Bracelets for the soul

    As soon as the three were loaded up into the vent, Cyrus started his fast trek to find the end of the ventilation passage, the metal clattering underneath his frantic limbs as he crawled and clambered towards the smell of fresh air. The rust and chemical-scented clear air he'd knocked just minutes ago would be the sweetest smelling thing after this ordeal. With his energy returning with each inch towards clean air, he finally spotted a faint light at the end of the duct.

    "T-THERE IT IS!" he signaled, rushing towards the final grate keeping them trapped within this death chamber. Turning his body around, he gave it a few solid kicks, denting the offensive grate a few times before one of the sides was pried off the wall, the ribbing on the outer screws stripped. Gracelessly, the engineer dropped from the vent, his tired legs buckling under his weight and sending him falling to the floor. "W-We m-made it," he gasped, clinging to the wall and tugging his body up. That's when he remembered Alti's physical condition. F-Fuck fuck fuck he tugged at his already bedraggled shirt and stripped away a few ribbons of fabric, ready to grab Alti and tie off his wrecked arm once he came out the other side.

Maicy heard the something open. Could this be it? Freedom? Maicy began to carry a crying Piami and a hyperventing Aberdeen and ran to where the sound come form. Maicy, in-spite of her legs feeling wobbly, runs as fast as she could and once she got out, the sent of fresher air was apparent. Hell, the fuck, yes! She set the two she was carrying down gently.

"Hey Aberdeen. Piami. You guys okay?" Maicy asked, feeling concerned.

"Tr-Trying to be." Piami spoken, meekly.

With Nace, and surprisingly Vale, climbing in the vent after him, the man rushed through the vent and punched the great straight off its hinges before dropping to the floor. His body collapsed immediately, his lungs struggling to fill with the 'fresh' air of the hallway the three men found themselves inside of. After a few moments of raspy breathing and coughing fits, he finally managed to get to his feet, chuckling hoarsely as he brushed any dirt or dust off of him. The amalgamates seemed to finally regain their composure and stared up at their master, awaiting his next command.

"Ooooooooh, gotta say, that was a close one, boys." He called back to the two ex lovers behind him, a wry smirk spreading across his lips. "But, I think we can all agree that the enemy of our enemy is our friend, yes? Can we hold a truce until the three of us get rid of that psychotic scientist and get the hell out of here?" He chimed as he began walking down the hall, not waiting for their answers. "I'll give you a bit to think about it! As for me...." His words trailed off as he furthered the gap between the three.

---

Aberdeen once again found themselves being dragged out of the room by someone they didn't know. They'd hoped it was Maicy, but there was no telling as they'd lost all their senses. They continued to squirm vigorously until their muscles began giving out even further as the toxins quickly filled their body due to their intense struggling. Once set down again, the fighter attempted to drag themself away again, but merely collapsed on the ground, gasping for air.

With the introduction of fresh air into their system, Aberdeen heaved and choked as they attempted to force the toxic fumes out of their system. Their body writhed on the ground as puffs of yellow and white were intermixed as they attempted to reform their head in order to get an idea of where they were. Short blips of vision. 2 people? 3 people? No, 5? 

They managed to back themself against the wall and intentionally force their head into geyser mode, taking an enormous amount of their left over energy, but managing to release the gas much faster than it would naturally. Their vision slowly came back to them, along with their hearing. Aberdeen's eyes darted around the room as they tried placing the name of each face. 

Cyrus, Alti, Ortus, Piami, Alraada... wait, w-wheres..

"MAICY!!!" They called out, quickly shooting up from their place on the floor and nearly falling over. Upon spotting their partner, they quickly ran over and brought her in for a hug, squeezing her as tight as they could with the little strength they'd managed to regain. "Oh my god, are you okay!? Are you hurt? What happened!? I couldn't see or hear anything! They didn't hurt you, did they? Are you alright?"

They rapid-fired their questions as they continued to panic, looking at their partner before pulling her close to them again, wispy tears forming in the corners of their eyes. "I'm so glad you're alright!!" They choked out.

    After what felt like hours of dragging himself forward with only one good arm --the other sloppily smearing blood against the side of the vent wall the entire time-- Alti inevitably found his way to the other side, as well. Noisily, he spilled out of the wall and to the floor like the useless sack of potatoes he earlier embodied before writhing violently, hacking and coughing out the last of the lethal fumes as if he were choking on his own two lungs. His mind slowly recalibrating itself with every hoarse breath, he tried to silently ponder if the last few minutes of rescue were a direct result of spending an almost therapeutic amount of time with other people or because of the noxious gas, but at every turn, every thought he focused his hardest on seemed to blur out of existence as soon as they materialized. Why? As he groggily used some of his regained strength to seat himself against the wall, through his half-opened, yellow-filmed eyes he caught a bit of red. Alright, a lot of red, actually, all still leaking from the mutilated muscle of his right arm. Ohhh.....

    Beads of sweat rolled off his fair-skinned face --which managed to grow even paler with the extreme amount of blood loss-- and trailed down into his handmade shirt collar. His breathing hoarse and lethargic, he continued to focus on the red on his side through his confused slits of vision. I don't bleed like this. Why am I bleeding like this? Why isn't it stopping? he rapidly questioned to his thoughts in an almost matter-of-factly tone, the blurred colors and chatter from the world around him scattering away for a moment as he tirelessly tried to locate the answer to this conundrum. And then a pair of hands crossed his stream of consciousness and reached for his damaged limb, Alti ferociously jerking at the sudden, almost sickening warmth of gratification as the disembodied hands squeezed black strips of fabric the wound. That's when when he noticed the pool of red underneath his hand stopped stretching away from his fingers. Surprised, Alti blinked rapidly and stared at the phenomena with awestruck eyes as if it didn't make any sense, trailing his gaze back over to the equally red-stained hands, materialized its arms into existence, and eventually made his way up to Cyrus' worried face. 


     Oh, hey.... Alti watched as the other man continued on with his unnecessary precautions, almost smiling at the attractive, blood-smeared man in all his panicked glory since he knew now that at least he had been alright himself and his efforts to save Cyrus and the other two hadn't been made in vain. But as soon as the thought of that spike-laden deathtrap crossed his darkened cloud of consciousness, he soon remembered the tower of sharpened metal that separated muscle from bone, and while he couldn't at all remember obtaining any pleasure from the tear, the wound was just too unsightly to wait for. What would Cyrus think if he saw it? 

    Slowly, he parted his white lips and recited some string of language which, as it turned out, sounded like Latin when not being squelched underneath a pile of mumbling. Over the minute and a half of foreign blabbering (it'd usually never take this long), the sinews of his biceps stringed closer to each other under the protection of the torn shirt and tugged themselves together, unbeknownst to the fear-struck stranger before him that the damaged ends of the rip had now merged. "Always comes back....." he whispered weakly.


    "... Yeah, whatever you say, guy." he exhaled softly as he plopped himself on the other man's naked back, clearly still suffering the effects from losing around a third of his blood volume as it dragged its feet to replace itself. "Jus' don't.... just don't tell Cyrus abou-zis', OK?" The pool of blood he lost back at the plane was nothing in comparison to this....

    Cyrus carefully shifted his body forward and stood up, balancing his partner on his back, perplexed by the Latinesque babble that had been streaming at a steady clip from his lips. While he'd caught Alti mumbling in an odd language in the past, it was never anything to this extent.


    The scientist paused and frowned, visibly perturbed by the other man's confusion. How much blood had he lost? He doesn't even recognize me?? "Y-Yeah don't worry I ain't gonna tell him," he mumbled in response, carrying Alti over to where the others convened. Next step was finding a way out of the rat trap, and with nothing behind them but gas and death, there was nowhere else they could go but forward.


"Think that's the only way we can go, kiddo," he sighed, moving to push his hair out of his face when he realized just how blood covered his hand was, the engineer making a grim face and opting to swing the stray hair out of his vision instead. Tentatively he moved down the hall with his confused partner in tow, eyes and ears wide open for any sort of traps in the floors or walls only to find nothing but a series of doors. Cyrus hesitated to even participate in this funhouse of a door puzzle, tempted to peer through one of the doors but stopping himself. What would happen next? A blast of fire? Acid? A series of arrows shooting upon opening the door? Hell if he wanted to find out just yet. Instead he began to canvass the room for another airduct or ventilation shaft of any sort. Some sort of alternative to what were surely more death traps like the one they'd just escaped.