CaD: Deathstroke vs Zealot

@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.