DTL Season 5-Week 11 (Set 1)

[DTL Commish]

The rules:
This is one of four threads containing matches.
Due to the holiday, these threads will be in use for 10 days. Days 1-4 (Feb 5 - Feb 8) are strictly setup time for owners to plead their cases, tell us their team’s strategies, breakdown the match ups, and do whatever else they can/want to do to try and convince you that their team would pull out a victory. Please, let the owners do this on their own with no help.

On Day 5 (Feb 9) I will post and tell everyone that voting may begin. Any votes cast before I open voting will not count. Look over the matchups and read the strategies, and take into consideration how in-character each character is. Afterwards, use your best judgment to decide who you think has the best chance to win the match. (Note: The length of a writeup the discretion of the owner. Do not punish owners just for having a shorter writeup.)

To vote, post the team names you think will prevail in each match. Remember to vote for all matches or your vote will not count! The teams with the highest vote total at the end of the 9th day (Feb 12) will get a W while the other will get an L. (Equal votes will result in a tie.)

The battleground for this week is: Imperial Gladitorial Ring (Planet Hulk)

X*
Thor (Power Gem) (MU)
Josef Huber (MU)
The Super Skrull (MM)
Batman (One Million) (MR)
Coronary (MR)

VS.

In Jesus' Name
Thanos
Mimic
MountJoy
Shimmer
Forge

_______________________________

The Authorititans
Infinity-Man (DU)--New God, superstrength, flight, superspeed, Infinity-Beams, invulnerability, phasing, energy manip, magnetokinesis, healing factor
Resurrection Man (Cosmic Awareness) (DU)--cosmic awareness, quantum telekinesis (which manifests itself in myriad ways)
Aztek (DM)--energy manip, superstrength, superspeed, supersenses, intangibility, flight
Anarky (DR)--tech supergenius, expert at every martial arts fighting style
Midnighter (Post-Worldstorm) (DR)--martial arts supergenius, predicts outcomes of battles

VS.

B'wana Bet?
Baron Helmut Zemo (with Moonstones)(MU)- The gravimetric Moonstones grant Zemo his own version of Cosmic Awareness and powers, including the ability to open warps through time and space, in addition to his own natural skills and prodigious leadership ability.
Ares (DU) - The Olympian God of War, Conflict, and Death, and gains power from all three. Possesses vast superhuman strength and durability, magical armor, the Staff of Hades (which devours life), and various mystical and devine powers, including energy-projection and interdimensional teleportation.
Lightray (DM) - Faster than light, superhuman strength and durability, energy conversion, and light manipulation. Lightray is highly-intelligent and possesses a Mother Box.
Reed Richards (MR) - Elastic supergenius.
Freedom Beast (DR) - Telepathy, mild super-strength, and the ability to fuse any two organisms together into a chimera.

 

[AnnoyingSilence]

pm me when next season starts

 

[AnnoyingSilence]

used to be was the active owner got the vote automatically...
to be given what he/she rightfully earn by participating...
if yall haven't noticed, all my write-ups are late.
when i get home and actually have time and see that i've already been voted against... its unfair..

 

[AnnoyingSilence]

pm me when next season starts.. i have no reason to be here.. theres absolutely NO chance for me to get to the playoffs

 

[XFanTim]

used to be was the active owner got the vote automatically...
to be given what he/she rightfully earn by participating...
if yall haven't noticed, all my write-ups are late.
when i get home and actually have time and see that i've already been voted against... its unfair..

People will wait if you ask them to wait. You've been losing matches where you never did a writeup, or barely did one and gave no indication that you had more coming. Look at the last match -- I said outright I'd be willing to vote for you if you wrote five sentences and addressed a few specifics, I waited until the last day to vote, and you posted nothing.

Personally, I don't see why an owned team where the owner does nothing is any more entitled to a win than an ownerless team.

 

[Aristotle]

used to be was the active owner got the vote automatically...

There's nothing "active" about an owner who doesn't write.

 

[AnnoyingSilence]

theres no active about an owner who works 70 hours a week.

 

[Aristotle]

If you've got time to ***** at us for not voting the way you want us to, you've got time to write a couple paragraphs about why your team is superior.

 

[wiegeabo]

theres no active about an owner who works 70 hours a week.

It' not our fault if you don't have time to play. It's really no one's fault because life takes precedence.

It might sound mean, but if you don't have time to play the game, you shouldn't be playing the game. Family and work should always come first, and we all understand that. It happens to all of us, it just hasn't been happening to us as much as you lately. I appreciate you trying to be around enough to write and vote, but if it's a choice between life and the DTL, it's not really a choice.

 

[DTL Commish]

Voting is now open

 

[Aristotle]

Prep Time
After last week's match, without any heavy hitters, Anarky's pleased to see that his team is allowed to play at full strength again. He's pleased to be joined by both Infinity-Man and Resurrection Man, two of the biggest guns on the squad. As usual, he's flanked by Aztek and Midnighter.

His cheer pales as he looks at the opposing roster. This team will be no pushover. Baron Zemo is truly a dangerous one, and Ares, who gains power from conflict, seems like a difficult foe to be in conflict against. Lightray will push Aztek to his limits, and the other two look like no fun at all.

What's more, the battleground this week offers little comfort. It's just an empty gladiatorial ring. While there are certainly plenty of places to hide and fight guerilla-style, it's not the tech-laden paradise that Anarky would have hoped for, and has been lucky enough to find in previous weeks. Still, he muses, this Richards character is probably thinking the same thing. He contents himself with a reminder that everyone has the same handicaps in this game.

“Alright, Mitch, you're up against this Zemo character. Your resistance to reality-manipulation will help you deal with a lot of what his Moonstones allow him to do. Infinity-Man, go god-to-god with Ares. Aztek, of course, you're slated to go up against Lightray. Midnighter, you're better suited to dealing with Freedom Beast than I am, so I'll take Reed Richards.”

As usual, Anarky fits his team with psi-blockers and comms tech, and passes off a few extra devices to Midnighter, and one to Aztek, also fashioning a few for himself out of the tech available to him in his suit. He talks with each team member individually, explaining how their strategies will play out, and how they'll interplay with the rest of the team. Then, the Authorititans prepare for the coming struggle.

As the battle begins, the Authorititans and B'wana Bet surge towards each other, across the battleground. Aztek and Lightray clash in the middle. Anarky and Richards, natural opponents, gravitate towards each other along one side of the arena. Midnighter and Freedom Beast stalk each other in the center of the arena like beasts hunting prey. And the titanic ubers clash high above the rest, in the sky.

 

[Aristotle]

Battle Time
Aztek vs. Lightray
The two meds are off at the buzzer and meet in the middle of the arena. Lightray's a sight faster than Aztek, but not so much faster that Aztek can't give him a fight. Gauging each other's strengths and weaknesses, they circle each other mid-air, firing energy blasts and deflecting attacks.

Slowly, it begins to appear that Lightray has the advantage, and he begins to press it. It's exactly what Aztek's been waiting for. As soon as the New God starts playing aggressively enough to press the advantage, he leaves himself open to attack. Lightray is highly intelligent, but Aztek is born, bred, and trained for war against divine and supernatural powers. The arrogance of the god is all he needs. Aztek pours on blast after blast of fourth-dimensional energy, binding Lightray in plasma netting and slamming him with energy attacks. Lightray escapes the binding and absorbs much of the energy attack, but he's not invulnerable. The fight begins to deteriorate into a superspeed duel. Lightray ducks and dodges away from his pursuer, and Aztek compensates for his slower speed with better agility and an arsenal of offensive weapons that keep his opponent playing defense.

Anarky vs. Reed Richards
Reed Richards is a tough nut to crack. His uniform insulates him from electrical attack, leaving many of Anarky's first- and second-line tech attacks useless against him, except for purposes of distraction. Anarky has abandoned the open spaces of the arena for the halls and nooks and crannies, hurriedly trying to come up with a way to take down a genius-level Elongated Man.

Even after numerous matches in the DTL, Anarky is unused to thinking like a team leader, as opposed to a one-man force. It hampered him in his attempted alliance with Green Lantern and the JLA. It hampered him in his attempts to reach out to Batman. Today, it's hampering his ability to take out Richards. But eventually, it's only a matter of time until his superintellect comes up with a plan.

“Aztek, come in,” he mutters into his helmet mic. “I need your help immediately.”

Whispering to avoid detection by Richards, Anarky guides Aztek to his location. It takes Aztek awhile, as he needs to coordinate his aid with his efforts to corral Lightray. Eventually, however, the trap is laid. Richards, searching thoroughly for his opponent, enters a sizable hallway. Before he can even get his bearings in the room, however, Aztek smashes through the wall and socks Richards with all the force he can muster, before zipping back out to get back to his fight. Richards is stunned from the blow, and his body stretches with it, leaving him a momentarily defenseless sheet of rubber.

Anarky descends from the rafters, and before Richards can recover, he's been sprayed with a nerve gas that shuts down his brain.

“One down,” mutters Anarky, out of breath.

Aztek vs. Lightray
Briefly granted a reprive, Lightray strains to bring a counterassault against Aztek, but he's too beleaguered. Aztek surprises him with a tackle from behind, and the two careen around the arena, Aztek slamming blow after blow into the New God. The soft-spoken “doctor” from Vanity shows a surprising degree of unflinching aggression when it's necessary, and in combat with a god, it is indeed necessary. He rains fists down on Lightray, interspersing them with surprise energy blasts that come too randomly and intermittently for the god to absorb or convert. It is only a matter of time before the New God falls to humankind's last line of defense against apocalypse, but Aztek wants to make sure. With Lightray momentarily stunned, he has a chance to use Anarky's radiation-emitter—tuned to simulate the radiation of Radion. Radion is, of course, the equivalent of kryptonite to the inhabitants of New Genesis and Apokolips, and exposed to the element, Lightray's remaining strength quickly whithers. Aztek finishes him with a blow, and the fight is over.

Midnighter vs. Freedom Beast
Of all the matchups in today's fight, this one will be the easiest for the Authorititans. Freedom Beast, perhaps selected because of his mastery of animals, actually finds that ability quite useless in the unpopulated arena. His telepathy is similarly useless against the well-shielded Midnighter, leaving this battle to be decided on other merits. Beast certainly has some combat skill, and mild superstrength, but Midnighter has strength and agility and speed enhancements as well, not to mention superior martial arts capabilities, and his vaunted ability to calculate all possible outcomes of a battle. Midnighter plots out a fairly simple course of action, and dispatches the Freedom Beast with relative ease.

 

[Aristotle]

Infinity-Man vs. Ares
Infinity-Man has his work cut out for him. Although he is one of the most formidable of all the New Gods, this god of Earth is giving him a bit of trouble. For one thing, he draws his very power from conflict, and this match is most certainly a conflict. Ares is a formidable opponent indeed.

But Infinity-Man is no pushover either, and he knows the history of this Earthling god, thanks to Anarky's brief lesson. Ares was defeated many times in the heyday of the Olympian gods, simply by outfighting him in battle. So Infinity-Man buckles down, and trades blow for blow with the God of War.

It becomes an old-fashioned slugfest, as most DTL fights with Infinity-Man do. They eschew weapons. Infinity-Man dares not let his focus stray long enough to try the Infinity-beams. It is punch for punch.

But the God of War is not invincible, and in the end, he is no match for one of the greatest warriors of New Genesis and Apokolips. Infinity-Man beats him down, and like so many times before, the fight is finished with a blast from his Infinity-beams. Mighty Ares lies motionless.

“You are finished, Enyalius,” spits Infinity-Man, putting every possible ounce of venom into the epithetical name.

Resurrection Man vs. Baron Zemo
Zemo's reality warping powers are proving less effective than he'd hoped. Every time he tries to blast Mitch into a warp, the grudging anti-hero has dispelled them on a quantum level, or put up barriers to block his teleportation. It won't be that easy for Zemo.

Mitch only needs to create enough time for himself to focus. While he does not have true cosmic awareness, he does have an acute awareness of all things near him on a molecular level, so all he needs to do is get a moment to concentrate on the moonstones, and he can simply dissolve them at the tiniest possible level. He trades blows and blasts with Zemo, and Zemo finds, to his great frustration, that none of his powers seem to be workable defenses. Resurrection Man is more than an able physical combatant. His attempts to manipulate Mitch's gravity founder against Mitch's resistance to such attacks, and he finds that Mitch can even reciprocate them. Intangibility provides him with a possible escape, but he also is unable to damage Mitch from such a state—and again, he finds that Mitch has the same capacity. His energy blasts can be dispelled by Mitch's quantum telekinesis, and can be fired right back. His only edge, and the only element of the fight that allows him to keep Resurrection Man from summoning the focus to destroy his moonstones, is his teleportation.

But this will not save Zemo. At best, he is stuck in a stalemate that he can never win. One of two things will happen: first, Resurrection Man will superspeed away just long enough to get his bearings and figure out where the moonstones are and how he can take them apart, or Infinity-Man will arrive, knock the bejesus out of Zemo, and afford Mitch the same opportunity. Either way, Resurrection Man destroys the moonstones, robbing Zemo of the only thing that makes him uber.

What happens after that? Well, maybe the stones just get taken apart and Zemo goes down. Maybe their destruction unleashes an unfathomable energy blast that annihilates everything on the battlefield except Mitch, who, being prepared for such an eventuality, shields himself on a quantum level and survives the blast. But whether it's 1-0 or 5-0, the Authorititans win it again.

 

[Aristotle]

Pre-emptive defense of some points:
The fights generally skew individual for a reason—These are individualized fights that make sense. The supergeniuses fight each other, the superfast energy-blasters fight each other, the heavy-duty gods fight each other, and the reality-warpers fight each other. That just leaves Freedom Beast and Midnighter.
Midnighter vs. Freedom Beast—I was told the arena was unpopulated. I asked for clarification about whether there were animals (as Ahura had mentioned) and Wieg clarified that animals were not present. That means no animals for Freedom Beast to make chimeras.
Aztek vs. Lightray—Gog's almost certainly going to make an issue of Aztek's speed here, but I think when you look at his performance in the JLA book, not to mention clear implications in his solo book, there can be little doubt that he possesses med-level superspeed. He's probably not as quick as Lightray, but he's easily quick enough to make it a fight, and his offensive arsenal is just more powerful than Lightray's. Finally, the Radion is only a guarantor of what is already a likely outcome. This is Aztek's way of insuring a fight which already is most likely going to be won by him. If you don't believe that Anarky (a tech genius capable of making a boom-tube from scratch) could rig up a radiation-emitter tuned to one radiation frequency, that's fine—Aztek wins anyway, it just takes longer.
Anarky vs. Reed Richards—The tactic of taking out Mr. Fantastic by stunning him momentarily, leaving him a briefly defenseless, pliable bit of rubber, is an old one, going all the way back to Fantastic Four Annual #1 (1963). It worked for Namor, and I'm fairly certain it would work for the superstrong Aztek, in conjunction with the tech genius Anarky.
Ares vs. Infinity-Man—Ares is based on the Ares of myth, and since there is nothing in DC canon that countermands the extant tales of Ares, we must assume that they, too, are canonical. And there are a number of myths involving Ares simply being outfought, including his defeat at the hands of a human commander during the Trojan War. There's another defeat he suffered by a couple of giants. Another time, all it took was another god, Athena, to take him down. There's no secret here. You just beat him down and outfight him, and Infinity-Man is capable of doing that.
Resurrection Man vs. Baron Zemo—I'm not a Marvel buff as much as I'm a DC buff, but to my knowledge, every attack that the moonstones have manifested, Quantum-TK Resurrection Man has an answer for, and almost all of them, he can reciprocate. The defensive moves, he also will be pretty good at dealing with. Zemo will only be able to secure a losing stalemate—i.e., a situation in which he can't win, and is constantly retreating. That's why this battle is going to end as soon as Resurrection Man can get the focus up to quantum-disintegrate the moonstones, whether Mitch fabricates that chance himself, or Infinity-Man creates it for him by socking the living **** out of Zemo.

 

[Ahura Mazda]

I am voting for In Jesus Name given I could see a strategy with Mimic as an uber and mountjoy that could take out the other team

And the final vote goes to....hmmm difficult decision....I guess The Authoritarians

 

[XFanTim]

Thor with the Power Gem has fought Thanos in the comics. It was a pretty even fight, until Thanos pulled out a stasis gun an froze Thor. Huber can claim any mutant power, and if he takes the powers of Magneto he could easily trash Thanos's gun, leaving Thanos and Thor an even match. Likewise, he could trash whatever weapons Forge hopes to use against him (his mutant depowering gun, for instance).

Shimmer's transmutation and Mountjoy's absorption are short range, so Huber can stop those with a forcefield, as can Super Skrull who after all has Sue's forcefields. If Mimic tries to hit Huber with an optic blast, he can copy Bishop's power and absorb it or just copy Cyclops or Havok to make himself immune to its effect. Really, anything Mimic can do, Huber can do better. Huber can use any mutant power, whereas Mimic can only use any mutant power on the battlefield plus the five he starts with, and he only gets them at half strength. Mimic's best bet may be to copy Huber, but he still only gets half his power, and anyway by the time he does that Huber will probably have fried him with some uber-level telepathy.

Once Mimic goes down, Huber should be able to turn the evenly matched battle between Thor and Thanos in Thor's favor. And none of AS's other three guys are beating Super Skrull.

X wins.

--

In the other match, I'm sure Ari will have some comments on Gog's when he reads it, but I don't know when Wieg is closing voting (it was supposed to close at the end of yesterday?) and I figure if I don't vote now I may not get another chance.

I don't know Aztek very well, so I can't really weigh in on how fast he is. But even Ari admits Lightray is faster, yet in his writeup Aztek is able to switch from fighting Lightray to helping against Reed and then switch back, without Lightray capitalizing on it. I'm not sure if I buy that. Also, Gog gave two possible counters to the use of Radion against Lightray.

With Infinity Man vs. Ares, both Ari and Gog seem confident their guy would win, and I'm not entirely sure who's right. But Gog seems to be citing battles from the comics in support of his position, whereas Ari is citing actual Greek myths. Yeah, the DC Ares is supposed to be the basis for the myths, but that doesn't mean the myths accurately depict his power level. Plus, at this point in the comics he's assumed control of Hades realm, too, right? So that presumably makes him more powerful than the guy in the myths.

With Resurrection Man vs. Zemo, could Quantum TK really stop all his attacks? Teleporting him, energy attacks, gravity, time manipulation, shrinking him into the microverse, etc.? Maybe I don't get what Quantum TK means -- is it just telekinesis that works at the atomic level? Anyway, I'm also not sure Ari's writeup really factored in Zemo's precognition.

So I guess I'm slightly leaning toward Gog on all those battles. He didn't really address how he'd beat Ari's regs (other than hitting them with an EMP), but if he's up three to two (and with the more powerful three), that's enough for the win in my book. So I'll vote for B'wana Bet?

 

[Nightwing]

X vs In Jesus' Name
The Authorititans vs B'wana Bet?

 

[Aristotle]

In Jesus Name.

 

[Aristotle]

Gog? You got something?

 

[Dark Gog]

I'm typing.

 

[Dark Gog]

Rad, Germs, and Steel: The Story of How Team B'wana vs. The Authorititans Came to be Regarded as the Biggest Route Since My Moustache Ate Your Beard


Prep: It does not take long for my team to realise none of The Authorititans are familiar with the Marvel universe. In contrast, the New Gods hold no mystery to Group B'wana, Lightray was a JLAer before, after, and during parts of Aztek's tenure, who's connected to the Old Gods of the Fourth World, and Ares is on some level familiar with just about anything that happens on DC Earth. The Midnighter would be something of an X-factor, except that we've already encountered an almost identical version earlier in the tournament.

Ares spends much of the final hour of prep dueling with Zemo. It's been an age since he'd witnessed gladiatorial combat. Unlike what may be expected, the Colosseum had never been his favourite venue, yet all the same it was a fitting place for him to battle in.


Fights:


1)/b] The Infinity-Man has but one target here: "Ares!", he screams, "you murdered Highfather!" This annoys Ares, who seems to feel Drax would be better served focusing on more immediate concerns. "Of-course I did", he answers, "I'm murdering you now, though. Do pay attention."
-----


In a comic-book, Ares would beat IM. He has the power, the stamina, and in killing Highfather and several past comparisons to Darkseid, (all done several power-ups ago, incidentally) he has the pedigree. He's also demonstrably capabale of affecting the incorpereal, and will have the highly significant advantage of tempering his weapons and armor with Radion. Naturally, the realm of Hades is positively brimming with the stuff.

Lightray's power is the conversion of energy forms, and Radion is just a form of radiation, so its effect on him should be absolutely minimal. Even still, I've been having Lightray use Reed's designs for radiation suits since Week Two.

2) Even invisible, Mitch Shelley seems to have little difficulty locating Zemo. His attempts to transmute Helmut are countered by the Mother Box Lightray had lent him, and he proceeds to scatter Resurrection Man through time.

He was fortunate to discover in advance Shelley would use his first attack as a front while he tested the Moonstones. Even still, it is by sheer will that he now holds one of them together.

3) Lightray's first action is not aimed at Aztek at all -- a powerful EMP washes over the arena, interfering with the Midnighter's implants and many of Anarky's devices. The blast of plasma striking where he'd stood is unlikely to have troubled him greatly even had it hit him. But it is an early marker of a fact which soon becomes quite clear; Aztek can't hope to keep-up with Lightray's speed, much less his quickness and maneuverability. Wind buffet's Curt Falconer as Lightray dances around him, knocking him off-balance. (Aztek's flight is due at-least in part to gliding on air-currents using his armor's wings.) His first real coup comes when Lightray fills the air light to blind him. His helmets systems compensate to give him a VR simulation of his surrounding, which the New God hadn't reckoned with, and for the first time he connects partially with a blast of 4D Energy.

A strange sensation begins to creep on Aztek. It is not fear - at-least, not for himself - but rather a burdening sense of hopelessness. The feeling that he'd dedicated his life to stop an oncoming apocalypse and now it may not even matter. He could raise his density with a thought, but that would cost him what little maneuverability he had. He could phase, but that would give him little defense against energy attacks.

It is at this point he realises everything's going black.
-----


Let's be absolutely clear here: I don't believe Aztek has any real degree of super-reflexes, and I don't accept that he is any more powerful than Lightray, other than his bursts of Fourth Dimensional Energy, which he can't really spare for fear that his energy reserves would be depleted. I'll ellaborate later, as I'm sure Ari will have something to say about all this.


I need to get to school now, so:
-Anarky and Midnighter overcome Reed, although he is still difficult to hurt.
-Dominic has merged with a single cell organism and is riding along with Lightray. He shut-down Aztek psychically.

 

[XFanTim]

Gog, I hope you live in England or somewhere. Because if you have to go to school at 4 AM, that's just brutal.

It really is 4 AM here -- I just don't sleep.

 

[LadyVader]

Annoying Silence: the squeaky wheel gets the grease my friend.


Wow, this is a toughy. I really like some of Dark Gog's ideas and I like his writing style but...

It's Aristotle for providing a full and relatively plausible write-up.

 

[Aristotle]

In a comic-book, Ares would beat IM. He has the power, the stamina, and in killing Highfather and several past comparisons to Darkseid, (all done several power-ups ago, incidentally) he has the pedigree.

He's never fought Infinity-Man, who is Darkseid's brother. Drax comes from the same genetic stock as Darkseid, plus a HUGE power boost from the Infinity-Man stuff. Infinity-Man could probably beat modern-day Darkseid, so a comparison between Ares and Darkseid doesn't do much for ya. As for killing Izaya, Highfather may be incredibly powerful, but apparently that doesn't make one too much of a force to be reckoned with: Takion's in this League, I believe, and not even considered one of the top-end ubers.

He's also demonstrably capabale of affecting the incorpereal, and will have the highly significant advantage of tempering his weapons and armor with Radion. Naturally, the realm of Hades is positively brimming with the stuff.

Naturally? I didn't realize that Hades was laced with Radion. Radion is a fictional element, invented either by Kirby or another DC writer, so it wouldn't have shown up in ancient myth. And I don't remember when any DC comic suggested that Hades was "positively brimming" with Radion.

For the battle between Infinity-Man and Ares, you present no actual ideas, just a couple flaccid one-liners, a faulty premise of a plan, and some boasts that go nowhere.

Lightray's power is the conversion of energy forms, and Radion is just a form of radiation, so its effect on him should be absolutely minimal. Even still, I've been having Lightray use Reed's designs for radiation suits since Week Two.

The second sentence seems to indicate your lack of confidence in the first one. Furthermore, Lightray's power is actually more specific than that. He's not just a generic energy converter. Radiation-control has never been shown as an ability of his. So if Aztek beats him down, rips off the rad-suit, and shoves Radion up his ass, Lightray's going down.

Even invisible, Mitch Shelley seems to have little difficulty locating Zemo. His attempts to transmute Helmut are countered by the Mother Box Lightray had lent him, and he proceeds to scatter Resurrection Man through time.

Who's transmuting? Mitch has WAY more uses for Quantum TK than that, including the ways I showed him using it. Anything Helmut could try, Mitch could answer for.

He was fortunate to discover in advance Shelley would use his first attack as a front while he tested the Moonstones. Even still, it is by sheer will that he now holds one of them together.

He doesn't have the will to spare. Mitch has him on the ropes, so Zemo has to defend himself or the moonstones. Something has to give.

Lightray's first action is not aimed at Aztek at all -- a powerful EMP washes over the arena, interfering with the Midnighter's implants and many of Anarky's devices.

If we're assuming that Anarky hadn't thought to protect his devices, we must be assuming that none of Reed's devices were protected, rendering many key parts of Lightray's rad-suit meaningless? The question is actually moot, because I'm not recalling when Lightray ever did that before in a comic.

The blast of plasma striking where he'd stood is unlikely to have troubled him greatly even had it hit him. But it is an early marker of a fact which soon becomes quite clear; Aztek can't hope to keep-up with Lightray's speed, much less his quickness and maneuverability.

There's simply no precedent for you suggesting that Lightray is that much faster. He certainly has an edge, but the greater degree which you're suggesting starts to test the limits of the med ranking. Lightray has a bit of an edge, no more, and that can easily be compensated for by Aztek's VASTLY superior offensive arsenal.

-Dominic has merged with a single cell organism and is riding along with Lightray. He shut-down Aztek psychically.

Dominic can only fuse ANIMALS into chimeras, and he would be unlikely to fuse himself, since he can't unfuse them. Furthermore, I noted in my writeup that Anarky provided psi-blockers, and since Lightray doesn't have EMP power, those continue to protect Aztek's mind.

 

[Aristotle]

But even Ari admits Lightray is faster, yet in his writeup Aztek is able to switch from fighting Lightray to helping against Reed and then switch back, without Lightray capitalizing on it. I'm not sure if I buy that.

The reason for that is that Aztek beats the hell out of Lightray with his vastly superior offensive arsenal, leaving Lightray on the ropes long enough for Aztek to help with Reed.

Yeah, the DC Ares is supposed to be the basis for the myths, but that doesn't mean the myths accurately depict his power level. Plus, at this point in the comics he's assumed control of Hades realm, too, right? So that presumably makes him more powerful than the guy in the myths.

The bottom line remains, however, that he's just a god who can be and has been defeated by other gods just outfighting him. I'm assuming he's one of the victims of Granny Goodness' purge of the Olympians, for example.

With Resurrection Man vs. Zemo, could Quantum TK really stop all his attacks? Teleporting him, energy attacks, gravity, time manipulation, shrinking him into the microverse, etc.? Maybe I don't get what Quantum TK means -- is it just telekinesis that works at the atomic level?

Technically, but that answer belies its true power. It's manifested itself as everything I mentioned in the writeup, plus more.

Anyway, I'm also not sure Ari's writeup really factored in Zemo's precognition.

Zemo's precog doesn't come into play here, because he's simply being overpowered. Just because you see the train coming doesn't mean you can defeat it. All you can do is keep hopping out of the way--and wait for Infinity-Man to shove you right back in front of it.