Board Thread:Antaeus' Arena: Audience Chamber/@comment-1515612-20160820001629/@comment-24067344-20160820023137

Percy, by far! I know Nico is extremely powerful, but he won't stand a chance. Why? Because Nico loves Percy. And with that love, he wouldn't be able to defeat him. I know some might say, "But Erick, imagine if Percy and Nico were enemies!". And you know what, that'd make things worse. You know what Percy can do to enemies, and you know what happens when he gets angry too. Since it's post-The Crown of Ptolemy, well, Percy's gotten quite a lot more powerful after those Kane-chronicles crossovers. Anyways, I'll post my reasons.

1. Combat. This has been argued so many times, but Percy is by far, the better fighter. I'll explain my reasons of why. But let me give you a counterargument from my friend 8th, whom she and I have argued way back...I hope you remember this 8th. Before I post it, I do realise that her posts are extremely old, but nothing new has come about this specific argument, and since no one has argued if Nico or Percy is stronger, I thought it would be good to use past arguments, since there hasn't been any in a long time. Here's what she wrote:

You cannot state that Percy is a better swordsman and combatant than Nico as a fact--we simply do not have enough evidence of that... If anything, Nico had the advantage of being able to train with skilled undead warriors whenever he pleases. Given how much Nico would have tried to please his father, I would assume that these sparring matches would be very intense... Just saying! XD

Ok, let's stop here. Well, there is in fact more evidence that Percy is a better swordsman, since one of the ways of seeing which one is better is through feats, since it shows the power, the strength and the skill the swordsman possess, just like we know Hercules was the strongest and most powerful demigod because of his feats...I mean, how else would we know if he's powerful, if he does;t display it, and would show a lack of confidence of his strength and of himself? There are reasons why people objectively think Percy is one of the best swordman, for example, he was considered the best sword-fighter in Camp Half Blood in The Sea of Monsters, with the best sword-fighters at that time being much weaker than Percy, like Annabeth.

I realise that some of the best combatants, like Thalia, were never known to be excellent fighters in Camp Half Blood, at least not to Luke's extent, in being the best sword-fighter in the last 300 years, like Luke was in Camp Half Blood, so it's true that my point is moot, basically. But, to be the best sword-fighter [Percy] in such a short time, in that time, with no knowledge of Thalia's feats or skill besides Annabeth saying they were "amazing monster-fighters", is quite incredible, but to be fair to Percy as well, Annabeth was shocked and impressed at what Percy was capable of doing in The Lightning Theif, like defeating 5 Ares girls in Capture the Flag.

Anyways, let's continue hearing to what 8th has said long ago: Also, just because Percy has fought/slaughtered more monsters, gods, Titans, and Giants, that does not make him a better warrior than Nico, it merely means that Percy was in the right place at the right time, while Nico was simply never given a chance to prove himself in that regard. Hence, that cannot be used an an objective counter-argument. For instance, like Percy, Nico would have been able to hold up the entire sky, since that was not a feat of physical strength, but rather, one of willpower (which Nico has, evidenced by his survival in Tartarus), great courage (which Nico has, evidenced by him standing up to Lycaon, Kronos, Hades, and Cupid), and a true heart (which Nico has, evidenced by how loyal he is to his friends and family, and by how much he actually cares about them).

Prove himself. This is a poor argument. Before we continue, I'll ask, what is a feat? Here it is: "An achievement that requires great courage, skill, or strength" I find this rather interesting really. There has been many moments where Nico couldn't prove himself, because of his lack of strength and combat skill, which latter on, as you read The Heroes of Olympu, you'd realise one of the reasons why he couldn't prove himself in Percy Jackson, was because he had the lack of courage, confident, luckiness, and skill, which shows the the lack of feats for Nico in Percy Jackson and The Olympians. Also, one other explanation, was that it wasn't because Percy was at the right place and time, Nico was as well, and hasn't been able to do anything as impressive as Percy has done, besides Tartarus, because of his lack of combat skill unlike Percy. I mean, let's think for a moment. Nico has fought giants before, but he needed the help of Coach Hedge, Reyna, Hylla, Thalia to fight and escape the giant, which shows that he doesn't have the combat skill to fight giants; he relies on his powers way to much, unlike Percy, who can fight without his powers. Let me ask several questions. Has Nico defeated A Titan before? No. Has he had the chance to fight them? He probably did, considering he was in Tartarus, where several titans where. Was he able to defeat him? Well, I can't answer that, but it's most likely he was defeated very easily. Let's continue that trend. Did Nico fight a Giant? Yes. Was he able to defeat one? Hell no. As I mentioned earlier, Nico first, needed a diversion to fight a giant in The Blood of Olympus, then he had the help of Reyna, Coach Hedge, Hylla to fight him, and had help from Thalia to escape, while on the other hand, Percy defeated Polybotes almost single-handedly, and fought on equal terms with the Giant Thoon, with a concussion: "Percy was back on his feet, Riptide once again in his hands. He still looked dazed. His nose was bleeding. But he seemed to be holding his own against the old giant Thoon, who had somehow reattached his hand and found his meat cleaver." Pgs. 408-409

Did Nico take out an entire enemy army by himself, like what happened with Frank and Percy? Nope. While there were moments were he defeated a number of monsters, he has never defeated an army, which Percy did a number of times already. As for Nico's combat skills, Nico's most impressive feats are lower than Percy's, like defeating 6 Roman demigods, but with the help of some Greek demigods, which makes it less impressive, or defeating several monsters, throughout the series.

So, Nico had all the same opportunities like Percy did, but was never able to succeed like Percy did. Why? Because Nico lacks the power and combat skill like Percy, which shows that Percy's combat skills are [mostly] unrivalled among his friends.

Ok, the one I bolded is where I'm going to counter-argue the most. It's true, Nico has courage, he has will-power, he is loyal, but can he surpass Percy? If he can't, it shows that Nico is inferior to Percy, because once again, Percy is the stronger one, and, I realise that 8th was talking about that Nico could carry the sky, but what I argue is going to prove that even though Nico could hold the sky, it would't be the same, because Nico has less courage, less loyalty than Percy, which means, less opportunities of having impressive feats, due to not having certain qualities like others.

Courage. 8th mentioned that Nico has great courage, which I agree. However, the main problem is the fact that we lack Nico's great courage in the first series, due to the fact of being unsure of himself, and being unstable most of the time, after his sister's death. But he did show great courage a number a times, like standing up to Hades, Kronos, Cupid. Does Nico have enough courage to surpass Percy's courage as well, which is one of the defining factors of what makes something a feat? Sadly, he doesn't, which is one of the reasons why Percy has more impressive feats=more courage. As of what we know, Percy has stood up to Kronos, Hyperion, Hades, Alkhys, Tartarus himself in incarnation, something that is even more terrifying than seeing Tartarus in it's true horror, though Percy has seen it as well, which proves my point even more. He has also stood up to Nyx, one of the most terrifying beings in the Riordanverse, and all of her children. And of course, all the monsters he has killed over the years being together, to destroy the world. He also stood up to the Arai, and even destroy dozens of them, despite knowing how terrible they were, an dhow easily they could kill them, which the almost did. With this feats, it is already known, that Percy has more courage than any other demigod, because one of the advantages of Nico is the fact that he is the son of Hades, which gives him an unfair advantage of not being scared of the darkness and the underworld, something Percy is terrified of. Nico himself said that that not even a son of Hades can survive in Tartarus, implying that Sons/daughters of Hades are more prone to the underworld, Tartarus, than all demigods, because of the fact that darkness doesn't affect them.

Let's continue. Loyalty. I don't even really have to explain over here. Percy's fatal flaw is loyalty, which means his loyalty surpasses everyone, since that is his major flaw, and what causes many troubles, but as well as being the redeeming factor and saving grace in many problems that have been caused, which if it weren't for Percy, the world would be destroyed. But on the other hand, it has been told, that the world would be destroyed, because of Percy's loyalty, which show how high the stakes are if Percy didn't stop his fatal flaw, implying that there is no one out there that has more loyalty than Percy, since loyalty defines Percy.

Here's what 8th said as well: But it would only be logical for that to be the case, since Percy was the main character of the first series (him being the title character!), and one of the legendary Seven Heroes of Olympus, while Nico di Angelo was, sadly, always a somewhat secondary character in comparison, and featured far less in both series as a whole :(((. But, as I have stated before - just because Percy has more feats, the fact that Nico has never been in most of those situations in and of itself does not indicate that he would have fared less than Percy (unless the situation could only be overcome with hydrokinesis, such as escaping the exploding Princess Andromeda quickly enough to survive, or defending oneself against the attacks of 2 water deities while underwater). Hence, since we lack a decent amount of feats from Nico (due to him not being in the right place at the right time, so to speak), we can only attempt to draw logical conclusions from what we do know.

One again, Nico has been in the right places at the right time just like Percy has, meaning this argument didn't think well enough. One of the reasons why Nico lacked a decent amount of feats in the first series was the fact that he didn't have the strength, the will-power, the courage, the stability and oneness of a calm mind and power to prove himself a lot, which was his fault, and which Percy didn't have at all, giving him more of a chance to have more feats.

I'll post more about this later.