you could have stopped her…" she spoke, in barely more than a whisper.

"I-I tried my best!"

"Sometimes, even your best isn't good enough," rayla muttered in a barely audible croak.

That line had hit far too close to home, the one thing reminding Cole of all the taunts he had received in his time in the village, angered him.

Eventually Cole proved them wrong through his performances, Glynda had assured him that they were just jealous, and usually, he'd just shrug the insults off when they came…but from his friends, that was the straw that broke the camel's back Cole let out a sob, biting his tongue to prevent it from becoming audible, but rage burst through like a bomb hot tears slid down his high cheeks and only increased the amount when raven stabbed them both through the back and chest. He was frozen in that moment watching his sister disappear, and his mom die to THAT WOMAN!

But just as his anger came in floods, so did the voices team RWBY and JNPR minus Weiss and Ruby.

Blake : "YOU'RE THE REASON THEY'RE DEAD"

Nora: "YOU KILLED THEM ALL"

Pyrrha: "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU"

Jaune: "YOUR WORTHLESS"

Yang: "SHE'LL NEVER LOVE A MONSTER"

Ren: "WE WISH YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN"

Ruby's voice came next but what caught his attention was her wrapping her arms around his chest and said, "a devil made from heaven and sent from above shouldn't think that he would have any control over anything"

Her words echoed around inside his head and hurt so badly that he hadn't noticed her arms were squeezing the life out of him and sank her claws into his chest. Their distorted screams of insults were deafening to him as he began to drown in a black ooze that swallowed him whole. He tried to fight out of her grip, but she held tight dragging him down, he managed to free his Grimm arm and reached up but nothing he grabbed held up and crumbled under the weight. His breathing became erratic, the more of him that disappeared in the black tar-like liquid.

"I DON'T WANNA DIE, PLE- ACK" he wailed as he started to choke on the slime invading his nostrils and mouth.

Cole shot up from his spot with tears in his eyes and yelped, but that didn't matter to Ilia cause she had been next to him the moment he started crying in his sleep she pulled him into a tight hug and let him cry for a mystery woman named rayla and how he kept blaming himself for something but didn't catch on to what it was.

By the time he composed himself he packed up what he had and walked down the road with Ilia silently trailing behind him wanting to talk about what happened but made no indication that he was going to do any talking, to Ilia, Cole looked lost in his thoughts and what annoyed her was that he wasn't listening to a word she'd say but stayed quiet anyway.

Life has been kicking my ass but I'll try to keep publishing these chapters.

My depression and anxiety has been hell, just became a father, and I have so much going on im forced to limit how often my girl and kid see me it tears my heart apart but it's harder now that she's sick and said kid is without me to help both of them and I hate myself for being so useless and pathetic that weekends and words of comfort are all I can give...whatever, guess I'll just live life and just try to not have another breakdown.

geralt and ciri will show up again I promise.

Comment anything you think could be worked on at:

H6pp1n355_in_misery.

Criticism is appreciated