Inception Of A Grimm Soul - Chapter 3.1 (Patreon)

Boosted forward, her speed enhanced to the limit by her glyphs Weiss lashed out, unleashing a rapid flurry of blinding stabs with her rapier.

As expected, with the minimalistic of movements her opponent, tilted his body just as much as he needed to weave between her strikes. In almost a picture perfect rendition of when they first fought, his hand came up and grasped her wrist in a vice grip that she knew she had no hope of breaking free of with pure brute strength. Cobalt after all, overshadowed even Yang and Nora in pure brute power.

The absurd amount of training he'd forced her through for the past two weeks though, were not in vain at all.

A glyph flashed into existence beneath her feet, boosting her up into the air a bit and enhancing her moment as she lashed out with a kick straight at his chin.

He had to let go of her wrist to tilt his head back enough to avoid having her pristine white high heeled boot slamming into his face.

On the apex of her kick, she called forth another glyph and used her foot to bounce off of it, flipping backwards to gain distance from him and land on her feet facing him, crouched low and her rapier at the ready.

Her face was hot with exertion, and she took great big gulps of air as she tried to get her breath back. They'd been sparring for over twenty minutes straight, and she could feel the sweat sticking to her body

"Not bad," Cobalt grinned at her, his twin coloured eyes flashing with excitement, she'd come to learn over the two weeks she'd spent training with the younger boy that he absolutely loved fighting and training, especially training, "I actually felt some of the force behind that." he complimented as he reached up and rubbed his chin.

Two weeks ago her pride would have been rankled massively. Two weeks ago she didn't know the kind of monster he actually was physically. Faster than her even enhanced by her semblance, stronger than Yang and Nora, more durable than Cardin even in his full plate armour and with more skill than Ren, comparable even to Pyrrha.

Her eyes flickered between his arms and feet, clad in thick black bracelets and boots. His weapons, while he'd shown them to her and they were quite impressive, not once in the two weeks she'd sparred with him, had she managed to get him to draw his weapons on her.

For all his smug arrogance, Cobalt could indeed back it up. And as predicted, he had not made himself many friends with what he pulled two weeks ago when defending the faunus girl. Wherever he went, hushed whispers, glares and fearful looks followed him.

Though he was surprisingly popular with the faunus, but that was probably mainly due to him outright broadcasting that anyone bullying or being racist to one in his general vicinity would find themselves the target of his ire.

Weiss really didn't have the heart to tell any of them what he really felt. She'd learned that, he honestly didn't care at all about Faunus rights or things like that. He just hated people he deemed weaklings acting like they were big shots and causing a lot of ruckus because of something as 'stupidly simple as a few animal ears or arms or stupid shit like that', his words, not hers. And the fact that they let them having those 'minor' differences, get to them or make them afraid, cowardly and pathetic.

Cobalt really wasn't a fan of cowards acting like they were strong because they could bully people they vastly outnumbered.

Weiss took one last breath and called on her semblance once more, her aura was dwindling rapidly because of how much she needed her semblance just to get close to fast enough to land any blows on him, she needed to figure out a way to take him by surprise, and quickly.

A glyph formed beneath her feet, and she was just about to shoot towards him when the sound of a scroll beeping rang out through the forest clearing they were in. They'd come to the Emerald Forest this morning and she'd been forced to clear out the grimm in the area before they sparred. When it came to training, Cobalt was indeed a harsh task master

"Let's call an end to this for now." Cobalt held up his hand to stop her, and reached into his pocket, retrieving his scroll and opening it up.

Weiss raised a dainty eyebrow in interest. 'Odd, he rarely ever gets messages from anyone.' she noted, but she wasn't going to complain. She really needed to sit down.

Dispelling her glyph, she made her way to a small rocky outcropping and almost collapsed onto it. As the adrenaline faded, she almost moaned as she felt the numbness in her legs.

Her eyes flickered to the boy on the other side of the clearing, a wide smile on his face as he read over something on his scroll. She grimaced as she remembered how she learned of the fact of why he rarely got messages from anyone.

'It was nice of you to defend Velvet, but wasn't it risky of you? You could get expelled. Won't your parents be disappointed in you if you lose your spot here at a prestigious academy like Beacon, after getting in a year early at that?' she'd asked, looking to make conversation.

'Nope,' he'd shrugged and snorted, 'I ain't got parents Weiss, I grew up on the streets.'

He was utterly blase and casually revealed his past to her, why at some points he even fondly recalled terrible things as if they were fun and happy memories. Weiss was just horrified. His earliest memories were of digging through the garbage looking for food and sleeping within bins or cardboard boxes for warmth. Of fighting for every scrap he ever had and being beaten down over and over again by other poor souls who lived on the streets, it only getting better when he was one night attacked by a Beowolf, and unlocked his aura and semblance, managing to kill it.

Her eyes flickered to said Beowolf. Mike as he called it, the biggest and strongest Alpha Beowolf she'd ever seen prowled around the outside of the clearing they were in and was taking care of any Grimm that came near them.

It was such a sad and tragic story, of a boy who didn't know where he came from, but pushed on ahead without ever hesitating. It was how he'd always lived. Really, it was like the start of an epic story or fairy tale, and it explained so much about his attitude.

Really, it did. She'd taken it upon herself to teach the boy some proper manners, and some public decency while she was at it, he unashamedly ogled her quite a lot, and those first few times he'd commented on her chest or rear end, she'd had to refrain from slapping him.

And while she indeed was flattered by his completely genuine attraction to her, she could do without the crude way he worded it constantly early on. Why, when she'd first worn her workout clothing, he'd leered openly at her body and outright asked her if she would like to have some fun when they were done. And return to his dorm room with him and he would 'fuck her silly'.

She had been mortified, nobody had ever been so crude with her. But, she had already learned of his past by then and could at least appreciate the fact that it was simply because he was uneducated. The fact he was so well put together, intelligent and strong even with that was a massive group of points in his favour really. And when she brought up that she didn't like him speaking to her like that, he actually apologised. He had his flaws, and they were many indeed, but he was not unaccommodating and was willing to learn and improve himself when needed.

Really, his dedication to improving himself was almost awe inspiring really. Whether it was training or studying, he threw himself into it fully, to a ludicrous degree. He considered three hours of intense rigid training pushing his body to the limits, to be only a light workout.

"Hmm." he hummed, narrowing his eyes on something the scroll.

"What are you doing?" Weiss found herself asking, curiosity getting the better of her.

"A friend of mine just sent me a message," he replied, not looking up from his scroll, "It's got a list of stocks from a majority of the dust shops in Vale, I'm thinking of investing in some of them since the stocks are all dropping massively because of Torchwick robbing so many places."

Ah, Torchwick. Father had been furious last she seen him. He was forced to raise prices on dust being shipped out to Vale, meaning there were less buyers. And the ones that did, had to raise their own prices to continue turning a profit.

Which meant only the ones actively buying the dust from her families company and actively raising their own prices, actually were getting new dust in stock.

She supposed stocks would be plummeting in most of said businesses now, to a mere fraction of their usual amounts. It was a risky move, because if Torchwick wasn't dealt with soon, many of them would flat out go out of business, but if he was dealt with, stocks would rise rapidly once more, especially because of the sheer demand of dust. Should it work out like that, the sheer mass of investment profit could be enough to make Cobalt quite wealthy, hardly on the level of her own family, but it wasn't impossible for him to reach the net worth of Atlesian societal elites.

"Would you like some help looking things over?" Weiss asked, "As you know I am the heiress of the Schnee Dust Corporation and I have a vast amount of training when it comes to this type of thing." Cobalt frankly deserved wealth far more than many of the annoyances she knew as elite from Atlas.

Cobalt grinned at her, and she could see the boyish charm for a moment, usually hidden under the rough and gruff warrior of the streets, "That'd be a big help actually."

"Well, we have a few hours before the trip to Forever Fall," Weiss smiled back, she was happy that he was actually willing to take her help and expertise, beyond the dust casting training and supplying him with low grade dust for it, there had been precious little she could do to return the favour for all he was helping her with. He'd went above and beyond what she'd asked for initially, and outright accompanied her on her trips to the Emerald Forest t fight Grimm and even took it upon himself to give her training in close quarters combat to augment her fighting abilities, "How much do you have and how much are you willing to part with?"

She was actually quite surprised and impressed by how much he'd saved up when he revealed what he had to her.

_________________

"Yes students, Forever Fall is indeed a beautiful place," Professor Goodwitch lectured as the entire first year combat class followed behind her through the red grass covered forest, red leaves adorning every tree, "But there isn't much time to sight see I'm afraid. Professor Peach has asked that each of you collect some samples of the tree sap to bring back with you and I'm here to make sure that none of you die while doing so."

Hands within the pockets of his cargo jeans, Cobalt followed behind at the back of the group at a leisurely pace. Weiss, as prim and proper and as always eager to be on the good side of the professors, was at the very front of the group right behind the blonde professor.

And considering she was the only one he actually considered a friend amongst this bunch, well the back suited him just fine.

'Odd though, that Arc is back here as well.' Cobalt mused, his eyes lazing scanning the back of the armour clad blonde walking in front of him, barely managing to balance the crate of glass jars he was carrying that they would be using to collect sap.

Odder still was the fact, that he was crowded in amongst Winchester and his team. Actually, he'd noticed idly that Arc was hanging around the team of scrubs more than his own team.

What an absurd thing to do. The only dude on Arc's team, Lie Ren was quiet as hell, really a big plus as far as companions went in Cobalt's opinion. And on top of that, he had the tall, bodacious and beautiful Pyrrha Nikos, and the busty, fat assed and exciteable as hell Nora Valkyrie who was always bouncing and jiggling around on his team.

Well whatever, Cobalt didn't care. He was in too much of a good mood to let Arc being a complete putz annoy him. Weiss had been a godsend earlier. With her critical eye for business, she'd been able to point out all the best stocks for him to buy, buying up the cheapest ones that came with the least risk and some of the most reward at the same time, while still leaving him with half of his nest egg!

He'd gotten his hands on five hundred stocks in total, spending fifty thousand lien. It was an absurd amount of money for him to part with, and he was actually horrified to see that amount leave his savings at once. But he stood to gain so much if things went his way. Weiss claimed he was looking at a ten times increase at the least if things worked out.

"Now," Professor Goodwitch stopped and turned, prompting the entire class to stop as well, "Do keep in mind that this forest is full of the creatures of grimm, so don't stray too far now. Stay by your teammates, and we will rendezvous back here at Four o'clock, have fun."

As the class began to break up into their teams, Cobalt raised an eyebrow when Arc placed the crate of jars down and made to walk over to his team, only for Winchester to throw an arm over his shoulder, "C'mon buddy, let's go!" he cheered, a great big fake smile on his face.

"Y-yeah, okay." Arc nodded, and let himself be dragged off by Winchester. As they walked off, green mohawk looked around and their eyes met.

Cobalt narrowed his eyes at him, and the older boy yelped and quickly turned away, quickly grabbing up a bunch of jars and running off. He snorted, 'Pussies.' he spat mentally.

He grabbed a jar of his own from the crate after everyone else, but and was about to walk off when his eyes lingered on a certain trio. The green and pink clad two were already walking off, but the tall beautiful redhead was hesitating, staring off after a certain blonde armour clad moron, a sad frown on her face. 'Arc included.' he added.

Really, he didn't now what was going on with him, nor did he care. But he was clearly letting Winchester push him around, as he had since the start of the semester. It might have been hypocritical of him to defend Velvet and not Arc, but Velvet was cute, and he was not.

Besides, Velvet at least had a goo- decen- well she had some form of reason why she wasn't just kicking the losers ass herself. Arc was just a fucking pussy. And to think, he thought Arc at least somewhat respectable before. He was a pansy ass weakling, but at least he had the guts before to keep standing up when people kept kicking his ass around in combat class.

'Not my problem.' Cobalt mused, and walked off into the forest. This place was supposed to be full of Ursa right? And not many people came out here, so maybe he could find an Ursa Major or two after he grabbed the sap he needed.

He had the perfect crew to sniff them out if there were any.