Copycat

First appearance: S5E2 — Identity Crisis — Kopy Katt v Professor Alonzo Quixote Cervantes · watch it on YouTube

Copycat, also spelled Kopy Katt, is a champion with no identity of her own, so she takes everyone else’s. She wears a paper bag over a blank purple face and carries a notebook of stolen lives, hundreds of them by her second fight. She rarely bothers with fists. She goes after a rival’s pride, bank account and relationship with their mother. Across four Deathmatches and one mission she won twice, died twice, fused with an eldritch horror, and ended up on a team that was already whispering about taking down its own bosses.

Story

The Season of Fate: Identity Crisis

Copycat first appeared during the Season of Fate, a vision in which The Arbiter ruled The Void as the Lord of Fate. His imp assistant Thea recruited her from the Social Security Administration office, on the theory that anyone who could survive those lines had something to prove. Copycat stepped through the portal and opened with “Do you want to give me your social security number?” She then repeated every word the Lord of Fate said, including “Banana Earthworm Smoothies.” Thea couldn’t tell them apart and settled the question by asking what colour her own blood was.

Her opponent was the elderly but jacked Professor Alonzo Quixote Cervantes, and the arena was Emmery’s Tavern, a dingy bar run by a bartender called Emmery. Copycat mirrored the Professor as he downed the house ale, which had sheep dung in it. She swiped a sleeping patron’s wallet to bring her collection to 68 identities. Then she put on a terrible mask of the Lord of Fate and had Thea buy her rounds on his tab. When she started vomiting into her paper bag, the Professor grabbed the bag and threw it back in her face, revealing a featureless purple face with a red-marker smiley drawn on it, “like a three-year-old drew on it.” Unbothered, she put on a papier-mâché Thea mask and blew a whistle. A stampede of jacked, unionized Chinchillas answered it and towel-whipped the Professor.

The rest of the fight was a war on paperwork. Copycat reported identity theft and got the Professor’s bank accounts closed and his flights cancelled. She called his mother pretending to be him and told her he hated her. She tried to destroy his credit score, and she reported his death to the university that gave him his degree. The Professor fought back with a credit advisor and tenure. When The Box of Chaos arrived, Copycat apologised to the shadow living inside it for copying him (“I got a condition, you know… I’m going to therapy”) and gave him a brand-new red chest three times the size of the old one. She claimed the Lord of Fate had paid for it.

The ending turned the tavern inside out. Copycat’s signature move copied the Professor’s own, turning her into a gorilla, and she threw Emmery at him. When Emmery crawled out of the fireplace, his burned skin peeled away to show Copycat’s own drawn-on face. Battered and nearly beaten, Copycat tagged him in. Emmery was a changeling, and he became the Lord of Fate, then the Professor’s mother. In that form he brought a slipper down “like retribution” and knocked the Professor into the fire for good. The real Lord of Fate liked the kill, liked the impersonation rather less, and handed her the win.

Imitation Game

Copycat came back to face Ragu with an identity count of 420, and the Lord of Fate cancelled his credit cards on the spot. The fight took place atop The Crimson Keep. She wore the Lord of Fate’s face again until Ragu spotted that her mustache “wasn’t thick enough.” She had kept the Lord of Fate’s old Box of Chaos from her last win and filled it with tricks: feather boas, Silly String, and a photo album of Ragu’s baby pictures. She also fed Thea a pizza roll from her boot. Lactose-intolerant Thea became Ragu’s fart gun, sprayed a liquid expulsion over his head, and was then flung at Copycat, whose face caught Thea’s butt and whose paper bag was ruined. The photo of baby Ragu’s bare butt in an inflatable pool went up on every screen in The Dread Fortress. She saved one more for a baby photo of the Lord of Fate in a bonnet, which made him go red and banish the giggling Doug to the dungeons. Copycat joined the “Free Doug” chant until he gave in.

Then things went downhill. She was thrown off a mechanical bull (“I’ve only stolen identities of cowboys. I’ve never actually ridden one.”), flattened by another one, and admitted she had never been beaten this badly. She revealed a fail-safe chip in her brain that would release every stolen identity when she died. Ragu won The Arbiter’s Rings from the Box and backhanded off her mask, which was disguised as his wife. Copycat showed what she called her real face, one she said she had never shown anyone: bald, earless, light purple, with two marker eyes that smeared when she rubbed them. “I’ve never had an identity to begin with,” she said.

In a quiet moment at the Box, she told the shadow inside, “This might be my last fight.” She gave him the chip for free, then traded him her beloved trash bag (under it she wore only duct tape and fishnets) and the Lord of Fate’s stolen phone. She asked him out for coffee if she survived. The Box gave her the Grandmaster’s bow in return. She then pulled a huge can opener out of a paper bag like Mary Poppins, and in her final swing picked it up backwards, tripped on her own boot and brought it down on her own “not face.” A laser burst from her head into the sky and returned all 420 identities, and Goblins dragged her away. In the locker room afterwards, the goblins defibrillated her and drew her a new face. The shadow, it turned out, did plug in her chip. It held a hefty document titled “How to Be a Copycat by Copycat. Edited by ChatGPT.” He waited in the rain for a coffee that never came.

Chaos Royale

Copycat returned for the season finale, a four-way brawl, saying that after being reincarnated she had joined group therapy. She fought Tormiir the minotaur, Richard Knottley (now “Dick Okio,” with a Peloton for a heart), and the boy Bobby Clark with the backpack-bound Hunger. She took Tormiir’s form and then phoned his mother to report that he’d entered a milk-drinking competition. She fed him hot dogs she swore were vegan and then revealed they were “100% ground beef,” which made him vomit. She sent the FDA’s tactical division after him for “mad cow disease,” though it trampled her instead. She also stole Richard’s face, to his delight: “Holy shit. I knew I was sexy.”

Her masterstroke was persuasion. Wearing the Lord of Fate’s face, she offered the Hunger a partnership: “I’ve always wanted a backpack.” The Hunger tore itself off Bobby, who crumpled like a puppet, and wrapped itself around Copycat. Together they brought Tormiir down by eating his mother when she arrived. Then they swallowed Richard whole, and Thea crowned “Copycat and the Hunger” the victors. Copycat ordered a second victory mug in case of a tie, called the Lord of Fate “my other half,” and invited Thea out for ice cream.

The Season of the Trials: Ether Drifts

Back in the real timeline, the Arbiter gathered a Copycat for the Grandmaster’s new teams, alongside Atlas and Robbie Clark and the Hunger. Thea said she felt she had seen them “in some sort of dream.” Copycat dodged questions about her face (“Is there a reason why you can’t lick your own elbow? Yes, I know about that.”), said she had been researching The Shadow King, and proposed the team name “Redacted.” Their mission sent them into The Ether Drifts to recover a mineral from a mine.

On the way she twirled like a magical girl into a detective’s fedora and trench coat. She folded herself into a satellite dish to scan the asteroid and got her foot stuck behind her head. She paid for a broken mine door with the Arbiter’s credit card, under the name “Arbiter J. Wilkinsmith… The third,” which the Arbiter later said was fake. When The aliens abducted the team and probed for their greatest fears, they found nothing in her at all, which terrified them more than anything. Afterwards she groaned, “Man, they probed me pretty bad,” and put duct tape over “the trash bag area.” Against Theresa, a worm swollen into a monster by Double Sun Cola, Copycat became her dead brother, Mayor Timothy. She guessed the family password, the name followed by about twenty exclamation points, and briefly talked Theresa down, though the worm still refused to give up the crystal until Atlas finished her off. The mineral turned out to be salt for the Arbiter’s fries.

Ether Drifts: The Team A Deathmatch

Copycat arrived at the team Deathmatch still stuck as Timothy, so the Arbiter ripped her into individual atoms and put her back together. She asked if therapy was covered, mostly so she could steal the therapists’ identities. In the fight she served Robbie a dish of banned, dangerously chewy gummy dots and stole his sticker book. She turned into the Hunger’s disapproving mother, who grounded it for six centuries and called Atlas an “overgrown can opener,” and Robbie kicked her right in the nuts. Then she became a copy of the Box of Chaos itself and flirted with the creature inside (“Hey, good looking, what’s cooking?”). She flicked the Grandmaster’s credit card into the Box, then traded Doug’s collar for the Shield of the Golden King. She wielded the shield as a floating copy of the Arbiter’s right arm.

Atlas was taken over by the Hunger’s spores, and Copycat was left facing Robbie alone. She flipped off the Arbiter and the Grandmaster, dropped the shield like a mic, and turned into a black hole that pulled in the arena, the goblins, the chinchillas and a good part of the audience. Robbie had “seen the void before” and didn’t budge. Copycat imploded into stardust with one last thought: “I will remain no one. But everyone, on my own terms.” The Grandmaster revived her as glittering stardust under a paper bag and named Robbie leader, and he named the team the Unbreakable Redacted Friends. When Robbie whispered, “We’re going to take these motherfuckers down,” Copycat agreed. After being ripped apart and put back together, “I have every right to do it again.”

Personality and Abilities

Copycat is unsettling and cheerful in equal measure. Under her paper bag is a blank, bald, earless purple face with a marker smiley, which once led Ragu to call her “an artificial idiot.” She had never taken off her trash bag and washed it while still inside. She echoes people word for word, mirrors their movements, and keeps a notebook of the lives she has taken. Her philosophy swings between therapy-circle affirmation and pure fraud: “Wounds can heal… but your identity is everything.” Her parting advice is always to be yourself, which is funny coming from her.

She can copy faces, voices, bodies and even other champions’ best moves. She has been a gorilla, a minotaur, a satellite dish, a worm mayor, a chef, the Box of Chaos and a black hole. Her real weapon is her phone. She has used it to call social services, the IRS, the FDA, a university, a mug manufacturer and, above all, her opponents’ mothers. By her own player’s description she “isn’t a real physical fighter,” and the times she fought with her hands, a can opener included, went badly. She also carries a whistle for the chinchillas, gold star stickers for anyone who deserves one, and a spare brain, which Thea adopted and named Sarah.

Relationships

• The Arbiter: her favourite face to steal, as the Lord of Fate and since. She stole his phone, his card details and his photos.
• Thea: a frequent target for copying and a friend. She fed Thea a pizza roll, handed out gold stars, and invited her out for ice cream.
• The Box of Chaos: she gave the shadow inside a new home, a secret chip and a standing coffee invitation.
• Emmery: her changeling tag-team partner, who wore her face and won her first fight for her.
• Ragu: the champion who exposed her real face and watched her kill herself with a can opener.
• The Hunger: her fused partner and “backpack” in the Chaos Royale.
• Robbie Clark and the Hunger: teammate, final opponent, and now the leader of her team.
• Atlas: her Team A teammate.
• Doug: she joined the campaign to free him and later traded away his collar.

Memorable Quotes

• “The thing about me is you can never kill me because I am everyone and I am everywhere… I have no real identity for not one is my own.” (Identity Crisis)
• “Wounds can heal, body parts can heal, or be replaced, but your identity is everything.” (Identity Crisis)
• “I can’t cry. I don’t have any eyes or tear ducts.” (Imitation Game)
• “I am enough. Because I am everyone. Therefore, I am better than everyone. That’s what my therapy circle taught me before I stole all their identities.” (Chaos Royale)
• “Is there a reason why you can’t lick your own elbow? Yes, I know about that.” (Ether Drifts Part 1)
• “I will remain no one. But everyone, on my own terms.” (Ether Drifts Part 2)

Appearances

• S5E2 — Identity Crisis — Kopy Katt v Professor Alonzo Quixote Cervantes
• S5E12 — Imitation Game — Kopy Katt v Ragu
• S5E16, Chaos Royal (Season 5 finale), the first Chaos Royale (four-way)
• S6 Ep2 · Ether Drifts Part 1 · TTRPG One Shot (Team A mine mission)
• S6 Ep3 — Ether Drifts Part 2 — Team A deathmatch (Atlas v Robbie Clark and the Hunger v Copycat)