CaD: Deathstroke vs Zealot

God, I'm loving this debate so far.

@The Great CIB

Post 02 // Counters and Rebuttals

2.1 // Physicals

I shall begin my rebuttal post by first defending my initial strength feats before supplementing additional ones. In the case of Zealot and Maul, the strength scaling is unambiguous in my opinion. Maul and Warblade were roughhousing and decided to pick on her, and she one-shot Reno who ate a double-digit ton punch from the same version of Maul that put Zannah in a lock. Zannah was only yelling at Maul to release her because she heard enemies outside the building and was tired of their playing, not because he was overpowering her or anything of the sort.

The second she got serious she folded him with a kick to the gut and broke free of his hold. I'm not sure how this could be interpreted in any other way than her individual supremacy to the duo. Saying that it's not a strength showing is pretty dumb since these are legitimate striking feats, and the only reservation someone should have about the authenticity of the showing should concern me stating that Zannah "directly overpowered" Maul.

What I mean by that is, you stated that Zannah broke out of his hold because she kicked him in the abdomen first which loosened his grip. The panel doesn't make any distinction between whether or not she kicked him first and his arms opened as a result, or if she broke out of his grips while kicking him at the same time. So I would say the latter is more plausible simply because the type of hold Maul put her in. It was a chokehold, a time-tested grappling restraint that diminishes any physical leverage the victim has. How I know Zealot broke out of hold before kicking (or at the same time) is the type of kick Zealot used. It is a side kick. She wouldn't have been able to strike him in the gut with a side kick anywhere above his shins in the position she was held to, with her back against his chest and all. So she broke out of his chokehold and kicked him in the gut after, meaning she directly overpowered him and then grounded him with a single hit.

In summation, your first debunk was a failure for two reasons:

• You apparently didn't realize that Zealot was distracted while Maul was strangling her, due to her super hearing alerting her of enemies outside (not sure how you missed that because they literally raided them the next page). I say that because you pointed out that Zannah was shouting for Jeremy to release her as if she was crying uncle. When in reality, she was just getting tired of his games. She even warned him against thinking combat was a game and said there's no second chance in war the panel before... Zannah swiftly dispatched Maul the moment she got serious. Saying the showing is "unquantifiable and misinterpreted" was a deadly mistake; we only get 3 posts in this debate and you're not coming back from that.

• You proved that you don't understand the anatomy of grappling holds or the body's limitation when in certain positions. This is reason enough for me to disregard your opinion on future related topics in this debate. Seriously, doing research isn't hard when you have the entire internet at your disposal.

Regardless, if one-shotting Reno, who has also tanked point-blank building busting explosions along with Zealot, (and also tanked a blow from Jeremy in stronger forms) isn't enough evidence to show that she's superior to that version of Jeremy on top of her own feat against him, I do indeed have other instances that showcase Zealot's strength. Namely cratering a steel wall by backhanding someone into it while they were dozens of meters away, and beating up Black Racers in the same issue they were shown hurting Maul. Then there's also her infamous fight with Midnighter, which I generally try to avoid using at all because of how high end it is in comparison to her other feats. However that's not an invitation for you to use high ends, since I think Zealot only lasted as long as she did because Midnighter likes to drag out fights, and because she is far more skilled than him and also has absurdly high damage soak and pain tolerance.

Overall I believe she holds a strength advantage to Deathstroke, and the fact that you conceded a technical skill advantage really nullifies your attempts to compensate for it by talking about footing and balance... because those are two of the most salient aspects of technical martial skill anyway.

With that out of the way; I would like to transition into speed, durability, and endurance. These are also areas I was left unconvinced of Deathstroke's superiority. How bold of you to claim that Deathstroke is "far above" Zealot when the best raw feat you posted was deflecting assault rifle shots in a very unclear manner in Deathstroke (2014) #11. (I say that because we don't see any actual bullets being deflected or cut in half, nor is there any onomatopoeia or typical SFX at all. But it's implied that's what happened with Slade swiping his sword while they were shooting at him). The turrent feat seemed like he ducked before the guy actually started firing the bullets, and even if that's not the case it's hard to tell. Whereas with Zannah's minigun feat, the panel transition and afterimages in that showing are very in-your-face about the fact Zannah leaped off her moving motorcycle after the minigun started spraying bullets that chewed up her bike, proving they were aimed at her and going to hit her if she hadn't moved.

Anyway, the scaling to Katana is the only thing that would put Slade in league with Zealot speed-wise, based on your post and the little research I did on her. It's impressive that he reacted to her when his back was turned if I take your comments about Katana's speed at face-value. But Zealot has better scaling. She has been able to fight Nemesis to a standstill on multiple occasions with different context and scenarios, demonstrating a consistent level of equality between the two in both barehanded combat and bladed confrontations. An excellent example would be their emotionally charged skirmish at the beginning of Wildstorm: Revelations #5

• https://imgur.com/a/yp89Tgb

On top of that lies Charis' own statement that Zealot is the greatest warrior the Coda sisterhood has ever produced apart from her explicitly because she "fights dirty".

This leads me to believe that Charis thinks she is superior to Zannah if she uses underhanded tactics, but that they would be evenly matched in a fair fight. The reason all of this is impressive is because Charis has an abundance of extremely casual bullet timing feats, but the deal-breaker is that she can predict attacks and movements by sensing emotions via her empathy, a subset power of telepathy.This naturally gives her a reactionary and preemptive movement edge over anyone she fights, a fact that was boldly expressed in Wildcats: Nemesis #1 -

She reacted to Dagger-Bikes sneaking up on her while completely invisible both visually and to the most advanced forms of detection... add that to her natural speed that let's her effortlessly react to and erect her shields before a point blank automatic machine gun fire could reach her.

Charis was actively using her ability in this issue, which also included her crossing blades on equal footing with Zannah, with the blades also matching perfectly - a detail that will become important later.

Issue #3 exhibits it even more plainly, when they fought unarmed combat and Charis even mentions that she was sensing her feelings while taunting her and getting into her head as they beat each other about. A dirty tactic that Zannah was still able to fight through. Towards the end, Zannah actually tackled her down and mounted her with the intent to kill, so she was evidently about to win if it wasn't for a Daemonite attack that interrupted them in the arena:

• https://imgur.com/a/RHJO1TP

In terms of speed, if Zealot can consistently match an automatic high-caliber machine gun bullet timer who can predict movements ahead, but is also equally as skilled as Zealot herself in technical martial arts and swordplay (which is the key difference between your scaling to Cass and mine to Charis), what makes you think Deathstroke even close to being "far above" when you factor in the skill and experience disparity between Deathstroke and Zealot themselves? Charis is one of the most skilled and reputed Warrior of the Coda, she has thousands of years of combat experience just like Zealot, and she eats, sleeps and breathes battle and uses combat as an official language and as the seasoning of her food... The fact that Zealot is fast enough and skilled enough to keep up with her when she's using her empathy completely shuts down any avenue that you can take for a speed advantage. Plus, even if Deathstroke WAS faster, he can't hope to beat her in skill, something that shrinks the gap.

2.2 // Skill

Dreamwar was a pretty nonsense crossover, and it's straight up non-canon for DC (while it is for Wildstorm). However, among the ridiculous things that you mentioned that transpired in that comic was the fact Batman was able to last as long as he did against Zealot, when she should normally take him out much quicker. Anyway, the Teen Titan showing isn't above Zealot's capability to replicate, not by a long shot. In fact she has something even better... a feat I already stated I was going to bring up: Zealot absolutely thrashing a score of Coda Sisterhood Assassins.

All of them have millennia of combat experience, many where trained by Zealot herslef (thus are very skilled) and every Coda has Kherubim blood making them impressively superhuman in addition to the fact they are skilled with any type of weapon and can kill without weapons at all if necessary.

Groups of top tier assassins slaughtered pretty mercilessly by Zealot, who said it only took her a few seconds longer than she expected after the massacre was over.

2.3 // Battle of the Blades

I'm not readily convinced that Slade's Promethium sword cutting in half Aquaman's trident is an admissible counter against Kusar blades. Kusar blades can slice electrons, are forged in stars and can absorb the heat of them on top of scare guys like Captain Atom. Best of all they pretty consistently match Nemesis' Creation Blades, which I would say is above cutting the trident. For reference, check out every scan I posted of Zealot crossing blades with Nemesis. Charis one shot Majestic with a single slash in the same issue that Zannah was evenly matching her in a sword fight.

But the significance of those swords go beyond that. The Creation Blades are made from the shards Creation Engines, the most dangerous weapon ever constructed.

They can pierce through literally anything, and this statement was not only put to the test, but proven when they were used to maim the deranged reality-warper Tao. They worked on Tao when he was overpowered as hell and actively warping reality. When he was impaled he couldn't access his powers and was barely able to move or talk until they were removed.

The negation of powers isn't something that would scale t the Kusar Blades, because the sword was disrupting Tao's body due to the creation energies.

But being able to pierce him is what I want to get across. Not just pierce him really but cut his hands off and sink through his body. If you're gonna scale Slade's Promethium Swords to Aquaman's Trident, then do don't really have **** on the Creation Blades. And from the looks of it, cutting Aquaman's trident was a one-time thing while the Kusar Blades match the Creation Blades consistently. Consistency is really the key here.

Lastly not only are Kusar Blades >> Promethium Sword, but Zealot is a much better sword fighter than Deathstroke. It is considered suicide to fight her with a blade in Wildstorm. Zealot is better at swordplay than she is at hand to hand, something that was made clear when she lost to Backlash in h2h only to beat him in swordplay in Wildcore #3. Pretty sure Zealot guts Slade tbh.

2.4 // Deathstroke's Tactics

You continue to drone and prattle on about "balance alteration", "footing", "positioning", "leverage exploitation" and a bunch of other things like that, but considering the location is just a plain city street, I doubt any of those things would be game-changing. A starting flat surface for both of them? And they begin 50 feet apart, a distance that can be covered in under a second by either of our combatants? If Deathstroke is willing to kill from the start (Zealot certainly is) then I think it is far more likely for them to close the gap and engage in CQC in order to land surefire instant-kill moves, rather than to be running all over the place and play a game of tag like in your feat with Cassandra Cain.

I'm not arguing Deathstroke's character or tactics for you, I just think his versatility in weapons is pretty meaningless when they're fighting up close and personal. On top of that, those things that you talk about (balance, footwork unpredictability, all that good stuff) is no stranger to Zealot. She demonstrated those kind of traits while fighting Coda assassins on curved Asian style rooftops.

• https://imgur.com/a/OmIc6au

She danced over them and was still skilled enough to grab one of the chicks grenades and stuff it in her mouth, then gut the other girl who flew over the flames and was overhead Zealot when she got stabbed. Automatic bullets didn't slow Zealot down for jack in this fight as well.

Showtime.

tag

Part One: Physicality and Reflexes

Vulcan - Maul was actually strong enough to casually hold Zealot and have entire monologues with Zannah that she was shouting for him to release her and completely unable to escape his grip. She only broke out of his lock by kicking him hard enough to loosen his grip and actually free herself. You're literally unironically claiming Zannah is anywhere from 20 to 100 tons based on an actual misinterpreted unquantifiable panel. Do you have ANYTHING to substantiate the claim that she's on that strength level? Because it seems like you looked really hard and tried making that out as some feat then went off talking about how Maul is impressive - I would never have interpreted that as an actual strength showing. Slade himself has feats that would put him in the double digit range inside the stat amping nth metal armor:

Pressurized airplane doors require 12 tons of force just to open...Slade ripped off the Cargo plane's metal door and severely dented the thing using one hand during the first issue of his New 52 series. This is actually quantifiable and irrefutable in comparison with the evidence that you presented for Zealot being so strong. And if Slade holds the strength advantage he will indeed abuse his physicality with similar mannerisms like how he simply manhandled Batman and how he can use the environment like literally effortlessly smacking Batman with 2-ton chunk of concrete even when he was outside of nth metal armor. But we are on opener stages so if you're holding back on feats I will have you know that Slade is ridiculously proficient at using footing and balance alteration to actually disadvantage strength as he has ragdolled people like Captain Marvel Junior and Donna Troy - This goes back to his first appearance when he used superior footing and Donna's arrogance to sling her at Starfire in the New Teen Titans Vol.1 #2:

I want to stress how Deathstroke abuses his speed and instantaneous reflexes as his fighting style is perfectly attuned for such tactics to perfectly time attacks and engage maneuvers faster than his opponents can comprehend. Slade's way more dangerous for his speed than his strength and this is so relevant herein because he has speed feats well above Zealot's paygrade even outside of his Nth metal armor. He's effortlessly rolled through turret fire on the lowest end and that comfortably matches Zealot dodging minigun fire. But when he's actually trying he has shredded assault rifle gunfire from 3 different directions and angles simultaneously:

This feat is magnitudes more impressive than anything Zealot has done..I would actually associate this level of speed with Iron Fist/Gorgon fast characters. Your scaling with Grifter is decent but Slade scales above people on Zealot's own speed level. Katana has multiple feats wherein she rapidly deflects high caliber gunfire from jets and machineguns so it's fair to say she's comparable to Zannah yet Slade performed graciously against her during the Outsiders #19 when he twisted himself and locked with Katana at the last second when she was suckering him...

She had every possible advantage at the moment yet Slade's instantaneous reflexes allowed him to match her strike and she is just as fast if not faster than Zannah. Durability and endurance are irrelevant factors as both characters have swords that cut on the high-tier level and can tank each other's blows backed up with their respective healing factors so I'm going to skip ahead with those arguments.

Part Two: Fighting Style and Combat Skills

Let's get right into this debate. I'll be using Deathstroke with all the consistent equipment he's displayed across his appearances along with feats from all his armors (Promethium and Nth Metal) with the exception of the ikon suit. This gives Slade laundry lists of destructive power and versatility to gain upperhands throughout the fight with tactics like environmental exploitation and balance alteration that work perfectly in conjunction with his fighting style to ultimately maneuver Zealot into other attacks and even land killshots.

If you request them, notable feats I'll post include: Beating up and then killing Batman in the Dreamwar crossover

Using the Dreamwar crossover for feats? Seriously? That event was so full of PIS that we had Grifter kill Doctor Fate with bullets, The Joker keep up with Midnighter and Superman oneshot Mister Majestic. Batman and Zealot were actually evenly matched until Zealot opted for cheap tactics that Bruce amateurishly fell for...Perhaps because he was so out of character he literally set the tone of the fight to killing each other? Because the DC characters were idealized dream constructs and the Wildstorm guys were just dreaming?

Your feats are fine regardless and I'll admit Zealot is more technically skilled than Deathstroke. But as I said, Slade's fighting style relies on tactics and versatility to gain upperhands and ultimately defeat his opponent. His technical martial art skill is decent enough but Slade is more about the physics and circumstances of the fight wherein he identifies advantages and pressures on them or uses things like superior footing, balance alteration, leverage exploitation and body positioning with some martial arts in-between. Let's conveniently cite Teen Titans #46 where Slade destroys the Titans to illustrate this type of fighting prowess when he had nothing more than his standard blade...

This is ludicrously impressive for multiple reasons. Donna has far better physicals and could turn him to redpaste if she lands 1 clean hit and people like Cassandra Cain and Ravager (Rose Wilson) have precognitive abilities then there's the fact that Batgirl and Nightwing are simply way more skilled yet he managed to redirect all of their attacks and deal with them pretty comfortably with his situational awareness and tactical ingenuity. He was even able to duck Donna's punch and make her lose balance allowing him to literally fling her around, manipulate their fighting styles against them like how he wrecked Dick and use wordplay as emotional manipulation to off balance the Titans. This is further contextualized when we know Deathstroke was purposely holding back against the Titans meaning he could have damn well killed them if he actually wanted to do so...His techniques and tactics are going to be much looser here and he will aim to carve Zealot's skull out.

Part Three: Equipment and Combat Tactics

So things get really cool here given Deathstroke has his Volatile Promethium Type-II blade which absorbs unlimited amounts of energy and can cut pretty much everything as established by Christopher Priest (the writer of Rebirth Deathstroke). It's something backed up through feats as Slade has slashed Superman across the chest that he drew blood - he has even halved Aquaman's trident during Justice League Vol.3 #43 and that has multiple feats of piercing beyond Superman level beings:

Deathstroke's Promethium Sword comfortably matches the Kusar Blades as far as Swordfights are concerned. But Slade has concrete advantages regarding versatility and combat tactics with all the equipment he's packing and the way he applies them into his fighting style. His hardcore marksmanship and various guns should suffice into keeping Zealot within bay from ranged attack points and off balance her positioning and focus with trickshots that lead Zannah into other assaults that will surely spell doom given the destructive power and rapid fire Slade packs. Let‘s look at what he did pretty much effortlessly during Deathstroke Vol.3 #2 against 300 ninjas when he was weakened regarding skills and reflexes by 25% per Writers statement...

Deathstroke identifies how many men this army includes and correlates the point with how he will thin down their numbers whilst suspended midair and shooting well over 1 hundred ninjas without missing any shot and without looking then leads them into landmines because he knows he can tank them and he performed the showing when he was having fun and weakened with his reflexes and skills. Pretty insane level marksmanship and tactical thinking that he can apply during CQC...

Possessing rapid fire bullets that he can unpredictably use for luring Zealot into other maneuvers and balance alteration tactics gives distinct advantages during CQC when he’s engaging into Swordfights. Slade further pressures on all this with his grenades that distract his opponent into misdirection and the likes...Note I showed Slade shitstomping the Titans with nothing more than his standard blade using the aforementioned tactics and he has all his equipment herein which obviously translates into more tactics and maneuvers that Zealot can’t deal with which I’m fairly certain about because Slade has the reflexive advantages for timing his attacks and pulling off maneuvers faster than Zannah can comprehend. He has exemplified this combat capability against Cassandra Cain during Batgirl #63.

He fluently avoids her blows whilst leading her into environmental exploits that drop the concrete foundation pillar and collapse the building using simple trickshots then off balances Cass by shooting her bombs that leads her into the bola nets. Cassandras actually marveled at the amount of tactics and maneuvers he’s employing simultaneously that were so complex she could not read him. It was revealed towards the end that Slade was merely toying with the fight because he was saving Cass for his daughter and she admitted next issue that Slades better at pretty much everything including speed which correlates to how she partially attributed her inability to read him because of his speed and Cass has read people like Batman and Lady Shiva just fine. Cassandra Cain dodges sniper bullets inches from her face as an 8 Year Old and has genuine low level speedster feats where she crosses massive distances as an abstract blur - Slade being so much faster than her is another showing that proves Zealot isn’t on his speed level.

First post looks good. Tag me for the votes.

@The Great CIB

Post 01 // Introducing Zannah of Khera | "The Zealot"

Zealot is indisputably one of the most terrifying characters to face against in the Wildstorm Universe. She is a character who eats, breathes, and sleeps combat. Zannah is a Kherubim, an ancient alien race who's entire culture revolves around the fighting customs, laws, and rituals ordained by the god Hecate. Female Kherub's of the upper class are separated at birth from men, and trained in the art of war. Zannah emerged as a prodigy, her talent completely unrivaled among all those who opposed her. Unfortunately, despite her natural aptitude for bloodletting, the law on Khera dictated a mandatory tradition that would force her to abandon life as a warrior. But she defied the edicts of the home world and continued her life of battle for next several thousand years to come.

The reason her background is relevant to this fight is because it contributes valuable information to her fighting experience and ability. Zealot knew how to swing swords by the time she could walk. She's been fighting for thousands of years, mastered every martial art known to man (and to Kherubs), and is pretty much peerless in the entire Wildstorm Universe with a blade and is second only to one in hand to hand skill. She was one of the founding members of the Coda, a sisterhood of assassins stationed in Greece who are fierce and trained in all the ways of combat she was. Needless to say, there are few other characters to call upon if you're seeking bloodshed.

I'll establish two advantages here that Zannah holds in many of her fights, and why she wins because of it.

1. Kusar Blades - A one shot weapon that can repeatedly spell doom for high tiers.

2. Skill - The tiebreaker if physical stats are even.

3. Experience - That one abstract element of combat that lends an advantage in wisdom, battle choices, tactical thinking, and everything in-between.

1.1 // Strength, Speed and Durability

Zealot is incredibly strong, incredibly fast, and incredibly tough. For an excellent combination of all three, look no further than her second-ever appearance when she danced around and casually one-shot Warblade (with Maul stating she was too fast for him to tag), and immediately thereafter was caught off-guard and put into a crushing headlock by Maul. She easily broke out of it—directly overpowering him—and kicked Jeremy in the gut so hard he doubled over and was dropped to a knee.

In the previous issue, Maul punched Warblade hard enough to literally blast him dozens of meters through the MIRV's hangar room, busting wide open the thick reinforced steel wall he crashed through. Warblade completely ate the blow, he wasn't even fazed.

This puts Zealot's casual striking a comfortable level above this. And her raw brute strength is up there too, seeing as she overpowered Maul's headlock. I use Maul's intelligence rather than his size to gauge how powerful he is at any given moment, but the scaling is pretty damn clear cut here since pages before his skirmish with Zealot, Jeremy was holding up a MIRV unit so inspections could be performed on it. This was following the Wildcats escape from I/O after the botched rescue of Voodoo from a nightclub.

The MIRV is Wildcats Warplane, and it can split up into 6 sub-units. The jet engines of a single unit weigh from 35,000 lbs (17 tons) up to 205,000 lbs (102.5 tons).

On average, Maul being upper double digit to class 100 tons in raw strength while not even at full size is perfectly consistent. Like, at those sizes (where he's still intelligent enough to make smart comments) Maul stated that his fist had the mass of an aircraft carrier. So just lifting his fists is a crazy feat for strength.

Considering beating Maul and Warblade simultaneously is legitimately one of her lowest end feats, it's more than safe to say her strength (both striking and lifting) is dwelling either above theirs or on the same tier. Zealot is armed with swords here but she still strikes opponents physically in character when she has them, like when she hit Mr. Majestic so hard that he was sent flying into a thick steel wall and cratered it from the impact.

In terms of speed she's exceedingly fast, she dances around bullet timers and has casually timed mounted minigun fire herself.

Bonus points for immediately blitzing and beheading the chick.

Here she straight up toys with Grifter. Zannah was able to cut both his weapons in half—after they were drawn but before he could pull the trigger—knee him in the face to leak a stream of blood before kissing him, as well as do literal cartwheels over his body, dodge his swings, and land a double kick to the chest in a great showing of fluid speed skill in action.

• https://imgur.com/3BnLg7A - Wildcats vol. 2 (1999) #23

Cole can dodge bullets at close range, and on top of that was trained by Zealot herself in the precepts of the Coda. So he is not only fast but also skilled.

These are fairly low end, however. The biggest testament to Zannah's speed is probably this exclamation from Captain Atom.

She was able to surprise Captain Atom with his speed. And in case you're wondering, yes this is indeed Nathaniel Adam.

As far as durability is concerned, Zealot is pretty up there. Here when Alexander stabbed at Zealot and Tapestry with a Coda Clef Blade, there was a release of energy that resulted (so Zannah was at the epicenter and therefore tanked most of the concentrated force before the AoE simply expanded) and collapsed a building, but she was unharmed.

• https://imgur.com/4wD4KMI - WildC.A.T.S: Covert Action Teams (1992) #13

From looks to stats she's the full package.

1.2 // Kusar Blades

Zealot is armed with two Kusar Blades here. "What's that?"

Kusar Blades are Kherubim weapons forged on Khera. They are impossibly sharp seeing as they can cut on the sub-atomic level and absorb energy, as stated and shown above. Zealot used the blade to absorb laser vision from a visibly angered Majestros.

I know Deathstroke has done pretty much the exact same thing to Superman with the Promethium blade, but I would argue this feat well above. Mr. Majestic's casual laser vision was capable of superheating the entire planet of Jupiter and altering it's chemical composition on the sub-atomic level.

Mr. Majestic was also able to essentially create a star with his laser vision that was hot enough to act as a replacement for the Sun.

So Zealot's statement that her blade could absorb the heat of Suns and slice electrons (sub-atomic particles) is actually entirely backed by feats.

Here Jeremy goes sub-molecular and shrinks down to the smallest atomic particle on Earth in order to avoid being cut by Zannah's sword.

And next we have their potency. Zannah has knocked down Helspont with a single slash but the famous instance is when Majestic proved the sharpness of a Kusar blade by pricking his thumb with a light touch.

Zealot also used them to block a punch from Helspont that within the same panel hit Majestros where it hurt.

If a Kusar blade can breach the durability of Superman+ level characters and combats energy attacks from high tiers (or star level heat) and cuts on a sub-atomic level, I don't see any reason why they can't cut through Slade even if he were to don something like the Ikon suit which he doesn't have here.

1.3 // Skill and Experience

Honestly, I'm going to keep this section extremely short and dispense scans (until asked for) because I think the entire debate will focus on gear and skill, and skill in particular is one of those intangible discussion points that churn out a lot of brain candy.

To be candid, Zealot is one of the best fighters in the entire WSU, and being a Kherub grants her extremely long life to the point of nigh-immortality. So she has been on Earth for thousands upon thousands of years, and has centered her very existence around combat. Zealot has mastered every martial art known to man, and many alien ways of fighting as well. She also helped established the Coda, which is like a sorority of assassins (***** sorority as Cole puts it).

If you request them, notable feats I'll post include

• Beating up and then killing Batman in the Dreamwar crossover

• Stomping over a dozen Coda members in vol. 2 of Wildcats

• Her fights against Nemesis

• General statements and accolades

Din't want to drop another scan bomb this soon :P

Why Zatanna Wins

Zealot is a vicious fighter with no compassion for her enemies. She was raised in the art of bloodfare for her entire life, and it's all she's really ever known. Such a person is hard to defeat even when abilities are comparable, because that extra oomph she gets from portrayal lends to the credibility of her being able to punch above her weight class. Her speed is top notch, her skill even better, and her defense borders on impregnable with her no-selling point blank building busting attacks and being able to block weapons and all kinds of projectiles with her blades. She also has a notable healing factor and pain tolerance that I haven't bothered going into just yet, to keep this post compact; it all makes for a multi-tiered defensive system that complicates the thought of putting her down, in the scenario where a combatant would be doing everything in their power to avoid getting one shot by her sword.

Speaking of her sword, it cuts on the sub-atomic level so it's within one's best interest to avoid even a graze. But Zealot's skill in sword fighting is even better than her hand to hand skill. She also has other weapons that she can use for distractions, and her agility and brutality combine forces for her offensive assaults. She makes use of her speed and won't hesitate to behead anyone she's out to kill.