First appearance: S5E2 — Identity Crisis — Kopy Katt v Professor Alonzo Quixote Cervantes · watch it on YouTube
Professor Alonzo Quixote Cervantes, Esquire was an elderly, astonishingly muscular scholar of bloodshed who fought Kopy Katt in S5E2 — Identity Crisis — Kopy Katt v Professor Alonzo Quixote Cervantes. He arrived ready for a straight brawl. What he got was a war of identity theft, credit scores and maternal betrayal inside a grubby little bar. By the end he had lost his money (briefly), his mustache (to the Box of Chaos) and his life, all in that order.
Story
Thea found the Professor fighting space crocodiles behind space waffles. She didn’t actually listen to his answer to her invitation, but it looked positive. He strolled into the Lord of Fate’s throne room calmly with a leather suitcase, announced himself a fan, and introduced himself as “a professor and a student of Bloodshed.” The Lord of Fate had just told Thea not to bring any elderly people into the arena, and he was not pleased to see that she had brought one. Cervantes assured him he was “young in spirit.” He also explained that he drinks milk, so his bones would endure, and Thea responded by making both champions walk through a waterfall of milk to get into the fight. Inside Emmery’s Tavern he politely bought the house special, a “number two.” He learned that the secret ingredient was sheep dung, asked for a straw so it wouldn’t get in his mustache, downed it, and ordered another. Kopy Katt copied every move.
He opened the fight by throwing his glass at Kopy Katt. He then grabbed the paper bag she was vomiting into and threw it back in her face, which revealed a featureless purple face with a red-marker smiley drawn on it, and demanded, “Show me your capacity for violence!” She answered with a stampede of jacked, unionized Chinchillas snapping wet towels at him, and the Professor went pale, admitting he had never met a creature as fearsome as a chinchilla. When they came at him with clippers, his sentient mustache dodged them on its own. He threw a passed-out patron at her, apologizing to the very much alive man that he “was really counting on you being dead,” and then hurled the man’s table into the fireplace because it was getting cold. Kopy Katt chose to fight him a different way. Posing as the bartender, she asked to see his IDs. Then she reported him for identity theft, which closed his bank accounts, cancelled his travel and wrecked his hard-won 850 credit score. Finally she phoned his mother while pretending to be him and told her he hated her, which revealed two things: the mother had chosen him as her favorite, and she flatly refused to believe her “little fighter boy” would ever say such a thing.
When The Acolytes summoned The Box of Chaos, the Professor offered up what he held most dear. He ripped off his entire mustache, which kept its shape, and the shadow living in the box gratefully put it on. His reward was his favorite snack, a salad covered in Worcestershire sauce, which he ate “in the most gentlemanly and educated way.” From the suitcase came a plain spear, which struck Kopy Katt; when she warned he would be feeling pain for years, he replied that he was also a lawyer. He shrugged off a tetanus-laced rusty spoon, since naturally he had his shots. He spent part of the match on a rotary phone with a credit advisor until he was “back at 850,” then threw the phone, which landed in the fire like the table had. Her later attacks on his credit failed, because he had legal shield. So did her call to his university, reporting him dead, because he had tenure. He yanked the burning table out of the fireplace bare-handed and threw it, then missed and threw it right back in. He called the credit bureau on her with an 80s brick phone and promptly hung up on them by accident. Then Kopy Katt became a gorilla, the gorilla threw Emmery the bartender at him, and the two of them tumbled into the flames together.
The Professor rose from the fire wreathed in flame, his shirt burned away to reveal “his old yet incredibly ripped body,” and called his mother out of retirement. She rose from the fireplace looking exactly like Mary Poppins, announced that she had a gorilla for breakfast, and tackled the beast while her son relaxed at the bar to watch. The gorilla threw Mama Cervantes at him, and then threw Thea, who latched onto his face like a face hugger. Mama answered by tearing off her corset and hoop dress down to her old-lady bloomers, and with pure Cervantes rage she landed a haymaker. The Professor leapt from the bar and drove a flaming Cervantes elbow into Kopy Katt’s forehead. Then Emmery was revealed to be a changeling. He tagged in as the Lord of Fate, and when Kopy Katt goaded the real one, the real Lord of Fate swooped down and cracked the Professor with a metal chair. In overtime Cervantes flying-kneed himself into the fire and swung a burning suitcase he had never once opened. At last Emmery took the form of his mother and slapped him with a slipper that shone “almost like a halo.” “I had a dream it would end like this,” the Professor sighed, and he flew back into the fireplace one final time.
Personality and Abilities
Cervantes was courtly and unflappable. He was the kind of man who takes notes (“Fascinating”) while a legless shadow drags itself into a new chest like a hermit crab. He described himself as an educated man with an educated meal. He held a degree from what the operator called “Bullshit University,” tenure and a lawyer’s credentials (“It said Esquire”). He valued money above everything, his mother ranking somewhere in the top ten. He was not American, though his homeland was never named, and he was unwelcome at a certain Waffle House near some crocodiles. He had eight toes, which explained his terrible balance and aim. That aim showed: his fighting style mostly consisted of picking things up and throwing them, very often into the fireplace. His leather suitcase held a spear, a rotary phone and more, and he carried a brick phone because he was afraid of technology. His mustache was sentient; he had once visited a tribe of people with sentient hair, whose chief had nose hair that wrote poems. At the table, the player admitted he had planned a pure brawler and none of the finances or backstory. The one exception was “I have tenure,” which he had kept ready all match.
After the fight, in Dried Blood, he passed on two lessons: don’t throw things into a fireplace, and be kind to your mother, “because she will, or at least a changeling doppelganger of her will beat you into oblivion.”
Relationships
- Kopy Katt: His opponent, who copied his words and moves, stole his identity, and won.
- His mother: Estranged, but he is her favorite; she fought at his side and was later impersonated to finish him off.
- Emmery: The changeling bartender who served him sheep-dung ale, fell into the fire with him, and delivered the fatal slipper.
- The Lord of Fate: Disapproved of elderly champions and hit him with a metal chair.
- The Box of Chaos: The shadow inside the box took his mustache in exchange for a Worcestershire salad.
- Chinchillas: Genuinely terrify him.
Memorable Quotes
- “I’m actually very familiar with your combat here. I’m quite a fan.” (S5E2 — Identity Crisis)
- “I’m sorry, sir. I was really counting on you being dead.” (S5E2 — Identity Crisis)
- “I enjoy being stabbed. This is just rude.” (S5E2 — Identity Crisis)
- “Do you really think you go the places I go and not have your tetanus shot?” (S5E2 — Identity Crisis)
- “No one can run from the IRS.” (S5E2 — Identity Crisis)
- “I had a dream it would end like this.” (S5E2 — Identity Crisis)