So, seeing all the thoughts on coil's escape, I figured I might as well weight in with my own take. In the form of a snip, that the gracious Ghoul King decided to cannonize for your reading pleasure. I ain't the best writer, but I'll try. I hope you enjoy it anyway.
2.x Coil
Coil came too in a haze of confusion and pain. His body was distantly trying to tell him all about the many bruises, cuts, and minor burns littering it, but it was all eclipsed by his head. Oh god, his head. Pain radiated out from it, lancing and stabbing and burning in time with his heartbeat. It was... it was agony. Everything seemed to dim in the face of the mounting pain, his awareness trying to escape in the only way it knew how.
But he was COIL! He wouldn't let this defeat him. His mind fought the darkness, refusing to give in, no matter how sluggish his thoughts or scattered his resolve was. In the face of adversity, Thomas Calvert did what he always did. He split the timeline, seeking safety.
With two trains of thought, the path forward became clear. Moving his thoughts in ways only a person with two bodies and two minds could even understand, let alone learn to duplicate, he shunted the pain of both bodies into one self.
Clarity.
At least for one half of himself, but the one slowly falling apart under the pain would be erased, and so did not matter.
Now able to function, Coil opened his eyes. There was no use pretending to still be unconscious, as he was sure he had made some noise while dealing with the pain. Fortunately, he was alone in the room. Not that he particularly liked what he saw. Concrete walls, bare floor, heavy door. Feeling around with his aching body revealed that he had been placed on a basic cot. At least they had left him his underwear. Amateurs.
He slowly began to sit up, when suddenly his other timeline fell apart. He quickly created another split, and shunted the pain onto one of the two Coils. Hmm. It seemed the pain proved too much for the other him, and probably pushed him into cardiac arrest. Lack of oxygen to the Coronna Pollentia, and his powers and the timeline failed.
Well, the dying him's were able to take care the pain, so all in all, it worked well enough. Hopefully the pain would eventually pass. Using his powers this way removed the possibility of more useful applications. He would have to plan quickly.
The door was the first obstacle. Hobbling his way over, he knelt beside the lock and studied it carefully. It was an older model, one that he vaguely recognized. He clumsily felt around in his underwear, feeling for the emergency pouch he had sewn in place. His lockpicking tools, switchblade, and lighter were all there, good. It might take a minute or two to open the door, less if he used his power, but it could be opened.
Now for the other matter.
He could remember what that bitch had said. A proximity bomb set to blow up if he left a certain range. Best to assume that meant the room, and deal with it now.
In the time it had taken him to reach and study the door, three more timelines had fallen apart under the strain. Thankfully, standing seemed to lessen the pain, and while his other self was still dying under the pain from two bodies, it was happening much slower. Time to learn what he was dealing with.
In the throwaway timeline, the convulsing body on the ground spastically raised its arm, and tried to feel its head. Instead, it hit itself right on top of the cut piece of bone, driving it into the brain, and killing it.
Back in the main timeline, Calvert sighed while making a new timeline. Thankfully, the second attempt gave some more insight, as this body had only just begun to deal with the stress. Having a firm mental grasp on what exactly had been done to him, Coil paused to consider his options.
They were rather sparse.
Waiting to see if he could influence or trick the two psychopaths into removing the device or freeing him would be foolish. Coil was loath to simply wait and trust that he could outmaneuver them. They held all the power, and saw him as an object. If Coil had been in their position, he would have never let his victim go. No, that could only be a last resort.
But he did need to remove the bomb. He would just have to do it himself. He split the timeline again, then slowly allowed himself to feel part of the pain. Moving around, he found the optimal position, a hunched, awkward seat on the cot, and then began.
In the throwaway, he carefully prodded the wound, gauging how much leeway he had. It was hard to tell, between the blood and pain, but the loose bone seemed to be sticking out slightly. With slippery fingers, he managed to grasp it, and after taking a moment to steady his nerves, yanked.
Coil gave a short, breathless whimper, before fainting.
In the other timeline, Coil waited. While one of him was unconscious, he was still aware that there were two him's. If the unconscious one disappeared, it would indicate that either the bomb was trapped against its own removal, or he had fallen over and killed himself against the floor.
The second timeline did not disappear, even after he waited several minutes. So, Bakuda hadn't even thought to stop him from removing the bomb. So very, very unfortunate. After his escape he was going to kidnap her and torture her, show her how a real professional did things. He might even let her live. Hmm, he could certainly use a tinker to augment his forces.
Enough daydreaming, he had an escape to implement.
Dropping and splitting the timeline, he grasped the piece of bone. Reproducing the exact movements as much as he could, he breathed out, then pulled. Out it came with a grating pop. In the other timeline, the one that he had shunted the pain to, he keeled over once again. Nevertheless, he sat absolutely frozen, waiting to see if this timeline would end. After several minutes, he relaxed, and dropped the timeline were he had fallen unconscious, and were he had not removed the bone, then split one more.
Cringing at the next bit, one of the Coil's reached up, and began to feel around. While the hole wasn't too thick, it wasn't very big, and accidentally touching the sides would cause quite a lot of pain, as his feeling around had attested. Dropping and splitting once more to get rid of the shakes, he considered his approach.
If he was not careful, there was a very real chance of killing himself. Thankfully, where others might be unable to take the risk, he could try until he succeeded, with no repercussions.
What felt like an hour, and thirty seven failures later, he had mapped out the hole in his head, the device, and the various parts of his brain he should not be poking. He had also pulled the bomb out four times, only to realise he had given himself some form of brain damage. It was subtle, but Calvert had a unique advantage in being able to compare healthy and not so healthy selves in real time, so as to discover any injury.
The fifth attempt had been delayed after number four had seemed successful, until he had felt the blood starting too gush out of the hole and down his head. So far, the attempt seemed to be working out, as he had managed to grasp the device without touching the sides and flinching, or poking his brain and bleeding out, or pushing the bomb in further and cutting into something important. With a slow methodical movement, he drew the bomb out of his head, and carefully, he brought it around, peering at it blearily.
Was that a bandaid holding the wires together?
No matter. Just as slowly as before, he moved the bomb away from himself, placing it in the furthest corner of the room. Taking several minutes, he made sure that his thoughts were not slower, or more disorganized than those of his safe timeline. He moved his head around, and felt his limbs to ensure he could still feel his whole body.
Coil rated it as a tentative success, and went to work on the lock.
With both timelines working at the lock, one with a headbomb, one without, the lock opened relatively quickly. One Coil opened the door, while the other waited.
Seeing no one on the other side, he set off in opposite directions, each timeline looking for a way out. The base was curiously empty, and he only had to hide in an office once. Eventually, the Coil with the bomb in his head found the stairs.
While the Coil without the bomb would have walked down the stairs and out the door, the one without couldn't do so without running an even greater risk of exploding. This would not be a huge loss, but Coil felt somewhat cautious about dropping the timeline just yet. The longer he kept it, the more certain he could be that he had not damaged his mind in some way. So constrained, he decided to head upstairs, to see what he could find. It may not be the way out, but he figured there might be a chance of finding something useful.
At first it all seemed more of the same, until he found a room he recognised. Bakuda's workshop. Quickly hiding himself, he took the moment to look around. The place was a mess, filled with piles of scrap and random junk, some of it not even mechanical. A banana peel sat on an old newspaper, which hid a pile of who knows what underneath. He started to cautiously search the place.
Darting through the workshop, Calvert froze when he caught sight of someone. It was Bakuda, working at one of the tables, oblivious to the world. He nearly laughed out loud. No traps, simple lock, no guards, not even aware of the world around her. This would be sweet.
Crouched low, Coil made his way toward her, knife out and ready to stab. It might not be as fun as some of the other options he had envisioned, but work came before pleasure. He was thirty feet away, and almost halfway through the room when a single beep pierced the silence, and the timeline dropped as his head blew up.
Over in the other timeline, the one where coil did not have a bomb in his skull, he snarled to himself. So she did have some measure of defence against him attacking her after all. Not that it mattered he thought, as he split the timeline in two.
One of him continued out the door of the stairwell on the first floor, while the other stayed behind. This floor, being marginally more busy, took a few retries to avoid being seen, but the place was once again rather empty, and Thomas Calvert was an elite soldier, even without counting the benefit of his powers.
Having distracted the door guard and made his escape, he made his way out of sight of the building and down the block until he found a suitable alley to rest in. His body was sore, but now that he had escaped it would soon be remedied. Assuming the other timeline did not work out, in any case.
The other Coil, once he had cleared the door, had started up the stairs once more, heading for Bakuda. This time, he thought, she wouldn't be saved by her bomb. He was going to hurt her, and maybe see what he could find out with some inventive questioning. Coil was considering retrying his attacks until he found one that ended with her dead and his re-escape. She had made him so angry, he wasn't sure he cared just how hard it might be. He wanted her dead.
The Coil on the inside made his way up to the third floor, and was once more approaching the tinker on silent feet. This time, as he closed in on her, no bomb went off, and he entered into stabbing range.
Stooping low, and still as silent as possible, he stabbed her leg. Best to limit her movement from the start, limit her options, maybe even cripple her with the pain. Coil knew he was about to enjoy this.
He stepped to the side, prepared to fight off a desperate counter-attack. Unexpectedly she simply shifted onto her other foot with a wince, and continued to tinker. Thomas Calvert was confused. And furious. How dare she just... ignore him like that!
He grabbed her arm and spun her around, knife coming up to her throat as he threw her on to the table.
That was more like it, there was the fear, the weakness and the pain. Just as he opened his mouth to start talking, to offer her life in exchange for useful information, (she wouldn't survive this, but hope was such a powerful tool for keeping people obedient) she seemed to come to some realisation.
Whatever the epiphany was, it caused her to reach over to a device, and before he could stop her, she had pressed one of the many buttons. A dozen exotic bombs suddenly exploded, each effect capable of devastating destruction. These caused the other bombs to explode in a cascading eruption. Together, they managed to damage the city in a wide area, from hyper-ballistic pieces of the building to a strange lightning that seemed to disintegrate matter, to a series of marble sized black holes that had been scattered like shotgun pellets by one of the other bombs, to more.
The only one that would actually affect anything, as the timeline fell apart as Coil died, was the bomb that caused agonising nerve pain. Already wounded and weary, and not expecting such a shock to the system, the remaining Coil gave one startled gasp where he was sitting in the alley, and fainted.
-----
Several hours later, Coil came to, and decided he had enough of fighting the ABB on his own. Wearily, and furious despite his successful escape, Thomas Calvert headed home.
