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.
Looking over the manual ruby had provided, he found it had a built-in cooling and targeting system she'd recently created and installed.
The rest of his armor was a segmented chest piece that went past his diaphragm, two plated vambrace, and plated boots. In the vambrace 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/irrelevant details, I know it is 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 A rank for difficulty and make the combat uhm...a variation of everything." He replied lazily wanting to start as soon as possible "and if you'd be so kind, please make it quick"
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.
"Powering training droid 43, full power in t-minus 2 minutes; please make sure to check your weapons and Essential for your mock battle.
Cole strolled toward a table holding his personal weapons. Ammunition, dust vials as well as crystals, guns of all types and sizes, and lastly, some medical supplies for later, but he doubted he'd need them.
"Training droid at full power, beginning next round for - "
"don't hold back and just send them out!" He suddenly snapped angrily, as he tightly started clenching his teeth and tightening his grip on his sword, he charged forward charging his power into the regulators of his sword and sliced through the bot's armor but nothing more.
"They all deserve your hate, your power frightens them, they envy you, they don't understand you" a strange voice said in his head which distracted him long enough making sure he'd receive an armored fist to the face and the droid charged him before he had time to recover. It brought down its great sword, luckily Cole had enough time to block the hit and kicked the bot away, so he could get some much-needed distance from it and brought his hand up firing off a few bolts of lightning to stun it, but it ended up blowing off its armor.
But while the rage built up, a powerful swipe to the arm and chest like a giant pair of scissors cutting the bot open exposing his goal and stabbed the crystals in its chest draining the power out and blew it up at the same time.
Memories began pouring in from a few months ago relating to Weiss, Blake, yang, jaune, and Pyrrha, all who had talked behind his back at one point or another, causing his anger to spike significantly. "I'm gonna take this trash out!" he thought, swinging his sword to parry the bot's swing.
He managed to parry the broken great sword and block the quick attacks, but a few got through his defense and cut into his armor like it was made of paper.
After Cole had woken up that day, he had been more unstable around the others and took more jobs that needed bodyguards and muscle to prevent people from being hurt or worse.
He only got worse himself as the days rolled by and almost fought outside of Glynda's classes rife with a white-hot flame that raged in his soul, but thankfully Ruby was there to calm him some and kept doing it for a month hoping he'd get better emotionally, but nope, he got worse regarding the Grimm hordes and constant missions that took weeks for the average hunter to complete but took him a few days at most.
"Cole just go blow off some steam, I'll talk to them" his rage went down a bit but not enough to bulldoze through yang and jaune hurriedly speed walking towards the training room to break the more powerful training robots. "You two really should stop poking the bear" Weiss scolded as she followed close behind in case something happened.
Behind a set of one-way windows someone had broken into the room and saw the difficulty to all four bots were so high, so they decided overwriting would be a bit easier but not by much, long slender fingers danced across every key to keep up with the defense grid in the system, but this was to be expected for the best security in all of Vale.
"Sorry, but this woman knows how to work around your cute little walls" she said with a smirk looking at the system's schematics to each droid and had them all filled to the brim with lightning variant 8 dust crystal to help Cole after each bot was taken out.
As much as jaune liked being at beacon and became a leader he got bored not being able to fight anyone who'd even spar with him, even though he was still so far behind everyone else he didn't think he was that bad...well, that was until Cole got there, he didn't have a record in any of the four kingdoms, and he had no way of proving his fighting style or skill unless he fought with someone. "a nobody like him made me look like such a fool...and he's the same age as me!' he thought angrily.
While the rest of his team and RWBY (minus Weiss) were currently studying in the library jaune decided to walk around the academy riding high on his secret session with Pyrrha, and after a few minutes he got the great idea to see if Cole was interested in a spar and considering everyone made it their goal to beat Cole. He, of course, wanted to give it another try since he had yet to get so much as a single hit on him, so far only Glynda, Qrow, and ozpin had beaten him in a spar, albeit because he'd begged them multiple times to spar with him only to get beaten pretty badly, and out of the blue Ruby came close the whole school found out cause Cardin leaked those videos to everyone in beacon.
Soon enough -because he had a large pool of aura- jaune stupidly thought he could finally be capable to beat him with ease, but on that day he saw Cole thrashing training bots left from right in droves, he decided against jumping in, so he figured It was best to watch Cole fight bot after bot gradually upping the difficulty from beginner to novice, over to intermediate, then apprentice, then up to expert. The longer Cole fought, the harder he pushed himself, as if his power were an ocean compared to his own, and Jaune only got more jealous and spiteful than he already was. But would soon have a reason to fight him anyway "man's pride before the fall will cause devastation" he muttered, thinking that it was Cole that was the prideful one since he never lost to a single student.
As he got up, he gritted his teeth at the pain in his ribs, and his face finally registered it. Instead of stopping, he let his control go allowing himself to become a figurative storm of lightning and swords as he thrust his fist through the bot he was thrown into and used it as a shield as the whipping bot grabbed his leg and pulled while the sword bots charged him from behind.
He smirked and kicked out the pistol bot's legs and pulled the whip bot forward into the sword bots, but the other bot currently stuck to his arm was sparking and caught fire, which he had caused. Cole ripped the bot off his arm and threw it at the bot in front of him before diving out of the way before the four bots were blown up with it.
"He is also far too aggressive in combat class, and it needs to stop. In a month, he will be in cuffs, I bet my savings on it" jaune said, watching Cole sparring with Ruby on hand-to-hand combat. Granted, he was supposed to go easy as per Yang's request, but Ruby told him if he went easy, it would not be as fun... Plus, he was too pissed to go easy on her anyway.
He got up and turned around just in time to get smacked in the face by the flat of the sword from the first bot, and looked better than the other bots considering what Cole was capable of.
Hitting the floor, he rolled two feet away, bleeding badly from his nose. And as he rose from the ground to recalibrate, he grimaced at the taste of the floor and spit it out, wiping the blood from the rip in the scar on his lip. "FUCK, argh. This just finished healing too" he said panting and coughing harshly before dodging a haymaker before he swung in a similar way.
Seeing that he was on his feet the bot tried again, just as Cole did the same, he let out the loudest battle roar he could just as they punched each other with so much force that they were thrown five feet onto the ground both unmoving and out of energy.
Cole was the first to get up from the hit and noticed a lot of blood was freely flowing from his nose, the split in his lower lip, back, left arm, and right leg. His pants were ripped from the middle of his shins down and soaked in sweat and blood, his shirt and armor were no better, but then again looking over at the bot on the floor he saw that it was in even worse shape.
Looking around he took notice that it's head was long gone, two of the three bots were heaped in the middle of melting together and created a large hole in its chest plate due to the amount of heat the pile radiated, and soon some of the reinforced plastic in the visors and the rubber in the feet and hands popped loudly spewing parts and shards everywhere.
By the time he realized how high the flames were he opened his mouth to call for the extinguisher protocol if it were not for an enormous blast of ice-cold air hit him so hard it knocked him on his back and froze the sweat all over him as well as the blood from his cuts and nearly sent his body into shock.
Collecting as much lightning out of the floors as possible, he began powering himself up for his last resort. Right as the ice began to harden around him, he let out. A roar just before he brought down a shower of lightning draining some power from the lights in the rafters and ended up creating snow that fell all around the arena and covered him in the frosted fluff. Under all the snow he let out a few chattering breaths while trying to calm down.
Sauntering over to a pile of snow covering the bots Cole had destroyed, Weiss stopped and winced at how angry he looked when he burst from the white fluff, glaring and panting.
"You have a serious prob-"she froze when she quickly realized she was the one who created that blizzard in the first place and saw how fast he went from calm to pissed off in the span of a few seconds.
"You damn near gave me frostbite, you dumbass!" he yelled as he sheathed his swords.
"Serves you right for not paying attention sparkler" she snarked and not thinking he could hear her she muttered "you really don't get what's going on around here, you aren't going to last much longer out there and in here"
If Cole had the patience of a saint, then this was the day he gave it up 'everyone turned their backs on me, talked shit behind my back, bullied me for pointless drivel. Only this time they finally gave me a reason to let go' he angrily thought just as he let an explosion of power erupt from his entire body spreading from his chest outward and went upward into the ceiling creating a sizeable hole.
Weiss flinched at his outburst and instinctively crouched in her battle stance, but soon saw just how slow she reacted, cause a brief gust of wind blew the snow in two different directions and Cole was nowhere to be seen.
"Wh-where'd he go?" she said horrified at where he once stood, he was not above her, below her, left nor right, only place left was- "behind you snow angel" cole said colder and agitated than she thought possible, for her uncaring attitude he'd read it for her body immediately tensed up and shakily began to turn her head but soon felt a hard sidekick to the back.
Air driven from her lungs Weiss felt her back pop in all the wrong places and the wind knocked out of her as she went tumbling to the ground and bounced a few times.
Cole sprinted towards her just as she shakily rose to her feet and looked up to see the tip of a plated boot high kick her into the air and Cole's bloodied fist met her cheek, sending her barreling into the wall creating webbed cracks in the wall. her eyes went wide, aura didn't register the punch and falling to the ground.
Weiss saw Cole immediately being restrained by Ren and Nora while Ruby tried to talk him down. Jaune, yang, and Pyrrha ran over to her but by the time they caught her mid-fall she passed out in jaune's arms and let a few tears fall into his hoodie.
She whispered as best she could, "he's not monster" before letting out a deep breath and passed out.
The tension in the room escalated even further as Jaune, consumed by a mix of emotions, approached Cole with an unwavering determination.
"HEY, ASSHOLE" His confrontation with Cole was like a powder keg waiting to explode, and Ruby desperately tried to mediate and prevent the situation from turning into a full-blown battle.
Cole, still struggling against Ren and Nora's grip, couldn't believe that Jaune was willingly provoking a fight with him. The anger within him continued to swell, and he felt a deep sense of betrayal from his friends who had talked behind his back.
Weiss, unconscious and caught in the crossfire, was a silent testament to the fractures within their group. The rift had grown too wide to mend, and it was clear that things had spiraled out of control.
Ruby's pleas for everyone to calm down fell on deaf ears as Jaune, driven by his emotions, took further steps toward confrontation. The atmosphere in the room was thick with anticipation, and the consequences of this clash were unknown and potentially devastating.
Looking up at his teammates, Jaune gave them a look that was damn near unreadable to the two and laid Weiss gently on Pyrrha's lap, just before taking Pyrrha's sword and unsheathed his own he walked toward Cole.
"Jaune what are you- "Pyrrha said but froze mid-sentence and stopped when his eyes met hers and in his eyes was a maelstrom of emotions; rage for his hurting friend, arrogance thinking he could fight Cole and win, and sad that it came to this.
While Nora was well known for her strength and power she was not strong enough to restrain Cole, even Ren had to used his aura to strengthen himself to keep Cole in place who fought their grip on him with everything in their power but knew he wasn't going down without a fight, but both hoped Ruby could calm him down and fast. Otherwise, it would get messy.
"Cole, please stop! Weiss is your friend -our friend, we are all your friends. Please talk to us- "
"HEY!" Jaune yelled, cutting her off before she could end it peacefully. "I'M TALKING TO YOU, YOU PARIAH"
Everyone in the room froze at the outburst and turned to see him in full battle armor, two swords, and a bone to pick with Cole (who still fought to get out of their hold)
"Jaune shut up and let me handle this!" Ruby yelled, to watch as her words had gone right over his head and was ignored entirely.
In the control room, behind a set of one-way windows, a mysterious woman had broken into the security system. She watched the unfolding drama with fake interest, her slender fingers dancing across the controls with a smirk on her face. Her cold, calculating eyes followed the events in the training room with discontent.
"Let's see how this plays out," she muttered to herself, all the while recording the chaotic scene on her scroll. Her voice held a sinister undertone as she commented on the events unfolding before her.
"Ah, young hunters and their conflicts," she said with a feigned air of curiosity, as if she were watching a reality show.
Pulling out her scroll she called someone named back up. "It seems our friend Cole is losing control, and his comrades are in for quite the surprise." She said seeing the call was received.
She chuckled softly, relishing the turmoil she had instigated. The woman continued to manipulate the security system, ensuring that every moment of the confrontation was recorded for her enjoyment and perhaps for a more sinister purpose yet to be revealed.
Dear Readers,
I wanted to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude for your continued support and readership. Your presence here means the world to me, and I truly appreciate your dedication to my work.
Writing is a journey filled with ups and downs, challenges, and moments of inspiration. Through it all, your encouragement and feedback have been a constant source of motivation. Knowing that there are readers who appreciate and connect with my words makes every effort, every late-night writing session, and every revision worth it.
Please understand that I am doing my best to bring you stories and content that resonate with you. Each word is carefully chosen, every sentence meticulously crafted, with the hope of creating a world you can immerse yourself in and characters you can relate to.
Your support is a driving force that keeps me going, pushing my boundaries and exploring new horizons as a writer. I'm committed to improving and delivering even better content in the future, thanks to your unwavering encouragement.
So, thank you, dear readers, for being a part of this wonderful journey. Your presence, comments, and enthusiasm mean everything to me. Together, we'll continue to embark on literary adventures and share the magic of storytelling.
With heartfelt appreciation, not LUC1F3R-117