Endoskeleton

    Kirik waved his appendages in the air in frustration. He was confident he was one of the best fighters in the Pit, a subterranean arena where xenos of all creeds and nations came to fight for glory and credits, and he had been advancing through the ranks rapidly ever since the debut of his career. A recent fight with Gukudu, a massive Jik with an inch thick carapace, had ended in defeat and he had been forced to fight some lower ranking opponents to move his way back up. Though he knew it was necessary to face fighters that were beneath him, this was too much to ask for. I have standards, dammit.

"What the hell is that? You expect me to fight that thing? It's absurd! Just look at it! It's got no exoskeleton! It's only got two arms! You may as well throw an amputee in the ring. It's beneath me to fight that," Kirik crossed both sets of arms as he shouted at his coach. His opponent in question was a soft-bodied xeno with only four appendages and only two forward facing eyes. Two of the four appendages were devoted to standing and Kirik couldn't fathom how it was able to balance with so few. Xenos without protective carapaces weren't unheard of, but they were usually small and reproduced incredibly rapidly to survive as a species. Some garden worlds with little competition and plentiful food facilitated the evolution of intelligent soft-bodied species, though they were hardly fit for medium to heavy work, let alone fighting in the Pit. Soft-bodied xenos rarely even made it off of their cradle planet due to the delicate nature of their bodies. This was the first time Kirik, or anyone in the audience for that matter, had seen one up close. It was both repulsive and comical, to say the least.

"Yeah, yeah, shaddup why don't you? You think we get 'ta pick after your shit show with Gukudu?" Kirik made a face at that comment. Half of the fighters in the Pit knew Gukudu was using illegal substances to facilitate his unnatural size and strength, which was against the rules but no one called him out because the other half of the fighters were using synthetic hormones and chemical stimulants as well. Kirik prided himself on sticking to the original spirit of the fight. It was supposed to be a brutal clash between two insectoids using nothing other than their natural gifts to survive. There were very few rules in the Pit, namely no artificial weapons, no performance enhancing substances and, most importantly, no mercy. "Get the hell in there and squash the fuckin' thing so we can get this farce outta th' way and get you moving back up the ranks to fight in the championship. You wanna get revenge on that cheatin' bastard Gukudu, don't you?" Kirik nodded angrily. "Then get your big fat shell down there and fight! Just try not to spray its guts in my direction or I'll come up and kick your ass myself," Kirik's coach, Tuug, was a three armed Gakattan with his fighting days behind him. His brightly patterned shell had faded over the years, but his language only grew more colourful as time passed and he was still a fine trainer. Kirik stood nearly twice his height, but he always looked up to Tuug's fighting career. Tuug had won the championship three cycles running, before a big nasty Craik tore one of his arms off, forcing him to retire.

"Yeah, fine, whatever. No promises about splattering you with guts, though," Kirik chittered through his mandibles as he strutted past noisy crowds to the centre of the arena, Tuug pushing and shoving through the masses. Kirik felt several appendages touch his shell, and a die-hard fan nearly halted his procession with the offer to bear his brood. Tuug swore loudly and pushed her out of the way. Kirik wiggled his antenna affectionately as he passed, as a sort of apology to his clearly delusional admirer; she was a completely different species. Kirik's four legs moved him smoothly over the sloping ground, down to the Stone in the centre. The dirt floor had been firmly packed by millions of passing xenos, come to watch the fighting, and the high ceiling was dotted with electric lanterns, casting a yellowish glow on the entire chamber.

The Pit itself was a massive burrow, hidden from the outside world and only accessible by those with the inclination and the credits. It had originally been a Queen Skurak's chambers when the planet had still been young, but the Queen was now no more than a figurehead and the people of the dry world were no longer completely hers. The Skuraks composed less than half of the population, and interspecies feuds were commonplace on the diverse world. The government appeased the crowds with periodic fights available to all for viewing and social unrest was kept at a perpetual simmer. However, surface fighting had not been enough to slake some individual's thirst for violence. Those fighters didn't offer what the Pit did; the Pit offered blood and lots of it. Just like the surface fights, two fighters would climb upon a Stone for six six-minute rounds punctuated at the beginning and end by loud sirens; the Stone had originally been an actual boulder when the first fights were fought but had since been reduced to a flat, standardized circle, slightly raised above ground level to emulate a stunted cylinder of sorts. The difference with the illegal Pit fights was that they usually ended before the sixth siren could mark the end of the third round. Usually, only one xeno ever left to climb down the Stone as fighters in the Pit frequently fought to the death. Winners were declared when their opponent was dead or no longer fit to fight, but the two conditions weren't mutually exclusive, and those who lost due to disability only ever left with their lives thanks to the siren marking the end of the round.