Pits

by Cordria

Danny has been captured and thrown into the Pits by Walker to fight for his life. Listen in as he tells his dark, twisted tale of surviving despite the odds. Warning: dark and depressing. Sequel is 'Final Exam'.

17. Page 13

Warning: lots of death and fighting in this chapter. LOTS.

Warning: hellishly long chapter (30 plus pages in Word) – that's why it took two months to get it up.

Happy Birthday Invader Johnny! I got it up... Hey, it's still the right day in my time zone. It's 11:45pm. I made it. XD

To catch you up if you've forgotten: Danny just beat an insane woman, fighting in a maze-like pit fight. Now he's stuck, not knowing how to get back out. Still not totally happy with it... but okay. I've been fighting over posting it or not for three weeks and I give up. Enjoy.

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Pits
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

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Page 13

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Rage and fury swirled around the tiny section of the maze, curling almost tangibly around the young man as he towered over the trembling form of the human he'd been told to fight. She'd gotten in a few lucky blows – as evidenced by the gooey green blood trickling down the boy's face – but she really never stood a chance. Not against an angered hybrid.

I stared at the blood pooling by my feet as the strange image dissipated. My mind drifted for a moment as it tried to kick back in gear, my eyes blinking blankly. It settled on trying to comprehend what was right in front of my eyes. Blood.

Red and green… lots more crimson than emerald. They swirled and refused to mix – oil and water. Life and death. Human and ghost. Never able to truly become one; they never had and they never would.

Unlike me. What does that make me?

Before I could do more than ask the unanswerable question, the world fizzled and danced out of focus again.

The young woman had fallen to the ground with a choked-off scream. Now her lifeless eyes were nothing more than pools of blankness that stared in the direction of her murderer. The hybrid didn't give her dead body a second glance, instead turning his attention to the surrounding maze. When he looked up into the faces of the ghosts floating overhead, feasting off of the remnants of the human's dying breath, his face twisted into a sort of disgust. Suddenly his eyes seemed to flare with an eerie blue-green light and his head dropped so that he was staring at his feet, contemplating the blood that was oozing around them.

I blinked away the strange image of myself, trying desperately to get these visions to stop. Not knowing where they were coming from or what they were for, I needed them to go away. So I did what I normally did when experiencing some strange ghost power: I held my breath for a moment, crossed my fingers, and waited. After nearly a minute, I let the air out of my lungs and tried to smile.

Looking up, intending to search for a way free of this deadly labyrinth and keeping my fingers crossed that the images (or visions or whatever they were) were done for good, I spotted a tiny blue ghost light appearing in the air over Sophie's head. The world fuzzed around me before I had a chance to think.

Dancing and bobbing on currents of emotional energy, a small blue ghost light twirled into existence above the blood-soaked body. The boy's gaze was suddenly drawn from the crowds above his head to the ghost light that contained all that was left of Sophie's spirit. They looked at each other, the hybrid's eyes glowing with an internal light exactly the same color as Sophie's ghost light.

As the world swirled back into reality around me, I knew that these weird visions and the ghost lights were somehow connected. The 'how' and the 'why' of it all was beyond me, but the idea seemed to click in my head. I somehow knew that I was right. "Stop that," I muttered randomly, wondering if the ghost light would be able to understand. It drifted away from the pool of blood and danced up to hover in front of my nose, making the blood-splattered walls of the maze vanish in a swirl of blue light.

The hybrid blinked his eyes, studying the ghost light as it twirled. It didn't understand words – it was too far removed from its human existence for that. But it comprehended emotions. The ghost light formerly known as Sophie hesitated when it felt a swirl of apprehension and resignation from the hybrid.

-- ? --

"Stop," I whispered again, putting force behind the word when my world came back into focus. "I need to get out of here and you're not helping." I hoped that even if it couldn't understand the words, it would be able to figure out my meaning based on my emotions.

I took a few steps down the maze and glanced back, my eyes resting on Sophie's limp form for a moment, guilt and frustration sizzling through my veins like a small tidal wave. I blinked and wrenched my eyes away from the pool of blood, taking a deep breath and trying to steady my crashing emotions. It took a few seconds, but I got them back under control, blinking away the tears that had formed in my eyes. The tiny blue ghost light appeared, bobbing and twirling right in front of me, sending a small echo of that wave of frustrated annoyance skipping through me. Why is the stupid thing following me? "Fine. Follow. But don't do the vision thing anymore," I snapped.

-- ! --

"Excellent," I murmured, raising an eyebrow at the fact that I was talking to a little ball of light. It fit in with talking to rats, being captured by a dead warden, and fighting for my life in a pit, I thought. Twisting around, I let out a slow breath and I started to make my way back through the maze. I had wandered pretty much randomly on the way here, so making my way back out of the maze was going to be a bit of a trick. I glanced up again, but most of the ghosts that had been hovering overhead appeared to have lost all interest in me. There were only a handful of them still watching.

One of the spirits, wearing a dark green cloak, waved to me. I hesitated, then waved back. The green-cloaked ghost seemed to look both ways before holding up six fingers. Then he slowly put down his fingers, one at a time. When the last finger went down, he pointed to me, then pointed over his head.

I blinked a few times, wondering what he meant, and shrugged. The ghost held out six fingers again as the world fizzled and twisted.

A ghost light bobbed and danced out of the star-like gloom of the Pits and twirled around the head of the green-cloaked ghost. The ghost light's energy briefly illuminated the ghost's silvery face before swirling on. "Six more fights," Skulker rasped, glancing around apprehensively as he tried to communicate his plan with the trapped hybrid. He didn't know how to put this any better without giving himself away to the guards that lurked around the edges of the pit. "Six." He put down all of his fingers. "In six fights, we're going to free you." He pointed to the hybrid staring up at him with blue-green eyes, then pointed briefly towards the ceiling. "Free."

"Free," I mouthed, staring up at the green-cloaked ghost. "I thought you hated me, why are you helping?" Skulker didn't answer. Instead, the figure gathered his cloak around him and flew off.

My feet moved, carrying me farther from Sophie's remains. Tiny ghost spiders and shadowy spectral rats appeared in the darkness, scuttling away from me as I approached them. Broken, crumbling walls were barely visible in the glow given off by my body as I clambered over the remnants of old walls, trying to retrace my steps. Finally I reached a point where the passage I was in forked to the left and right and I couldn't remember which direction I came from.

"Great," I breathed. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…" The blue ghost light twirled past me, vanishing down the corridor to the right. "That way, huh?"

Broken walls flicked and flashed as the tiny light danced its way down the maze. Left, left, right, left, right… and it was free.

The world tipped drunkenly on its side as I blinked away the image, shaking my head slightly. "Stop that… you're going to drive me nuts. More nuts than I already am, anyway." I wandered in the direction the tiny light had gone, muttering to myself. "Talking rats, lights that are dead people giving out visions, murderous ghosts, hybrids… It all fits, somehow."

-- !! --

The hybrid was moving through the maze, unnoticing as a giant shadow slithered out of the darkness behind him…

I twisted around, my arms coming up to protect my head before I fully realized what was coming. A huge blob of darkness detached itself from the rest of the darkness and flung itself at me. I ducked, glancing up at red-green scales as the creature flew over my head. I heard it crash into the wall behind me as I spun back around to keep it in my sights.

It shook its head, blurry-red eyes turning around to train on me. A deep hissing rattled the maze and its tongue flickered out. "Ghosst."

Taking a small step backwards, I narrowed my eyes. "Get out of my way," I warned it, the blades extending from my arms as I tensed and stared at the ghost snake. "I'm done with my fight – I'm leaving."

"Bitess'es, tearss'es, sslayss'es," the ghost snake slurred. It reared its head up to easily twice my height and glared down at me. Flashing its fangs at me, it continued, "Ghosst child diess'es."

"Thanks for the warning," I muttered sarcastically. "Now, move?"

It moved. Fangs extended, it uncurled its body in a lightning fast move, slashing towards me. I threw myself to the side and felt the cold scales of the snake brush past me. "Hey!" I snapped. It wasn't supposed to be attacking me! I was done with my fight. What was it doing?

The snake's tail curled, wrapping around my legs and sending me stumbling. Before I could gain my balance, the snake's freezing coils appeared around me, pinning my arms securely to the sides and tightening painfully. "Leggo," I gasped, unable to get a breath. In this weird ghost-human state, I still needed to breathe.

"All in the pitss'es, fair game," the snake hissed. "Ssqueezess'es ghosst child. Diess'es."

As the snake wound itself tighter, I struggled, pain flaring in my ribs and arms. My vision was beginning to grow dark. "Le…" I ground out with the last of the air in my lungs. I couldn't think of what to do. I didn't want to die here…

"MINE!" A howling voice shook the walls of the maze. Something huge slammed into the snake from behind and the coils suddenly released their grasp on me. I stumbled to my knees, gasping in a huge lungful of air, already twisting around to see what had happened. Another ghost had appeared – a giant wolf-like creature with blazing blue eyes and three-foot fangs. "MINE!" it bayed again, slashing at the snake with its claws.

"Dogss'es," the snake muttered, its red eyes narrowing in anger as it glared at its attacker. Then it slipped off down the maze, the dog-wolf bounding after it.

I pushed myself to my feet, still struggling to get air into my bruised chest, staring off in the direction the two ghost-animals had raced. "What the…" Shaking my head dismally, then stopping that action when a wave of nausea ripped through me, I decided that getting out of the area would be a good choice at this point. Forget about the snake and the wolf-thing.

-- ? --

"I'm coming, I'm coming," I muttered, taking a painfully deep breath and stumbling a little. "Give me a break, stupid light."

As I headed through the darkened shadows of the maze, trying to stay quiet and listen for any more attackers, I gritted my teeth and thought through my list of things that were 'wrong'. One was that my emotions were going haywire; they were almost overpoweringly strong at times, but yet not at others. It had to have something to do with this strange half-human/half-ghost state that I was stuck in – almost like I suddenly had access to ghost emotions… which my parents would definitely disagree with. They didn't think ghosts had any emotions, much less ones that were stronger ones human emotions.

The ghost light bobbed and dipped, zipping over the head of the slow-moving hybrid. Left, right, left, right, free! A large double door appeared out of the darkness as the light swirled through the air.

And then there was that.

What in the world could possibly be happening to cause those 'visions', I didn't have a clue. Suddenly being able to talk (kind of) to the ghost lights was weird, creepy, and slowly driving me insane. They cut into my thoughts without any sort of warning. The whole situation did seem vaguely familiar though, in a strange sort of way. Three fights ago – back when I had chosen to just give up and never fight again – one of the ghost lights from my room had shown me an image of my family.

This was… like that, in a way. Almost like I could see what the ghost lights could see. They could project their thoughts into my head almost like moving, 'living', video cameras. I wonder if Walker can see through them too… The thought that he could watch my every movement made me shudder.

-- ?! --

"Yes, I think you're creepy little things," I answered sourly, levitating for a moment to get over a large section of collapsed wall, then turned to the right and headed down the shadowed corridor.

A tail covered in green and red scales suddenly appeared right in front of me, curling around in an attempt to grab me. I ducked and rolled, wincing when my bruised ribs slammed into the uneven ground. "Ghosst child," the snake hissed.

I glanced up. The snake was covered in glowing, emerald blood, seeping out of dozens of cuts and bite-marks on its body and oozing slowly out of an empty eye socket. "You don't look so good," I remarked as I got to my feet and kept backing down the hallway. "What happened to the wolf guy?"

"Bitess'ess, ripss'ess," the ghost snarled. Its tail slammed back across the maze, missing me by inches and colliding with a solid whump against the other wall. Dust rained down around us. "Killss'ess."

Well, that answered that question, I suppose. I slipped backwards a few more feet, keeping my eyes securely on the enraged serpent and staying on my toes. If that thing chose to attack, I was going to be ready to defend. No stupid reptile was going to get the better of me.

My eyes started to burn as energy collected around me and made my eyes glow brightly. The desire to fight, to kill, to destroy this thing that was slithering by me grew like a wildfire. It was just some stupid snake – I'd kill it and be on my way. It was a goner anyways; I'd just put it out of its misery and then…

I shook my head fiercely, dragging myself out of that train of thought and fighting the feelings that were swirling around inside of me. "No," I snapped, more to myself than to the snake. The serpent wasn't in my way. I could leave without killing it – I wasn't just some ghost that would let my mind be taken over by emotions.

Mind over matter. Brain over instinct. Flight over fight.

But I still wanted to tear the stupid snake to shreds.

"Ghosst!" the snake shrieked when it finally realized I was slowly edging away from it. "Fight!" It coiled backwards and then flung its long body down the hallway, leaving smears of glowing blood on the walls.

The blades slipped soundlessly out of my arms, accompanied by the cold feeling of metal trickling through my veins. I crouched, eyes burning with power, as I watched the snake slither towards me, blind with its own rage and pain. In my head, I could see what would happen next: a sidestep from me, swinging the blade downward, cutting the snake's head off even as its momentum carried the rest of the body beyond me.

"No," I whispered, my body shaking as I struggled to gain control of myself. I could kill the snake – that didn't mean I had to.

I'd killed that human woman without thought, lost to the ghostly emotions that were flooding through me. I had actually felt like I had been doing the world a favor by destroying a worthless human. She hadn't stood a chance.

I hadn't had a choice.

Now I did. I had a choice. This was my body, this was my mind, this was my fight. Killing was something I couldn't help – true – but at least it was going to be my choice to kill, rather than some monstrous instinct.

The choice to destroy or not, the ability to choose who would die and who would live… that ability was what set me apart from ghosts like Walker. It would be a very cold day in Hell before I was anything like Walker.

"No."

The snake, snarling and roaring in anger and hate, was inches from me before I stepped to its blind side. My arm came up, the impossibly sharp blade glittering in the distant lights of the pit as the snake rushed passed. It would be such a simple thing to slash downwards, to sever its life, to just be done with this idiotic battle. The muscles in my arm twitched.

I wanted to kill it. Oh, how I wanted to kill it. Every molecule in my body was screaming at me to move, my heart was pounding at the thought of holding the snake's life in my hands, ghostly blood lust singing in my veins.

But I didn't. I waited until the snake had passed before slowly lowering my arm to my side. The snake slammed head-long into a half-collapsed wall and shrieked in agony before spinning around to face me. Emerald blood splattered in every direction as the snake's single bloody eye searched for me in the shadows.

Suddenly, I was back in control of myself. The impossibly strong desire to kill vanished as quickly as it had arrived, leaving me a little weak in the knees. I took a deep breath, flinched at a sharp pain that zapped through my chest, then took a single step forwards.

The snake, lost to the instincts I had just fought against, caught sight of me. "Diess'ess!" it screamed. Again it attacked, flinging itself straight at me.

I needed to take it out of the picture, but I refused to kill it. This wasn't my fight. The snake's death wasn't on my shoulders. I wasn't anything like Walker – killing just because it was convenient or because of some age-old instinct to destroy. The snake was going to live through this fight.

I took a small step to the side, my blade raised, and it flicked out when the giant serpent slithered to within a foot of my body. Just for a moment, I saw the surprise and rage in the snake's remaining good eye before my blade sliced through its eye socket.

Completely blind and curling around itself in pain, the snake hissed and snarled and buried its bloody head in its coils. I stood still for a moment, watching the impossibly huge reptile. "Sorry," I said softly, turning to head towards the exit. The snake was as good as dead.

-- ? --

The tiny blue ghost light, Sophie's light, glittered and danced above me as I turned the last corner, headed towards the exit. I clenched my teeth. "I hate this."

---

I stumbled through the doorway, the ghost light swirling over my head, glaring darkly at the guard that was holding the door open for me. The greenish deputy met my gaze for a moment before jerking his head silently towards the other door. Despite my better judgment, I looked.

Lounging against the door frame, the warden stared at me with his shrunken-raisin eyes. He pursed his lips as his gaze traveled over me, the rustling sound of his dry skin filling the small room. My brain annoyingly supplied me with images of the torture Walker had put me through earlier and I had to stomp down on the desire to run back into the pit I'd just left. Shivering slightly at the way Walker was staring at me, I made the blades vanish, crossed my arms over my aching ribs, and twisted my fear into a dark glare. I was not going to go curl up in a corner… no matter how much I wanted to right then. "What do you want," I snapped, pleased that my voice didn't shake.

"Don't speak to me like that," Walker snarled softly, tapping his stick against his leg. "I'll have to keep a closer eye on you – you seem to be forgetting my rules."

"Rules-smules," I muttered softly, glancing away from him and taking a deep breath to steady myself. It wouldn't be good for him to see the fear in my eyes. "What about the one ghost per fight thing?"

My gaze flickered to him just long enough to see Walker's face twist into a cruel parody of a smile before fixing my eyes back on the floor. "You should have left the pit quicker and not stood there playing charades with that idiot Skulker. I fail to see how that is my fault." I heard him move and froze when I felt his fingers dig into the skin of my chin and wrench my head up. "You, punk, have lost the fear you used to have when I walked past you, haven't you."

Walker couldn't have been farther from the truth. My stomach was twisting in on itself, terror coiling in my chest as I remembered what usually happened when Walker and I had a 'chat'. It always involved me curled up on the ground in a lot of pain. I narrowed my eyes, my mouth moving without my brain's help as I tried to keep him from seeing the effect he was having on me. "Sure, whatever you say." I should have left it at that, but I couldn't stop the words from tumbling from my mouth in a sarcastic parody of what he'd just said to me. I wanted to hurt him, to cut into him, to finally be a player in this game of mental chess rather than just a pawn. "You, Walker, have lost the key you used to have, haven't you."

Furious comprehension flared in the warden's eyes as I berated myself. What a stupid thing to say: now Walker knew that I knew about the key and it didn't seem to hurt him nearly as much as I had hoped. His crackled fingernails dug into my face as his grip tightened. "What did you say…" he breathed, trembling with rage.

I couldn't speak due to Walker's tightening grip on my jaw, so I narrowed my eyes further and contented myself with taunting him that way. I could feel the fear clawing at me, but terror wasn't as much of a motivator as it used to be after you've been some of through the things I've been through the past few weeks. Months. Whatever. A simple threat wasn't going to get answers out of me.

Walker screamed in inarticulate anger and tossed me into one of the walls, my head jangling painfully when it connected with the thick stone. I pushed myself to my feet, my blades slipping out of my arms, ready to attack. This was it, I was going to kill Walker and just be done with the whole damned thing right now. I don't care what plans Skulker or the rat had in place – I wanted out of this insane place and here was my chance.

Fury sparkled in my brain, swirling around every tortured memory I had of the Pits and cascading into an unstoppable force. My arm slammed out, the star silver blade slicing through the air towards Walker's throat. Walker's shriveled eyes widened…

Pain scorched through me as the leathery collar around my neck activated. Agonized screams forced themselves from my throat as my attack was cut off in mid-swing and I collapsed to the floor. When it was over, mere instants that felt like hours, I was lying panting on the ground, my body trembling with aftershocks of pain.

"Don't even think about it, punk," Walker hissed. I caught a momentary view of his face before the stick he'd been carrying whistled through the air and slammed into my stomach. Breath was forced from my lungs and I struggled get a mouthful of oxygen. "Nobody attacks me and nobody steals what is mine."

I coughed. "Except me," I rasped as soon as I could get a breath.

Walker knelt down beside me, his stick pressing into the ground inches from my nose. "One must speak up when spoken to," he snapped. Then the thick piece of wood snapped out and banged against my nose. He dragged me off the ground and slammed me into the wall, holding me so that my feet weren't touching the ground. "Stupid half-ghost punk."

I hacked up a mouthful of the blood that was pooling in the back of my throat and spat it into his face. It glowed with an eerie combination of green and red. "Leave me alone."

Wiping the glob off his face with an audible growl, Walker put one hand around my throat and pressed me against the wall. "You will show respect to those more powerful than you," he snarled, "that's the law."

"What are you going to do, kill me?" I chocked, struggling to remove Walker's hand from my throat.

"Worse…" Walker stepped up to me, his eyes inches from mine. I could see every wrinkle and crease in his skull-like face, the fury in the set of his mouth. I'm sure he could see the fear that was in my gaze. "Until I get my knife back, I welcome you to a new level of Hell, punk."

He twisted around, tossing me across the room with a lazy heave. Before I could catch my balance in the air and turn the throw into an attack, Walker had a tiny box in his hand. "N…" Agony flared being all around me as the collar sparked to life and sent me whirling into blackness.

---

My first thought when I woke up was, I'm sick of waking up in pain!, and then the rolling agony that was my body overrode any other thoughts that might have germinated in my brain. I just lay there, eyes closed, unmoving, for a long moment as I tried to adjust to the pain. After a bit, it occurred to me that I wouldn't have woken up on my own like this; something had to have woken me up. And that it might be a good idea to find out what.

Tiny claws bit into my cheek before I could summon the energy to open my eyes. "Go away," I mumbled to the rat – or at least I think I did. I hurt too much to really care what I said.

"It's time to train," his annoying voice chirped into my ear. "Get up."

I wedged one eye open and sent a pain-filled glare at the rodent. "I hurt. Go away."

The rat shook its head. "According to the plan we need to start training. You need to get up."

"Later. I hurt." Closing my eye again, I let my thoughts drift as the rat began to rant about his plan and what we were going to do today. The last thing I wanted to do at the moment was anything that involved movement. Sure, I agreed to be trained… but not right now. I could barely move without passing out.

Every inch of me hurt – even my brain. It didn't seem to matter what thought I dwelled on; everything was coated in a greasy layer of agony. The best bet, I knew, would be to go back to sleep. But I wasn't sure how to accomplish that with all the aches of my body. Then, strangely, I found a bit of my mind that didn't hurt. It seemed different, somehow – more distant. I reached for it, pleased that I had found something that wasn't a brightly burning nest of agony, and…

The hybrid relaxed on his cot, the rat still sitting by his ear chattering away, as the ghost lights danced overhead. Suddenly, the rat tensed and moved forwards, prying open one of the boy's eyes. "Hybrid?" the rat asked softly, confusion lacing his voice. The hybrid's eyes, glowing with the light of the ghost lights, stared forwards blankly. "No…" The rat panicked. Racing up and down the cot, the rat babbled for a moment about the boy needing to wake up. Pausing next to the boy's face long enough to say, "Sorry," he bit down – hard – on the hybrid's broken nose. The boy's body jerked…

I screamed, flailing out with my arm and dislodging my attacker. A stream of incomprehensible words tumbled from my mouth as I touched my already-abused nose and my fingers came back coated in greenish blood. Blinking tears of pain out of my eyes, I glared at the tiny rodent.

"What did you do?" he asked, his voice laced with fear and his eyes glowing brightly in the dim cell.

I couldn't find words to answer him. With my mind curled in on itself, trying to hide from the pain, I couldn't decide what he was jabbering on about. I didn't really care.

"What did you do?" he snapped again.

Still unable to find an answer and unwilling to ask questions, I just shrugged my shoulders and tore my gaze away from his terror-filled eyes. Whatever he was talking about, it apparently wasn't a good thing.

The rat was silent for a long few minutes. "Don't… don't do it again," he whispered. Then he jumped off my cot without another word and vanished, training apparently forgotten.

I hesitated a moment before lowering myself back onto my cot, closing my eyes, and doing my best to fall back asleep. Compared to what else I'd been through during my stay in the Pits, that little exchange didn't rate too highly on the scale of 'weird'. Besides, I hurt too much to care. I'd kill for some Vicodin or some Tylenol-3 right now…

---

At some point I did manage to fall asleep. The next time I woke up, I wasn't in a substantially better mood. Being in less pain helped and not having an annoying, talking rat digging its claws into my face definitely helped… but I was still in a horrible mood. Walker had just tortured me, again, and I couldn't find a single reason to smile. Not that I'd really smiled in awhile – I probably had forgotten how.

After dragging my still-aching body out of cot, I dug my fingers into the cracks around the loose stone, prying open the tiny, hidden compartment to dig out Walker's knife. "Serves him right to lose the darned thing," I muttered darkly as I dropped the stone to the ground and pulled out the shiny bit of metal, studying the object that was causing me so much pain and not being very impressed by it. "Stupid, rusty old knife."

If I had my way, Walker would never get his bloody knife back. After years of ghost hunting, I was good at turning terror into useful anger, and whatever fear Walker was managing to inspire in me was working against him. His towering presence only gave me more of a reason to keep the thing from him, not hand it over.

Anger suddenly boiled over in my mind. For a brief second I fought against it, but then I mentally shrugged and gave in. I deserved to be angry – I had been tortured, I was frustrated, I was confused, and I was a little scared. I had every right to be furiously angry.

My eyes glowed with energy as that overpowering rage swirled through my mind. I clenched my fingers tightly around the knife, then stormed over to the door, muttering darkly under my breath. The thought crossed my mind that I needed to calm down or I'd so something I regretted, but it was a quiet thought that kept to the dark, barely used corners of my brain. I leaned against the heavy, scorched wood of the door for a moment, listening. When no sounds reached my ears, I touched the door with the point of the knife. A thick clunk of the lock met my ears.

With a small growl, I kicked the door open and strode out into the empty hallway. Welcome to a new level of Hell… I was truly sick of being tossed around like a rag doll and waking up in blazing amounts of pain. I was tired of never knowing what was going on. I was frustrated at how much I was being put through for some mysterious 'plan', and there was no way I was sticking around to see what Walker had in store for me. Hero and selfless sacrifice could go to burn in a pit of hellfire and brimstone. I didn't sign up for this. "I'm done. This isn't worth it."

I closed the door behind me, glaring angrily at the bloody '13' painted on my door, reveling in the furious power that was thrumming through me. Thirteen people dead at my hands. Thirteen fights. Thirteen murders. Thirteen reasons to leave this place and never look back.

Each door I passed made my heart skip a beat, even through my supernatural cloud of fury, knowing that I was sealing the doom of whatever being was locked behind them. But I never paused. I was getting out of here and I figured that if anyone else had the option, they'd do the exact same thing. Whatever commitments I'd made earlier of staying and trying to rescue people and destroy the Pits were out of my head. I'd find some other way of stopping Walker that didn't involve me voluntarily being tortured. I'd get free, then I'd come back with reinforcements.

As I stormed through the dark corridors with no real idea of where I was going, just thankful to be moving and on my way out of Walker's clutches, the paranormal fury that had sparked my dramatic escape from my room slowly began to fade away. It took more energy than I had to maintain that level of rage for long. A blue bat brushed my hair at one point and I saw a half-dozen small ghost rats slinking through the shadows. Tiny glowing bugs crawled out from under my feet every few steps. Finally my movement turned from a powerful stride to a more cautious walk, drifting through the corridors, paying more attention to what was around me, and taking the time to peer around corners before I walked past them. More dark, empty hallways lined with heavy wooden doors.

Licking my lips as the last of my anger melted away, I wondered if I was doing the right thing after all. The rat seemed to have some sort of plan to get me out of here – and not just me, but everyone. All of the innocent ghosts and humans that Walker had thrown into this hellish place. I wasn't even sure that I could find my way out, even if I tried. Could I get out without help?

Was this split-second decision escape attempt basic suicide?

Now, walking quietly down the hallway, I felt less like an avenging and righteous escapee and more like a lost idiot wandering randomly to his death. I had no idea where I was going, what was going to happen when I got wherever I was going to end up, or how to get out the Pits. The only thing I really knew was that when Walker found me out of my cell with his knife, I was dead. And it was going to be slow and painful.

On top of everything, I had no idea how the Pits really worked. After weeks of being locked up in here, I had really no clue about how to get out of it. I had no information other than fight and live, stop fighting and die.

It was a dismal realization, to say the least. Even I knew that the best way to defeat someone was to learn as much about them as you could – Vlad had taught me that much at least. With pure ignorance on my side, my chances of beating Walker, escaping, or even surviving dropped like a rock.

As I set off down one of the side corridors, wondering if I should turn back and talk to the stupid rat again, I walked as softly as I could and listened for footsteps. A lot of the ghost guards didn't have feet – thus didn't walk – but my only chance of staying out of their way was to hear them coming. I didn't want to get seen or caught and a ghost sense doesn't work very well when you're constantly surrounded by hundreds of ghosts. I was so constantly bombarded by the deep-seated chills running down my back that I'd stopped noticing them weeks ago.

Coming to the end of a relatively short passage after only a minute, I hesitated. Should I just go back? This vague 'plan' the rat had was probably my best bet at getting out of the Pits alive. Either that, or wait for Skulker's grand 'plan' – whatever that was. It would probably end with me being a pelt on a wall, but even that had to be better than this. But I had already gone so far down the hallways…

Deciding to go a bit farther and see what I could find, I turned to the left and slunk down the dark corridor. The cell numbers on the doors were growing progressively smaller, which I took as a sign that I might be headed towards some sort of exit. Maybe it would be an exit that wasn't be well guarded. I could – and would – fight my way out of this hellhole, but I wasn't sure how much of a fight I was up to. If the opportunity presented itself, I could get out of here, get help, then come back and save people. That would be even better than sticking around.

Lost in my thoughts, I turned down one of the short side corridors without looking first and froze. A figure was standing shrouded in darkness, two gleaming eyes staring straight at me. "Phantom!"

Cold metal trickled down my arms and the blades slithered into existence as I tensed, mentally categorizing the obstacle. Human, based off the emotions that fluttered around it, probably male and not much older than me. He wouldn't put up much of a fight. I crouched; he couldn't shout a warning – I'd be dead before breakfast. If I had to kill him, I would.

"I didn't know you could get out of your room!" the figure continued softly, taking a step forwards and flicking on a flashlight. I squinted, my eyes quickly adjusting to the barrage of light aimed straight towards me. I recognized him; the younger version of Former that had confused me earlier… whatever his name was. "I was going down to sneak some food out of the kitchens. They forgot to bring some food today – the ghosts forget a lot, you know – and I'm hungry. You want to come with?"

I blinked when he turned the light away from me to sweep it through the hallways. "I…"

"Sorry about scaring you. Last time they caught me out of my room after curfew I got in really big trouble. Gory had to do a lot of work to keep me out of a pit fight and I didn't want to get caught again. But I'm hungry and Gory snuck out too so he can't complain too much."

I took a small step away from him. The blades vanished from my arms in a wash of cold and I licked my lips. I wasn't hungry, not really. I was more interested in finding… I wasn't sure what I was looking for anymore. An exit? My own cell? "I'm…"

He grabbed my hand, blinking in surprise. "Geez, your hand feels weird. It's too cold, but it's not cold enough, if that makes sense. Come on; I know you're hungry. I'll show you where the kitchens are," he rambled, starting to pull me in the direction I was trying to head anyways.

With a mental shrug, I allowed him to tow me along and listened to him whisper. "I like how they instituted this curfew idea, there's no guards patrolling the hallways. A few years ago they didn't have curfew and there were always guards everywhere and you couldn't sneak out of your room at all without being caught and..."

"You sneak out a lot?" I broke in to his monologue.

He didn't seem to care that I'd interrupted. "Pretty much. The ghosts forget that time passes quicker for humans and that we need to be fed. All the humans that work here sneak into the kitchens all the time."

He took a breath, but I snuck in another question, deciding to scan the endless dark hallways for a door that looked like it led outside. Knowing where the exit was would come in handy. "How long has it been, since the fight I was in?"

Glancing at me, he grinned. "Four days, almost. When was the last time you ate something?"

I shrugged, hesitating before a door with no number written on it, but he just pulled me past with a shake of his head. "Before the fight, I guess," I mumbled.

"You can go that long without eating?" His eyes were wide.

"I dunno," I answered. Obviously I could, whether or not it was good for me was another question.

"That doesn't sound like a good idea to me. No wonder you look so sick and pale. I'll try to remember to bring you food from now on. I sneak out every couple of days to grab some stuff that looks edible. There's three chefs, you know, and beware the green one. She's got seven-inch fingernails, although they come in handy when you need a haircut. Gory says I need to be careful, though, 'cause she's a combination of Edward Scissor-hands and Sweeny Todd. No idea who either one of them are, but if you catch her on a Monday she's usually okay. I think she died on a Monday…"

I tuned him out as he started to ramble off on a tangent about the three chefs and why it was best to avoid each one of them. "Do you know how to get out of here?" I asked suddenly while he was extolling on the horrors of the French chef.

He hesitated. "I know where the front doors are, yes," he said slowly after a moment. "But you can't go through them."

"Why not?"

"The collars." He lifted his chin and pulled down the collar of his shirt and I saw, for the first time, that he had a collar around his neck. "I know, only ghosts are supposed to wear them, but humans that have free reign of the Pits get them too. It's to keep us where we're supposed to be. If we leave the fighters' area without permission they automatically trigger, and if we actually leave the Pits with them on…" He shuddered. "I saw a guy do that once, walk out the front door during the fights. He figured death would be better than the kind of life he had locked in here."

I sighed. That didn't bode well. This was the exact reason having information was such a good idea before storming off in an attempt to escape. Walking out the door was instant death. Excellent. "Do you know how to get them off?"

He shook his head, stopping in front of a door that looked just like all the others. "This one's the kitchen." He gestured to it with his chin before reaching out and opening the door. "It's not locked. The chef with the fingernails knows we sneak in to get food and she leaves it open for us, most days, when she remembers. Come on."

Watching him walk into the dismal shadows that hid the Pit's kitchens, I glanced around the deserted hallway. All the doors looked the same to me and, if my new companion was correct, I wouldn't be able to walk out the door even if I could find it. It looked like I was going to end up back in my cell, waiting for either the rat or a ghost who wanted to hang my pelt on a wall to save me. "Bogus," I muttered darkly in an unconscious imitation of my Dad.

"Come on, help me carry some stuff," he called softly, turning his flashlight back towards the door to see me still standing there. "We won't get in trouble, I promise."

I sighed and stepped into the large room, which was barely lit by the flashlight. If I couldn't get out tonight, I figured I should make this trip as useful as possible: find out more information. "Do you know any other way of getting out of here?" I asked softly as I walked towards him. Large, industrial and modern stoves lined one wall and huge bowls – big enough for a person to sit inside – were hung over medieval-style fireplaces along another. There were some large metal tables in the way, but I just walked through them.

The young man grinned at me. "I know something," he answered with a smile, "but that kind of knowledge needs to be paid for."

"Something useful?" I held out my hands as he loaded my arms with loaves of what looked like green-glowing French bread and a few jars of a blue-glowing sauce.

He raised an eyebrow in response. "You get what you pay for, that's what the ghosts say. You'll have to decide if it's worth it. In the mean time, carry that bread back to my room for me, I'll let you have some too. Gory hates that kind of bread, but I like and I'm the one sneaking so he can just eat it." His arms full of food that glowed either green, blue, or red, he started to head back towards the door. "Mine and Gory's rooms aren't very far away. You caught me just as I was sneaking out. I'm kind of surprised you didn't run into my brother – he didn't leave very much ahead of me."

"I wanted to try to escape," I muttered to myself as I followed him, "not that it's going to happen tonight… but I don't want to stay around here, not with Walker's newest threat hanging over my head."

"I heard about that," he said softly, kicking the door shut after I stepped out into the hallway. "Walker's ticked at you and he's taking it out on anyone he can find. You should see Gory's black eye he got yesterday for having his shoes tied wrong." He met my gaze for a moment, his eyes calm and blue and making a shiver run down my back. "And you know you're not going to escape, not tonight. You're here to save us or do something…" he trailed off, then blinked and looked away. "Besides, you can't escape the Pits with brute force – it's been tried. Walker's got too many safeguards in place to do that. You need to be smart."

"And your information will help me?" I wondered. I sighed, my heart sinking at the thought of Walker's 'life will be a living hell' threat. What was I going to do? I wasn't going to just sit around and let Walker torture me!

He smiled and nodded. "The more you know, the farther you'll go. The farther you go, the more you'll grow. The more you grow, the more you'll know."

"That makes no sense." But I stepped in line behind him and tailed him back to his room as he began to ramble.

"The numbers on the doors, they show how many Pit fights the person inside has won. Or lost, as the case may be. See, each person's got a clipboard by their door too, and that says their rank. The closer to the beginning of the alphabet, the stronger the ghost and the more likely that ghost will win his or her fight. Lots of the ghosts that come to bet on the fights use those numbers kind of like odds, playing for or against the stronger one. Most of these ghosts right along here aren't fighters, actually, they're the workers like Gory and I. The humans live here too."

"I knew that," I said softly.

He twisted around to grin at me. "Most people know that, I'm just giving you the grand tour. That," he gestured with his chin at a set of double-doors, "is Gory's office – the room with all the books that you go into right before a fight. He does a lot of the calculating the odds for the fights and he does some of the matching of fighters too. A lot of it is random, though, and not even my brother always knows who everyone will be fighting. And that," he gestured at the room across the hall, "is a room you never want to see the inside of, trust me."

"What's in there?"

Shuddering, he just shook his head. "I hope you never find out. I was put in there once, a long time ago. It was one of the first rooms I ever saw, and I still have nightmares about it."

I hesitated in front of it. "Is there a way out in there?"

"For the people that go in," he answered softly, waiting for me a bit down the hallway. "But almost nobody ever comes back out, and no – you can't escape through there. Not and live through it, anyways. It's just a room. Come on."

"So this information," I asked, catching up to him, "what kind of payment would it be?"

"Info for info," he smiled, glancing over his shoulder at the room we'd just passed. "You answer me one question, truthfully – any question I want."

After a moment, I nodded my agreement. He knew most of my secrets anyway, somehow. He knew I had Walker's knife and he knew I was trying to escape… so I couldn't figure out what more he could get that he could use against me. "Deal. Now talk."

"Here," he announced, setting down his load of food to dig a key out of his pocket. The door had 'Gory and Mica Former' scratched onto it like a hand-carved nameplate. I rolled my eyes. Mica. I finally had the name. He pushed open the door and told me to go in while he picked his armload of food off the ground.

I stared around the tiny apartment with surprise. I was expecting a room sort of like mine, but this was an actual apartment – minus the windows. They had a couch and a chair, a table and a rug, and a few doors that probably led off into other rooms. Mica grinned when he saw my expression. Dumping the food on the table, he asked, "You want a cup of water? We got a water filter a few years ago so the water is pretty good."

I nodded and my food joined the stuff on the table, creating a glowing mound of edibles. Mica handed me a cup of water and picked through the food for a moment, choosing one of the loaves of bread and a jar of blue sauce. He tore off two pieces of bread, opened the jar, and offered me a slice. "This junk is kind of like jelly, Gory says, and I think it's pretty good." Smiling, he dunked his chunk of bread into the jar and took a bite. "It's interesting having a visitor, we don't get many… 'cept for L'Jai."

"LJ? The rat?" I wondered. I dunked my piece of break into the blue sauce and tried it. It tasted a lot like blueberry jam – jam the consistency of soup – but it wasn't half-bad.

Mica nodded, his eyes sparkling as he started to divulge the information I had just 'bought'. "L'Jai comes to talk to me pretty often. He knows all sorts of secret passages through the Pits – it's his home, you know. He was born in the city and he died during its collapse. He's some sort of guardian."

I took a sip of water and raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue, wanting to hear more about the mysterious rat.

"The Pits is part of Atlantis, or so my brother thinks. Vanished into nothingness in a day and night of cataclysm – that was when L'Jai died – only to reappear as a doorway in the Ghost Zone centuries later. Gory thinks that the Pits is just a small part of the ancient city and that the rest of it is out there. He's right; that's where L'Jai vanishes to."

"Under my cot," I muttered in surprise.

Mica's eyes glittered. "The third portal is in your room? Oh that's perfect! I've always wanted to see L'Jai's city. The trick would be to figuring out how to get through the portal, but I'm sure you could do that somehow. L'Jai told me that each doorway has a separate key. He's never told me where they are, but I know where two of them are anyways. Walker's key – the one you've got – opens the door to the Ghost Zone, and the second portal is in one of the pits."

I blinked, my mind working through that information. Three portals; one main door to the Ghost Zone, one under my cot that leads to this 'Altantis', and one in the Pits that leads to… the human world? "How do you know that?"

"I've been everywhere in the Pits," Mica said with a slightly feral grin as he dropped unceremoniously into one of the old kitchen chairs and tore off another chunk of the bread we'd appropriated from the kitchen, "I've seen just about everything – including all of Gory's fight ledgers – and talked to just about every ghost that's worked here. Ever since Gory told me about his theory of the three portals I've been trying to figure out where they are. Think about it. There's one ghost who always manages to vanish and reappear back in the human world and the missing portal is the one that's rumored to lead to the human world."

Connections clicked in my head. "The Box Ghost…"

"Exactly! I told Gory, but I don't think he believed me. He's not sure about the talking rat either, since L'Jai refuses to talk to him, but I know I'm right. I know that's the ticket out of this place if I only knew how to get through the portal. You don't know how the Box Ghost gets through the portal, do you?"

I shook my head.

"Darn." He frowned and sank back into his chair with a scowl. "I was really hoping that you might have some ideas. See, my brother's up to something…"

The door clicked and we both whirled to stare at it, my heart neatly stopping in my chest. If Walker caught me outside of my room and with his knife in my hand I was going to be filleted, and Mica would probably be seconds behind me. The door swung open with a creak and I let out a sharp breath when Former stalked into the room. "Stupid, idiot, insane doctor…" he trailed off when his gaze fell on me. "Phantom?"

"Hi," I said with a small wave, feeling my heat restart.

"What are you doing here?"

"I invited him," Mica jumped in, literally jumping out of his chair, babbling nervously. "He wanted to know more about the Pits – you know, history and stuff and you've told me a lot of it and I knew you were busy so I thought that I'd tell him and not really bother you –"

Former closed his eyes and sighed, cutting off his brother's train of thought. "Fine, Mica, whatever." He glanced over at me, then down at the food-covered table. "The fights are about to start for the day and this place will be swarming with people in a few minutes. You might want to head back to your room before it gets busy."

I nodded, still feeling my heart beating too fast. "Yeah, okay," I said, slipping towards the door as he walked off into a different room.

"Wait!" Mica stepped in front of me right before I grabbed the door knob to leave. "I haven't told you everything – I'll come find you later – but you've still got to do your part of the deal. I told you about the rat and the portal, now you have to answer my question."

I hesitated, glancing at the door. "What question?"

"This is your fourteenth fight. You get another wish – what are you going to wish for?"

I shrugged, wondering why he cared. "I don't know. I hadn't thought about it."

"Take a guess. Come on," Mica grinned, "it's payment for information."

With a small sigh, I cast around in my head for the first image that popped into my mind: the image of the girl with the red notebook I'd seen earlier. "A notebook and a pencil," I said, "so I can write this whole convoluted story down and maybe figure some of it out."

"That's a good wish," Mica nodded, "and after that you're going to save us all, right?"

I snorted softly. "I'm not sure I can save anyone."

"Sure you can, you're a superhero, right?" He raised an eyebrow. "You're here to save us."

"I'm not a superhero; go find Spiderman or Batman or something. And I'm pretty sure I'm here to die rather than to save people. Can I leave?"

"Who?" Mica said blankly, but he moved out of my way and opened the door for me, thrusting two loaves of bread and a jar of the blue jam-sauce into my hands. "And you are here to save people – that's all in the plan." He winked at me as I stepped around him and into the hallway. "Besides, we don't need to find someone else. We've got the great Danny Phantom, don't we?" Then he slammed the door shut before I could get in another word.

For a moment, I stood in the dark hallway just shaking my head and trying to clear my thoughts. I could still escape; I could still try. If I headed towards the front door, I'd be free or I'd be dead, one or the other, depending on whether or not the kid's information was correct. I'd definitely try to run for it… but I wasn't ready to die yet.

Finally it became clear I'd hesitated for too long. I could hear voices down the corridor. With a small groan, I turned in the opposite direction and headed back to my room, my thoughts dismally full of the things that Walker was going to bring down on me. I was walking, willfully, back to my cell to await torture.

That thought really stung. With those dismal thoughts accompanying me on the trip, it was only a few minutes before I was staring at my door – room 143 – with tears in my eyes. Slowly, I reached for the door marred with a bloody thirteen, pulled it open, walked inside, and locked it behind me.

---

"Hybrid?"

I groaned, burying my head deeper into the thin pillow at the querulous voice. I'd been back in my room for, at best, thirty minutes and I was trying really hard to get back to sleep. Not that it was working – my brain felt like it was on overdrive, spinning around thoughts of these mysterious 'plans' to get free, what few facts I knew about the place, various escape ideas, and, best of all, Walker's imminent threat of torture.

It was like spinning my wheels in mud. I was getting nowhere and feeling more and more helpless and doomed by the second. The addition of the rat into my thoughts only made them spiral worse. The rodent never explained anything, leaving me to just trust him. "Go. Away."

"We need to train."

"No." I refused to look up from my spot, lying face-down on my cot. "Go away."

I heard a soft scratching noise as the rodent jumped onto the hard bed a few moments before a tiny paw pressed into the skin of my arm. "Why not?" he asked. For some reason, he sounded almost scared… concerned.

That did it. I looked up, studying the rat and debating whether or not I should answer. More than a little of me was very willing to just put my head down and continue repeating 'go away' in a very childish manner until he left. But I decided, after a moment of internal arguing, to actually answer. It wasn't the full answer, but it was one I could tell the rat. "Because I'm tired of being left in the dark. I'm tired of being tortured. I'm not going to just sit here and do nothing and let someone hurt me." I narrowed my eyes to a hard glare and I knew my eyes were glowing.

The rat flinched a little and I had to bite back the intensely happy feeling that flooded through me, too strong to be believed, at that small sign of his distress. His head dropped to stare at the ground and he opened his mouth to say something, no doubt about his stupid plan, but frustration, anger, and fear were spinning too quickly inside of me. Suddenly I was drowning in my own emotions, unable to make them stop. I struggled with my thoughts, clawing at them to get them back to normal, but it wasn't any use. They bubbled out of me, out of control once again. "I'm fifteen!" I shouted, "I'm not some hero out of a comic book that can take everything with a smile and think it'll be alright. Look at me."

He glanced up, his sapphire eyes fixing unhappily on my face. "Look at me," I continued sourly, "I'm a hybrid-thing-freak, I'm hungry, I'm exhausted, I'm a murderer for crying out loud, and now I'm going to be tortured. What is it you want me to do?" Distantly, I was aware that my powers were acting up, feeding off of my raging emotions. Water was freezing into ice and an almost tangible cloud of furious energy had formed around me. I was too frustrated to care.

"I don't know…" the rat whispered, unable to look at me anymore.

"I want to go home," I snarled, closing my eyes and shaking my head. "I just want to go home."

Silence stretched between us as I struggled to regain control of my suddenly haywire emotions. Deep breaths, my arms clenched tightly around my chest, trying to calm myself before I did something I regretted. Slowly, I felt myself returning to normal.

"I know you're angry," he said suddenly, my eyes snapping open to study him. "I know you're scared. I know you want to go home." Under his breath he added, "Trust me, I know."

"Then how do you expect me to just sit here and do nothing?" I asked, my voice quieter and less powerful than it had been. "I'm not going to wait around for Walker to turn this… this… life into Hell."

The rat shook his head. "I don't know. All I've got is the plan." He looked up at me. "All I can give you is the hope and the dream that you're doing the right thing and that everyone will be better for it when you're done. And the promise that I'm trying my hardest to get you out of here as fast as I can."

I knew he was telling me the truth… but only part of the truth. "I don't want to be left in the dark," I said. "Tell me. Talk to me."

I knew how to escape this place without his help – somewhat. I could get out that door if I could get this collar off and nothing would be able to stop me. There was no need to trust a plan I didn't know. The rat needed to talk to me if he wanted me to go along with his plan.

But only silence met my demand. He seemed to be willing to look everywhere but into my eyes.

"Either tell me or just leave."

"What do you want to know?"

I could barely hear him, but as soon as the words registered in my brain, questions flooded into life. Just as I opened my mouth to ask, my cursed bad luck suddenly reared its head and the door to my cell slammed open at the worst possible moment.

Both of us froze, me staring down at the rat for a split second. Fear, worry, and annoyance curled softly in my head, but my unstable emotions chose that moment to act up. Pure, unbridled anger surged through me, causing my eyes to burn as energy coursed around me.

I twisted a little to glare at the guard standing in the doorway, a mote of pleasure surfacing in me at the startled look in his eyes and his small step backwards. "No," I snapped at him, startled at how furious I was.

"Don't have a choice," the guard muttered, his hand going down to finger the shock box at his waist.

"Go away." Surrounded by how impossibly enraged I was at his intrusion into my conversation, I could distantly feel the temperature of my cell drop as my temper simmered and stoked my ghost powers.

The guard was harshly shoved aside and the warden himself appeared, his body swollen with power until his eyes were barely visible beyond the charred door frame. "Move it, punk," he snarled, "or you won't live to see tomorrow."

I glared at him, fury curling around in my chest for a few long moments before I slowly stood up and stalked towards him. Almost drunk on the unnatural anger I was feeling, I stormed straight up to Walker, fixed my gaze straight into his raisin eyes, and said, "Make me."

In hindsight, this wasn't the smartest of plans in the world, but I wasn't thinking straight at the time. Pain flared as the collar sparkled to life. It chased away that strange, powerful rage and, strangely, it cleared my head. When the agonizing feeling faded to a dull background ache, I actually felt better.

Somewhere between the thought that I was obviously a little more crazy than I had originally figured and the question of why Walker had chosen to come visit me in my cell, I remembered the rat. Walker knew about the rodent and, for some reason, seemed to despise the creature. I glanced back at the cot, wondering how the warden would react when he spotted the rat sitting on my bed.

The cot was empty. If the rat was still there, he was as invisible as a ghost. Way to stick around and be of some help.

"Get up and walk or get knocked out and carried."

It wasn't that I doubted if the crazy warden would carry out his threat – and it definitely wasn't that I wanted to get shocked into unconsciousness again – but my mouth ran away from me. The volts of electricity had finally succeeded in scrambling my brain. I looked up at him from where I was kneeling on the floor, my eyes fixing on that annoying little box with the button that activated the collar around my neck before flitting up to his face. "When I could get this stupid collar off, I'm going to kill you."

I asked for it – I really did. I had just enough time to snap my eyes shut and curse my stupid mouth before Walker's stick slammed into the base of my skull.

In a bright flash of pain, everything went dark.

---

Ouch, ouch, ouch, "Ohhh..." I didn't dare open my eyes until my stomach stopped its incessant churning – which wasn't being helped at all by the fact that I was being unceremoniously half-dragged, half-carried to some unknown destination. Something was drilling into my skull like a mob of nail guns and it took me a moment to realize that it was sound… lots of sound… cheering and screaming types of sounds.

It took me another few moments to realize why that left such an ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I tried to open my eyes to see where I was, but the world tilted angrily and what little I'd eaten earlier surged up my throat. I was dropped to the ground in mid-heave, coughing and spitting as I felt the ground twist and churn underneath me.

"Ew," a human voice muttered. "Those who follow in your footsteps will be so thankful for that."

I spit a few more times to try and get the taste of the bile out of my mouth. "Welcome," I croaked, wincing in pain at the sound of my own voice.

"Concussion?" the too-loud voice asked sympathetically.

I would have nodded if the mere thought of movement didn't make me want to pass out. I chose to moan instead.

"Bad timing. Walker's just instituted some new rules about group fighting. You've got a partner for this fight – a kid named Jeremiah Higgins – and you two are going up against the worst the Pits can throw at you. Both B-class, high level ghosts."

Groaning, I focused on opening my eyes without throwing up. The sandy ground was burry and bright underneath my hands.

"Come on, get up." I felt two hands under my arms, pulling me upwards. In a nauseating feat of strength, the human got my arm around his shoulders and held me in an almost-upright position. "Fight starts in about twenty seconds – we've got to keep moving."

"Fight?" I whispered, dread swirling through me at the thought of where we were heading. Or, based on the screams of the crowd, where we already were.

"Yup," the voice sighed. "Don't die on me in this fight, okay? I've got a killer plan to get all of us free and I need your help."

My pain-addled brain swirled around that thought. "You 'n everyone else," I slurred unhelpfully. Skulker, the rat, my parents – unless they were just dreams, which was possible – and now this human. I was probably the only one without a plan to get out of the Pits. "Whaz so special 'bout me?"

The voice laughed, a jarring sound that rumbled around in my mind. "There's something special about you, that's all."

"I'm supposed to save you," I mumbled as the human – Former? – pulled me to a stop at the starting line. "If you all save me, you're gonna ruin the plot."

"Just don't die yet." The hands that had been holding me up suddenly vanished and I dropped to my knees. "Good luck," he said.

I turned my head towards Former's receding figure as a deep voice grated into my aching brain. "That's just how I like my victims… on their knees."

Painfully I turned back to look up… and up… and up into the beady red eyes of the third scariest ghost I'd ever seen.

Which, after you've been through what I have, means a lot.

---

"Escarnio," the ghost boomed. Then his lip curled into a sneer. "And this second-rate loser is my 'partner', Skeeter."

"Second rate? I'll have you know I'm the second highest rated fighter in the Pits." A small ghost – almost child-like – slipped over to his giant partner and glared up at him.

"As I said: second rate." Escarnio's lip curled a bit higher to show off his pointed teeth, his massive forehead wrinkling as he stared down at his tiny partner. Skeeter bristled, energy flooding out of the small form.

Gazing blearily at them, I wondered if the two ghosts would just kill each other off or if I'd have to actually get up. Then a sniffle caught my attention and I turned my head away from the posturing ghosts. It took a moment, but my eyes managed to focus on my partner for this fight. A kid, probably not even seven years old and dressed in an overly-large Pit uniform, kept moving his head and staring at each of us in turn. He had the strangest expression on his all-too-human face; a strange mixture of murder and pure terror.

I felt a beat of protectiveness wash through me before my concussion buried it in a landslide of nausea. It was horribly obvious that there would be no protecting the kid unless I could save myself first; that would require being able to move. Pushing against the ground in an attempt to get myself to my feet, I felt the world sway drunkenly and I had to stop, taking deep breaths to keep myself from passing out.

A horrible feeling of guilt settled over me as I twisted away from my partner. It would be a miracle of I could save myself, much less someone else. The kid was doomed. My gaze flickered over to him once more, memorizing what he looked like before focusing back on the arguing ghosts and pushing the boy out of my mind.

A casualty of war. Unavoidable losses. My hands curled into fists in frustrated fury: I was going to kill Walker slowly for this.

"So, which do you want?" The small ghost's voice cut into my thoughts. "The human or the ghost-thing that can't even stand?"

Escarnio snorted. "I'll do the ghost-thing, although this pathetic fight seems beneath me."

"I can do them both," Skeeter chuckled, "that's fine with me." When I glanced over at him, the small ghost had an insane smile on his face. "I'll even do the human first, just to give the ghost-thing a chance to recuperate a bit more."

"Put up some kind of fight?"

Skeeter's crazy grin grew. "Exactly."

It occurred to me that these two strange ghosts were doing all this talking about who would get to kill me and I hadn't said anything on my own behalf. Pushing myself to my very unsteady feet, I fixed a hopefully evil glare on the smaller of the ghosts and tried to get my brain to come up with something to say.

"Oh look," Skeeter taunted sarcastically, rocking back on his heels, "the ghost-thing can stand up. Let's throw it a party."

"I'm not a ghost-thing," I muttered darkly. "I'm a hybrid-thing, thanks very much." Then, just to back up my words, I let the two ectoluminum blades trickle out of my arms and sent a pulse of energy racing through the pit.

Escarnio grinned. "Excellent."

The random screaming of the crowd in the background was coalescing into a simple chant as we stood there, staring each other down. "Fight! Fight! Fight!" I shook my head to try to clear the cobwebs and then fought down a wave of nausea.

"I've got the ghost-boy," Escarnio rumbled to his partner, staring straight into my eyes. He kept blurring in and out of focus. "You handle the human child."

I blinked and the giant ghost moved, apparently finished talking. He moved with a burst of speed I wasn't expecting; much too fast for a ghost of his size, and much too fast for my aching head to follow. One glowing fist whipped through the air towards my head. I ducked – more stumbled backwards, really – and Escarnio's swing missed my by a hair. Continuing my movement, I collapsed into a scrambling crabwalk and tried to but as much distance between me and death as possible. Escarnio laughed as I backpedalled, coming to a stop against a pair of legs.

Looking up, I caught a glimpse of Skeeter's laughing blue eyes before a strong kick caught me between the shoulder blades and sent me face-first into the muck. "Not impressed," the small ghost muttered, "I'm already done."

"Mine ducked."

"Mine did too; sliced off half his head instead of through his throat like I was planning." The small ghost seemed pleased, however. "Interesting splattering of blood when you do that. Want some help?" he asked mockingly.

I had just gotten to my hands and knees when Skeeter's boot slammed into my back, driving me back onto stomach. He put some weight onto his leg, easily holding me in place as the muddy sand started to choke me.

"Look, I'll hold it still for you." Skeeter chuckled softly.

"Get off me," I spat between mouthfuls of bloody mud. I needed to focus and my pounding head was not helping anything.

Skeeter leaned down – I could feel his weight shift painfully on my spine and his cold breath dance on the back of my neck when he talked. "Make me."

I struggled for a moment, pushing against the slippery muck, but nothing much happened. My body just wasn't up to physically overpowering the small ghost above me. I panted, screaming in my head for my body to do something, but I got nothing.

"Just kill it so I can go back to sleep," Skeeter droned.

Craning my neck, I looked up just in time to see a giant foot, most likely connected to Escarnio and glowing with lethal amounts of energy, descend towards my head. My eyes widened… and I screamed.

Something that sounded vaguely like a rubber band snapping resounded through my head – a switch was thrown in my messed-up mind, completing some random circuit for energy to flow along. Power surged up from the ground, swirled through my arms and legs, coiled in my chest for the barest of heartbeats, then flooded out of me in a supernatural shriek that I usually had very little control over. And at this moment in time… no control at all.

Energy poured through me in an uncontrolled mass, sending the muddy ground flying in every direction. The blades on my arms seemed to catch the energy – snagging it out of the air, purifying it and making it more potent – as it boiled out of me. Mud splattered in every direction with the force of my voice.

Finally it drained away, leaving me on my hands and knees, panting heavily. My throat was burning, my head was screaming at me to just stop doing anything, and my stomach had chosen that particular moment to rebel against me. Dry heaves kept me from staggering back up to my feet for several silent seconds. When I did get to my feet, the world spun crazily before I could focus in on the two ghosts that were my opponents. Both of them were standing against the edges of the pit, staring at me with similar expressions of surprise and murder, not a single scratch on them.

Crud. I just wasted all of my energy and all I did was make them mad. This was not good.

"Interesting," Skeeter said softly, "it's got a self-defense mode."

Escarnio nodded, watching me as my knees give way and I collapsed back to the ground. "An attack that uncontrolled can't be repeatable. That was a one-time thing." He arched one of his giant eyebrows in my direction and snorted. "It can barely stand; it's as good as dead, now."

"You called him." Skeeter crossed his legs and floated in mid-air, apparently putting himself out of the fight. "Go kill him so I can go back to sleep."

With a deep throated chuckle, Escarnio thumped across the muddy ground. Back on my hands and knees, I could feel the entire pit shake with the force of his footsteps and I knew there wasn't a thing I could do about it. All I could do was watch as he got closer, my whole body shaking with the energy I'd lost using that sound attack.

Then I caught sight of the ghost light flickering off in a corner. Shimmering with a brilliant blue – the color that signaled a human soul – the light flared and the world turned inside out.

Mom was staring down at me, running a small piece of equipment through the air. "I know I saw Danny, Jack."

"It's just a ball of ectoplasm, Mads. We've run every test on it we can find." Dad lumbered into view, wrapping his arm around Mom's shoulders.

"Danny…" Mom blinked tears out of her eyes.

-- ? --

Both of my parents froze, their eyes widening. "What was that?" Dad breathed. I'd never heard him speak so quietly.

"Danny?" Mom asked.

-- !? --

"Danny, Danny, sweetie, if you can hear me, don't give up!" Mom's finger reached out and seemed to go right through me. "We talked to that Skulker and we've got a plan to get you out of there. Just… hang on. We're coming."

-- ! --

"Hang on…"

I blinked the world back into focus as Escarnio pulled back his fist, glowing a brilliant emerald, and got ready to destroy me. He had a smirk on his face, his eyes held no compassion for me. Kill or be killed, live and don't let live – those were the rules of the Pits and Escarnio knew them as well as I did. "No…" I whispered. "Please, don't…"

But I knew he wouldn't listen.

-- ! --

The tiny blue flicker of light I'd seen earlier zipped past me, throwing itself into Escarnio's face. The giant ghost roared in pain at the unexpected attack, ignoring me for a moment to paw at the ghost light. "Stupid thing!" he snarled, clawing at his face in an attempt to dislodge it from himself.

In the few moments I'd suddenly been given, I could feel something weird happening around the Pits. It was like a tidal wave of emotion that raced around, centered on me, like a loud chorus of unheard voices. Millions of innocent souls screaming out, begging, pushing for something that they wanted. It wasn't just one ghost light… it was all of them… and they wanted me to win.

I screamed for them, startling myself as much as the ghost I was fighting. Pushing myself to my feet, a trickle of anger curled around in my stomach. All of those tiny ghost lights, all of those lost souls, wanted me to win. They wanted a champion.

Centering on that anger inside of me, I fed it, letting it build, feeling the raw fury of a ghost poor through my veins. I found the deepest dregs of the energy inside of me and pulled them to the front. The blades caught that power and sent it sparkling like a thousand rainbows across the pit floor. Suddenly I wasn't some concussed teenager… I was a powerful and furious ghost.

Two steps, a thrust forwards, a twist of the arm, and a slash sideways. Escarnio, still blinded by the tiny ghost light, shrieked in pain as ectoplasm gushed out of his chest and collapsed to the ground. I followed with a snarl, slamming the point of my blade into Escarnio's head and silencing the ghost's scream forever.

Dancing slowly into the air, the blue ghost light hovered for a moment as that sudden burst of incredible rage died away, leaving me trembling and ready to pass out. I knew that the light was the kid – my partner – helping me from beyond the grave. "Thanks," I rasped to him, getting a subdued and tired

-- ! --

in response before the light flickered and drifted away.

I was done, ready to turn around and leave the pit to catch some much needed sleep when I heard the soft sound of slow clapping. Clap. Clap. Clap.

"I'm impressed."

Twisting unsteadily on my heel, I looked up at the ghost I'd completely forgotten was there. Skeeter, still floating in the air, relaxed, grinned at me.

He clapped a few more times before unfolding his legs and dropping to the ground. "You killed him. He was the top ranked fighter in the Pits, you know? Now, I suppose, you are." The small ghost laughed, his voice a little wild, his eyes glittering insanely. "And when I destroy you, that'll make me top ghost, won't it?"

I gritted my teeth and glared at the ghost, not trusting myself to speak. My voice would probably give away just how tired I was. Besides, it was taking an immense amount of my concentration to keep myself upright.

"Bye bye, hybrid-thing." With that, Skeeter split into four and scattered around the arena, surrounding me with his crazy grin. Ectoplasm glowed all around me, stinging my eyes and throwing everything into sharp contrast.

Struggling to find a plan, any plan, my eyes fell down to my blades. They were still glittering with power after my attack on Escarnio, tiny fizzles of energy sparkling at me. I reached over with a finger and touched one of the sparks, flinching at the unexpectedly powerful jolt.

I knew from the rat that the blades acted sort of like a filter – they took my energy and purified it, making it more powerful than normal. I also knew from experience that they were a lot like my parents' ectoguns. They collected energy and released it in a sudden blast of power. Unexpectedly and unknowingly, I'd killed a number of ghosts in the Pits with some of the weird things the blades could do.

Crud. Slamming my eyes closed, I threw myself into my crazy plan head-first. I grabbed every once and flicker of energy I could find lodged inside of me and channeled it into the blades on my arms. They were working; the power buildup was a sort of freezing hot burn that close to my skin. But I didn't let the energy go. I kept it in there, pouring in more and more and more energy.

It wasn't much compared to what I usually could have pulled up, but it was all I had left and I had to hope that it was enough.

I opened my eyes, squinting a little at the impossibly bright light my blades were giving off, and glared at the four copies of my final opponent. They were close: three more jumps and I was a dead man.

I wasn't trained in how to use these blades for energy attacks. I had no idea what I was doing and no clue if the attack would be powerful enough to actually take Skeeter out, but it was my best option. I focused my thoughts on the idea of letting the energy out in a giant wave, extending around me like a ring of light.

There was only one more attack left in me. I had to get all of them in this one. And Skeeter was going to have to be really close. If it failed...

Skeeter's copies took another jump. Two more leaps before he'd attack me. By this point, I could easily see his crazy, red eyes and the confident tilt to his smile. He knew that I was running on empty.

My focus wavered for a moment. One more jump.

A cackle burst out of Skeeter's throat as all four of him slammed forwards with ectoplasmically charged hands and feet.

Four feet. I'm so dead.

Three feet. This isn't going to work.

Two feet. What was I thinking?

One foot.

NOW!

Energy burst out of me in a dazzling flash of light and energy. I could hear it rumble and growl as it sliced through the air and slammed away from me in every direction. The only scream I could hear was my own, barely audible over the sound of pure energy ripping through the air.

It lasted for what seemed like millennia, the roiling power moving in slow motion through the air as it blasted past where the Skeeters had been, boiled away all of the muck on the ground of the pit, and continued on to slam into the ghost shield.

When the ghost shield gave way, I felt it.

Finally it was over. Remnants of the energy I'd released flickered and danced in the air like miniature lightning bolts. All of my hair was standing on end from the static charge that was in the air. One of the green flashes of lightning sizzled along the ground next to my feet, illuminating the fact that I was now standing on a bit of a hill – the top foot or so of the floor all around me had been blasted away.

I stared around at the destruction, blinking stars out of my eyes. Walls had collapsed, the ghost shield overhead had flickered off, the now-empty stands were in ruins. Dozens of the ghostly spectators had probably been killed in the blasts; hundreds were likely hurt. Even now, I could hear people moaning and crying up in the bleachers.

Skeeter was nowhere to be seen.

Twisting my head in the direction of the exit, I couldn't help the small smile that was on my face. I'd done that much damage just on the dregs of my power… no wonder they'd outlawed these blades. Take that Walker, I grumbled in my head, taking an unsteady step towards the doors that would get me out of the chaos. Walker wouldn't stand a chance against me once that rat actually trained me.

The world tipped sideways as a dizzying wave of vertigo swept over me. I collapsed to my hands and knees, unable to get my feet underneath me. In the wake of all that power, I was left with nothing. My arms trembled as they suddenly felt too weak to hold me up.

I had the thought that the ghost shield was down – the place was in such chaos that now would be a great time to escape this damned place. Collars and the chance that I'd be electrocuted could be damned.

But I was too busy passing out to do anything about it.

---

The young woman had her hand pressed against her mouth as she read, her eyes wide in surprise. "Atlantis?" she whispered in surprise. "The rat's from Atlantis? And..."

She gasped as a strange through struck her. "He can see through the ghost lights. So can L'Jai! He can see through that mirror of his... but why?" Her fingers traced over the pen marks on the page, her face contemplative as she tried to figure it out. "Why? And what's going to happen when all of these people try to rescue him?"

Unable to answer her own questions, she simply turned the page and continued to read...

---

Not much left to this story, really. That's nice. I can't wait for this story to be done. XD

Thanks to Chopee, Piece of Toast, Mak-Magic, DannysGhostWriter, ShadowedDarkness, Nyghty, Hedra Ledro, skitzo forgot to review this, Stopwatch-To-Oblivion, ImmortalPhantom22, Kinoshita Kritanite, Rahne-Aamar, caffeinatedlackey, FieryPhoenixTears, Nylah, PixieGirl13, katiesparks, Anne, Werewolf of Suburbia, Kit Turned Mighty, kdm13, AnimeBando33, ShadowFox123, Carroll-Grimm, Cutesycat, hermiethefrog, CrAzYeMoGal, Anon, Invader Johnny, Dark Austral, TexasDreamer01, Secret Spy Guy, FunkyFish1991, Rakahn, sarapottercullen, FreakLevel27, Hiei's Cute Girl, Me-against-the-world, Chaos Dragon, Quacked Lurker, Enray, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, E-Dantes, Xela Tokrub, h0meskill3tt, Thunderstorm101, bluename, Lockblade, MoonrockBlink1772, MutantLover09, New Ghost Girl, Esme Phantom, HaiJu, and Forget and Forgive for reviewing! YAY TO 600 REVIEWS!

FAN ART! - http: / pepperkatsrule. deviantart. com/ art/ L-Jai-82492642 L'Jai by pepperkatsrule

FAN ART! - http: / forgetandforgive21. deviantart. com/ art/ Nobody-s-Home-Pits-fanart-88304582 Nobody's Home Pits Fanart by forgetandforgive21

To catch you up on facts since I know this has been dragging on so long…

-Danny's a half-ghost/half-human mix with ectoluminum blades. These blades were banished from use by ghosts years and years ago because ghosts created a 'mental connection' with them – the blades literally became part of their bodies – and they grew to become incredibly powerful.

-For a reason we've yet to find out, Danny can now tap into the thoughts of the ghost lights. Interestingly enough, so can the rat, LJ, through his mirror (which is, coincidentally, made of the same ectoluminum that Danny's blades are). I wonder if that's going to play any kind of roll in this story coming up. A safe vote is 'yes'.

-We've got multiple 'Save Danny!' plans going on. LJ's got one, Danny's parents are working with Skulker's rebels to create one, and now Former appears to have one. One thing's for sure, if all those plans meet, they're going to blow up into a huge mess.

-To make it all the more interesting, Danny now knows how to find the portal that leads to the human world. All he needs is a key (which he's got) to get through. The only thing holding him back is that collar around his neck which will kill him if he walks through the door. So… Danny might just free himself before the others can. Wouldn't that throw a kink into everyone's plans.

-Walker knows Danny's got the key, or at least knows where the key is. He's intent on making Danny's life a living hell until Danny gives it back. This could get very… interesting.

-We know Walker's key is his knife, however the 'reader' of the journal has got Walker's knife… but it's not the key. Somehow the 'key' part has been removed. Walker still doesn't have it. She's in Danny's room and he's not… so that begs the question… What happened to it?

-The strange girl at the end of some of the chapters will be back. Her role in this story we've yet to find out – but trust me, she'll DEFINITELY be back.

-This story will be twenty-five chapters long. Well, twenty-four with an epilogue. There's not much left. Five more fights… if you can believe Skulker.

Later!

-Cori

P.S. - As promised, 'Masks' will be updated next among my big stories. Drabbles will be updated as I see fit.