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Chapter 8

Morning the next day, not that anyone could tell with the complete lack of access to the sun's embrace within the deep metal caverns of the metahuman prison, Lilith found herself whistling to some incomprehensible rhythm as she got up from her bed.

Getting to her feet, she did a few stretches, trying to get rid of the stiffness in her body. In truth, said stiffness was probably only imaginary, but stretching felt good nonetheless, so she did it anyway.

After that, she headed towards the still locked doors. Suddenly, she turned around and stared at the phone lying on her bed with a deep, deep regret that was probably wholly inappropriate. Sighing, she ignored it, knowing that it was probably filled to hell and back with hidden trackers or other weird technological shit that she frankly had no intention to explore.

Turning back towards the doors, she smirked. Normally, they only opened at 8 am sharp, and right now, it was only 4 am. She probably didn't need to do this like this, but she wanted to leave a message behind.

She raised her fist, and then punched the door. Now, normally, her power didn't technically come with a strength enhancement in the package deal. However, it did allow her to literally turn the entirety of her arm into extremely dense muscle and still work fine.

The result was that the doors were completely blown off their hinges, being flung back hard enough that when they smashed onto a wall thirty or so meters away, the wall itself almost broke.

Her hearing was immediately blocked off by the loud screams of dozens of sirens, but she ignored them. Walking forward with a swagger to her steps, she didn't bother going through all the twists and turns of the maze-like compound, but instead, she chose to escape in a more... direct way.

Summoning around a couple dozen spider-like limbs from her back, she made the tips of each leg extremely sharp and as hard as diamond. Then, when she reached the basically already broken wall, she slashed at it with her new limbs.

The thick metal felt like butter to her, easily being cut apart and allowing her to continue walking. She repeated this process a few more times for the next sets of walls before finally encountering a human presence.

Really, this whole place was a bit of a sham. It supposedly housed the most 'unstable' and 'powerful' of humankind, and the most unknown, and yet it took them a whole 5 minutes to react to such an obvious break out attempt. Not that Lilith planned for this to be an attempt, not even close.

This was going to be a walk in the park.

There were several dozen guards, each armed with shields and pistols. She felt almost... nostalgic. It'd been a while since she'd seen these prison guards, as they usually stayed nice and clear of her.

They raised their shields in unison and pointed their pistols at her. In response, she just raised an eyebrow as the sharp limbs behind her swayed gently yet threateningly behind her.

Smirking slightly, an idea popped into her mind. In a fraction of a second, her sword-limbs shot out at the speed of lightning, well, maybe not that fast, but fast enough to completely bamboozle the guards anyways. Finally, there was some silence as the limbs retracted, leaving behind only destroyed alarm sirens.

There were naturally a lot more through the building, and she could still hear them, but at least she could hear her own voice now. And, more importantly, the gentlemen in front of her could.

One of them stepped forward. The only difference she could see between him and the others, apart from height and weight, was the fact that the badge on his chest looked slightly fancier.

"Surrender, Shapeshifter. There are dozens of reinforcements coming, and if you don't do so now, we won't be as gentle." He spoke firmly. Still, Lilith could practically smell the fear rolling off of him.

She didn't know whether he was courageous, or just a fool. The line was very easy to cross sometimes, after all. She knew that from personal experience.

"Hmm... Well, I could do that... Or, hear me out, you could all fuck off and let me pass. I don't particularly want to hurt you, but I don't mind breaking a few of your bones if you force my hand." She sniped back, enjoying the guard's flinch a bit too much than what should probably be socially acceptable, but Lilith was far beyond caring what society thought.

Not waiting to hear their answers, she just kept strolling forward. Unsurprisingly, after a moment of hesitation, the guards all parted ways before her. She turned up her nose at them, eyeing them with a mix of contempt and pity.

They just wanted to get paid, and yet, here they were, trying to stop someone she was fairly sure they had been warned never to fight, and yet also ordered to hold off in case of this very exact situation happening.

Really, people were such hypocrites sometimes. When she reached the end of the room, her limbs again slashed forward, easily chopping it to pieces and allowing her through.

Then, one of said limbs struck behind her, turning from a sharp edge into a non-clawed hand and grabbing at the throat of a guard who thought he was sneaky. She turned around, raising an eyebrow before commenting, "Yeah, not a very smart idea."

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Then, she smashed him against the floor. She was careful not to break anything too important, but nonetheless, the concussion he got from it was enough to force the man unconscious. The other guards shifted, looking ready to jump in, but a harsh glare from Lilith quickly stopped that.

"Next time..." She murmured, turning her voice's creepiness factor up to a hundred, "I won't be so merciful."

She smirked as the guards backed down before continuing on her 'rampage' through the building. After a few minutes more of smashing through walls and ignoring the guards tailing her, she finally reached the exit... Well, it was more like she made her own exit, but those were mere details.

Taking a deep breath of the nice, fresh air, Lilith enjoyed the feeling of having the sun kiss her skin once more. She felt like a vampire, what with hiding from the sun for so long... Well, it hadn't exactly been her idea to do so, but whatever.

She turned back to stare at the giant metal complex, unsurprised to find it's appearance having drastically changed since the last time she'd seen it. Despite having technically lived inside of it for almost 3 months, she'd never been able to really look at it, and she had to say, she was quite impressed.

Humming slightly, she turned around, not walking any further as she stood before her freedom. She'd made her point, but she didn't want to antagonize the people on top too much. After all, while she was a bit offended that they didn't trust her to not go on a killing spree, she could at least understand the reason behind their actions against her.

Still, understanding didn't mean agreeing, which led to this whole thing. She tapped her fingers against her shoulders impatiently for a few minutes before turning to the tense-looking guard boss staring at her, shield raised, standing a safe distance away from her.

"Hey, so, when's the big boss coming? I wanna give them a message." She asked. The man flinched, taking several steps back. Lilith rolled her eyes, mentally taking back her comment about the man being anything but a damned coward.

"... Overseer John won't come for safety reasons. Protocol dictates that, should metahumans Shapeshifter or Fireman choose to escape, the top priority of the guard units should be to avoid personnel casualties and delay the escapee as much as possible, and for employees to immediately evacuate to a safe area." The man recited mockingly, although said mockery didn't seem aimed at Lilith.

The shapeshifter in question just shrugged, feeling a bit foolish for waiting like this. It made sense for the important guys up top not to throw themselves into danger head-first, but it still left a bitter reminder that, while they sat nice and safe on their chairs back home, they were throwing the lives of their subordinates around like this.

She wouldn't kill anyone, obviously, at least not without a very good reason, but that meant little when someone else with her powers easily could. Thinking about this only reinforced her belief that this escape truly was the best option.

"... I see. Anyways, tell our good friend John that, if the people on top wish to contact me and ask for my assistance, I don't mind lending it... for a price. Also, tell them that whatever shitty papers I signed beforehand are null from now on, and that if they bring me to court or some shit, they won't see hide or hair of me ever again. The same thing applies if they send assassins or some shit after me. Actually, is there a camera recording me or something?" She asked after a sudden epiphany. The man hesitated slightly before nodding, although he didn't look too certain.

"Whatever. Nothing to lose anyway." Lilith shrugged before taking a deep, completely unnecessary breath to prepare herself.

"Fuck with me and I join the Chinese, don't fuck with me and I don't go fuck with you. Yeah? That clear? Good. Also, fuck you to whoever came up with the idea to try and 'block my powers'. Bitch, try me." She hissed, purposely swearing as much as she could. Authority figures had always annoyed her on some level, but as of late, she'd started outright resenting them, and doing this felt far, far too good.

The guards all looked... Well, they looked absolutely stone-faced at her words, but Lilith didn't care. Shrugging happily, she resumed her easygoing escape from her prison.

The guards didn't follow, instead choosing to watch her leave while some went back inside, probably to relay her message to their boss. Again, Lilith hardly cared. She just wanted out of this place.

She walked slowly, purposely stopping at places just to gently touch the flowers lining the soil and caressing the hard bark of the trees. Even the feel of the grass on her shoes-that-were-not-shoes felt... Well, she didn't feel anything, but she liked it anyway.

Finally, after an entire thirty minutes of random wandering, she reached the beach. There were a few ships far out in the ocean, and Lilith highly suspected that they'd received a warning to immediately distance themselves.

She huffed in amusement. If she truly wanted those ships sunk, it would actually be easier to do so out in the open ocean than on land. Again, they were lucky she didn't particularly want to turn into a criminal.

She tilted her head at that thought. Technically, she'd probably turned into a criminal already, she was just too powerful to apprehend and throw in jail... Although, did it make you a criminal to escape from jail when you weren't a criminal in the first place?

To Lilith, it kind of felt like a kid trapped in a basement question. The kid was kidnapped, thrown into the basement, and left to rot there. She was the kid, and the basement was her jail.

She wasn't all too sure where she was going with that, but it felt right to think of it like that anyway. Eyeing the water before her, Lilith took a tentative step into it.

A small smile bloomed on her face. She hadn't had a bath or shower ever since gaining her powers, mostly because she didn't need it. Still, she'd missed the feeling of dihydrogen monoxide on her skin.

"Heh... I really need to get over myself." She murmured, suddenly missing the ability to feel through touch. Still... Just thinking about being able to feel pain made her immediately discard the idea, at least for the moment.

Closing her eyes for the moment, she murmured, "Alright, world. Here I come!"

She dived forward, her body exploding outward as she transformed into a titan-sized leviathan. She'd been dreaming of the moment where the walls of her cage wouldn't restrict the size of her shapeshifting anymore, and now that she was free, she wanted to try it out.

She grew and grew, finally deciding to stop when she reached around the 300-meter mark. She wanted to roar, but held back, knowing that the people in the suddenly much closer ships were probably pissing their pants in fear. She settled down on huffing out a large breath, creating a wind capable enough to throw back those ships with that alone.

She looked like a snake with two massive arms a bit below the head and a fishes' tail instead of a normal snake tail. Smirking in this form felt much different than in her human form, but she did it anyway, if only out of force of habit.

She crawled forward using her arms, leaving long trenches where her clawed nails landed. After a bit, she was finally in deep enough water to swim, and only a few moments of hesitation, she did just that.

Freedom was hers, but now, she knew she had to decide what to do with her life.