CaD: 616 Black Panther (Darthjhawk) vs Yuma Kuga (Maestromage)

Kuga Yuma, Tamakoma-2's Ace

"Even though my chances of winning are slim, I still can't run away."

Before I get started, I just want to clarify exactly what version of Yuma I'm using (for the 0.2 people who have actually read World Trigger). In this fight Yuma will not have his black trigger, nor will he have access to his normal combat trion body. Instead he will only have his base trion body though he will still have access to all of his usual B-Rank gear. The reason for this is simply just so that T'Challa can actually hurt Yuma without Darth having to rely on using high end feats and such. I'd also like to apologise both to the voters and to Darth for changing the matchup partway through the match but I simply thought that this would be a more interesting matchup to debate. Also given that World Trigger is ongoing, I think it's fair to say no feats after Chapter 185 for Yuma (though this match will probably end before the next chapters come out). With that said, let's start my opener (again).

World Trigger Explanations

Before I can get into showing Yuma's feats however, I should probably briefly explain the power system in World Trigger, as I doubt anyone here has read it. Characters in World Trigger fight using triggers, which are alien tech powered by the Trion of the user (the Chakra or Ki of the power system). Unlike other Shounen series, the "powers" of WT characters is entirely through their gear, their triggers. When characters fight they also use a Trion body, which is significantly more durable than a normal body and impervious to almost all human weapons, hence why Yuma doesn't have it here. Regarding what I said about Yuma's base trion body, the TLDR is that Yuma has a trion body instead of a normal human body, except it's notably weaker but has a small healing factor instead.The other thing thing to talk about would be Border, which is the organisation that Yuma (alongside the other main characters) is a part of. I will mention it later on so just bear that in mind. (Note: when I post multiple pages at once they'll be ordered right to left to keep the original panel flow of the manga)

The White Nightmare I - Gear

The first thing to talk about would be Yuma's gear as it will be very important for him in this fight.

The above is Yuma's trigger set, taken from the Databooks. The main trigger and sub trigger simply indicates which triggers he has available in each hand (which means yes, he can only have 2 triggers activated at any one time).

Scorpion is his main attacking trigger, it's basically an energy sword made from Trion that can alter it's shape as well as come out of various places in Yuma's body. In terms of cutting power, Scorpion is pretty powerful given its ability to tear through Trion bodies, e.g:

Yuma literally slicing trion bodies in half. Based on this, he shouldn't really struggle to hurt T'Challa through the vibranium suit, especially as it is somewhat vulnerable to slashing damage to my knowledge.

Yuma's other main trigger ability would be Grasshopper.

Grasshopper allows Yuma to place a small blue platform anywhere he chooses (on objects, mid-air) and anything that steps on it will be accelerated at high speeds (each platform is single use only). Yuma uses Grasshopper to enhance his effective combat speed at times, alongside other various situational uses. I'll go into more detail on how Yuma uses his gear later.

The other two triggers aren't hugely important. Shield is exactly what it sounds like, a spawnable shield used to block attacks (and it's pretty durable) but the reason it's not very important here is just that Yuma almost never actually uses his shield in melee combat (though it could be used to block any ranged attacks T'Challa may employ). Lastly, Bagworm is simply a cloak used make you invisible to radar so he has no reason to use it here.

The White Nightmare II - Physical Stats

Here I'm going to briefly go over Yuma's stats, just to show that he can compete with T'Challa.

Now, Yuma isn't a fighter who relies on his physicals in fights (and in general WT fights are almost never about physicals) but Yuma still has the feats to suggest he won't be overpowered by T'Challa at the very least. As an example, Yuma has shown the ability to block hits from Marmods, who are fairly strong:

In the above example we see a Marmod smash Osamu clean through a wall pretty easily, so given Yuma's performance against this same Marmod, he should have no problems holding his own against T'Challa in strength.

Now Yuma doesn't really have much in the way of durability feats in this form, though even if he did I'd say he probably can't tank T'Challa's gear anyways. That said, he does have a healing factor as I mentioned earlier:

Here Yuma is lightly damaged by getting hit by a card hard enough to completely dent the front of it, and then quickly heals the damage. Now this may not be enough to show that Yuma can tank physical blows from T'Challa, but at the very least it displays that light injuries he sustains will be healed quickly.

The last thing to talk about would be speed. World Trigger has no shortage of bullet timing feats, but the clearest one to demonstrate Yuma's speed would probably be this one from Hyuse:

This is a reaction speed feat for Hyuse which involves him reacting to and blocking multiple bullets at once (at close range) despite not knowing that they could turn. Though this doesn't translate directly to combat speed, it still speaks greatly for his operational speed. As for how Yuma scales to Hyuse, they are currently portrayed as nigh equals, and when they had a sparring match Yuma won 12 rounds to 8.

If you want something involving more movement (given you made a statement about reaction speed not always transferring to combat) then I present the following:In

In the above feat, Yuma is fast enough to move his whole body out of the way of a sniper shot whilst moving towards said sniper at high speed. This should be better than the feat you posted for Karnak given it was a faster bullet and that Yuma moved a greater distance, and as such should be enough to demonstrate that Yuma can hold his own against the Black Panther in combat.

The White Nightmare III - Combat Skill

The first two sections of this opener were me setting up Yuma's abilities, but this is the section where I'm going to show how he wins.

Contrary to what I originally planned however, I'm not actually going to show skill feats for Yuma, at least not in the traditional sense. Though Yuma is definitely a skilled fighter and swordsman, I decided I would focus less on technical skill (fodder wrecking feats and the like), and instead focus more on exactly how Yuma demonstrates his skill in combat in his fights.

I'll preface this by saying that Yuma is a very talented and experienced fighter. He was trained for six years by his Dad, and then after he died Yuma travelled around fighting more or less solos for another 3 years. As a result the Yuma we see now is an incredibly capable battle hardened fighter who rarely, if ever, is surprised or loses his cool.

The first thing I want to talk I want to talk about is Yuma's Tactical Intelligence. The feat I'll be using to demonstrate this will be his first fight against Midorikawa:

To explain the context behind this fight, Midorikawa publicly embarrassed Osamu (Yuma's friend and Captain) and so to get "payback" Yuma challenges him to a best of 10 match. However, despite that fact that he could have just beaten Midorikawa normally, Yuma takes extra precautions to ensure that he stomps him. Despite literally having just met Midorikawa, he correctly deduces information about his personality and uses it against him by intentionally throwing the first two rounds. Yuma explains his strategy in the next Chapter:

Yuma was able to accurately deduce details about Midorikawa's personality after meeting him and immediately came up with a plan to abuse said details in order for him to win. All of this and I haven't even mentioned that fact that Midorikawa is a prodigy and is very skilled himself or the fact that this was Yuma fairly early on in the series when he was still acclimating to Border's triggers (he didn't even have grasshopper yet). This doesn't necessarily mean he's going to use T'Challa's personality against him, but as Yoneya said, "His moves are quiet, matter-of-fact and Deadly. He simply finds the best way to kill his opponent". If Yuma picks up on anything in T'Challa's behaviour or fighting style that could be of use, he won't hesitate to immediately use it to his advantage.

Which brings me nicely to my second point for Yuma, where I'm going to highlight his Quick Thinking in battle. Now this may not seem like a hugely important thing, but the ability to almost instantly react to new information and changes in the battle could be the difference between winning and losing a fight. As it was for Yuma in his fight against Arafune:

This video shows the important part of the fight but I'll explain the context. Yuma is engaged in a melee fight against Arafune, someone who is touted as a master swordsman. However, Arafune is being backed up by one of his sniper teammates Hokari, making it harder for Yuma to fight. Then Hokari is attacked by a third part and has to run away. However, he decides to sacrifice himself to sniper Yuma (which explains why Yuma was tagged as he wasn't prepared to be sniped) and that's where the above video starts.

However, as I previously mentioned this is a feat of Yuma's Quick Thinking. The reason being that after he's sniped and takes notable damage, he instantaneously reacts by coming up with a strategy that utilises his own misfortune. He immediately places a grasshopper platform behind him as a feint to draw in Arafune, taking advantage of the fact that Arafune has reason to believe Yuma would want to retreat and also the fact that Arafune is familiar with Grasshopper and what it does. After feinting with Grasshopper he jumps over the platform and then off of the wall to take off Arafune's legs (which also shows great environmental awareness given that he was clearly aware of the wall behind him and how far away it was).

The point behind showing this feat is to demonstrate that Yuma is always ready to take advantage of any opening T'Challa may leave, even if that opening is T'Challa succeding.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, what may be the most useful thing for Yuma would be his Tactical Unpredictability. Yuma essentially has two abilities, Scorpion and Grasshopper, both with limited uses (though Scorpion is fairly useful). Depite his seemingly limited versatility and despite the fact that many others before him have used these same weapons, Yuma consistently displays the ability to surprise his opponents mid battle with some new situational usage of his triggers. And I have the perfect example to demonstrate exactly what I mean:

This feat is from Yuma's sparring match with Obishima. In this fight, Yuma completely blindside's Obishima with a creative usage of Scorpion. I won't bother explaining what he did as the scans explain it perfectly but this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, Yuma using his limited versatility in creative and unpredictable ways, allowing for him to beat opponents with relative ease. What makes this feat even crazier is how knowledgable these characters are on Yuma. Obishima herself is actually a fan of Yuma and has watched all of his matches, and on top of that will have a pretty good understanding of what Scorpion and Grasshopper can do due to her being an active border agent herself. And Despite her extensive knowledge on Yuma's abilities she still get's caught by his moves. She wasn't even aware of how exactly he did it until Yuba explained it to her. Plus, the same could be said for Yuba and Midorikawa, especially the latter given that he's basically Yuma's rival and has actually fought him several times at this point.

Yuma's creative unpreditability in combat is a big reason why he's so successful, and he aptitude for combat only makes it easier for him to pull off crazy moves on the fly. And I'd like to point out that something like the above isn't rare for Yuma at all. It's very common to see him using new situational techniques in his matches, and in a recent chapter Obishima herself (and Yuba by implication) admits that it's very likely that Yuma will have some new move up his sleeve in their upcoming match (which happens a day after the above fight). It's entirely possible that Yuma thought up this move on the fly (the context being that Yuma owed Yuba and Yuba wouldn't let him leave without showing off a new move) but I won't push that very hard.

Yuma's unpredictability will be the Panther's biggest obstacle to overcome in this fight, given the fact that characters with vastly more knowledge on Yuma and his capabilities have still been caught unawares by his strategies.

Initial Counters

I just wanted to briefly go over a few things you mentioned in your post to show how Yuma could deal with them.

First of all regarding T'challa's combat agility, I don't see Yuma struggling to deal with this in the slightest. The main reason being that he should be able to match if not surpass the Panther's agility by utilising Grasshopper. This ability greatly improves Yuma's agility, and actually allows for aerial mobility (given that they can spawn midair), which is something T'Challa himself does not have (to my knowledge). It also allows him to rapidly change direction at a moments notice, which could actually leave T'Challa struggling to keep up. As an example:

Despite Tatsumi being able to keep up with Yuma's normal movements, he is surprised by Yuma's sudden direction change and is no longer able to keep up. This was probably due in part to the fact that this was Yuma's first time using Grasshopper in a match and as such Tatsumi had no knowledge, but T'Challa is in a similar situation here so the comparison remains relevant. Not to mention the fact that Yuma regurlarly spars with (and beats) Midorikawa, the person who taught him Grasshopper in the first place.

The other thing I thought I should tackle was T'Challa's combat stealth. Now this one is a little harder to deal with as World Trigger as a series doesn't have many real stealth feats. That said, Yuma is hardly unaccustomed to putting on his bagworm and sneak attacking his opponents. There have been many times when Yuma has snuck in during the chaos of a battle to take someone out, and it's also worth noting that he did get a perfect score in Border's stealth training, which very clearly implies that he's experienced in stealth to some degree (which makes sense given his history). The other thing I have to say about this is that I'd simply like to question how often T'Challa uses his stealth like that. I'm sure it's in character for him to use stealth, but I doubt that He goes into every fight with the intent to abuse his stealth as much as he did against Danny there. That and I would argue that Yuma has more environmental awareness than a bloodlusted Danny.

Conclusion

Overall. Yuma has the stats to hang with T'Challa, and on top of that he has the Intelligence, the Quick Thinking and the Unpredictability to allow him to overcome The Black Panther in this fight.

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