| Cat Noir vs. Claire Nunez | |
|---|---|
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| Season 5, Episode 6 | |
| Air date | July 26, 2020 |
| Written by | I'm Lynda |
| Episode guide | |
| Previous Green Hornet & Kato vs. Nite Owl & Rorschach |
Next Cat Noir vs. Troll Jim Lake |
Cat Noir vs. Claire Nuñez is a What-If? Death Battle by I'm Lynda. It features Cat Noir from the animated television series, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, and Claire Nunez from the animated television series, Trollhunters.
(This is part one of a three-part series saluting the upcoming fourth season of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir, and the new installment of Tales of Arcadia, Wizards: Tales of Arcadia!)
Description[]
Powerful heroes need competent sidekicks, and in this battle we pit two of them against each other. It’s Miraculous versus Trollhunters!
Interlude[]
Wiz: Sidekicks, no hero should be without them. They are there to make the hero look good, and to provide some complexity to the hero’s story.
Boomstick: Especially, when they use staffs...staves...sticks.
Wiz: In this battle, we pit two staff-weilding sidekicks against each other. The first being Cat Noir from the animated television series, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir.
Boomstick: And the second is Claire Nuñez from the equally animated television series, Trollhunters.
Wiz: ...Uh, yeah. I’m Wiz, and he’s Boomstick.
Boomstick: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.
Cat Noir[]
Wiz: Adrien Agreste was a far from typical young boy. The son of a rich and famous fashion designer, and a supermodel in his own right, he seemed to have everything. But, having an absent mother and a cold and distant father, he lived practically alone in a beautiful Parisian mansion.
Boomstick: However, everything seemed to change for him on the day that he found a little jewel box. It seems that this enigmatic, 186-year-old Chinese guy was looking to recruit some superheroes to help him, and he thought that Adrien would be a perfect fit.
Wiz: That rather spry-for-his-age man was Master Fu, the last of the Order of the Guardians, an ancient Chinese society dedicated to guarding the Miraculouses. These magical pieces of jewelry each contain a kwami...
Boomstick: Which look like little, flying Funko Pop toy animals.
Wiz: But are, in reality, sprite-like spirit-creatures that can help someone transform into a superhero.
Boomstick: Adrien was given the kwami named Plagg, who was the kwami of destruction. His Miraculous is a finger ring that looks silver when inactive.
Wiz: However, when Adrien activates his Miraculous...
Boomstick: By shouting the somewhat lame power words, “Plagg, claws out!”
Wiz: He becomes Cat Noir, complete with a black costume with cat ears on his head.
Boomstick: Cat Noir’s most basic powers are that he can move extraordinarily fast, and leap extraordinarily high and far. He also gains the ability to fight like a martial arts master.
Wiz: His greatest power, though, is the power of Cataclysm. When he activates this power, his right hand becomes charged with a black energy, and the next thing he touches will be destroyed.
Boomstick: He seems to have some discretion over how much destruction he causes with the Cataclysm. He has caused large structures to collapse after being hit with it, but once, he used it on the controls of a bus, causing them to go haywire.
Wiz: The limitation of this power is that, once he activates the Cataclysm, whether he uses it or not, he reverts to being Adrien Agreste in just five minutes.
Boomstick: But that’s not the only powers this kid gets while being Miraculous...it...tized...Miraculousitized? Is that a word? OK, while using his Miraculous is that he becomes super-fast. I mean he can run along the vertical wall of a building, and he once even got over to a pirate ship by leaping across the flying cannon balls that were being fired at him. And, he can use that speed to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Wait, that sounds familiar.
Wiz: He becomes super-dexterous, able to leap and spin through the air, dodging projectiles, and moving into and out of trouble.
Boomstick: He gets super-strong, able to lift heavy items, even flipping a bus over, using his staff as a lever.
Wiz: And, he seems to gain a certain amount of invulnerability. He has been punched by rock monsters, and been thrown down paved streets, and gotten up without a scratch. Once, the super-villain Hawk Moth used his cane to hit Cat Noir so hard, that he shot him through the ceiling of his hidden lair and up into the air, then he flew up and hit him again so hard that he flew across Paris and collided with the Eiffel Tower. When Hawk Moth went to confront him there, he showed no obvious damage of any kind.
Boomstick: In the episode “Ladybug,” he said, “we’re supposed to be nearly invulnerable.” Well, “nearly” is right. In the episode “Miraculer,” the villain steals Cat Noir’s power of Cataclysm and uses it on him. The kid is not destroyed, but he is visibly wounded, barely limping away from the battle. So, it does appear that while physical attacks might hurt Cat Noir, it takes magical attacks to actually harm him.
Wiz: When it comes to fighting, Cat Noir’s go-to weapon is his stick. When put away, this item is rather small, not much bigger than his hand. But, with an unspoken command he can lengthen it to act as a baton, a staff, a javelin, a vaulting pole, or even a bridge. He can even divide it in half to use it as two batons. And, like its owner, the stick appears to be completely unbreakable.
Boomstick: Yeah, this kid is really young, but don’t underestimate him. He’s strong, fast and nearly invulnerable, and that makes for a formidable opponent in any fight!
Claire Nuñez[]
Wiz: Claire Nuñez was a fairly typical student in Arcadia Oaks High School in Arcadia Oaks, California. She took Honors Algebra in her freshman year...
Boomstick: Nerd!
Wiz: ...was in the drama club...
Boomstick: Artsy fartsy loser.
Wiz: [Sigh] Let me guess you only studied guns in high school?
Boomstick: No, I also studied beer...and girls.
Wiz: And did you learn much?
Boomstick: About beer? Everything I needed to know! About girls? Not so much.
Wiz: Getting back to the subject in hand, Claire was a normal student, until she met a young boy named Jim Lake, Jr.
Boomstick: This Lake kid seemed to have some sort of secret, and Claire wanted to know what it was. Imagine her surprise when she found out that he was a Trollhunter. Which, surprise, surprise, is not someone who hunts trolls, but a warrior chosen by a magic amulet to protect the Earth from the evil creatures that inhabit a shadow dimension called, the Darklands.
Wiz: Getting sucked into Jim Lake’s adventures, Claire soon found herself acting as Jim’s assistant.
Boomstick: Sidekick. Now Claire did what she could to help the Trollhunter kid, but she really came into her own when she fought the evil troll, Angor Rot, and took away his Shadows Staff.
Wiz: This potent magical weapon was created by the sorceress, Morgan la Fay. When put away, it folds down to being a baton little larger than her hands. But, with a flick of her wrists, it unfolds to being a full sized staff that is a tall as she is.
Boomstick: The Shadow Staff’s must basic function is that it can open a portal, through the Shadow Realm, to another location, even one that is very distant. The one limitation being that Claire must be familiar with the other location that she is opening the portal to. She can’t, for example, have it open up above a volcano that she has read about, or over the Sun. But, she can open a portal to the Shadow Realm, and anyone sent there is going to have a really hard time getting back.
Wiz: The Shadow Realm is a plain of darkness and chaos, being something like the Upside Down in the television show, Stranger Things. It is from this realm that the Shadow Staff draws its power, and that is one of its great weaknesses. You see, just using the Shadow Staff exhausts the user, and corrupts him or her. When Claire used it to create a truly monumental portal, she was so corrupted that Morgan le Fay was able to possess her.
Boomstick: In her final confrontation with Morgana, Claire used the Staff to generate a blast of shadow energy to force the sorceress through a portal into the Shadow Realm, though even that came with a price, as it also dragged Claire towards the portal as well.
Wiz: Through her psychic link with Morgana, which she picked up when Morgana possessed her, she also picked up some magic of her own. In particular, she can call the Shadow Staff to come to her, and she can detect magic. For example, when the troll assassin, Angor Wat, was coming after the Trollhunter, Claire was able to sense his magic.
Boomstick: Among the other things that she was gifted with, Claire is now much stronger than an ordinary girl her own age, more dexterous, and she is an expert at hand-to-hand combat. Heck, she can even wield that staff of hers like a ninja warrior!
Wiz: And, finally, Claire has one other ace up her sleeve. She wears armor that was crafted for her by Merlin himself. It’s not known if this armor is particularly magical, but it does give her good protection against opponents.
Boomstick: So, she might look like a little girl, but Claire Nuñez is a fierce and resourceful warrior. She has fought powerful foes, and she is still standing!
Intermission[]
Wiz: Alright the combatants are set; let’s end this debate once and for all.
Boomstick: Its time for a DEATH BATTLE!
DEATH BATTLE![]
Pre-Fight []
Adrien Agreste stood in the line to buy some real-life American hotdogs. He did not know when he had ever been happier.
He had been excited to find out that he was going to a photo-shoot in Las Vegas, Nevada, but when Nathalie had told him that he could take his friends, Nino, Alya and Marinette, it had been like a dream come true.
They had flown to the Los Angeles International Airport, and then the four of them had packed into the back of a rented limousine and set out for Las Vegas. They had travelled along a great big American expressway when suddenly the limousine had broken down. While the Gorilla had stayed with the car, the four friends had gone into the nearby city, where they had found that a Battle of the Bands was scheduled for that very evening.
The bands had been surprisingly good, especially DJ Kleb, whose music had started out rather strange, but quickly became simply awesome.
When the gang had started to mention that they were hungry, Adrien had immediately volunteered to go buy some food. In truth, though, Adrien had volunteered because he was tired of listening to Plagg, his kwami, complain about his own hunger.
After buying five of the hotdogs, Adrien ducked behind some trailers, opened his over-shirt and released Plagg.
The little kwami looked down expectantly at the paper bag that Adrien was holding, and asked, “Ooh! What do you have in the bag? Is it Camembert?”
Adrien extracted one of the sandwiches from the bag, unwrapped it, and held it up to Plagg.
“It’s an American hotdog!” he announced.
Plagg looked down at the fluffy bun, which contained a bacon-wrapped sausage covered in fried peppers and onions, mayonnaise and other less-recognizable toppings, and recoiled.
“Ew!” he squealed. “You want me to eat that thing? It looks revolting!”
Adrien looked down at the hot dog with a frown. “It’s what they eat here,” he said. Then he smiled, “Come on, Plagg, just try a bite.”
Claire Nuñez stood on the stage, looking out at the crowd. She was trying to tell them that disaster was coming to Arcadia Oaks, but she kept tripping over her own words.
To make matters worse, her friends Mary Wang and Darci Scott thought that her speech was part of the performance, and they were trying to turn it into a song. Claire could not believe how badly things were going!
Suddenly, there was a colossal explosion, and a pillar of fire shot into the evening sky. Mary screamed, but the rest of the crowd just stared at the infernal column with their mouths agape.
“Claire, what’s going on?” Darci gasped.
Turning to her friends, she told them, “You guys need to go now. Get off the streets. Get somewhere safe.”
“Listen, Plagg,” Adrien began, “this is what I have for you to eat. I really don’t think that I am going to be able to get Camembert from a street vendor in Arcadia Oaks, California.”
Plagg just hovered in the air, his arms crossed and his back to Adrien. He seemed to radiate stubbornness.
Suddenly, there was a terrific explosion, and a pillar of fire and smoke rocketed up into the air. Both Adrien and Plagg stared at it with their mouths open.
Suddenly, Adrien said, “Well, it looks like the time for eating is over. Plagg, claws out!”
Plagg flew into Adrien’s Miraculous, and immediately the boy could feel himself transform into Cat Noir.
He reached behind his back, extracted his stick, and extended it to staff-length. Then, he planted it on the ground, and vaulted off towards the explosion.
Behind him, a rat came out of a storm drain, and sniffed that the forgotten bag of hotdogs. The rat sneezed, turned around, and ran back into the sewer.
A battle raged in the city square, with opponents squaring off seemingly everywhere. Finally, it began to look like they were winning.
“I’ve got this area covered.” Jim Lake announced. “The rest of the city is overrun. Fan out and take down any threat, Trollhunters.”
He stabbed another one of Gunmar’s Gumm-Gumms, and then turned to Claire and Toby Domzalski. “If anyone else is out there, get them inside the school."
Claire nodded, and ran off towards where she had last seen Mary and Darci.
Cat Noir found the city awash with huge monsters that seemed to be made of rock. They vaguely reminded him of the many copies of Stoneheart that he and Ladybug had fought. But, these ones seemed more like soldiers.
He used his Cat Noir stick as a lever to fling one such monster into the side of a building. It hit the wall, and shattered into a pile of small rocks.
Then, he ran around the corner and came face-to-face with a purple she-monster that was wielding two sickle swords. The monster seemed as surprised as Cat Noir was, so he seized the initiative and launched an attack, driving the creature back.
Suddenly, there was a yell, and a staff struck him on the side of the head, sending him reeling back.
“Keep going!” a female voice yelled. “I’ll take care of this one!”
The purple monster ran past him, and Cat Noir turned to face his new opponent. This one looked nearly human, almost like a girl in purple armor.
The girl twirled her staff around, and then lifted it into a fighting posture.
“You picked the wrong side, changeling,” Claire announced.
FIGHT! []
Claire pointed her staff at the ground beneath Cat Noir’s feet, and willed a portal to appear. The cat-changeling dropped into the hole with a squeak, and then Claire pointed the staff into the sky behind her.
Another portal opened, and Cat Noir plummeted out of it, hurtling towards the ground.
Thinking quickly, Cat Noir extended his stick, and shot the end to the ground. Then, he rode the stick down like an elevator, alighting gracefully on the ground.
He looked around to get his bearings and then planted the stick, and vaulted back towards the purple armored girl.
He landed behind her, and struck out with his staff, knocking her to the left.
Claire caught herself, and quickly said a little prayer of thanks for the protection of her new armor.
Once again, Claire spun her staff, and brought it into a ready position.
Facing her, Cat Noir spun his staff, and also brought it up.
The two combatants charged at each other, and collided in the center of the street. Their staves twirled and flashed as they dueled across the concrete.
Cat Noir forced the armored girl back with a series of overhead slashes. He was confident that her armor made her slower than him, so he leaped over her head, and landed behind her.
Claire leaned forward and kicked out with her right leg, catching him in the chest, and throwing him backward.
He stood up, realizing that in spite of its apparent weight, the armor was not actually slowing her down. Surprisingly, she seemed to be nearly as fast as he was.
He raised his staff, pointed the end at her, and extended it in a flash. Claire raised her staff, and created a portal in front of her. As the end of the Miraculous staff disappeared through the portal, she sidestepped, and created a portal immediately behind her opponent.
The end of the staff flashed out, catching Cat Noir in the back of the head, and knocking him to the ground.
Cat quickly retracted the staff, and used it to lift himself up. His ears rang with the force of the blow.
He shook his head, and looked at his opponent.
“You’re good, Princess,” he said with a wink. “But, not good enough.”
Before Claire could answer, Cat Noir used his staff to vault at her.
He collided with her, and the force sent both of them rolling along the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.
They rolled to a stop with Cat Noir on top, and he raised his fist to strike at her unprotected face.
Suddenly, Claire heaved, and threw the boy off of her, and onto his face. She leaped to her feet, and lifted her staff to create a portal beneath him.
But, before she could work the magic, Cat Noir rolled onto his hands, and kicked backward with his legs. His feet connected with the breastplate of her armor, and propelled her backwards.
As she reeled back, Claire created a portal behind herself, and fell through it. Then the portal disappeared.
Cat Noir looked in surprise at where his opponent had been. She was gone!
Suddenly, another portal opened behind him, and Claire seemed to shoot out from it. She swung her staff around, and delivered a powerful blow to Cat’s back.
Cat Noir staggered to the side, and raised his staff, but Claire disappeared through another portal and was gone.
Cat Noir turned around again, only to have a portal open behind him. Claire shot out, delivered a blow, and then disappeared through yet another portal.
Again and again, Claire used her portals to attack Cat from an unexpected angle, keeping him off balance.
Suddenly, Cat Noir leaped to the side, and used his staff to vault up into the air. He bounced off of a building, leaped up higher on another building, and bounced off of that one, heading towards the first building’s roof.
“You're good, armor girl,” he declared. “But I’m better.”
Claire stepped out of a portal, looked up at Cat Noir landing on the building’s roof, and then generated another portal and stepped through it.
As soon as he saw her disappear, Cat Noir leaped from the building, and spun his staff two-handed, using its helicopter-like motion to slow his descent. He charged off up the street.
Claire looked down at the retreating cat changeling, pointed a staff, and opened a portal on the ground directly in front of him, on the ground.
When the portal opened, Cat Noir planted his staff on the ground and vaulted over the portal. When Miracle Queen had taken control of Pegasus, he had used that same trick, to try to drop him into the Sun, and he was not going to fall for that one again!
He vaulted from wall to wall, moving like a ball across the playfield of a pinball machine. Claire tried to place portals in front of him, but he moved too fast and too unpredictably for her to trap him. She opened a new portal, and transported herself down to the street.
When Cat Noir shot past her, Claire pointed her staff up the street, and opened the largest portal that she could create.
Astonishment blossomed on Cat Noir’s face as he shot towards the portal. This one he could not avoid.
At the last second, Cat Noir opened his staff incredibly wide. The staff bridged the distance between the buildings on either side of the street, and stuck securely. Cat held on to the staff, and it stopped him immediately.
Seeing the cat’s miraculous save, Claire braced her staff, and fired a stream of raw shadow energy at him, shoving him towards the portal.
Cat Noir held tightly to his staff, and he could see it bend, as the energy blast forced him towards the portal.
Claire cried out as the stream of energy dragged her towards the portal as well. If the cat changeling didn’t let go soon, she would be overcome by the staff’s dark energy.
Finally, she relented and stopped the stream of shadow energy.
Suddenly, Cat Noir’s staff unbent, shooting him forward like an arrow from a bow. As he rocketed towards her, Cat Noir yelled, “Cataclysm!” and dark energy sprang up around his right hand.
As Cat Noir sailed past Claire Nuñez, he reached out and touched the end of her staff.
To Claire’s amazement, the staff turned gray, and crumbled into dust!
Cat Noir rolled to a stop up the street, turned and charged at Claire. He hooked his staff against her side, and threw her towards the nearest building.
Claire collided with the building, her armor making a dull, metallic clang. And then she collapsed to the ground.
K.O.! []
Cat Noir raced up to the girl and felt her neck. There was no pulse.
He hadn’t expected to kill her with that attack. The akumatized villains he had fought had always been able to take much more of a beating. Perhaps this girl really was just a normal girl.
Suddenly a loud roar filled the air. Cat Noir leaped up, planted his staff on the ground and vaulted up towards the top of the next building. He had less than five minutes before his miraculous powers would expire, and he did not want to be in the middle of a monster-infested city when that happened. Besides, he needed to check on his friends.
Back in the street, Jim Lake knelt over Claire’s body with tears streaming down his blue cheeks.
He hiccupped and tried to speak, but only gurgles came out of his mouth. Then he cleared his throat and tried again.
“Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food!”
He looked up at the building where the cat creature had disappeared, and said, “For the doom of the cat monster, Eclipse is mine to command!” And with that the Sword of Eclipse appeared in his hand.
Results[]
Boomstick: Ouch, she’s gone, she’s gone. But, why couldn’t she defeat a lightweight like Cat Noir?
Wiz: Well, in point of fact, this wasn’t really all that close of a match. Claire had a good weapon in the shape of the Shadow Staff, which she could use to open portals at will. Unfortunately, Cat Noir did have experience in facing an opponent with this very power, so it really didn’t completely catch him completely by surprise.
Boomstick: And, when you get right down to it, Claire was largely speaking a one-trick pony. If Cat Noir could figure out a way to remove her staff from the fight, Claire was left with very little to fight him with.
Wiz: Claire was fast, but Cat Noir was much faster, being able to run along walls, and even leap over tall obstacles.
Boomstick: Claire was strong, but Cat Noir was much stronger, being able to flip a city bus over.
Wiz: And, while Claire was a good fighter, Cat Noir had a good deal more experience fighting opponents that were larger, faster, or just plain tougher than anything that Claire had fought.
Boomstick: So, the winner is Cat Noir
Next Time[]
Miraculous versus Trollhunters continues and gets even more fierce when we present Cat Noir vs. Troll Jim Lake!
Trivia[]
Cameo Appearances[]
- Mary Wang