Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I'm just playing in Naughty Dog's sand box.

-Chapter Ten-

When Jak climbed out of the holding room, it was into a scene of chaos. He couldn't even comprehend what the other men were doing at first because it struck so violently against the very core of his world. People just didn't do things like this. An occasional brawl or a fist swung in anger was one thing. Even shooting at the vehicles of supposed lawbreakers could be justified. But this...

People didn't take swords and run them through the bellies of other people.

People didn't attack each other for no good reason.

People didn't kill people.

Something warm and liquid spattered across his face as something - someone - fell down in front of him. Jak's eyes followed involuntarily, his horror rising when he recognized the mangled features of Dag, the man who had been accused of being his brother. Dag's eyes were open and staring, oblivious to the axe that was buried in his face.

Jak's stomach nearly rebelled then and there.

Then the axe was wrenched from Dag's head, and with a start, Jak realized that the man who had killed Dag was still there, and now he was turning to face him, and didn't he care that he'd just killed a man, why was he grinning, why was he lifting his axe again, why was he-? Jak's instincts kicked in, cutting through numbing horror, and he threw himself to the side just in time to avoid losing his head. He stumbled backwards, trying to put distance between himself and his attacker, but the man just kept coming after him, swinging his axe again and again.

Unfortunately, he didn't have much room to go before he came to the edge of the platform and there was nothing in the lava that he could jump to. Trapped between the axeman and the molten rock, Jak did the only thing he could think to do. It was instinct, almost, ingrained into him from all his battles with Lurkers. Gathering his legs beneath him, he leaped as high into the air as he could manage and spun, delivering a powerful roundhouse kick to his attacker's head. Even as large as the man was, and despite the dented helmet he wore on his head, he still grunted and fell back. Jak didn't give him any chance to recover. As soon as his feet touched the ground, he lunged forward and punched the man in the gut, doubling him over, then jumped and kicked him in the face.

This time the man went down, completely unconscious. For a moment, Jak just stood there, his breathing shaky with adrenaline and the realization of what he'd just done. He'd attacked another person, might have really hurt them, and it wasn't in defense of the world. Even with Gol and Maia, he hadn't attacked them directly. He'd been more interested in destroying their machine than in killing them. In fact, knocking them into the dark eco silo had been more accident than anything else. He'd never fought anyone like this. And for what? What's going on?

The only answer he got was another attacker swinging a club at his head. The fighter was huge and bandy-legged, and there were several teeth missing from his snarling mouth. Jak ducked the club and dove between the man's legs, coming out in a roll. Unfortunately, he came up right in front of another fighter who was more than happy to slash his knife at Jak's face.

Panic gripped Jak, and again he acted out of instinct. One hand snapped up to latch onto the knifeman's wrist, not so much stopping it as pushing it off course. His other hand formed a fist which he used to deliver a sharp uppercut to the man's chin. The man fell back with a howl of pain, and if not for Jak's grip on his arm, he would have fallen into the lava behind him. Wide-eyed at what he'd nearly done, the teen let go and stumbled back.

However, there was no gratitude in the knifeman's eyes. With a wordless yell of rage, he lunged forward, slashing wildly at the boy from Sandover. Jak tried just dodging, hoping that the man would come to his senses and realize that Jak didn't want to fight him, but it quickly became apparent that this wasn't going to happen. Jak's gut twisted with the realization that if he didn't want to be stabbed, he was going to have to fight back. His mind rebelled at the thought.

But when the knifeman came at him again, all his thoughts about how wrongwrongwrong this was were completely drowned out by the need to act now. Ducking under the next slash, so close he thought it might have nicked his ear, he came back up inside the fighter's guard and slammed his fist into the man's face. There was a sickening crunch of something breaking and the man's head snapped back under the force of the blow. He staggered, and for a moment Jak thought he might recover and attack again, but then something that gleamed of metal and blood sprouted from the middle of the man's chest. The knifeman looked down at it, as though surprised to see it there.

He never looked back up. His body jerked and collapsed as the person behind him yanked his sword back out, but he didn't so much as twitch after that. Jak's breath hitched. He couldn't tear his eyes away. Only moments before, the man had been alive. Snarling and maddened, but alive. Now he was bloody and still and he'd dropped his knife and please pick it back up get up get up please get up I don't care if you attack me just please-

"You're next, kid."

Jak barely heard the words. There was a roaring in his ears as he fought with denial. He knew what death looked like. He'd seen plenty of Lurkers die, most of them by his hand. But this was different. This wasn't a Lurker. Dead men shouldn't look like dead Lurkers.

Another voice, louder and nearer than the ones that filled the air, joined the cacophony of shouting, and Jak finally looked up to see the swordsman charging at him with sword raised overhead.

-o-

Damas watched the fight with narrowed eyes, his hands gripping the armrests of his chair. Most of it was going exactly how he had expected, with clumsy displays of weapon skills and brute strength, hardly a drop of discipline or training to be seen. No, the unexpected came in the form of the teenage boy who had apparently decided that he wanted to be a Wastelander.

Why doesn't he use his gun? Damas frowned as Jak again resorted to using his hands to defend himself, this time from a man wielding a knife. Granted, the boy seemed to be fairly skilled at unarmed combat, if oddly hesitant at times, but the gun would still have given him an advantage. Perhaps he thinks that he does not yet have the training to use it properly in a fight.

Whatever the reason, it remained strapped to Jak's back, a useless weight that would only hinder his movement. Damas would have to speak to him about that, assuming he survived the arena. His fingers tightened their grip.

In the arena below, Jak's opponent, stunned by the boy's right hook, was taken from behind by another challenger. Such things were common and, while not exactly honorable, were still considered sound tactics. You had to take advantage of your enemy's weakness when the opportunity appeared, and in a free-for-all such as this, it was best to eliminate opponents as quickly as possible. Damas was not surprised.

But Jak froze, staring at the fallen knifeman instead of facing his newest opponent as he should have. Damas gritted his teeth, unable to act on the impulse to shake some sense into him. The man is dead and no longer a threat, he wanted to snap. Pay attention to the man who killed him!

At the last minute, Jak seemed to wake up to the danger and threw himself to the side, but it was not soon enough to avoid the blade entirely. Even from this distance, Damas could see the stain of blood that blossomed on his shirt, but he could not tell how bad the wound really was. Not bad enough to keep Jak from defending himself, though, which he did by kicking his leg out and sweeping the swordsman's feet out from under him. However, over the course of the battle, such injuries would take their toll and possibly prove fatal.

Then Jak did something that was completely and utterly baffling. As soon as his opponent was down, he leaped forward and wrested the sword from the man's grip, but instead of keeping it for himself, he threw it out into the lava. Damas stared. What? Disarming one's opponent was one thing, but this? This was utter foolishness! Even if Jak's personal preference was for unarmed combat, such an action not only wasted a perfectly good weapon, it also wasted an opportunity to dispatch his opponent cleanly and quickly. Worse, he'd done this while the man was both conscious and unrestrained and easily close enough to strike him while his guard was down.

Glaring down into the arena, the king found himself hoping that Jak would survive if for no other reason than so that he could chew the boy out.

-o-

Jak had hoped that throwing the man's weapon away would convince him that the fight was over, but it only seemed to spur him into an even greater frenzy.

"You little maggot!" the man roared as he got to his feet. "I'll make you pay for that!" He lunged for the teen, looking mad enough to try to strangle him with his bare hands.

But Jak was much smaller and more agile than this hulk of a man could ever hope to be, and he didn't have any stiff, unyielding armor restricting his movement. He easily evaded the man's grasping fingers. His chest felt like it was on fire where the sword had sliced into him, but there was nothing he could do for it right now except ignore it. What was more difficult to deal with were his roiling emotions. He could still see the knifeman's wide eyes and the way the blood had spilled down and soaked his shirt where he'd been run through. He could still hear the wet gurgle that had been in his last breath. He could-

Focus! Breathing somewhat raggedly, he forced his attention back on the fight, jumping back just in time to avoid the enraged fighter's fists. Unfortunately, he didn't come down on even ground as he'd thought he would, but instead stepped on something that gave and rolled beneath his feet. Jak flailed and nearly lost his balance, but another step back found firmer footing. When he looked down to see what it was he had stepped on, his stomach tried to heave again.

It was a body, its belly split open and its guts spilling out. Next to it was another one, this one lying face down. Its skull was caved in, splinters of bone sticking out of bloody, gray matter that should never have seen the light of day. With a rising wave of horror, Jak realized that the whole arena was littered with the bodies of the dead and dying, victims of other fights that had been going on while he had been focusing on the men attacking him. Some of those fights were still going on, but there were more people lying on the ground than there were standing. Even as he watched, two more men fell, their bodies hacked and bloody. No one else seemed to notice or care.

"Got you now, you scrawny piece of shit!"

Later on, Jak would realize that if the man hadn't yelled before he attacked, he would probably be dead, but at that moment, he was too numb to think, too sick at heart to do anything but react the way his body was trained to. When the fighter lunged for him, his eyes gleaming with madness and bloodlust, Jak's fist snapped up and slammed itself into the man's throat.

Something crunched and gave way that shouldn't have. The man's eyes bugged out of his head and he clutched at his neck, his mouth gaping open, but no sound came out. He was obviously trying to gasp for breath, but with the panic that was written all over his face and the way he was beginning to stagger, it was just as obvious that he wasn't getting enough air. Jak's eyes widened as he realized what he had done and he reached out to help the man, to do... to do something, though he had no idea what, but his fingers had barely brushed the suffocating man's arm when the fighter slipped on the edge of the arena platform. Before Jak could do anything, the man was engulfed in lava.

He couldn't even scream as he was burned alive.

Jak's knees gave out beneath him as he emptied the contents of his stomach. Even when there was nothing left, his muscles still convulsed. A sickening odor filled the air, but his brain refused to identify the smell. In fact, it was doing its best to shut his every thought down, because there was one thought trying to surface that he knew, he knew he couldn't cope with.

It was almost a blessing when the loud clomp of boots behind him alerted him to the presence of another attacker. It gave him something else to think about, something else to focus on, so that he didn't have to deal with the fact that he had just k-

He rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the club that smashed down where he'd been kneeling. He didn't stop moving, though, because this time there wasn't just one attacker. A second man, this one also armed with a club, tried to bash his head in as he climbed to his feet. Moving on autopilot, Jak leaped up, his foot touching briefly on the club as it passed beneath him, and he used it to shoot himself up even higher. The second man blinked up at him stupidly, as though he'd never seen someone jump that high before. Without thinking, Jak flipped himself in the air and came down fist first, straight into the man's face. The man crumpled to the ground beneath him.

"Lucky move," the other man scoffed. Blood dripped down the side of his face from where he'd lost an ear, but he didn't seem to notice. "Idiot shouldn't have just stood there. I won't be so easy, kid, trust me." He hefted his club up and gave it a practice swing as he eyed the blond teen. "Huh. Bet the only reason you've lasted this long is 'cause everyone else went after the real fights first."

Jak probably should have felt insulted, but at this point he couldn't bring himself to care. His thoughts refused to slide together into coherent strings, leaving only a jumbled mess of fragments and feelings. He wanted to go home. He wanted to see Daxter. He wanted his uncle to wrap his arms around him. He wanted to dream of sand.

But most of all he wanted this to be over, so when his opponent finally got tired of waiting for him to react and charged him, Jak was ready to fight back. He dodged one swing of the massive club, then another, getting a feel for how long it took the man to adjust the direction of his attacks. The third time the club passed within a hairsbreadth of his chin, instead of jumping back, he lunged forward and jabbed his elbow into the man's gut with every ounce of his strength. The man wheezed as the breath was knocked out of him. Jak took advantage of this moment of weakness by chopping down on the wrist that held the club. Unfortunately, this move didn't work as well as he'd hoped, and the man retained his grip.

With a snarl of pain, the other fighter tried to grab him with his free hand, but Jak was expecting this. He dropped into a crouch to avoid the hand, then shot up into the air with his fist swinging. There was a sharp crack! as he connected with the man's jaw, but he didn't wait to see if that had done the job. Grabbing onto the man's shoulder with his other hand, he vaulted himself higher. As he came down, he swung a kick to the back of the man's bare, unprotected head.

The man was unconscious before he hit the ground.

Jak landed and, breathing heavily, he looked around to see who was going to attack him next. To his surprise, though, there was no one else standing, despite the screams that continued to fill the air. His eyes traveled up the distant walls that were beyond the edge of the lava, and there he saw people just standing and yelling from some kind of wide ledge or balcony. He didn't understand what they were doing, but they weren't fighting. As far as Jak was concerned, that was all that really mattered. Feeling numb and drained, he let his eyes drop back down and he began to pick his way through the bodies in search of a way out of this hellish place.

-End Chapter Ten-