Edited February 2008
Pits
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria
Page 5
I lost my ghost form before the guards had even arrived to pick me up. The eerily glowing blades once again vanished in a sparkle of silver lights. No longer able to slice myself up, I curled into a little ball and buried my head in my hands.
One of the guards kicked my foot. "Get up," he snapped at me.
I didn't want to get up. I didn't want to move. Let me die…
Visions of the dying ghosts played relentlessly through my mind. Crusher, coughing up blood as he helped me kill him. Slasher's head rolling on the ground, mouth moving soundlessly as he slowly evaporated into nothingness. Doric… calm Doric still refusing to fight, even at the end, his ectoplasmic blood leaked out of him as he fell in two pieces.
Ignoring the guards, I dug my fingers into my hair. I can't do it anymore… I can't…
Suddenly I was wrenched to my feet, a guard leering in my face. "Move it, kid." The ghost's green eyes flickered, and suddenly I was staring straight into Doric's eyes once more.
No… I twisted in his grasp, barely aware that it wasn't really Doric before me. I could see it. Green blood pooled around Doric's waist and streamed down to the ground. Lifeless green eyes stared accusingly at me. No, no… I didn't… I can't…
The guard let go and I dropped to my knees in the mud. From between the ghost's legs, I could see the remains of the panther-ghost, slowly disintegrating. I shut my eyes, pressing the heels of my palms into lids. Lights flashed and danced. No… please… I didn't…
"Move!" a guard yelled, grabbing my shoulder and pushing me backwards.
"Don't," I whispered. Leave me alone… I just want to forget…
A ghost planted a foot against my back and kicked, knocking me face-first into the bloody mud. "Get up," the guard snarled.
"Don't TOUCH me!" I screamed, eyes flaring green. In an instant, I was back in ghost form, blades flashing in the dim lights of pit two. The guards backed away, but not fast enough. I lashed out with one of the blades, slicing a long strip out of the nearest guard's chest. Spinning, I sliced a chuck out of another guard's leg. I twisted in a small circle, but now all the ghosts were out of range.
Tears were trickling down my cheeks. "I didn't want to!" I cried. "Leave me alone."
One guard raised a baton, getting ready to slam it down on my head. "No!" I shrieked, the guards being thrust backwards at the force of my voice. Energy fizzled into existence all around me, the starlit blades capturing and focusing it before sent it sparking along their smooth lengths, tingling cold against my nerves. "Stay away!"
I glanced up just in time to see one of the uninjured guards pull a small box off of his belt and point it at me. The leather collar around my neck burned to life, forcing a ragged scream out of my lips and dissipating all the energy I'd managed to gather. I was back to human in a flare of light, twitching on the ground as the guard mercilessly continued to press the button.
When he finally quit, I just lay on the ground, panting. My whole body was burning, muscles twitching unconsciously. I let my eyes stay closed, reveling in the cool feeling of the damp sand as it pressed against my skin.
"Pick him up," a guard ordered.
It took a few seconds, but strong hands grabbed onto my arms and yanked me to my knees. Unable to stand on my own, I moaned as their grips on my arms made my shoulders twist painfully. They began to drag me through the mud and out of the pit.
I didn't care to look around; I stopped trying to do anything more. I just let them pull me out of the arena, through the darkly lit hallways and to a strange room, my mind blank and wondering. The guards, still holding tightly to me, pushed me under a stream of freezing water.
"Gah!" I spluttered, my eyes flashing open, struggling a bit. Four of the ghosts kept their strong grip on my arms as a fifth worked soap into my hair. The horrible smelling substance burned in my eyes and left a sour taste in my mouth. The bubbles trickled down my arms and soaked into my clothes, washing away the worst of the dried-in muck.
When they pulled me out of the cascade of ice water, my fingers and toes were numb enough to go with my broken mind. Things that happened after that were small flashes of scenes: shoes squelching against the floor; a bright blue light that mostly dried my hair and clothes; endless hallways of doors filled with moaning and screaming occupants; flashes of red numbers painted onto the doors like blood.
Room 143, my room, appeared before I had really comprehended the fact that we had walked that far. I blinked blearily at the large bloody "3" on my door before I was thrust into the room and the door was slammed shut behind him. Sinking to the floor, I didn't notice the bowl full of greenish food by my knees.
A vision of Doric's death flooded through my brain once more, his terror-filled eyes burned into my mind. "No…" I whispered. "Stop…"
Slowly the picture faded away, leaving me alone in my cell. I glanced around, swiping at a lone tear that had made it out of my eye. Not even the rat was there to keep me company. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I pressed my back against the door and stared distantly across my small room, feeling the day's exhaustion sneaking up on me.
With a flicker of memory, I was suddenly on my feet. My photograph…
I scrambled over to the corner were the guard had carelessly tossed my picture. It wasn't there. Frantically, I searched every corner of the room. It wasn't there. It wasn't there. "No!" I stood, trembling, in the middle of the room, slowly twisting in a circle. Walker's not that cruel… he wouldn't take it…
Wait. Something twitched on the cot. I raced over to it, staring down in disbelief at the photograph lying there. Uncrumpled, dry, and not-at-all wrecked, the picture was resting on the thin pillow.
In disbelief, I reached out and slowly picked up the picture. I glanced around the room one last time. "Who saved it?" I wondered softly. Sinking onto the cot, I sat cross-legged with the photo securely in my fingers. I stared down at the faces of my family, a small, tired smile crossing my lips. My family was safe.
After a long handful of minutes, I carefully tucked the photograph under my pillow and lay down, letting my eyes drift closed. I kicked my shoes off, listening to them fall off the other end of the too-short cot. Then, crossing my fingers in the vain hope I wouldn't be plagued with dreams about what had just happened, I let myself relax. I didn't want to think about it yet. I'd deal with it in the morning.
For a moment before I slid off to sleep, my mind flittered back to the question of who had saved my family's picture. I gave a half-hearted mental shrug. "Thank you," I breathed, hoping that the kind-hearted person would know my gratitude.
As my dreams took over, I could have sworn I heard a small voice from under my cot whisper, "You're more than welcome."
Back in the pits, screaming crowds pressing in around me, my head throbbed to the beat of some hidden pulse. I was in ghost mode, my black clothes spotless for once as I hovered easily over the gore of the pit. Just above my head, the ghost shield sparkled green each time a wave of rampant ectoenergy drifted through the air. I glanced around, searching for my opponent.
Standing at the other end of the pit, the ghost leered at me through pulsing, green eyes. She moved forwards out of the shadows, her long, blue hair flaring with the cheering of the crowd. "Dipstick!" she yelled up at me. Her guitar swirled into existence in her fingers.
"Ember," I whispered.
"Say my name!" she screamed, strumming a chord as the crowd picked up its chanting.
"Ember! Ember! Ember!"
As she lifted of the ground, her hair flared and grew until it was swirling all around her, reaching out like a hundred arms to fill up the entire area around her. She threw her hand up in the air, fingers bent, then crashed down, a power chord ripping over the noise of the crowd. The energy of her blast was so powerful that it was visible as it snaked towards me in a green wall of light.
I brought my arms up, the blades deflecting the worst of the energy, but it still slammed into me with enough force to throw me across the pit and blast me into the wall. Dazed and trembling, I collapsed into the muck. Ember drifted across the pit, her hair flaring bigger and bigger with the vigorous chanting of the insane crowd.
Before I could struggle to my feet, Ember began to softly pick out a melody on her guitar. The music drifted through the air, caressing the muck I was kneeling in. The green-red mud began to glow, thick strands of it rising up off the ground like snakes being charmed in the movies. Suddenly they wrapped around me, trapping my legs and squeezing around my waist.
The muck began to pull me under as Ember continued her siren's music. "See ya on the flipside, kid," she sang.
I was up to my waist in the muck, struggling helplessly. "Stop it, Ember!"
"No," she cooed. "With you gone, Walker has promised that I can have Amity Park." She grinned at me. "With all you annoying Fentons out of the way, it'll be the perfect place to stage my comeback tour."
As the mud creeped up my chest, I stared at her. "Out of the way? Where are they? What did you do to my family?"
She strummed a bit, humming a haunting melody. "Oh, nothing yet," she confessed. "But after I finish you off, Walker's going to go take your family and any friends you have and throw them in the Pits. He's planning some kind of mass execution." A smile flickered across her face. "Not really my thing, you understand, but I won't be here to care."
"No," I whispered.
"Then you have to fight, kid." Ember's hair glowed brightly for a second. "You have to win."
"I don't want to fight." The mud was up to my neck.
"You're going to drown in the blood of the ghosts you murdered," she whispered, "and then spend the rest of eternity knowing that your family's fate is all your fault… and that's all you have to say? You don't want to fight?"
I struggled against the mud for a second, spitting out a mouthful of sour, green liquid. "I don't want to fight," I snapped.
"Newsflash, dipstick. Neither do I. But sometimes you have to fight." Her skull-decorated boots drifted down until they were floating even with my eyes. She knelt down in mid-air, staring at me with her haunting emerald eyes. "Sometimes, to do what's right, you have to do what's wrong."
"I don't want to kill you." I wasn't entirely sure I said it aloud, too distracted by the fact that the mud seemed to have stopped pulling me down.
She grinned at me, fiddling her fingers on the strings. The soft melody drowned out the chanting, pulsing crowd for a moment. "It's a nice sentiment kid, but is it really what you want?"
"What?"
"Don't you remember the fight you had with that idiot panther-ghost?"
I shivered and tried yanking one arm out of the mud. After a few seconds of straining, the muck released my arm with a slurping sound. "Yeah, Ember, I remember."
Her eyes glazed over as she watched me. "Don't you remember the feeling when your blades collected all that energy and purified it, focused it?"
Struggling to get my other arm free, I paused. My mind flickered back to the fight with Doric. I could remember it very well. How the ectoenergy had swirled in frozen streams around my arm, flaring along the silver of the blades, blazing with power. I could remember perfectly how the energy had thrummed through my body, sparkling against my nerves, sending shivers of desire into my brain. I had never felt energy that had been that… condensed. That focused. That powerful.
"Power is intoxicating," Ember breathed. "Especially that level of power. That's what I feel when I get all these people," she gestured to the crowd, "chanting my name."
I freed my other arm, pushing myself a bit farther out of the mud. "What does this have to do with anything?" I snapped.
"You want more," she whispered. "That's what you really want. You want to fight. You want to win."
"I don't want to fight." I kicked against the muck, straining.
"Yes, you do." Ember was suddenly inches from my face, staring straight into my green eyes. "You're a ghost," she murmured into my ear. "Deep down, you love the discord, the raw emotions, the pure power of the fight. You can't deny that."
"Watch me," I hissed, twisting my head away from hers.
"Fine," she snapped. "But if you can't accept who and what you are, ghost-boy, you're never going to win." Ember stood up, drifting a bit farther away. "And if you don't win, your family will lose."
She raked her fingers across the strings, the muck suddenly jumping back to life. "Bye-bye, dipstick." Before she could complete another power chord, the mud was up over my head. I struggled against the thick substance, barely able to move.
I don't want to fight.
My lungs were straining, holding my breath. I needed to get free.
I don't want to fight.
I pushed against the mud with one hand, shaking my head in an attempt to clear a space for one breath of air. No such luck. I'm not going to give in.
As my mind started to go black, my body struggled more and more to free itself. I'm NOT going to give in! I snarled to myself, green energy flaring behind my closed eyes. Frozen streamers of power drifted around me, whispering against my nerves and sending jolts to my brain that made my toes curl and my teeth clench.
I fought the intense feeling, trying to shove the tickling joyful bubbles out of my head. I'm not going to give in… I'm not going to give in… I'm not going to give in…
As the delicious feeling of pure power flooded through my nerves, my body gave up its fight to hold its breath. My mouth opening despite the mud, I reflexively took a deep breath.
And woke up with a start on my cot.
I stared around the room, panting, the nine ghost lights on the ceiling whirling and dancing in frantic patterns. No Ember. My breathing slowed enough for me to realize that I was missing an important component to my nightmare-driven panic attack. My heart wasn't racing. I couldn't hear it pounding in my ears at all. Which meant…
I glanced down at my arms, not entirely surprised to see the silvery blades and the vaguely glowing skin that signaled that I was in ghost form. I sat back on my heels and sighed, letting my racing mind settle back into a normal pattern.
The dream floated through my brain, the memory of Ember leaning over me, hissing those toxic words into my ear. I shivered, trying to push the thought away. "Deep down," she whispered in my memory, "you love the discord, the raw emotions, the pure power of the fight. You can't deny that."
Her words echoed around in my head. I brought one leg up to my chest, wrapping my arms around it and resting my chin on my knee.
"I don't want to fight," I whispered, jumping slightly at the hoarse sound of my voice in the empty room. "I have to."
At the barest thought, the slightest flicker of memory, neon green energy shimmered into existence around my hands. It sparkled and shone, then fizzled, snaking up my arms and twirling onto the shining blades. Instantly the energy flared to that new level, concentrated and purified, simmering and coiling in the cold air of the room. The cool tingle of this pure power sent shivers up my arms and an unconscious smile to my face.
Suddenly I triggered the transformation, letting the prickle of life sweep through me. For the longest time, I sat there, staring down at my hands, wondering, listening to the simple beat of my heart in my ears.
Is Ember right? Deep down, do I really like fighting? Do I like the thrilling pulse of power and the exhilarating emotions of these battles?
I shivered, clenching my fists and wrapping my arms around me.
At least don't lie to myself. I do like to fight. I like the power. But I don't like the ending.
I chill swept through me, raising goosebumps on my arms.
I didn't like fighting at first, now I do. I didn't like that feeling of power at first, yet now I love it. It's… enthralling. I don't like the endings… I don't like killing…
Not yet anyway…
I pushed the pillow roughly off the bed, uncovering the photograph of my family. I just sat there, staring down at their faces, watching the shadows move and dance as the ghost lights flickered overhead.
To save my family… was I turning into something just as bad as the ghosts I had once fought? Would I ever be able to go home? Or, by the time I got free, would I just be another murdering spirit terrorizing the world?
Two 'meals' later, Walker stormed back into my room. He snarled, his rusty knife already out and dancing in the greenish light. I was jerked off of my cot, slipping to my feet.
"Got something for you," he snapped, glared over his shoulder at a guard. The ghost stepped into the room, a small garbage bag held tightly in his arms. "Leave it," Walker commanded, kicking the guard back out of the room and shutting the door.
Walker turned to me, a chilling grin stretching his lips. "First, I want to congratulate you on your win." He nodded slightly at me, tipping his hat. "You made me quite a bit of money."
I shivered, backing away from him, not bothering to answer. What did he want me to do, thank him for letting me murder Doric?
"But," Walker hissed, "we need to discuss your actions after the match. They were less than exemplary."
I narrowed my eyes, feeling the cold stones press into my back. My mind slowly churned on the idea of attacking Walker. He was all alone right now. I'd just have to get past this stupid shock collar…
"As a… consequence of your actions, I have brought this," Walker toed the bag with his polished boot, "and this," he said, holding up his bloody knife.
My thoughts of attacking him derailing at the sight of the knife, I glanced down at the garbage bag. "What's in the bag?" I asked, remembering to speak up.
Walker's grin widened. I got a nice view of his rotting teeth, even from across the room. "You remember when you first arrived here? We had a little chat."
I remembered: he stuck that stupid knife into my arm and condemned me to die in the Pits. How could I ever forget that? I'd probably spend the rest of my pathetically short life with that memory ringing in my head.
Walker was continuing on his monologue without waiting for my input. "You confessed to the crime for which you were sentenced to die. You remember what it was?" He barely paused. "You murdered your friends. Sam and Tucker."
"No I didn't," I snapped as he opened his mouth to continue.
"Oh yes, you did," he cooed, his desiccated eyes rolling around in his eye sockets. "Those three idiots – the two safari ghosts and the elephant? – they shot you with a dart, you remember that?"
Vaguely. Everything went black, but there may have been a sharp prick in my arm. I couldn't remember for sure. I simply nodded, sliding farther along the wall towards the corner as Walker took a step towards me.
"True idiots," Walker sighed, "they shot you with a drug that causes mild schizophrenia in humans." He shot me a dark look. "You, punk, went crazy for a few minutes."
I raised an eyebrow. Does he think I believe this?
"You won't remember it, the drug would have caused a black-out in your memory, but you began hallucinating. From what we can determine, you thought your two friends had turned into ghosts. Split images of Plasmius." Walker sent me an easy grin, the knife flashing in the light as he used it to pick some dirt out from under his fingernails. "You attacked them. Apparently, they didn't stand much of a chance." The warden stooped, slicing through the garbage bag sitting next to him. Bloody clothes spilled onto the floor.
I stopped breathing, eyes locked on the contents of the bag. A yellow shirt, soaked in blood and charred beneath a familiar, shattered red beret. A green checked skirt with a black shirt.
"The funeral was yesterday," Walker continued conversationally. "I had a guard sneak into the police station and steal these for you. They were saving them for evidence, but as you won't be back, there's no point in having a trail." His foot toed through the clothes, scattering them around on the floor. A purple scruchie, dotted with nearly-black blood, tumbled away from the rest. Walker lazily kicked it in my direction.
I scrambled away from it, my breath catching in my throat. "No," I whispered.
"It's not really your fault," he soothed. "Those idiot ghosts are the ones that shot you with that dart. You can't really be blamed for what happened. But confessions are confessions, and crimes must be punished appropriately."
Pressed into the corner of the room, eyes focused on the scruchie on the floor, I wasn't listening to a word he was saying.
Walker chuckled softly. "Don't beat yourself up about it, alright punk?" Then he was gone.
Leaving the bloody clothes scattered all over the floor.
I didn't kill my friends, this is a trick, a mind game. My head was racing, pouring over what he had said. But the clothes were there, disrupting my thoughts. Each time I managed to start to think that nothing was wrong, those mangled clothes threw me off track.
"I didn't kill my friends," I hissed, tearing my gaze away from the pile of clothes to glare at the door Walker had already disappeared through.
"I didn't!" I snarled, my anger at Walker for even suggesting such a thing trickling up through my veins. "This is a weak trick!" I shouted at the door. "I'm not stupid!"
I twisted my head to gaze at the clothes as simmering frustration welled up in me. " Walker," I seethed. I brought my arm up, blinking at the sight of the starlight blade sparkling on my arm. I wasn't sure when I had shifted to ghost mode.
Power coiled through my arm, fizzing on the blade and sending shimmering energy flooding through my veins. It fed off of my fear and anger, flaring around me in an almost visible cloud of ectoplasm.
"No!" I yelled. "I didn't do it!" Suddenly I threw my arm out, the electric energy flaring along the blade, blazing through the small room. It slammed into the small pile of bloody clothes, flaring them to ash in a millisecond. "I didn't kill my friends," I fumed, glaring at the dirty smear on the floor, ignoring the ghost lights that were spinning, terrified, around the ceiling.
Frustration coiled inside of me, tearing at my stomach, dragging ectoenergy to the surface to flash around me. I glanced around the room for another target. I needed to get this out of me; I was going to be torn apart. Seeing nothing, the intoxicating power built up inside of me with no outlet. Finally, with a scream, I released all that energy. It flew out in all directions, shattering the small cot to splinters and charring the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. Eight of the ghost lights, all of them except for one that had managed to hide from the powerful wave of energy, vanished in small puffs of light.
Grinning through the tiredness that was pressing down on me, I looked around the room. A small laugh trickled out at the sudden, blessed calmness of my mind, echoing oddly in the silence of the room. Slowly, I twirled on my heel, marveling at the almost weightless, blank feeling invading my head.
Suddenly I was human again, the moment of tranquil peace shattering. I stared at the destroyed room, dropping to my knees and wrapping my arms around my chest, fully comprehending what I had just done. "What did I just do?" I whispered. This isn't me. I don't destroy things out of anger and frustration. Ghosts do that. Not me. Why did I… A sick feeling swirled up in my throat as I remembered the almost happy feeling that had drifted through me as I had surveyed the damage I had caused.
My eyes settled on the purple scruchie that still sat on the floor, the only piece of 'evidence' that hadn't been completely destroyed in my crazy outburst. I stared down at it, my breathing shallow as Walker's voice rasped through my mind.
"It's just a trick, I'm not a murder." Carefully, I picked up the charred scruchie, holding it in the palm of my hand. "I'm not a murder," I insisted, staring at it.
The faces of Crusher, Slasher, and Doric flashed before my eyes. I changed my plea. "I didn't kill…"
A flash of memory. Sam running in terror, her violet eyes wide. Tucker lying on the ground, his beret smoking.
"I didn't…"
The simple, purple scruchie just sat on my hand and refused to agree with me.
The fight after that little episode was a complete disaster. To say I had temporarily given in to my ghostly side was the understatement of the century. To this day, I'm not entirely positive what came over me. Some potent combination of fear, anger, frustration, depression, and loneliness maybe.
Or, perhaps, I truly went nuts for awhile. It's entirely possible. I mean, I was learning to deal with being a murder and I had just found out that I may have killed my best friends in cold blood. You need to cut me a little slack.
He's the only ghost I ever fought in the Pits that I can't put a name to. I didn't listen when Former told me, and the ghost never got a chance to talk to me in the pit. Even though I hate thinking about that fight, I remember every moment of it with crystal clarity.
I remember storming out to the starting spot, frustration and anger thrumming through me. The poor ghost was standing at the other end of the pit trembling as he started at me. On that horrible day, the ghost wasn't a person – he wasn't an opponent. He was a target; a way to release the emotions roiling around inside of me. I must have been a vision of terror, my eyes blazing green and energy tearing up the mud around me. It's the day, looking back weeks later, when something dark woke up inside of me.
He didn't stand an ice cube's chance in Hell of winning. The crowd knew it, betting nearly two hundred-to-one odds that I'd beat this ghost. From the terrified look in his sapphire eyes, he knew it too. I can remember grinning at him – grinning at him – before I attacked him.
I remember cutting him down with one simple attack. I left him, lying fatally wounded, in the mud. I wasn't tired, not wounded, and barely even dirty. Not worth my time. I shudder to think about what was going through my mind during that fight.
After killing him, I remember turning around, glancing down at his disintegrating body and feeling the wrongness of it all. A perverse sickness flooded through my entire being. I still cling to the memory of that feeling. It's the only thing that hints at the fact that I didn't go over the edge. That I wasn't lost. That I hadn't given in the whole way.
Sure, I had killed without hesitating. I had killed without struggling. I had killed in cold blood.
But it was still wrong. And I still knew it.
While the guards were escorting me out of the pits, I remember looking up into the crowds… all those truly insane ghosts. Quite a few of them were staring at me, faces pale, trembling when I met their eyes. I had scared them. I remember sending them a sadistic grin and chuckling as more than one of the ghosts ducked away from my gaze.
One didn't flinch. The ghost in the green cloak was back, neon eyes staring sorrowfully at me from the stands. Slowly, deliberately, the ghost shook his head, turned, and walked away. A ghost I didn't even know… the same one that had secretly applauded my defensive, defiant actions earlier… he was ashamed what I had done. It was like a punch to the gut.
As I was pushed out of the pit, I can remember one thought echoing through my mind. What have I done?
Even today, I'm not entirely sure.
The young woman shivered. "He wrote that fight differently from the others," she whispered to the empty room. "I wonder why?" She flipped to the next page of the notebook, then hesitated. Slowly, she closed the battered, red notebook, staring down at the words scrawled across the cover.
"I'm not writing this story for you – I'm writing this story for me," she read aloud, tracing her finger over the depressed words. Her mind whirled. "He wrote this for himself, not for me," she muttered, "but yet he started writing distantly… like he was trying to pull himself out of the story …almost like he didn't want to think about what he was thinking about…"
She glanced up at two sapphire eyes that glittered out from under the cot. "What could've been going on in his head that he wouldn't want to think about?" The rat's nose twitched and it scurried back over to her side.
"What was he so afraid of?" A small laugh escaped her mouth as the rat crawled up to her shoulder and peered at the closed notebook impatiently. "Did he really think he'd turn into some evil monster?"
The rat's eyes flickered up to meet hers and it tapped her cheek with its small claws. She gave a small shudder at the cold feel of its skin, raising one eyebrow. "Why, for crying out loud, am I asking you? It's not like you're going to answer."
When she finally picked up the notebook again, the rat stared down at the messy handwriting for only a moment before jumping off her shoulder and sliding back under the bed. Before it vanished into the corner, the rat paused, looking over its shoulder and sending her an unnoticed grin.
Alone in the room once more, the young lady continued to read…