[X] Three mentioned having more 'Dolls.' If they opened all the doors and cut loose the monsters, they could create a distraction.
"How many doors do you think there are down here?" Pyrrha asked.
"I didn't pass many." Mordred noted. "But we haven't walked too far from our cell. Probably a few?"
"This might work, then." Pyrrha said to herself. "Three said she had more of those... Things."
She tried not to look at the chained up corpse, as Mordred picked up her club.
"If we let a few of them free..." Pyrrha mused. "Let loose enough that Three and the people working with her have to fight them instead of us..."
"Why are we assuming they'll fight Three's people?" Mordred asked.
"They're chained up for a reason." Pyrrha replied. "I don't think those monsters can really tell people apart."
"...Fair enough." Mordred admitted. "Which way, though? Follow Three and let things loose that way? Or let them loose as we move to the exit?"
"I... Would prefer we move to the exit." Pyrrha admitted. "The closer we get, the better our odds will be if we need to run. Which may be likely, considering the monsters might also try to attack us..."
"Well, let's go then." Mordred said, putting her club on her shoulder again as she walked out the door. As she did so, she turned back and lowered her voice.
"Don't make too much noise." She whispered. "We don't want Three overhearing us."
Pyrrha nodded, and didn't speak, as she followed Mordred out. There was only so many things she could focus on, and right now, between trying to stay quiet and trying not to freak out, she was plenty distracted. Talking risked slipping up, being too loud or giving herself away somehow. She didn't need the distraction.
They walked along for a time, until Pyrrha and Mordred came across another steel door. Mordred walked up to it, and pressed the button by it, before ducking to the side of the wall as it slid open. Pyrrha hid on the other side, and peeked in, trying not to be visible from inside the room.
The positioning meant that she only got a brief side-view of the being inside the room before she ducked back in, but within the room, she got a glimpse of some stone-like figure. She would have mistaken it for a statue, if it wasn't chained to the wall. It was androgynous in gender, but appeared to have a human body, except its legs looked like someone had cut off it's feat and replaced it with horse hooves, while also attaching the back of a horse to the back of the person.
It was facing the wall, so that the chains would keep it captured without causing problems with it's horse-like back, so Pyrrha looked inward and saw what else was in the room.
Once more, there were bodies littering the back of the room. Human ones, as usual, but also some slaughtered animal part. The head of a pig, the front of a horse, a dead dog with its head attached to a human body, a cat with a human head, and many others. Some of them were like stone, and some of them were unnaturally big, but all of them were laying in bloody pieces.
Pyrrha very pointedly looked away from the corpses, focusing on the manacles around the stone beasts hands, and used her magnetism to snap the chains. The centaur creature looked at them, confused, and turned to look around.
Pyrrha slipped back to the wall, blocking her head from view, and crouched down near the ground. Mordred mimicked her actions, as the stone-like thing started moving. It stepped outside of the door, ducking under it to step into the open, and Pyrrha quickly rolled through it's horse legs to get into the room before it could look around. As the horse legs stepped outside the door, Mordred quickly passed her club to Pyrrha before sliding in as the centaur looked around.
It wandered off, towards the direction Pyrrha and Mordred had come from, and Mordred poked her head out as it walked away.
"...Well, that thing's gonna go run into Three." She noted. "We should hurry. Stop worrying about being sneaky."
"If you think so." Pyrrha nodded, looking out herself as the centaur turned a corner. Stepping out of the room a moment later, Pyrrha looked the other direction and started walking at a brisk pace.
Mordred quickly overtook her, walking ahead, before coming to a split in the path. The path straight ahead continued, while another hallway opened up to the left and continued down for a bit.
"Split path." Mordred muttered. "No signs, too. Which way?"
Pyrrha looked around, for a moment.
"...This is about halfway through the path." She noted. "And this hallway looks like it turns right at the end. I think the left is more likely to lead to the exit? Or at least to somewhere different."
Mordred nodded. "Good enough, I suppose. But let's get the door over here first."
Mordred kept walking for a bit, coming to another steel door, and she and Pyrrha once again stood either side of the doorway as Mordred pressed a button. It opened, and Pyrrha looked in.
Inside the room was a half-dozen people, kept in cages rather than chained to the wall. Each of them seemed simple enough, but upon looking at them closely, Pyrrha realised their body parts were mismatched. There was a tall, pale man with a much smaller, dark-skinned arm ob his left, an even bigger and longer tanned arm on his right, and the legs of a child. There was a tiny head attached to a huge, hulking body. There were cases of a small torso but overly-long limbs, large bodies with tiny limbs that forced the person to be on all fours to keep themselves upright.
Each of them were staring straight ahead, entirely non-responsive, as Pyrrha stared at them. Unsteadily, she raised an arm, and tore away at one of the bars of the cages, which folded outwards as it snapped. She repeated this project for a short time, until there was a large enough gap in all the cages for the people to walk through.
They failed to respond.
"...This is creeping me out." Mordred admitted. "There's a lot of them, they're all messed up, and they're not doing anything. Let's just move on."
Pyrrha nodded, leaving behind the strange group. She paused for a moment, before choosing to leave the door open. If they did something at some point, that could be a distraction.
What the hell was going down here, anyway? Three was taking people and... Doing things to them, calling the results her dolls. This was like some story about a mad scientist. No matter how she looked at it, none of it really seemed real.
Maybe that was for the best. Even as she was, she was barely able to bring herself to talk, with how horrifying the sights were. If she was properly processing it...
She and Mordred came across another door, as they started walking down the other path that they thought could lead to an exit, and Pyrrha pressed the button to open it.
Inside were a collection of Grimm beasts. Three Ursa's, a Beowolf, and a Minos. The bull-Grimm was glowing green, as it looked towards the open door, and it began stamping its hooves as it prepared for a charge.
Pyrrha noticed that they weren't chained up, or restrained in any way beyond the steel door that she had just opened.
"We should run." She suggested.
Mordred suddenly sprinted down the hallway, and Pyrrha followed her, after a moment. Mordred's metal club was dropped to the ground to drop weight. They wouldn't be fighting these Grimm, they needed them to serve as a distraction, so they'd need to keep out of their reach. Thundering hooves followed for a moment, growing closer and closer, as the Minos charged faster than either girl could run. Looking ahead, Pyrrha noticed another steel door, and reached out to find the metal button that opened the door, pushing it inwards.
The door swung open as Pyrrha ran into it, pulling Mordred aside, and the Minos tried to stop and ended up slamming into the wall that was ahead of it a bit.
Pyrrha looked back for a moment, looking at a human-ish figure with a similar green glow as the Minos, and Pyrrha briefly ripped off its chains from a distance before running out of the room. One of the Ursa's went into the door, Pyrrha noticed as she looked back with Mordred right behind here, and there was the sound of a detonation and a splatter of blood a moment later.
There was a distant thundering of feet from behind the Grimm, which was quickly drowned out by the Beowolf howling.
"So much for stealth." Mordred noted, as she and Pyrrha ran past the Minos, which was pulling its head out of a wall. It briefly shimmered as it heard the two of them turn the corner around it, but the light died down as they ran into the distance.
Ahead of them, there was the sound of shouting, and running. Pyrrha focused on that sound. It was likely to be Three's people, which meant they were getting close to the exit.
A large figure turned the corner ahead of Pyrrha, and the girl swiped her hand to the left, forcing any metal on him to be thrown in that direction. A stun baton in the man's belt was thrust to the side, alongside a few coins that were ripped from his pocket. As his gaze followed the baton, Mordred leaped forward and punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground and leaving him to the Ura's that were chasing the two.
"Keep going!" Mordred called, as she noticed Pyrrha's gaze turning back, and she looked ahead as the two girls turned the corner again. The suited woman from earlier was standing by a set of stairs, holding a cannon that had expanded to lower a stand and extend two small machine guns on either side of it.
As Pyrrha came into view, the woman flipped a switch on the cannon, and opened fire. The shooting sounds echoed as the dust rounds shot out, and Pyrrha ducked and rolled to avoid them. If they were regular bullets, she could do something, but dust rounds? Not magnetic in the slightest.
She rolled on the ground, as she heard Mordred dodge around behind her, and repositioned herself as she slid on the ground so she could kick upwards and aim the cannon at the roof. It fired upwards, blasting a hole in the roof and revealing another floor above it, and Pyrrha jumped up and landed on her feet, throwing the gun to the side in the process.
The woman in a suit punched Pyrrha in the stomach, and she doubled over in pain. A second fist hit the side of Pyrrha's face, punching her into a wall. She spat out blood, as she stood up to face the woman, and Mordred jumped in suddenly to headbutt the woman.
There was a melodic screech from the distance, vaguely similar to Three's voice.
The woman, with her Aura intact, recovered first, throwing Mordred into a wall and charging in to follow through. Stretching out her hand, Pyrrha used her Semblance to pick up the cannon on the ground and threw it at the woman, who stopped her charge into Mordred to dodge it. Mordred took the opportunity to pull herself off the wall and punch the woman in the face.
There was a roar, as an Ursa ran around the corner and made a beeline for the fight. The woman in a suit grabbed Mordred's arm and threw her at the Ursa, and Pyrrha pulled herself off the wall to charge against the bear Grimm before it could do anything. Pyrrha's leg kicked upwards to hit it in the stomach, and the Ursa paused, giving Mordred time to recover.
Mordred jumped up, landing on the Ursa's head, before jumping again, aiming for the hole in the roof. The woman in the suit caught her an instant before she made it through the hole, and threw her back down. Pyrrha looked back, but quickly re-concentrated on the Ursa, leaping up at it and wrapping her arms around its neck. The Grimm struggled for a moment, slamming into the wall behind it to force Pyrrha off, and Pyrrha heard something like a bone cracking in her chest before she managed to snap its neck. She looked to the side, and saw the tall man in a suit trying to hold back the other two Ursa's and the Beowolf without his weapon, but as the Minos charged forward, he leaped to the side.
Pyrrha jumped up the wall, running up it for a moment as the Minos charged behind her, and as she started to jump away to safety, a sudden force hit her in her back. She briefly saw the cannon beneath her, before she fell to the ground. The Minos began to glow, and Pyrrha felt a hand suddenly grab her and throw her away as it detonated.
Mordred, having rushed to Pyrrha's aid, caught the brunt of the explosion, being thrown forward as the explosive force burnt at her. Without her Aura, that had to hurt. The woman stood over Pyrrha and Mordred, and drew a knife out of her sleeve.
There was a scream from around the hallway, and the woman paled, before running off around the corner.
A moment passed, with the sound of conflict right around the corner, as Pyrrha struggled to get to her feet. As she stood, Mordred crawled forward, and Pyrrha noticed that her legs were bleeding heavily.
"Shit..." Mordred groaned. "Just get out of here, magnets. I'll figure something out."
Pyrrha picked Mordred up, holding the blonde girl over her shoulders.
"I'm not leaving you." Pyrrha insisted.
"Idiot." Mordred snapped. "You'll never..."
Pyrrha heard another scream from around the corner, as well as several pained groans.
"...Sounds like something set off the frankensteins." Mordred noted. "Lets... Not, wait and see what they do to people."
Pyrrha noted, as she rushed ahead. She dashed up the stairs, and paused momentarily to open the door, careful not to lose her grip on Mordred in the process. Once the door was open, Pyrrha started running. The door opened into a small metal room with several other doors, and a damaged camera in the corner.
"...This is still the arena." She noted, looking at the walls. "That construction, the concrete in the walls and the paint job, its all the same."
"Huh." Mordred noted. "So this is why they don't like people looking into the employees only section."
Pyrrha nodded. Still in the arena...
That had to mean they didn't need to get far, to get out. Just past these steel doors, and whatever else there was. The arena was a big place with a lot of paths people weren't usually allowed in, so it might take a while, but she just needed to find a window and they could get out...
"...Hey?" Mordred asked. "Wasn't there two of those big guys when we were being captured? And just one down there?"
Pyrrha gulped. "I... Think so..."
"Can we run a bit faster?" Mordred asked. Pyrrha nodded, as she reached for a door.
Sealed shut. An electronic seal of some sort, not a lock or key. The door just wasn't opening.
Pyrrha paled, and wandered to the next door. Same problem. No way to open it. The third, and then the fourth, final door, both had the same problem.
"...I'm going to have to make some noise." Pyrrha noted, as she put Mordred down so she could reach for the door with both hands. She closed her eyes and concentrated, before tearing out one of the doors and throwing it back towards the door leading down.
"We need to hurry." Pyrrha noted, picking Mordred back up. The blone girl grumbled at being held up like that, but went with it. Pyrrha started running again, down a hallway with a couple of doors that, upon being checked, just led to small rooms with no windows and a cupboard.
At the end of a hallway was another door that Pyrrha could open, which led to a much longer corridor. The red haired girl stuck out her hair, and looked either way. Down one way, there was a wall.
Down the other, standing in front of a window, was the second large man.
"Oh no." Pyrrha whispered, as she backed up. "Mordred, we need to hide."
"Don't need to tell me." The girl whispered back, as Pyrrha slipped back into the hallway and hid in one of the rooms with no other ways in or out. The large man must have seen her, and be chasing them, but they couldn't run. Pyrrha wouldn't be able to sneak past him or open another one of the sealed doors on the way back. She needed to...
She took a deep breath, and thought for a moment.
"I have a plan." She decided, eventually.
[X] If Pyrrha fought the big man, Mordred would have time to slip past and get out the window, hopefully find help.
[X] The man might not have seen Mordred. If Pyrrha runs and lures him away, he wouldn't have reason to look for Mordred.