Edited December 2007

Pits
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Interlude: Walker

The young woman stared confusedly at the page before her in the journal. It was not written in the boy's normal, sloppy handwriting. This writing was small and neat, perfectly spaced. It looked almost like it had been typed.

What was most interesting, however, was the fact that the page was not part of the original notebook. The paper was a yellowish color against the white paper of the rest of the notebook and it was loose, having been placed carefully in the notebook at this point. She picked up the page, flipping it over. The story written on it was rather short. "It's not part of the boy's story…" she murmured.

On her shoulder, the black and blue rat chattered softly. It pressed a cold nose into her neck.

She put the page back into the book and settled down against the wall to continue reading. After a few moments, the rat put its head on its paws and gazed down at the paper as well. Laughing quietly, the young woman started to read aloud…

My blue eyes glittered as I gazed into the mirror. I had watched the boy fight, not at all surprised when he had undergone his rather spectacular transformation. For a few seconds, I contemplated the figure that was standing in the middle of the pit, drained from his fight. I was pleased that the boy had won… a large part of my plan revolved around his extraordinary ability to beat the odds.

Then I touched the controls, panning the view over the ecstatic crowd, shaking my head as I watched the chaos of the Pits. Ghosts were being trampled left and right, fights breaking out amongst the partiers. I couldn't stop the small grin that crossed my face when I noticed a tall figure in a dark green cloak. Pausing the mirror for a moment on the ghost's silver face, my mind raced as I tried to think about why he would risk that much to watch the boy fight. The boy must mean more to the cloaked figure than I had originally anticipated.

Dismissing the rebellious ghost with a shake of my head – it wasn't that important in the long run – I tapped the controls and the scene began to scroll before me once more. The view finally reached over the top of the crowd and centered on a large room located at the top of the Pits. This was the area reserved for two types of spectators: either for very special guests or for the warden himself.

Normally, these ornately decorated box-seats were kept extraordinarily neat and clean. The white walls scrubbed of any grime or ghostly mildew, the floor meticulously swept, the small tables polished, and the comfortable chairs perfectly placed and the cushions fluffed daily.

Today, however, the box was a disaster. Walker's wonderfully gilded chair was smashed into a million pieces and his antique side table was overturned and shattered. Even the walls were covered in the glowing remnants of Walker's fury. I narrowed my eyes, watching the warden closely as he picked up a shattered table leg and snapped it over the head of a hapless guard. For the first time, his desiccated body actually looked like it belonged in that stupidly over-decorated room.

Walker paced back and forth in his special box, keeping his boots out of the slowly increasing pool of ectoplasm that had recently been a very unlucky guard, his raisin-like eyes glaring down into the pit. I chuckled at the warden's angry posture, reaching over and carefully manipulating the controls. The picture on the mirror changed slightly, narrowing its focus so that only Walker filled the view. I touched another button and smiled as Walker's voice began filtering through the scene.

"…how did he win?" Walker growled. He walked up to the edge of the box and braced his dried-out fingers against the railing. "That's two he's won. That rule-breaker… Slasher… he let me down."

Drumming his fingers and thinking, his eyes drifted over the partying crowd before a chilling smile settled onto this face. I shivered as the sound of his stretching, crackling, dry skin filtered over the speakers. "His next fight will bring in lots of new patrons." He turned around and stalked across the box towards the door. My claws flew over the controls to my ancestor's mirror… I wanted to follow him to figure out what the insane warden was up to next. My plan could easily be thrown off course by a strange turn of Walker's crazed thoughts.

When Walker spoke again, his voice still rippled with anger, but it had a strange undercurrent of excitement. "New customers mean good business." He grabbed the handle and hesitated, eyes almost closed. Suddenly he nodded and yanked the door open. "Bullet!" he hollered. I winced away from the mirror as the raspy hiss of his yell echoed through me and made my ears ring.

"Boss?" the ghost replied almost instantly, appearing by his side.

"Get me the list of ghosts fighting tomorrow. I'm going to personally handpick who the punk fights against."

Bullet nodded and vanished. Walker began to pace down the whitewashed hallway, rubbing his hands together and grinning. The picture on the mirror followed him perfectly, the point of view seeming to dance dizzily from one side of the corridor to the other. When the ghost deputy arrived back with the list, Walker grabbed the list and scanned it, murmuring to himself.

"Boss?" the deputy interrupted. "You may want to try Specter. She hasn't won many fights yet, but she's a powerful fighter. She may be able to beat Phantom."

Walker laughed and Bullet cringed away from the dripping wickedness in the powerful ghost's voice. "Don't you get it, Bullet?" he cooed. "I don't want Phantom to lose anymore. Not yet, anyway."

Bullet blinked. "Then… what do you want?"

"I want him broken. As an added bonus, we'll pull in customers like never before." Walker took his bloody, rusty knife out of his pocket and used it to point to a name on the page. "The punk fights this one. Make sure the entire Ghost Zone knows." He tossed the list back at Bullet and strode off.

I let Walker walk away, focusing the mirror to try and see the read Walker had pointed to. The smaller deputy wrinkled his forehead. "Doric?" he muttered. "A 0-J newbie?" Bullet shook his head and rolled the list up into a tight cylinder, stuffing it into a pocket. "Well, I guess we can guarantee that Phantom won't lose to him."

Bullet rolled up his list and turned to leave, but not before raising his hand and seeming to take a swipe at me through the mirror. "Pesky ghost lights," he hissed.

On my side of the mirror, I laughed. I let the screen lose focus on its target and the view began to drift aimlessly. Split-second snapshots of ghost and human prisoners flickered on the screen as the mirror flickered between cameras. I barely registered the pictures as I contemplated what I wanted to do next. It was a huge long shot… but I needed to know. The knowledge of what was going on elsewhere was crucial to my plan.

I tapped the controls carefully, directing a few of the flares to search for a new target. On the screen, the mirror flashed a few more times before it settled on a view of the very edge of the Pits. The view leapt forwards as the ghost light received its instructions, dashing out into the chaos of the Ghost Zone and leaving the relative safety of the Pits behind. Within seconds, I had sent out seven flickers of light into the green abyss. Hopefully one of them would survive long enough to reach its target.

Settling back into an easy crouch, I turned the view on the mirror away from the speeding lights and back onto the boy. His white hair snapped into focus, green eyes blazing as he fought against the guards trying to hold him in place. One guard was attempting to remove the boy's blades. I chuckled, knowing full well that the poor ghost would fail. Psychosomatic connection indeed.

Finally, I rested my head on my paws and wrapped my tail around my feet, watching the scene play out before me. It was now a waiting game. Wait for the boy to fall apart. Wait for the "rebel" in green to make his move. Wait for the time to be right. And, most of all, wait for my little flickers of light to find their target: the boy's family.

The young woman shook her head, annoyed. "Who wrote that?" she wondered, glancing down at the little rat still perched on her shoulder. "The friend mentioned?"

The rat blinked up at her before jumping off of her shoulder and racing under the hard cot. She watched it go, tilting her head to the side to keep it in view. When the rat reached the far corner of the cell, it vanished. "And why is it that you can seem to get through the walls and this boy couldn't?"

Her head fell back against the wall and she groaned, tossing the notebook away from her. "I'm trapped in some sort of 'Ghost Zone', about to die, and what do I care about? Some silly story? What's wrong with me?"

For a few seconds, the cell was silent. Suddenly, the heavy, wooden door snapped and creaked, opening nearly a foot. The girl was on her feet in seconds, tensely waiting for the guard to appear. Instead, a roughly circular metal disk was tossed into the room, followed quickly by a long-fingernailed hand and a large ladle. The hand dropped a glob of bluish gunk onto the disk and pulled back out of the room just as the door snapped shut again.

The young woman crept over to the door, her eyes flickering from the… food… to the door and back. Slowly she picked up the dish and retreated back to her corner. On the way, she stooped to grab the notebook. After settling down, the oatmeal-like substance balanced precariously on her lap, she riffled through the notebook.

"Page 4…" she read softly…