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Two returning champions, each with one win to their name, met atop The Crimson Keep. Kopy Katt is a paper-bagged identity thief with 420 stolen lives to her credit. Ragu is a squatting, nunchuck-swinging, string-dodging force of nature who insists that “nobody copies Ragu.” The fight that followed involved a fart gun made out of Thea, baby photos on the mega screens, a mechanical bull and a “Free Doug” protest. It ended with the first look anyone had ever gotten at what lies under Copycat’s bag, and with a can opener to the face that nobody, least of all Copycat, saw coming.

The Story

Thea in the Closet

The night began in the cool halls of The Dread Fortress, the subterranean castle inside a giant skull in the middle of a lava field. There the Lord of Fate was pacing, hunting for Thea, who was, as usual, “never anywhere to be found.” He checked the library, pausing to admire a large painting of himself. Then he tried the kitchen, the brewery downstairs and the attic. At last he made his voice boom through every hall, and somewhere deep in the basement a closet door slammed shut.

“I’m nowhere, I’m nowhere,” Thea insisted, over the sound of plastic storage containers snapping open.

The Lord of Fate: “I swear to God, if you’re eating hot dogs, I will find you and I will break you.”

She wasn’t. She had eaten all the hot dogs earlier. When he ripped the door open he found her half-dressed in four Halloween costumes at once: a witch’s hat, Frankenstein’s bolts, Dracula’s cape and giant hobbit feet. More costumes were stacked behind her, including a hot dog, a corn on the cob and a little scarecrow. He had told her she couldn’t wear all of them, so she couldn’t choose. Halloween had been last week, he pointed out. “Halloween lives in your spirit and is with us forever,” Thea replied. He told her that her words formed sentences but didn’t mean anything, and she cheerfully agreed.

She had prepared the Deathmatch, though. She had also found two matching sloth onesies, and she tossed him one. He had a better idea. With a snap, the costume shrank and Doug grew into it out of nowhere, still with a shackle around his ankle. Thea pulled on her own onesie, pink wings popping out the back. Then she clapped open a portal to the throne room herself (“It’s almost as good as yours”) and dragged along a Doug who seemed alarmingly floppy. “No bones in Doug?”

Two Lords of Fate

Two giant pink portals delivered the champions. Ragu arrived already doing his famous squats. The trash talk began at once. Copycat claimed that her lane was everybody’s lane. Ragu warned that anyone in his lane would get run over, because he was “a reckless walker” who could “walk all the alphabets.” Thea reminded Ragu that Copycat had stolen 69 or 74 identities last time. Copycat checked her notebook: after a busy holiday season, the count now stood at 420. Ragu wrote out his response on a tablet: “I will not be number 421.” The Lord of Fate, taking no chances, conjured a 1980s telephone and cancelled all his credit cards on the spot.

It didn’t help. Copycat promptly became a second Lord of Fate, echoing his every word and complimenting Thea’s onesie. Thea, asked which one to listen to, bowed at the copy’s feet: “That’s clearly the real one.”

Into the Crimson Keep

Thea clapped everyone through to the arena, the top of a dark castle under a glowing moon with bats fluttering overhead. She pointed at the real Lord of Fate and declared, “You, the imposter, you will fight Ragu.” The copy then flared white wings, swooped up, snapped every star off Thea’s forehead, and handed her a sheet of gold star stickers to make up for it. “I feel everyone deserves a gold star once in a while.” Ragu saw straight through the disguise anyway: “Your mustache wasn’t thick enough.”

The Acolytes roared, blue slushies flew, and, as is tradition, people tore off their breakaway jeans. Thea spotted corn-on-the-cob socks in the crowd and dove in after them. Doug crawled into the middle of the arena in his onesie. Copycat identified him as “a thag.” The Lord of Fate snapped him back beside the throne and asked Thea to stop eating people’s ankles.

Nunchucks, Boas and the Boot

Ragu struck first, and his nunchuck caught Copycat right in the forehead, leaving a dent in her paper bag. “I made you bleed your own blood.” His next two swings missed, the second a sneaky left-handed attack that she blocked with nunchucks of her own. “I’m a quick learner, you see?”

Then Copycat produced a chest that the Lord of Fate recognized: his old Box of Chaos, which she had kept after her last win. “It’s just an empty box,” he protested. It wasn’t. Out came a cloud of feather boas to blind Ragu, which failed, and Thea stole some. Next came a blast of Silly String, which Ragu danced away from.

Ragu: “I am a professional string dodger. Wherever you spray, I shall weave.”

The secret, he explained, was all in the shoulders. Copycat changed tactics. She took off her boot and clobbered him with it, a boot caked in mud, feathers, glitter and a stray pizza roll. Thea begged for the pizza roll, and Copycat tossed it to her. “Don’t feed the Thea,” warned the Lord of Fate. That was when Ragu pointed out that the pizza roll had cheese in it, and Thea is lactose intolerant.

The Thea Gun

Thea’s tummy began to bubble. She offered herself to Ragu as a weapon: “a fart gun, if you will.” Ragu said yes. His first “super whirlwind fart explosion number five” missed: instead of gas, a liquid expulsion came out of Thea and landed all over Ragu’s own head. The second, a tie, burned their nostrils and became “the unending fart of 12 days,” getting into both champions’ mouths, down their throats and into their stomachs, and wore them down equally. As the Acolytes were reminded, five bouts of that kind of exhaustion and a champion dies. Fed up with the smell, Ragu grabbed Thea by her tail, swung her like a rope and let go. Her butt hit Copycat square in the face, ruining her paper bag, and Thea thanked her for helping wipe it off. Thea gave her a reusable D20 Deathmatch bag instead. “My bag is everything. It’s my bag of tricks.”

The new bag brought a new Lord of Fate. The real one tried to point out that the copy was the one with shit on her. The copy calmly replied, “I’ve always smelled like shit,” and Thea agreed. Ragu sniffed out the fake anyway: “Unwanted guests, poverty and regret.”

Free Doug

Copycat now struck where it hurt. From the chest she pulled a photo album of Ragu’s school photos and baby pictures. One showed baby Ragu’s bare bottom in an inflatable pool, and it appeared on every mega screen in the Dread Fortress. Ragu crumbled. Copycat had saved one special photo for the Lord of Fate, showing him as a baby in a bib and bonnet. “I’ll have you know that that cutesy baby murdered his own family,” he snapped. “Or at least he thought. It’s a complicated story.” He went red on his throne. When Doug snorted with laughter, he banished the pug to the dungeons (“they have a bathroom. We’re not animals”).

Thea declared that Doug the pug was innocent, and the arena erupted into a chant of “Free Doug!” The Lord of Fate held firm (“I usurped the throne. Fair and square”) until Copycat revealed she had already taken over his “fate book” account and changed his two-factor authentication using his own phone. “Fine, you want Doug?” A giant cage appeared, floating and spinning in the middle of the arena, with a very dizzy Doug inside. Copycat then threw the album at Ragu and missed, and he kept it. In the back of the album he found her personal file, which she said was all fake. “Everything about me is fake. I’m not a real person at all. I’m everybody else.”

Ride Them, Cowboy

The Acolytes chanted for chaos. The lights dimmed, the ground turned sticky, and each champion found a cheap beer in each hand as mechanical bulls rose beneath them. Copycat went flying: “I’ve only stolen identities of cowboys. I’ve never actually ridden one.” Ragu rode it out but tired himself badly doing it.

Ragu kept the bull theme going. A gigantic mechanical bull came squeaking in on wheels and headbutted Copycat backwards. Then his sped-up nunchucks landed again. Copycat copied his power-up and slapped the bull on the rump to send it at him. She fumbled, hit its flank instead, and the bull spun around and flipped onto her. Battered and nearly spent, she revealed a fail-safe chip in her brain that would release every stolen identity when she died. Her last-ditch second boot missed. She took a moment to recover, and gave Thea a spare brain from her pocket, which Thea named Sarah.

Then Copycat put on a new mask: Ragu’s wife, Prego, who had come “to support you” and who claimed the enemy looked a lot like the Lord of Fate.

The Box of Chaos

The Lord of Fate shot multicolored lightning into the chaos storms, and the Box of Chaos slammed down in a column of pink and yellow fire. A shadowy figure clawed out. This was a newer box, one Copycat herself had given him.

Ragu had a question for his “wife.” What was her favorite vegetable? “Obviously, the tomato.” He was not fooled: “Prego’s favorite vegetables are onion. You are an imposter.” He fed his mechanical bull to the box and received the Arbiter’s ring, a ring that had once belonged to the Lord of Fate himself, which gave him brief mastery over time and space. Then he backhanded the mask clean off her face.

Underneath there was nothing. She had light purple skin, no hair and no ears, only a blank surface with two eyes and a smiley face drawn in marker, “like a kid drew it.” When she rubbed an eye, it smeared. “I’ve never had an identity to begin with. I am everyone, but no one at the same time.” Ragu was delighted (“an artificial idiot”), and the Lord of Fate snapped a Polaroid “for later.”

Copycat knelt and knocked on the box. “Is it rude that I don’t know where to look?” the shadow asked. The two had a heart-to-heart. She confided that this might be her last fight and pressed a tiny memory chip into his hand, free of charge, to “use when the time is right.” He praised his roomy new box (“I can almost straighten my elbows”). She traded him her trash bag (underneath was duct tape and fishnets, and she had never once taken the bag off) and the Lord of Fate’s phone. “Don’t worry, I know the passcode. I used to be a shadow.” She asked him to coffee, if she survived. In return the box offered the Grandmaster’s bow, which could take whatever shape its wielder wished. Moments later Copycat reached into a paper bag like Mary Poppins and pulled out a huge can opener.

It worked. She chased Ragu around (“Chef, this can opener on you,” a joke she immediately disowned), struck him hard, and caught his glorious locks in the dial and sheared them off. “Nobody messes with the dew.”

Super Ragu

Ragu, raggedy and furious, activated the ring so that her next attacks would falter. Then he charged up fivefold. “I am now Super Ragu.” When Copycat argued that a tomato is a fruit and asked to change her answer, he said, “Denied.” His surge struck true, a nunchuck across the ear so she couldn’t hear what was coming. She dodged the follow-up by stealing his own shoulder dance (“my sense of groove is too strong”). His final, girthier chuck missed, making him a “one-chuck chump,” as the narration put it. Her thrown jar of Rogaine missed too.

The Final Can

Barely holding on, Copycat stalled while Thea made a thinking face for her. Then she swung the can opener “one more time.” She picked it up backwards, ran at Ragu in slow motion revving it up, tripped over her own boot, and brought it crashing down on her own not-face. “Literally did not see it coming.”

Sparks flew from her face, then a giant laser shot into the sky as all 420 identities were released to find their owners. “That’s a lot of identities. It ain’t even New Year’s,” said Ragu. Goblins dragged her away with her bag and her other boot. Ragu stood alone atop the keep, the moon as his spotlight, while the Acolytes chanted his name. The Lord of Fate declared himself “fucking stoked” about Copycat’s death, and offered a no-questions-asked reward for his missing phone.

Dried Blood

While the post-match interview ran, the goblins hauled Copycat into the locker room, defibrillated her, and drew a new face on her, possibly with a Lord of Fate mustache and some gold stars this time. Another crew of goblins brushed and shampooed what was left of Ragu’s hair. Copycat joked that he no longer matched his ID. In a final scene, the shadow sat in the rain, peeking out of his box, waiting for someone to come drink coffee with him, someone who never came. He did plug in Copycat’s chip, which held a very hefty document titled “How to Be a Copycat by Copycat. Edited by ChatGPT.” Copycat’s parting advice: “Always be yourself because you are the best version of yourself and nobody can copy that.” Ragu answered with a T-pose and “Nobody can copy you when you are Ragu.”

Notable Moments

  • Thea was used as a fart gun, shot a liquid expulsion all over Ragu’s head instead of gas, and was then thrown butt-first into Copycat’s face by her tail.
  • Baby Ragu’s bare bottom went up on every mega screen in the Dread Fortress, and the “Free Doug” protest forced the Lord of Fate to release Doug in a spinning cage.
  • The first look ever at Copycat’s real face revealed a blank purple surface with a marker-drawn smiley.
  • Copycat’s tender chat with the shadow in the Box of Chaos ended with a secret chip, a traded trash bag and a coffee date that never happened.
  • Copycat tripped on her own boot and killed herself with her own can opener, and 420 identities flew into the sky.

Memorable Quotes

  • Ragu: “Nobody copies Ragu.”
  • Kopy Katt: “I feel everyone deserves a gold star once in a while.”
  • The Lord of Fate: “I’ll have you know that that cutesy baby murdered his own family. Or at least he thought. It’s a complicated story.”
  • Thea: “You can wield Thea if you’d like as a weapon, a fart gun, if you will.”
  • Ragu: “Prego’s favorite vegetables are onion. You are an imposter.”
  • Kopy Katt: “I am everyone, but no one at the same time.”
  • The shadow in the Box of Chaos: “Don’t worry, I know the passcode. I used to be a shadow.”
  • Ragu: “Maybe next time you send me a human with skill and not a copycat, you can never be the real thing.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Kopy Katt / “Copycat” (Cat). A returning champion and identity thief.

  • Appearance and gear:
    • Wears a paper bag over her head, replaced mid-fight with a reusable D20 Deathmatch bag.
    • A trash bag over duct tape and fishnets. She has never taken the trash bag off. Yellow boots.
  • Her real face: light-purple skin, bald, no ears, blank, with a marker-drawn face of two eyes and a smiley. It smears when rubbed. “I’ve never had an identity to begin with… I am everyone, but no one at the same time.”
  • Identity theft: 69 or 74 stolen identities last time (per Thea), 420 now, including credit cards and livelihoods. She keeps a notebook of them.
  • The fail-safe chip: a chip in her brain that, on her death, releases all stolen identities and a candy-store coupon.
  • Copying: she can copy faces and voices, including the Lord of Fate’s, but her mustache gives her away. She copies power-ups and moves.
  • Possessions:
    • The old Box of Chaos (the Lord of Fate’s “old chest”), kept from her last win, full of tricks: feather boas, Silly String, the photo album, the Prego mask.
    • The Lord of Fate’s cell phone, with access to his “fate book” account and two-factor authentication.
    • Gold star stickers. A spare brain in her pocket (given to Thea).
  • She had given the box’s shadowy figure his new box. Here she gave him a USB-like chip, her trash bag and the Lord of Fate’s phone, and asked him to coffee.
  • She said “This might be my last fight.” She died by her own can opener on a natural 1 and was dragged off by goblins.

Ragu (Big Cheese). Returning champion with one prior win, famed for the “Ragu squat.”

  • Fighting style: nunchucks (a left-hand “surprise”), “a professional string dodger” whose dodging is “all in the shoulders.” His signature move is the super whirlwind fart explosion, now on “number five.”
  • Family:
    • Married to Prego, whose favorite vegetable is onion.
    • Spent last Christmas with his wife in the Bahamas.
    • Baby photos exist of him in an inflatable pool.
  • His hair (“the dew”) was cut off by Copycat’s can opener. Goblins later shampooed what was left.
  • Won the Arbiter’s Rings from the Box of Chaos by sacrificing his summoned mechanical bull.
  • Calls Copycat “an artificial idiot.” Won the fight.

The Lord of Fate (Mudcat).

  • Has a large painting of himself in the library.
  • Cancelled his credit cards by 1980s telephone. Lost his phone to Copycat and offers a reward for it.
  • Claims about his past and power:
    • He says the baby in the bonnet photo “murdered his own family. Or at least he thought. It’s a complicated story.”
    • “I usurped the throne. Fair and square.”
    • Keeps Doug shackled in the dungeons, which have a bathroom.
  • Took a Polaroid of Copycat’s real face “for later.”
  • Summons the Box of Chaos with multicolored lightning into the chaos storms.

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). Pink imp with pink hair, pink wings and a tail usable as a slingshot grip.

  • Halloween: tried to wear four costumes at once; “Halloween lives in your spirit.”
  • Food: ate all the hot dogs. Lactose intolerant. Eats ankles. “Don’t feed the Thea.”
  • Stars: has stars on her forehead, which the copy removed and the Lord of Fate partly restored.
  • Gifts: gold stickers from “the other Lord of Fate,” a spare brain she named Sarah, and a social security number of 16.
  • Can open portals (“almost as good as yours”). Was used as a fart gun and thrown at Copycat.

Doug (the pug). Kept shackled in the dungeons.

  • Wore a sloth onesie “with no bones.”
  • Chortled at the Lord of Fate’s baby photo and was banished.
  • The “Free Doug” chant got him back in a floating spinning cage.

The shadowy figure in the Box of Chaos (Mudcat).

  • “Just like a soul,” with no body.
  • “I used to be a shadow,” and he knows the Lord of Fate’s phone passcode.
  • Lives in a newer, more spacious box that Kopy Katt gave him, minimalist, with his stuff piled in the corner. He can’t leave the box.
  • Gave Ragu the Arbiter’s Rings and Copycat the Grandmaster’s bow.
  • Received Copycat’s chip, trash bag and phone.

Prego. Ragu’s wife, seen only as Copycat’s mask. Favorite vegetable: onion.

Sarah. Copycat’s spare brain, now Thea’s.

Goblins. The arena crew. They drag off the dead, defibrillate them, draw faces, and shampoo hair.

Hans. Mentioned only in “Poor Hans is just left out there in the cold.” Unresolved.

“Jota”. Mudcat voices “Jota has questions” about how Copycat breathed. Unresolved.

Places

  • The Dread Fortress: a subterranean castle inside a giant skull in a lava field. Rooms named this episode:
    • the library, with a large painting of the Lord of Fate;
    • the kitchen;
    • the brewery downstairs;
    • the attic;
    • the basement closet with Thea’s costume stash;
    • the throne room;
    • the dungeons (which have a bathroom);
    • mega screens throughout.
  • The Crimson Keep (spelling uncertain): the arena, a dark castle top with moon and bats.
  • The locker room: Dried Blood only.
  • The Bahamas: Ragu’s holiday.

Items

  • The old Box of Chaos: Copycat’s chest of tricks.
  • The new Box of Chaos: home of the shadowy figure.
  • The Arbiter’s Rings: once the Lord of Fate’s. It resizes to fit, and grants one round as “master of time and space,” giving the opponent disadvantage. It cannot undo more than a few seconds.
  • The Grandmaster’s bow: crit on 19s, permanent, shape-shifts. Copycat used it as a giant can opener.
  • The photo album: Ragu’s and the Lord of Fate’s baby photos, with Copycat’s fake info in the back.
  • The Prego mask.
  • Copycat’s microchip / USB card: in Dried Blood it holds “How to Be a Copycat by Copycat.”
  • Other things in play:
    • the Lord of Fate’s cell phone;
    • the Polaroid of Copycat’s real face;
    • sloth onesies;
    • gold star stickers;
    • the reusable D20 Deathmatch bag;
    • the mechanical bulls;
    • Silly String, feather boas, Rogaine.

Lore statements

  • The Acolytes rip off their bottom-half clothing “as is tradition,” and blue slushies fly. Cupcake socks were once given out.
  • Champions can sacrifice to the Box of Chaos for magic items.
  • In the Season of Fate, the Lord of Fate says he usurped the throne, and calls his baby self someone who “murdered his own family. Or at least he thought.”
  • Copycat’s death released 420 identities via a laser into the sky.

Full Round-by-Round