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Chapter Text

The Star Beagle Adventures                                                
Episode 7: The Roundabout
Scene 10: Sacred Games

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Sacred Games

Pel and the marines were relieved that their private box was separated from the private box the large-handed, crab-like aliens had purchased. Even with a nearly violent confrontation, it had still taken constant vigilance and the occasional, well-delivered jab to convince their fellow tour-group to keep their quite large and intrusive hands to themselves.

Most of the marines, along with nearly everyone else in the Beagle task force, had been keeping up with the broadcasts of the games. For most of the station’s solar year (equivalent to just under 2 terrestrial years) competitors only fought members of their own species. Heethed fought heethed. Oeast fought oeast. Orseld fought orseld. Eadh fought eadh. Oules fought oules.

But the year was divided into five roughly equal segments, and every fifth, the champions from each species would meet each other. And Pel had chosen such a day to attend the Sacred Games. 

The first contest pitted the heethed champion against the oeast champion. Looking at the two, it hardly seemed a fair matchup. The oeast champion was the largest of his species they had yet seen, almost as big as Private First Class Sasha Soko.  The heethed champion was average size for his people - possibly 5 feet tall. But he was fast. 

This created an odd mismatch. The oeast simply could not get a grip on his small, lightning fast opponent. The heethed tried any number of holds on his large, muscular opponent, but simply did not have the mass to move the oeast or lock him up.  

But this contest was much more than well-regulated combat. It was a show. 

Most of the crowd were oeast, and they cheered when the large oeast took a moment to stride around the ring, beating his chest and raising his fists to show off a powerful, muscular body, naked save only for some protective gear covering his genitalia. 

As many cheered when the similarly naked, skinny, but wiry heethed took a moment to race from one corner of the ring to another to leap with grace and agility up onto a post, throw his hands in the air and open his mouth to hiss through an impressive collection of fangs.

After nearly a half-hour of this, the heethed champion managed to trip his opponent and pounced on top of him, trying to pin him down, and nearly succeeding for a dramatic moment before the large, muscular oeast reversed and spent several minutes pinning down his slippery, wiry nemesis. It took several minutes as the heethed did not give up and kept trying to scramble out from under his much heavier opponent, being blocked by one move or another until the two were tangled into a single knot with the heethed champion pinned underneath.

During the entire fight it became clear that Sgt. Chavez Lone Wolf and PFC Sasha Soko were both intensely interested in the fighting style and they kept up a running commentary on each move, how the two champions reacted to muscle and joint locks, indicating physiological differences from humans as well as potential weaknesses.

The second match pitted a relatively small, feathered eadh against a large, rubbery, heavily armored orseld. Again, it seemed like an uneven match. And it was…

In the first moment of the match, the eadh champion, who had entirely white feathering with crimson edges, leapt up and forward and struck the orseld in the face with his hardened stomach, knocking the orseld onto his back. The eadh flipped in mid-air, performing a full spin and landed on his feet, then pranced around the perimeter of the ring, screeching and ruffling his feathers, and receiving wild cheering from the oeast-dominated crowd. 

The orseld rocked on his back, came back up on his feet and was immediately struck and knocked down again. Every time he got up, the eadh champion hit him with his full body weight and tremendous force to knock him back down again, sometimes on his back and sometimes on his side. In the opening five minutes of the contest, the small, white-feathered eadh sent the large, heavily armored orseld champion to the sandy floor 8 times. 

Following his eighth landing, instead of standing up again, the orseld rolled over and stayed low to the sand all fours, essentially turning him into a battle tank on legs. He attacked with incredible speed, launching himself horizontally toward the eadh champion again and again as the eadh leapt over him, spinning to face the feathered champion each time the eadh landed behind him. The eadh would screech and ruffle his feathers for the crowd just as the orseld was charging toward him from behind, leaping high into the air and out of the way just in time. And the oeast were screaming themselves hoarse for these antics.

The advantage this tactic presented to the orseld was that it made him nearly impossible to attack. His head and back were essentially heavy cartilage covered with a thick layer of rubbery skin. The disadvantage was that it reduced his potential attacks to grappling only. By game rules, a champion could strike only with the soft parts of the upper or lower arm, upper or lower leg or their belly. (While the orseld’s belly was also armored, it was not with cartilage, but only a very thick layer of skin.)

Open hand grappling was allowed and the object of the competition was to immobilize and control the other champion. 

The eadh champion suddenly changed his tactics, running around and around the horizontal orseld, forcing him to spin around again and again, which quickly caused the heavily armored champion to become dizzy. This finally allowed the eadh to capture the orseld’s head by wrapping his entire, feathered body around it, forcing the orseld to flip back onto his back and bracing his legs to make it impossible for the orseld to turn his head again, locking him in position.

And the crowd went wild. 

The closing ceremonies included a parade of all the champions who had competed so far, and provided Pel and the marines their first glimpse of  the large, bear-like oules… But all of this started to fade and swim…

Alone among the away team, Spike caught the whiff of something wrong. A bad smell. She held her breath and activated an alert and request for immediate beam-out from her communicator even as she started to lose consciousness. She entered another series of commands into her communicator badge, hoping against hope that she had remembered and entered the sequence correctly…

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