Joel Miller vs Lee Everett

'''This is DarkofDragoon's fourth What-If? Death Battle. Criticism is welcome, just as long as you're gentle.'''

Description
The Last of Us vs The Walking Dead! Two zombie-fighting heroes fight to the death! Can Joel and his survival skills work to defeat the last remaining member of the Everett family? Find out here!

Interlude
Wiz: We've all heard of the deadliest creature of the night...

Boomstick: My mom?

Wiz: No, but the zombie. They lurk around the planet, causing outbreaks and destroying our very population. When you have the whole world at stake, there's usually someone that survives.

Boomstick: Joel Miller, a survivor of the cordyceps brain infection and protector of Ellie.

Wiz: And Lee Everett, the charismatic and brutal survivor and guardian of Clementine.

Boomstick: He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick.

Wiz: It's our job to analyse their weapons, armour and skill to see who would win in a Death Battle.

Joel
Boomstick: When the whole world's been plunged into a zombie outbreak, there's not a lotta people that can survive. Joel however, is a lucky son of a bitch.

Wiz: Born on September 26th, 1984 in Texas, Joel grew up with his brother, Tommy. The pair had struggled with life without their parents and were extremely lucky to even make it to school.

Boomstick: Early on in his life, Joel made the worst decision of his life...marriage. He got hitched to somebody and even had a daughter called Sarah, though it wasn't long before his wife left him. Asshole.

Wiz: Forced to look after Sarah, the two lived through the rest of their lives in Austin, Texas, working in a construction site in order to get enough money so he can look after his daughter. This job continued to make Joel active, and he even had a treadmill at one point. Even though his job was demanding and took up a lot of his time, Joel still was able to spend quality time with Sarah.

Boomstick: On the day of the zombie outbreak, Joel, Sarah and Tommy were forced to evacuate town before they were accused of carrying the virus and then killed. While Tommy was fighting the zombies, Joel and Sarah came across a soldier that ended up shooting Sarah and eventually causing her to bleed out. Yeah, his life kinda sucks.

Wiz: The zombies would go onto killing millions of people all over the U.S and twenty years afterwards, Joel and Tommy arrive at a quarantine zone at Boston, where Joel got work as a smuggler. One day, Tommy leaves to join the Fireflies, a group rebelling against the military. When he forms a disliking for the Fireflies, Tommy leaves the group and even leaves Boston, leaving Joel alone.

Boomstick: After some asshat tries to kill Tess, a girl that Joel became friends with, they are offered by the leader of the Fireflies to carry something over to a branch of their group and in return, they'll be let off. Turns out that the something's actually a girl called Ellie.

Wiz: This is where Joel and Ellie's adventures begin. Tess leaves herself behind after she reveals herself to have been bitten and in any form of zombie media, that means you're dead already. The pair travel across America, forming a strong friendship that could never be broken.

Boomstick: Joel's one heck of a badass, able to take on hordes of zombies by himself. He uses a buncha weapons, including a 9mm Pistol, a Revolver, a Shotgun, Sniper Rifles and even uses Shivs, Nail Bombs and Smoke Bombs.

Weapons:

9mm Pistol

Revolver

Hunting Rifle

Bow (and arrows)

Shotgun

Military Sniper

Flamethrower

Assault Rifle

2x4

Shiv

Pipe

Baseball Bat

Machete

Hatchet

Molotov Cocktail

Nail Bomb

Smoke Bomb

Wiz: While Joel's arsenal is impressive, he can only carry three items at once, which can be tough to manage. He can use his backpack to hold items he isn't using. Joel has taken on the quickest of zombies and is impeccable with his sneaking. He's also quite the tactician, able to tell exactly what he should do in any given circumstance.

Boomstick: When everything else doesn't work, Joel's been crafting weapons should he ever be low on some. He can do this during any sort of fight, as long as he's hidden. Not only that, but when he's focused, he can tell exactly where his enemies are. Shit, there's no hidin' from this guy.

Wiz: Joel can also hold his breath for a long amount of time and is even knowledgeable in close quarters combat. He can perform fatal chokeholds, forceful punches and he can even take on those that are at least half his age. Whenever something's threatened Ellie, he will stop at nothing to find her.

Boomstick: You don't fuck around with Joel.

''Joel: I struggled for a long time with survivin'. And you...no matter what, you keep finding something to fight for.''

Lee
Boomstick: Y'know, there's something off about this guy. I don't know what...

Wiz: Is it because he's black? Do you have a problem with that?

Boomstick: No, I'm just curious. Seems like the kinda guy I wanna hang out with.

Wiz: Well, Lee was originally a professor at the Georgia State University for over six years. During this time, his family consisting of a brother, mother and father, looked after a family business in Macon, Georgia, which was a drugstore.

Boomstick: Drugs? Heck yeah, I love this guy now!

Wiz: He's probably not somebody you wanna get too close with, as sometime after those six years, he was arrested for having murdered a senator that was sleeping with his wife, who he then divorced. For this one brutal murder, Lee was going to be imprisoned for the rest of his life. That's when...

Boomstick: Zombies happened. As he was being driven up to the station, a zombie got in the car's way and forced it to swerve down the road and into the forest, where the officer that was driving him died and turned into a zombie shortly after. Lee was forced to kill the officer, but thanks to the crash, his leg was damaged and could barely escape from the zombies that heard the gunshot that killed the officer.

Wiz: After climbing over the fence to the back garden of a house, Lee enters the house and finds that a family used to live there, but the parents of the only child had went away, leaving their kid with a babysitter. Lee found a walkie talkie in the house and began communicating with the child, who had survived by hiding in a treehouse.

Boomstick: Smart kid. Lee then goes and kills a zombie, which he begins to call walkers, that used to be the babysitter, with help from the kid. The kid introduces herself as Clementine, and they escape from the home and end up on a farm.

Wiz: On the farm, Lee met up with Kenny and his family on a farm and the two became good friends. After the farm's owner's and Kenny's sons get into a problem involving walkers, Lee, Clementine and Kenny's family are all thrown out of the ranch and are forced to go elsewhere.

Boomstick: Their journey stops when they reach Macon and are attacked by a swarm of zombies. Saving their asses are another group that holed up in Lee's family's drugstore, which is where Lee's group is first formed.

Wiz: This group would go onto building a fence around a motor inn and surviving there for quite some time, until they're chased out by bandits. As more people of their group die, the remaining survivors of the group begin to thin out. That's as far we're going to go without major spoilers.

Boomstick: Lee's one heck of a fighter. He's awesome with pistols, hunting rifles, even melee weapons like hatchets, fire axes and whatever he finds.

Weapons:

Pistol

Hunting Rifle

Fire Axe

Spanner

Wiz: While Lee doesn't have that big of an arsenal, he is actually pretty smart. He figured out how to kill walkers silently, how to move across a massive group of walkers without getting attacked and learnt how to operate a train by looking at notes. Lee is strong, able to beat other humans to a pulp with a small amount of punches.

Boomstick: Lee does like to fall on his face. This can bring him into bad situations, but he usually comes out on top. He has enough muscle to climb up walls, pull out drains and even hold onto ledges for ages.

Wiz: He's also very agile, able to jump across rooftops and leap across rooms with relative ease. Lee is also an expert at using the environment around him in a fight. And when somebody's got their hands on Clementine, there's nothing that brings down this convicted felon.

''Vernon: I'll take Clementine off your hands. Take her back with me, to my people...''

*Lee pins Vernon onto a wall*

''Lee: That little girl's in my care! We've been through more together than you could imagine! Anyone who tries to get between me and her is gonna wind up dead!''

DEATH BATTLE!
A black-skinned man wearing a blue shirt, beige leg garments and a goatee walked along the train, which had been halted in place thanks to the danger of an explosive tanker blocking its path, climbed down a small ladder and began walking along the tracks, towards a lonesome station in the distance.

"I'm headin' to the station!" the man called out to his group.

Behind him came a young girl, seemingly wanting to join the man. "Lee! Can I come with you?"

"Sorry Clem, it's gonna be a little too dangerous for you. Stay here with Kenny and the others, you'll be safer," Lee Everett answered, squatting in place to be face to face with the child.

"But you said we're supposed to be a team..." Clementine lamented.

Lee placed a hand on Clementine's shoulder. "I don't know what I'll find out there. Maybe something we need to cut that tanker down. If I don't come back in half an hour, get the others and start running over, okay?" He lowered his tone so he would feel more comforting for the young girl.

"Okay..." agreed Clementine, returning to the warm embrace of her group.

Lee stood back up and readied a pistol, now walking slowly towards the station. As he approached, he could see a larger, run down building in the distance, which seemed to hold more promise. Interested, Lee took this opportunity and aimed his sights for the bigger construct. At first, rubble had blocked any potential way in, but Lee managed to climb up the wreckage and enter through a broken window.

Click! A sound of a gun alerted Lee to a slightly older man wearing a chequered jacket, jeans and a brown backpack, aiming a pistol for the former's head.

"Who the fuck are you?" the other man asked, apparently pissed off. "Are you another one of those cannibals?"

"Fuck no. I've met cannibals before, now they're walker food," Lee answered, aiming his own pistol for the stranger's head. "You're not a bandit, are you?"

"Bandits. The type of people that get on my nerves," the man returned. "I have someone to protect and I can't let you be the one that separates us."

"The feeling's mutual."

"So, mind telling me your name?"

"It's Lee. Lee Everett."

"The killer? Now I just can't let you live," the man realised, putting a finger on the trigger. "My name's Joel, and I won't let you hurt Ellie."

Joel and Lee stared down each other through the aiming of their respective pistols. Both men had the look of hatred in their eyes, like they had just met their worst enemy.

FIGHT!

The two began shooting from their pistols almost immediately after the intense stare-down, though the majority of their bullets failed to connect to their targets. Two of Joel's bullets had hit Lee, but only one of Lee's had shot Joel. After a minute of firing, both guys found that they had run out of ammunition, so Lee rugby-tackled Joel, shoving him through the door and into the hallway's wall.

Joel managed to throw Lee off of him, then had enough time to get out a smoke bomb, blinding Lee and allowing the father of the two to slip away. In time, Lee managed to step out of the smoke and equip himself with a hunting rifle, then began to slowly walk down the hallway.

What he didn't expect was for his opponent to pop out behind him and stab him in the back with a shiv. Instantly pulling the shiv out of Lee's back, Joel stepped backwards to avoid gunfire and went in for a stab, though Lee crouched to dodge the lunge and shot for his foe's chest, causing him to recoil for a brief second.

Lee was not quick enough to abuse this recoil time, but was fast enough to continue avoiding Joel's stabs and on the flip side, Joel was expert and narrowly evading Lee's gunshots and even managed to disarm and take the hunting rifle for his own, but after a single shot to Lee's chest, the rest of the ammo became depleted.

Lee took this time to pin Joel to the ground and punch him in the face with considerable force, until Joel threw his darker-skinned opponent off of him, then re-equipped the shiv and tried to stab Lee once again, but he had already brought out a fire axe and began countering the stabs blow for blow.

This kept going until Lee hacked at Joel's left shoulder, forcing him to leap backwards.

"Those are a killer's instincts...you're not exactly organised, are you?" Joel asked, trying to tend to his pain.

"I'm organised enough. No fucker's gonna stop me from looking after Clementine!" Lee retorted.

Lee went in for some more slashes, but Joel dodged them all and stabbed Lee in the chest, using the recoil time to pull out a nail bomb then slide it underneath Everett. Stepping back to the far end of the hallway, Joel watched as Lee exploded into many bloody pieces.

K.O!

Joel ventured downstairs, where he found Ellie sitting on a chair. Panting, Joel did his best to get out a sentence before something would happen.

"What's up with you? Find someone upstairs?" Ellie asked, in a playful mood. "I heard the explosions, the shooting and the shouting."

"We need to leave, immediately," Joel declared, getting his breath back.

"Huh? Why?"

"Guys like that don't survive on their own. Someone's going to come after him and who knows, maybe he belongs to an entire group. We won't be enough to stop that group."

Ellie sighed and stood up. "Good point."

The two friends snuck back out, escaping scot-free. Clementine on the other hand, was indeedly upset.

Results
Boomstick: Shit, that was pretty awesome. Too many cutscenes, though.

Wiz: Well, The Last of Us and The Walking Dead do have bundles of cutscenes layered in between gameplay. But yeah, this fight was an interesting one. Lee was much smarter, as he actually became a professor and though it was for history, it still means he was sensible enough to not bear the responsibility of fatherhood at an early age.

Boomstick: Lee never actually had a kid. Lucky guy.

Wiz: Joel had nearly every advantage over him, though the two were tied in physical strength, Joel's stealth tactics allowed him to get as many hits on Lee as he wanted. Combine that with a decent arsenal, you've got yourself a deadly opponent.

Boomstick: Looks like Lee took a bite outta death.

Wiz: The winner is Joel.

Next Time on DEATH BATTLE!
"It's no use!" barked a white-grey hedgehog, using psychokinesis to throw a blue hedgehog into a wall repeatedly.

"The nightmare is over, Cell! DIE!" shouted a Super Saiyan with a sword, using a massive ki blast to kill a green creature.

Silver vs Future Trunks