Board Thread:Versus Battles/@comment-34385655-20190811112927/@comment-25603146-20190816071702

...literally the Wiki deleted my attempt to reply to this thread twice now, so I'm determined

Power: 2.57 YT vs. 1.45 YT, with their respective "this is close to the biggest that can be done at this point", so Zain's edge.

Speed: Equalized, obviously, but since Yanald doesn't resist Time Manipulation and Zain spams Chrono + Blade in character he's going to constantly be both amping himself and slowing Yanald down. Also Zain's edge.

Agility: Conversely, Yanald has much higher travel speed than Zain, and can create portals to counter The Lovers Mystery's teleportation with impunity having no limits on how much he can use it, so Yanald's edge.

Range: Planetary vs. Planetary. Technically, Yanald can mindhax from another reality, but that's A: out-of-character, and B: there's no reason I can see that Zain couldn't just follow him through the portals, or use The Lovers to move to his location if they established any kind of mental link.

Intelligence: Genius vs. Extraordinary Genius. Yanald's edge, but not a drastic one probably?

Stamina: Superhuman vs. ..."Extremely High". However high that is. So, ??

Versatility: Yanald can do near anything you'd expect to see in a standard fight, Zain prior to the Monad has to use items and general jank to pretend to come halfway close. Yanald's edge.

Sustain: For all of his self-heals, Soma, and so forth, there's not really any stacking up to be done with someone who can hit The Everything Button ad infinitum. Yanald's edge.

Assorted Important-Seeming Footnotes
 * Both can, and would before long, exploit each other's elemental Dark/Holy weaknesses respectively.
 * Since Yanald can regen from having his soul torn up and Zain's own stamina is finite, he's at a loss for more traditional ways to keep Yanald down
 * Zain probably resists most of Yanald's nastier stuff? Blood, Mind, etc. are already covered by the Sephira he's gathered so far.
 * The notable exception, at least as it pertains to the Sephiroth, would be Soul Manip., seeing as he lacks the Binah as of yet
 * Zain lacking the Binah Sephira also means he doesn't technically have a counter to Swap Future? Which is weird, it feels a lot more like something that the Netzach should have on lockdown, being about fiddling with timelines and whatnot. More importantly...
 * Yanald can't see Zain in any of the futures he can read, by virtue of his future being unwritten on account of being the Tiphareth.
 * Finally- and vitally- Yanald is an arrogant bastard.

What I'm seeing...

They fight for a bit, Zain does some memes with Time Manip. and counters Yanald's Time Stop with resistance + bigger Time Stop, and finds out at length that nothing he's going to do in the short-term is going to keep Yanald down. Either Yanald's various other advantages wear down Zain from there, or the Death Mystery somehow manages to successfully curse Yanald into staying down the same way it did for Ruin, and buys Zain five years to hit his last key and make Yanald not a threat. Assuming the former, since that seems more generally likely,

That bit about Yanald being arrogant, and Zain having no future to read, leads me to believe that, as far as Yanald's concerned, there is no future in which Zain survives getting his soul torn up. Granting that there are some instances in which Yanald goes for taking a Soul Core as a trophy, and just wins that way, the majority of the instances that result from this seem to lead to Yanald just gloating about how inevitable this outcome was, tearing his soul up into little confetti strips, and calling it a day since there's no Zain in the future to stop him from terrorizing New York City.

...which doesn't account for him popping back up in an hour or few. As people- especially the arrogant types like Yanald- talk more about themselves, and generally through the use of their powers make them apparent, they reveal more of the Idea Fractures that created those powers. On top of that, A: Yanald has no notable resist to Memory Manip., let alone high-caliber Memory Manip. like the Yesod's, B: I see no reason to assume that Yanald's ability to hide his energy would be potent enough to hide from Zain even if he'd wanted to, and C: I see no reason that his own mind would work substantially differently from a normal person's.

All that being said, if 1/10 fights end with the Death Mystery keeping Zain down, and 2/10 end with Yanald figuring out that Soul Core Incap. is the best way to go with his Intelligence advantage/etc., then the remaining fights end with Zain using the Yesod to enter Yanald's Dreamscape, figure out what caused him to start being just a general prick (fear of humanity's unchecked freedom and potential, desire for control), fight his not-Shadow to formalize and make healthy those desires, and Win via diplomacy. There's already precedent for that kind of thing being viable, after all.

The only thing that might in theory throw a wrench in that idea is Yanald having Void Manip., but it both seems to take a lot of time and not be an immediate in-character move. Plus, even if he does eat the planet after Zain's been killed, he can survive in space and use The Lovers Mystery to tether himself back to Yanald in order to enter his Idea Fracture.

So... yeah. Hunh.