Tooth and Claw
The beating sun baked the arena, it's heat glowing off of the coarse grains of sand as droves after droves of people lined the elevated seating arrangements of the colosseum. Built to resemble the great monoliths of old, this particular arena was a site of grandeur and hardships, a gritty scene that held the crowd's attention indefinitely with it's romanticization of honorable battle. The spectators were especially engrossed in uncleaned bloodstains kept at the bottom of the pit, women and their children pointing at the caked-on mess and laughing. Electronic fans were positioned throughout the stadium to give relief to the heated attendants, for many people had come to see this interesting fight. It was rumored that the fight was to be a larger free-for-all, and that four houses had agreed to supply their gladiators. Truly, it was rare to see that many houses grouping up with that many brawlers. Surely this would be a long and intriguing deathmatch, a main event that could easily sate the most bloodthirsty of Merkadia's citizens. And speaking of the main event, here it came!
The houses, flying their respective colors proud and high, marched around the bottom of the colliseum to a grand fanfare. Confetti was flown and drums were beat as a parade of Merkadian nationalism pleased the now cheering crowd. Trumpets were blared ever louder as each autocratic group had it's turn to visually boast to the above crowd. The gladiators were shown off most prominently, though, each one getting to glimpse one-another as they stood silently in lines facing the masses, allowing the excited citizens time to mentally graded each synthetic slave's physique for themselves. Magnus, one of these standing behemoths in the Scalpaleon line-up, heard the slight shouting of his stage name 'Steel demon', but brushed such praise off. The crowd also yelled names like "Skitter", "Tooth-Taker", etc., very foreign names that seemed to indicate a more diverse crowd than usual. Yet, the diversity did not stop there, as creatures that were only fragments of a past humanoid started to file in. For once, he was thankful for a house that merely indulged in metal-grafted armor. Bloated monstrosities that seemed to be made from composted flesh, followed by a house that provided only one, ragged gladiator with skin that slipped, it was all especially strange. Magnus definently was not in the least excited to fight with these changed... beasts. Luckily, to the metal man's surprise, a lone human, un-modified, presented himself for the barbaric pit fighting in the stead of a rather militaristic house. The man certainly seemed a brave fellow, many men would have offed themselves before entering this hell hole. As the celebrations wiled down, and the gladiators were put into their waiting cages (large, bared boxes hanging from the sides of the arena), the house officials started their ascension to their seats of honor in the spectator seats above. A large, fat-man clothed in robes entered the ring to specify the rules of pit-fighting and the kind of free-for-all situation that the slaves would be combating in. None of this was new to the steel veteran, and thus, he simply looked around to take a second gander of the types he was to battle.
Low-and-behold, there sat the human, looking pathetic as he diddled about with the bars of his enclosure. Surrounded by only this man, a large insect menace, and the strange-skinned man from before, Magnus decided that perhaps the unmodified male was the only lingual one out of the bunch. As the large man in the center of the pit continued his speech on necessary regulations, those of which were painfully drawn-out and would not be followed anyways, Magnus proposed his spare-time to converse with this only somewhat distressed man.
"You are already at a disadvantage physically, thus, I will try not to kill you. But I must ask: How did you convince your master to not bio-engineer you?"
