Medic Vs Herbert West
Medic Vs Herbert West
Two doctors, disgraced and ostracised from their fields who nonetheless continued their research and beat death itself, proving, in the process, that they can end life just as easily as restoring it.
For this match I'm approaching it with something of an anything-goes attitude. Medic will get the game, including mannpower and MvM, all of the official animations, including unreleased ones, the comics & any crossover I consider canon enough to scale. Likewise Herbert is going to get his film trilogy, the novel, the comics, including the evil dead crossover & anything else I consider canon enough to fit.
Medic:
Born & Raised in Stuttgart, Germany, Dr Ludwig is by no means a true man of medicine, he's actually something of a psychopath, seeing healing as a mostly unintended side effect of his experiments, although it definitely came in handy when he was hired to carry out a blood feud between Red & Blu Mann, working on the borderline dysfunctional Team Fortress. This fabled blood feud is actually two old gits hiring mercenaries to fight over worthless pits of gravel for them, and Ludwig couldn't care less because it gives him the perfect opportunity to carry out research and practice medicine. The centrepiece of his entire practice is the Medi Gun, a bizarre, hose-fuelled energy cannon that can heal teammates from almost anything that won't outright kill them, from burns & bullet wounds to knitting Heavy's chest back together after surgery or replacing Scout's tooth. It's even capable of extinguishing fires or allowing the operator to catch up with a faster patient, and, if the patient was wearing a specialised pack they can be reconstituted after being entirely vaporised. It can also project a shield capable of defending his entire team by vaporising all incoming projectiles, as well as any enemies stupid enough to get close and, provided the patient has a special heart implant, and their heart didn't explode from the sheer amount of energy, the medic can activate an Übercharge, rendering both himself and the recipient entirely invulnerable for 8 seconds, or, with alternative Medi Gun designs, it can triple their damage output, or render them nigh-immune to certain types of attack, or heal them from the brink of death in seconds. On top of this, Ludwig has developed a healing factor of his own, capable of healing him from injuries as severe as bullet and stab wounds, and that's without even mentioning the bizarre physiology characters in the TF2 universe seem to have, the Soldier survived his spine being snapped in half by a Yeti, and he was able to reattach his hand after it was cut off. People can be revived by sloshing their blood back into their bodies with a bucket and necks can be un-snapped. One guy woke up after Ludwig stole his skeleton during a surgery. It's a gory cartoon world. Additionally, after selling his soul to the devil, Ludwig surgically attached 8 more souls onto his own, giving him, at time of writing, a 7:2 stake in his soul's board of directors, after he sold one to literally buy his way out of Hell and resurrect himself. It's safe to say it would be tough to kill Herr Ludwig.
He's not without his offensive options either, he's got a revolver in his lab and a series of syringe guns with varying designs, from a long-range crossbow to a bloodsucking model that can heal the user. On top of that, he has an assortment of bonesaws, including the vita-saw, which is built to pluck organs right out of its recipients, a comically large machete and a frying pan, as well as various other improvised melee weapons. He bottled both the attack-trebling and invincibility inducing aspects of his Übercharges, giving him and his teammates a distinct advantage against the barrage of Gray Mann's robots, and he can use a grappling hook to zip around any arena, or even pull himself directly towards his enemies after, well, impaling them, which makes getting up close somewhat redundant. It might seem obvious, but for him the Hippocratic oath is more of a suggestion than anything, and one he gleefully ignores.
In terms of stats, TF2 is interesting. You can get them to galactic level by including the cameos in dungeon defenders, although I am unwilling to do that considering the characters aren't really there. Additionally you could call scout, and by extension, Medic, a light-timer, considering he can dodge the C.A.P.P.E.R. and Shooting Star with Bonk!, however, I'm unwilling to count those, because a Bonk! Scout is so far above the regular cast in terms of speed he can't even use his own weapons, let alone get tagged by a medic. What I am willing to do is get silly with vaporisation calculations. Scout, in meet the medic, survives being hit by three rockets all at once. A rocket is exactly as strong as a blast from the cow mangler, and three of those can vaporise a Heavy. Vaporising a human, according to FanofRPGs on VS Battle Wiki, takes around 70.6kg of TNT, and, as heavy is likely to be around double that weight, given his height and build, making the yield required for that vaporisation around 141.2kg of TNT. We can scale Medic to that, as he's actually more durable than scout, who took an explosion of that strength in the first place. Being generous, we can scale him even higher. With MVM upgrades, a soldier can double his attack output and with critical hits he can triple it. Those multipliers together would put the TF2 universe's maximum output at 847kg of TNT, something you could cautiously scale medic to as a well-timed shield can do an analogous amount of damage to a soldier, and he can still kill mercs and robots that can survives attacks from a fully upgraded soldier. Additionally, an ubercharged heavy was able to stop a train with (around) 30 cars, traveling at full speed, a feat of strength and durability that could equal around 2.1 tons of TNT. In terms of speed, characters can react to, and dodge, rockets from the direct hit, which are around 80% faster than regular rockets, making them mach 1.6. For what its worth the crossovers (Alien, Hitman, CS:GO, Portal, etc.) didn't seem to do much for Medic, however you could definitely argue that the Sam & Max crossover is viable, considering TF2 mercs can use their weapon, the Lugermorph, and because of the crossover for Poker Night at the Inventory, which would get TF2 to 1.9 tons of TNT.
Additionally, despite being the weakest fighter on his team, Ludwig is a menace in fights, he overpowered and decapitated a BLU Spy, he can bluff trained mercenaries into believing something as absurd as a pen being a remote that could cause them to gestate three baboon foetuses in a matter of seconds. (Obviously the actual remote can only induce one or two) and he's familiar enough with the human body to know exactly what spots are vital and, therefore, what spots need stabbing with a bonesaw. His reactions are fast enough to save someone from falling to their deaths a split second before they hit the ground, or rendering someone invincible the second before an explosive hits them, and he's smart enough to account for travel time while firing his syringe guns, able to consistently track, tag and kill the fastest mercs on the field. On top of all that, despite his less-than-composed demeanour, Ludwig is an extraordinary genius, to the point that he was able to bring Sniper back to life hours after he died, as well as developing all of his own weapons, machines, and medicines, *and* being a master manipulator, able to trick scores of mercenaries into positions where he can carry out unwanted surgeries and experiments on people, such as the aforementioned soul stealing and uterus insertion.
Herbert West
Herbert West was a trainee doctor in Switzerland before an unfortunate accident with his mentor led to him being transferred to America, where he continued his research. West's groundbreaking theory involved the assertion that consciousness resides in every part of the body and that patients can be revived long after the 6-12 minute limit imposed by his superiors. It just so happens that he conducts this research by injecting corpses with a reagent that looks like it came straight from a glowstick & people keep ending up dead in his wake.
His reagent is an impressive feat of medicine, in its imperfect state it could bring someone back to life hours after their passing, albeit in a primal, animalistic state but after years of tinkering, the addition of iguana spinal fluid, and the occasional use of "Nanoplasm energy" (basically a person's life force), he's proven capable of bringing people back entirely conscious, and his advanced serums can even restore a body in its entirety. His masterpiece, however, was creating life itself, ridding himself of the shackles even God himself is bound by and cobbling a new consciousness together with the body parts of numerous corpses and breathing life into her with his reagent before her heart was ultimately broken and she tore herself apart.
The road to his medical triumphs hasn't been easy either, he's had to duck out of the way of a hail of bullets and been forced to dodge a shotgun blast aimed directly at his dick & balls. He's also developed a knack for improvisation, solving a murder case that wasn't even under investigation with evidence he passively observed, he used a special heartstopping strain of chloroform to kill a detective that was out for his head. He even went as far as to decapitate the plagiarist professor Dr Carl Hill with the business end of a shovel and he later burst him open with an overdose of reagent after he came back to life. Somehow. Hard to say what caused it really. Herbert also managed to survive the resultant onslaught of suffocating intestines and frenzied attacks from zombies strong enough to crush skulls and rip bodies limb from limb. It seems the zombies didn't have the guts to finish him off.
After that he became a combat medic with his "roommate" Dan, fighting off multiple guerilla fighters with nothing but a pistol, and he managed to get his hands on a government-issue revolver later on before, again, being mobbed by reanimated monstrosities, this time with an entire catacomb collapsing on top of him, and yet, still, he survived in time to be arrested and face justice for his, frankly, absurd list of crimes against humanity.
There are many explanations you could offer for this seeming immortality, dumb luck, overexposure to reagent, retcons, inhuman durability, and as true as any of them may be, the explanation Herbert himself offers is the most reasonable, somehow. You see, many years ago his blood was cursed by a foul demon, rendering him unable to truly know the glory of his own reagent. So anything his reagent could bring him back from can't kill him so long as the curse remains. Considering his reagent has given life to creatures as simple as an eyeball spliced onto a handful of fingers, and based on West's own theory of consciousness residing in every part of the body, his body would need to be utterly destroyed, or at least his blood would need to be completely drained to even have a chance at killing him. He gets even harder to kill once you realise his disturbing ability to pull himself back together, able to reattach his head to his shoulders, send individual body parts away for reconnaissance and even possess others by attaching his head to their bodies. You can tell he's a Lovecraft character. In case that wasn't enough, focusing on his regeneration presupposes that you could hurt him in the first place. He survived German shell exploding in his face, a hospital being destroyed around him and a fistfight with Ash Williams. On top of that, he's even somewhat comparable to Vampirella, who survived an explosion that destroyed a plane.
Even after getting older and a stint in prison he was still a formidable fighter, getting past enough of his superhumanly strong reanimated corpses to escape the jail under the alias of the prison doctor he'd been assisting, ready to continue his work, going wherever it takes him and going through anyone who tires to stop him.
Fight:
Comments
Post a Comment