Nervously, Alex lagged behind the forerunners. When they momentarily stopped at the elevator, he paused to catch his breath. Despite getting more physical exercise than usual in this place he wasn't in great condition, and didn't want to use his powers again for fear of falling on the floor in front of all these people. He looked around at the rest of the group, desperately trying to get in and leave. While he was glad for a chance to catch his breath, he also felt nervous at standing still for any amount of time, and was visibly relieved when the elevator finally did arrive. He got in along with the rest of the assembled kids, and decided to lean against one of the walls for support. This elevator could take them back to ground level, and then they could leave.... was it really going to be this easy? While Alex certainly hoped it would be, something in the pit of his stomach told him that was impossible.

Of course, that was when the girl started freaking out, slamming the open door button repeatedly. Raising an eyebrow Alex wondered what had gotten into her. There was nothing dangerous in here, was there? Now hysterical she began shouting something about them stopping the elevators and Alex realised they were stuck in the elevator. Even then it wasn't such a big deal though, I mean with all the powers here there was certainly someone who could open the door, right? I mean, even he could probably do that, if he managed to get his fingers in the gap... in fact, he should do that right now!

That was when the gas began to pump into the room. With a horrible hissing sound a greenish-yellow fog began to fill the room, slowly moving from the top to the bottom. Alex started, backing into a corner as his heart made a jump. Oh shit, so this is why people were freaking out! Alex had never been gassed before. Was this knockout gas? Tear gas? Was it murder-gas? Oh my god he was going to die here in this little metal box cut off from the rest of the world choking on his own blood it was happening right now. Eyes wide he spent a moment staring at the ceiling as his mind screamed at him to move, but he couldn't get out of here. The only way out of the elevator was blocked by those doors! But....

Glancing back at the doors, Alex suddenly remembered he was a superhero now. Did he have enough power to break through those doors? What if he just broke them so they didn't open, and then they all died in here? That sounded like a thing he'd do... But if he was going to be a superhero one day, he had to learn to just do stuff. So, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat, Alex forced his way to the front of the kids and towards the doors. This was his chance to show everyone what it was he could do, just how cool his ability was. So he placed his hands on the door, and began drawing on his stored energy. Like an invisible muscle he twitched it. He still didn't exactly control how much power he drew on, it wasn't an easy thing to do. Not like in the comics, where people knew exactly how to do stuff like that.... but for this he figured he'd need all of this. So he pulled with all his might, until he could feel a massive ball of power focused on his arms. Like he'd somehow tied a knot into his flesh, it was kinda painful. More energy than he'd ever held before, this was probably everything he had left. All of his reserves. Hopefully it was enough.

Breathing out, Alex let everything out. He opened the floodgates, and all of the power came flowing out of his body, through his arms and into his fingertips, into the door. Like a wave slamming into the shore it slammed into the door, and with a blast like a gunshot they were torn completely away from the wall. They launched themselves across the room and into the hallway, skidding across the ground before they came to an eventual stop about 10m away from their starting position. The entire thing left Alex breathless, the feeling of sending out that much power that quickly was like a punch to the gut. He was having trouble breathing properly, and stumbled out of the room, dropping onto his hands and knees. After a bit of coughing he managed to roll onto his back and started breathing properly again. Not exactly the awesome introduction he'd wanted for his powers, but damn! He'd murdered that door. Too bad he'd spent all his energy while doing it, he wouldn't be able to pull off something like that again for a while.

Andre

Laughed in slight hysteria, wiping away tears quickly and doing his best to get to his feet without assistance. "God yes I am alright! Oh it's so good to see you!" He began to go in to hug this kind stranger, but immediately realized how odd that would be, and instead moved his hand up to push them through his hair, a classic "so anyways" motion. "I'm so glad I ran into you all, there are so many of you! Holy shit!" His face was lit up with a massive grin, his teeth showing and his eyes it up. Never had he been this happy to see people. It was obvious they were making a break for it.

Especially when one girl, their leader maybe? Passed them by without a second thought and called for them to follow if they wanted. He turned to look at Ada, as if remembering he was in a conversation with her. "Hey, thanks. I appreciate the concern. We should probably follow them though yeah?" He grinned and gestured behind him with his thumb, stating the obvious. He giggled and spun on his heel, beginning to skip down the halls. The idiot made his way down, keeping a slow enough pace to look back and check if the others were near behind. Only losing his smile when the yelling started. His face went pale and he stopped in his tracks. What was going on around this corner?

He should have ran, not away but towards them. Even if they weren't his best chance at survival, they were also living beings, trying to escape this shit-heap.

But he didn't.

He stayed glued where he was, the gravity of everything rushing back and weighing on his shoulders. He didn't want to turn around that corner. Then something loud happened and the sound of metal doors clanging against the walls made Andre jump, taking a few steps back. What a joy-kill existential fear was.

Fuyuki was more or less baffled by the sudden appearance of the young boy with tears in his eyes, but he was in no position to be so surprised by that. He was a patient after all, and they all had a common goal, a great desire from the bottom of their souls: to escape this hellhole.

He simply gave a smile to the boy as the pink-haired girl approached him. But as Alina dashed away to the elevator, Fuyuki knew that it was time for him to move, or else he would either got shot dead in his tracks, or be darted, subdued and thrown back to that horrible claustrophobic cell living in everlasting darkness of his blindness.

“Come on, let’s go. We’re being left behind.”

He called out to the three as he too moved into a dash, trying to catch up with her fellow survivors. But as he moved with haste, he noticed, or rather sensed, that something was also off. As if…someone is missing.
Fuyuki stopped at a T-section and looked back to his trail, and saw that the boy with teary eyes wasn’t there, for some reasons. Maybe he’s trying to catch up. But it turned out to be not the case. Most likely not, as he had already spared a few seconds to wait for him, but he did not turn up around the corner he expected him to be.

“Now what is he-Ahh!”

Suddenly, it hit him.

His senses began to blur.

Slowly and strugglingly, Fuyuki looked to the hallway that crossed path with the hallway that he was running through, and at his fatal carelessness. A scientist, with a dart gun, was standing firmly there, crouching and aiming patiently. Fuyuki could not see him as clearly anymore, but what he could see was a dart, filled with a strong sleeping substances, was plunged straight into his arm.

He was shot.

And in only a few seconds, the substance would take effect.

‘This…is the end. My end? It can’t be.’

It couldn’t end like this. He was waiting so patiently for what was to come for so long, and now God is going to smash it, his dreams, all to pieces and tell you that everything that he had endured was for nothing?

It can’t be!

“It can’t be!”

The scientist, noticing how the Asian boy was slowly falling into unconsciousness, smiled triumphantly as he casually approached him. But little did he know…that Fuyuki was still capable of seeing clearly.

That was his worst mistake.

Fuyuki suddenly snapped, his eyes opening widely, as the arrogant scientist was sent slamming violently against the wall, and then being pulled with a tremendous force towards Fuyuki. He went out cold instantly, as obvious as no normal man was able to sustain such force and maintaining his cool, not to mention a scientist, whose job only included working his brains and torturing patients like him.

But even that could not stop the effects of the drugs. It could not be stopped only with sheer mental will, no one so naive would have thought that.

Fuyuki could feel his eyelids as heavy as a bag full of sand, threatening to fall any moment. It would fall, if he didn’t do anything to deal with it. Come on, think!

All of a sudden, Fuyuki jerked his head, in realization. Of something. Something…crazy. He remembered that in one of the movies that he once watched with his family back before being kidnapped into this place. In one particular scene, the villain was struck with a tranquil gun, and he punched himself to keep himself awake.

Of course, it was just a typical Hollywood movie that was full of trivial and sometimes absolute bullshit scenes. It was awesome when watched, but some you could not simply apply it to real life before being proved. Fuyuki didn’t know if pain could actually cause the mind to concentrate better and negate the effects of it, but after looking back at the position that he was in, there was no time for considering factors like that. If you don’t act fast, you’re gonna fall.

To hell with this!

He looked down to the unconscious scientist, and found a gun being holstered in his pants pocket. And now it was not any dart guns, a real gun. A semi-automatic pistol, the H&K USP.

‘This is gonna hurt.’

Fuyuki quickly reached out for it, trying his best not to fall to the ground and let loose to the effects of the sleeping substances. After having a solid grip onto it with his hand, he quickly pointed it…to his other arm. Both hesitantly and decisively, he pulled the trigger.

“This is the only way to keep me conscious." He said, in case anyone asked.

“E-Eh?” Ada said, confused to the boy’s sudden fit of laughter. Was she wearing something weird on her face? A few moments later and her questions were answered by the boy’s next words, making things clearer. Seeing his happy reaction made a smile appear on Ada’s own face and had he followed through with it, she’d have greatly hugged him back. “See, we’re just like you. We want to escape this place too,” she said, following after him and Fuyuki.

“My name’s Ada by the way. Ada Harper. We’re supposed to be heading to the exit and I think that’s where the others went…yeah! Down there, right at the elevators,” she said. And then she gasped in horror seeing the rest of their companions trapped in the malfunctioning door of those same elevators. Panic and desperation could be heard from inside the metal cage and the boy who had spoken to her earlier was now a crumbled heap on the ground.

But they were no longer humans now, were they? That same revelation seemed to resonate with the other subjects because soon enough the doors to the elevator were blown away, each of the trapped victims sprawling out back to safety and solid ground. “Thank god they’re safe,” Ada said, trying to bring Andre back to his feet. “Come, we have to find another way out-Fuyuki!”

It all happened to fast. The needle that pierced him, the scientist suffering a painful fate, and Fuyuki’s decision to use equal pain in keeping himself awake. Immediately Ada rushed to his side, already wincing as a gunshot echoed throughout the hallway.

“Y-You didn’t have to do that,” she said meekly, trying not to look at the self-inflicted wound he had given himself. “Fuyuki, I…I could have helped. If you needed pain to keep awake, I could have…” she tried to get out, thinking of her own powers. After all, a human punch wouldn’t do it, but what about being punched by a truck?

Alina was...shocked?

Stunned?

Stupefied, maybe?

Something like that.

She wasn't exactly sure why; after all, it was part and parcel of this hellhole to have people who could control their own blood. Why not someone who could do anything else? Logically (at least as far as logic went here), it all made sense.

Logic still had a tendency to fail when someone conjures an explosion massive enough to send metal elevator doors flying, yet somehow barely moves. Something about blatant disregard for the known laws of physics shorted out her mind somewhat. Luckily for her, it came online quickly enough for her to realize something:

Shit, I'm still bleeding. The slash on her shoulder, though short, still bled profusely. Though she would recollect the blood eventually, there wasn't time for "eventually." They had to move. Now, now, and now. As more blood spilled out, she expanded and hardened it with her mind, filling the slash with a line of solid blood. The bleeding was lessened, only occasionally seeping out around the blockage. More importantly, though, the pain was tremendous. Having a solid object jammed into the wound forced a gasp from her, and nearly broke her focus enough for it to simply revert to blood. She held on, though, to that tenuous concentration, at least enough to grit her teeth and spit to anybody in the elevator behind her, "Guess this is our stop. Come on, get out." She stood, swaying slightly, and walked out, nudging the man on the floor with her foot. "I'm with you," she bit out as blood poured down her shoulder, "I want nothing more than to lie down right now. But we gotta get going. Up you come."

Favoring her uninjured arm, she reached down, grabbing his hand and hauling him upright. There was still some strain on her shoulder, though, and another bolt of pain and and spurt of blood ran down her arm, the blood dripping off at the fingertips. She screwed her eyes together for a second, cursing flagrantly under her breath. Then she opened them, and cursed flagrantly--this time not under her breath. The cameras in the hallway were rapidly readjusting themselves, steadily moving towards her and the man. "Come on!" she shouted to whoever happened to be nearby, whether in the elevator or outside, not caring at this point whether or not she was heard, since they were pretty much S.O.L. already. "We need to move!"

Then came something she didn't expect, from off in a side hallway. It was close by, too, enough to set her ears ringing. A gunshot. One crisp, clear shot. Her legs blazed back into motion and she darted down the hallways towards the sound. After all, where there were guns, there were probably some of the escapees that hadn't followed her. Safety in numbers, after all.

She skidded to a halt as she saw something she didn't expect. Pink-haired girl from before—Ava, Ada, something like that, she hadn't had enough time to fully commit everything to memory—was standing next to the boy that had slammed guards to the walls. She remembered his name; not every day you hear the name Fuyuki in America. There was a blood pouring out of a bullet wound in his hand, but...he was holding the gun. She stood stock-still for a moment as she stared at the bizarre tableau. Dimly, she realized that the girl she first busted out of the cell, the one that had asked about the plan, was standing nearby, clearly appreciating the sheer oddness of the situation just as she was.

"Whuh?"

In the time since being freed by the other girl, Penny had experienced life and death in a way she hadn’t thought possible; a daring description considering the fact she had a very vivid imagination. Her brows had tensed and she had probably experienced a few years of stress within the elevator situation alone. But somehow her fellow prisoners “saved the day”. It was surreal and for Penny’s highly complicated thought process the only thought she could come to even comprehend was one single thought; a thought that was in utter shock and awe.

I’m not dead. We’re not dead.

Still, despite her stupor she did not remain in the elevator once the doors were pried open. She kept close to the girl who had found her and followed her lead. As far as Penny could tell, it was the best and most logical course of action. Was this girl who she attached to going to be their actual leader? The one who pulled them out of this living nightmare? What would happen when they got out of here? The scientists surely wouldn’t stop, they would want to catch them again; especially the ones whom had manifested spectacular extranormal abilities. Penny wasn’t sure if she was unlucky or fortunate that her power was unknown to her. What if she needed it in a time of crisis? What if it was useless to help her newfound friends? Would any of them bother with her if she was recaptured? They didn’t even know her name. After all, much like in school she had been the quiet one during this whole venture. Perhaps it was her fault?

Perhaps she should have stayed in her cell. It was comparatively safer there, after all. The idea was a curious one, but Penny didn’t have time to think about it as a loud ‘bang’ echoed in the halls and soon enough her and the leader girl were in a corridor with two other prisoners. She looked at the situation before looking to the leader girl who seemed confused by everything.

“Are we waiting for the scientists to take us back to our cells?” She inquired, her tone flat. “If not, we should keep moving.”

Alan's eyes darted back and forth. Even with the guards focused on everyone else, he had to be careful. The stairs were likely guarded, and actually taking the elevator would be a death trap. He couldn't think of a way to be more of a sitting duck, except possibly sitting inside his cell. But maybe, if he got to the elevator shaft, he would be able to climb down it. It was dangerous, but it likely had the least amount of guns. His exoskeleton could probably take a hit with an elevator, but a clip of bullets from an assault rifle would rip through him like a sewing machine needle through fabric. With a plan in mind, he ran towards the elevators at the end of his hall, not sure how exactly he would open the doors.

Then he heard an explosion. He decided he would take his chance with the bullets on the stairwells.

He burst through the doors into the stairwell. That explosion meant that the conflict was escalating. He had to get out of here fast. Jumping onto the wall, he scurried downwards. His heart was pumping with adrenaline. The facility always kept him isolated, so he didn't recognize any of his environment. Nothing could be planned right now, he had to go on instinct alone. The short sighted plan change yet again when he noticed the sound of boots hitting metal getting louder and louder from below. Guards were running up the stairs. He had to get into the hallway or he was gonna get caught. Jumping down, Alan took the full force of the landing to his leg. A little harder than he would have liked, but nothing he couldn't handle. Bursting through the door, he peeked over his shoulder to see what floor he was on. Floor 4, according to the sign next to the stairwell door. Right where all the action was supposedly happening. It was definitely less than ideal. Looking back forward, Alan realized another sign he was on Floor 4: the load of test subjects running around. A load of them seemed to have just come out of a destroyed elevator. He had ran himself right from the pan into the deadly fire. He froze as he tried his best to figure out what to do next. As he mentally scrambled around for any sort of plan, he realized he had known. He couldnt see any way out of this. He should have just stayed in his cell.