[X] "Hold on a moment. If I can ignore the pain enough to loosen one of your chains, you'll hurt yourself less getting out."
Mordred stopped struggling for a moment, looking at Pyrrha.
"You think you can break the chains?" She asked.
"...I can try, at least." Pyrrha replied, reaching out with her Semblance. The instant she focused on her Semblance, grabbing the chains with her polarity, the electricity started flowing into the back of her neck, breaking her concentration and making her cry out in pain.
"Shit." Mordred swore. "Hey, cut that out. I can get out of here myself."
The electricity stopped, as Pyrrha groaned, looking up at Mordred again.
"N-No..." She groaned. "I can... Do this..."
She took a deep breath, and tried concentrating again. Her Semblance was focused again, and once more, the shock hit her in the back of her neck. Pyrrha gritted her teeth, focusing on just keeping a grit on her Semblance. She needed to ease into it, focus on just being able to hold the polarity, before she moved on to something before she tried to do anything with it.
Just focus on her Semblance. Keep her grasp on the polarity. Magnetise the chains. Hold on it. Focus on it. Ignore the pain. Hold on. Ignore-
"Argh!" She screamed, falling to the ground but being held up of her chains. Breathing heavily, Pyrrha dug her nails in her palm to try and avoid any risk of passing out.
Closing her eyes, Pyrrha tried to concentrate more.
"Oi, enough!" Mordred called again. "The hell are you doing?"
"G-Getting you out..." Pyrrha panted out of gritted teeth. Without standing again, she reached out to grab the chain at Mordred's wrist, locking it in place for a moment.
She needed a different tact this time. She kept failing because she was trying to overcome the shocks. She couldn't stand it for long. So she had to rip away at the chains before it got to her.
As the shocks struck her for the third time in as so many minutes, Pyrrha grasped her polarity and ripped away at the chains at Mordred's wrist. There was the sound of snapping, and Pyrrha collapsed, taking shaky breaths for a moment before she looked back up to Mordred.
"Did..." She wheezed out, as she tried to stand. Her leg slipped under her, causing her to collapse again, before she shakily got to her feet while leaning against the wall.
In response, there was the sound of steel shattering, as Mordred tore her right arm off the wall, the chains breaking behind her.
"Perfect." She replied. "How about you? Are you alright?"
"I'm..." Pyrrha muttered, trying to focus. "I'm fine."
She looked over at Mordred, who grabbed the chain around her left hand and stepped away, pulling out of the wall while holding the chain in both hands. She grunted as she pulled, and after a moment, the wall started crumbling as Mordred pulled the chain through. After a moment, the eye-bolt attaching the chain to the wall was ripped out, still attached to the chain on Mordred's arm, and she rubbed her wrist for a moment as it hung off her.
"Good enough." She declared, as she walked over to Pyrrha. "Now be honest. How bad did that hurt? We're gonna get out of here, and if you need me to help you-"
"Sorry..." Pyrrha groaned.
"Oi, stop that." Mordred declared, putting a bare hand over a small sensor on Pyrrha's back. "When I say go, start pulling with your right hand."
Pyrrha nodded.
"Then go!"
Pyrrha forced her right arm to move, straining on the steel, as she heard a cackling sound from behind her head. After the moment, there was a cracking sound, and Pyrrha stumbled forward a step before the chain on her left caused her to swing around as she fell.
"Ugh." She groaned, getting to her feet again and looking back at Mordred. She was shaking her hand, and Pyrrha briefly saw some sort of electric burn on it.
"Are you okay?" Pyrrha asked. "I'm sorr-"
"Enough with the apologies." Mordred snapped. "You can apologise after we get out of here."
Pyrrha reached up to the other chain with her Semblance, and ripped the chain off the wall. The sensor on the wall cackled with energy that eventually arced out and shocked her arm. Pyrrha bit her tongue to avoid crying out again.
She was down, now. She needed to be strong, now. Needed to get out of...
Wherever they were.
"We need to move." Pyrrha declared, walking up to the steel door of the room with her arm at her side.
"Stand behind me." Mordred said, stepping forward. Pyrrha blinked.
"But-"
"Your Semblance will get through this easier." Mordred noted. "But if there's someone on the other side serving as a guard, they might shoot through before you get the door down. If I'm blocking you from anything on the other side, you at least might be able to get out."
Pyrrha desperately wanted to argue against that. She didn't want anyone risking getting hurt for her. But it'd be smarter to focus on getting out, over arguing with her ally.
"Fine then." She replied, before reaching out with both hands. Mordred stepped in front of her as she parted her hands, the steel of the doors parting slowly as she did so. It crumbled, cracked and opened outwards, as Pyrrha tore it open.
"Nobody there." Mordred noted, sticking her head out and looking around. "Come on. Let's go. Might not be any alarms going, but if there's nobody watching then I'd be surprised."
Mordred stepped through the hole in the steel door, and Pyrrha followed her after a moment. The hallways past it where empty, and poorly lit, but the material of the walls was familiar somehow...
"Left or right?" Mordred asked, looking around.
Pyrrha was quiet for a moment. "...I don't hear anyone coming, so... Either?"
"Let's try the left, then." Mordred muttered. "Wait, hang on, do you think you could tear off a chunk of that steel door? Like a club?"
Pyrrha turned to the door, and closed her eyes. "I can try..."
Steel groaned as Pyrrha ripped off a chunk of it, eventually pulling out a thick section as long as her arm. Letting it hover for a moment, Pyrrha let it go as she Mordred grabbed it.
"Good enough." She muttered. "It's not a proper weapon, and I could throw it if I'm desperate, I guess."
Sighing, Mordred held the makeshift club over her shoulder, and started heading to the left. Pyrrha followed her, and they walked in silence for a moment.
"...So, what happened after I lost consciousness?" Pyrrha asked.
"Not much." Mordred muttered bitterly. "I was too low on Aura after the tournament fight, and they were bringing some heavy weapons too. Not sure how the management didn't overhear the cannon going off, or how they got around the cameras, but I wasn't in a good enough state to fight them after a few hits. I hit them just as bad, at least, but..."
"...There's something strange going on." Pyrrha muttered. "They were able to get into the backstage, right when our Aura's where lowest, and when security should have been highest. Nobody interfered with the fight. They were able to get us out of there while we were down without being stopped. It's... Strange."
Mordred looked back at her. "You thinking that the people in charge of the tournament might have been involved?"
"I..." Pyrrha trailed off. It wasn't a nice thought. The people who managed the Mistral Tournament were fairly important people, and vetted heavily. If they were willing to help capture the champion and runner-up, then what did that imply about how much influence the people responsible had?
"...How long were we out anyway?" Mordred asked "My Aura's still down, so it can't have been long, but they still managed to get us into a cell and chain us up. We can't have been out too long, right? Can't be too far from the arena."
"Hopefully." Pyrrha muttered, as they passed a door.
"...Hold on." Mordred stopped by the door. "Might be something in here."
She pressed a button by the steel door, and it swung open. She looked inside, and paled slightly.
Pyrrha stepped in to look what was inside the room, and her breath stopped as she stared inwards. There was a figure chained to the wall, viciously ripping away at it, with a pile of corpses on the other side of the room. Each of them was bloated, their skin discoloured in a variety, from unnaturally pale, to a dark blue and purple, to a bloody red.
The figure against the wall was a kind hulking behemoth of a person, their features deformed and looking far from human, and their skin pitch black, not unlike that of a Grimm.
"What the hell?" Pyrrha asked. "What..."
The figure let out an echoing scream, and Pyrrha wasn't sure what to think of it. It sounded angry, mindless, but more than that...
...Pained.
Mordred pushed Pyrrha aside, stepping into the room while holding her club.
"Oi!" She called. "The hell are you?"
The not-human creature looked down at the girl, and screamed again, reaching out for her while reaching for her head. The chains stopped it before it could reach for Mordred, as it mindlessly called out, snarling at her.
"...I see." She noted, before smashing her makeshift club into its head. The club made a crunching sound, and the creature was dazed for a moment, before Mordred followed up, hitting it another two times before eventually caving in the monster's skull.
Pyrrha took a step back, at that.
"The hell has that Three woman been doing to these people?" Mordred asked. "That thing... That was a mad dog, not a..."
She took a deep breath, before turning away from it, and towards the door.
"We need to get the hell out of here." She said. "I'm not going to-"
She trailed off, as she tilted her head to raise her ear. Pyrrha listened too, and heard footsteps in the hallway.
"Hide." Pyrrha whispered, looking around for somewhere in the room they could get into. Mordred put her club on the ground, and walked towards the pile of corpses in the back.
She gestured Pyrrha towards her, and the woman in red hair made sure she was breathing.
...There wasn't any other options. Whoever was coming would be here soon, and the room was empty apart from the one thing. Following Mordred, Pyrrha shifted one of the bodies, and as the rotting flesh spun, reached for her mouth, desperately trying not to throw up. She forced herself to stay quiet, as she looked at Mordred hide under the bodies.
...She couldn't do this, she-
Didn't have a choice. She was too weak right now to do anything, and if they were caught...
Laying down on the ground, Pyrrha shifted one of the bodies to be on top of her, but left her head exposed. Well, slightly. She shifted another body to block her head from the view, but otherwise left it uncovered.
Closing her eyes and trying not to think about where she was, Pyrrha listened to the footsteps as they entered the room, alongside the sound of cutting scissors.
"...Oh, Glatisant." She sighed. "Why did they do this to you? You were such a milestone. A doll who had survived past the procedure. You could have been..."
She sighed, as she trailed off.
"You were screaming not long ago." She noted. "They couldn't have gotten too far..."
She trailed off, looking at the door.
"...They couldn't have passed me." She spoke aloud, before yawning. "No, need to stay awake now. They might break more of my dolls."
There was the sound of movement, before a brief cackle of static and Three talking louder.
"Guard the left-wing stairs." She ordered. "Don't let them up."
And with that, she yawned again, and left the room.
There was silence, for a long time, before Pyrrha felt comfortable moving again. Trying not to think as she pushed off the object on top of her, she stood, and considered what Three had said.
She seemed confident that only one location needed to be guarded, which meant there was only one way out. Likely the way she had come from, unless she just just lived down with all of her...
...Victims, was the best word.
Which meant that Mordred and her would have to fight their way out, she realised.
"Well, crap." Mordred swore. "Any plans, magnets?"
Pyrrha thought on it for a moment.
[X] They didn't have a choice. They'd just have to try and fight their way through, and hope for the best.
[X] Three mentioned having more 'Dolls.' If they opened all the doors and cut loose the monsters, they could create a distraction.
[X] Pyrrha could reveal herself to whoever was guarding the stairs and lure them away, and give Mordred time to run and find help.