User blog:BeastMan14/Arrow vs Nolan, Part 3! Malcolm Merlyn vs Daredevil!

This week on Arrow vs Nolan, we celebrate the upcoming release of Daredevil Season 2 by bringing in a special guest star for a clash of black-clad warriors of the night! Malcolm Merlyn! The ruthless assassin who was willing to destroy part of a city to avenge the murder of his wife! Daredevil! The crime-fighter of Hell’s Kitchen who will stop at nothing to bring down the Kingpin! WHO...IS...DEADLIEST?!?

Malcolm Merlyn
"Every warrior must learn the simple truth, that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional."

- Malcolm Merlyn

Formerly a kind-hearted, loving father, Malcolm Merlyn's entire world changed following the murder of his wife Rebecca at the hands of Danny Brickwell in Starling City's Glades. After tracking down and murdering the man who he believed to be his wife's killer, Malcolm left his son Tommy in the care of others as he left in search of Nanda Parbat, home of the League of Assassins. Taking the name Al Sa-Her (The Magician), Malcolm trained for two years under Ra's Al Ghul, who helped him come to the realization that the world is cruel. Finding a new purpose in life, Malcolm was released from the League under the condition that he follow the code.

Upon his return to Starling, Malcolm began working with Robert Queen and Frank Chen to rid the city of crime by forcing criminals to give up their money. After a few months, Malcolm assembled his allies and revealed his true plan to create an earthquake machine and destroy the Glades. While most of the group was won over, Robert was against the idea, so Malcolm arranged for his boat, the Queen's Gambit, to be sunk, killing him and stranding his son (and Tommy's best friend) Oliver on the island of Lian Yu. Using this as a warning to the others, Malcolm also began to threaten the life of Thea Queen, his own daughter, to keep Robert's wife Moira in line.

Daredevil
"We don't live in a world that's fair, we live in this one. And I'm doing everything I can to make it a better place."

- Daredevil

The son of washed up boxer Jack Murdock, Matthew "Matt" Murdock's entire life was changed when he saved an elderly man from being hit by a chemical truck, only to be blinded by the hazardous material the truck was carrying. Waking up in the hospital, Matt realized he could hear every sound in the area. Learning to control his heightened senses, Matt continued learning as much as he could at the insistence of his father, who wanted a better life for him. One night, Jack was told by local mobsters to throw his fight with Carl Creel, but he chose to instead win the match and give the money he won to Matt. Before he could get home, Jack was killed, and Matt was moved to St. Agnes Orphanage, where he met Stick, a wise but rather coarse man who taught him how to control his senses. When Matt began to see Stick as a surrogate father, Stick left him, and would not return for many years.

Years later, Matt was accepted into Columbia University, where he befriended Foggy Nelson. After they graduated, the duo worked as interns for Landman and Zach, but left after Matt grew disgusted with defending immoral corporations who ruined people's lives. They began their own law firm, swearing to protect the innocent and make a difference. After leaving, Matt began to have trouble sleeping due to hearing a girl crying as her father abused her. After the man alluded the authorities, Matt donned a black mask and savagely beat the man, threatening to kill him if he ever hurt his daughter again. Satisfied, Matt began donning the black mask and fighting more crime, bringing his actions to the attention of the criminal element of Hell's Kitchen.

Malcolm Merlyn
Weapons and Equipment: Abilities:
 * Customized Compound Bow: Malcolm uses a customized PSE X-Force Super Short Short Draw LF Compound Bow as his primary weapon in combat.
 * Custom Hunting Arrows: Malcolm uses custom arrows more centered on killing or wounding than Oliver, to the point where the arrowheads have three serrated teflon-coated titanium blades.
 * Explosive Arrows: Unlike Oliver, Merlyn tends to stick with regular arrows, though he has shown himself to be equipped with explosive arrows during his rescue of Thea from Deathstroke's army and his fight with Damien Dahrk.
 * Scimitar: During his third battle with Oliver, Malcolm wielded a scimitar with deadly efficiency.
 * Dark Archer suit: Malcolm, like all members of the League, wears a custom-made black suit when masquerading as the Dark Archer. What exactly it's made of is unclear, though it is known that it has Kevlar parts.
 * Peak Physical Condition: Thanks to years of training, Malcolm is incredible physical condition, capable of keeping up with (and outmatching) Oliver on multiple occasions. His reflexes are enhanced to the point where he can catch an arrow out of the air, and he can survive taking an arrow through the chest.
 * Master Archer/Marksman: Malcolm is an incredible archer, to the point where he can take down one of Deathstroke's superhuman soldiers by landing one well-placed shot, and can even take Oliver by surprise with his skills.
 * Expert Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Malcolm is, quite possibly, the most skilled hand-to-hand combatant in the DCTVU. He's capable of defeating members of the League of Assassins with relative ease, and Oliver struggled to even land a hit on him during either of their encounters, even with the assistance of John Diggle.
 * Stealth Expert: Merlyn's stealth skills are incredible, and he's capable of nonchalantly sneaking into heavily-guarded and surveyed locations like the Arrow Cave. Even The Flash, a person with enhanced reflexes, was incapable of noticing him.
 * Expert Tactician: Malcolm is a genius-level tactician and manipulator, regularly coming up with massive, incredibly risky strategies that always work out in his favor, such as the Undertaking, a plot which only failed due to the efforts of the Queen family but still ended with him accomplishing his major goal, and his plot to get the League off of his back that ended with him becoming the next Ra's Al Ghul.
 * Skilled Swordsman: Merlyn is a skilled swordsman, to the point of where he can defeat Nyssa, the daughter of Ra's himself, in a duel. He is shown at one point where to practice fencing regularly, alongside being skilled with a variety of styles.

Daredevil
Weapons and Equipment: Abilities:
 * Custom Suit: Designed by Melvin Potter, the Daredevil suit is better designed to protect Matt from damage such as knives or gunfire. According to Potter, the black parts of the armor can take direct hits from things like knives or bullets, while the red parts can stop a knife at the right angle.
 * Billy Clubs: Matt also had Potter create a special set of billy clubs that can be combined into one larger staff.
 * Master Hand-to-Hand Combatant: With a fighting style that mixes the likes of boxing, wrestling, kung fu, and aikido, Matt is an incredibly dangerous foe up-close. He's capable of effortlessly defeating a group of armed cops up-close, going toe-to-toe with an assassin of the Hand, and overcoming Wilson Fisk, a man much stronger and larger than he is. Even when physically exhausted and badly injured, he was able to overcome a room of gangsters and rescue the child they had kidnapped.
 * Skilled Acrobat: Matt's enhanced sense of balance enables him to pull off incredible feats of agility. He can dodge gunfire from an Uzi at close-range, and keep up with a moving car by jumping from rooftop to rooftop.
 * Enhanced Senses: Despite the loss of his sight, Matt was trained by Stick to harness his other senses to their full potential, giving him superhuman senses.
 * Superhuman Hearing: Matt's hearing is incredibly sensitive, to the point where he can hear a person's heartbeat to determine if they're lying or telling the truth and even hear a radio conversation from across the city. Even the highly-trained assassin Nobu was incapable of getting around it, as Matt heard him as soon as he entered the room.
 * Superhuman Sense of Smell: Matt's sense of smell is enhanced to the point where he can smell a man's cologne even though the man in question is three floors below him. He can even tell what someone had for lunch a few days prior.
 * Superhuman Taste: Matt's sense of taste enables him to pick up on even the tiniest tastes, such as the taste of copper in the air when someone is bleeding or being able to determine the location of the ingredients in a cone of ice cream.
 * Super-Human Touch: Matt is capable of knowing who is around him simply by feeling the vibrations in the air, and he's capable of detecting and dodging bullets by feeling them cutting through the air. He can locate enemies on any floor of a building just by feeling the vibrations they create through the wall or floor.
 * High Pain Tolerance: One of Matt's best traits is his refusal to back down, no matter what his injuries are. He once did battle with the Russian mob after they savagely beat and stabbed him before leaving him in a dumpster for hours, and defeated Nobu after suffering dozens of blade wounds all over his body, then attempted to attack the Kingpin, who threw him in the harbor.
 * Stealth Expert: Daredevil can effortlessly get the drop on any foe with incredible ease, to the point where he was able to ambush a group of prepared cops and defeat them with ease.
 * Skilled Marksman: Matt's senses give him enhanced spatial awareness, and he uses the skill to land well-placed shots with his clubs. In the season 1 finale, he was able to ricochet one of his clubs off the side of a truck, into a man's face, and back into his hand.
 * Skilled Stick Fighter: Matt is highly skilled in the usage of his clubs, in both stick and staff form.

Explanations

 * While Merlyn has traveled the world in an attempt to find himself, he hasn't really used the skills beyond planning the Undertaking. Daredevil, meanwhile, has been constantly fighting crime on a nightly basis for some time now, alongside his battles against Wilson Fisk and his allies, such as the Russians and Nobu.
 * Daredevil, other than his training under Stick, is largely self-taught. Malcolm has received training from the elite League of Assassins, and was the star pupil and supposed "right-hand man" of Ra's Al Ghul, one of the deadliest people on the planet, suggesting an even greater level of training and skill than most recruits.
 * Matt Murdock is no idiot. He's one of the finest lawyers in New York, and it's mentioned he graduated law school with flying colors, but he's got nothing on Merlyn's tactical skill and intelligence. Malcolm is a master manipulator and planner, regularly thinking circles around everyone around him, though his arrogance and borderline sociopathic tendencies has caused him to make mistakes in the past.
 * Daredevil's willing to be brutal, certainly, and he's shown a willingness to kill if you push him far enough (though the ensuing stomping from Wilson Fisk stopped him from actually going through with it), but Malcolm Merlyn will kill anyone that stands in the way of his agenda, be they friend or foe. Recent events have even shown that he values his own goals and motivations over the life of his daughter, Thea.
 * Matt's fighting style and abilities enable him to make special use of his clubs, but Merlyn's skill as an archer is pretty much unrivaled. Even Oliver has admitted that Merlyn is superior to him (at least at that point in the series, he did).