2021 Mid Tier PYP Round 1: Ashrym vs SupremeGeneration

Their battle begins with them speeding around Central City at outright insane speeds, making sharp turns, avoiding cars and the like. I'm sure if someone calced the speeds they were moving there (and it wouldn't be difficult since Central City's map is supposed to be an exact replica of Portland, Oregon IIRC) they'd be moving at bare minimum supersonic speeds. However, that's not what's really important, is it?

Note that throughout their pre-stadium race, Eobard is ahead of Barry rather casually. Once they arrive at the stadium at around 0:53, Barry doesn't even know where Thawne is. Their initial exchange in the actual fight at around 1:05 has the two running at each other, and Thawne wrecks that, tripping Barry over before the man can even make a move. Note impressively, Thawne ends up behind him when Barry finishes rolling despite Thawne having run in the complete opposite direction.

After they start running around the stadium, neither seems to have a true edge until the end where Thawne ends up rolling Barry away like a goddam ragdoll, meaning he had to grab Barry during their running. Barry gets kicked around a bit and then tries to blitz him from the standstill position, only for Eobard to dodge the attempt and counter with his own strike, and turn it into a combo, blitzing the holy crap out of Barry who is unable to do a thing about it before getting flipped over.

He later dodges a punch from Barry, counters, then speeds away from an on-looking Barry who can't even keep track of him and hits him from behind.

If you don't get the gist of it by now, Barry by 1x09 is completely and utterly helpless to Eobard's speed: he's slower in movement speed, can't even keep track of him despite his own speed, and gets utterly humiliated in close quarters. To contextualize, we're going to look at two of Barry's feats just the episode prior in 1x08:

For starters, when the shotgun gets fired, Barry is nowhere to be seen. Barry comes in from behind the bullets and before he can begin to do anything, he has to analyze the situation in exactitude in order to figure out his best course of action. Said course of action is to casually outspeed the shotgun shells - even taking the time to turn and look at them and then go way faster than them - then going sideways not once, but twice in contrast to the shells (meaning they're moving towards him whereas he makes no movement in direction they're going, giving them more time to reach him), moving two cops out of the way before the shells can reach Joe, then moving Joe himself.

According to imfbd.org - a decent site for figuring out what guns are used in movies and TV shows - the shotgun in question is a Remington 780 which has a muzzle velocity of 1550ft/s, or roughly mach 1.37. The speed by itself is inconsequential, but given Barry covered easily multiple times the distance of the shells in the same time, casually and very solidly outsped them after slowing down to take a glance, and at one point even made absolutely ZERO leeway in the direction the shells were travelling (in order to save the two cops) and they still hadn't caught up to him and then he still had time to get back on track to save Joe West, calling this feat the lowest end of hypersonic should be a very fair assessment given the circumstances.

Barry has another feat in the same episode against a Beretta 92FS which has a muzzle velocity of 381m/s or roughly mach 1.11 - so a bit slower. The feat itself is inarguably even better in the quick-thinking department, even if I basic calc it as slower than the shotgun instance. Barry comes in, again AFTER the bullet is fired. Also once more, he has to assess the situation, see what's happening, and plan rapidly accordingly.

A basic breakdown of the feat would be: Barry comes in, sees the bullet, and puts an object in it's path to stop it. Simple, right? So very wrong, actually. This feat is so much more insane than most people realize when analyzed past the surface level.

Barry came in after the bullet was fired, had to see the trajectory the bullet was fired upon and make the insane calculation that the very thin piece of metal from the stand he moved would catch the bullet just right - even a centimeter off and the consequences could be devastating. He then sped out of the building before the bullet hit the stand.

Now, let's get back to the speed of it for a second. This is a screenshot I took for reference of the distance between the lady shooting and the guy being shot. I don't know about you, and feel free to contest, but that looks no more than 10ft to me. For the sake of basic calculations, I'll call it 15ft, though. A calculation of distance (15ft) over speed (381m/s) gives us the value of .012 seconds. Even assuming Barry started from right outside the door, he travelled a good four-five times the distance of the bullet in LESS than .012 seconds, because the bullet didn't actually hit/reach the 15ft - he had to run in, go past them, get the structure, drop it in front of the guy, and he still sped out before the bullet hit. Assuming about 60ft, that's 3409mph or about mach 4.44.

Keep in mind, this is with minimum wank. I'm not taking into account the fact that it's obviously less than 15ft, that the structure was about 2ft from the guy when the bullet hit (which translates to less than .012 seconds), or the fact that the bullet had already travelled about a foot and a half before Barry even entered the store (so either add more distance on Barry's part, but that's an unknown, or calculate a new time used in the equations which ends up being way less than .012 when taking into account the structure stopping the bullet). Adding even one of these factors to the calculations pushes it into the hypersonic range.

So basically, an episode before Thawne beat the crap out him, outsped him solidly, sped away from Barry looking at him and Barry didn't see him, and just generally humiliated him, Barry had two feats in the low end of the hypersonic range. And this isn't even S1 Eobard's best performance against 1x09 Barry - far from it, in fact, but I'll save their other fight in the same episode for my next post.

For this fight I'll just break down the Reverse Flash fighting against The Flash (S1), Al-Sah Him, and Firestorm (Ronnie).

1. From my time-stamp to about 1:05, Thawne takes about 15 seconds to stomp Barry Allen once again in speedster CQC. Note Barry by this point is capable of moving in tandem with explosions and casual missile timing (can get gif if needed).
2. At the 1:08 mark he casually throws Barry some 20-30ft, breaking the STAR Labs sign.
3. At 1:12 he gets shot with an arrow by Oliver in the leg then stays standing against a point-blank blast from Firestorm.
4. At 1:16 he creates arm tornados capable of sending Firestorm at rapid speeds away. We'll see why this is so impressive later.
5. NANITES, COURTESY OF RAY PALMER. THEY'RE DELIVERING A HIGH FREQUENCY PULSE THAT'S DISABLING YOUR SPEED. YOU'RE NOT GONNA BE RUNNING AROUND FOR QUITE A WHILE. At 1:33 he kinda holds his own against Oliver but mostly gets rekt up till 1:45.
6. At 1:45 though we see that Thawne sent Ronnie flying a HUGE distance, still flying despite the well-over-ten-second gap of Thawne vs Oliver. Not only that, but he's flying at highly respectable speeds - Barry had yet to catch up to him at this point.
7. At 2:02 after getting his ass beat some more, Thawne phases the nanites out his body and wrecks Oliver, preparing to phase into him.
8. At 2:19 Thawne tanks a high-speed collision from Barry, then proceeds to fight him atop STAR Labs. Barry does respectably here - each has a shining moment, and Barry takes the lead towards the end.
9. At 2:47, Thawne takes a blast to the back from Firestorm, a multi-hundred foot fall that crashes a car, and still gets up to continue fighting until getting hit by a triple-dosage of nanites from behind by Oliver.

Keep in mind this Firestorm can casually light military vehicles on fire. It's a great combat feat - it showcases his speed (still mostly superior to Barry), versatility (arm tornadoes that send Firestorm flying HUGE distances at insane speeds + phasing), strength (sending Barry flying 20-30ft), and durability (no-selling a point blank Firestorm blast, tanking a Firestorm blast then tanking the multi-hundred foot fall and getting up to continue fighting).

While it can vary from time to time, it's been shown to heal off most of what Eddie's taken. For the best examples, Venom's squared off against the mutant Wolverine several times. While his healing factor doesn't exactly match up to the mutant's, he's fought off impalement from his adamantium claws several times. Way back in his first encounter with Wolverine in Marvel Comics Presents #120, Wolvie straight up impales Eddie. Thanks to his healing factor, Eddie's back up the very next page. Another encounter yields some amazing feats from Venom (2018) Annual #1:

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Now yes, I did leave out a few scans from the complete fight, as I'm saving them for later, but this should tell you what you need to know. The dude is literally ignoring being stabbed by adamantium, continuing to fight.

Yet a third encounter with Wolverine from Venom's first solo series shows us the Symbiote clone outright ignore being stabbed in the head by Wolverine as well as regrow an arm that Wolverine managed to cut off (1)(2). The finale of the same solo series had him fight his clone, who used Symbiote tendrils to stab him in multiple parts of his body all to no avail:

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All of this just means that putting Venom down is a high task, and these are just low tier compared to freaking Carnage. Good luck with that.

The Venom symbiote offers plenty of options in the offensive department to make deleting enemies go by much, much smoother. The main thing here is piercing attacks:

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1. Casually slices through armed men with the thinnest of tendrils in Venom (2018) #7.
2. Impales Wolverine repeatedly in Venom (2018) Annual #1.
3. Tags the likes of Spider-Man with extended tendrils in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #10

Other preferred tactics of Venom include internal attacks, such as sticking his symbiote into people and having it off them (here's an example from Venom: Lethal Protector #1) as well as suffocation, something he does often to Spider-Man:

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That last one is something I might touch base on in my next post, but if need be, Venom can will the symbiote underground or around the battlefield for a sneak attack. He can even outright detach parts of it to go for the incap. However, for this post, I think this is enough of an introduction.

Another useful ability provided by the symbiote is that it can go invisible, aka camoflauge. He's been able to sneak up on both Kraven the Hunter (Venom 2016 #157) and Wolverine (Venom 2003 #7), so it's got a pretty good sense-fooler.

Gideon giving a breakdown of what happened from historical records is an easy counter. Telling team Flash or Thawne how to win was never something demonstrated. Gideon matches the time records on file and compares them to new data.

Minutes of footage on what to expect can give some knowledge, but that doesn't give a win.

I can compare that to Midnighter's battle computer.

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Midnighter's battle computer runs probabilities millions of times between seconds real-time in the fight. It doesn't matter how your team preps, the spider-sense perk is going to alter the course of Gideon's history during the fight and make it moot after the fact. Precog abilities beat out even the best probability options when it comes to preparation and planning.

That was quite a bit of calculating for Barry's speed. I'm not sure it was necessary given his speed has been given throughout the series to quantify it and early speeds are comic book street level. ;-)

You gave me comparisons to bullet speeds and explosion timing. Barry's speeds were inconsistent but stated to be around MACH 3 so not far off from your calculations in season 1, but considering how much faster he becomes I'm not sure why you went with this approach.

Starfire can also easily see, react to, and block weapons fire from a distance away because her starbolts are solar energy and travel at the speed of light. Starfire is massively hypersonic in travel speeds, FTL flight in space and interstellar flight speeds.

She's counting miles and jumps from 8 to 92 in the split second her opponent thrashes. That's easily MACH 470 without even trying hard.

Given this part of rule 11...

Speed is a little hard to quantify for mid-tiers, but let's say they can't be faster than the level of travel speed Iron Man is usually at.

...I don't think Thawne is coming at her faster than she can get away no matter how much you might try to wank him because he needs to get to her under a speed restriction that limits both of them to an equal travel speed. And she has spider-sense. And he is impacted by terrain slowing him down while she is not because she's flying.

With her spider-sense perk she's going to fly upward to avoid danger. Given the equal speed restriction he has reaching her and she has escaping her vertical height will be the starting distance before he can reach her at a minimum. She can take Tempest with her just to save me time having to go through royalty level Atlantean reaction timing here.

No speed blitz for you.

Please note this additional information:

For this fight I'll just break down the Reverse Flash fighting against The Flash (S1), Al-Sah Him, and Firestorm (Ronnie).

and...

Keep in mind this Firestorm can casually light military vehicles on fire. It's a great combat feat - it showcases his speed

I cannot see those links. Based on the description you gave they do not seem to matter much at this point.

Regeneration is useful but I am not using Wolverine and my team isn't going to be stabbing your characters or cutting off limbs. Starfire is going to go atomic as she flies up. It won't hurt Tempest because of the friendly fire perk. Your team needs to be able to handle this...

For scale...

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Those are large stone buildings and she's decimating many blocks worth of civilization in a single shot.

Starfire radiating atomic heat and flame while your symbiote bonded speedster attempts to speed blitz seems like more of this situation happening...

Instant incineration.

I won't get into Tempest for now, but he has magic that includes hydrokinesis, heat generation, cold generation, magic blasts, optic blasts, teleportation, force fields, and more. He can also incinerate opponents to a lesser degree than Starfire.

You didn't go into much detail here. Suffocation is questionable since Starfire can sustain herself on solar energy like she does for space travel. Atlanteans have been shown to hold their breath for hours if necessary. In either case approaching to pull it off is a bit moot because of the burning energy defense.

Another useful ability provided by the symbiote is that it can go invisible, aka camoflauge. He's been able to sneak up on both Kraven the Hunter (Venom 2016 #157) and Wolverine (Venom 2003 #7), so it's got a pretty good sense-fooler.

Tempest can track 1 part per trillion blood from out in the ocean to a small hideout. High end Atlantean super senses are better than Kraven or Wolverine. I can give hearing, vision, or taste examples too. Starfire also saw right through Spiral's masking tech when Dick Grayson was in his secret agent persona if you want that too.

As I stated in my opener, I'm not banking on Gideon. I don't really need her, nor is she a core part of my strategy. The argument was never that she'd explain how we win, the argument was that she'd tell me how the fight would go and then (if lost), help the Thawnebiote come up with a way to win;

Telling team Flash or Thawne how to win was never something demonstrated.

This is not something I argued

I do wholeheartedly agree that she'd give insight as to who is being faced in this match up, provide knowledge of their abilities, and she should definitely be able to discern the victor of the fight. One other thing:

the spider-sense perk is going to alter the course of Gideon's history during the fight and make it moot after the fact. Precog abilities beat out even the best probability options when it comes to preparation and planning.

This is something I didn't think you'd argue. I thought it well-established that symbiotes don't trigger Spider-Sense; it's a non-factor for you in this fight. I'll let Peter say it outright himself:

Just to end this section off I think the biggest thing we both agree on is that the Thawnebiote is coming into this fight with some level of knowledge, and that's really all I need.

You gave me comparisons to bullet speeds and explosion timing. Barry's speeds were inconsistent but stated to be around MACH 3 so not far off from your calculations in season 1, but considering how much faster he becomes I'm not sure why you went with this approach.

Oh boy... are we going to go the statements route? I was going to go feats for dayz but even with the statements game I promise you Kory isn't faster than Thawne. Of course you nullify the advantage later with rule 11, but I just wanted to put this out there.

Starfire can also easily see, react to, and block weapons fire from a distance away because her starbolts are solar energy and travel at the speed of light. Starfire is massively hypersonic in travel speeds, FTL flight in space and interstellar flight speeds.

Seeing as we aren't in space, I doubt FTL speeds will be seen here. No point in mentioning that, really. That leaves dealing with Starfire's massively hypersonic travel speeds, which I'll get into here:

She's counting miles and jumps from 8 to 92 in the split second her opponent thrashes. That's easily MACH 470 without even trying hard.

Given this part of rule 11...

Speed is a little hard to quantify for mid-tiers, but let's say they can't be faster than the level of travel speed Iron Man is usually at.

...I don't think Thawne is coming at her faster than she can get away no matter how much you might try to wank him because he needs to get to her under a speed restriction that limits both of them to an equal travel speed. And she has spider-sense. And he is impacted by terrain slowing him down while she is not because she's flying.

As smart a strategy as this is, with equalized speed, what you end up arguing is that you're just running away the entire time. You have to come in to fight, because any blasts can very easily be dodged. I highly doubt you can prove that Starfire's blasts are anywhere close to lightspeed, and even then, I already showed Barry timing an explosion earlier and Thawne is much, much faster, so dodging the explosion of the blast is a very handy tool. For reference, S4 Barry statued a nuclear explosion for a long-ass time, so this should be no biggy.

Furthermore, this entire time we've talked about travel speed. How are Starfire's reflexes? How fast are her reactions? What's her combat speed like? These things are directly correlated for Thawne. For non-speedsters, there's a clear line drawn in fiction. Frankly, I don't see why the Thawnebiote doesn't blitz outright from the getgo, before Starfire even goes airborne. There was no counter to phasing displayed and it's highly in-character for Thawne, who can now do it without worry as he'll regenerate his arm anyways.

New link to trio vs Thawne. The other one is useless, you're correct.

Regeneration is useful but I am not using Wolverine and my team isn't going to be stabbing your characters or cutting off limbs. Starfire is going to go atomic as she flies up. It won't hurt Tempest because of the friendly fire perk. Your team needs to be able to handle this...

For scale...

Those are large stone buildings and she's decimating many blocks worth of civilization in a single shot.

Starfire radiating atomic heat and flame while your symbiote bonded speedster attempts to speed blitz seems like more of this situation happening...

Instant incineration.

I see no reason why the Thawnebiote can't just outrun this explosion. All you'd be doing is decimating the battlefield, and the fight can move elsewhere. While Garth will survive due to no friendly fire perk, "atomic" heat will also instantly vaporize all the nearby water, leaving with him less options AFAIK. Alternatively, the Thawnebiote could also phase through the explosion, because I agree he's not tanking it.

All that said, Starfire would have to fire this off before the Thawnebiote blitzes into her and phases her heart out, or something to that effect. In terms of landing this hit, it's not going to happen. While I can agree it's a one-shot, it's not a one-shot that's going to be actually hitting.

If the future shows your team won then that would have taken place without having any knowledge. It's a difference of winning with the insight versus winning without the insight, which is pointless in resolving the battle. For such insight to have meaning you would be admitting your team isn't going to win in the first place. At that point you would be accepting you lost before the match started and are trying to change the future, which isn't guaranteed in any way just having such knowledge.

The insight into the fight based on future history only matters when your team would lose without it. That's admitting to the inferiority of your characters. Just sayin'. ;-)

That might prevent a loss, tbf (knowledge would still be an advantage over lack of knowledge), but but for it to make any difference means having lost already as far as the future is concerned, which is pretty telling.

This is something I didn't think you'd argue. I thought it well-established that symbiotes don't trigger Spider-Sense; it's a non-factor for you in this fight.

I did not counter an argument you had not yet made. I make shorter arguments when I don't try to anticipate points that have not been given. ;-)

No one stipulated this was specifically Peter Parker's spider-sense. That was an assumption because Peter Parker is well known for it. Venom (as well as clones of Peter) did not trigger his spider-sense but that's based on Peter specifically. Ben Reilly's spider-sense did react to Venom. Some information:

Prior to bonding with Peter Parker, the symbiotes did trigger his spider-sense. They learn how to hide from him in particular later.

Venom still triggered Ben Reilly's spider-sense because his ability to fool the spider-sense depended on whether clones of Peter Parker were created before or after Peter had the symbiote.

Peter and Ben both demonstrated spider-sense against other symbiotes multiple times during Planet of the Symbiotes. There's no reason to believe that just because they could fool Peter Parker's spider-sense that they could also fool Tempest or Starfire's spider-sense until after they bond with either and learn how. Spider-man's history easily supports this and is clear in the Scarlet Spider example.

I led with interstellar travel and FTL space flight because it reinforces the massive hypersonic travel speeds I'm arguing for planetary speeds, and also because it demonstrates the energy reserves needed for interstellar travel.

As smart a strategy as this is, with equalized speed, what you end up arguing is that you're just running away the entire time.

I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that the travel speed restriction prevents Thawne from closing to complete a speed blitz in the first place because Starfire can maintain distance with her flight and flight speed to prevent it. That keeps my team safe while they use ranged options until they finish your team off.

My team has no need to close for combat. That particular need is part of your strategy.

You have to come in to fight, because any blasts can very easily be dodged.

In order to dodge there needs to be some place to where the characters can dodge. That's why I demonstrated AoE power. The only reasonable answer to where to dodge to is away from the energy and moving away is going to be at that travel speed limitation.

I already showed Barry timing an explosion earlier and Thawne is much, much faster, so dodging the explosion of the blast is a very handy tool. For reference, S4 Barry statued a nuclear explosion for a long-ass time, so this should be no biggy.

I can show Jason Todd outrunning explosions while pausing to grab someone to rescue.

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That's high street level speeds. This link gives more information on detonation speeds. Statuing a nuclear explosion sounds impressive but this link claims a 1 megaton bomb peak blast speed within a 0.6 mile radius is still subsonic. The flash travels light speed but that energy being statued is clearly not light speed based on all the lights radiating light in that video for comparison. If you give something to quantify that speed better it still will not change my next point.

I highly doubt you can prove that Starfire's blasts are anywhere close to lightspeed, and even then, I already showed Barry timing an explosion earlier

Considering timing explosions is nowhere near light speed that doesn't mean much. I though it was odd you would use the speed of ammo fired in your calcs above but not accept the speed of solar energy as not the speed of solar energy when I mentioned it. That's like me asking you to prove the speed of the bullets you gave or the speed of electricity when we see lightning.

Starfire's starbolts are typically described as solar flares with some addition information here. The flares are speed of light. Particles within the flares are rapidly accelerated near speed of light. The plasma or coronal ejections are not the actual flares people confuse them with but those go fast enough here too. They just aren't part of the atomic level energy she can AoE.

As for examples of the blasts themselves, it's easy to show they move at the same speed a Lantern energy.

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The second image shows Superman pushing his speed to throw Starro slower than those blasts. That scales her blasts faster than light speed based on Superman's feats but I only mention that to demonstrate why calcs and scaling need proper consideration.

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The first image confirms it's solar energy for you. Starfire is bathing the planet Rann in it. The second image is the city of San Diego.

I would buy aim dodging her straight blasts with Thawne's speed but when she AoE's like that there's to place for him to move out of the way, and he cannot outrun the speed of the energy directly away from it at his travel speed.

Furthermore, this entire time we've talked about travel speed. How are Starfire's reflexes? How fast are her reactions? What's her combat speed like? These things are directly correlated for Thawne. For non-speedsters, there's a clear line drawn in fiction. Frankly, I don't see why the Thawnebiote doesn't blitz outright from the getgo, before Starfire even goes airborne.

We've been talking about travel speed because no matter how you look at it, Thawne need to use travel speed to approach my team in the first place. The battlefield is the Savage Land and big. Your team needs to travel through the terrain and my team need to fly straight up while they do it. Thawne doesn't magically get to close that gap when they share the same travel speed limit and that prevents the speed blitz.

I'll state the obvious that motion is relative and everything Starfire rushes towards is rushing towards her. She clearly has reflexes to handle her own travel speed.

Here is some more for you if you need it.

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Starfire has shown this by reacting to and weaving between 31st century computer targeting lasers or popping out of a space ship travelling at space travel speeds to help navigate through an asteroid storm.

Ironman's travel speed typically keeps up with jets and short term burst that keep up to high velocity missiles placing our travel speed limit in the MACH 5-10 range. At MACH 10 that's under 11 feet per millisecond so bullet timers can react to that easily enough from 20 feet away. Wanking Ironman up to MACH 50 still gives plenty of time given the size of the battlefield.

Starfire also accelerates fast enough to FTE Superman to instantly be out of site. He goes looking for her.

There was no counter to phasing displayed and it's highly in-character for Thawne, who can now do it without worry as he'll regenerate his arm anyways.

There was no counter because Thawne needs to get close to do it and that is in contention. Plus, the only things to counter were slowly phasing the nanites out and failing to slowly phase attack Green Arrow.

You need to demonstrate phasing through that level of heat, not dodging it because it's an AoE. I'll add a few things for Tempest here, as well.

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That's Tempest casually defeating several members of the Legion of Superheroes, including Apparition (Phantom Girl). She can become intangible. He manipulates elements faster than she can phase through them to pull her out and control her. He was also physically capable of fighting Thunder (the future Captain Marvel / Shazam).

Starfire doesn't need to instantly destroy the water as you speculate. She can generate less energy and still melt your team.

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He can manipulate water fast enough to overwhelm Donna Troy, Roy Harper, and Wally West. He won that fight too and Wally came back later while Tempest was about to take out Saturn Girl and Omen. Mera has also dehydrated Barry Allen before he could reach her if you want more water vs speedster comparisons.

Garth also generate magical force fields.

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That last one is Commander Drogue. Garth only held him back briefly but Drogue handled Superman no difficulty during Drowned Earth if you want those scans. Given that there was no way to bypass the Crown of Thorns (Atlantean forcefield) without magic while Flash was present (2016 Justice League ish 24) that indicates Atlantean magic force fields cannot be phased through if you do produce feats to show it's possible to phase through some force fields.

Just a couple things that don't fit in under speed or prep.

The fiery defense can only be sustained for so long and is easily outrunnable, especially seeing as I myself have a Spider Sense but you don't. I personally consider it a non factor: either Starfire tires herself out or realizes it's futile.

Starfire has a lot of energy.

She has enough energy power power a huge mad scientist base for weeks. Starfire flies between star systems MTFL for days or weeks. Why wouldn't your team tire first?

Some other neat things that could be done include symbiote decoys (and since they're made of symbiote should replicate everything about the Thawnebiote, so should fool senses) as well as some long grabby shenanigans (that are fast as hell thanks to composite factors - Carnage's tentacles could traverse an entire city in search before Sin Eater could pull a trigger).

That's hard to judge because there's no time scale and it looks like the trigger pulling isn't being attempted because of conversation.

Ultimately, I'd like to see how fast Kory can react and whether she can prevent death before two seconds pass into the fight.

I gave more earlier, but I would like to point out that 2 seconds is a lot of time in comic book fights. Most decent street level characters are bullet timers reacting in milliseconds.

This is Karl -- he's an automaton defense system:

This is what happens:

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Jason and Starfire reacted to point blank automatic fire, energy weapons fire, and missiles by pulling back a considerable distance to cover. Bullets can travel thousands of feet in 2 seconds. Both my characters can easily react and move in that time frame. Starfire could be miles up in the air in that amount of time.