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So, I'm a decently big fan of Death Battle, despite them having some results that I think are pretty disagreeable. That's to be expected with a show that runs for over a decade, of course, they're going to just be flat-out wrong sometimes or contrive explanations to give the win to a more popular character.

But one episode that really bothered me was Cole vs. Alex - not because I disagree with the result, but because I think their logic for that result was really nonsensical. I mean, "Cole survived an explosion that supposedly (this character could easily have been speaking metaphorically) rips you apart down to your atoms, so he's immune to being infected by a virus that only works down to your molecules"? What??

I decided to rewrite the ending analysis based on what I think of this matchup. That means no contrived or loose power-scaling to people they've fought or anything like that - I'm looking purely at what these characters are capable of on their own merits. (Seriously, saying "Cole has more power because he fought more powerful people" is just stupid.) Keep in mind this will feature spoilers for the games that the episode didn't go over.

Both opponents were incredibly versatile and deadly, and both could match each other's powers blow for blow; they could both create weapons, amplify their own strength, and fight at range. By far the most pivotal question of the entire fight is this: Could Cole resist and survive the Blacklight virus? Against similarly powerful opponents to himself, Alex would usually need to weaken them first in order to consume them and take their strength. This could be because of their healing factor, their powers also being derived from the virus and thus their DNA resisting, or a mix of both- but either way, Cole has evidence in favor of resisting it.

Sasha's tar could control minds, warp people's bodies, and even dampen Cole's ability to store electricity, suggesting it was directly interfering with his Conduit physiology. Despite this, Cole resisted being outright mind controlled by it numerous times, and even healed others who were infected by it - the only times he was completely debilitated by her Tar were his very first exposure to it, and when the military made a more refined, condensed version that worked via gas rather than fluid. This suggests that Cole actually developed a resistance to it as the first game went on; like catching an illness and becoming vaccinated against catching it again.

In addition, Bertrand's corruption could completely warp people into monsters that weren't even recognizably humanoid anymore - but Cole can be bathed in the stuff during his boss fights against him and come out totally unaffected. Now, granted, both of these are kinda-sorta-maybe cases involving things that are DEFINITELY not as strong or as deadly as the Blacklight virus, I'm not arguing that. But now we need to discuss how Conduit healing works in the first place.

When a Conduit is shot, they don't bleed. Instead, they spurt out their element. You can see this in the games - whenever Cole gets shot, little electrical sparks shoot out wherever the bullet hit. In Second Son, Delsin's healing factor kicking in is even accompanied by a fresh wave of his currently used element sinking into his body. This, plus the fact that absorbing their element heals them even faster, plus the way turning into their element and back again is a frequent ability of most Conduits, all strongly suggest that Conduits are more like elements that take the shape and appearance of a human than actual flesh-and-blood beings anymore.

So, even if Alex had the chance to try and infect a weakened Cole by stabbing or impaling him, he would be getting constantly electrocuted in the process, and any cells he reached would just turn into electricity and lose any DNA for him to rewrite. Alex could potentially take some bites of Cole's biomass directly and consume those by splitting them off from the whole, but Cole could do a very similar trick by draining his neuro-electricity - which would also be a very efficient way of getting around Alex's healing factor to do much more substantial damage to him.

Bottom line, I don't think this fight is as simple as Alex getting a glancing cut on Cole and then waiting for the Blacklight to take him over completely; he has a strong healing factor, a history of resisting similar mutagenic forces, and it's highly debatable if his body even works like that anymore. But of course, this is far from Alex's only method of killing people.

Both of them had similar levels of raw destructive power - Alex can tear down buildings, while Cole's lightning can blow a hole through an aircraft carrier. The difference lies in what kinds of damage they're inflicting. Cole has fought enemies with immense raw strength before, but Alex's foes mostly use military hardware or similar Blacklight abilities, both of which he resists due to the nature of his physiology. By contrast, electricity would be dispersing its energy through all of Alex's cells constantly, doing far more damage to his whole than a bullet or even a bomb.

I know people always say "Alex would evolve to resist the electricity", and I... just don't know what they're talking about? Yes, Blacklight is an ever-evolving force that constantly makes Alex deadlier and deadlier, but he doesn't have some adaptive power to become immune to things that hurt him. He's still being hurt by regular bullets and bombs by the very end of the game; the only display of focused evolved immunity is him building up a resistance to Bloodtox over the course of the first game. Even if his evolution worked that way, how exactly is he supposed to become immune to electricity? Become a perfect Faraday Cage in the middle of the fight with Cole, while keeping to a form that lets him keep fighting effectively? I think you guys are underestimating how primal and vital to all forms of life electricity is.

It's the same story with Cole's ice, plus the additional benefit of making it much harder for Alex to shapeshift when parts of him are constantly being frozen and rendered brittle. And on top of all that, once the fight breaks out, most of Alex's power sources would be actively running away while he's being tied down fighting Cole, while Cole's power sources would stay in place and still offer him energy even if they were completely destroyed. This means that despite his weaker healing factor, Cole arguably has more longevity in a hypothetical fight.

The durability is in his favor, too. Alex was in the radius of a nuke's effects and only barely survived as irradiated chunks by sheer luck - you can't convince me he wouldn't have died of seventeen thousand different kinds of cancer were it not for that random crow showing up fast enough. Meanwhile, Cole was at the exact epicenter of a bomb that obliterated six city blocks, and was running and jumping around within minutes.

The Ray Sphere is designed to activate and empower Conduits, yes, but even Kessler was afraid Cole might not survive the blast, and he created the Ray Sphere specifically for the purpose of turning Cole superhuman. Obviously it doesn't normally vaporize people with the Conduit gene unless it goes horribly wrong like it did with John White, but the fact that the ground itself was vaporized into a massive crater with absolutely no corpses around Cole is evidence of its horrific destructive power - which he survived by his own durability. There's no doubt that Cole could survive in a fight long enough to get Alex in a position where he could kill or completely destroy all of his biomass.

Lastly, there's the question of non-canon evil Cole, and how he would fare. Surprisingly, Alex has a much better shot here. Good Cole's powers are based around taking enemies down precisely and efficiently, one-by-one. This makes him much better suited for a prolonged duel against a powerful opponent; evil Cole focuses on huge area-of-effect attacks that hurt as many enemies at once as possible, less effective against single human-sized targets. In addition, napalm would be far less effective against Alex than ice control, as he's consistently shown borderline immunity to the strongest incendiary warfare Blackwatch had to offer. If Alex's odds against good Cole are 10/90, I'd say his odds against evil Cole are more like 40/60... unless we mean end-of-story evil Cole, who absorbs the powers of the Beast for himself, thus becoming orders of magnitude stronger than anything Alex has ever faced.

Speaking of non-canon, my headcanon for the fight is that Cole finally figured out his time travel powers that we know he eventually gets because Kessler had them. He's using them to do a cosmic retcon of Alex's horrendous heel-turn characterization in Prototype 2. Then he goes back to his regular timeline and he and Prototype 1 Alex make out. Don't argue with me, I'm the world's biggest Cole MacGrath fan and I know this is canon.

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