Board Thread:Antaeus' Arena: Audience Chamber/@comment-1515612-20150804024815/@comment-5471249-20150808014455

All right, let's take a good and objective look at those examples of yours. I’m sorry to say that none of them are very compelling:

1) Annabeth—Now you did make one fair point, Annabeth has indeed been training for 5 years longer than Percy (7 years longer than Nico), so she is definitely more experienced. HOWEVER, that doesn’t necessarily imply that she's more skilled, since Percy and Nico might be prodigiously skilled swordsmen, with more potential in this regard. As for Annabeth defeating Percy “several times”? Aside from their fight in “The Lightning Thief” movie (which is non-canon, since we’re dealing with the book series), I do not recall Annabeth ever defeating or even stalemating Percy in a straight-up fair fight. If you’re referring to how she defeated Percy in Capture the Flag in “The Bronze Dragon” I would point out that Annabeth only managed to do so with the element of surprise, by approaching Percy invisibly (wearing her Yankees cap) and disarming him before he’d fully realized what was going on. The fact that Annabeth chose to do it in such a way implies that she herself didn’t believe that she’d be able to defeat Percy in a straight-up fight.

2) Frank—Yes, Frank did display superhuman strength while fighting 100 Katoblepones in Venice and while fighting monsters in the Necromanteion. HOWEVER, you shouldn’t forget that both instances were only while Frank had the Blessing of Mars backing him up, a blessing that (similar to the Curse of Achilles) grants Frank invulnerability, superhuman strength, speed, agility, reflexes, and endurance. Hence it would be unfair to use that feat in this debate, since Nico wasn't ever similarly enhanced by Ares/Mars.

3) Percy in “The Last Olympian”—Yes, Percy did personally kill a large portion of Kronos' army in "The Last Olympian". HOWEVER, you shouldn't forget that he did so only while bearing the Curse of Achilles, that granted Percy not only invulnerability, but also superhuman strength, speed, agility, reflexes, and endurance. So, just like with Frank, it would be unfair to use that feat in this debate, since Nico wasn't ever similarly enhanced by the Styx.

4) Percy vs Resurrecting ghosts—First of all, there were only about 100 of them, not “hundreds”, but I’ll admit, that’s still a lot. Secondly, you shouldn’t forget that Percy also used a hurricane, not just his combat skills, to even his odds against them, and began to lose ground against the ghosts as soon as his hurricane vanished, even though they could already be killed by that point. It would be logical to assume that Percy most likely wouldn’t have held his own against them without the hurricane, so it’s unfair to use this argument in a debate to prove which one of them is more skilled, since that isn’t an ability that Nico can’t utilize.

5) Percy vs Amazons—See, “Percy defeating the Amazons easily” is a huge overestimation, since Percy only fought and defeated 2 of them before riding out on Arion. Sure, Percy defeated both of them easily, but that is by no means a feat that Nico wouldn’t have been able to pull off.

6) Percy vs Romans—Yes, Percy did defeat dozens of Roman demigods by himself, “fighting like a demon” (as Frank said), since Percy’s unpredictable, Greek solo fighting style made him particularly dangerous to them, since the Romans are used to fighting as a group, allowing Percy to easily defeat multiple Romans at once. Yes, it looks better than Nico defeating only 6 Romans. HOWEVER, you should also recall that Nico was very much weakened while fighting the legionnaires (since he had just shadow-traveled a few seconds before), and wasn’t even going all-out against the legionnaires, whom he didn’t want to kill. So, it would only be logical to assume that a non-weakened Nico going all-out would have been able to defeat many more Romans simultaneously, much like Percy did in “The Son of Neptune”, since Nico also has what it takes for such a feat—he’s Greek, so Nico also utilizes an unpredictable solo fighting style, which makes him particularly dangerous to them. If any of the legionnaires are bigger and stronger than Nico, that won’t be a problem either, since Nico has once overpowered an entire group of 7-foot-tall Earthborn (who were definitely both bigger and stronger than any legionnaire), while being limited by being able to fight them with only 1 hand (since Nico was holding his scepter in the other), so logically, I’m sure that Nico would also have been able to pull off this feat, much like Percy did.