Edited/rewritten December 2007

Warning: Murder and torture in this chapter. Please read responsibly.

Pits
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Page 2

Well, dearest reader, that's how I ended up in here. I was caught by some of the most pathetic ghost hunters the Ghost Zone has to offer. I don't remember the trip at all – it was quite some time before I was really able to comprehend just how much my life had changed in those few seconds.

And the fact that I couldn't remember what happened after those idiots shot me with that dart came back to haunt me over and over again. Walker really knows out what buttons to push…

But I'll get into that when it's time. Speaking of time…

Days have no meaning in the Pits. There is especially no meaning to the word "day" in this cell that you and I have found ourselves. There is no sun, no moon, and no light. The flickering ghost lights that wander eternally around our cell don't dim and brighten over the course of the hours. Ghosts, who are eternal creatures, have no need for something as trivial as 'days'. They don't care about the passage of time. Many, I figure, try to ignore the fact that the human world is passing them by.

I have been locked in the Ghost Zone for two weeks now… by my reckoning. During this time, one of the odd things that I've noticed is that ghosts work so hard to ignore the passage time that the entire Ghost Zone has been tainted with their thoughts. This place completely lacks a sense of time. It's nearly impossible to count in a steady rhythm or to try and tick off seconds with your fingers. At first, I had a good idea if long periods of time had passed based off of my own body's rhythms and patterns. I slept regularly and ate regularly. But, a few days ago, I sat still and watched a ghost light flit around my cell. I couldn't tell you if I sat there for minutes or hours. I think I've lost my ability to sense the passage of time as well.

I'm not trying to explain temporal physics to you – I don't understand it myself. I only tell you this to try and explain how I know that two weeks have passed. In reality… I have no idea how much time has gone by while I lounged around in this regal splendor. I do, however, know that fifteen "days" have passed. Since I no longer have a concept of how long a true day is, my definition of a day is a bit different by necessity. They are neither twenty-four hours long nor does it have anything to do with my sleep schedule. My "day" ends with each fight that I am thrust in to.

Sometimes the fights come in a regular interval – two meals, a fight, two meals, a fight – and I can almost convince myself that those really are days that are passing. Sometimes there are six or eight meals between fights. Some days I don't eat. My mind likes the idea that the meals come at steady intervals (so some of my "days" seem longer than others in my mind) but I have a feeling that this isn't the case. I have to keep reminding myself that my cell keepers are ghosts and ghosts, as I told you, lack a definite sense of time. I'm probably fed whenever it crosses their minds. This is one reason why I plan my days around the fights rather than the meals. The fights seem to have a more definite time frame and rhythm.

Anyway. My "day" ends at the end of a fight. The next "day" begins when I'm thrown back into my cell. My "day" consists of lying around, eating when somebody remembers I exist, and talking to LJ… or L'Jai… whatever. It's complicated and I'm getting into things I don't need to yet. All I need you to understand right now is that when I say "day" I don't really mean twenty-four hours have passed. It means that I am between fights. Day one – which you are about to read – does not start and end at midnight. It ends at the end of my first fight… that brutal fight with Crusher. And it starts when I wake up. Make sense?

Have you ever been knocked out? If you have, then you know that you don't wake up nice and slowly, your eyes slowly opening and the panicked faces of your loved ones coming into focus like they do in the movies. I wish. The first thing I remembered was an absolutely splitting headache and a painful throbbing feeling coming from my wrists. The last thing I wanted to do was open my eyes. I've had enough headaches to know that I did not want to open my eyes… and that I didn't want to see who would be looking at me when I woke up.

There wasn't a chance in hell that I could pretend to still be unconscious at this point either. Before I even realized that it would be a good idea not to let anybody know I was awake, I had already let out a loud moan of pain and had curled up into a ball, trying to get my hands over my head. It took me a few dazed seconds to figure out that I couldn't get my hands to my head. It took me a handful of seconds more to comprehend that my hands were behind my back – and seemed to be tied together.

Probably a half a minute passed before I was able to do anything besides lie there curled up into a little ball. When I did manage to think about something outside of my throbbing body, the first thing I noticed was the harsh, dry laughter filling the room. It whipped through my head and slammed into my skull with a syncopated beat that made my head spin. Here was where the movies finally got something right: I knew that laugh. It didn't take processing time. The pit of my stomach knew that laugh.

Walker.

I cracked my eyes open and stared blearily in the direction of the laugh. The ghost warden was standing against the other wall of the room, his head thrown back in an all-out laugh. Two of his deputies were floating to each of his sides – both were grinning evilly and flicking glances in my direction. Finally, Walker stopped his chortling and looked over at me.

"You awake, Punk?" he asked. His voice still haunts my sleep. It rasps dryly in his throat, menace and pure evil coloring any sounds that make it past his constricted windpipe. Walker is true evil: he was when he was alive; he is now that he's dead; and your whole body feels it when he talks to you. It's like a cold shiver that runs down your spine and up the back of your neck.

He locked his eyes on mine. Not that he really has eyes – they are more like two dried-out, withered, marble-sized remains of eyes that rattle around in his skull's sockets. They work nicely with his bone-white skin and cracked lips though. It gives him a malevolent look that fits his personality perfectly. Walker's thin lips stretched into a smile when I didn't answer him.

"I finally have you right where I want you." Walker laughed softly, a jarring combination of snake hissing and death bells tolling in the distance. "You cannot escape me this time."

"Wha…" I rasped. My brain exploded with pain when I tried to talk. I snapped my eyes closed and gritted my teeth, missing the first part of what he said next.

"…sent out a reward for your capture. I put up a reward big enough to entice the best hunters and trackers in the Ghost Zone to go after you. I never would have figured those three idiots would have gotten you. Guess you don't live up to my expectations, do you, Punk?" Walker tipped his head to the side, his raisin eye-balls rolling lopsided in his sockets. He brought his hand out from behind his back and grinned down at the item he now held loosely in his desiccated fingers.

"However, my sense of judgment must not be overcome by your past transgressions or my expectations. We are here today to get a confession out of you for your more grievous crimes. Only with a confession can the proper punishment continue on its course." He brought a slim knife up and held it before his face, making sure I could see it. The blade was darkened with rust and blood, the old handle dirty from much use. "This is my child. She has been with me forever – she died with me. She had seen quite a bit of use, and can tell you stories that you will not believe. Do we understand each other, Punk?"

I stared at the dingy blade, my heart skipping beats. I knew very well what that blade was capable of. During Walker's life, he had used that blade to torture and kill dozens of people in the booming town of Phoenix. For his crimes, he had been hung and, rather than being buried, his body had been thrown out into the bleak Arizona wasteland to slowly mummify. I had looked up Walker's life months ago. James Theodore Walker. The murdering sheriff of the desert.

Walker twisted the knife a bit, allowing its bloody surface to catch the flickering green lights and reflect onto the walls. One stray bit of light sparkled off the blade and lit up his neck, giving me a quick view of the bruised and torn line around his throat where the hangman's noose had tightened. I had no desire to find out what he could do to me. "I understand," I whispered, my throat tight.

"What was that?" Walker grinned, showing me with rotting teeth, and reaching one bone-like hand up to cup the side of his head. "Perhaps we need to teach the boy how to speak up."

"I understand," I whispered again, but my voice was even quieter than before. I shivered and tried to scoot backward, but my back was already against wall. I had nowhere to go and no strength to get up.

"Pick him up," he ordered, pushing his ten-gallon hat back a bit on his head. "We need to teach this boy some manners and for some reason they pass out and die quicker lying down."

The two deputies drifted across the room and yanked me to my feet. One held my bound hands roughly while the other grabbed my shoulder to steady me. "Hey boss," the one on my right quipped, "he's shaking like a leaf in a sandstorm."

Walker strode across the room, his dry skin rubbing like sandpaper. "Is he now?" Walker crooned. "We can't abide by that, now can we, boys?"

The ghost behind me laughed softly, panting on the back of my neck. "Nope. What you going to do, boss?" I shuddered away from him. The deputy to my right grinned widely at me, his eyes sparkling with anticipation.

"Well," Walker drawled, tapping the moldy blade against his dry lips, "I was thinking about maybe starting with that talking problem of his. Then, if we can fix that, maybe we can move on to this confession we need."

"Hear that, kid?" the right deputy laughed, freezing spittle flecking onto my face. "We gonna hurt you bad."

Walker stepped up to me, his withered nose less than an inch from mine. I stared into his eye-sockets, smelling his foul, rotten breath for a total of a heartbeat. Then I closed my eyes, turning my head away. There was no life or compassion in him. I was at his mercy… unless…

I reached deep into my mind, searching for that cold, weightless feeling that had been there since that accident over a year ago. I scrambled through the mess of my brain, tossing thoughts left and right as I searched desperately for that feeling. I couldn't find it. It was gone.

Suddenly, I was jerked back to reality by a hard slap to the face. "Don't turn your face from me, Punk," Walker snarled.

"Why can't I go ghost?" I mumbled, still dazed.

Walker reached into his blood-covered, hole-ridden sheriff's uniform and dragged out a very familiar-looking device with two prongs. "I'm borrowing this from a friend of yours. I do believe that the special 'effect' will last for another hour." He tossed the Plasmius Maximus into a corner and grinned widely at me, giving me a clear view of the fact that he was missing quite a few teeth in the back. Not for the first time, I cursed Plasmius with all my heart.

"Now," Walker continued, "we need to 'discuss' your ability to talk. One must speak up when spoken to." He held out the knife, tracing the point over my cheek and down to my throat. "Mustn't we?"

I stared bleakly at him. What was I going to do? I had nothing to fight with, I had no where to run… I closed my eyes and let my head hang. Now I was trapped in Walker's prison, about to be thrown in jail for a thousand years. I screamed as my left arm suddenly exploded in pain, jerking my eyes open. Walker's knife was buried in my upper arm up to its hilt.

"Do not turn your face from me!" Walker screamed in my face, his scratchy voice echoing in my ears and bringing my pounding headache to a whole new level. Suddenly, Walker's crazed expression vanished, and he repeated – in a perfectly normal tone of voice, "One must speak up when spoken to, mustn't we?"

My mouth opened and closed a few times. I gazed into his eyes, my mind completely blank. Between the throbbing of my head and the shooting pain in my arm, no thoughts were coming together to get me out of this.

"Answer me," Walker snapped, twisting the knife that was still lodged in my arm. I screamed as the pain flooded up into my brain and my legs tried to give out. The only things that kept me from collapsing were the two spectral deputies holding me up. "Answer me," he hissed softly.

"Yes," I managed to pant. Tears flooded down my cheeks and peppered the floor.

"Yes, what?" he sneered, twisting the knife a bit farther.

My brain froze, it couldn't think. My arms trembled and I just stood there. I finally just shook my head in defeat.

"Yes, sir," one of the deputies said smartly.

"Yes, sir," I repeated in a whisper.

Walker pulled the knife out of my arm and examined it closely. He hummed softly, twisting the blade to see every aspect. My blood dripped lazily down the length of the blade and slid over his dried-out fingers, coating his hand in a gooey-red glove. Then he looked up at me, a malicious grin on his face. "One must speak up when spoken to, mustn't we?"

I opened my mouth, but Walker beat me to it. Picking a spot just above where the blade had mangled my arm last time, he carefully inserted the tip of the blade under my skin, and began to slowly start skinning me alive. I hadn't thought anything could hurt worse than the twisting knife. I was wrong. I hadn't even begun to process the pain when my brain commanded my voice to scream. "Yes, sir!"

Walker stopped suddenly and smiled at me. "Good," he cooed. "Now, Punk, we need that confession."

I stared into his skull-like face. "What confession?" I asked softly. Walker moved his blade closer to my arm and I repeated myself – much louder. "What confession?"

"Why, the one where you confess to murdering your friends, that's what confession."

"What!" I snapped, my eyes opening wide. "I didn't…" I hesitated when Walker's knife pricked the skin of my cheek. "I didn't…" He pushed down harder, warm blood trickling down my face and getting into my mouth. My blood does not taste good. I tried one more time. "I…" but I couldn't really even get started.

"Come on, murderer. I just want that confession."

I stared up into the dead, desiccated eyes of the ghost warden and felt a chill run up my spine. What other choice did I have? "Fine," I whispered, not caring about the volume of my voice. "I confess." My arms, tied behind my back, were suddenly yanked hard, causing me to yelp in pain and drop to my knees. The shock from that horrible device wouldn't wear off for nearly another hour. I was stuck as a human. I was trapped. I squirmed for a second against the chilly hands that were holding me roughly to the floor.

"Confess to what?"

"Killing my friends," I whispered.

The knife blade danced in front of my eyes for a second. "Manners, Punk. We must speak up when spoken to, mustn't we?"

I gazed into his eyes. Even though my thoughts were riddled with pain, the fact that he had said that same sentence three or four times managed to filter into my mind. At that moment I simply filed that away for later and decided to speak up. That knife had too much of my blood on it already.

Perhaps if I had known what was coming, I wouldn't have been so quick to give up. I would have searched for another solution. But that's the annoyance of hindsight. At that particular moment in time, in a vain attempt to escape the situation and to stop the pain, I confessed to a murder that I'm pretty sure I didn't commit. "I confess, Walker. I killed my friends."

Those lifeless eyes contemplated me. Walker's dry lips spread into a bloodless smile. "Good. I have come to my decision, punk," he whispered as the guard to my right chuckled mirthlessly. Walker jerked his chin up at the guards, the scars from the rope burn around his neck showing for a brief second. Then I was hauled to my feet, my shoulders and stabbed arm screaming in pain. "The penalty for your crimes is death. I sentence you to be executed."

"What?" I hissed. "You can't…"

Walker's bloodless smile grew and he interrupted me. "Throw him in the Pits."

"You want we should stick him in a cell to stew for a bit?" The guard grinned down at me.

Walker grinned, his withered eyes staring down at me from his skull-like face. "Punk," he said, "I'm going to do you a small favor."

"Yeah? What?"

"I'm giving you a chance. A chance to be famous."

I blinked up into his dead eyes, silent. My arm throbbed distantly in time with my headache, the slice in my cheek nearly forgotten. My fingers tingled faintly and squelched when I clenched my bloodied fingers together. Don't get me wrong. I may have given in and confessed for Walker – but I was not down for the count. I had not given up yet. Walker offering me a chance to be famous? Nothing good can come of it.

Walker held a small, round device in his boney fingers and twirled it around in small circles. I didn't know what it was, but it had to be better than that knife of his. I shivered as his dried-out skin rustled like leaves in the silent room. "You win this fight, kid, I'll let you have your ghost powers back. I'll give you that leg up."

I had no idea what he was talking about. Fights? "Why?"

"The halfa in the Pits and fighting? You'll make me rich, Punk."

I laughed softly, not bothering to try and move. "And why would I do that for you?"

His bloodless lips stretched into a parody of a happy smile. "Because your very existence rests on it. The Pits are one of the only places in existence where ghosts can truly die." Silence stretched as I stared into his dried-out skull. Walker studied me for a second and then held the little device out to one of the guards. "Don't bother with the cells. Take him right to Former. Get him set up to fight – nice and early. I want to see him squirm before lunch."

The guard to my right accepted the small circle and nodded to his companion. They hauled me roughly to my feet. "See you later, Punk," Walker croaked as I was marched from the room. "Oh, and boys? Make sure Skulker takes his place as Ghost Enemy Number One for that trick he pulled this morning."

The corridors that I was dragged down were right out of a nightmare. The walls and floor were made up of roughly hewn rock, worn smooth my hundreds of years of feet. The ceiling was low and heavy as it pressed down on us as the guards escorted me gruffly towards my destination. There were no windows or lights – not even any torches on the walls – the entire place was lit up by small flickering fireflies known as ghost lights. They sparkled green and blue against the dark rock, dancing and racing each other around the cracks and crevices of the ceiling.

The worst part was the doors. There were dozens of them: heavy, solid, wooden doors with thick metal locks. Row after row, door after door, they seemed to file past us as the deputies marched me through the hallways. That day, I didn't bother to try to count… I really didn't care how many doors there were.

I've since figured out that there are between sixty-two and seventy-three doors in each of the corridors and that there are seventeen corridors dedicated to prisoners like you and me, dear reader. Each of those doors leads to a small cell not much different from the one you and I are sitting in. Many of those small cells contain prisoners… humans and ghosts waiting to be executed for the pleasure of the masses. I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am that I didn't know that on that first day. I'm not sure I would have survived if I had known what odds I was up against.

As it was, on that day I was shaking and almost delirious from the combination of the fear, the cold, and the pain in my arm when they came up to an odd-looking door set deep into the wall. One of the deputies pulled a huge key out of his coat pocket and stuck it in the lock. Neither the lock nor the door made any sound as the key was turned and the door swung open.

"Former!" the deputy snapped. "Newbie!"

They pushed me roughly into the brightly-lit room. I tripped over the door frame and came down hard on my hands and knees. I hissed in pain, yanking my bleeding arm up off the floor and cradling it to my chest. Before I had a chance to stand up or even hurl a half-hearted insult in the direction of the two deputies, the door slammed shut behind me. They had left me alone in the strange room.

"What's your name, kid?" I jerked my head up, scanning the room. It took awhile to scan the entire room – it was piled with odds and ends and useless junk from around the world, all illuminated by the first real lights I had seen in this strange place. Finally, I spotted the man who had spoken. He was sitting behind a desk, his warm, brown eyes gazing at me from behind a humongous book. Most surprisingly, he was human. "What's your name?"

"Danny," I mumbled, staggering to my feet and continuing to sweep the room.

"Danny what? You need a stage name, kid. Even newbies get a stage name." His voice was soft and mellow as he studied me.

I held my arm carefully against my side and glanced at him. "Why would I need a stage name?"

"Scare your opponents." He grinned. "Names like Crusher and Slicer and Blood Bath and such. I could pick one for you. I'm good at that… lots of practice." His smile slipped off his face for a second before coming back full-force.

It took several blinks for me to process what he had told me. You can't really blame me for being a little slow. I had a massive headache, had just been tortured, and still had no idea what was going on. It took me a few moments to get my mouth to work. "Phantom."

"Phantom? That's a good one." Former leaned over the big book and scribbled on the page for a few moments. "I'm Former." He flashed me a grin. "First name's Gregory, or Gory, or even just 'human' depending on who you talk to. Welcome to the Pits, kid."

"What's going on?" Of all the questions dancing around in my head, that one was the one that seemed to sum up my confusion the best.

Former was silent, biting his bottom lip before answering. "You're fighting Crusher today. Not fun for you, I can tell you that, kid. Crusher is a thirty-two time champion. Just two fights shy of a new record. Odds are against you. Nearly fifty to one that you loose."

I stood there and stared at him. Only one word merited being said. "What?"

"I've never seen him fight, mind you, but I hear he's a bit slow on his direction changes, and he's a pretty low-powered ghost. Not much in the way of ectoplasmic manifestations or any of that stuff. No telekinetics, no splitting, no nothing. He's more brute strength than cunning." Former stood up from behind his bench and stretched before walking over to me, my eyes widening. Former was tall; seven feet easy. His spiked hair only made him appear even taller. "Now," Former muttered to himself, his eyes traveling over me, then over the room, "you need some stuff. What do we have…"

He trailed off, humming softly as he began to wander around the room. Picking up a pair of sword-like objects, he grinned but then shook his head and moved on. I watched him dazedly for a few minutes as he grabbed two shiny metal things and a few more odds and ends then he strolled back to me. He grabbed one of my arms and held it out, measuring my length of my arm from my elbow to my wrist with his hands.

"Perfect," he whispered, kneeling down. Grabbing a roll of gauze he had brought, he started to wrap the wound on my arm. "Normally," he commented as he worked, "I'm not allowed to medic anybody – not that I'm good at it anyway – but Walker said he wants to give you a sporting chance. I don't see why. You're not going to win, kid. Not against this guy." He tightened the gauze and tied it off.

Then he picked up the two sword-like objects he had dug out of the junk that littered the room. "These are your blades. They get registered to you, and nobody else can use them until you don't need them anymore." They sparkled dully in the light as he held them up for me to see. "Pure ectoluminum, these things are razor sharp and can cut through anything… ghost or otherwise. Ghosts can't even phase through them. And it also reflects ectoblasts. That's a neat feature. Takes some getting used to – but if you can learn it, you can fight like nothing else, kid."

He pulled out a few leather straps and strapped the sharp blades onto my arms. The blades began just below my elbow, arced up and over my arm like a sharp, pointed shield, then cleared my wrist and hand before slicing away from me. The point was almost two feet beyond the tips of my fingers. The blade seemed to almost glow green in the bright light of the room.

"We only give these blades to humans, so you don't have to worry about Crusher having them. I heard that they used to give them to ghosts – back before humans in the Pits was legal – but some ghosts had some kind of psychosomatic connection with the ecto- part of the ectoluminum and made it kind of unfair. Lots of fun and frankly terrifying stories about what they used to be able to do. So now it's just humans like you and me."

I looked up from the two blades now connected firmly to my arms and stared at him. There was nothing I could think of to say and I still had no idea what was going on. My brain and my arm hurt like nothing else. So I settled with the one thing my mind knew it could say. "What?"

Former laughed. "Kid, I do hope you win your fight. You're funny, you know that?"

"What?" I don't know if I actually said it this time, or if I just mouthed the word. It was rather a moot point anyway, as the heavy double-doors on the other side of the room slammed open right then. Four guards stalked in, their eyes pinning me in place.

Not that I would have moved anyway… I had just gotten my first view of the Pits through those open doors.

I'm assuming, dearest reader, that you've never seen the Pits. It's entirely possible that you have and that you are a seasoned fighter by this point, but I'm going to assume for a second that you're not. You can't really understand what happened next until you understand what it was that I saw through those double doors in Former's room.

The Pits is an awe-inspiring place even if you don't know what you're getting into. Imagine walking into a modern-day football stadium, the roof arching impossibly high over your head and the seats set out in raising rows on every side. Now imagine five of those stadiums, all interconnected with tunnels and miles of tunnels, filled with tens of thousands of ghosts screaming for blood. According to Former's odds, for every one person out there cheering for me to win for that first fight, fifty were screaming for my head to roll – literally.

The pit that I was escorted into by my four guards was a sandy area about the size of a football field. High, red and green walls surrounded the pit, each facet of the wall glittering like polished enamel in the bright lights of the pit. Not that I could look around (at least one guard had a strong hold on my hair and was forcing my head down towards the floor… which I did not appreciate with my headache), but I can tell you what it looked like since I've had a few fights in there since then.

I had no idea what I was in for. I had some vague idea about fighting and Crusher and ectoluminum blades… but my whole plan at the time was to go with the flow. Escape later. It couldn't be that bad to just go through with the fight.

When we reached a point about a third of the way across the pit, the guards shoved me to the ground and took off, wanting to stay away from my blades. I couldn't have used them at that point. I was too stunned by what was going on.

Crusher, however, was a different story. It took seven guards to wrestle him into the pit and to his starting position. As soon as they let go, Crusher swung at them, taking out a guard with his overly-large fists before they managed to get high enough that the ghost-shield preventing the fighters from flying away and hurting the betting patrons could snap on between them.

There were a lot of things I didn't know that first point. I had no idea that the second I was released I was allowed to start. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I didn't know the consequences. But I learned really quickly. The poor guard that hadn't gotten away fast enough was my first lesson in pit fighting.

Crusher ripped the guard to shreds with his bare hands, ectoplasmic blood raining down on the sand like a small thunderstorm. As I stood there, stunned by the suddenness of the guard's demise, Crusher looked up and grinned at me. There was no sanity left in those green eyes. Crusher was crazy. I knew it down to the tips of my toes. I knew I was next.

The speed that the huge ghost could move was a surprise. I guess it was partly because I was in shock and not thinking right, but Crusher was about fifty feet closer to me before I realized it.

His fist was glowing green and heading straight for my head. If it would have connected, I would have lost my head right then and there but I managed to duck at the last second, my arm reacting automatically with a year's worth of ghost hunting reflexes. I tried to punch him, but I had forgotten about the blades. When my arm snapped out, the sharp point of the blade went right into his gut.

I yanked it back out, stammering an apology. I hadn't meant to hurt him like that. Crusher looked up at me, his green eyes burning with crazy hatred, one hand holding onto the gash in his stomach. "You," Crusher hissed, his voice deep and echoing.

He came at me again, an ecto-blast forming in his hands. I raised my arms in self defense, crossing the blades in front of me. I was lucky, I suppose. Crusher's ecto-blast smashed into the blades and was deflected away, slamming into the ground. I was pushed backwards a few feet, my arms tingling from the force of the blast.

Crusher followed the blast in, fingers grasping for my neck. Humans find themselves in the pits nearly as often as ghosts do, and Crusher had fought enough humans to know our weak spots. A simple twist of the neck and I would be finished.

I, however, was finally coming out of the shock of the first few attacks. I wasn't quite ready to die at the hands of some crazy ghost. I sidestepped Crusher's attacks and slammed a blade into his arm as he passed. The blade was a lot sharper than I had thought it would be – it went straight through his arm with little resistance. Crusher and his left arm were forever separated.

He staggered to a stop, holding his severed stump of an arm close to his body, ectoplasm dripping down his front. Snarling in pain, he launched himself towards me again, this time taking to the air. Ghosts can't fly high in the pits because of the ghost shield, but they can get about fifteen feet off the ground. Once Crusher was up to his highest point, he dove at me.

There is nothing quite as scary as a six-foot tall, glowing, powerful, and insane ghost hurtling towards you at about a hundred miles an hour. He had his fist out in front of him, fatal amounts of ecto-energy pulsating between his fingers. I thought my reaction was wonderful considering the circumstances: I screamed and panicked.

This happened to be quite helpful in this situation. I dropped into a crouch, my hands coming up to cover my head. Of course, the blades attached to my arms were then sticking up into the air. Crusher, already in a steep dive, was going way too fast and couldn't stop or correct his dive in time. He had been aiming for my chest. Now that I was crouched, he was aimed for my two blades.

He ran into them, not being able to pull up enough, the two blades carving out long strips of his chest and abdomen. Crusher collapsed to the sand, screaming in pain as I scrambled to my feet and warily got as far away from the enraged Crusher as I could. I figured he had more tricks up his sleeve – being the reigning champion and all.

I was right. Crusher managed to push himself to his feet despite the enormous pain he had to have been in, seemingly gallons of ectoplasmic blood running down his front, and then vanished. This would have been a much bigger deal if Crusher hadn't been bleeding all over the place. His ectoplasm didn't stay invisible once it wasn't connected to him anymore. I could easily trace his path across the pit floor by the thick trail of green blood he was leaving behind.

When Crusher reached me, I was ready. I knew where he was. I thrust my two blades forwards in a double-punch, feeling the two sink into the cold flesh of his stomach. What happened next reviles me even to this day. I know that ghosts fix themselves much quicker than humans, and what I did was far from fatal for Crusher, but it still weighs on my mind at times. I had two blades in his abdomen about four inches apart. When I felt his cold skin hit my fists, I ripped my arms apart, tearing the blades through Crusher's sides and, basically, cutting Crusher in half.

Crusher screamed, losing his invisibility instantly. I was showered in a spray of cool ectoplasm as he teetered on his feet for a moment. Then he collapsed onto the ground, his good arm clutching at his destroyed stomach, unable to move because of the pain.

I stood there, dripping in my opponent's freezing blood, staring at him. He wasn't going to get up – not for a very long time. I had won. I looked up, gazing around, wondering, stupidly, when the medic was going to come and help Crusher and let me off the field.

The crowd was chanting. "Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!" They were screaming and cheering, the ghosts that had placed bets on me shrieking to get on with it so they could go collect their winnings.

I wasn't able to comprehend what they meant. I had won, hadn't I? What more did they want from me?

Walker answered my unspoken question. He had been sitting in his special box for the entire match, but now he was floating over the pit, just on the other side of the ghost shield. "Destroy him, Punk."

"What?" I wasn't being dense. I knew what he meant… I just couldn't understand why.

"Only one of you may survive, kid: you or him. Choose."

I looked down at Crusher, who was staring up at me with those crazy glowing eyes. "Kill me," Crusher whispered. "I'll just die tomorrow when they throw me back in here. I'm too injured to fight anymore. Kill me so you can live."

There were tears on my cheeks. Crusher wasn't fighting anymore; I wasn't going to hurt him. "Kill him!" Walker ordered.

"I can't," I whispered, staring down into his eyes. "I can't kill him." I stared at him, sinking down by his side, not noticing the cool ectoplasmic mud that I was kneeling in. It was through my head by this point: it was either him or me. One of us had to die. One of us had kill… and it wasn't going to be Crusher killing me anymore.

Crusher smiled up at me, his green eyes locked onto mine. "The first kill is always the hardest, kid." I felt his muscular hand grab my limp arm. He maneuvered my arm so the blade was hovering over his throat. "One swift cut and it'll all be over."

"No…"

I still can't believe what happened next, and I'm not sure exactly what happened. Crusher started my arm moving down and through. I completed the movement. I'm not sure when it went from Crusher killing himself to me killing him. I still don't know if Crusher committed suicide or was murdered.

I do remember the cool gush of ectoplasm as it left Crusher's throat and washed over me. Crusher disintegrated in my arms soon after that, leaving nothing behind by a muddy pool of green ectoplasmic blood in the sand.

And that's how I won my first fight in the Pits. Day one was over.

The young woman shifted against the hard ground of her cell and sighed. Things did not look good for her. "I'm going to end up in those pits, aren't I?" she whispered. The small rat, her only company, glanced up from where it was rooting around under the hard cot and twitched its nose. "That's how it goes, I suppose. But, then again, I guess I deserve it, don't I?" She snorted when the rat seemed to nod its head before going back to snuffling around the stone tiles.

She scanned back over the page she had just read and wrinkled her forehead. "I wonder…" she trailed off, biting her lower lip. "There are a couple of things that make no sense. What's this thing about Skulker? Isn't he the bad guy from before? And who is LJ?"

She knocked the back of her head against the stone wall a few times. "It's kind of twisted, isn't it?" She stared off into the wall, her mind a million miles away. "I'm trapped in a ghost world, facing imminent death, and all I can think about is this stupid story this kid wrote. And I'm talking to myself. Am I crazy?"

Underneath the cot, the ghost rat paused in its eternal search for food. It looked up at her for a few seconds, then it suddenly vanished without a trace.

"And the rat disappears. That's it. I'm crazy." She laughed softly for a second and then turned the page…