Golden Thorns Chapter Twenty-eight

Coran was dumbstruck. "Wow Dev… that was…wow."

"Yeah alright. Laugh it up. We have class to get to."

"I'm not laughing mate. That was deep."

"Geez, you sound like a frikken hippie."

"Yeah, I need more sleep. Let's go" they moved on towards their respective classes, Dev to Grimmonology with Port, Coran to sparring with Goodwitch.

The latter had an exceptionally boring time. He broke some slacker, Pyrrha Nikos proceeded to wipe the floor with the entire of CRDL… nothing out of the ordinary. The only interesting thing that happened was some exchange student, claiming to be from Haven, demanded (quite rudely he mused) to challenge Pyrrha, just after she destroyed a strong team. This piqued Coran's interest.

But to his utmost disappointment he forfeited after just a couple of clashes. Kid probably got cocky and realised his mistake. Although… he didn't seem discouraged in any way. Interesting.

Leaving the hall he noticed RWBY and a couple of guys from Mistral, chatting to each other. Blake stormed of and the monkey Faunus looked a little disheartened. Clearly he was not used to being rejected. Oh well, serves him right for trying to get lucky with little miss stonewall.

Coran thought about what he had to do the rest of the day. Glaive could do with a touch up, there was that research assignment for Oobleck… what else, what else… oh yes. He was out of rounds. He needed to head down to "dust 'till dawn" and see if they had any new flavours for him to try. He had been saving up the allowance that the school gave him and felt like treating himself. He had just enough Lien to get a couple of clips of dust rounds. A rare occurrence in his current situation.

He keyed in his teams group message on his scroll. "Need 2 go 2 vale 4 supplies. U guys up 4 shakes?" the replies came back fast. "Always, could use the fresh air." Dev.

"We are already in vale, remember? We will meet you guys at the coffee shop." Marie. This was followed by a picture of Marie and Jo, the latter's arm wrapped around the former's neck, the camera held at arm's length. Clearly Jo's work. He picked up the pace and caught the next airbus down to vale.

Strolling through the boulevards of the city, Coran gazed into shop windows with mild curiosity. Fashion, technology, food markets, Tuckson's book trade, closed, they had seen the news bulletin. Finally he arrived at Dust till dawn. As he opened the door there was a small ringing of a bell. The usual old man was behind the counter. Coran smiled at him politely before making his way over to the shelves where the ammunition was on display.

"Can I help you there, young man?" the shopkeep was at his shoulder, grinning enthusiastically.

"Uh, yeah. I'm in the market for some dust rounds. Can I have a look?"

"Sure thing." He shuffled over to a cabinet and took a key from around his neck, "however before I open this up I will need to see some sort of ID. We can't be selling these to just anybody." Coran sighed, took his scroll from his pocket and handed it to the older man.

"This checks out. Beacon, eh? This for the tournament? Bear with me." He turned the key and stepped back to allow Coran to take a look at his wears.

"Are you serious?" an incredulous Coran turned to stare at the shopkeep. "What's with these prices?"

"Don't blame me. I've been held up more times in the past month than ever before in my life. All my shipments are being intercepted and I've had to pay for so many repairs that half the building is less than five months old. These criminals sure get a kick out of breaking windows, let me tell you."

Coran sighed. His meagre savings couldn't match up to those tags. There was nothing he could do short of rob the guy and from the sounds of it he'd had enough of that recently. He thanked the old man anyway and stepped out onto the brightly lit streets.