S5E15 — Cosmic Collision — Teddy Oso v Ragu

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Two returning favourites, the zombie-slaying Teddy Oso and the luxuriously coiffed Ragu, were dropped onto an asteroid in the rings of a roaring gas giant. They fought the longest battle of the season there. The match was booked by Thea as her last chance to keep her job. It featured a hijacked 1998 Chevy Impala, a frozen chinchilla, a nipple that changed hands twice, and a finishing kick delivered in genuine slow motion.

The Story

The Last Straw

The night began with shouting. “Welcome to D20 Deathmatch, everyone, where we are loud for no reason and you can all suck it,” bellowed the Lord of Fate, ruler of The Void in the Season of Fate. Thea protested that there was more planned than him screaming his head off, and he conceded there was, “but it’s not going to be any good.”

Deep in The Dread Fortress, where the walls sweat with condensation as lava meets cool air, the Lord of Fate clacked across the stone in what he called handcrafted Italian leather shoes. Thea pointed out that they were cacti leather, and that cacti leather is also handcrafted. He was hunting for her, “because she’s never where she needs to be.” He followed noises to the throne room and found her fast asleep in his throne. He crept up, put his face right into hers and asked, “Are you enjoying your nap?” She fluttered off, wiping away drool that poured “like a waterfall,” and insisted she was fine.

She was not fine. “I could put up with a lot of bullshit, but this is the last straw,” he declared. “You’re fired.” Thea’s first question was whether he was going to burn her. He noted that she had once refused to put her feet where his feet had been, yet had no problem putting her butt cheeks where his had been. Thea reassured him: “Oh, uh, I put a towel down first.”

He demanded her clipboard, then relented into a probationary period. She had this one Deathmatch to prove herself, and if she failed, “not only will I fire you, I will destroy you.” Thea asked about severance. “Something will be severed, yes.”

Two Returning Champions

Thea had brought back two fighters, because she was sure the Lord of Fate had loved them last time. He had never said so, but she had read his mind, “even though I can’t read minds.” He allowed her to speak their names to pull them through the portal, “just not to me,” so she turned to face the wall and clapped. The wall dissolved into pink glitter dust.

Teddy Oso arrived first. The Lord of Fate recalled that Teddy’s zombie count had stood at 12,000 last time. Teddy corrected him: “we’re like in the 30,000 range at this point.” Thea promised to update his profile on the Dread Fortress Void web. When asked how anyone kills that many zombies, Teddy explained that sometimes you go one at a time to savour the moment, “and sometimes you just like grenade, just thump.”

Thea presented Ragu with Vanna White jazz hands, admitting she hadn’t asked before “just sucking you through the portal.” He didn’t mind. “My legs are ready. Ragu is back.”

Out of This World

Another clap, and the Fortress faded away. The champions stood on rock in open space, under endless stars, beside a giant purple planet whose storms thundered audibly across the void. Their arena was its orange ring of meteorites. “I brought you here,” Thea announced, “because I thought the two of you were out of this world.”

Ragu booed. Thea declared that the crowd laughed uproariously. The Lord of Fate immediately overruled her. In revenge, Thea handicapped both champions for not laughing at her joke, reminding them that “everything Thea says is gold.” Ragu offered to “pimp smack your ass,” then fumbled his start, and Teddy took the first move, crying, “Praise me! Adore me!” The Acolytes obliged. They screamed his name, ripped off their shirts, spilled blue slushies and fired the newly stocked Teddy Oso shotguns from the concession stands into the air.

Round One: Gravity Power

Teddy opened casually. He cocked a hip in a pose Thea compared to a catalogue model and lobbed his axe “all gentle-like, but with a lot of force behind it.” Ragu batted it away perfectly. Teddy then flipped his shotgun like a drum major and let one round go, hitting Ragu square in the chest and sending him floating off into space. Thea offered a rope. Ragu declined: he had “gravity power. That’s my weight.” The Lord of Fate made a note to use that excuse himself.

Ragu answered with his nunchucks, which caught Teddy on the forehead. Teddy took the hit with a dead stare: “I never, never flinch. Never close my eyes.” Ragu then spotted a bandage on Teddy’s right knee and struck it. That led to an unsettling confession. Teddy had been bitten by a zombie, but he wasn’t turning, because “every time I kill a zombie, I eat a tiny little piece of it.” He eats it raw, from fleshy bits like “the thumb muscle or like a butt cheek.” By his count it came to about 40 or 50 people’s worth. Thea, clipboard-less, took notes on her hand. When Ragu tried to rip off the bandage and “beat the zombie back in” him, Teddy stepped aside with a lazy lunge and resumed his pose. Thea fainted.

The Impala

The Acolytes demanded blood, or possibly ice cream, and the first chaos event struck. A glint appeared overhead. Was it a shiny bird? A silver 1998 Chevy Impala with Michigan plates? No. It was a metal chair, which Teddy dodged and which smacked Ragu. Thea consoled him with a prize: if he won, the Impala was his. He was disgusted at first. Then he noticed it was metal, not plastic, apologised for his outburst, and climbed in. Nobody knew who had given him the keys; Thea had forgotten to lock it. “Look at this 8-track.”

Round two became a car fight. Teddy stepped on Ragu’s arm and grabbed his “long, luscious blonde hair” to slam his face into his knee. Ragu dodged, corrected him (“This is ultra silver”) and, safe inside the car, dared him to “make my millennium.” Teddy tried to rip the door off, but Chevy Impalas, Thea explained, “were built to last.” When Thea teased that Teddy was just jealous because he rode a motorcycle, Teddy replied that he had better gas mileage. On it he picked up his girlfriends Susie and Betty, one of whom was a zombie. “Not all zombies are violent. Some just want to be loved.” He eventually has to shoot them, because they start to smell. That prompted the Lord of Fate to consider a firmer hand with Dread Fortress hygiene, and Thea hurried off in search of deodorant.

Ragu tried to run Teddy over. Then he tried to ram him with what he called his “long doors.” Teddy met the charge with one perfect axe swing that gashed the door from end to end. “Your insurance is not gonna like it.”

The Areola Affair

In round three Teddy hauled Ragu out of the car by his herbal-scented hair. He backflipped over him, faked a landing on his groin, then buried the axe in the middle of Ragu’s chest. Ragu sobbed over how long that chest had taken to build. Worse, the blow had taken his nipple. Teddy pocketed it. “Is that your pepperoni snack for later?” Thea asked. Ragu fought back with spiked nunchucks that drew blood from Teddy’s belly button. A follow-up nail grenade missed, and Teddy’s advice was simply to roll higher: “I’m just repeating the zeitgeist.”

The second chaos event brought a shivering chinchilla to each champion, begging for warmth. Teddy tucked his into his jacket pocket with a sweat rag. Ragu, drained of blood and body heat, watched his freeze into a tiny ice cube.

In round four Ragu combined his nunchucks for a ranged strike “for my areola.” Then he mugged Teddy and snatched the nipple back. Since it had shared a pocket with the chinchilla, it came back hairy, and Ragu stitched it on anyway. “Why is my areola so hairy?” This led to a discussion of the fuzzy navel and the slippery nipple as cocktails. Teddy revealed that “Hairy nipple was my uncle,” known to the family as Uncle Nipple. Thea eventually tricked the Lord of Fate into saying the word himself.

The Box of Chaos

Trying to shake things up, the Lord of Fate summoned The Box of Chaos. It landed like a shooting star: a pink and yellow chest bursting with flames, a small creepy black hand creeping out of the lid. For Teddy it produced a blue slushie that melted away his exhaustion and cost $14.97. “How the box got a slushie machine, we’ll never know.”

Ragu’s bargaining took longer. The shadowy figure had gone through Ragu’s wallet and was still admiring a photo of Teddy’s wife it had found there. Ragu offered the chinchilla hairs from his areola. The figure demanded documentation and called in Thea as “the resident chinchilla hair expert.” She examined them and confirmed “a clear, true Chilean chinchilla,” worth maybe three chinchillas at auction. Ragu received the golden Shield of the Golden King. He immediately tried to hit Teddy in the face with it, which, Thea gently noted, isn’t what shields are for. She coached him to empower himself by chanting his own name. Teddy was unmoved: “At some point, you’ll get around to it, I’m sure.”

Surges and Insults

With the fight tied after a break, Teddy found new strength by opening “a little book” and learning to do more each turn. He kicked “Mr. Marinara” in the chest, then cannonballed him in the face, explaining that zombie fighting had taught him to be specific. Ragu surged too and unleashed “the most annoying sound in the world” from his melodic voice. Teddy simply laughed over it. Every good roll Ragu made, Teddy matched, and Ragu’s attempt to stomp Teddy’s big toe went nowhere. Thea gave him a pep talk about his peerless locks and his one remaining good areola.

The third chaos event was a horde of children in the stands hurling painfully accurate insults: “you dress like me ma, you don’t have enough nipples.” Both champions shrugged off the emotional damage, though Thea added a few of her own. Then the Lord of Fate realised they had run out of chaos events entirely. Thea warned that if they didn’t kill each other soon, she would kill them both.

The Shield Shatters

Round seven brought Teddy’s powered-up “nipple slicer,” aimed at the other one. Ragu fumbled his defence completely, and the Shield of the Golden King shattered into “a tiny million pieces.” Teddy reloaded his shotgun with exaggerated slowness, flicked away a last scrap of nipple and blasted Ragu in the face. “I am invincible.” Asked about the afterlife, Teddy offered Ragu a final word: “Rosebud.” Ragu wasn’t having it. He blocked Teddy’s next attack, a punt to the crotch Teddy called the “Soprano” (“I’m not dead yet.”), and swung again and again. “My fate is near. The only thing that’s colorful is my boots. So let’s go out with a style.”

In round eight Teddy began to feel bad for him. He mouthed “I’m so sorry” and brought his gun butt down on Ragu’s bowed head, but fumbled and hurt himself instead. With both men so exhausted that a tie would kill them both, Teddy ran to the Impala, got in and ran Ragu over with his own car. Ragu made a last stand and landed two hits while Teddy, by his own account, just stood there with his eyes closed.

The Roundhouse

The Lord of Fate noted that no fight had gone this far all season. In the ninth round Teddy jumped, faked a kick and landed a real roundhouse to the face, then spun straight into a second. Time slowed. The kick struck Ragu in the jaw and cracked his gorgeous manscaped face clean off its hinges, while blue slushies arced through the air in slow motion. Ragu’s voice echoed from beyond: “It’s officially still a bitch though. You suck.”

His body floated off into orbit and froze, “just like the chinchilla that he failed to save earlier,” his tongue stuck out as he drifted into space. “Yeah, I died to a fucking roadhouse kick. Tell my wife, Prego, I tried.”

Teddy was crowned victor at kill number 30,001, and he won the Impala too. Thea asked whether she had earned her job. The Lord of Fate admitted they were too far into the season to replace her, “so it’s more of a logistics thing,” and handed back her clipboard. Thea celebrated by grabbing Teddy and swinging him around. The Lord of Fate spread his white wings and announced that the season would close next week with the first D20 Deathmatch Royal Rumble: “Four champions will enter the arena, but only one will leave.”

Dried Blood

Afterwards Ragu admitted he knew he was finished the moment his second areola went. He worried about two green areolas, and the right one still carried chinchilla hair, making him, by Thea’s estimate, about 0.3% chinchilla. Teddy credited his win to reading The Secret, since last time he had lost “to an old lady.” He planned to pimp the Impala with funky paint, big TVs, fuzzy dice and the dried nipples. Thea warned that the Michigan plates wouldn’t work until he registered it and paid the taxes. The Lord of Fate asked why he thought they were giving it away. “It was cheaper than paying to impound it,” Thea added. Teddy’s lesson for the Acolytes was to skip school and learn a trade like zombie fighting. Ragu’s was simpler: “Protect your areolas, man.” He floated the idea of a quest to recover them, the “Diary of an areola-is-less.”

Notable Moments

• Thea was fired for sleeping in the Lord of Fate’s throne, kept her job on probation, and won it back by the end.
• Ragu claimed the Impala from a chaos event, and Teddy later ran him over with it.
• Teddy pocketed Ragu’s severed nipple, and Ragu stole it back and stitched it on covered in chinchilla hair.
• Thea authenticated chinchilla hair for the Box of Chaos as its resident expert.
• The match ran out of chaos events entirely and became the longest fight of the season.
• Ragu died in slow motion to a roundhouse kick and froze in orbit like his chinchilla.

Memorable Quotes

• Thea: “Oh, uh, I put a towel down first.”
• The Lord of Fate: “Something will be severed, yes.”
• Teddy Oso: “Every time I kill a zombie, I eat a tiny little piece of it, so eventually I just built up an immunity.”
• Ragu: “First of all, Teddy, my hair’s not blonde. This is ultra silver.”
• Teddy Oso: “Because fun fact, not all zombies are violent. Some just want to be loved.”
• Ragu: “Why is my areola so hairy?”
• Thea: “You can see from the white hairs and how they split at the ends. That’s a clear, true Chilean chinchilla.”
• Ragu: “Yeah, I died to a fucking roadhouse kick. Tell my wife, Prego, I tried.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Teddy Oso (guest, speaker 01). Apocalypse survivor and zombie fighter with a shotgun and an axe (blurb).

• His zombie count rose from 12,000 (“last time”) to “the 30,000 range,” and Thea counts this kill as 30,001.
• Bitten on the right knee by a zombie (bandaged). He eats a tiny raw piece of every zombie he kills to build immunity: about 40–50 people’s worth, from the thumb muscle, butt cheeks or shoulder.
• Rides a motorcycle. Girlfriends Susie and Betty, one of them a zombie. Says not all zombies are violent; some just want to be loved.
• His wife is a zombie (“she is now”).
• Never closes his eyes when hit. Signature moves: the casual hip pose, the drum-major shotgun flip, the golf-swing uppercut.
• Uncle “Nipple” (“Hairy nipple was my uncle”).
• He used his heroic surge to learn an extra action from “a little book.”
• Keeps the chinchilla in his jacket pocket. Won the 1998 Chevy Impala. Concessions sell Teddy Oso shotguns.
• In Dried Blood he says he lost last time “to an old lady” and reads The Secret.

Ragu (guest, speaker 02; blurb spelling Ragu, transcript “Ragu”).

• Ultra silver luscious hair (not blonde) that smells of herbal essence. A “prettier stash,” a manscaped face and colorful boots.
• “Gravity power” pulls him back when he floats away.
• Nunchucks with spikes, recall, an exploding spike that scatters nails, and the two chucks combine into one for range. “Melodic voice” annoying-sound attack.
• Lost one areola/nipple to Teddy’s axe, stole it back, stitched it on hairy with chinchilla hair and shaved it. Lost the second to the nipple slicer.
• Briefly held the Shield of the Golden King.
• Died to a roundhouse kick and froze in orbit. His wife is Prego (“Tell my wife, Prego, I tried”).
• Called “Mr. Pizza Sauce” and “Mr. Marinara” by Teddy.

The Lord of Fate (Mudcat; Vythorn in the Season of Fate).

• Wears “Italian leather” shoes (Thea says cacti leather).
• Fired Thea for sleeping in his throne, then put her on probation. Kept her on “for logistics” after the match and returned her clipboard.
• Wants firmer hygiene in the Dread Fortress. Has white wings. Announced the first Royal Rumble.

Thea (Caustic Phoenix). The Lord of Fate’s assistant.

• Slept and drooled in his throne (“I put a towel down first”). Says she can’t read minds.
• Booked both fighters as returning favorites. Keeps a clipboard, but wrote notes on her hand while he had it.
• The resident chinchilla hair expert. Fainted at Teddy’s pose. Kept her job.

The shadowy figure of the Box of Chaos. A small creepy black hand inside a flaming chest. Took the wallet and admired the photo of Teddy’s wife. Has a slushie machine, apparently.

The chinchillas. Shivering chaos-event chinchillas (“Chilean”). Teddy’s is warm in his pocket; Ragu’s froze into an ice cube.

Susie and Betty: Teddy’s girlfriends, one a zombie. Uncle Nipple: Teddy’s uncle. Prego: Ragu’s wife. The heckling children in the stands.

Places

• The Dread Fortress: lava condensation on its walls. The Lord of Fate’s throne room; the throne is now his.
• The ring arena: a rocky asteroid on the orange meteorite rings of a roaring, storm-covered purple gas giant amid infinite stars.
• The Dread Fortress Void web: a website holding champion profiles.

Items

• The 1998 silver Chevy Impala with Michigan license plates, with an 8-track. It has a gash down one door and a stuck spike, and nails scattered from the exploded spike. Won by Teddy, but unregistered, with taxes due.
• The Shield of the Golden King (Box of Chaos): golden, +1 mettle, shattered on a nat 1.
• The blue slushie ($14.97, clears fatigue).
• Ragu’s wallet (fruit snack, gift card, Tropical Smoothie, the photo).
• Teddy’s vial of zombie blood. Thea’s clipboard and rope. Concession Teddy Oso shotguns and blue slushies. The metal chair.

Lore statements (Season of Fate)

• The Acolytes trigger chaotic events by “demanding blood.”
• The Box of Chaos trades magical items for offerings, and the shadowy figure inside judges their value.
• Each event “hits harder”: Mudcat rules 1, then 2, then 3 damage on a failed save.
• A tie at four fatigues kills both champions (rule as stated).
• This was the longest fight of the season (nine rounds).

Full Round-by-Round

Every beat of the episode, with timestamps (click to expand)

Opening — the Dread Fortress throne room

1. 0:05:22 Cold open with shouting: “Welcome to D20 Deathmatch, everyone, where we are loud for no reason and you can all suck it. That’s it, that’s the show, good night.” Thea objects that they have more planned “besides just the Lord of Fate screaming his head off.” The Lord of Fate: “we have more planned, but it’s not going to be any good.”
2. 0:05:58 The walls of the Dread Fortress are moist with condensation where the lava meets the cool air inside. The Lord of Fate’s Italian leather shoes clack across the cold stone. Caustic Phoenix says they’re fake, “cacti leather”. He insists they’re handcrafted. She replies: “Cacti leather is still handcrafted.”
3. 0:06:30 He is searching for Thea, “because she’s never where she needs to be.” He hears noises from the throne room and finds Thea asleep in his throne. He tiptoes up and puts his face right into hers: “Are you enjoying your nap?” She flutters away, wiping drool “pouring from her mouth like a waterfall.” “I’m fine!”
4. 0:07:32 — Fired. “I could put up with a lot of bullshit, but this is the last straw… It’s sleeping in my throne… You’re fired.” Thea: “Are you gonna burn me?” He points out that she thought it inappropriate to put her feet where his feet have been, “but not to put your butt cheeks where my butt cheeks have been.” Thea: “Oh, uh, I put a towel down first.”
5. 0:08:26 — The clipboard. “Hand in your clipboard.” She hands it over, but points out that she has put together a match “super, like, butt cheek impression good… some seasons just cup your butt cheeks nicely.” He: “I don’t need to hear you talk about butt cheeks anymore.”
6. 0:09:07 — Probation. He grants a probationary period: this one deathmatch to prove herself. If she fails, “not only will I fire you, I will destroy you.” Thea: “Do I get severance?” “Something will be severed, yes.” She puts her severance on the line.
7. 0:09:29 Thea says she brought back two fighters because last time he thought, “that was fucking awesome, Thea.” He never said it, but she “read your mind, even though I can’t read minds.” He: “I would like to do anything that involves you no longer speaking to me.” She needs to say their names to pull them through the portal, so he lets her speak, “just not to me.” She turns to face the wall.
8. 0:10:06 — The champions. Thea claps, and the wall fades away in pink glitter dust: “I bring you Ragu versus Teddy!”
9. 0:10:29 — Teddy Oso returns. The Lord of Fate notes that the count “was up to 12,000 zombies last time.” Teddy: “we’re like in the 30,000 range at this point.” Thea will note it “for historical records” and update his website profile “on the Dread Fortress Void web.”
10. 0:10:58 Asked how anyone kills 30,000 zombies: “Sometimes you go one at a time, because you want to… savor the moment. And sometimes you just like grenade, just thump. You take like 30 of them out at once.” The Lord of Fate: “a nice way to keep it fresh.” Thea: “Fresh, because they’re not fresh, because they’re zombies.”
11. 0:11:35 — Ragu returns. Thea presents him Vanna White style, with jazz hands: “Ragu, Ragu, Ragu.” He is back “from the fight last time.” She admits she didn’t ask permission “before just sucking you through the portal.” Ragu: “my legs are ready. Ragu is back.” A whispering bit follows (“Ragu, aka… Yeah.” “Is yeah your nickname?”). Thea: “It’s part of the test. It’s creepy.” Ragu: “This ain’t loud enough.”

The arena — the rings of the gas giant

12. 0:12:47 Thea claps again and the Dread Fortress fades away. They stand on rocky ground in open space, “literal space”: “the vast void now becomes greater.” Infinite stars fill the sky, and a giant purple gaseous planet roars nearby, its thunderous storms audible. The battle takes place on its orange rings, “the meteorite’s ring.” Thea: “I brought you here because I thought the two of you were out of this world.” Ragu boos.
13. 0:13:37 — The retcon. Caustic Phoenix, “as a DM,” declares that the audience goes wild laughing at Thea’s joke. Mudcat, “as the other DM,” retcons all of that. In revenge, Thea gives both champions disadvantage on initiative “because fuck you both for not laughing at my good joke.” Teddy: “You did not instruct when laughter should begin.” Thea: “everything Thea says is gold.”
14. 0:15:09 Ragu: “Pimp smack your ass, bitch.” He rolls a 2, so Teddy goes first. Teddy: “Praise me! Adore me!”
15. 0:15:33 — The crowd. The Acolytes scream “Teddy, Teddy,” rip off their shirts and spill blue slushies. The concession stands have started selling Teddy Oso shotguns, and the Acolytes are firing them wildly into the air.

Round 1

16. 0:16:08 Teddy starts “calm.” He leans onto one hip (“the Cole’s model pose,” says Thea) and tosses his axe “all gentle-like, but with a lot of force behind it” with a grunt. Ragu: “constipated.” Ragu defends with a natural 20. Teddy claims he did it on purpose: now they both have 18 fighting spirit, “an even playing field.”
17. 0:18:38 Teddy flips his shotgun in the air like a drum major, catches it and lets one round go. Thea: “Whenever I think of immense violence, I always think of drum majors.” The shotgun goes “boom” (a “casual shotgun”). It hits Ragu in the chest. He starts floating away into space.
18. 0:20:03 Thea offers him a rope to tether himself to a rock. He refuses: “I just found a way to get back. With my gravity power. That’s my weight.” The Lord of Fate: “I’m going to have to use that. I’m not fat. I have gravity power.”
19. 0:20:56 Ragu: “You see these chucks in my hand?… I’m going to pull the Kakarot and I’m going to hit you really hard.” The nunchucks hit Teddy on the forehead. Teddy: “I never, never flinch. Never close my eyes… Cause I’m tough.” He takes the hit with a dead stare.
20. 0:22:22 — The knee. Ragu notices a bandage on Teddy’s right knee and hits it: “I’m not sure if he took an arrow to the knee, but we’re going to find out if it’s super effective.” It hits.
21. 0:23:26 — The zombie bite. Thea asks why the knee was already hurt. Teddy: “Because I got bit by a zombie.” He isn’t turning: “Every time I kill a zombie, I eat a tiny little piece of it, so eventually I just built up an immunity.” He eats it raw (“If you cook it, it’s not good”). The Lord of Fate asks whether he gets kuru. Teddy doesn’t know: “I seem to be okay.” Collectively he has eaten “like 40 or 50 people” in tiny chunks: “the thumb muscle or like a butt cheek or like a little shoulder.” Thea: “Because butt cheeks are very important.” Teddy: “What I do with my own time is my own business… Kiss and tell.” Thea takes notes by writing on her hand, since the Lord of Fate has her clipboard.
22. 0:25:52 Ragu’s power-up: “since you feel like you’re not a zombie, I’m gonna expose your weakness… get that little tape off of your leg and I’m gonna beat the zombie back in you.” Teddy sidesteps with a casual side lunge and returns to his spot. The Lord of Fate: “you look like you belong in like the GQ’s most handsome men… especially with the pose.” Teddy: “Yeah, I got more.” Thea faints.

Chaos event 1 — the metal chair, and the Impala (0:28:08)

23. “The Acolytes are demanding blood this week.” “Ice cream.” “We could probably do both.” Thea: “Chaos!”
24. 0:28:27 Thea narrates: “From high above, a glint catches your eye. Is it a shiny bird, a launched trash can, a silver 1998 Chevy Impala with Michigan license plates? No, it’s a metal chair hurling at both of you.” Teddy dodges; Ragu is hit. Ragu: “Why do I get hit by big cars?… That f***ing hurts.”
25. 0:29:33 Thea: if he wins, he can have the 1998 Chevy Impala. “I don’t want that s***.” Then he reconsiders, because “that car is metal instead of plastic,” and apologizes for his outburst. “You have no choice. I’m already in the car.” “Who gave him the keys?” “I forgot to lock it.” Ragu: “Look at this 8-track.”

Round 2 — the car fight

26. 0:30:29 Teddy (“big muscles… don’t scare me”) runs at Ragu. He steps on Ragu’s arm and grabs “that long, luscious blonde hair” to slam his face into his knee. Ragu: “my hair’s not blonde. This is ultra silver.” Ragu defends with a natural 20: “you got bit by a zombie, you have no strength in that knee.” From inside the car: “Make my millennium.” Hiding in the Impala impedes Teddy’s attacks.
27. 0:32:00 Teddy reaches over to rip the car door off. Ragu: “Don’t you touch my car.” It fails. Thea: “Chevy Impalas were built to last… it stays on its hinges.” “It’s a small fortress.” Thea: “Teddy’s just jealous because Teddy rides a motorcycle.” Teddy: “I have better gas mileage.”
28. 0:33:17 — Teddy’s girlfriends. He rides around picking up “chicks”: Susie and Betty. “They go to another school. They’re too cool to hang out with you.” There are two of them, one zombie and one not, “usually about 50% of the group.” “Not all zombies are violent. Some just want to be loved.” Eventually he has to shoot them “because they start smelling.” Thea: “I promise to bathe very often, Lord of Fate.” He: “I think I should adopt a firmer hand with the hygiene here at the Dread Fortress.” Thea goes off to find deodorant.
29. 0:34:48 Ragu: “Since you want to put your hands on my Impala, I’m going to run you over with it.” The roll is a tie (“How do you have the same power as my car?” “Because I pay attention.” “your bill’s past due on the attention bill”), and both take a fatigue.
30. 0:35:54 Teddy: “I have really long legs.” Ragu: “I have long doors.” He backs up and charges full speed to smack Teddy with the door. Teddy defends with a natural 20: one big axe swing as the car passes leaves a giant gash down the door. “Your insurance is not gonna like it.” Ragu: “Me no like.” The Lord of Fate: “This fight has gone nowhere so far” (17–17).

Round 3 — the nipple

31. 0:37:53 Teddy pulls Ragu out of the car by his hair. It smells nice, “like some herbal essence.” Natural 20 on the attack. Teddy taunts him: “You’re gonna roll better, Mr. Pizza Sauce.” Ragu: “Not cool.” He floats off again; Thea tells him to use his gravity force. Ragu: “He stole my car!” The Lord of Fate: it wasn’t his car to begin with. “My car is stolen. I’m gonna get you!” Thea: “Avenge the car!”
32. 0:39:49 Teddy backflips over Ragu and fakes landing on his groin (“on his spaghetti and meatballs,” Thea), “just scare tactic.” Then he brings the axe down into the middle of Ragu’s chest. Ragu sobs: “It’s my chest! You know how long… it took me to get this type of chest!” Teddy: “that sexy chest is gonna have a big ol’ scar.” Ragu: “Right in the areola.” Teddy picks up the severed nipple and puts it in his pocket. Thea: “Is that your pepperoni snack for later?” The Lord of Fate: “He does eat people… Teddy slices off a piece of your chest salami.”
33. 0:41:57 Ragu fixes spikes to the end of his nunchucks, revs them up and throws one into Teddy “right in your belly button.” It hits and Teddy bleeds (a bleed status).
34. 0:43:40 He recalls the nunchucks (“you stupid son of a biscuit-eating bulldog”; Thea: “They have recall capabilities”) to smack Teddy in the face on the way back. It misses. The spike stays behind in the car, and he presses a button on the nunchucks to explode it, scattering nails everywhere (“a grenade of sorts”). That misses too. Teddy’s advice: “just try rolling higher numbers… I’m just repeating the zeitgeist.” Thea writes “zeitgeist” down to look up later.

Chaos event 2 — the chinchilla (0:45:46)

35. Thea rolls a natural 20 for the end of round (“It’s all natural, baby!… No inflated numbers here!”). She petitions to keep her job because of it. The Lord of Fate: “it’ll go into the review.” Thea: “Got it, so yes.”
36. 0:46:22 “Shivering, a tiny chinchilla approaches both of you. Its sad big eyes look up at you desperately begging for warmth… roll to snuggle or else your chinchilla gets frozen.” Teddy keeps his warm in his jacket pocket with a sweat rag. It is his now. Ragu fails: “You’ve lost so much blood… no body heat. Your chinchilla slowly turns into a tiny ice cube.” Wordplay follows: chilly chinchillas chillin’, “they’re also Chilean,” “Everyone knows chinchillas are from Chile.” Thea has “watched National Geographic plenty of times.”

Round 4 — the hairy nipple

37. 0:48:19 Teddy’s “famous move”: a golf-swing uppercut to the face with the flipped gun. It misses: “Weave, motherfucker. Weave.” Teddy then treats his bleeding belly button.
38. 0:49:36 Ragu complains: “You have been bullying me… he has cut the car… he has more health than me.” He combines his two nunchucks into one for a ranged attack “right in your face.” It hits: “this is for my areola.” Chat: “For the nipples!”
39. 0:50:36 Thea: “is the chinchilla in the same pocket as the nipple? …it’s gonna be covered in hair.” Ragu mugs Teddy and snatches his areola back. He then stitches it back on to heal: “Why is my areola so hairy?” Thea: “your chest isn’t hairy at all. It’s just your one nipple now.” He tries to shave it with a blade, and the Lord of Fate suggests he accidentally cuts it off again.
40. 0:52:15 — The drink. Thea answers chat: “it’s not called a furry nipple, it’s a fuzzy navel. And there’s a slippery nipple.” The Lord of Fate suggests a “hairy nipple” is a new drink. Thea asks whether they’ll offer it in the concessions. Teddy: “Hairy nipple was my uncle.” Thea asks: “Uncle Nipple or Uncle Furry?” “Uncle Nipple. He rolls better off the tongue.” Everyone chants “nipple.” Thea tricks the Lord of Fate into saying it (“I don’t want to say nipple.” “Ah, you said it! We win!”).

Round 5 — the Box of Chaos (0:53:34)

41. The Lord of Fate tries to “shake things up” (“With the hairy nipple?” “No, I’m trying to do a thing here.” “This is not looking good for you on the review”). “Box of chaos!” Thea: “Like a shooting star landing on the ground, we see a beautiful pink and yellow chest with flames bursting out of it. A small, creepy little hand.” A shadowy figure creeps out of the lid. Each champion can sacrifice an action to trade for a magical item.
42. 0:55:56 The box rumbles and pink and yellow fire shoots into space. “That black hand… presents to you a blue slushie. How the box got a slushie machine, we’ll never know, but the cold sweet nectar hits your lips and all your problems melt away. That’ll also be $14.97.” It clears one fatigue; Teddy drinks it.
43. 0:56:59 Teddy pulls out a vial of zombie blood, drenches his axe with it and takes a swig (a status effect). The attack misses: Ragu “moved far away because I didn’t like the sound of that.”
44. 0:57:57 — Ragu’s trade: the chinchilla hairs. The shadowy figure is still “admiring the picture of Teddy’s wife.” Ragu offers “these chinchilla hairs that came from my areola” and tells the whole story. The figure wants documentation and calls Thea over as “the resident chinchilla hair expert.” Thea: “You can see from the white hairs and how they split at the ends. That’s a clear, true Chilean chinchilla.” At auction, “you could probably get three chinchillas for that.”
45. 1:00:06 Ragu receives the Shield of the Golden King: “Behind its golden gleam, your mettle increases by plus one… on a nat one defense roll, the shield is destroyed.” The Lord of Fate calls him “Ragdewy.”
46. 1:00:34 Ragu tries to hit Teddy in the face with the shield. It is shut down; Thea: “shields are typically more defense items.” He says that was just to get close, then tries a ranged nunchuck hit, which also misses. Thea coaches him: “You need to say your name. You need to empower yourself. Ragu. Ragu. Ragu.” Ragu: “I’m going to hurt you now.” Teddy: “At some point, you’ll get around to it, I’m sure.”
47. 1:02:00 Thea: “It’s a little cold in space. Can we take like a 10-minute break?” The Lord of Fate goes to “see about getting one of those hairy nipples.” (The break is cut from the mp3.)

Round 6 — heroic surges

49. 1:02:18 “14-14. We are all tied up here in space on this rocky asteroid floating in the rings of a gaseous giant.”
50. 1:02:57 Teddy’s heroic surge: “I’m gonna open up a little book. I’m gonna learn all kinds of things… I learned how to do an extra action.” He gains a permanent third action per turn.
51. 1:03:30 He kicks “Mr. Marinara” in the chest to knock him down (“Because I have ideas”), and it hits. He follows with a jump into the air and a cannonball to the face. Thea is impressed he carries a cannonball around; he means the knees-grabbed jump. It hits: “I’m the best.” Thea: “You went for the chest first, then the nipple, and then the face.” Teddy: “It’s all the zombie fighting. I learned how to be specific.”
52. 1:05:32 Ragu answers with his own heroic surge, increasing his power-ups (“by three… by five… I don’t even know my own math anymore. I just got cannonballed”).
53. 1:06:10 With his “melodic voice,” he makes “the most annoying sound in the world” as a status attack. Teddy defends with a natural 20 and laughs awfully over it. Ragu: “it seems like chewing on fruit snacks in his ear doesn’t help out.”
54. 1:07:24 His surged attack (“three times the damage”) ties, and both reach two fatigues. “Every time I get a high roll, this mofo matches it.” Teddy: “you could sit and cry.” Ragu: “you forgot about my shield.” He tries to smash Teddy’s big toe to make him fall. It misses (“0 for 3”). Teddy: “I’m not even trying.”
55. 1:09:42 Thea’s pep talk: “There’s no one who has prettier locks than you, no one that has a prettier stash than you, and you at least have one good areola left in you… If you go down now, you’re going to lose both your nipples.” “That was my life.” “And therefore also your nipples. Priorities.”

Chaos event 3 — the children (1:10:44)

56. “Suddenly from the stands, you both hear a group of children scream out, ‘you dress like me ma, you don’t have enough nipples.’ A small horde of children hurl insults… painfully accurate and hurtful observations categorize them quite clearly as big butt heads.” Thea: “Your shotgun is compensating for something.” Both champions resist the psychic damage. Ragu: “That’s why your Meemaw nipples are hairy.” Teddy: “I took all the kids off.” “Fuck you kids.” Thea: “We’re very mature here.”
57. 1:12:15 “Round seven… Holy shit… We are out of cards.” Thea: “if you don’t murder each other soon, then Thea gets to murder both of you.”

Round 7 — the shield shatters

58. 1:12:41 Teddy runs in with his axe spinning like a drummer’s stick and goes for the other nipple: a powered-up “nipple slicer.” Ragu rolls a natural 1 on defense. The hit lands, the Shield of the Golden King shatters “into a tiny million pieces”, and Thea will clean it up. Teddy: “I don’t even have to roll good.”
59. 1:14:20 Teddy very slowly reloads his shotgun, making a spectacle of it. He takes a little piece off the nipple and tosses it aside, then delivers a powered-up shotgun blast to the face. “I am invincible.” Fighting spirit stands at 4 to 15.
60. 1:15:19 Ragu: “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s next.” Thea: “Does Ragu have an afterlife that he’s planning on?” Teddy: “Rosebud.”
61. 1:15:49 Teddy puts the shotgun away and goes for a punt to the crotch, a status effect he names “Soprano” (“it just keeps climbing up… into your belly”). Ragu defends with a 20: “I’m not dead yet.” Thea: “Rosebud will not be your final word!”
62. 1:16:54 Ragu applies regeneration/siphon to steal back whatever he hits for (“We make up the rules. It’s fine”). He attacks three times and misses all three. “I’m just gonna keep attacking until I get something.” Asked what it looks like: “My fate is near. The only thing that’s colorful is my boots. So let’s go out with a style.” Thea: “Your boots do look styling.”

Round 8 — the Impala strikes back

63. 1:19:10 “We don’t have a card for this.” Teddy starts feeling bad, “like I’m just taking advantage of the poor dude.” He mouths “I’m so sorry” and brings his gun butt down on the back of Ragu’s bowed head. Natural 1, and Teddy hurts himself instead.
64. 1:20:05 He goes for the golf swing again, “No sympathy.” It’s a tie at 4–4. “Are you both just suddenly getting real shy?” Both now have four fatigues: “a tie kills you both,” and a nat 20 will kill Ragu.
65. 1:21:11 Teddy runs to the Impala, gets in and runs Ragu over with it. “Dirty 20!” It hits: “Teddy running him over with the car… As you get hit by your own car…”
66. 1:21:49 Ragu, “in my last stand,” lands two hits and misses one. Teddy: “I didn’t hit you at this point. Just standing there with my eyes closed.”

Round 9 — the roundhouse

67. 1:22:40 “This is the furthest we’ve gone this season.” Thea: “No one has had this level of endurance.” Ragu is at 3 fighting spirit.
68. 1:23:00 Teddy jumps, fakes a kick, then lands a real roundhouse to the face, applying a bloody face status. He lands and immediately spins into another. Ragu: “It’s the GG’s.”
69. 1:24:02 — The kill (Caustic Phoenix). “In that moment slow motion does indeed happen as it begins to spin, your leg coming in for that second kick. It hits in the jaw, dislodging that gorgeous manscaped face. Ragu completely cracking it off its hinges. The crowd also in slow motion… Blue slushies spilling everywhere.” Asked what goes through his mind, Ragu: “It’s officially still a bitch though. You suck.” “A voice echoes from beyond the grave.”
70. 1:25:12 Ragu floats into orbit, his body freezing “just like the chinchilla that he failed to save earlier.” Ragu: “Yeah, I died to a fucking roadhouse kick. Tell my wife, Prego, I tried.” His tongue sticks out and freezes as he drifts into space.
71. 1:25:49 — Victory. “Teddy Oso, you are victorious, taking another life today! 30,001!” Thea: “Don’t I earn my job, Lord of Fate?” He: “We’re this far into the season. I really can’t afford to replace you right now. So it’s more of a logistics thing, but sure… Here’s your clipboard.”
72. 1:26:43 Thea grabs Teddy by the stomach and swings him around in a victory swirl. Teddy wins the Chevy Impala: “A brand new car!”
73. 1:27:12 — Sign-off. The Lord of Fate stands flaring his white wings: “Tonight has been filled with a lot of blood, a lot of chaos, and one Chevy Impala.” Teddy: “Mostly Ragu’s blood.” He announces that the season of Deathmatches will close next week with “the very first D20 Deathmatch Royal Rumble. Four champions will enter the arena, but only one will leave.” “Welcome and goodnight to D20 Deathmatch!”

Full Dried Blood notes (click to expand)

Opens with “He’s naked! He’s naked!” (unclear what this refers to) and “welcome back to another episode of Dried Blood!”

In-character (Dried Blood, canon in the Season of Fate framing):

• 1:31:26 Ragu: “I knew I was going to die. The second, my second areola got yupped off.” He jokes about infection, “two green areolas,” and the right one “still had the chinchilla hair on it.” Thea: “Part chinchilla now… only like 0.3%.” The Lord of Fate muses about nipple transplants, “replace his nipples with chinchilla nipples. Really tiny ones.”
• 1:33:34 Teddy: “I read this thing called The Secret… you have to believe it, and then it will happen… Last time it was sad, to an old lady. This time, you have to step it up.” Ragu: “That was from a Naruto book. He said, believe it.”
• 1:34:20 Teddy’s plans for the Impala: paint it “all funky colors,” put big TVs in it, and get Xzibit to “pimp your ride.” He’ll add fuzzy dice and “dry out those nipples and hang them on there too.”
• 1:34:52 Thea warns that the Michigan plates won’t work unless he registers it, and he must pay taxes and licensing. The Lord of Fate: “Why do you think we were giving it away?” Thea: “It was cheaper than paying to impound it.… This is why we don’t deal with the consequences… you pass them along to someone else.”
• 1:36:08 Teddy’s lesson for the Acolytes: “don’t go to school. Just pick up a trade. I took up zombie fighting and look at me now.” He has a car and no college debt. Thea: “one girlfriend and one zombie girlfriend… which is good because your wife is with Ragu.” The Lord of Fate: “[He did/didn’t] have her picture. She is a zombie.” Teddy: “I’m going to talk about this later.” Thea: “That’s the after-after fight.” The Lord of Fate: “Resurrect him just to kill him again.”
• 1:36:56 Ragu’s lesson: “Protect your areolas, man… I need shields… I even had a shield and I lost it… I need to go and resurrect them.” Thea: “a private story for Ragu, his own mini-adventure to find his own areolas.” Ragu: “Sounds like a one-shot to me. Diary of an areola-is-less.”

Out-of-character (creator notes):

• 1:29:06 Mudcat: this was the last regular-season match of the season, before the first Royal Rumble next week.
• Caustic Phoenix on the dice: many nat 20s and a few nat 1s; strong first half, low rolls in the second.
• Teddy took it slow in the first half so he wouldn’t “finish this whole thing before the break.” Caustic Phoenix: the pose belongs “in a Target advertisement.”
• Mudcat: “You didn’t die to a pun this time” (refers to Teddy’s previous outing).
• 1:37:38 Mudcat: “We’ll see you all on the final episode of D20 Deathmatch.”