The Dark Warriors

XI. Gladiator Mice

---UNDERGROUND RUINS---

Shadow was the first to wake up, he found himself lying on a pile of fuzzy rubble, "Daxter?" He asked looking down at the comatose Ottsel underneath him, "You alive?"

A snore escaped him, showing that there was still life in there...

Good.

Shadow knew that both Jak and Deitonin would have killed him if he'd killed Daxter. He lifted him onto his back as he took in his surroundings.

The Underground was destroyed. Pure and simple. Rubble lay where the whole building used to sit as smoke billowed upward.

But where were the others...?

Daxter started to stir, then he bolted upward, "Where's Jak?!"

Shadow lumbered over and lifted the boy's gun from the ground, "The Krimson Guard must have gotten them..."

"Seriously?" Daxter's ears fell, "We've got to save them..."

"But how?"

The Ottsel crossed his arms, "Can't you just do that mind thingy with Dei and ask where they're at?"

"Or I can track them..." He sniffed and caught the spicy scent of his master's blood, "Come on."

The Werecat scampered out of the Slums and found a large transporter carting away the survivors of the Underground! He quickened his pace, but slowed as bombs began to explode around him. The Ottsel dug his fingers into Shadow's fur as he turned a corner a few hundred feet behind the transporter.

"Are you sure that that's the right one?!"

"Yes! Our masters are in there!"

Shadow stumbled as something smacked him in the back of the head, sending him sprawling...

-•-•-JAK'S POV-•-•-

Jak sighed as he laid there, Deitonin and Torn sat across from each other with the same stern expression on their faces.

He tried to sit up, but was forced back to the ground as the straight jacket he wore sent currents jolting through out his body, "How come you two don't have these things on you?!"

"It is because out of all our Dark Warriors, yours is by far the most unstable..." Torn replied hoarsely.

"All of us..." Jak frowned, "So you..."

"Yes.... Torn hissed, "I have one too..."

"I see..."

"Torn and I were tainted around the same time..." Deitonin sighed leaning back, "How could we be so stupid..."

"You were the one who told us to come to the Underground!" Jak exclaimed, "How can we know that you didn't fabricate this with the Krimson Guard?!"

Deitonin grimaced, "Look Jak. I'm just as clueless to this insanity as you are, but there's an upside to this."

"What sort of upside?!"

"Daxter and Shadow are planning on rescuing us."

"You mean the annoying rat and your cat?" Torn asked in disbelief.

"Yes," Deitonin said glaring, "And you and I know damn well that they can do a lot together!"

Torn grumbled something as he looked away, "Where do you think they're bringing us?"

The transporter began to slow and the back doors were opened by Krimson Guards, "Welcome to The Haven City Arena, Mice."

They were pulled out to see that they were standing before the Racing Stadium, but it was bastardized into a gladiator's arena...

"My God..."

After awhile they were led inside and thrown into a cell with a withered young woman who curled into herself out of terror, "P-please stay away from me..."

Jak saw that her clothes were bloodied and tattered as if she'd been in a serious fight. Then the guard banged on the bars, "Hey bitch! Say hello to your new team members!"

The three of them dodged her attack as she lunged at the bars, shifting into a twisted Dark Warrior with corkscrew horns like that of the Axis deer. She shrieked like a wild cat as she clawed at the bars, screeching at him in a strange language.

The guard smirked as he shocked the woman with a cattle prod charged with Light Eco. She hit the ground and twitched a little before her form receded and she passed out. Jak glanced over at Torn to see him looking at the woman with his arms crossed.

He looked somewhat...depressed...

Deitonin carefully moved the woman back to her original place before he sat against the far wall with his arms crossed of his knees, which were at his chest, "What do you suppose we do now?"

"Fight."

They looked too the battered man sitting in the cell across from him, he gestured vaguely, "Haven City has become a place of gladiator battles...You must fight and win thirteen battles before you can be freed..."

"Well bring it on..." Deitonin snarled.

The man chuckled, "Yeah...All new blood thinks that way..."

Deitonin glared at him, "We may be new blood...but Darkness treads in my shadow...I won't let us fall..."

"That sort of mindset will be your downfall..." The woman behind them said, "That's what happened to my former teammates..."

Jak frowned as he thought about it, Deitonin was prone to thinking big...