User blog:Wassboss/Nice Guys Finish Last: Jonathan Joestar vs Ghastly Bespoke

When you're living in a world full of snarky assholes where everyone is a dick to everyone else it's refreshing to find a character whose just an all round nice person, despite the hardships they've faced. That's the theme of this battle with two warriors who are the two shining beacons of kindness in such cruel worlds. Despite suffering great pain in their lives these two still manage to be gentlemen and fight against evil to try and make the world a better place and make the ultimate sacrafice because of it. But just because these two are nice doesn't mean they'll be holding back their punches when it comes to a fight as;

Jonathan Joestar: Heir to the Joestar Family Fortune, whose life was turned upside down by the arrival of Dio Brando.

takes on

Ghastly Bespoke: Tailor, boxer and war hero, cursed at birth to have a scarred face.

Who is Deadliest

Jonathan Joestar


"There are times when a gentleman has to be courageous and fight, even when his opponent is bigger than he is and he knows he's going to lose!"

- Jonathan Joestar

Jonathan Joestar had a relatively happy childhood, despite the death of his mother when he was just a baby. However this happy childhood came to an abrupt end with the arrival of Dio Brando, a boy adopted by Jonathan's father as a favour to a man who saved his life. He made his life a misery until Jonathan beat him up after DIO kissed his girlfriend Erina. Dio would later be thwarted in an assassination attempt on George Joestar by Jonathan and in desperation turned himself into a vampire with a mysterious stone mask. Jonathan then fought and seemingly killed Dio but would later find out he had survived and set out to kill his childhood rival once and for all, with the help of the mysterious Baron Zeppeli.

Equipment  Powers & Abilities
 * Luck & Pluck: After defeating the undead knight Bruford, Jonathan acquired his sword called Luck & Pluck. A standard broadsword Jonathan channels his Ripple through his sword in order to increases it's power and be able to fight opponents without having to get to close to them.
 * Ripple: Known as Hamon in the east, Ripple is the usage of energy of sun rays through a special breathing technique which allows the user to harness solar energy as an attack. Mostly used as a way to combat the undead, Ripple will also cause a severe pins & needles feeling before fainting on a normal person. An object, while charged with Ripple energy, will become more dangerous, and its user can perform several techniques that can combine with the warrior's own tactics, to allow for a very flexible fighting style. The biggest weakness of this style is that the user must have controlled breathing in order to use Ripple and if the user cannot properly breathe (aka they were being choked) then it cannot be used. As a skilled Ripple user, Jonathan can use the following techniques;
 * Sendo Ripple Overdrive: Another usage of Overdrive is to channel the Ripple energy through the users arm to perform a powerful chop. This slowly transfers Ripple through the point hit, advancing until it blows up, with enough power to cut through solid bone.
 * Zoom Punch: The Ripple user launches their fist forward and strikes their opponent. This attack involves a ripple breathing technique that dislocates and stretches the joints to extend the arm and give it greater reach while also using the same ripple to dull the pain caused by the move.
 * Scarlet Overdrive: Jonathan charges his Ripple into one of his hands, creating a flame which can burn an opponent.
 * Underwater Turquoise Blue Overdrive: Ripple is at it's most effective when channelled through liquid and therefore when used underwater Ripple is at it's most powerful. Jonathan can release high powered tempests while underwater with enough force to blast enemies away and drain a lake to waist-high deep.
 * Sunlight Yellow Overdrive: Jonathan's most powerful Ripple technique. Jonathan delivers rapid flurry of Ripple-infused punches which has power comparable to the sun itself. Jonathan marks the attack by exclaiming "My heart resonates! The heat's enough to burn! The beat of my blood is razor-sharp".
 * Healing: Ripple can also be used to heal the user to a certain extent. It can be used to eject poison from the bloodstream and heal broken bones with Jonathan once being able to heal his own broken neck.
 * Superhuman Strength and Durability: I mean come on. Just look at this guy. He's a fucking man mountain. Jonathan is at the peak of human physicality and is strong enough to perform feats normal humans would find impossible. Some of these feats include; ripping through steel bars, managing to drag along 4 full grown men during a game of rugby, launching himself into the air with the strength in his arms alone and delivering punches which can stumble a giant undead knight. Jonathan is also incredibly durable able to shrug off blows from swords and bladed projectiles and even managing to survive falling from the top of a very tall mansion. Combined with his Hamon healing and incredible determination Jonathan is a hard to man to keep down.
 * Skilled Hand to Hand combatant: Jonathan is also a very skilled unarmed fighter able to deliver a brutal beat-down to Dio (albeit before he became a vampire) and hold his own against undead zombies and vampires (including the aforementioned Dio when he became a vampire).

Ghastly Bespoke


"Fashion. It's life or death."

- Ghastly Bespoke

Ghastly Bespoke is a tailor by trade and a close friend of Skulduggery. When his mother was pregnant with him she was jinxed and as a result he was born with scars that covered his entire head, making integration into normal society almost impossible. As a child, Ghastly told his friends that his mother was a tailor and his father was the boxer - but it was the other way round, with his mother being a famous boxer with a 23 consecutive win streak while his father enjoyed sowing making adjustments to hemlines and all that.

Equipment


 * Sword: All of the dead men carry a sword with them into combat. While the exact specifications are not known for the sake of comparison it is assumed that it is roughly 2 feet long. The blade is incredibly sharp, able to lop off limbs and heads with ease.


 * Gauntlet: Originally mages went into battle with a sword and shield but this was impractical as it left them with no free hand to use their magic and thus they created an arm length gauntlet, reaching from the shoulder all the way down to the wrist. This Gauntlet is able to block Cleaver Blades, which are made from an incredibly sharp material able to slice through skin and bone.

Powers and Abilities
 * Skilled Elemental Magic User:  Ghastly is an elemental, meaning his magic focuses on control of the elements . The elements and some of their uses are listed below;
 * Fire: The flashiest and most used of the four elements. Elemental sorcerers create fire by generating friction, usually the snapping of fingers, and use it for various purposes. These include creating fireballs, creating barriers of fire, expelling fire in a flamethrower type stream and fireballs can be focused into more concentrated flames which can be used to cut and carve.
 * Air: Air magic is the most versatile and, at times, the most powerful of the four elements. Air magic is the easiest to learn with most sorcerers learning this first. Uses of Air magic includes pushing and pulling towards or away from the sorcerer, squeezing and crushing objects, holding a person in place, creating a powerful wall of air to block an attacker, creation of whirlwinds, reading disturbances in the air, depriving people of air, containing an explosion within a sphere of air and can be used to buff up a users punching power by encasing their fists with a layer of air
 * Earth: Earth magic was at first, and for a very long time, thought to be last resort defensive magic. However it has since been shown to have some offensive prowess as well. The main use of earth magic is to turn the user into an unbreakable stone statue but the length of this transformation is unpredictable and could last any length of time, from a couple of years to several centuries.
 * Water: Water is the most rarely used out of the four elements . When the user is submerged in water, water manipulation can be used in a similar way to air manipulation. Uses of Water magic includes walking on water, enhancing swimming ability, firing a stream of water as a projectile, creating a wall of water, manipulating water vapour in the air to create small rainstorms and the manipulation of ice or snow.


 * Skilled Hand to Hand Combatant: Trained from an early age by his boxer mother, Ghastly is one of the most powerful hand to hand fighters in the skulduggery pleasant universe. He can fight multiple skilled mages at once, once being able to take down six sorcerers single-handedly. He was also the only member of the main cast able to fight on par with the assassin Tesseract, a mage who defeated four exceptionally skilled mages (which included Skulduggery, Valkyrie and Ravel) single-handedly.


 * Superhuman Strength and Durability: Ghastly is a stocky man and as such as displayed feats that a are above the standard capabilities of a normal person. He can knock a person out with a single punch, choke hold someone into unconsciousness in a matter of seconds,carry a full grown person without struggle. Ghastly is also incredibly resilient, able to survive a bomb blast at close range and punch a steel mask without injury.

X Factors
Physicality: Jonathan=90/Ghastly=85

Both of these men are in peak physical condition even before you take into account their respective magical disciplines which boost their physical capabilities even further. However Jonathan's physical feats border more on a superhuman level whereas Ghastly is more at the peak of what a normal human can achieve so Jonathan gets a slight edge.

Experience: Jonathan=60/Ghastly=85

Ghastly takes a massive edge here. Being over 400 years old, Ghastly has seen his fair share of combat including a centuries long war and a number of adventures both before and after said war. Admittedly he did settle down to become a tailor and later an elder after the war but still often finds himself dragged into combat against powerful mages and monsters. Jonathan on the other hand has about a week of actual combat experience and while this is against vampires, zombies and other undead creatures it's far shorter.

Brutality: Jonathan=65/Ghastly=70

While both Jonathan and Ghastly are more than willing to use lethal force against evildoers and the undead both are more forgiving against human opponents and rarely aim to kill their opponent. However because Jonathan actively tries to not badly injure his opponents as well as not killing them, as seen in the battle against the Ogre Street Thugs his rating is slightly lower than Ghastly, who will still inflict a brutal and crippling beat-down to an opponent.

Voting System/Notes
Battle takes place in Knight's Landing.

Battle takes place at some point between Jonathan beating Dio and getting married to Erina. In the Skulduggery timeline this takes place around the same time as Phantom Blood with Ghastly still part of the Dead Men during the war.

In order to be counted in full, votes must be at least 5 lines long or have been done in an edge format.

Anything less than 5 lines but which is competently argued and thought out will be counted as a half vote. I will inform anybody if their vote is considered a half vote and allow them to amend it to bring it up to a full point.

Irrelevant votes will not be counted at all.

I reserve the right to award a vote as half or discount it entirely for reason not mentioned here if I feel it is applicable.