Zoofights 5 contestants/overview

"This is a tough time to have a zoofight. Things have changed since our golden era of space stations and champagne. Most significantly, human civilisation has been decimated in an atomic war, sparked by an attempt to give squid access to the internet. It was kind of our fault.

Or rather, we should have said something about it.

You may remember from crude paintings daubed on the walls of your caves and tin shacks that our last tournament featured a competitor from the nightmare squid/war future described above. If your tumour-riddled ancestors were particularly good with a clay-daubed thighbone, you may have been able to distinguish it attacking a space station from Jupiter's atmosphere, while being savaged by a giant moth that thought it was God.

If not, I suggest you read what happened. All will become clear.

In any case, the squid got beat, and that's why there are now two suns in the sky. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing was done to avert the advent of the Seanet project, and so a few decades after the tournament, the whole damn thing happened anyway. Some squid got hooked up with VoIP, the ocean gained sentience, and a whole lot of nukes got launched. You know the rest.

Luckily, our guys knew what was up. They called round the international elite and started selling places in our state of the art, futureproof cryo-bunker. When the mushroom clouds started blooming, we finished our brandies and settled down for centuries of comfortable sleep under a mile of rock and lead.

Now that our monitors have assessed the remnants of humanity to be capable of attending an unparalleled spectacle of violence and chance, we are back in business! The aim of the game is the same as it ever was: beef up 16 animals into relentless monsters, then make them fight and bet on it."


Round 1 Contestants:

Round 1 Fight 1:

Dreadnautilus:
"While humanity's governments were crippled during the Seanet war, a guerilla resistance still rages against the Squid from strike bases in the deep oceans. Dreadnautilus is the latest product of this struggle, a cyborg drone built to fight tentacles with tentacles, and entered into Zoofights in the hope of winning supplies for the desperate resistance. Bristling with kinetic weaponry and equipped to fight above or below the surface, this juggernaut is limited only by extreme stupidity - a necessary measure to safeguard it from seanet control. Unfortunately, this means a reliance on constant instructions from radio operators on the battlefield."

Brut-05:
"The blunt, pitiless ergonomics of Brut05 have inspired envy throughout the pits. A combat-engineered warthog with towering hydraulic hind legs and twin concrete-shattering assault cannons, he is one of the latest batch of riot suppression units commissioned by an increasingly desperate South African government to solve its post-nuclear problems. From the destitute aliens that arrived seeking refuge after betting away their fuel money at Zoofights IV, to the cy-boer war of '79, this mass-produced bastard has seen more problems than an army of Jay-Z clones. His solutions, unsurprisingly, tend to involve a lot of goring, stamping and automatic weapons fire. "

Result: Brut-05 kicks a bus into Dreadnautilus' handlers mid-match, killing them instantly. Dreadnautilus is stunned by this, but for the first time in its life, can think absolutely clearly. Using this lucidity, Dreadnautilus takes aim at Brut-05 with an armor piercing grenade launcher, and explodes the boar.

Round 1 Fight 2:

Blood 4 Oil:
"What oil remains in the post-nuclear world is hoarded by survivors of the production cartels, on artificial fortress islands in the scum-choked Persian Gulf. BLOOD 4 OIL haunts the surrounding marshes, harvesting oil-producing algae with its tungsten proboscis. To avoid wasting precious gasoline, it is fuelled by blood; wherever it lands, clouds of tiny offspring billow from its back to descend on anything nearby with a pulse while it guzzles fuel oil. Capable of drilling through steel, this thing can drink a car's tank in seconds and turn a field of goats into dust for dessert. Makes malaria look fun."

Snake Preview:
"After an aircraft laden with salvaged wartime technology was shot down by cargo cultists deep in the Peruvian Amazon, local shamans wasted no time in claiming the time-bending machinery aboard for their god - a green anaconda grown vast on meals of sacred cattle. But their attempt to give it sight beyond time backfired horribly when they turned on the unshielded chronoreactors and bits of cooked snake flew everywhere. Rearing back in a nimbus of green light, the half-skeletal serpent was cursed with the ability to see the immediate future - but only in infrared. It had become Snake Preview."

Result: Blood 4 Oil manages to knock Snake Preview out, but before it can deal the finishing blow, the time seeing snake rises. It projects a final message of "your going 2 die", which Blood 4 Oil considers, before jabbing Snake Preview in the brain because it don't give a shit. Meanwhile, the audience are suffering from the revelation of their own mortality, swarms of mechanical mosquitos, and heavy amounts of radiation.

Round 1 Fight 3:

Smash Gordon:
"Smash Gordon is a controversial attempt by England to circumvent our "no human competitors" rule: a cloned Neanderthal entered into the tournament as an animal. As dense in stature as he is in mind, this brutish thug is the culmination to years of experiments by the propaganda wing of the British police state, aimed at creating an unstoppable terror weapon for Scotland Yard. In fact, he is so colossally challenged that he needs to be guided through non-violent life by his trusty bulldog, Nelson. Nonetheless, he retains a brute cunning, which is truly deadly when backed up by hubcap-sized fists."

The Sturgeon General:
"The tattered remnants of Russia's army forgot who they were fighting, but never who led them. Under the forbidding bellow of The Sturgeon General they marched, driven onwards by the hated fish on its ancient tank tracks. When they stumbled through hunger, cold or radiation sickness it urged them forward, and any who disobeyed were transfixed with a mighty shout, then mangled under its treads. The General never let discipline slip, not even when the last man in the legion died under its wheels. Therefore, in admiration of its leadership talent, we have given it an army of devlish antigrav stingrays."

Result: When Smash Gordon is knocked out, Nelson takes up the fight against the general's stingrays. This distracts The Sturgeon General for a few moments, allowing Smash to leap up and begin wailing on the fish. Unfortunately, The Sturgeon General lets out a bellowing cry, destroying Smash's ax, as well as his arm. The poor neanderthal is then stung by each of the stingrays, and even with two hearts, dies of a cardiac arrest. Nelson, despite the defeat, launches out a missile branded with the British flag, its purpose unknown.

Round 1 Fight 4:

Croctopus - For Only 6 Billion Rupees!:
"Although few can afford sponsorship opportunities after a nuclear war, we were definitely keen when wreckage magnate Ranjit Patel proposed to buy a tournament slot as advertising for his breaking yard on the Coromandel coast. We were even keener when we saw his marketing strategy. Croktopus - for only 6 billion Rupees! is the finest, best value wrecking tool on the market today. A top quality crocodile with the arms of a top quality octopus and a range of free wrecking tools, his morale is constantly buoyed by the delightful yet ultimately tragic belief that he is building a boat."

Pride and Prejudice:
"Deep in the icy desert that grips the northern reaches of the globe, tribes of Barbarians thunder across icy plains in their fortified city-trains, battling each other and hunting mega-caribou with their mighty snow lions. One such clan has demanded a place in Zoofights to showcase its mastery of big machines, lions and phenomenal aggression. As a result, we have Pride and Prejudice: a gang of raging lions, pulling a giant railgun named "Prejudice". Even better, the lions are the ammunition. Into the back the lions go, and out come their heads at enormous speed, roaring all the way."

Result: Croctopus manages to kill all of the lions in amazingly efficient time, tearing them all to shreds and destroying the Prejudice just as quickly. He quickly fashions them into a horrible metal-lion boat.

Round 1 Fight 5:

Count Smackula:
"Roving over Europe in swarms of ropey gunboats and salvaged gasbags, hordes of travellers stay afloat by scavenging scrap and plundering technology from anyone who has it. On their airships' flanks crouch thousands of horse-sized bats, ready to descend and strip metal from unsuspecting townships. Their champion, Count Smackula, has been set loose in the hope of winning the Zoofights V trophy, which is made of valuable osmium. Aiding him in his quest are the arms of legendary bareknuckle bat-boxer Finbar O'Batahan, which have been grafted in place of his legs, as well as a bucket of smoke bombs, and rumours of an ancient curse. "

Mr. Ro-Boto:
"Born in a cetecean breeding lab at the heart of megatokyo, Mr Ro-boto was happy to spend his days being tickled and eating fish. But now he has neural implants, he realises the duty he must do for his country's reputation. Having started the whole Seanet debacle, Japan is reaching out for the world's forgiveness via the best mascot they could think of: an adorable pink river dolphin. Sadly, getting global attention means competing in Zoofights, and that means extreme violence. Thus, with regret, their ambassador's robotic suit has been fitted with antipersonnel rockets, ultrasound percussion weapons and short-burst rocket boosters. Poor Ro-Boto."

Result: Mr. Ro-Boto is knocked off the edge of the airship they're fighting on, but manages to cling on. He fires at Smackula, managing to hit him, while Smackula drops a heap of scrap metal onto the dolphin. The bat moves in for an aerial finisher, but they enter an epic mid-air tussle, Ro-Boto breaking free from his mech to deliver direct blows to the bat. Smackula manages to knock Ro-Boto away, sending him crashing to the ground below.

Round 1 Fight 6:

Sting Kong:
"Knee-deep in the fetid swamps of an uncharted island, Sting Kong fights day-in, day-out against a gruelling bestiary of monsters. A daring attempt to splice gorilla DNA with wasp and scorpion genes, the misunderstood behemoth was the favoured creation of lunatic scientist Magnus Footbridge, who believed that the world's scars could somehow be healed by breeding horrendous chimaerae. Eventually, Footbridge succumbed to his own research, butchered by a pack of baboon vultures before Kong could save him. Now his protege battles on alone, with nothing but his wits and a pair of hooning great scorpion-tail arms to keep him alive."

Barbarramundi:
"In the moments between racing mangled vehicles and fighting with spanners, the people of Australia still celebrate winning Zoofights 4 with a pissed off fish. Ned Killy drank himself to death at his own victory parade, however, leaving the outback clamouring for another hero. Funded by warlord and media tycoon Doctor Rupert Murder, Barbarramundi is a lower budget take on the Killy formula: a fish's head and a relentless urge to get in fights. The fish in question is a barrimundi, and the urge to fight is backed up by that old zoofights staple: a pair of big muscly arms."

Result: The biggest upset of the tournament. Barbarramundi thrashes Sting Kong, tearing off one of his arms and leaving him dead on the ground. The muscly fish is thrown a fridge, and despite Sting Kong injecting his horrible venom into his body, is still squished by the weight of the fridge. In a freak numerical event, Barbarramundi is the winner.

Round 1 Fight 7:

The European Onion:
"We were reluctant to allow a vegetable into Zoofights, especially one with psychic powers, but when the designers of The European Onion presented their creation to us complete with contracts (and a vast deposit) guaranteeing it would not become a tournament ending god-beast, we were convinced. Creeping around on horrible vegetative pseudopods, this pungent murderer uses its twelve tendrils to hijack the nervous systems of nearby corpses, which it uses to attack its opponent. From what we can gather from its sinister creators, it is used in its native Belgium to execute enemies of the European state via arena combat."

Presidential Seal:
"When America's political and business elite sealed themselves underground to fight the long game against Seanet, they never anticipated going barking mad, experiencing total civil collapse and electing an elephant seal as their god-emperor. The largest and most agressive of a race bred to clear vermin from the deepest levels of the vaults, Presidential Seal is a raging wall of hydraulically strengthened meat with an intense hatred of, well, everything. Capable of felling an ultracheetah in one lunge or eviscerating an orang-utarantula with a sweep of its tusks, nothing will stop this brute when "hail to the seal" strikes up."

Result: The Prez fights through an army of zombies as it makes its way through the sewers to the onion. He is then encountered by three past Zoofights contestants; the terrible Tapogres. He manages to kill them, and nearly makes it to the European Onion, but is encountered by the onion's secret weapon, a clone of the might Drillbjorn, another past contestant. After a blow to the head, the Presidential Seal realizes it isn't here to fight the bear, and takes a massive chomp out of the onion itself.

Round 1 Fight 8:

Great Leap Forward:
"Despite a sky perennially choked in radioactive ash and thick snowclouds, North Korea never quite starved to death. Even when electronic communications failed, the Party, deep in its plush bunker, continued sending inspirational messages on horseback to the hundreds of work camps left under the dead sky. Although their near-skeletal farm labourers fall in hundreds each day, they continue to give their labour for the Revolution. Now, from the Pyongyang cloning vats, Great Leap Forward has been forged to aid them in their struggle. An 18-foot grasshopper with enough wildly spinning farming machinery to plough the most brutal landscape - or opponent - into arable land, this prototype will show Dear Leader's strength to the world. Farmers will cheer as it seeds enemies with fast-growing millet using its tungsten seed drills."

The Snapture:
"From the cracked and blasted wastes of the world, in came The Snapture, with a chip on his shoulder and a thirst for absolution. Entering the stadium complex via the front gates and signing his own entry forms (After all, who would argue with a Truck-sized snapping turtle with shutter shades?), his motives for entry are unknown. Some say he is an angel with a dust habit, come to do the last violent work of heaven. Others say he is the devil himself, here for his own dark amusement. Whatever the case, he sure does do a lot of PCP."

Result: Great Leap Forward pins Snapture down. As they continue to struggled, they're interrupted by the contestants of the Twelfth Annual All-Apocalypse Murder Rally, who quickly rend their own weapons into Snapture's body. Having enough of this shit, Snapture decides to take an ASSLOAD of drugs and gets absolutely borked off his mind. Great Leap Forward realizes how pointless its efforts were, before being snapped by the Snapture.


Loser's League Contestants:

Loser's League Fight 1: