"Heave. Heave. Heave." Together, one of our metal poles wrapped around the pipe, we pulled at it. We had been doing it for forty minutes, slowly warping the metal. This pipe was not going to stand in the way of us both escaping alive.

Steel would bend under enough force. Even if it wouldn't bend all the way for us, a little kink would weaken it a lot. I had bent steel rods myself for the garden. You could do it with enough leverage and will.

I don't know if this world had a physics engine, but while strength might be about killing potential, we were both reasonably heavy men with strong upper body strength. It shouldn't be impossible for us to bend the pole a little at least, together. At least, my now restored mental stats said so.

And it gave a little. It bent!

Strength test! After a lot of hard work, the steel is close to bending- or snapping back. Exert as much force as you can in the next twenty seconds, or the pipe will snap back.

A red bar appeared on the screen, moving up a bit with each tug.

"I need a break" Said Gordan. "My muscles-"

"No fucking way. Pull now." I shouted.

I burnt through my stamina like candy. I pulled and pulled, and shouted at him to keep pulling. He wasn't putting as much in- neither was I. We were both tired. But this was it. We had to get it bent. I couldn't break through the door after this, if I had to use the gun. We had to do this ourselves.

10

9

8

7

6

Gordon flopped to the ground. I was on my own. I had to do all the work myself. I felt a chill of cold run over my overheating muscles as I kept yanking. I would do this, alone, if needed. My stamina bar was empty, but I didn't care. My body still had strength.

5

4

3

I was close. So close. I could see it. The red bar was almost full.

I dug deep. I dug into my hate of being trapped in a dirty toilet underground, of my painful sore muscles, I dug deep, and found something that burnt with cold flames.

"Power strike!" I called out. And yanked.

The pipe I was using, thinner and more flimsy snapped. I flew back onto my ass, and Gordan went flying down, awkwardly yanked back by the chain.

And the steel pipe bent!

Bent metal. 25% debuff.

Steel pipe. Made to resist escape attempts for the chosen subject. Quality and well made steel. 37/37durability. 9 armor.

After running out of stamina, hitpoints tapped into. Torn muscles. 25% physical stat debuff for 24 hours.

I laughed and laughed like a madman. We had done it. We had bent it!

"We didn't break it. What are you so happy about?" Said Gordan, as he awkwardly got back up.

"It's not about breaking it, yet. It's about weakening it. The hacksaws? Weak ass. But if we can fuck up the metal enough we can use them.

We tried hitting the steel for a while. The armor did it's job. Neither of us could even dent it. But this, this had worked. Now it was time for phase 2.

"We need heat first. Steel is weaker when heated up. We need something to burn." He swung his eyes at Gordan's clothes.

Gordan looked at him… me disgustedly and shook his head. "You first."

I was still getting these weird flashes. I didn't fit in this body. It didn't feel right. It wasn't mine, the legs were the wrong length, things were in the wrong place. Part of why I had smashed the mirror I think.

But that wasn't important. What was important was-

"We have another source of clothing." I said, jerking my thumb back at Jigsaw.

His face calmed. "Yes, that's logical. He doesn't need them now."

I went over, awkwardly, to his body, and with a lot of effort slowly disrobed Jigsaw. His skincare routine could really use some work. He was all wrinkly.

But he was also packing muscles. I could see why people wrote serial killers letters in jail.

I found something else, other than his clothes.

I held up a switch. "I found this on him. Stuck in his hands. What do you think it does?"

I tossed it to Gordan, suppressing my face's reaction.

He pressed it, and collapsed to the floor, spasming as an electrical pulse went through his body. The remote switch which I had totally known would shock him stayed in his hand and oh crap it was staying in his hand.

Electricity needed a circuit. Avoid a circuit, and it couldn't hurt you. I quickly shoved some of the toilet plastic over towards him, my muscles groaning, stood on them, and with a pull managed to roll him up onto them for a second. I then hit the remote away.

"Damn man, you ok?" I asked. Hadn't I dropped the gun in the film? I remember that I tried to shoot- Adam, the fictional character tried to shoot Jigsaw and the gun flew out of his hands. Was that just movie physics fail?

He shook his head after a moment.

"It shocked me!"

I went to pick it up.

"I guess that if he hadn't offed himself he would have had a chance to shock us too. Jigsaw is one creepy bastard.

Gordan nodded. "Very manipulative. Why was I shocked though? It's a solid floor. Shouldn't have been anywhere for the shock to go. No way to complete the circuit.

That was weird. I got close to the floor and looked at it, felt it, touched it.

There was a thin layer of dust and… wires. They were very small, too small to see without looking closely. But there were tiny holes drilled in the floor, and little wires coming out.

I yanked one out, and held it out to him.

"That would do it. Some sort of dust, probably conductive, along with wires. I'm impressed they didn't-"

I tugged out some more. "Ah, yep. Some of them did burn out."

A circuit was like a river. You needed a start point and an end point, and you needed them connected. You started at the mountain as rain, flowed down into the rivers, and then evaporated up into rain again. Battery, wire in, wire out, battery. Too much or too fast electricity, or water, in too narrow a channel and your river flooded over- or in this case, the wire burnt out.

I tugged out and showed him some melted wire.

"That's lucky. I might have died if they hadn't burnt out." He sounded really cold about it.

"Don't you care?"

"I do care, but I want to get back to my family so I can take a bit of pain" I nodded.

I glanced at his status. He had lost some HP, which was regenerating slowly, but had no status effects. Lucky.

My muscles hurt. Ow. It wasn't so much the force of tugging out the wires, but the motion. My shoulders killed.

"Anyway, step one" I said.

I took the special piece of glass that damaged armor in a handful of jigsaw clothes, and sliced it around the edge of the bent steel, gently poking a few holes in thinner parts, making a thinner section of the pipe, before the glass shattered.

We prepped the bin and filled it up with dirty water to douse any wounds.

"Step two, we're gonna set up a fire. His clothes, the paper I got, the batteries. We can use the plastic junk we have to set up a fire pit. That will weaken the pipe. Then, when it's damaged enough, I can hacksaw through the weakened metal. Or we can bash it in some more. You first. My muscles burn.

"We are risking some valuable supplies. We should be ready for this to fail."

I shook my head. "What happens happens. No point in worrying twice."

We set up the small fire pit. The batteries we had stolen from the tape recorder and the mobile phone got strapped onto the cloth and I carefully tied my bin bag from the toilet that had hacksaws and photos of Gordan cheating on his wife in it onto it. We needed all the heat we could get.

After that we piled up a small pile around the steel pipe.

He got the lighter, and I got a pair of clothing wrapped glass shards.

"You ready?" He asked. I nodded.

He set the edge of the clothes on fire with the lighter, and I stabbed both of the batteries.

They started to fizz and burn as multiple layers of internal battery things that were not meant to be in contact came into contact and reacted rapidly. Toxic gunk and fire shot out, splattering our makeshift barrier.

And the pipe.

Warped status. 10% debuff. +1 damage. Lasts as long as the fire is active plus one minute.

Corroded status. 10% debuff. +2 damage. Permanent.

Steel pipe. Made to resist escape attempts for the chosen subject. Quality and well made steel. 26/29durability. 6 armor.

And nothing else happened. The stats didn't tick down any further. I hoped, waited, and wished something would happen but it just didn't.

"It's not enough."

I felt a cold pit in my stomach. We could have tried the fake cigarette death trick, got out. But I had used up the phone battery, because I wanted to be smart. Was this the end? Us starving to death because of the pipe?

It looked weaker. There were holes in it, areas where the battery fluids or the heat or the glass had cut open parts of it. Not enough but... It looked almost like a grin to me. It was smiling at me. I had tossed everything I had at it, and it wasn't enough. I wasn't even sure if the bullet would work. With my luck, it would ricochet and kill me.

"Get behind me." said Gordan. I looked at him, and obeyed, confused.

He stepped up onto a fragment of urinal. He had the shocking button in his hand! He pressed it.

Very quickly parts of the steel pipe heated up as a taser shock of electricity went through it's weakened, heated frame, glowing bright red.

Hydrogen embrittlement! 25% debuff.

Steel pipe. Made to resist escape attempts for the chosen subject. Quality and well made steel. 19/21 durability. 4 armor.

The pipe's smile was a mad red now, glowing at us like the devil. But it's armor was down now, and we had to seize the moment.

Sweeping aside the fire, turning off the electricity, we both lunged in with the hacksaws. My muscles burned, but the hacksaws didn't need a full strength stat. We sliced and cut, the pipe glaring at us as we did so.

We were almost there when the battery suddenly started spurting again. A drop of some burning, horrible substance fell on my forearm. It sizzled.

I bit my lip, hard enough to draw blood and taste the iron, and kept sawing. My muscles burned, drained even by this effort but I didn't dare stop. The fire debuff was running out, and when it did...

Steel pipe. Made to resist escape attempts for the chosen subject. Quality and well made steel. 5/21durability. 4armor.

11 seconds left.

4/21

8 seconds left

2/21

5 seconds left

The hacksaw snapped! I looked at it in shock. Gordan was taking his fucking time, sawing slowly and carefully.

3 seconds left.

The now cooler face of the pipe grinned at me. It would win, and we would never escape.

"Power attack!" I smashed the base of the hacksaw against the pipe.

2 damage done! 4 used up on armor. Critical strike!

It snapped and broke. At the mouth it tore, ripping apart under the force of my blow, the jagged bottom half jerking away from the top of the pipe, slamming against the bin to a stop. Weakened by acid, heat, electricity, glass, and hacksaws, it stood no chance.

Through technical engineering and brutal effort you have defeated the pipe! Gain the title Pipeslayer! 100% extra damage against pipes. +1 strength and +1 int.

Quickly, I poured water from the helpful bin on my arm, soothing the burn there.

I laughed again. We had done it. The pipe was dead. Long live the Pipeslayer!

"Why do you yell power strike whenever you push yourself?" Gordan asked, slowly working his handcuff out.

"I- oh, it's an anime thing."

He looked confused for a second.

"Oh, Japanese porn?"

I nodded. "Yes. It's Japanese porn."

"So the power strike is your-"

"Yes, yes it is. It's exactly what you're thinking of." I was too exhausted to explain the nuances of Japanese cartoons.

It was mostly an emotional thing. There was an emotional place of hate and pain I had to tap into to use power strike. I was pushing myself to my limit with it. A lower limit now that I had the debuff. To get into that emotional state, yelling the word helped. Luckily Gordan was a cold unemotional- oh yeah. I had probably pissed him off by shouting too much. He didn't like people being overly emotional.

Oh well.

I checked out my new title. Neat. I could really slay pipes now. The knowledge upgrade helped as well. My body hurt so much that I hadn't even noticed more things slotting into place.

Thanks agony!

After lying collapsed for a while as Gordan, unharmed, worked his handcuff out of the messed up contraption we had made, we turned to the final barrier.

Steel gate. 350 HP. Sealed. 10 armor. A steel gate, well made, designed to resist escape.

With what we had left, we had 90 durability worth of items to expend on the wall.

We would be making a little gun nook because the bullet might rebound. We would lose some durability there, but we could make that up with the bin, the gun, the chest, the hacksaw. The phone and the cassette sadly didn't do anything smash worthy.

Between those we had 45 more durability worth of hits to expend. That should leave us, with the bullet, down 15 health to rip through the gate, minus whatever the bullet destroyed when it rebounded.

So, no way through right?

Wrong. We had three options.

1. We could weaponize Jigsaw's body. Use his corpse as a battering ram. Sharpen his bones into blades to slice open the door. I was against this option because Amanda would be mad.

2. We could get the camera out that they were watching us with and use that as a battering ram. This was an option, but again it might trigger bad things, and the camera likely wouldn't be that durable.

3. I could abuse my power strike power by using it when each object had 1 durability left and eke out some extra damage.

Option 3 was best. Less risk of retaliation.

After tapping the door a while to find where the bar was, we stood together, the gun in our makeshift toilet bowl shield.

"You can do it. My hand is shaking too bad." I handed him the gun.

Maybe if he had heard the tapes I'd be worried. But he had no idea that his family would be safe if he killed me, just the way I liked it.

He took it, aimed at a spot just below the bar, and fired.

The bullet went forward with a powerful thud, white dust and rust spreading everywhere.

The steel cracked and deformed around the bullet, not quite breaking, but close.

It took a lot of work, and a lot of sweat and pain, but we worked that crack open. We hit it, stabbed it, sliced it, and just generally went to town. Eventually we managed to peel the steel back just a few inches.

Then he took our one remaining pipe and held it under the bar..

"When I say, slide the door. Wait for it, wait for it… now!"

I put my weight against the door, sliding it open, ready for freedom.

Then the world filled with blackness, redness, and stars. I staggered back, a hand to my head, my world spinning. I tripped on the bin. I vomited out what little remained in my guts, and fell to the ground. I felt a sharp, stabbing pain and cried out, as I heard the thud of metal hitting flesh.

"You didn't really want to live. You just, macgyvered your way out. You don't deserve." Amanda said.

I heard the click of handcuffs.

"Fresh batteries for the tape, a new hacksaw, and a shiny new pipe. Aren't you lucky?" Amanda said. Jigsaw's apprentice. A red haired druggee he had recruited to help him out. And she was keeping us in. She had apparently been sitting right outside the door waiting for us.

I groaned, and tried to pull myself up, failing. Everything burnt. I looked at my chest. The pipe, the steel pipe I had cut, was sticking through my chest, leaking blood.

"Why did you do this? We tried! We wanted to live. We did everything!" I shouted out at Amanda.

Amanda turned to look at me.

"You. I heard you whisper about his brain cancer. That's why."

I shouldn't have mentioned that before. I was dust fumed but. Damn. She was very protective.

"But I tried. I did everything your tape asked." I said, gasping for air.

She walked over to me, and kicked my chest. I flinched away.

"You tricked your way out."

"Then why is my arm burnt? Why are my muscles burnt and torn? Why is my hand sliced up my shrapnel? I wanted to live. I want to live." She looked from side side, then spat in my face.

"You're the surplus. You never mattered. You were here to test Gordan. Nothing more. You're trash. Trash which knows too much."

She glanced at my chest.

"Macgyver your way out of that. Game Over." She gave me another solid kick, cracking several ribs, and walked out.

My vision was starting to go blurry. Blackness filled the edge. I saw Gordon, chained to a new pipe, his head bleeding from a hit. I saw Jigsaw being dragged out, him in one hand, a baseball bat in the other...

And the last thing I saw before the end was the top end of the pipe, still smiling it's joker smile at me. In the end, the pipe won.

I died.

Story over guys, nothing more to see.

But no, the game is not that merciful. He will be back.

Adam really got a raw deal in Saw. I'll be covering it more in the next chapter, but, he did everything in the film his tape told him to, unlike Gordon who failed to kill Adam in the time frame, and then got left locked up with no way to escape because Amanda tossed the key on his chest in the bathroom while Gordon got expert medical care from Jigsaw. And then Amanda murdered him.

Dragonbornthesam, yeah the system as I have it written up works through debuffs but with sufficient will to live you can ignore stuff like lost limbs. A limb might have 5 HP so if Adam sliced off his arm he would still be functional. Would have to find a way to stem the bleeding but if he did then he could totally one armed hero his way out of things with full stats. The perks do sound fun, and I will add them to the list. Perks are always fun. That said, his luck is generally gonna stay quite low. Part of his thing will be that he doesn't get to be the characters with plot armor, he gets the nobodies who get murdered. He must fight against fate to survive.

Williams1996, the intention is that he should be done with Saw 1 in two chapters more, unless writing hits a snag, so after that he will be free. He is gonna work his way through the entire Saw film set, but whilst I plot out Saw 2, he can go on some sidequests. Any suggestions as to horror movies he should visit?

Perks, world suggestions, and reviews are always appreciated.