CaV: Iron Man (BPIB) vs. Samus Aran (AmethystGravity) Open For Votes!

Orphaned by Space Pirates at the age of three, Samus Aran grew up with the Chozo, an advanced alien race in their twilight years. Trained by the Chozo, infused with their DNA, and equipped with their Power Suit, Samus would go on to become a galactic hero, ridding the universe of psychic abominations, alien masterminds, and infectious horrors in her career as the best bounty hunter in the galaxy. In the real world, Samus is one of video games earliest female protagonists, and she continues to be a popular face in both the Metroid series and in Super Smash Bros.

In the Metroid Prime series, the scan visor (Metroid Prime Instruction Booklet, page 18) allows Samus and the player to gain more information about creatures, objects, and lore. Here's an example of the Scan Visor being used on the alien psychic U-Mos, and an example of later scanning both the planetary energy and a record of Luminoth Lore.

However, instead of posting a video or link each time a scan, logbook entry, or lore entry is included in my post, I'm going to just include the text and post a link to the appropriate wiki page, where these are transcribed directly from the games in a written format. For instance, U-Mos's scan and logbook entry are included on his wiki page, and the Luminoth Lore is listed on a wiki page, too. If any scan or entry needs clarification, I can work to find the video clip of the item being scanned, but in the interest of everyone's time, I'm not planning on doing that unless asked.

The game manuals are included on the Metroid Database and on the Metroid Recon site (the latter of which I can link images directly from), like how Metroid Fusion's manual is linked on the Metroid Fusion page. A simple google search can also find the manuals from Nintendo's website. Similarly, many of the game guides are going to be listed on the Metroid Database's guide page. For both of these, I plan on citing the text, but these links can let viewers see the original source material.

Also, the Metroid manga, volume 1 and volume 2, is on the Metroid Database's old site if anyone wants to read it.

Finally, the Metroid: Other M Theater Mode includes abbreviated fight scenes and is literally called: Metroid: Other M The Movie, so feats from there might look like gameplay footage but are just as canon as any of the other sources.

Samus's arsenal includes Suit upgrades, missile upgrades, and beam enhancements, which help her defenses and beam attacks respectively. The Suit upgrades stack upon each other, and in most of the entries in the series, the beam upgrades do too, as the Metroid Zero Mission Nintendo Player's Guide explains on page 5, "The beams are not mutually exclusive--there's no need to switch from one beam to the next. When you collect a new beam, it supplements the strength of all your other beam upgrades." Thus, if Samus receives the Varia Suit and later acquires the Gravity Suit, both Suit enhancements will be operational. Similarly, if Samus has the Charge Beam and Wide Beam, and later receives the Plasma Beam, all three beam upgrades will function simultaneously. However, in many of the sources, especially the guide books, the Suit and Beam are referenced by the last upgrade acquired. In the previous examples, Samus's Suit would be referred to as the Gravity Suit, and the beam would be referred to as the plasma beam, as saying Power-Varia-Gravity Suit or Charge-Wide-Plasma-Wave-Ice Beam grows tiring quickly. Exceptions are when the upgrades are talked about regarding their unique properties, and if Samus fires a charged shot, the blast is often referred simply as a Charge Beam, even though it has the other beam properties.

Anyways, here's a glossary of some of the relevant upgrades, with their feats being highlighted later. There are more upgrades, but for now, I think these are the most relevant.

Beams:

1. Normal Beam (also referred to as the Power Beam): The unenhanced blasts Samus fires.
2. Charge Beam: Metroid Fusion is the only game in the series where the Charge Beam enhances uncharged blasts. The Charge Beam also gives Samus the ability to charge a beam shot into a more powerful blast.
3. Wide Beam: This beam enhances Samus's firepower and damage output by firing three blasts each time Samus fires.
4. Plasma Beam: Often referred to as the most powerful beam, the Plasma Beam enhances Samus's firepower and gives her beam the ability to pierce right through her opponents, despite armor and flesh.
5. Wave Beam: While also enhancing Samus's damage output, the Wave Beam makes every shot phase through obstacles.
6. Ice Beam: An enhancement that not only increases damage output, but also freezes opponents with extreme cold.

Missiles:

(Metroid Fusion is one of two entries in the series where the Missiles stack in a manner similar to beams)

1. Normal Missiles: They're the basic explosive.
2. Super Missiles: These triple the damage output of Normal Missiles. Note that Super Missiles from the Metroid Prime series are slightly different.
3. Ice Missiles: Basically the Ice Beam equivalent for Missiles.
4. Diffusion Missiles: In addition to strengthening the damage output of missiles, charged Diffusion Missiles can spread the Ice Missile freezing effect over a larger area.

All of these (with the exception of the Ice Beam, which was a surprise addition at the end of the game) are described on pages 32 and 33 of the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet.

Suits:

1. Power Suit: The basic layer of defensive shielding for the Suit. Samus's base suit in Metroid Fusion is also called the Fusion Suit, as the original was stolen by the X-parasite that became the SA-X.
2. Varia Suit: Likely the most iconic suit, the Varia Suit protects Samus from extreme temperatures and increases her defenses.
3. Gravity Suit: While increasing Samus's defenses, the Gravity Suit also protects Samus from lava and allows her to ignore forces that would impede her motion, like viscous liquids and explosive decompression, among others.
4. SA-X Suit: Acquired after Samus absorbs the SA-X (an X-parasite mimic of Samus), the SA-X Suit increases Samus's defensive shielding and fixed a genetic issue that prevented her from wielding the Ice Beam in Metroid Fusion.

These suits are briefly described on page 21 of the Metroid Other M Instruction Booklet, though Samus acquires a new Varia Suit and Gravity Suit, which are described on page 34 of the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet. The SA-X Suit, like the Ice Beam, was a surprise at the end of Metroid Fusion.

Miscellaneous:

1. Speed Booster: With this upgrade, Samus can run long distances at supersonic speeds while also being coated in protective energy. The Shinespark lets Samus use the Speed Booster to also launch herself with the ability through the air.
2. Space Jump: Samus is able to somersault repeatedly in the air with this item.
3. Screw Attack: As long as Samus is somersaulting, she is coated in destructive energy. With the Space Jump, this lets Samus continuously use the Screw Attack mid-air.
4. Power Bombs: Highly destructive explosives, Power Bombs are one of the stronger items in Samus's arsenal.

These are briefly described on pages 30 and 31 of the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet.

Other Suits:

The Dark Suit and Light Suit from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, as well as the PED Suit and Hazard Shield from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, grant Samus various boons and resistances to environmental toxins, but do not increase the base shielding strength. As Samus has the Varia Suit in those two entries in the series, that means that Samus has the Varia Suit's level of shielding in both of those entries.

Power Suit:

Samus's basic Power Suit has decent durability feats, like how in Chapter 15 of Volume 2 of the Manga, Kraid stomps on Samus, only for her to get up after blowing him away, her Power Suit unscathed. Kraid just standing up causing his entire cavern to quake.

Varia Suit:

Of the iconic orange Varia Suit, page 24 of the Super Metroid Instruction Booklet says, "The Varia Suit cuts the damage from enemy attacks in half and allows you to explore in high-temperature zones." In other words, it doubles the Power Suit's shielding efficiency (its durability) while negating the effects of high temperatures. Unfortunately, "high-temperature" is a bit of a vague term, but we can see how that applies by how page 30 of the Super Metroid Instruction Booklet says, "The air in Norfair is unbearably hot for adventurers who are not equipped with a Varia." Norfair is the lava zone of planet Zebes, the planet Samus grew up on that is featured in both Metroid: Zero Mission and Super Metroid. Page 12 of the Metroid Zero Mission Player's Guide says,

"Maps of Zebes: Norfair

The air is warm and the pools are filled with a dangerous, gurgling brew in the planet's core region."

Thus, the Varia Suit keeps Samus safe from heat in planet Zebes's core.

As for what level this puts the Varia Suit at in durability...

In Chapter 12 of Volume 2 of the Manga, Grey Voice, a Chozo wearing an ancient suit of armor, escaped outside on a small plateau on a mountain after being impaled by Ridley. Here's a glimpse of the size of part of the plateau. Ridley, enraged that Grey Voice shot down one of the Space Pirate fighters, blasts Grey Voice with his plasma breath, and while the shot lands on top of the plateau, it also ends up crumbling the entire face of the mountain connected to that plateau.

By contrast, in Chapter 16 of Volume 2 of the Manga, after Samus obtains the Varia Suit, she faced Ridley in his lair. Surprised by her parents' killer, Samus ends up taking a complete shot of Ridley's plasma breath in her shoulder pauldron. However, the shot fails to do even cosmetic damage to the Varia Suit. Considering that the Varia Suit took much less notable damage than a mountain did by the same attack (no visible damage on the Varia Suit, as opposed to the plateau section of the mountain being pulverized), the Varia Suit's overall durability is thus at least as strong as a mountain's.

However, another clear comparison with mountain-level strength exists. Goyagma, a giant creature dwelling in the lava sector of the Bottle Ship in Metroid: Other M, is capable of supporting the sheer weight of an entire volcano's lava, as shown by how right after Samus kills Goyagma, the volcano drains extremely rapidly. Remember that lava is just the liquid state of rock, so the lava has a similar mass (thus, the density of magma and of granite are very similar). It's not like Goyagma has some sort of geokinetic ability, as during the fight in Other M's theater mode, Goyagma physically hurls lava with its hands at Samus. Despite this strength of Goyagma (holding up a mountain's worth of lava, and freely moving in the same substance, which is 100,000 times to 1.1 million times more viscous than water (according to this Live Science article), Samus in the Varia Suit is perfectly fine after Goyagma attempted to crush her. Again, the Varia Suit's total durability seems at least mountain level.

While these two feats seem to be the clearest comparisons for a mountain-level Varia Suit, throughout the series, this kind of durability is consistent with the threats that face Samus in the Varia Suit. In Metroid Prime Hunters, she faces several bounty hunters with powerful loadouts. There's Kanden, a hunter whose logbook entry states, "A disruptive electromagnetic field appears to surround the hunter KANDEN, analysis suggests voltage potential comparable to that found in lightning storms," and whose main weapon, the Volt Driver, is described in the logbook entry as, "The VOLT DRIVER draws energy from the planetary electromagnetic field and converts it into multi-terawatt bursts of HIGHVOLTAGE." Similarly, she faces Weavel, whose weapon the Battlehammer is described by the logbook as, "The BATTLEHAMMER is powered by a miniature nuclear reactor." There's also Spire, of whom the scan visor's logbook entry states, "Analysis of this creature's physiology indicates the presence of molten ferrous compounds normally found only in a planet's core," and with the Magmaul weapon described by page 7 of the Metroid Prime Hunters Nintendo Player's Guide as, "The Magmaul's hydrogen core burns at temperatures in the thousands of degrees, allowing it to expel deadly blobs of superheated magma." Finally, there's Noxus with his Judicator, of which the logbook entry states, "The JUDICATOR is powered by cold-fusion synthesis. It fires SUPERCOOLED PLASMA at temperatures approaching absolute zero."

Similarly, in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Samus with the Varia Suit and the Dark Suit (the latter of which only reduces damage from the Dark Aether toxins, and does not increase Samus's base defensive shielding) faces off against Quadraxis, whose logbook entry states, "The Quadraxis unit went rogue and entered the service of the Ing. Its primary weapon system fires destructive matter-antimatter blasts." In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Samus with the Varia Suit and the PED Suit (the PED Suit lets Samus harness the substance Phazon in a risky temporary state called hypermode for a maximum of twenty-five seconds each, but does not increase the Varia Suit's base defensive shielding when hypermode is not active) faced off against Mogenar, a Mogenar-class war golem enhanced by the Last Lord of Science's magic and a Leviathan's Phazon. Regular Mogenar-class golems, without magic nor Phazon, were described in the Bryyo Data entry Downfall (stored by Samus's scan visor in the logbook) as, "See the giant stone Mogenars do battle, destroying the land with their titanic blows."

Thus, Samus's Varia Suit has two favorable comparisons with mountains, and mountain-level durability is consistent with the magnitude and power of the foes she faces with just Varia Suit-level shielding.

The same level of damage Samus takes in the Varia Suit can also be dished out by her basic weaponry. Dark Samus 1's logbook entry notes, "She wears a version of the Varia Suit, altered and augmented by the Phazon within her," putting her at least on the same durability level as Varia Suit Samus. However, Samus still defeated her wielding the Power Beam, Charge Beam, and normal missiles, as page 27 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Nintendo Player's Guide explains, "Dark Samus Battle - Phase 1...If you stand far away and fire missiles as fast as you can, many will breech the shield. It's a good way to damage your doppelganger early...Charge up your Power Beam and run to her side, then wait for her to stop glowing. The moment she does, hit her with the beam. Upon defeating Dark Samus, take an elevator to..." Thus, with the normal missiles, the Power Beam, and the Charge Beam, Samus is able to defeat Dark Samus 1, who is at least as durable as the Varia Suit.

Gravity Suit:

As described in page 24 of the Super Metroid Instruction Booklet,

"Gravity Suit

This suit reduces the damage from enemy attacks to one fourth and allows you to move freely in water-filled areas."

The one fourth refers to the Gravity Suit on top of the Varia Suit, showing that it has twice the shield efficiency as the Varia Suit. In addition, page 73 of the Super Metroid Nintendo Player's Guide states, "You can't reach Ridley's hideout by bombing through the narrow upper path. The only way in is through the lake of lava. With the Gravity Suit to protect you and the Space Jump for extra jumping power, you can spin safely up to the entrance." Thus, the Gravity Suit no-sells submersion in lava and grants Samus full mobility in liquid environments, even under lava.

Being twice as durable as the Varia Suit puts the Gravity Suit at twice the sort of mountain-level strength of just the Varia Suit. This, like with the Varia Suit, seems consistent with the sort of opponents Samus faced with the Gravity Suit. Samus was able to face the Diggernaut and win with the Varia and Gravity Suits, when the Diggernaut was used by the Chozo to dig out their colony to the center of planet SR388.

SA-X Suit on its Own:

At the beginning of Metroid Fusion, the last game in the Metroid timelines so far, Samus was infected by an X-parasite, a creature that devours its prey, then uses the absorbed material and memories to replicate it. In desperation, the Galactic Federation removed Samus's infected suit parts (including the Varia and Gravity Suits), but Samus's condition did not improve. While Samus was eventually saved by an infusion of Metroid DNA, the suit parts were shipped off to the Biologic Space Laboratories, where the X-parasite, armed with Samus's DNA, creates a copy of Samus Aran, known as the SA-X.

However, when X-parasites copy, they can also use their shapeshifting abilities and previous stores of DNA to make improvements and alterations. For instance, they make standard Hornoads into more terrifying creatures after infection and replication. Similarly, the SA-X altered Samus's suit. Whereas the Gravity Suit is twice as durable as the Varia Suit (takes half the damage the Varia Suit would otherwise take), the AI ADAM notes to Samus that the SA-X is completely immune to all attacks in her arsenal at the time, forcing her to use a penetrating weapon, like the Plasma Beam (which makes sense, given that page 24 of the Super Metroid Nintendo Player's Guide describes the Plasma Beam as "This is the most powerful Power-Up beam you can find. You instantly see that your firepower is exponentially increased when you have the Plasma Beam equipped."). Considering that the Power Beam, Charge Beam, and normal missiles could deal damage to the enhanced Varia Suit of Dark Samus 1, this puts the SA-X's defenses well above even the Gravity Suit's, which is already twice the mountain-level Varia Suit.

This level of durability is further corroborated by the official guides. The Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 110, "The SA-X catches up to Samus in the next room, so just keep running. You absorb a few hits, but you don't have the firepower to turn around and fight, so just keep going." Page 123 of the same guide adds, "When you reach the next room, leap over the roots and set off a Power Bomb. As you can see, the SA-X is right behind you." The Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide describes the same encounter on page 78, "Your first enemy encounter in the Sector 2 shortcut will be a terrifying SA-X battle...all you can do is freeze it with Ice Missiles and run away."

This means that the SA-X no-sells every weapon Samus had up to the time. These include the Super Missile enhancement, which triples the firepower of normal missiles, and the Wide Beam, which page 32 of the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet states, "Use the Wide Beam to shoot three normal beams at the same time." This means that the SA-X no-sells weapons three times more powerful than those that Samus used to defeat Dark Samus 1. In addition, the weapons the SA-X no-sells include Power Bombs, of which page 69 of the Super Metroid Nintendo Player's Guide notes, "Explode a Power Bomb beneath the floor to vaporize the blocks, then Dash from the far right," and page 78 says, "Ridley, Mother Brain's master of mayhem, returns for the second time...First use Super Missiles, then lay Power Bombs on alternate sides of the platform. Finish him with Missiles and the Charge Beam if necessary." Thus, the SA-X also no-sells Power Bombs, which vaporize rock and damage Ridley, who, as mentioned before, lives in a lair accessibly only through a lake of lava (page 31 of the Super Metroid Instruction Booklet calls him "Ridley (The Boss of Norfair)". Thus, even the ability to no-sell magma and survive in the core region of planet Zebes is insignificant in comparison to the SA-X's defenses, which is consistent with the SA-X being far more durable than even the Gravity Suit.

In terms of how Samus's firepower stacks up, as mentioned before, her ice missiles can freeze the SA-X. Considering that page 50 of the Metroid Prime Hunters Instruction Booklet says, "If Noxus uses the charge attack with the Judicator, its shots freeze the target," and how earlier I cited how the Judicator's shots already fire at near-absolute zero, it shows that even uncharged shots don't freeze the Varia Suit. Thus, the Ice Missile is of greater cold potency than the uncharged Judicator shots. This level of cold works with the Diffusion Missile enhancement, as page 85 of the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion Two-in-One Guide states, "Diffusion Missile...Hold R until charged, then press B...One shot shot freezes everything within the blast radius. This power also translates to Samus's Ice Beam, as the Ice Missile enhancement was just a replacement for the Ice Beam (since Samus's Metroid DNA wouldn't cooperate with an Ice Beam addition), and is consistent with how page 73 notes, "The Magdollites are creatures of lava. They rise up like columns of fire, then shoot lava bombs. Fight fire with ice, freezing the Magdollite with the Ice Beam as the creature starts to emerge from the flame," and with how Samus can freeze Goyagma's arm with a charged Ice Beam shot for a time before it shatters the ice.

As mentioned before, the Plasma Beam is a piercing weapon. Page 33 of the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet states of the Plasma and Wave Beams:

"Plasma

This beam passes through enemies, hitting multiple targets.

Wave

Shoot through obstacles with this undulating beam."

Interestingly enough, even with this level of power and the ability to bypass defenses, Samus has to use charged shots of the beam. Page 141 of the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion Two-in-One Guide states, "Missiles don't hurt the SA-X, so you must use charged-up Wave Beams."

Thus, the SA-X has multi-mountain levels of durability, surpassing the Gravity Suit, and Samus's charged power-wide-plasma-wave beam (shortened in the guide to just the Wave Beam) can pierce through that level of defense. This is consistent with how page 8 of the Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide states, "Samus's Wave Beam defeats enemies with the power of a tsunami," when tsunamis can hold the energy of 23,000 times the energy of a 20 kiloton explosive, which is greater than the energy of the Mount Saint Helens eruption.

Beyond the SA-X Suit:

Towards the end of Metroid Fusion, Samus has obtained another Varia and Gravity Suit to replace those stolen by the X parasite. She also acquires the Screw Attack and Speed Booster, of which page 11 of the Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide explains, "Samus's signature move is the Screw Attack, which turns her into an invincible buzz saw of a bounty hunter while she is spinning through the air...If she gets a long running start, Samus will become blurringly fast and temporarily invincible." Obviously "invincible" would be a no-limits fallacy, but it does mean that both of these items render her immune to the attacks she faces in Metroid Fusion, including the SA-X's own beam, which has a power equal to Samus's.

Furthermore, the Screw Attack's offensive aspect is more powerful than her other attacks in Metroid Fusion, including the Power Bomb, the Super-Ice-Diffusion Missiles, and the Charge-Wide-Plasma-Wave Beam. When Samus has all of her items in Metroid Fusion other than the SA-X's suit/beam and the Screw Attack, the Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide says on page 98, "The right side of the vertical passage in the unmapped area is loaded with mindless and seemingly invincible creatures that float back and forth," showing that even the firepower that damages the SA-X can't damage these. After acquiring the Screw Attack, Samus can destroy them, as page 101 says, "Those mindless, floating fiends aren't invincible after all. You can blaze through a wave of them and through several wall sections as you Space-Jump with Screw Attack power." In addition, Samus has the Space Jump, which lets her somersault repeatedly in the air, so when paired with the Screw Attack, this means that Samus can heavily discourage close-range combat while also defending herself from a range.

Even without using the Screw Attack or Speed Booster, Samus's durability is above the SA-X's. As mentioned earlier, Samus's suits stack. Thus, when at the end of Metroid Fusion, she absorbs the SA-X, she acquires its suit and its Ice Beam, making her more durable than before and, because she has her own Varia and Gravity Suits from Metroid Fusion, she is much more durable than the SA-X. This is showcased in the final fight with the Omega Metroid. As the Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 142, "Suddenly, the blue X floats by and morphs into the SA-X. It steps in front of Samus and attacks the Omega Metroid. It fights valiantly, but another claw swipe turns the SA-X back into X. Jump up and grab the X to restore Samus's weapons and energy...as fast as you can while staying away from its claws. The Omega Metroid advances to the left each time Samus is hit, and it is easy to be trapped in the corner..." Thus, the difference is from the SA-X being one-shotted by the Omega Metroid (X parasite creatures turn back into their original X forms when their body is destroyed) to Samus with the SA-X's suit being able to take hits from the Omega Metroid. Scaling this far above the Varia, Gravity, and SA-X Suits, Samus by the end of Metroid Fusion should be approximating a mountain range in durability.

In terms of long-distance travel speed, the Speed Booster lets Samus run above mach 1 speeds, as the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet states on page 30

"Speed Booster

Dash at supersonic speeds and crash through certain barriers and enemies."

As for combat speed, Samus has displayed hypersonic speeds on multiple occasions, all under or right after experiencing extreme mental duress. She's managed to shoot down enemy fightercraft with the Power Beam while escaping into space in Chapter 12 of Volume 2 of the Manga, despite having earlier that day suffered an incident from her PTSD, including vivid images of her parents' deaths at the hands of Ridley. She's stood up while an explosion went off in slow-motion, despite having gone through two near-death experiences (being drained by the Baby Metroid, then being knocked unconscious by Mother Brain), only to witness the Baby Metroid, which saved her life again, be blown to bits by Mother Brain. She's also dodged a Queen Metroid's lunge from less than a few meters away (the Queen's lunge blitzed wounded Ridley from dozens of meters away, and wounded Ridley dodged a melee distance plasma-wave-ice beam from Samus, which makes Descbrachian wing flaps look in slow-motion, in the same way rifle bullets do). Thus, the Queen Metroid's lunge blitzes a supersonic character from over a dozen meters away, yet Samus can dodge it from a much closer distance. All this in spite of Samus having witnessed earlier that day the death of her mentor, Adam, and the apparent death of her friend, Anthony, which she even had flashbacks to in the midst of the battle.

Why do the mental issues matter? Well, Samus's Suit operates based off her mind and willpower, as chapter 2 of Volume 2 of the Manga explains. Sakamoto, the Metroid series developer, explained in a FAQ that "For Samus to remain connected to the Power Suit require mental energy unfathomable to an ordinary person." Thus, when Samus is under extreme mental duress, the Suit doesn't function properly. Thus, Samus performed these hypersonic combat feats while her powers weren't exactly at full capacity.

In terms of reaction/perception speed, I've already shown how U-Mos casually bends light, whether in holograms or to make the Light Suit. He's also reacted to the approach of the light beams from Agon, from Torvus, and from Sanctuary, which are located in different regions of planet Aether to form the global planetary network. The game calls these the beams of light which Samus can traverse via the Light Suit. Also, U-Mos can download the amber version of the Luminoth language and map data to the Agon temple in moments, showing again how fast his powers operate at.

For Samus, she's able to steer her ship through debris fields at near-relativistic speeds, which this scene highlighting how far she had traveled from the Bottle Ship. Samus's ship is clearly steered manually, and this sort of speed is consistent with how fast she departs from planet Zebes, from Aether, and from SR388. For reference, this is what the Earth looks like from the moon, and the moon is on average 384,400 km away from Earth, or about 1.28 lightseconds away from earth. Also, Samus clearly does have to evade obstacles while travelling at these speeds, as shown when the X-parasite knocked her into a coma, causing her ship to crash. Thus, Samus can perceive events at these incredible speeds.

In addition to all this speed, Samus has a form of precognition, as shown when she dodged Gandrayda's surprise attack and Vorash's under-attack, giving her an extra edge when it comes to dealing with otherwise unexpected attacks.

Samus rarely chooses to use her physical strength in combat. That being said, she can hurl a lava whale submerged in lava (which has a high viscosity and density, as mentioned above) high into the air and crumple a robot with a punch.

1. Samus's basic Varia Suit is already at least as durable as a mountain. Combined with the Gravity Suit and the SA-X Suit, Samus has mountain-range levels of durability.
2. Her firepower operates on a similar level to her shielding strength.
3. With the Scan Visor, Samus can obtain a fair amount of information on Iron Man, leading to a one-sided knowledge of her opponent.
4. In addition, the combination of the Wave and Plasma Beams allow her to bypass shielding, solid objects, and flesh, phasing through the former and piercing through the latter. With the Ice Beam, that means each shot can freeze Iron Man inside and out.
5. The Screw Attack adds an additional layer of defense, while also serving as an omnidirectional close-range attack, serving Samus regardless of distance.
6. Her speed should allow her to keep track of Iron Man, especially with precognition added to her at least hypersonic combat speeds and massively hypersonic to near-relativistic perception/reaction speed.
7. While Samus is no slouch in physical strength, that area is rendered irrelevant. She has the durability to take Iron Man's hits (physical or energy-based), she can use her weapons to deal damage in place of her fists, and the Screw Attack takes care of close-range engagements.

I look forward to seeing your response!

Samus rarely chooses to use her physical strength in combat. That being said, she can hurl a lava whale submerged in lava (which has a high viscosity and density, as mentioned above) high into the air and crumple a robot with a punch.

These feats really aren't impressive when compared to someone with objectively mountain-level strength, at best they are in a large building range, which is really nothing compared to Iron Man. So while neither grapple particularly often, if they ever get into a physical contest, Tony will mop the floor with her. Now lets look at what Iron Man's strikes can do to Samus.

However, another clear comparison with mountain-level strength exists. Goyagma, a giant creature dwelling in the lava sector of the Bottle Ship in Metroid: Other M, is capable of supporting the sheer weight of an entire volcano's lava, as shown by how right after Samus kills Goyagma, the volcano drains extremely rapidly. Remember that lava is just the liquid state of rock, so the lava has a similar mass (thus, the density of magma and of granite are very similar). It's not like Goyagma has some sort of geokinetic ability, as during the fight in Other M's theater mode, Goyagma physically hurls lava with its hands at Samus. Despite this strength of Goyagma (holding up a mountain's worth of lava, and freely moving in the same substance, which is 100,000 times to 1.1 million times more viscous than water (according to this Live Science article), Samus in the Varia Suit is perfectly fine after Goyagma attempted to crush her. Again, the Varia Suit's total durability seems at least mountain level.

This feat is decently impressive, and Goyagma is very strong, but not mountain level in terms of strength by any means. Yes the Goyagma was strong enough to support/displace much, if not all the magma in a mountain, but the amount of lava inside of a volcano isn't even close to as large as the volcano itself. Just take a look at this image: (eschooltoday.com) The mountain itself is dozens of times larger than the volume of magma inside of the mountain, and since, as you pointed out, magma is around the same density of granite and other mountainous rocks, supporting that amount of magma is dozens of times lighter than the actual mountain that it was surrounded by, so saying that Samus can tank mountain level strikes by scaling off of Goyagma is obviously fallacious. I underlined and bolded that part because I think it's critical for the voters to understand that Samus' Varia suit did not tank mountain level strikes from Goyagma since all of your scaling relies on this fact. Your scaling goes like this mountain level=Varia suit<Gravity suit<SA-X<End of Metroid fusion suit, which would obviously lead to the conclusion that Samus has multi-mountain level physical durability, but in reality, the hits that Samus tanked from Goyagma where nowhere near mountain level as I have proven, which pretty much demolishes the base of your scaling chain, leaving the rest of it to collapse.

I'd argue that even Iron Man's man-made island splitting bullrush is much more powerful than the strikes that Samus tanked from Goyagma. However, those aren't even Tony best striking feats, he has shown actual mountain level striking power on over one occasion. In on of his weakest armors to date (the Silver Centurion) Iron Man could destroy a large mountain with a single bullrush. (The Avengers Annual #16 - The Day Death Died) And keep in mind that Iron Man stated that this mountain was the size of Manhattan, which would actual make it 10.2 km in height, slightly taller than Mount Everest. (Mountain Size)

This is far from Iron Man's only display of mountain-level strength though, when fighting along side Thing against the Blood Brothers the shock-waves of their blows brought down an entire mountain. (Marvel Feature #12 - The Bite of the Blood Brothers) So Iron Man should have multi-mountain level strength even back in his classic days, and his more modern suits have been even stronger. He was able to casually overpower an Hulkbuster-esque armor, lifting it up and shredding it to pieces casually. (Iron Man #12 - Execute Program, Part 6) Now what's notable about this is the fact that this armor, moments earlier was overpowering and no-selling the Thing, the same Thing who I just showed bringing down a mountain with the shock-waves of his punches. (Iron Man #12 - Execute Program, Part 6) And this isn't even Iron Man's best physical strength feat, in his Superior Armor he could shred through the Hulkbuster casually. (Superior Iron Man #9 - Chapter 9: Freedom) And this is the same Hulkbuster suit the tanked multiple blows from a pissed off Green Scar. (World War Hulk #1) Now Hulk trashed that suit, and I'm certainly not arguing that Superior Iron Man hits harder than WWH, because he doesn't, but this should clarify that as time has gone on Iron Man's strength has increased by a pretty sizable amount, and he has more than enough striking power to deal very real damage to Samus, who I'm not even convinced at this point can endure mountain level physical blows, even by the end of Metroid Fusion because of how badly off your scaling is.

I've already talked about how Samus' blunt force/physical durability is not mountain-level, so now let's see about her energy durability.

In Chapter 12 of Volume 2 of the Manga, Grey Voice, a Chozo wearing an ancient suit of armor, escaped outside on a small plateau on a mountain after being impaled by Ridley. Here's a glimpse of the size of part of the plateau. Ridley, enraged that Grey Voice shot down one of the Space Pirate fighters, blasts Grey Voice with his plasma breath, and while the shot lands on top of the plateau, it also ends up crumbling the entire face of the mountain connected to that plateau. By contrast, in Chapter 16 of Volume 2 of the Manga, after Samus obtains the Varia Suit, she faced Ridley in his lair. Surprised by her parents' killer, Samus ends up taking a complete shot of Ridley's plasma breath in her shoulder pauldron. However, the shot fails to do even cosmetic damage to the Varia Suit. Considering that the Varia Suit took much less notable damage than a mountain did by the same attack (no visible damage on the Varia Suit, as opposed to the plateau section of the mountain being pulverized), the Varia Suit's overall durability is thus at least as strong as a mountain's.

One again, your entire scaling chain is based off of the "mountain-level" durability of the Varia suit, unfortunately, once again this scaling falls flat since the Varia suit did not tank a mountain-busting blast from Ridley. The basic suggestion of the feat is: Ridley did some damage to a mountain and didn't do as much visible damage to Samus, so Samus' durability>=a mountain's. But this scaling really doesn't work, yes Ridley destroyed a (relatively small in comparison) portion of a mountain, and yes, Samus tanked a similar attack, but this does not mean that Samus could tank a mountain busting beam. Ridley's direct energy blast failed to destroy that mountain, despite him being (by your own admission) enraged. So Ridley's plasma breath is sub-mountain-level, that much is basically undisputable based on what you've shown. But the crux of your argument isn't that Ridley's plasma breath can destroy a mountain, the crux is that Samus took less damage from that blast than the mountain did, and thus is more durable, but this doesn't hold up under scrutiny. See durability can't be scaled like that from a mountain to a person since what's impressive about destroying a mountain is the sheer volume of rock that was obliterated by the attack, which differs from doing damage to a character. See, most fictional characters can endure attacks that would destroy some portion of a mountain, but that doesn't mean that all fictional characters are mountain level.

Now this might sound confusing on the surface. Let me apply your logic to a different scenario. Any man armed with a sledgehammer could destroy a portion of a mountain with a swing or two (just a very tiny portion), yet someone like Luke Cage or Captain America could completely no-sell that same sledge hammer swing. Now if I applied your logic that would mean that Luke Cage and Captain America have mountain-level durability, which makes little to no sense. Now this is of course a more extreme example than the Ridley-Samus one that you provided, but it displays a clear problem with your logic here. Tanking an attack that damaged to a mountain does not equate to mountain level durability, plain and simple. Maybe you could say that Samus' Varia suit has small city-level durability based on that feat, but it isn't a showing of mountain-level endurance. So at absolute best your scaling chain could put Samus at mountain level durability with her metroid fusion suit, but given that I've displayed that far weaker suits than Iron Man's more current one's have mountain level+ repulsors I seriously doubt that she'll be able to endure more than a couple of attacks.

Just to cement Iron Mans earlier suits' blasting power as well above mountain level, I'll throw in these feats from the Neo classic armor, which are well above mountain level. Firstly Iron Man digs a trench that is far larger than the mountain-sized dragon Fing Fang Foom, and Tony actually states that it's about half the size of the Grand Canyon. (Iron Man #271 - Dragon Flame) And the Grand Canyon is obviously massively larger than mountains (likely in a mountain range level in terms of size) I mean just look at it. (The Grand Canyon) And just in case you don't think this is consistent for Neo-Classic Iron Man, he destroyed enough rock to fill the grand canyon in that very same time period. (Avengers West Coast Annual #6 - The Subterrean Wars (Part 5)) So even back in the Neo-Classic days Iron Man had multi-mountain level output. Now lets see the feats of some characters you scaled off of.

In Metroid Prime Hunters, she faces several bounty hunters with powerful loadouts. There's Kanden, a hunter whose logbook entry states, "A disruptive electromagnetic field appears to surround the hunter KANDEN, analysis suggests voltage potential comparable to that found in lightning storms," and whose main weapon, the Volt Driver, is described in the logbook entry as, "The VOLT DRIVER draws energy from the planetary electromagnetic field and converts it into multi-terawatt bursts of HIGHVOLTAGE."

This is the most impressive of the bunch that Samus battled, however he's still not in the mountain ranges of power. According to this converter 10 terawatts is only equal to about 8.6 megatons of TNT, which is mid-range nuke level, not nearly enough power to destroy a mountain.

Similarly, she faces Weavel, whose weapon the Battlehammer is described by the logbook as, "The BATTLEHAMMER is powered by a miniature nuclear reactor." There's also Spire, of whom the scan visor's logbook entry states, "Analysis of this creature's physiology indicates the presence of molten ferrous compounds normally found only in a planet's core," and with the Magmaul weapon described by page 7 of the Metroid Prime Hunters Nintendo Player's Guide as, "The Magmaul's hydrogen core burns at temperatures in the thousands of degrees, allowing it to expel deadly blobs of superheated magma."

Neither of these are particularly impressive. Nuclear reactors don't have energy outputs even close to that of actual nuclear bombs, and Tony's uni-beam, while only at 73% power was over 10,000 degrees Kelvin (so over 20,000 degree fairenheight). (Iron Man #8 - Execute Program, Part 2) so thousands of degrees is nothing to him.

Finally, there's Noxus with his Judicator, of which the logbook entry states, "The JUDICATOR is powered by cold-fusion synthesis. It fires SUPERCOOLED PLASMA at temperatures approaching absolute zero."]'

Iron Man doesn't really have any cold temperature based forms of damage output, so that's not really relevant.

As mentioned earlier, Samus's suits stack. Thus, when at the end of Metroid Fusion, she absorbs the SA-X, she acquires its suit and its Ice Beam, making her more durable than before and, because she has her own Varia and Gravity Suits from Metroid Fusion, she is much more durable than the SA-X. This is showcased in the final fight with the Omega Metroid. As the Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 142, "Suddenly, the blue X floats by and morphs into the SA-X. It steps in front of Samus and attacks the Omega Metroid. It fights valiantly, but another claw swipe turns the SA-X back into X. Jump up and grab the X to restore Samus's weapons and energy...as fast as you can while staying away from its claws. The Omega Metroid advances to the left each time Samus is hit, and it is easy to be trapped in the corner..." Thus, the difference is from the SA-X being one-shotted by the Omega Metroid (X parasite creatures turn back into their original X forms when their body is destroyed) to Samus with the SA-X's suit being able to take hits from the Omega Metroid. Scaling this far above the Varia, Gravity, and SA-X Suits, Samus by the end of Metroid Fusion should be approximating a mountain range in durability.

This cements that the Metroid Fusion Samus is far above the Varia version of Samus in terms of durability, but I still wouldn't argue that Metroid Fusion Samus is anywhere near mountain-range levels of durability. The best actual energy durability feat that you displayed was Samus enduring Ridley's vastly sub-mountain level blast, really at best this scaling chain leads to Samus having mountain-level durability by the end of Metroid Fusion based on the feats you've posted. And Iron Man actually has mountain range-levels of energy projection. I already displayed his Grand Canyon feats, which are solidly multi-mountain/mountain range level, but he has several others are in a similar league. With a single blast, Iron Man obliterated the leg of the Giant Hyrm and killed him. (Thor #81 - Ragnarok Part The Second) Now what makes this impressive is the fact that Hyrm, only an issue before, survived being at the epicenter of a multi-mountain level blast. (Thor #80 - Ragnarok Part The First) And the kicker is that Iron Man performed this in his Pentagon armor, which is canonically much weaker than his Extremis armor. When the Pentagon armor went toe-to-toe with Mallen he could more or less no-sell its repulsors, with Tony's energy projection doing no meaningful damage. (Iron Man #3 - Extremis, Part 3) Then, after Tony's suit receives the Extremis upgrade Iron Man's repulsors can blow through Mallen like he's wet butter. (Iron Man #6 - Extremis, Part 6) This should wrap up the damage output section, overall Tony has more than enough energy projection to do very serious damage to Samus with even his singular blasts.

You didn't post any feats for Samus' physical strength that even approach mountain level, so we agree that she won't be dealing Tony damage through blunt force, so in this section I'll most just be focusing on how Iron Man will fare against her missiles, energy attacks, etc.

The same level of damage Samus takes in the Varia Suit can also be dished out by her basic weaponry. Dark Samus 1's logbook entry notes, "She wears a version of the Varia Suit, altered and augmented by the Phazon within her," putting her at least on the same durability level as Varia Suit Samus. However, Samus still defeated her wielding the Power Beam, Charge Beam, and normal missiles, as page 27 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Nintendo Player's Guide explains, "Dark Samus Battle - Phase 1...If you stand far away and fire missiles as fast as you can, many will breech the shield. It's a good way to damage your doppelganger early...Charge up your Power Beam and run to her side, then wait for her to stop glowing. The moment she does, hit her with the beam. Upon defeating Dark Samus, take an elevator to..." Thus, with the normal missiles, the Power Beam, and the Charge Beam, Samus is able to defeat Dark Samus 1, who is at least as durable as the Varia Suit.

Damaging someone with equal durability to the Varia Suit really isn't impressive by Iron Man's standards. The basic Varia suit has yet to display even nuke-level durability, and Iron Man has completely no-sold being at the epicenter of multiple nuclear attacks. Hell, he's even no-sold blasts from his previous armors, many/all of which have mountain-level energy projection. And Tony has fully quantifiable mountain-level displays of energy durability. When Rhodey was wearing the Neo-Classic armor, he tanked a blast from Mandarin that shook the entire mountain range, sent him flying into a mountain hard enough to shatter it, with the impact being felt on a global scale, and then flying several more miles away. (Iron Man #275 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part IV of IV) - Dragon Doom!) And in that same issue Tony tanked the full power of all of Mandarin's ten rings going off in his face in an explosion that shook the entire planet and dwarfed the mountain range that he was in. (Iron Man #275 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part IV of IV) - Dragon Doom!) Obviously the Varia suit doesn't have a single durability feat that even holds a candle to this.

In terms of how Samus's firepower stacks up, as mentioned before, her ice missiles can freeze the SA-X. Considering that page 50 of the Metroid Prime Hunters Instruction Booklet says, "If Noxus uses the charge attack with the Judicator, its shots freeze the target," and how earlier I cited how the Judicator's shots already fire at near-absolute zero, it shows that even uncharged shots don't freeze the Varia Suit. Thus, the Ice Missile is of greater cold potency than the uncharged Judicator shots. This level of cold works with the Diffusion Missile enhancement, as page 85 of the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion Two-in-One Guide states, "Diffusion Missile...Hold R until charged, then press B...One shot shot freezes everything within the blast radius. This power also translates to Samus's Ice Beam, as the Ice Missile enhancement was just a replacement for the Ice Beam (since Samus's Metroid DNA wouldn't cooperate with an Ice Beam addition), and is consistent with how page 73 notes, "The Magdollites are creatures of lava. They rise up like columns of fire, then shoot lava bombs. Fight fire with ice, freezing the Magdollite with the Ice Beam as the creature starts to emerge from the flame," and with how Samus can freeze Goyagma's arm with a charged Ice Beam shot for a time before it shatters the ice.

So essentially Samus' ice attacks can reach temperatures that are very close to being absolute zero? Yeah, that will not be enough to freeze Iron Man. Tony has tanked a concentrated beam of absolute zero and could still move and perform actions in these levels of cold. (Iron Man #241 - China See!) So I doubt that Samus' freeze missiles will be much of an issue for Iron Man.

As mentioned before, the Plasma Beam is a piercing weapon. Page 33 of the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet states of the Plasma and Wave Beams: "Plasma This beam passes through enemies, hitting multiple targets. Wave Shoot through obstacles with this undulating beam." Interestingly enough, even with this level of power and the ability to bypass defenses, Samus has to use charged shots of the beam. Page 141 of the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion Two-in-One Guide states, "Missiles don't hurt the SA-X, so you must use charged-up Wave Beams."

The phasing/piercing functions of those weapons really won't affect Tony at all. He has already been shown to be immune to phasing when Vision tried to take him out by phasing through his chest. (All-New, All-Different Avengers #6) And in terms of piercing damage Iron Man tanked an Alternate Universe Terrax's axe straight to the chest. (New Avengers #5 - Black Swans) And this is an absurd display of piercing durability since this same axe was stated to slice through atoms. (Avengers #41 - Over there) So phasing and piercing will not work against Tony, so lets see the raw power of these beams:

Thus, the SA-X has multi-mountain levels of durability, surpassing the Gravity Suit, and Samus's charged power-wide-plasma-wave beam (shortened in the guide to just the Wave Beam) can pierce through that level of defense. This is consistent with how page 8 of the Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide states, "Samus's Wave Beam defeats enemies with the power of a tsunami," when tsunamis can hold the energy of 23,000 times the energy of a 20 kiloton explosive, which is greater than the energy of the Mount Saint Helens eruption.

Okay, this is the first (and only) example of mountain-level damage output that you've shown for any of these characters. Though it's not multi-mountain/mountain range levels of power. That is about 19 times more powerful that the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, and the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, despite taking place literally inside of the mountain itself, only destroyed the mountain top. Here is a picture of Mount Saint Helens before and after the explosion. (Before and After) So even though her wave pulse is many times more power than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, that would put it at mountain-level+ levels of energy output, and it's her absolute strongest attack, meanwhile I've already shown that Iron Man has mountain range levels of durability, and those aren't even his best feats. In a more recent comic he endured an explosion that would "turn the West Coast into a crater". (Iron Man: Fatal Frontier #1) Granted he absorbed some energy from the blast to power his shields, but there's no reason he can't do that to Samus' blasts as well. And just in case you think Iron Man tanking attacks of this magnitude isn't consistent, he did the same thing in his Neo Classic armor, except this time the blast destroyed the entire west coast. (The Infinity Gauntlet #2 - From Bad to Worse) Samus' best energy projection attacks are mountain level+, meanwhile Tony can casually tank multi-mountain/mountain range/and small country-level blasts and explosions. Frankly, I'm having a hard time seeing how Samus can put him down.

In terms of long-distance travel speed, the Speed Booster lets Samus run above mach 1 speeds, as the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet states on page 30 "Speed Booster Dash at supersonic speeds and crash through certain barriers and enemies." As for combat speed, Samus has displayed hypersonic speeds on multiple occasions, all under or right after experiencing extreme mental duress. She's managed to shoot down enemy fightercraft with the Power Beam while escaping into space in Chapter 12 of Volume 2 of the Manga, despite having earlier that day suffered an incident from her PTSD, including vivid images of her parents' deaths at the hands of Ridley. She's stood up while an explosion went off in slow-motion, despite having gone through two near-death experiences (being drained by the Baby Metroid, then being knocked unconscious by Mother Brain), only to witness the Baby Metroid, which saved her life again, be blown to bits by Mother Brain.

Moving faster than explosions is a decently impressive feat, but it's one that Iron Man has replicated several times in recent years. He did so while rescuing children from an exploding building in his Pentagon armor. (Thor #80 - Ragnarok Part The First) And he could suit up at outpace an explosion after it was already going off around him in his Extremis armor. (Invincible Iron Man #3 - The Five Nightmares, Part 3: Pepper Potts at the End of the World) And given that explosions move at hypersonic speeds that puts both those feats in the hypersonic+ range.

She's also dodged a Queen Metroid's lunge from less than a few meters away (the Queen's lunge blitzed wounded Ridley from dozens of meters away, and wounded Ridley dodged a melee distance plasma-wave-ice beam from Samus, which makes Descbrachian wing flaps look in slow-motion, in the same way rifle bullets do). Thus, the Queen Metroid's lunge blitzes a supersonic character from over a dozen meters away, yet Samus can dodge it from a much closer distance. All this in spite of Samus having witnessed earlier that day the death of her mentor, Adam, and the apparent death of her friend, Anthony, which she even had flashbacks to in the midst of the battle. Why do the mental issues matter? Well, Samus's Suit operates based off her mind and willpower, as chapter 2 of Volume 2 of the Manga explains. Sakamoto, the Metroid series developer, explained in a FAQ that "For Samus to remain connected to the Power Suit require mental energy unfathomable to an ordinary person." Thus, when Samus is under extreme mental duress, the Suit doesn't function properly. Thus, Samus performed these hypersonic combat feats while her powers weren't exactly at full capacity.

Scaling Samus to high-level supersonic characters is decently impressive, but Iron Man scales above hypersonic characters. In his extremis armor he completely and utterly dominated Mallen in terms of speed, blitzing him willy nilly and moving faster than he could perceive on multiple occasions. (Iron Man #6 - Extremis, Part 6) Now this is notable since Mallen casually blitzed down the Pentagon armor only a couple issues earlier, moving too fast fro Tony to perceive, keep in mind that this is the same Pentagon armor that I displayed as having casually hypersonic+ speed. (Iron Man #3 - Extremis, Part 3) So essentially Iron Man can casually blitz characters who are high-level hypersonic. And having combat speed that vastly exceeds hypersonic is consistent for Iron Man based on quantifiable feats as well. In his extremis armor he blitzed down a large group of soldiers, tanks, and helicopters at Mach 8.7. (Iron Man #9 - Execute Program, Part 3) He also outpaced and caught a rail gun bullet, which can move at Mach 10, casually. (Iron Man: Hypervelocity #4) Granted it was noted that rail guns are slightly less effective underwater, but even if its speed was slightly reduced, it still would have been moving at well above hypersonic speeds.

For Samus, she's able to steer her ship through debris fields at near-relativistic speeds, which this scene highlighting how far she had traveled from the Bottle Ship. Samus's ship is clearly steered manually, and this sort of speed is consistent with how fast she departs from planet Zebes, from Aether, and from SR388. For reference, this is what the Earth looks like from the moon, and the moon is on average 384,400 km away from Earth, or about 1.28 lightseconds away from earth. Also, Samus clearly does have to evade obstacles while travelling at these speeds, as shown when the X-parasite knocked her into a coma, causing her ship to crash. Thus, Samus can perceive events at these incredible speeds.

Fair enough, in terms of pure reaction Samus probably is slightly faster than Tony, but that doesn't matter much given he has equal, if not superior combat speed. And Tony's reactions aren't half bad, he has displayed MHS reaction while reacting to lightning in one of his newer models. (Iron Man #23 - .NOW Rings of the Mandarin, Chapter I) So while Samus has an edge in reactionary speed, it is negated by Tony's superior combat speed and comparable reactions.

I figured that I'd expound upon Tony's versatility a little more. I've already displayed his impressive sonics and powerful missiles, but he has a couple other items of gear that I think we prove very useful against Samus. Firstly there's Tony's energy absorption tech. I've already displayed him using it to drain some of the heat energy from the west coast destroying bomb, but he also uses it in combat. He absorbed Thor's lighting (which is far more powerful that Samus' energy projection) and increased his own power by doing so. (The Avengers #220 - War Against The Gods!) And given that Samus' main form of damage output is energy that could pose a very real problem for her. Samus will also need impressive piercing durability, since Iron Man has an energy blade that can slice through MODOK's shielding. (Iron Man #45 - The Big Bang Theory, Conclusion) And I've already displayed that MODOK's shields can endure the power of nuclear bombs, so Samus will need impressive piercing resistance feats in order to stand up to these.

I'm glad you agree that the Wave Beam is many times more powerful than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, though for your calculation is just ever so slightly rounded down: the Wave Beam (referring to the beams acquired up to that point, which are also the Power, Charge, Wide, and Plasma Beams) is over 19 times more powerful than said blast, as 23,000 times 20 kilotons divided by 24 megatons in said eruption is (23*10^3 * 20 * 10^3)/(24*10^6) = 19.167. As for the rest, well, in my opinion, I agree with the quote from Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi: "You will find that it is you who are mistaken. About a great many things."

Okay, this is the first (and only) example of mountain-level damage output that you've shown for any of these characters. Though it's not multi-mountain/mountain range levels of power. That is about 19 times more powerful that the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, and the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, despite taking place literally inside of the mountain itself, only destroyed the mountain top. Here is a picture of Mount Saint Helens before and after the explosion. (Before and After) So even though her wave pulse is many times more power than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, that would put it at mountain-level+ levels of energy output, and it's her absolute strongest attack,

For starters, National Geographic defines mountains as "a landform that rises at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) or more above its surrounding area." From the eruption, Mount Saint Helens lost a 396 meter tall cone portion of its mountain top: in other words, the amount destroyed in the eruption is equivalent to a mountain smaller than Mount Saint Helens, just flipped upside down. Mountain-busting, like Island busting, planet busting, and others varies based on size: there's a Mount Olympus-sized portion inside Mount Everest, just as there's a Mercury-sized portion inside Venus.

Thus, I've shown that the eruption indeed is mountain level, the same eruption you agree is 19 times weaker than that of the Wave Beam.

Also, it's not her strongest attack. For one matter, as I said in my opener,

The SA-X Suit, like the Ice Beam, was a surprise at the end of Metroid Fusion.

Ice Beam

That's why the Ice Beam isn't included in the statement about the Wave Beam (and the preceding beams) or in the list of beams in the manual; the Ice Beam is acquired afterwards, increasing the power of the beam (and tinting it blue). The Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide says on page 103, "After the Metroid has made short work of the SA-X, you can collect the SA-X's parasite to fill your tanks and absorb the power of the Ice Beam," and in the caption, "Collect the SA-X's X-parasite for a full recharge and ready the Ice Beam to attack with newfound force."

For another matter, Samus can charge the beam (a process which takes less than a few seconds) and this provides a pretty substantial increase in firepower, seeing as how, also in my opener, I explained:

Page 141 of the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion Two-in-One Guide states, "Missiles don't hurt the SA-X, so you must use charged-up Wave Beams."

My Opener

More from Page 141 of that guide: "Establish a pattern of going up to the top shelf on the left and stopping on the right side. When the SA-X arrives, jump off the left side of the shelf and race to the far right corner of the room, charging your beam while running. Fire a charged beam at the SA-X as it runs toward Samus. When it gets close, repeat this process, jumping up to the top and waiting for the SA-X to follow. Keep this up until the SA-X morphs into a larger form..." Thus, it's clear that not only was Samus forced to use charged up Wave Beams to finish the SA-X, showing that even the regular, multi-mountain shots were ineffective (and the charged ones are far more powerful), but even then, the SA-X is capable of taking multiple, forcing Samus to "establish a pattern" and "keep this up." And as I said before:

Even without using the Screw Attack or Speed Booster, Samus's durability is above the SA-X's. As mentioned earlier, Samus's suits stack. Thus, when at the end of Metroid Fusion, she absorbs the SA-X, she acquires its suit and its Ice Beam, making her more durable than before and, because she has her own Varia and Gravity Suits from Metroid Fusion, she is much more durable than the SA-X. This is showcased in the final fight with the Omega Metroid. As the Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 142, "Suddenly, the blue X floats by and morphs into the SA-X. It steps in front of Samus and attacks the Omega Metroid. It fights valiantly, but another claw swipe turns the SA-X back into X. Jump up and grab the X to restore Samus's weapons and energy...as fast as you can while staying away from its claws. The Omega Metroid advances to the left each time Samus is hit, and it is easy to be trapped in the corner..." Thus, the difference is from the SA-X being one-shotted by the Omega Metroid (X parasite creatures turn back into their original X forms when their body is destroyed) to Samus with the SA-X's suit being able to take hits from the Omega Metroid.

My Opener

Samus by the end of Metroid Fusion can take multiple hits ("each time Samus is hit") from the same Omega Metroid that one-shots the SA-X. By using the Wave Beam and the SA-X's durability alone, the SA-X's durability >>> then the regular multi-mountain Wave Beam shots, and Samus >>> SA-X in terms of durability.

As for the Varia Suit by itself, as mentioned in my opener:

The Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 110, "The SA-X catches up to Samus in the next room, so just keep running. You absorb a few hits, but you don't have the firepower to turn around and fight, so just keep going."

My Opener

Samus acquired the Varia Suit on page 108 of the ("When the Core-X dissolves, a purple X cluster remains. Grab it to obtain the Varia Suit...") and she acquires the Gravity Suit on page 129 ("Jump up and grab the floating X to recover Samus's Gravity Suit effect.") Thus, Samus had only the basic Suit plus the Varia Suit when she has to "absorb a few hits. " Seeing as how the SA-X has Samus's strongest abilities, including the same beam enhancements plus the Ice Beam, it shows that the Varia Suit has to be able to tank damage far above mountain level.

Another matter about your claim that the Wave Beam is "her absolute strongest attack"

As I said in my opener:

When Samus has all of her items in Metroid Fusion other than the SA-X's suit/beam and the Screw Attack, the Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide says on page 98, "The right side of the vertical passage in the unmapped area is loaded with mindless and seemingly invincible creatures that float back and forth," showing that even the firepower that damages the SA-X can't damage these. After acquiring the Screw Attack, Samus can destroy them, as page 101 says, "Those mindless, floating fiends aren't invincible after all. You can blaze through a wave of them and through several wall sections as you Space-Jump with Screw Attack power."

My Opener

Thus, the Screw Attack one-shots creatures that no-sell said Wave (plus Plasma/Wide/Charge/Power) Beam, including charged shots from said Beam.

This is the most impressive of the bunch that Samus battled, however he's still not in the mountain ranges of power. According to this converter 10 terawatts is only equal to about 8.6 megatons of TNT, which is mid-range nuke level, not nearly enough power to destroy a mountain.

Your First Response Post

You didn't link the converter, though I am curious about how they're converting watts (a unit of the rate of energy per time) into megatons (a unit of energy). The point of bringing up Kanden's description:

There's Kanden, a hunter whose logbook entry states, "A disruptive electromagnetic field appears to surround the hunter KANDEN, analysis suggests voltage potential comparable to that found in lightning storms," and whose main weapon, the Volt Driver, is described in the logbook entry as, "The VOLT DRIVER draws energy from the planetary electromagnetic field and converts it into multi-terawatt bursts of HIGHVOLTAGE."

My Opener

was to show his attacks were comparable to lightning strikes. As this article from Encyclopedia Britannica explains, "Peak temperatures in the channel are on the order of 30,000 °C (50,000 °F), about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun."

As for the number you cited being mid-range nuke level? Castle Bravo had a yield of 15 megatons and is the strongest nuclear device tested by the United States. As for not nearly enough power to destroy a mountain: as I just showed, 24 Megatons was enough to destroy a mountain-sized portion of Mount Saint Helen's, so being over a 1/3rd of that is still pretty close.

Tony's uni-beam, while only at 73% power was over 10,000 degrees Kelvin (so over 20,000 degree fairenheight). (Iron Man #8 - Execute Program, Part 2) so thousands of degrees is nothing to him.

Your First Response Post

For one matter, your conversion is off: 10,073 degrees Kelvin (the number in the scan) is 17540.33 degrees Fahrenheit. For another: considering the same sources talk about the Judicator in terms of absolute zero, why would thousands of degrees refer to Fahrenheit? Besides, most Metroid sources use the metric system, like the stats for Samus's height and mass.

One again, your entire scaling chain is based off of the "mountain-level" durability of the Varia suit, unfortunately, once again this scaling falls flat since the Varia suit did not tank a mountain-busting blast from Ridley. The basic suggestion of the feat is: Ridley did some damage to a mountain and didn't do as much visible damage to Samus, so Samus' durability>=a mountain's. But this scaling really doesn't work, yes Ridley destroyed a (relatively small in comparison) portion of a mountain, and yes, Samus tanked a similar attack, but this does not mean that Samus could tank a mountain busting beam. Ridley's direct energy blast failed to destroy that mountain, despite him being (by your own admission) enraged. So Ridley's plasma breath is sub-mountain-level, that much is basically undisputable based on what you've shown. But the crux of your argument isn't that Ridley's plasma breath can destroy a mountain, the crux is that Samus took less damage from that blast than the mountain did, and thus is more durable, but this doesn't hold up under scrutiny. See durability can't be scaled like that from a mountain to a person since what's impressive about destroying a mountain is the sheer volume of rock that was obliterated by the attack, which differs from doing damage to a character. See, most fictional characters can endure attacks that would destroy some portion of a mountain, but that doesn't mean that all fictional characters are mountain level.

Now this might sound confusing on the surface. Let me apply your logic to a different scenario. Any man armed with a sledgehammer could destroy a portion of a mountain with a swing or two (just a very tiny portion), yet someone like Luke Cage or Captain America could completely no-sell that same sledge hammer swing. Now if I applied your logic that would mean that Luke Cage and Captain America have mountain-level durability, which makes little to no sense. Now this is of course a more extreme example than the Ridley-Samus one that you provided, but it displays a clear problem with your logic here. Tanking an attack that damaged to a mountain does not equate to mountain level durability, plain and simple. Maybe you could say that Samus' Varia suit has small city-level durability based on that feat, but it isn't a showing of mountain-level endurance. So at absolute best your scaling chain could put Samus at mountain level durability with her metroid fusion suit,

Your First Response Post

Let's see just how erroneous your comparison with...a sledgehammer, of all things, is. Let's be extremely generous about the energy in a sledgehammer speed by using the fastest baseball hit speed recorded, 199.4 km/h (55.39 m/s) and use the high end of the mass of a sledgehammer, 9 kg. Using the basic kinetic energy equation, 1/2 * m * v^2, we get an energy output of 13,806.23445 joules. Now, let's see the energy output of the Mount Saint Helens eruption again: 24 megatons. That's 1.004 * 10^17 joules, which is 7.27 trillion times larger than the energy in that high-end hammer swing.

To put that in perspective, our galaxy is estimated to have 100-400 billion stars. Yet even 400 billion is over 18 times less than that multiplier. A person swinging at the high-balled speed every second, nonstop, 365 (or 366) days per year, 24/7, would take 230,596 years to equal the energy of that eruption.

In other words, your comparison is ridiculous because the percentage of damage the sledgehammer does to a mountain is so negligible, it's ridiculously difficult to measure. That's why Superman no-selling a bullet can't be compared to Thanos no-selling a bullet, which can't be compared to the Living Tribunal no-selling a bullet. While the fraction of energy the bullet deals compared to their total durability is vastly durable, regardless of which one it is, it's also too small to measure how much damage any of them take from that.

Let's use mathematics. Let M be the energy to destroy a mountain and D be a character's durability. If they take an attack with M amount of energy and survive, clearly D > M. If they take an attack with M/2 energy, and sustain less than half the damage to put them down, we get D/2 > M/2, which means D > M (just multiply both sides of the inequality by 2). This works for basically any positive real number N in the denominator, since multiplying by N is the same as just replicating that attack N times.

With the Ridley and mountain-side example, we get some sort of fraction that's the amount to damage the surface of the mountain. Samus does better off than the mountain, as she sustains no visible damage, while the mountain does worse, taking visible damage. Her D/N is greater than M/N, so the Varia Suit's D > M.

Contrast that with the sledge hammer example. M/N is literally so small, we can't register D/N. Did the character flinch? Did they blink? Did it give them an itch? There's no way to measure how much damage was dealt, so we can't see if M/N > D/N, or if M/N < D/N.

Thus, your comparison is completely off the mark...though this is all pretty extraneous, considering I've already shown the Varia Suit is multi-mountain in durability with the comparison to the Mount Saint Helens eruption and the Wave Beam.

And this is far from Tony's only showing of mountain-level durability. In his Neo Classic armor he endured being body slammed by an animated mountain. (Iron Man #273 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part II of IV) - Here There Be Dragons) And Iron Man's modern armors also have fantastic blunt force durability.

Your Opener

This feat is decently impressive, and Goyagma is very strong, but not mountain level in terms of strength by any means. Yes the Goyagma was strong enough to support/displace much, if not all the magma in a mountain, but the amount of lava inside of a volcano isn't even close to as large as the volcano itself. Just take a look at this image: (eschooltoday.com) The mountain itself is dozens of times larger than the volume of magma inside of the mountain, and since, as you pointed out, magma is around the same density of granite and other mountainous rocks, supporting that amount of magma is dozens of times lighter than the actual mountain that it was surrounded by, so saying that Samus can tank mountain level strikes by scaling off of Goyagma is obviously fallacious. I underlined and bolded that part because I think it's critical for the voters to understand that Samus' Varia suit did not tank mountain level strikes from Goyagma since all of your scaling relies on this fact. Your scaling goes like this mountain level=Varia suit<Gravity suit<SA-X<End of Metroid fusion suit, which would obviously lead to the conclusion that Samus has multi-mountain level physical durability, but in reality, the hits that Samus tanked from Goyagma where nowhere near mountain level as I have proven, which pretty much demolishes the base of your scaling chain, leaving the rest of it to collapse.Your First Response Post

First of all, I never said "Samus can tank mountain level strikes by scaling off of Goyagma." Rather, the fact that Samus's Varia Suit is completely unharmed by said attempt at crushing more than outweighs the difference between Goyagma's strength and the whole mountain, like in my explanation of Ridley and the mountain-side above. On the flip side, while you point out that the amount of lava Goyagma supported is a fraction of the volcano, your scan of Iron Man being slammed by an animated mountain that you claim is "mountain level" mentions "The fallen boulders are large enough that there is space between them." Clearly, the whole weight of the mountain isn't on Iron Man: if it were, the portion of ground directly beneath his feat/legs would have to also support that weight and would instantly collapse. Rather, the weight of the mountain is spread out all over the structure beneath the rubble, so you claiming that such a feat is "mountain level" is a double-standard. That's also not even including how a machine that can "punch through mountains" you mentioned elsewhere would be tunneling through the mountain, and yet somehow being able to tunnel through a mountain is mountain-level, but carrying the magma chamber isn't?

I've already displayed the Iron Man's earlier armors have mountain level energy projection capabilities, and this is perfectly consistent with his Classic armors. When Rhodey was allowed to use Stark's suit he used the repulsors and uni-beam to "blast mountains to itty bits" (Iron Man #188 - And Grimm Shall Be Their Name!) and when facing Fing Fang Foom he shattered the tops a multiple mountains in seconds, causing a massive avalanche that complete buries the gigantic dragon. (Iron Man #271 - Dragon Flame) So mountain level damage output is nothing to Tony even back in his classic days.

Your Opener

First up I'd like to showcase Iron Man's missiles, which are pretty obscenely powerful. With a singular missile Tony has exploded an entire massive cliff-side with a single shot from one of his missiles, so they certainly pack a punch. (Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Annual) And the best part? Iron Man can spam these bad boys like there's no tomorrow from pretty much any part of his body, not to mention the fact that they can lock onto targets. (Avengers #27 - Only Dirt... Six Feet Deep)Your Opener

You bring up scans of Iron Man and his suits destroying mountain sides and mountain tops with multiple hits to claim that he has mountain-level energy projection, and destroying cliff-sides is "obscenely powerful," yet in your first response post, you say this:

One again, your entire scaling chain is based off of the "mountain-level" durability of the Varia suit, unfortunately, once again this scaling falls flat since the Varia suit did not tank a mountain-busting blast from Ridley. The basic suggestion of the feat is: Ridley did some damage to a mountain and didn't do as much visible damage to Samus, so Samus' durability>=a mountain's. But this scaling really doesn't work, yes Ridley destroyed a (relatively small in comparison) portion of a mountain, and yes, Samus tanked a similar attack, but this does not mean that Samus could tank a mountain busting beam. Ridley's direct energy blast failed to destroy that mountain, despite him being (by your own admission) enraged. So Ridley's plasma breath is sub-mountain-level, that much is basically undisputable based on what you've shown.

Your First Response Post

This is the scan again. The amount Ridley destroyed in one blast is greater than the damage shown here, comparable to that here, and considering the relative sze of the people in this scan, Ridley's blast absolutely dwarfed Grey Voice, a human-sized being, so that one is also inferior to Ridley's blast. Yet, somehow your scans show mountain level damage output, but Ridley destroyed a "relatively small in comparison" portion, and is "undisputably" "sub-mountain level"?

Even back in his classic days Tony had some absurd striking feats, his updated Armor was able to casually plow through his previous armors with his blows and crumple them with his casual grabs. (Iron Man #159 - When Strikes Diablo) Now what makes this impressive is the fact that even his Mark I armor could trade blows with Savage Hulk without sustaining heavy damage (Avengers: The Origin #4 - Rumble Fish) Now obviously Iron Man doesn't strike harder than the Hulk, but this should give you a good idea of how durable the armors that Iron Man was obliterating are. And Tony consistently dishes out enough force with his blows to put other high-level Mid-Tiers on their asses. In his Extremis armor he could one-shot an enraged She-Hulk (Avengers #501 - Chaos (Part 2) And keep in mind that She-Hulk was operating well above her regular levels because of her intense rage amp, only a page before she was literally ripping Vision apart with her bare hands.

Your Opener

He could take a couple of hits from Taurus before going down, and in that very same fight Taurus could K.O. Thor with only three blows. (Avengers Assemble #1 - Assembling & Avengers Assemble #2 - Hulk Smash) Now Iron Man clearly isn't as durable as Thor, but the fact that he can tank hits from beings who are above Thor's weight class should indicate that Iron Man won't be easy to put down by any means, so unless Samus has some insane levels of physicality that I'm unaware of, I think that Tony should be able to tank pretty much any and all of her physical blows.Your Opener

In terms of vague scaling with high tiers, Samus has feats too.

With the Varia, Dark, and Light Suits (the latter two are only used for defending against the toxic extra-dimensional substances of Dark Aether and for being able to use Aether's light-based teleportation grid, and do not provide shield strength increases), Samus fought and killed the Emperor Ing, who wielded Dark Aether's portion of the Light of Aether. This source of energy is so powerful, when Samus used the Energy Transfer Module to store it for transport to Aether, the entire planetary dimension of Dark Aether began to collapse.

In just the Varia Suit, she fought Gorea, a creature who soloed a galaxy-spanning civilization. Yet Samus killed Gorea, with the resulting release of psionic energy being enough to engulf the region of space connecting the normal universe with the Infinity Void, with said region being comparable to the size of planet Alinos. (Another look at their compared sizes). (Here's the non-canon ending, where Samus defeats Gorea but doesn't fulfill the Alimbic Prophesy).

Do I think Samus is planetary? No. Just like you, though, I can bring up her doing well against opponents of incredible power while wielding equipment vastly inferior to what she brings to this fight.

even in his weaker Classic armors Tony could completely and utterly no-sell an atomic pile-driver that was meant to "punch through mountains". (Iron Man #95 - Ultimo!)

Your Opener

the Classic armor hit Ultimo with a blast more powerful than the aforementioned atomic pile-driver (Iron Man #95 - Ultimo!)Your Opener

The ability to "punch through mountains" (which doesn't even require destroying the whole mountain, like how modern real-world technology can tunnel through mountains) pales in comparison to what the Diggernaut can do, as mentioned in my opener:

Samus was able to face the Diggernaut and win with the Varia and Gravity Suits, when the Diggernaut was used by the Chozo to dig out their colony to the center of planet SR388.

Just to start off Iron Man could suit up and fly dozens of feet out of his building before a missile which had already entered the room, could even travel a couple of feet and explode. (Invincible Iron Man #501 - Fix Me) And keep in mind that large missiles like this travel at supersonic speeds, and given that Iron Man could outpace this missile several times over, this feat should rank in the solidly hypersonic range.

Your Opener

The scan doesn't really show the missile had to travel "a couple of feet" only, or that Iron Man had flown out entirely before the missile exploded. Also, considering the plethora of subsonic missiles that exist, I don't see where you're getting that missile has to be supersonic.

Regardless, Samus has dodged out a volley of missiles, and I've already shown in my opener her exceeding hypersonic speed while massively hindered.

And Tony does actually abuse his supersonic+ speed in combat on a somewhat consistent basis, for example, he blitzed Gravitron at Mach three. (Iron Man #8 - Execute Program, Part 2) So I've now established Tony has comfortably supersonic combat speed, but he can take it up a notch from there. In one recent instance Tony reacted to and caught a missile that was travelling at twice the speed of a rifle bullet (the average rifle bullet moves at about Mach 2.9), a solid display for hypersonic reaction/combat speed. (Iron Man: Hypervelocity #2)

Your Opener

A bullrush isn't combat speed, it's travel speed, and I've already shown Samus has supersonic travel speed:

In terms of long-distance travel speed, the Speed Booster lets Samus run above mach 1 speeds, as the Metroid Fusion Instruction Booklet states on page 30

"Speed Booster

Dash at supersonic speeds and crash through certain barriers and enemies."

My Opener

Similarly, catching up to the missile is travel speed, and in terms of the reaction part, as I've shown earlier:

She's managed to shoot down enemy fightercraft with the Power Beam while escaping into space in Chapter 12 of Volume 2 of the Manga, despite having earlier that day suffered an incident from her PTSD, including vivid images of her parents' deaths at the hands of Ridley.

My Opener

Considering modern Space Shuttles reach speeds "nine times faster than a rifle bullet" according to NASA, Samus has a much better combat and reaction speed feat than catching up to that missile.

And Iron Man has even fought and reacted in the millisecond range while fighting Crimson Dynamo. (Iron Man #7 - Execute Program, Part 1)

Your Opener

That doesn't even begin to compare with Samus's perception speed, as I highlighted in my opener. As for his armor adjustments at that speed, Samus switched on her Ice Beam while the world seemed to stand still, so she can more than match that.

As for the one combat speed involved, the punch at 3500 feet per second, that's a little over mach 3, which is supersonic. Hardly beyond Samus's own speed feats.

With a bullrush Iron Man could shatter an island compound, splitting the whole thing in half. (Iron Man #127 - ...A Man's Home Is His Battlefield!)

Your Opener

Unlike mountains or planets, islands don't exactly have much of a well-defined minimum standard for size, and the image doesn't show much of the size. As for smashing up the ground:

In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Samus with the Varia Suit and the PED Suit (the PED Suit lets Samus harness the substance Phazon in a risky temporary state called hypermode for a maximum of twenty-five seconds each, but does not increase the Varia Suit's base defensive shielding when hypermode is not active) faced off against Mogenar, a Mogenar-class war golem enhanced by the Last Lord of Science's magic and a Leviathan's Phazon. Regular Mogenar-class golems, without magic nor Phazon, were described in the Bryyo Data entry Downfall (stored by Samus's scan visor in the logbook) as, "See the giant stone Mogenars do battle, destroying the land with their titanic blows."

My Opener

Of course, there's also the Diggernaut excavating to the center of SR388. Speaking of which:

Just to cement Iron Mans earlier suits' blasting power as well above mountain level, I'll throw in these feats from the Neo classic armor, which are well above mountain level. Firstly Iron Man digs a trench that is far larger than the mountain-sized dragon Fing Fang Foom, and Tony actually states that it's about half the size of the Grand Canyon. (Iron Man #271 - Dragon Flame) And the Grand Canyon is obviously massively larger than mountains (likely in a mountain range level in terms of size) I mean just look at it. (The Grand Canyon) And just in case you don't think this is consistent for Neo-Classic Iron Man, he destroyed enough rock to fill the grand canyon in that very same time period. (Avengers West Coast Annual #6 - The Subterrean Wars (Part 5)) So even back in the Neo-Classic days Iron Man had multi-mountain level output. Now lets see the feats of some characters you scaled off of.

Your First Response Post

A: I would love to know why Iron Man and Wanda are accurate sources for the size of the grand canyon, in that they know that off the top of their head.

B: The Diggernaut's feat makes this look lilliputian in comparison.

C: For the first feat, Iron Man dug out that trench with a continuous blast. The Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide explains on page 9, ""Unlike Beam power, your missile supply is limited. Collect and conserve Missiles if you're running low." Moreover, page 16 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Instruction Booklet explains, "New to Samus is an ammunition system: for the Dark, Light, and Annihilator Beams, she will have to collect light and dark ammo to replenish her supplies," and "The Power Beam can open Blue Hatches and has infinite ammo." Thus, aside from the beams in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, which rely on the special light/dark energies of Aether and Dark Aether, Samus has an unlimited supply of her beam shots, so with a continuous stream of her multi-mountain attacks, she could more than replicate that level of energy output.

D: For the second, Iron Man blasted away enough debris to reveal the trapped Avengers, not the entire debris pile.

When Rhodey was wearing the Neo-Classic armor, he tanked a blast from Mandarin that shook the entire mountain range, sent him flying into a mountain hard enough to shatter it, with the impact being felt on a global scale, and then flying several more miles away. (Iron Man #275 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part IV of IV) - Dragon Doom!) And in that same issue Tony tanked the full power of all of Mandarin's ten rings going off in his face in an explosion that shook the entire planet and dwarfed the mountain range that he was in. (Iron Man #275 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part IV of IV) - Dragon Doom!)

Your First Response Post

As this article explains, "Events with magnitudes of about 4.5 or greater--there are several thousand such shocks annually--are strong enough to be recorded by sensitive seismographs all over the world." What does an earthquake in the 4.5 levels look like? Wikipedia explains: "4.0–4.9...Noticeable shaking of indoor objects and rattling noises. Felt by most people in the affected area. Slightly felt outside. Generally causes zero to minimal damage. Moderate to significant damage very unlikely. Some objects may fall off shelves or be knocked over." This is at least the sort of environmental impact that Kraid had, just by standing up, as I mentioned in my opener:

Samus's basic Power Suit has decent durability feats, like how in Chapter 15 of Volume 2 of the Manga, Kraid stomps on Samus, only for her to get up after blowing him away, her Power Suit unscathed. Kraid just standing up causing his entire cavern to quake.

My Opener

Also, Thardus, a sentient rock golem brought to life by the reality-warping properties of Phazon, is capable of causing seismic disturbances detected by Samus's ship, despite him being located in the ice-covered Phendrana Drifts and the Ship being located in the tropical Tallon Overworld.

As for the size of the explosion, from a previous CaV:

For another, the size of the explosion does not equate to what is destroyed. For instance, the largest U.S. Hydrogen Bomb test on the nuclear testing site at Bikini Atoll completely dwarfed that segment of the island, yet while the radioactive fallout had devastating, far-reaching consequences, the amount of surface landmass permanently removed by the blast is 2 km across and 80 m deep.

The Castle Bravo explosion produced a fireball 4.5 miles across from the 15 megaton blast, which is around the size of the Island of Krakatoa before the volcanic eruption in 1883 that destroyed 2/3rds of the island in an approximately 200 megaton explosion. For another comparison, Mount Saint Helens was 9,677 feet tall (about 1.83 miles tall), much smaller than the fireball size of Castle Bravo. However, in the eruption that reduced its height to 8,365 feet (about 1.58 miles), it released 24 megatons of energy. Thus, an explosion being "Island sized" does not make it capable of destroying an island or mountain of equivalent size, or even of much smaller size.

My First Response Post from CaV: Acnologia vs Samus and U-Mos

This explanation also covers this:

During his tenure as the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. the Golden Avenger, while wearing his Extremis armor, endured being hit with four nuclear bombs, and pretty much ignored the blast. (Iron Man #32 - With Iron Hands, Part 4 of 4) Keep in mind that Tony was daydreaming about women in fishnet stockings while these blasts were going off, so there's not even a question as to whether he no-sold them.

Your Opener

It seems like Iron Man flew away some distance before the explosion, and not being concerned with the explosions is not decisive proof that his armor no-sold the blast. That's like saying if a superhero cracks a joke after getting hit, they didn't feel it, like here: this is even more pronounced when a character has an energy shield to take the damage, so they don't feel anything.

As for explosions in general, adapted from this CaV:

Also, something with far less durability than a city can survive a nuclear blast, due to the nature of explosions. Explosions don't focus the entirety of the energy on a small target, like how a bank vault can survive a nuclear blast without being anywhere close to city-level in durability, how planets could potentially survive a supernova, how people under cover 300 meters or less from ground zero of the nuclear device in Hiroshima survived, and why it's recommended to lay flat before an explosion and reduce the lateral profile: the less surface area, the less energy transferred to something or someone by an explosion (ie, the city/mountain/island has multiple orders of magnitude more surface area, then say, Iron Man, and thus absorbs multiple orders of magnitude more energy from the blast). It's like why hand injuries with firecrackers are much more severe when the fist is gripping the firecracker, as opposed to holding it in a flat palm (though looking up pictures of this is pretty gross).

Adapted from My First Response Post from the CaV: Acnologia vs Samus and U-Mos

This difference is highlighted when the Galactic Federation was using explosives to breech the barrier wall of the Bottle Ship's entrance, but they didn't want to deal too much damage to the surrounding parts of the space station. They fail to make any damage, and as Anthony Higgs explained to Samus, they needed a way to focus damage on a single location: which she does, blowing apart the lock with her missile. Also, this example can't be used to low-ball Samus's missiles, since A: most of her weapons are literally designed to focus energy on a small target, as explained and B: building materials in Metroid can be unnaturally durable, like the glass pane withstanding a blow from the space giant, Phantoon (and the indoor volcano I showed earlier that Goyagma lives in is also inside the Bottle Ship, showing just how durable the Galactic Federation construction can be).

These explanations also apply to these feats:

With a single blast, Iron Man obliterated the leg of the Giant Hyrm and killed him. (Thor #81 - Ragnarok Part The Second) Now what makes this impressive is the fact that Hyrm, only an issue before, survived being at the epicenter of a multi-mountain level blast. (Thor #80 - Ragnarok Part The First)

Your First Response Post

and this:

In a more recent comic he endured an explosion that would "turn the West Coast into a crater". (Iron Man: Fatal Frontier #1) Granted he absorbed some energy from the blast to power his shields, but there's no reason he can't do that to Samus' blasts as well. And just in case you think Iron Man tanking attacks of this magnitude isn't consistent, he did the same thing in his Neo Classic armor, except this time the blast destroyed the entire west coast. (The Infinity Gauntlet #2 - From Bad to Worse)

Your First Response Post

As for energy absorption, I cover that below in the Countermeasures section.

Scaling Samus to high-level supersonic characters is decently impressive, but Iron Man scales above hypersonic characters. In his extremis armor he completely and utterly dominated Mallen in terms of speed, blitzing him willy nilly and moving faster than he could perceive on multiple occasions. (Iron Man #6 - Extremis, Part 6) Now this is notable since Mallen casually blitzed down the Pentagon armor only a couple issues earlier, moving too fast fro Tony to perceive, keep in mind that this is the same Pentagon armor that I displayed as having casually hypersonic+ speed. (Iron Man #3 - Extremis, Part 3) So essentially Iron Man can casually blitz characters who are high-level hypersonic.

Your First Response Post

I address the Pentagon armor's feat below. Also, you seem to have misunderstood the Queen Metroid's speed:

She's also dodged a Queen Metroid's lunge from less than a few meters away (the Queen's lunge blitzed wounded Ridley from dozens of meters away, and wounded Ridley dodged a melee distance plasma-wave-ice beam from Samus, which makes Descbrachian wing flaps look in slow-motion, in the same way rifle bullets do). Thus, the Queen Metroid's lunge blitzes a supersonic character from over a dozen meters away, yet Samus can dodge it from a much closer distance. All this in spite of Samus having witnessed earlier that day the death of her mentor, Adam, and the apparent death of her friend, Anthony, which she even had flashbacks to in the midst of the battle.

My Opener

When the Queen lunges, Wounded Ridley, whose already supersonic and has time to prepare, doesn't even have time to move a meter. (In case anyone's confused by the scene, it was from the Queen Metroid's perspective, just like this one). The room is over a dozen times longer (from the door the Queen entered through to where Ridley was) than Samus is tall, as shown in this scene, and Samus is, as mentioned before, 1.9 meters tall. Thus, the Queen blitzed Ridley's Clone from over a dozen meters, yet he wasn't able to move even a meter in response, meaning the Queen is at least twelve times faster. Definitely above just "high-level supersonic." On the other hand, Samus dodged the Queen starting a distance much closer, basically the same distance that Samus moved to evade, showing that Samus is at least as fast as the Queen. All this despite the mental hindrance she was facing, which directly impacts how well the suit functions.

This is one advantage that I'm confident that Iron Man holds over Samus. For starters even classic Iron Man had some seriously impressive raw strength. He could intercept a mountain-sized helicarrier and lift it with heavy effort. It's even noted that this required a force/determination that could move/conquer mountains. (Iron Man #119 - No S.H.I.E.L.D. To Protect Me!) Now keep in mind that this is one of Iron Man's earliest armors, and that his more recent armors have been shown to be vastly stronger than his previous ones. His Superior Armor overpowered the SKIN armor with an extended arm, displaying superior strength to its entire body more or less effortlessly. (Superior Iron Man #8 - Chapter 8: Stark Contrast) So clearly Iron Man has a pretty fantastic lifting strength that is mountain-level, if not above.

Your Opener

The narration states "...enough determination to--if not move mountains--then, at least, to conquer them." That doesn't say that it was a force to move mountains, and considering the Helicarrier has hollow passages and is designed to fly, it should be considerably less dense than a mountain. The force to "conquer a mountain" is not quantifiable.

As for grabbing the older armor and moving it, I would imagine that grabbing by the head would get a significant advantage in leverage, and it doesn't equate to "displaying superior strength to its entire body." Also, moving an opponent some distance doesn't equate to a strength advantage, especially when grabbing by the head: by that logic, DCAU Wonder Woman is much stronger than DCAU Superman, and the animated New 52 Wonder Woman is stronger than the animated Darkseid. Before you point out that Wonder Woman's opponents recovered afterwards: sure, but the scan you posted didn't show enough time afterwards to say the other Iron Man suit wasn't capable of doing the same (though for some reason, it didn't bother moving its arms or do anything to resist, despite not being restrained).

Thus, for your claim:

These feats really aren't impressive when compared to someone with objectively mountain-level strength, at best they are in a large building range, which is really nothing compared to Iron Man. So while neither grapple particularly often, if they ever get into a physical contest, Tony will mop the floor with her. Now lets look at what Iron Man's strikes can do to Samus.

Your First Response Post

Thus, not only is your "mountain conquering feat" not even the same as moving a mountain, physical strength is just another aspect of versatility. If they don't have superior damage output, physical strikes are just an inferior option to his repulsors, since they're only short range. Going for a grapple just means Samus can shoot him point-blank range, like she did to Goyagma, and she has the Screw Attack to coat her in destructive energy even more potent than that of her charged Wave-Plasma-Wide-Charge-Power Beam.

First of all in his Superior suit completely no-sold blasts from multiple other armors at once. (Superior Iron Man #9 - Chapter 9: Freedom)

Your Opener

No-sold seems a bit of a stretch, considering portions of his back and shoulder armor seem to be displaced.

And speaking of the Bleeding Edge armor Tony, while using it, could blow clean through M.O.D.O.K.'s shields with it and one-shot him, (Captain America and Iron Man #635 - M.A.D.A.K. Attack!) despite M.O.D.O.K. specifically noting that his shields can withstand the force of a nuclear blast is a separate comic that was released at around the same time (Secret Avengers #12.1 - Fear Itself, Pt. 1: The Captain).

Your Opener

M.O.D.O.K. doesn't finish his sentence, so far all we know, he could've been referring to a nuclear reactor, which you claimed earlier "don't have energy outputs even close to that of actual nuclear bombs." Besides, withstanding a nuclear blast still falls under my point earlier about explosions.

However, those aren't even Tony best striking feats, he has shown actual mountain level striking power on over one occasion. In on of his weakest armors to date (the Silver Centurion) Iron Man could destroy a large mountain with a single bullrush. (The Avengers Annual #16 - The Day Death Died) And keep in mind that Iron Man stated that this mountain was the size of Manhattan, which would actual make it 10.2 km in height, slightly taller than Mount Everest. (Mountain Size)

Your First Response Post

For one matter, your scan doesn't show the whole mountain being destroyed, only Iron Man causing an explosion and presumably tunneling through it.

For another, that "Mountain Size" scan makes the very generous assumption that the long-side of Manhattan is equivalent to the visible width of the mountain, when the width is much smaller than the length. Thus, that picture comparison is high-balling the feat as large as possible...while also disregarding that Iron Man's subjective statement could be referring to an estimate of the overall mass, rather than one particular dimension of Manhattan (and the largest one, at that).

This is far from Iron Man's only display of mountain-level strength though, when fighting along side Thing against the Blood Brothers the shock-waves of their blows brought down an entire mountain. (Marvel Feature #12 - The Bite of the Blood Brothers) So Iron Man should have multi-mountain level strength even back in his classic days, and his more modern suits have been even stronger.

First of all, the background resembles a place like the Monument Valley, which has the stone structures that Wikipedia mentions are sandstone buttes, the highest of which is 300 meters in height...shorter than the crater put in Mount Saint Helens that the Varia Suit's durability dwarfs in comparison.

For another, claiming that the shock-waves brought down the mountain is true, but A: We only see a portion of the mountain fall. B: Thing, Iron Man, and the Blood Brothers are fighting on the ground, so the shockwaves are travelling directly into the earth/rocks, rather than it going through the air. C: It takes multiple hits, and the narration about the momentum swinging in the fight would seem to suggest the brawl was not a short one. D: It's a shared feat between four characters.

He was able to casually overpower an Hulkbuster-esque armor, lifting it up and shredding it to pieces casually. (Iron Man #12 - Execute Program, Part 6) Now what's notable about this is the fact that this armor, moments earlier was overpowering and no-selling the Thing, the same Thing who I just showed bringing down a mountain with the shock-waves of his punches. (Iron Man #12 - Execute Program, Part 6) And this isn't even Iron Man's best physical strength feat, in his Superior Armor he could shred through the Hulkbuster casually. (Superior Iron Man #9 - Chapter 9: Freedom) And this is the same Hulkbuster suit the tanked multiple blows from a pissed off Green Scar. (World War Hulk #1) Now Hulk trashed that suit, and I'm certainly not arguing that Superior Iron Man hits harder than WWH, because he doesn't, but this should clarify that as time has gone on Iron Man's strength has increased by a pretty sizable amount, and he has more than enough striking power to deal very real damage to Samus, who I'm not even convinced at this point can endure mountain level physical blows, even by the end of Metroid Fusion because of how badly off your scaling is.

If you're not arguing that Iron Man can hit harder than WWH, how is this quantifiable? More so, considering that as the builder of the suits, Iron Man should be aware of any structural vulnerabilities he can exploit?

So essentially Samus' ice attacks can reach temperatures that are very close to being absolute zero? Yeah, that will not be enough to freeze Iron Man. Tony has tanked a concentrated beam of absolute zero and could still move and perform actions in these levels of cold. (Iron Man #241 - China See!) So I doubt that Samus' freeze missiles will be much of an issue for Iron Man.

A: Iron Man was barely able to move under that assault.

B: Samus's suit isn't frozen by near-absolute zero attacks, either, yet the Ice Missiles (and by extension, the Ice Beam) freeze the SA-X.

C: The temperature drop from the Ice Beam makes the attack in the scan look minuscule. Dropping Iron Man's suit from human body temperature (37 degrees Celsius) to 0 Kelvin (-273.5 degrees Celsius) is a drop of 310.5 degrees Celsius, Even using the low end of magma temperatures, 700 degrees Celsius, the ability to bring that down to freezing (0 degrees Celsius) is a drop of 700 degrees Celsius.

D: Another way of looking at the Ice Beam's impact on Magdollites. For reference:

This power also translates to Samus's Ice Beam, as the Ice Missile enhancement was just a replacement for the Ice Beam (since Samus's Metroid DNA wouldn't cooperate with an Ice Beam addition), and is consistent with how page 73 notes, "The Magdollites are creatures of lava. They rise up like columns of fire, then shoot lava bombs. Fight fire with ice, freezing the Magdollite with the Ice Beam as the creature starts to emerge from the flame," and with how Samus can freeze Goyagma's arm with a charged Ice Beam shot for a time before it shatters the ice.

My Opener

As this article explains, temperature is a measure of average kinetic energy of the atoms/molecules in the system and heat is transferred from the hotter to the colder. The mass of a Magdollite is far greater than that of Samus's beam. This is a Magdollite being frozen by the Galactic Federation's Ice Beam knockoff, a freeze gun. Clearly the Magdollite is far more massive than humans, including Samus, whose mass is 90 kg, which is just above the average mass for a man, 70 kg. As I showed earlier, magma has a similar density to granite. However, Samus's beam clearly has less mass than her, since otherwise she'd be flung backwards every time she fired in mid-air (which clearly doesn't happen) by the conservation of momentum's application in firing a projectile. Yet even if the average kinetic energy was 0 and we assumed the beam had the same number of atoms/molecules as the Magdollite, the average would only be half (same energy/twice the number of molecules), so from 973.15 degrees kelvin to 486.575 degrees kelvin, which is over 213 degrees Celsius (way above the boiling point, let alone freezing point, of water). Thus, Samus's Ice Beam simulates a temperature below absolute zero, even with generous assumptions (low-end of temperature of magma, even though Magdollites dwell in the core region of planet Zebes; high end of freezing point of ice, even though the golems would instantly start melting if that were the case; the number of molecules in the beam shot being equal to those in the Magdollite).

E: You also forgot this part of my opener, it seems:

The Suit upgrades stack upon each other, and in most of the entries in the series, the beam upgrades do too, as the Metroid Zero Mission Nintendo Player's Guide explains on page 5, "The beams are not mutually exclusive--there's no need to switch from one beam to the next. When you collect a new beam, it supplements the strength of all your other beam upgrades."

My Opener

In other words, it's not just Iron Man's outside that needs to cope with freezing; it's his insides, too, courtesy of the combination of the Plasma and Wave piercing/phasing combo. For instance, here's the Plasma and Ice Beam effects shown by freezing and piercing a larva Metroid. And this article explains what happens to cells that freeze: "'When water in an animal's cells freezes, the ice crystals that form expand and physically rupture the cell, causing death,' explains David Denlinger, an entomologist at Ohio State University in Columbus." Thus, an internal freezing is basically instant death, or at least incapacitation.

Moving faster than explosions is a decently impressive feat, but it's one that Iron Man has replicated several times in recent years. He did so while rescuing children from an exploding building in his Pentagon armor. (Thor #80 - Ragnarok Part The First) And he could suit up at outpace an explosion after it was already going off around him in his Extremis armor. (Invincible Iron Man #3 - The Five Nightmares, Part 3: Pepper Potts at the End of the World) And given that explosions move at hypersonic speeds that puts both those feats in the hypersonic+ range.

Your First Response Post

For the first scan, flying while an explosion is going off in the background is not proof that he's moving faster than the explosion: since it's just one panel, all we see is an explosion in the background and Iron Man in flight in the foreground.

The second is more impressive, but where did the explosion start? If the armor pieces that had to fly to him were closer than the explosion's start, that's not quite outpacing the explosion. As for the flying out: that's great, but at that part of the feat, it's just linear travel speed.

And having combat speed that vastly exceeds hypersonic is consistent for Iron Man based on quantifiable feats as well. In his extremis armor he blitzed down a large group of soldiers, tanks, and helicopters at Mach 8.7. (Iron Man #9 - Execute Program, Part 3) He also outpaced and caught a rail gun bullet, which can move at Mach 10, casually. (Iron Man: Hypervelocity #4) Granted it was noted that rail guns are slightly less effective underwater, but even if its speed was slightly reduced, it still would have been moving at well above hypersonic speeds.

Your First Response Post

He was stated as travelling at mach 8.7 at the start of that first scan, which was just travel speed. Whether or not he was still moving at that speed while mowing through the army wasn't stated. As for the railgun, not only is mach 7 the listed low-end speed of such projectiles (meaning the railgun wouldn't necessarily even be at mach 10), but water slows bullets down by an exorbitant amount, to the point where they barely travel a few meters. Considering that fluid resistance has a quadratic relationship with velocity (i.e. doubling the velocity quadruples the resistance), the Railgun's speed should be massively reduced to what it would otherwise fire at.

Fair enough, in terms of pure reaction Samus probably is slightly faster than Tony, but that doesn't matter much given he has equal, if not superior combat speed. And Tony's reactions aren't half bad, he has displayed MHS reaction while reacting to lightning in one of his newer models. (Iron Man #23 - .NOW Rings of the Mandarin, Chapter I) So while Samus has an edge in reactionary speed, it is negated by Tony's superior combat speed and comparable reactions.

Your First Response Post

Not only has Samus displayed at least comparable combat speed feats to Iron Man's, despite Samus being mentally hindered...but the descending stepped ladder of lightning travels at about 1/2,000 the speed of light, so that feat is not necessarily even comparable to Samus's reaction speed, not even accounting for her pre-cognition on top of that perception speed.

In addition, from this CaV:

Also, verification that said attacks are not only lightning, like actual, natural lightning, but are also the specific type of lightning that moves around mach 260 would be nice, since there's a multitude of artificial and actual lightning and lightning-like events that move far slower than that:

This tesla device sends bolts at less than a meter per 10 milliseconds (ms), which is 100 m/, or about a third the speed of sound. The bolts do sometimes move quickly in staggered bursts, but the overall movement is what we're counting.

Other sources talk about different types of lightning, including ball lightning, of which an artificial variant moves much slower than mach speeds. More on ball lightning.

A plasma cutter sends ionized gas (plasma) out at 20,000 feet per second, which is around mach 17.7.

Also, there's different types of lightning. Anvil lightning is much slower, as its propagation is visible to the human eye.

First Response Post: CaV: Acnologia vs Samus and U-Mos

Thus, you haven't shown conclusive proof that Iron Man's perception/reaction speed is anywhere near Samus's.

The phasing/piercing functions of those weapons really won't affect Tony at all. He has already been shown to be immune to phasing when Vision tried to take him out by phasing through his chest. (All-New, All-Different Avengers #6)

Credit

The very scan you posted shows Vision's hand phasing through Iron Man's armor; it's just that Iron Man was able to use that contact/proximity to reboot Vision's systems before Vision could do damage. Seeing as how Iron Man can't hack an energy shot (or Samus, more on that below), that particular example does not constitute proof that Iron Man can prevent phasing attacks from slipping right through his shields.

The next piece of gear that I'd like to touch on are Iron Man's sonics, which are very powerful. They nearly killed a weakened Juggernaut within seconds of activation. (Thunderbolts #150 - Old Scores) And while Juggernaut was weakened in this instance, he was still durable enough to tank lightning amped blows from Thor (Thunderbolts #150 - Old Scores) so his durability was still very impressive. And Samus will have a hard time avoiding these sonics, given that Iron Man can unleash them in an AoE fashion. (Iron Man #233 - Slaughterday!)

Your Opener:

Bringing up the ability to take Thor's blows seems irrelevant, considering sonics are a hax form of attack.

Anyways, Samus is well-defended against sonics. She's fine with test-firing the Sonic Boom in an enclosed space. The Sonic Boom is described on page 7 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Nintendo Player's Guide as "The most powerful Charge Beam Combo in the game, the Sonic Boom projects a wave of sonic force that can strike multiple targets almost instantly." This means the Sonic Boom is more powerful than the Sunburst, which page 71 of the same guide describes as "The Sunburst Charge Combo is an incredibly powerful weapon that could eliminate scores of people and even small towns if it were to fall into the wrong hands."

Another example of Samus's ability to ignore sonic-based offenses is with Ridley's Clone. The infant Ridley (aka little birdie) has a cry able to agitate the entire nest of Kihunter creatures. In his adolescent form, his cry was strong enough to drive the other creatures of the Bottle Ship into a frenzy (for reference, the Bottle Ship is much larger than a city, as shown here, and just one of the three environmental sectors contains the volcano and surrounding regions that Goyagma, mentioned in my opener, dwells in). However, even when the adult Clone roars directly in Samus's face, she's perfectly fine.

Firstly there's Tony's energy absorption tech. I've already displayed him using it to drain some of the heat energy from the west coast destroying bomb, but he also uses it in combat. He absorbed Thor's lighting (which is far more powerful that Samus' energy projection) and increased his own power by doing so. (The Avengers #220 - War Against The Gods!) And given that Samus' main form of damage output is energy that could pose a very real problem for her.

Your First Response Post

For one matter, absorbing electricity should be far easier than absorbing other types of energy, seeing as how I'd imagine Iron Man's suit uses electrical power.

For another, doesn't Thor often hold back while fighting foes on Earth, so he doesn't kill most of his foes?

Regardless, Samus routinely fights foes capable of absorbing energy: Metroids. Adapted from this Tourney:

Metroids were created by the Chozo to be able to absorb energy, including life energy, to combat the X parasite, as shown in chapter 4 of Volume 1 of the Manga. Chapter 14 of Volume 2 of the Manga elaborates on this, as the Federation Officials note that Metroids absorb any form of energy. This energy absorption is both unconscious and at a cellular level upon contact, as shown in Metroid Fusion, when Samus (after being given Metroid DNA) absorbs the X-parasites' life energy inside her while in a coma.

As for how potent this energy drain ability is, not only are Metroids noted as being able to single-handedly destroy planetary civilizations with ease, they can absorb energy from Samus (before Samus was given Metroid DNA), like here, causing visible discomfort. Samus faced off against Gorea, a creature described throughout the Alimbic Lore, including its ability to drain both life energy and souls, as well as the measures the Alimbics took to contain Gorea in the following logbook entries:

Alimbic Pride 04

Those who survived appeared lifeless and hollow, as if their very spirits had been sucked dry.

Alimbic War 04

GOREA devoured our people's life energy and grew powerful from it. Death swept across our worlds, and we despaired.

Alimbic War 11

To contain GOREA, our people reduced themselves to pure telepathic energy through the process of ESSENCE TRANSFERENCE.

Seal Sphere 03

The ALIMBIC ORDER directed surviving citizens to transfer their essence into the SEAL SPHERE. Our combined psychic energy is the engine that powers the sphere.

Clearly, Gorea devoured the life energy of entire Alimbic worlds. For reference, a temporary scan in Fan Room Beta states, "TETRA GALAXY "THIS AREA WAS ONCE UNDER ALIMBIC CONTROL. RUINS DETECTED ON VARIOUS PLANETS INDICATE A VAST CIVILIZATION." and the Lore entry, Alimbic Datashade 01 states, "Datashades are packets of telepathic data scattered throughout the TETRA GALAXY. They can be accessed by most galactic-standard scan systems." Thus, Gorea ended up draining multiple world from a galaxy-spanning empire, and the rest of surviving Alimbic citizens turned into pure psychic essences to seal Gorea's power.

Despite all this, Gorea was freed again, attaching itself to the Seal Sphere and draining it of the life energies of Alimbic essences while also draining the bounty hunters. Yet the Metroid Prime Hunters Player's Guide on page 67 explains, "If you fight from closer range, watch out for the tentacles that now protrude from Gorea. The long orange tentacle will grab and throttle you, draining your energy the entire time you're in its grasp. The smaller ones will..." Clearly, Samus (also before acquiring Metroid DNA) is able to take Gorea's incredible draining abilities and keep fighting, with some struggle, similar to how larval Metroids perform against the bounty hunter.

My Opener: Mid Tier Tourney Round 1: Shade545 vs AmethystGravity

This energy manipulation clearly extends to absorbing attacks: for instance, the Super Metroid Press kit mentions how Metroids absorb Samus's attacks. Similarly, the Metroid manual states that they can't be hurt without the Ice Beam, and page 74 of the Metroid Zero Mission Nintendo Player's Guide states, "Metroids are tough creatures. The only way to destroy one is to freeze it with your beam then hit it with five standard Missiles or one Super Missile. If it begins to thaw, freeze it again."

Thus, we see that the Ice Beam enhancement is able to bypass their energy absorption, which makes sense: cold is the absence of heat energy, after all. Thus, with the Ice Beam enhancement, Samus's beam is no longer stopped by the Metroids' energy absorption. In fact, that's partially why Samus was able to defeat the Omega Metroid after absorbing the SA-X, as mentioned earlier: the Ice Beam, in conjunction with the previously acquired Wave-Plasma-Wide-Charge Beam, was able to bypass the Omega Metroid's energy drain and tear it to pieces. Besides, considering you've already shown that Iron Man's systems were shutting down to extreme cold, the Ice Beam should be more than capable of shutting off the energy absorption.

Alternatively, Samus can just use missiles, though that really shouldn't be necessary.

Samus will also need impressive piercing durability, since Iron Man has an energy blade that can slice through MODOK's shielding. (Iron Man #45 - The Big Bang Theory, Conclusion) And I've already displayed that MODOK's shields can endure the power of nuclear bombs, so Samus will need impressive piercing resistance feats in order to stand up to these.

Your First Response Post

Even disregarding that M.O.D.O.K. didn't state his shields can take nuclear bombs, as I showed earlier:

The Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 110, "The SA-X catches up to Samus in the next room, so just keep running. You absorb a few hits, but you don't have the firepower to turn around and fight, so just keep going."

My Opener

Samus in just the Varia Suit is able to tank a few hits from the SA-X's beam, which includes the piercing Plasma Beam, the Wave Beam, and the rest of Samus's strongest equipment. Thus, she can take multiple hits from a piercing/phasing-freezing weapon, each of which is over 19 times stronger than the Mount Saint Helens eruption that blew out a 396 meter tall mountain-sized crater off of Mount Saint Helens, making the Varia Suit at least over 38 times more durable, taking the low end of "a few hits."

Considering the SA-X is only put down by charged blasts of said beam, and Samus after absorbing the SA-X is far more durable, this blade should be of little consequence.

As for hax of Iron Man that you haven't mentioned:

EMPs: Samus is fine with taking the EMP released from an Elite Pirate dying, despite it shorting out power in the room. She faces an electrokinetic in the form of Gandrayda with no issues, and her main enemies, the Space Pirates, have EMP grenades that shut down Galactic Federation power armor, yet Samus still solos their bases with ease.

Magnetism: Samus requires a special upgrade, the Spider Ball, to use magnetic tracks, showing that the Suit isn't made of ferrous material, which makes sense, given it's a construct summoned by willpower, not unlike the constructs of a Green Lantern. She also has the Gravity Suit, which prevents her from having her mobility impeded by lava (as shown in my opener), water, explosive decompression, and gravity wells strong enough to pull in her supersonic beam shots. Thus, she's not getting swept off her feet by his magnets. Similarly, telekinetics like the golem Thardus and Melissa Bergman (whose thawed herself from a Freeze Gun, which turns Magdollites into popsicles; smashed the reinforced glass in the Bottle Ship, which is built to house superhuman creatures and tanks hits from Phantoon) haven't ragdollled Samus in their fights, so Iron Man's magnets won't, either.

Holographic Projections: Samus has an X-ray scope and an infrared scope.

Nanosprite gas: Samus's suit is airtight and has its own oxygen supply.

Technopathy/Hacking: The Ing corrupted the machines of the Luminoth, yet Samus defeated their forces and killed the Emperor Ing. Dark Samus corrupted the organic supercomputers, the Aurora Units with her Phazon:

Dark Samus plans to gain control of the Aurora Units, the organic supercomputers that are the hub of the Galactic Federation network. They are loaded at important Federation bases and on important battleships. All Aurora Units are connected with each other in the broad network, making it possible to access an enormous database.

She attacks the Federation battleship Valhalla and grabs the Aurora Unit. She then installs the stolen Aurora Unit on Phaaze, causing it to be infected by Phazon. The infected Aurora unit allows Dark Samus to control Phaaze, giving her the ability to choose when and where to launch Leviathans.

First, Dark Samus sends a Leviathan to one of the Space Pirate homeworlds and places all Space Pirates completely under her control through the Phazon infection. Meanwhile, the Aurora Unit infected with Phazon sends the Phazon virus to the other Aurora Units in the Galactic Federation. …

Metroid Prime Trilogy Artbooklet,

Transcribed Here

There are thousands of these units, all across the Milky Way to manage the operations of the Galactic Federation.

Dark Samus also took control of the sentient machines of Elysia, as described in the SkyTown Data (transcribed here):

SkyTown Data: Defeat

Logbook entry

“Like the Aurora Unit, we too were infected with a Phazon-based virus. The spreading corruption consumed many of us, putting us under Space Pirate control. It was not long before only a handful of us remained.

During this time there was but a moment that we received aid. Ghor, the Hunter dispatched by the Federation, arrived there to restore the Aurora Unit. Our hope quickly vanished as he too was corrupted by Phazon and lost his own will.”

However, even when Samus was so warped by Phazon that her Ship couldn't recognize her, her Suit remained under control, to the point where Dark Samus completely failed to stop her from defeating Dark Samus, Aurora Unit 313, and planet Phaaze.

So yeah, hacking, like what Iron Man did to Vision, is going to nothing to Samus.

Some points you never fully addressed, or that I felt deserved more attention.

Similarly, in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Samus with the Varia Suit and the Dark Suit (the latter of which only reduces damage from the Dark Aether toxins, and does not increase Samus's base defensive shielding) faces off against Quadraxis, whose logbook entry states, "The Quadraxis unit went rogue and entered the service of the Ing. Its primary weapon system fires destructive matter-antimatter blasts."

My Opener

Now, at first glance, it might seem the matter-antimatter beam is unquantifiable. However, Samus acquires said matter-antimatter Beam from Quadraxis in the form of the Annihilator Beam. Considering recoil is directly proportional to the mass of the projectile, based off of the conservation of momentum, it's more than fair to assume that, given said recoil is greater than that of a 12 gauge shotgun's, we can use the mass of a shotgun round as a low-end. For a 12 gauge shotgun like the one in the video, Wikipedia explains "a typical 12 gauge shotgun slug is a blunt piece of metal that could be described as an 18 mm (.729 inch) caliber that weighs 28 grams (432 grains)." In matter-antimatter annihilation, the entire mass is converted into energy, according to e=mc^2, so using the proper units (kg for mass and m/s for speed of light), 0.028 * (299792458^2) = 2.5165145e+15 Joules, which is over 0.6 megatons. While this scaling of energy per shot isn't quite as good as the Wave Beam's, the fact that every single shot of the Annihilator Beam produces over 1/40th the energy in the Mount Saint Helens Eruption establishes consistency, especially seeing as how the Sonic Boom (mentioned earlier) is the Charge Combo of the Annihilator Beam, combining the 30 of the Light and Dark ammunition with the Charge Beam and five missiles, while the Annihilator Beam's regular shots require only one light ammo and one dark ammo. Yet page 20 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Instruction Booklet notes that for the Samus in Metroid Prime 2, "Impediments made of Denzium can only be destroyed by Power Bombs." Thus, the Sonic Boom is at least 30/40ths of the energy in the Mount Saint Helens eruption, the Power Bomb is even stronger, and yet:

This level of durability is further corroborated by the official guides. The Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 110, "The SA-X catches up to Samus in the next room, so just keep running. You absorb a few hits, but you don't have the firepower to turn around and fight, so just keep going." Page 123 of the same guide adds, "When you reach the next room, leap over the roots and set off a Power Bomb. As you can see, the SA-X is right behind you." The Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide describes the same encounter on page 78, "Your first enemy encounter in the Sector 2 shortcut will be a terrifying SA-X battle...all you can do is freeze it with Ice Missiles and run away."

My Opener

Thus, the SA-X no-sells that level of firepower, which is consistent with what I've established with the Wave Beam. Speaking of which, I feel like I need to reiterate just how much more durable the SA-X is from the Varia Suit, which you seem to be underselling.

The same level of damage Samus takes in the Varia Suit can also be dished out by her basic weaponry. Dark Samus 1's logbook entry notes, "She wears a version of the Varia Suit, altered and augmented by the Phazon within her," putting her at least on the same durability level as Varia Suit Samus. However, Samus still defeated her wielding the Power Beam, Charge Beam, and normal missiles, as page 27 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Nintendo Player's Guide explains, "Dark Samus Battle - Phase 1...If you stand far away and fire missiles as fast as you can, many will breech the shield. It's a good way to damage your doppelganger early...Charge up your Power Beam and run to her side, then wait for her to stop glowing. The moment she does, hit her with the beam. Upon defeating Dark Samus, take an elevator to..." Thus, with the normal missiles, the Power Beam, and the Charge Beam, Samus is able to defeat Dark Samus 1, who is at least as durable as the Varia Suit.

My Opener

Adding on to this, page 27 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Nintendo Player's Guide states, "To get a new weapon, you must defeat a new enemy. Dark Samus may look like you, but she lacks your wit and charm--not to mention tact. It's a tough battle, but one that you should be able to handle with a couple of Energy Tanks and 20-25 Missiles." By comparison, Samus in Metroid Fusion has 250 Super Ice Diffusion Missiles (number in the top of the screen). As mentioned in my opener, the Super Missile enhancement is 3 times more powerful than regular missiles, and

Page 141 of the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion Two-in-One Guide states, "Missiles don't hurt the SA-X, so you must use charged-up Wave Beams."

My Opener

Dark Samus already wields an enhanced version of the Varia Suit, and the Diffusion and Ice enhancements further increase the missiles power, but even ignoring that, we have:

25 normal missiles, plus the Power Beam and Charge Beam, is capable of putting down Dark Samus. By contrast, the SA-X is absolutely unfazed by Samus's Super Ice Diffusion Missiles, despite each being over three times more powerful than the normal ones and there being 10 times as many. 10 * 3 = 30, so the SA-X is at least 30 times more durable than the Varia Suit (though that doesn't even account for how the normal missiles help put Dark Samus down, while Metroid Fusion Samus's missile arsenal doesn't do any damage to the SA-X.

Considering that just using the fact that the Varia Suit tanks a few shots from the SA-X's Beam, each shot of which is over 19 times more powerful than the mountain-busting blast of Mount Saint Helens, that means the Varia Suit is at least 39 times more durable than a mountain, making the SA-X suit at least 1170 times more durable. By itself, the SA-X suit is clearly mountain-range level in durability.

But it's not by itself. There's another huge jump in durability:

As the Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 142, "Suddenly, the blue X floats by and morphs into the SA-X. It steps in front of Samus and attacks the Omega Metroid. It fights valiantly, but another claw swipe turns the SA-X back into X. Jump up and grab the X to restore Samus's weapons and energy...as fast as you can while staying away from its claws. The Omega Metroid advances to the left each time Samus is hit, and it is easy to be trapped in the corner..." Thus, the difference is from the SA-X being one-shotted by the Omega Metroid (X parasite creatures turn back into their original X forms when their body is destroyed) to Samus with the SA-X's suit being able to take hits from the Omega Metroid.

My Opener

By the end of Metroid Fusion, Samus can tank multiple SA-X one-shotting hits, making her at least twice as durable. Thus, she most certainly is mountain-range level in durability, no matter how you slice it.

As an additional advantage, Samus has the Scan Visor:

In the Metroid Prime series, the scan visor (Metroid Prime Instruction Booklet, page 18) allows Samus and the player to gain more information about creatures, objects, and lore. Here's an example of the Scan Visor being used on the alien psychic U-Mos, and an example of later scanning both the planetary energy and a record of Luminoth Lore.

My Opener

The Scan Visor has produced informative logbook entries for Samus on the extradimensional energy manipulator Emperor Ing, the galaxy+ telepath and shapeshifter Gorea, the mutated and warped organic supercomputer Aurora Unit 313, the magical golem Mogenar, and a whole host of other creatures, many of which have never before seen in Samus's universe except by her. That means she gets crucial knowledge about Iron Man and his arsenal. Given her perception speed, it should be of no difficulty for her to read through all of that data, giving her a massive one-sided knowledge advantage. In the wordz of Sun Tzu,

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Sun Tzu, Art of War

1. Even the Varia Suit is well above mountain level (at least 38 times, to be precise) by tanking the SA-X's beam, which includes the Wave Beam. The SA-X suit is over 30 times more durable, can't be defeated by the uncharged Wave Beam shots, and tanks multiple charged shots from said beam. Samus by the end of Metroid Fusion is at least twice as durable, and her Ice Beam enhancement gives the beam "newfound power."
2. The scaling with Ridley and Goyagma also point to the Varia Suit being at least mountain level, illogical comparisons to sledgehammers aside. However, they're not necessary to prove that the Varia Suit is mountain level, and your arguments against them reflect more than few double standards with the feats you presented as "mountain level."
3. The comparison with the Annihilator Beam, Sonic Boom, and Power Bombs also highlight how mountain level durability is insignificant next the SA-X's durability.
4. Many of the speed feats you presented were travel speed. This isn't a race, and if Iron Man tries bullrushes, Samus has her own at least comparable combat speed, massively superior reaction speed, and pre-cognition to deal with it.
5. Physical strength is not a massive factor: it's just another way of dealing damage. You haven't displayed mountain-level lifting strength for Iron Man, and physical strikes are just inferior in range to projectiles. Samus can just user her beam at point-blank range and the Screw Attack if the fight gets in close quarters, with the Screw Attack being much more powerful than the Charged Wave Beam.
6. Your feats with explosions disregard how the size of the explosion doesn't directly imply the damage output of them, and withstanding an explosion doesn't require one to tank all the energy in the blast, since it's dispersed over a wide area. On the other hand, Samus's weapons deal damage focused on a target.
7. Your feats to show Iron Man resisting freezing and phasing show Iron Man having systems shutting down by a temperature drop inferior to that which the Ice Beam enhancement delivers, and Vision beginning to phase his hand through Iron Man. As Samus's Beams stack upon each other, Iron Man has to deal with both at the same time, with the Ice Beam also bypassing energy absorption.
8. On the flip side, Iron Man's hax abilities are completely ineffectual. However, without something like the Scan Visor, Iron Man has no way of knowing this, meaning he would be wasting time with ineffective options.

In other words, Samus can more than cope with the damage output, durability, and speed displayed in this CaV for Iron Man. His hax trump cards are all useless. Meanwhile, the Scan Visor gives her a massive advantage, while her Beam lets her turn him into a popsicle, bursting cell membranes and shutting down his systems. As you said in your opener, "Iron Man isn't exactly a speedster; he doesn't really run around willy-nilly dodging attacks at super-speed and blitzing his opponents down," so Samus can get that beam shot in and make it count.

For starters, National Geographic defines mountains as "a landform that rises at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) or more above its surrounding area." From the eruption, Mount Saint Helens lost a 396 meter tall cone portion of its mountain top: in other words, the amount destroyed in the eruption is equivalent to a mountain smaller than Mount Saint Helens, just flipped upside down. Mountain-busting, like Island busting, planet busting, and others varies based on size: there's a Mount Olympus-sized portion inside Mount Everest, just as there's a Mercury-sized portion inside Venus.

While I agree (as I stated in my previous post) that the pulse beam is above mountain level, however, there are two things that are worth noting. Firstly, the amount destroyed by the explosion, per your own definition of a mountain, is a small mountain level, only 300 or so feet taller than the bare minimum requirement to be considered a mountain (once again by your own definition) so while a mountain-sized portion of the mountain was destroyed, it was a small mountain-sized portion. One thing that's also worth noting is that the blast that destroyed the portion of the mountain came from within the mountain itself. Now this is worth noting because something exploding inside of an object/being would do more damage that being hit with it externally (something I'm sure we can agree on based on common sense). So the explosion of Mount Helen's is solidly small mountain level.

Another thing that is very much worth noting is the article you linked described the energy of a "huge tsunami":

According to him, huge tsunamis like the Sumatra tsunami, 2004 has energy of order 10^17 Joules. Several including National Geographic [Link] and USGS websites states that it is about 20x10^17 Joules, an equivalent of 23,000 bombs, the one that was dropped on Hiroshima. That’s huge! To verify ourselves, we contacted the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and asked them.

-https://www.scrivial.com/articles/a-dive-into-tsunami-the-terrifying-energy-it-possesses

This level of energy was specifically referring to the Sumatra tsunami, which according to this article (and many others) is one of the top ten most destructive tsunamis ever recorded. (https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2011/03/the-10-most-destructive-tsunamis-in-history/) And it was caused by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake which was the 3rd largest recorded earthquake ever. (https://www.livescience.com/30320-worlds-biggest-earthquakes-110412.html) So just to be clear this is far from the norm in terms of the power of a tsunami, in fact, it's about as extreme an outlier as one can find. A more normal tsunami that occurred in 2011 was recorded to have slightly less power than a nuclear bomb:

That energy going into the tsunami, according to Professor Yeh’s estimate, was a bit less than that of an exploding atomic bomb.

-https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/weekinreview/13water.html

Now keep in mind that the Sumatra tsunami, the one you cited, had a power of 23,000 20 kiloton nukes, or 460,000 kilotons, which converts to 460 megatons. According to this list of every developed US nuclear device, the vast majority are in the kiloton or low end megaton range. So it's safe to assume that the average nuclear device would be around or slightly below the 1 megaton range. (https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html) So hundreds, if not thousands of times less powerful than the Sumatra tsunami, and, once again, an average tsunami (such as the one referenced in the New York times article) is estimated to have less power than an atomic bomb.

All of this is to say that you used the Sumatra tsunami as an example of how powerful tsunamis are, although it was one of, if not the most, powerful tsunamis ever in recorded history. Meanwhile, less outlying tsunamis have less power than nuclear bombs. So frankly I doubt that Samus' wave beam is as powerful as the explosion of Mount Helen's (24 megatons) let alone 19 times more powerful.

Also, it's not her strongest attack. For one matter, as I said in my opener, The SA-X Suit, like the Ice Beam, was a surprise at the end of Metroid Fusion. That's why the Ice Beam isn't included in the statement about the Wave Beam (and the preceding beams) or in the list of beams in the manual; the Ice Beam is acquired afterwards, increasing the power of the beam (and tinting it blue). The Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide says on page 103, "After the Metroid has made short work of the SA-X, you can collect the SA-X's parasite to fill your tanks and absorb the power of the Ice Beam," and in the caption, "Collect the SA-X's X-parasite for a full recharge and ready the Ice Beam to attack with newfound force." For another matter, Samus can charge the beam (a process which takes less than a few seconds) and this provides a pretty substantial increase in firepower, seeing as how, also in my opener, I explained: Page 141 of the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion Two-in-One Guide states, "Missiles don't hurt the SA-X, so you must use charged-up Wave Beams."More from Page 141 of that guide: "Establish a pattern of going up to the top shelf on the left and stopping on the right side. When the SA-X arrives, jump off the left side of the shelf and race to the far right corner of the room, charging your beam while running. Fire a charged beam at the SA-X as it runs toward Samus. When it gets close, repeat this process, jumping up to the top and waiting for the SA-X to follow. Keep this up until the SA-X morphs into a larger form..." Thus, it's clear that not only was Samus forced to use charged up Wave Beams to finish the SA-X, showing that even the regular, multi-mountain shots were ineffective (and the charged ones are far more powerful), but even then, the SA-X is capable of taking multiple, forcing Samus to "establish a pattern" and "keep this up." And as I said before:

Except, now that I've actually examined the evidence of the databooks statement of Samus' wave beam "having the power of a tsunami" and your subsequent source trying to prove that a tsunami-level attack is in the "multi-mountain" range in terms of power it's become obvious that an average tsunami is hardly even megaton level, let alone multi-mountain level. Once again this shows the issues with your scaling chains and Samus not having an on panel/on screen mountain level feats. As soon as one weak link is broken, the entire scaling chain falls to bits. Even if the charged wave beam is notably stronger than the base wave beam, that doesn't really matter, since the base wave beam is closer to small nuke level than it is to mountain level. (Unless you scale off of the Sumatra tsunami, which was an extremely massive outlier.)

Samus by the end of Metroid Fusion can take multiple hits ("each time Samus is hit") from the same Omega Metroid that one-shots the SA-X. By using the Wave Beam and the SA-X's durability alone, the SA-X's durability >>> then the regular multi-mountain Wave Beam shots, and Samus >>> SA-X in terms of durability.

Except, once again, the base Wave Beam, going by the consistent power of tsunamis, is barely even nuke level, let alone mountain level, let alone multi-mountain level. So once again your entire scaling chain collapses in on itself in a downright embarrassing fashion.

When Samus has all of her items in Metroid Fusion other than the SA-X's suit/beam and the Screw Attack, the Metroid Fusion Nintendo Player's Guide says on page 98, "The right side of the vertical passage in the unmapped area is loaded with mindless and seemingly invincible creatures that float back and forth," showing that even the firepower that damages the SA-X can't damage these. After acquiring the Screw Attack, Samus can destroy them, as page 101 says, "Those mindless, floating fiends aren't invincible after all. You can blaze through a wave of them and through several wall sections as you Space-Jump with Screw Attack power."

Thus, the Screw Attack one-shots creatures that no-sell said Wave (plus Plasma/Wide/Charge/Power) Beam, including charged shots from said Beam.

You're really using the guidebook's statement of invincible to prove that they can no-sells all of Samus' other attacks? That statement is hyperbolic, especially given that it says "seemingly invincible" and then it says that they're not actually invincible. Is Samus shown trying to use other weapons besides the screw attack to destroy them and fail, is it ever actually stated that only the screw attack power can destroy them? If not then I really don't think a vague and clearly hyperbolic statement is enough to infer that these creatures are completely immune to any attack that Samus has (besides the Screw Attack).

You didn't link the converter, though I am curious about how they're converting watts (a unit of the rate of energy per time) into megatons (a unit of energy).

It was terawatt hours, and my bad for not including the link. Here you go: (https://www.convertunits.com/from/terawatthour/to/megaton+[explosive]) Keep in mind that 10 terawatt hours is more powerful than 10 terawatt seconds.

There's Kanden, a hunter whose logbook entry states, "A disruptive electromagnetic field appears to surround the hunter KANDEN, analysis suggests voltage potential comparable to that found in lightning storms," and whose main weapon, the Volt Driver, is described in the logbook entry as, "The VOLT DRIVER draws energy from the planetary electromagnetic field and converts it into multi-terawatt bursts of HIGHVOLTAGE." was to show his attacks were comparable to lightning strikes. As this article from Encyclopedia Britannica explains, "Peak temperatures in the channel are on the order of 30,000 °C (50,000 °F), about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun."

I went ahead and watched the fully Samus vs. Kanden battle from Metroid Prime: Hunters and I found that, exterior to gameplay (which doesn't count) Samus never actually tanked a single attack from Kanden, so the power of his attacks is completely and utterly irrelevant when speaking directly to Samus' durability. (Samus vs. Kanden) Though I also understand that you brought Kanden up to show the caliber of opponent that Samus was facing, and let me assure you having attacks that are, in your own words "comparable to lightning strikes" is unimpressive. Just to be clear 90% or regular humans who get struck by lighting survive, so having the power of a lighting strike is nothing to people like Iron Man. (https://www.businessinsider.com/what-to-expect-when-you-survive-lightning-2016-4)

As for the number you cited being mid-range nuke level? Castle Bravo had a yield of 15 megatons and is the strongest nuclear device tested by the United States.

Fair enough, it's a high-range nuke in terms of power.

As for not nearly enough power to destroy a mountain: as I just showed, 24 Megatons was enough to destroy a mountain-sized portion of Mount Saint Helen's, so being over a 1/3rd of that is still pretty close.

This is pretty much semantics, approximately 1/3 of small mountain busting is pretty clearly significantly less power than it takes to destroy a regular mountain.

Let's see just how erroneous your comparison with...a sledgehammer, of all things, is. Let's be extremely generous about the energy in a sledgehammer speed by using the fastest baseball hit speed recorded, 199.4 km/h (55.39 m/s) and use the high end of the mass of a sledgehammer, 9 kg. Using the basic kinetic energy equation, 1/2 * m * v^2, we get an energy output of 13,806.23445 joules. Now, let's see the energy output of the Mount Saint Helens eruption again: 24 megatons. That's 1.004 * 10^17 joules, which is 7.27 trillion times larger than the energy in that high-end hammer swing. To put that in perspective, our galaxy is estimated to have 100-400 billion stars. Yet even 400 billion is over 18 times less than that multiplier. A person swinging at the high-balled speed every second, nonstop, 365 (or 366) days per year, 24/7, would take 230,596 years to equal the energy of that eruption. In other words, your comparison is ridiculous because the percentage of damage the sledgehammer does to a mountain is so negligible, it's ridiculously difficult to measure. That's why Superman no-selling a bullet can't be compared to Thanos no-selling a bullet, which can't be compared to the Living Tribunal no-selling a bullet. While the fraction of energy the bullet deals compared to their total durability is vastly durable, regardless of which one it is, it's also too small to measure how much damage any of them take from that.

As I explained my previous post, this was an intentionally extreme example, but it does not detract from the fact that the underlying principle of what I was saying was valid. As I said before what makes destroying a mountain impressive is the sheer volume of rock, dirt, minerals, etc. that are destroyed damaging a portion of a mountain in it of itself is not impressive.

Let's use mathematics. Let M be the energy to destroy a mountain and D be a character's durability. If they take an attack with M amount of energy and survive, clearly D > M. If they take an attack with M/2 energy, and sustain less than half the damage to put them down, we get D/2 > M/2, which means D > M (just multiply both sides of the inequality by 2). This works for basically any positive real number N in the denominator, since multiplying by N is the same as just replicating that attack N times.

This is perfectly logical.

With the Ridley and mountain-side example, we get some sort of fraction that's the amount to damage the surface of the mountain. Samus does better off than the mountain, as she sustains no visible damage, while the mountain does worse, taking visible damage. Her D/N is greater than M/N, so the Varia Suit's D > M.

And once again, this is where the logic collapses. Since my example didn't get through to out, let me use your own logic. Ridley blast destroyed a relatively small fraction of the mountain (let's be generous and say 1/10th). So now using your own logic Ridley's blast=M/10, these means that Samus took an attack with M/10 energy. However, since you only displayed her enduring the one blast we can't say that she was at less than one tenth of the damage required to put her down. There is literally no way to know how close the blast made her come to being KOed, and it's not as though she no sold it, she screamed out in pain. So there's no way to know that Samus>M, we only know that Samus>M/10. This once again ties back into my argument, which you didn't exactly address, it's very easy to gauge how much damage a mountain has sustained because it's fully visual. If 1/10 of the energy nessecary to destroy a mountain has been blasted onto a mountain, then 1/10th of the mountains volume will have been destroyed, if 1/2 the energy nessecary to destroy a mountain is blasted onto the mountain then the mountain will be cut in half. But for character it's different. Obviously it's not as though if Iron Man is hit with 1/2 the power nessecary to put him down he will be cut in half. There is no way to say exactly how much damage Samus took, so there is literally no way to prove that Samus>a mountain in terms of durability.

Contrast that with the sledge hammer example. M/D is literally so small, we can't register D/M. Did the character flinch? Did they blink? Did it give them an itch? There's no way to measure how much damage was dealt, so we can't see if M/D > D/M, or if M/D < D/M.

You literally are proving my point here, there is no real way to tell, just by looking at someone enduring at attack without medical equipment, how much damage they suffered from an attack. I often scream explicatives when I stub my toe, yet I've been in fist fights before (most of which I lost) and not screamed when getting punched in the face (which obviously does more damage that a stubbed toe). Another example is that a kid once threw a rock at my head, which made me bleed profusely, yet I never received a concussion, but while playing tackle football I slammed my head, and although I never bled and on the surface it didn't look as though I'd received an injury, I was badly concussed. There's no way to accurately gauge how much damage an attack did to a person based purely off of visual evidence. While you might say that it didn't do any visual damage to her suit, that doesn't really matter, since it's not as though Samus' suit needs to be destroyed for her to be KOed since plenty of suited character (such as Iron Man) can be KOed without having their suit destroyed and vice versa.

Thus, your comparison is completely off the mark...though this is all pretty extraneous, considering I've already shown the Varia Suit is multi-mountain in durability with the comparison to the Mount Saint Helens eruption and the Wave Beam.

It's really not, nothing about taking a blast that's not powerful enough to destroy a mountain would indicate mountain level durability, and, as I've already proven, Samus' wave beam is not mountain level at all.

In terms of vague scaling with high tiers, Samus has feats too.

With the Varia, Dark, and Light Suits (the latter two are only used for defending against the toxic extra-dimensional substances of Dark Aether and for being able to use Aether's light-based teleportation grid, and do not provide shield strength increases), Samus fought and killed the Emperor Ing, who wielded Dark Aether's portion of the Light of Aether. This source of energy is so powerful, when Samus used the Energy Transfer Module to store it for transport to Aether, the entire planetary dimension of Dark Aether began to collapse.

In just the Varia Suit, she fought Gorea, a creature who soloed a galaxy-spanning civilization. Yet Samus killed Gorea, with the resulting release of psionic energy being enough to engulf the region of space connecting the normal universe with the Infinity Void, with said region being comparable to the size of planet Alinos. (Another look at their compared sizes). (Here's the non-canon ending, where Samus defeats Gorea but doesn't fulfill the Alimbic Prophesy).

Do I think Samus is planetary? No. Just like you, though, I can bring up her doing well against opponents of incredible power while wielding equipment vastly inferior to what she brings to this fight.

Fair enough, though Iron Man's feats are slightly less vague since the character's that he's fighting have established stats, though the feats are pretty much of the same caliber.

The ability to "punch through mountains" (which doesn't even require destroying the whole mountain, like how modern real-world technology can tunnel through mountains) pales in comparison to what the Diggernaut can do, as mentioned in my opener:

Samus was able to face the Diggernaut and win with the Varia and Gravity Suits, when the Diggernaut was used by the Chozo to dig out their colony to the center of planet SR388.

Yeah, punching through mountains is definitely on the low-end for Tony, but it's worth noting given that Tony completely and utterly no-sold it and was in a much weaker armor than his current models. As for the Diggernaut this really isn't a feat, throughout the entire fight (apart from gameplay which we both no isn't valid for counting feats) the Diggernaut never tags Samus. We also do not understand how long it takes for the Diggernaut to dig to the core of a planet, however Iron Man, even in his weakest armor ever, could do this in only a few seconds. In his classic suit he digs from Netherworld up to the surface of the planet in an extremely short time frame (in the time to say about three sentences). (Tales of Suspense #43 - Tales of Suspense #43 Kala, Queen Of The Netherworld!) And keep in mind that the Netherworld, in that same issue, was explicitly stated to be at the core of the planet. (Tales of Suspense #43 - Tales of Suspense #43 Kala, Queen Of The Netherworld!)

The scan doesn't really show the missile had to travel "a couple of feet" only, or that Iron Man had flown out entirely before the missile exploded. Also, considering the plethora of subsonic missiles that exist, I don't see where you're getting that missile has to be supersonic.

Iron Man's room was relatively small, so the missile wouldn't have had to move a large distance at all. (Invincible Iron Man #501 - Fix Me) Also if Tony hadn't flow all the way out of the room by the time that the missile exploded that means that he would have had to move at (at the very least) comparable speeds to the explosion since the explosion itself dwarfed the room in size. So he either moved massively faster than the missile, or he moved at comparable speeds to the explosion. Either way, the feat obviously exceeds the speed of sound by a fair amount.

A bullrush isn't combat speed, it's travel speed, and I've already shown Samus has supersonic travel speed:

Except that Tony didn't just slam into Gravitron. When he entered the room his arms were behind his head, and yet he punched Gravitron when he made contact, punching someone while moving at supersonic speeds=supersonic combat speed.

Considering modern Space Shuttles reach speeds "nine times faster than a rifle bullet" according to NASA, Samus has a much better combat and reaction speed feat than catching up to that missile.

Except that this is a false equivalency fallacy, Space Shuttles are designed for high-speed space travel, that's it, they have no combat purpose. Meanwhile, as you said yourself, those are fighter jets, so a better comparison to draw would be to a real world fighter jet, not a real world rocket ship (the ship that Samus shot down also looks more like a fighter jet than a rocket ship). Real world fighter jets are in the Mach 1-3 range. So about the same speed as a rifle bullet.

That doesn't even begin to compare with Samus's perception speed, as I highlighted in my opener. As for his armor adjustments at that speed, Samus switched on her Ice Beam while the world seemed to stand still, so she can more than match that.

The "world standing still" doesn't really mean anything though. Do we know how fast her opponents were actually moving? Even sound (which moves at 343 mps) only moves about one foot per millisecond (to get an idea of how slow this would look if perceiving the world in millisecond time one foot per second is about .75 mph). I'd say that sound moving in slow motion is a much more impressive display of speed than seeing some generic enemies as completely frozen in place.

A: I would love to know why Iron Man and Wanda are accurate sources for the size of the grand canyon, in that they know that off the top of their head.

I think it's fairly clear that the writer intended for these comments to imply the sheer size of the rock structures, and Iron Man is a super genius, and in the case of the trench that he dug it could hold the massive Fing Fang Foom and the destroyed tops of several mountains all at once, so it was certainly above mountain sized.

B: The Diggernaut's feat makes this look lilliputian in comparison.

This isn't relevant since Samus never endured a single attack from the Diggernaut (at least in the fight that you posted), we also never got a timeframe for how long it took for the Diggernaut to drill to the center of the earth, and Iron Man, in his weakest armor, could replicate this casually.

As this article explains, "Events with magnitudes of about 4.5 or greater--there are several thousand such shocks annually--are strong enough to be recorded by sensitive seismographs all over the world." What does an earthquake in the 4.5 levels look like? Wikipedia explains: "4.0–4.9...Noticeable shaking of indoor objects and rattling noises. Felt by most people in the affected area. Slightly felt outside. Generally causes zero to minimal damage. Moderate to significant damage very unlikely. Some objects may fall off shelves or be knocked over." This is at least the sort of environmental impact that Kraid had, just by standing up, as I mentioned in my opener:

The impressive part of the feat wasn't that the shockwave was felt by seismographs, the impressive part was that the blast sent Rhodey flying into a mountain hard enough to shatter/plough clean through it, and that even after that Rhodey kept flying.

For another, the size of the explosion does not equate to what is destroyed. For instance, the largest U.S. Hydrogen Bomb test on the nuclear testing site at Bikini Atoll completely dwarfed that segment of the island, yet while the radioactive fallout had devastating, far-reaching consequences, the amount of surface landmass permanently removed by the blast is 2 km across and 80 m deep.

The Castle Bravo explosion produced a fireball 4.5 miles across from the 15 megaton blast, which is around the size of the Island of Krakatoa before the volcanic eruption in 1883 that destroyed 2/3rds of the island in an approximately 200 megaton explosion. For another comparison, Mount Saint Helens was 9,677 feet tall (about 1.83 miles tall), much smaller than the fireball size of Castle Bravo. However, in the eruption that reduced its height to 8,365 feet (about 1.58 miles), it released 24 megatons of energy. Thus, an explosion being "Island sized" does not make it capable of destroying an island or mountain of equivalent size, or even of much smaller size.

Sure size doesn't equal power, but the crater (the blast and starry thing in the scan) was shown to dwarf the surrounding mountains, and even the winds generated from the blasts can be seen pulling mountains apart. (Iron Man #275 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part IV of IV) - Dragon Doom!) The blast was objectively well above mountain level. Another thing that confirms this is the fact that the blast could be felt by humans (not by instruments) all over the world (by Thor, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four in New York, and by Man-Thing in Tanzania, keep in mind that the blast happened in China). Now why is this notable? Because even the largest earthquake recorded in history was only detected by primitive seismographs, it couldn't be felt by the average person all over the globe.

And because they were so strong, scientific instruments from around the world picked up the signal. When it was over, seismologists realized the earthquake had given them a window into Earth's structure. Nature had given the planet something like an ultrasound scan.

-https://www.npr.org/2016/08/29/490239181/when-the-biggest-earthquake-ever-recorded-hit-chile-it-rocked-the-world

And the fact that it failed to shake the entire planet (in a way perceptible to humans) is confirmed by ShakeMaps, which displayed this range for the earthquake:

-https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/official19600522191120_30/shakemap/intensity

As you can see the box of color is only about large country sized, no where near planetary. Now let me show you what each color means as per ShakeMaps:

-https://usgs.github.io/shakemap/manual3_5/tg_intensity.html

As you can see the translucent tint on the outer parts of the area inside the quake radius would indicate an instrumental intensity of I, and in these zones there is no perceived shaking. So pretty much there is clear confirmation that the Great Chilean Earthquake was not powerful enough for humans across the planet to perceive shaking.

So it's safe to assume that this explosion>the great Chilean Earthquake. Keep in mind that this earthquake was a 9.5 on a Richter scale, which converts to 2690000000 tons of TNT. (http://www.convertalot.com/earthquake_power__calculator.html) Or about 2690 megatons of TNT. For reference that is over 110 times more powerful than the small mountain-level eruption of Mount Helen's. And, once again, the Mandarin's blast would have had to have more power that the Great Chilean Earthquake since people all over the planet felt shaking.

It seems like Iron Man flew away some distance before the explosion, and not being concerned with the explosions is not decisive proof that his armor no-sold the blast. That's like saying if a superhero cracks a joke after getting hit, they didn't feel it, like here: this is even more pronounced when a character has an energy shield to take the damage, so they don't feel anything.

He was clearly inside of the fireball of the nuke, he only flew a couple hundred feet away, and there were multiple bombs, he was hit by them. And him forgetting that he was in the explosion is very different that a superhero cracking a joke after getting hit for a very simple reason. Iron Man was spacing out and daydreaming about women. While he was inside the explosion, he indicated no pain, he never yelled out, he never even remarked on the heat or the power of the bombs. If a superhero is non-cholently talking or cracking jokes while getting hit and sustain no perceivable damage, they are no-selling those attacks.

Also, something with far less durability than a city can survive a nuclear blast, due to the nature of explosions. Explosions don't focus the entirety of the energy on a small target, like how a bank vault can survive a nuclear blast without being anywhere close to city-level in durability, how planets could potentially survive a supernova, how people under cover 300 meters or less from ground zero of the nuclear device in Hiroshima survived, and why it's recommended to lay flat before an explosion and reduce the lateral profile: the less surface area, the less energy transferred to something or someone by an explosion (ie, the city/mountain/island has multiple orders of magnitude more surface area, then say, Iron Man, and thus absorbs multiple orders of magnitude more energy from the blast). It's like why hand injuries with firecrackers are much more severe when the fist is gripping the firecracker, as opposed to holding it in a flat palm (though looking up pictures of this is pretty gross).

This difference is highlighted when the Galactic Federation was using explosives to breech the barrier wall of the Bottle Ship's entrance, but they didn't want to deal too much damage to the surrounding parts of the space station. They fail to make any damage, and as Anthony Higgs explained to Samus, they needed a way to focus damage on a single location: which she does, blowing apart the lock with her missile. Also, this example can't be used to low-ball Samus's missiles, since A: most of her weapons are literally designed to focus energy on a small target, as explained and B: building materials in Metroid can be unnaturally durable, like the glass pane withstanding a blow from the space giant, Phantoon (and the indoor volcano I showed earlier that Goyagma lives in is also inside the Bottle Ship, showing just how durable the Galactic Federation construction can be).

Okay yes, concentrated blasts>>>explosions, but that argument doesn't apply to the Mandarin feat since Iron Man was literally holding onto Mandarin's rings as he forced Mandarin to channel the full power of them. (Iron Man #275 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part IV of IV) - Dragon Doom!) Iron Man was in direct contact with the rings as they released that power, so a vast majority of it would have come into direct contact with him before propagating further.

These explanations also apply to these feats:

With a single blast, Iron Man obliterated the leg of the Giant Hyrm and killed him. (Thor #81 - Ragnarok Part The Second) Now what makes this impressive is the fact that Hyrm, only an issue before, survived being at the epicenter of a multi-mountain level blast. (Thor #80 - Ragnarok Part The First)

and this:

In a more recent comic he endured an explosion that would "turn the West Coast into a crater". (Iron Man: Fatal Frontier #1) Granted he absorbed some energy from the blast to power his shields, but there's no reason he can't do that to Samus' blasts as well. And just in case you think Iron Man tanking attacks of this magnitude isn't consistent, he did the same thing in his Neo Classic armor, except this time the blast destroyed the entire west coast. (The Infinity Gauntlet #2 - From Bad to Worse)

Your First Response Post

As for energy absorption, I cover that below in the Countermeasures section.

Scaling Samus to high-level supersonic characters is decently impressive, but Iron Man scales above hypersonic characters. In his extremis armor he completely and utterly dominated Mallen in terms of speed, blitzing him willy nilly and moving faster than he could perceive on multiple occasions. (Iron Man #6 - Extremis, Part 6) Now this is notable since Mallen casually blitzed down the Pentagon armor only a couple issues earlier, moving too fast fro Tony to perceive, keep in mind that this is the same Pentagon armor that I displayed as having casually hypersonic+ speed. (Iron Man #3 - Extremis, Part 3) So essentially Iron Man can casually blitz characters who are high-level hypersonic.

Your First Response Post

I address the Pentagon armor's feat below. Also, you seem to have misunderstood the Queen Metroid's speed:

She's also dodged a Queen Metroid's lunge from less than a few meters away (the Queen's lunge blitzed wounded Ridley from dozens of meters away, and wounded Ridley dodged a melee distance plasma-wave-ice beam from Samus, which makes Descbrachian wing flaps look in slow-motion, in the same way rifle bullets do). Thus, the Queen Metroid's lunge blitzes a supersonic character from over a dozen meters away, yet Samus can dodge it from a much closer distance. All this in spite of Samus having witnessed earlier that day the death of her mentor, Adam, and the apparent death of her friend, Anthony, which she even had flashbacks to in the midst of the battle.

My Opener

When the Queen lunges, Wounded Ridley, whose already supersonic and has time to prepare, doesn't even have time to move a meter. (In case anyone's confused by the scene, it was from the Queen Metroid's perspective, just like this one). The room is over a dozen times longer (from the door the Queen entered through to where Ridley was) than Samus is tall, as shown in this scene, and Samus is, as mentioned before, 1.9 meters tall. Thus, the Queen blitzed Ridley's Clone from over a dozen meters, yet he wasn't able to move even a meter in response, meaning the Queen is at least twelve times faster. Definitely above just "high-level supersonic." On the other hand, Samus dodged the Queen starting a distance much closer, basically the same distance that Samus moved to evade, showing that Samus is at least as fast as the Queen. All this despite the mental hindrance she was facing, which directly impacts how well the suit functions.

As for the Hyrm feat, Hyrm was at the direct epicenter of the explosion so a huge portion of the energy would have had to hit him as it expanded. Even if he was only hit by 1/5th of the total energy, given that the explosion was mountain-range level, he still would have been directly hit by multi-mountain levels of energy.

As for the West Coast feats I can agree that Tony did not endure a massive portion of that energy, but the fact of the matter is that those are country level blasts, if Iron man could endure the full force of those then Samus literally wouldn't be able to scratch him given that those landmasses are hundreds of thousands of times (if not millions of times) larger than mountains. So even if Tony only endured 1/100,000th of the force of those explosions, he would still be enduring a mountain range level blast.

And if you're still unconvinced of the raw power of Iron Man's repulsors, his Superior Suit oneshotted his Neo-Classic Armor (the armor that tanked the mountain-range level blast from the Mandarin) with a single blast. (Superior Iron Man #9 - Chapter 9: Freedom)

The narration states "...enough determination to--if not move mountains--then, at least, to conquer them." That doesn't say that it was a force to move mountains, and considering the Helicarrier has hollow passages and is designed to fly, it should be considerably less dense than a mountain. The force to "conquer a mountain" is not quantifiable.

Except that it says "if not" and "at least" in the narration, and implying that Iron Man can likely move mountains, but at the bare minimum he's exerting a force that could "conquer them". The scan is implying mountain-level strength, or at least strength that is very near that level.

As for grabbing the older armor and moving it, I would imagine that grabbing by the head would get a significant advantage in leverage, and it doesn't equate to "displaying superior strength to its entire body." Also, moving an opponent some distance doesn't equate to a strength advantage, especially when grabbing by the head: by that logic, DCAU Wonder Woman is much stronger than DCAU Superman, and the animated New 52 Wonder Woman is stronger than the animated Darkseid. Before you point out that Wonder Woman's opponents recovered afterwards: sure, but the scan you posted didn't show enough time afterwards to say the other Iron Man suit wasn't capable of doing the same (though for some reason, it didn't bother moving its arms or do anything to resist, despite not being restrained).

Except that the armor was explicitly trying to overpower Tony, in the page directly beforehand the armor was bullrushing into Tony and pushing against him, that the Superior Suit could overpower it's full body bullrush is a clear indication of superior strength. (Superior Iron Man #8 - Chapter 8: Stark Contrast) And in all of those examples characters are pulling other characters around, but in that scan Tony not only drags the Neo Classic armor around, but he also holds it in place for an extended period of time while unlocking the Hulkbuster modification to his armor. It is very clear the Superior Iron Man overpowered his Neo Classic counterpart in that scan.

Thus, for your claim:

Thus, not only is your "mountain conquering feat" not even the same as moving a mountain, physical strength is just another aspect of versatility.

I've also displayed Iron Man casually overpowering and shredding an armor that was overpowering Thing, who has matched Professor Hulk, Namor, Dr. Doom, and other beings of incredible strength physically. So Tony consistently has highly impressive strength.

If they don't have superior damage output, physical strikes are just an inferior option to his repulsors, since they're only short range. Going for a grapple just means Samus can shoot him point-blank range, like she did to Goyagma, and she has the Screw Attack to coat her in destructive energy even more potent than that of her charged Wave-Plasma-Wide-Charge-Power Beam.

But here's the thing, you haven't posted a single decent physically durability feat for Samus, so I don't see why Tony can't just put her down with a few quick strikes.

M.O.D.O.K. doesn't finish his sentence, so far all we know, he could've been referring to a nuclear reactor, which you claimed earlier "don't have energy outputs even close to that of actual nuclear bombs." Besides, withstanding a nuclear blast still falls under my point earlier about explosions.

I think the writers intent is fairly clear in this instance, the implication is obviously nuclear bombs (saying that it can endure the force of a nuclear reactor doesn't really make sense, the intent is fairly clear). Though even still I think I've posted more than enough evidence to prove the fact that Iron Man's energy output is massively above that of nuclear bombs.

For one matter, your scan doesn't show the whole mountain being destroyed, only Iron Man causing an explosion and presumably tunneling through it.

Come on mate, did you even look at the scan? That is just blatant lowballing. Iron Man broke the mountain into pieces.

For another, that "Mountain Size" scan makes the very generous assumption that the long-side of Manhattan is equivalent to the visible width of the mountain, when the width is much smaller than the length. Thus, that picture comparison is high-balling the feat as large as possible...while also disregarding that Iron Man's subjective statement could be referring to an estimate of the overall mass, rather than one particular dimension of Manhattan (and the largest one, at that).

I mean that's not the most high-balled estimate, the most high-balled estimate would be to assume that the height of the mountain is equal to long side of Manhatten, meanwhile the most low-balled estimate would be to assume that the width of the base of the mountain is only as long as the shortest side of Manhatten. Generally, the assumption made in that calulation seems to be a fair middle ground between the two.

First of all, the background resembles a place like the Monument Valley, which has the stone structures that Wikipedia mentions are sandstone buttes, the highest of which is 300 meters in height...shorter than the crater put in Mount Saint Helens that the Varia Suit's durability dwarfs in comparison.

That mountain structure is not uncommon at all, and this is some pretty silly lowballing. That structure also resembles the Isis Temple in the Grand Canyon, which is 508 meters in height, over 100 meters taller than the crater put in the Mount Saint Helens. This is some silly lowballing.

For another, claiming that the shock-waves brought down the mountain is true, but A: We only see a portion of the mountain fall.

Bruh, narration states the mountain falls, not a part of the mountain, not a piece of it, the mountain. The lowballing and nitpicking is hitting a point of abject silliness.

B: Thing, Iron Man, and the Blood Brothers are fighting on the ground, so the shockwaves are travelling directly into the earth/rocks, rather than it going through the air.

I mean the shock waves have to go through the air to get to the ground, and obviously a direct blow>>>>>the shockwave of that blow in terms of concentrated power.

C: It takes multiple hits, and the narration about the momentum swinging in the fight would seem to suggest the brawl was not a short one.

No, that doesn't indicate time, on the panel before it says that Iron Man is getting punched by a Blood Brother and the Thing is punching a Blood Brother, then when the narration states that Iron Man is punching a Blood Brother and the Thing is getting punched, showing a clear shift in momentum that happens in a matter of seconds. (Marvel Feature #12 - The Bite of the Blood Brothers)

D: It's a shared feat between four characters.

Yes, but obviously all of them would have to be striking with mountain busting force throughout the fight in order to bring down an entire mountain with the shock-waves of their blows.

If you're not arguing that Iron Man can hit harder than WWH, how is this quantifiable? More so, considering that as the builder of the suits, Iron Man should be aware of any structural vulnerabilities he can exploit?

In that instance Superior Iron Man was hitting harder than World War Hulk, but Superior Iron Man was super pissed off in that instance and Hulk was somewhat calm in the beginning of his fight with the Hulkbuster. I more meant that World War Hulk generally hits harder than Superior Iron Man.

A: Iron Man could barely move under that assault.

And? There's nothing that would show the Samus' ice beam is absolute zero, and given that absolute zero is literally the coldest thing in the universe, being able to move at all in absolute zero suggests an insane level of cold resistance.

B: Samus's suit isn't frozen by near-absolute zero attacks, either, yet the Ice Missiles (and by extension, the Ice Beam) freeze the SA-X.

And? All that that means is that Samus' ice attacks are closer to absolute zero than the Judicator's are.

C: The temperature drop from the Ice Beam makes the attack in the scan look minuscule. Dropping Iron Man's suit from human body temperature (37 degrees Celsius) to 0 Kelvin (-273.5 degrees Celsius) is a drop of 310.5 degrees Celsius, Even using the low end of magma temperatures, 700 degrees Celsius, the ability to bring that down to freezing (0 degrees Celsius) is a drop of 700 degrees Celsius.

What? Are you implying that Samus' cold beam is more potent that a beam of pure absolute zero? You do realize that absolute zero is the coldest anything can be. (https://www.sciencealert.com/the-hottest-and-coldest-temperatures-according-to-physics) So obviously Samus' ice beam will not be more potent (in fact it should be less potent since there's no proof that it's actually absolute zero.

This power also translates to Samus's Ice Beam, as the Ice Missile enhancement was just a replacement for the Ice Beam (since Samus's Metroid DNA wouldn't cooperate with an Ice Beam addition), and is consistent with how page 73 notes, "The Magdollites are creatures of lava. They rise up like columns of fire, then shoot lava bombs. Fight fire with ice, freezing the Magdollite with the Ice Beam as the creature starts to emerge from the flame," and with how Samus can freeze Goyagma's arm with a charged Ice Beam shot for a time before it shatters the ice.

As this article explains, temperature is a measure of average kinetic energy of the atoms/molecules in the system and heat is transferred from the hotter to the colder. The mass of a Magdollite is far greater than that of Samus's beam. This is a Magdollite being frozen by the Galactic Federation's Ice Beam knockoff, a freeze gun. Clearly the Magdollite is far more massive than humans, including Samus, whose mass is 90 kg, which is just above the average mass for a man, 70 kg. As I showed earlier, magma has a similar density to granite. However, Samus's beam clearly has less mass than her, since otherwise she'd be flung backwards every time she fired in mid-air (which clearly doesn't happen) by the conservation of momentum's application in firing a projectile. Yet even if the average kinetic energy was 0 and we assumed the beam had the same number of atoms/molecules as the Magdollite, the average would only be half (same energy/twice the number of molecules), so from 973.15 degrees kelvin to 486.575 degrees kelvin, which is over 213 degrees Celsius (way above the boiling point, let alone freezing point, of water). Thus, Samus's Ice Beam simulates a temperature below absolute zero, even with generous assumptions (low-end of temperature of magma, even though Magdollites dwell in the core region of planet Zebes; high end of freezing point of ice, even though the golems would instantly start melting if that were the case; the number of molecules in the beam shot being equal to those in the Magdollite).

Okay, here's the problem with your whole argument, (I mean firstly it's essentially a fan calculation, but I digress) you're using real worth physics to justify a proposition that's inherently opposed to real world physics. You can't just pick and choose which laws of physics apply whenever they fit your narrative. Your claim is that Samus' ice beam simulates attacks that are colder than absolute zero, something that, according to actual physics, is impossible, and yet you're using the principles of real world physics (ie. the conservation of momentum principle) to support this notion. I hope you can see the irony in this.

E: You also forgot this part of my opener, it seems:

The Suit upgrades stack upon each other, and in most of the entries in the series, the beam upgrades do too, as the Metroid Zero Mission Nintendo Player's Guide explains on page 5, "The beams are not mutually exclusive--there's no need to switch from one beam to the next. When you collect a new beam, it supplements the strength of all your other beam upgrades."

In other words, it's not just Iron Man's outside that needs to cope with freezing; it's his insides, too, courtesy of the combination of the Plasma and Wave piercing/phasing combo. For instance, here's the Plasma and Ice Beam effects shown by freezing and piercing a larva Metroid. And this article explains what happens to cells that freeze: "'When water in an animal's cells freezes, the ice crystals that form expand and physically rupture the cell, causing death,' explains David Denlinger, an entomologist at Ohio State University in Columbus." Thus, an internal freezing is basically instant death, or at least incapacitation.

And it seems that you forgot that I already proved that Iron Man is immune to phasing.

For the first scan, flying while an explosion is going off in the background is not proof that he's moving faster than the explosion: since it's just one panel, all we see is an explosion in the background and Iron Man in flight in the foreground.

But actually we know that the explosion started before Iron Man flew out of the house since on the previous panel as Captain America is helping a fireman there is a boom the comes from the house and an explosion starts propogating out of the window.

The second is more impressive, but where did the explosion start? If the armor pieces that had to fly to him were closer than the explosion's start, that's not quite outpacing the explosion. As for the flying out: that's great, but at that part of the feat, it's just linear travel speed.

Well the explosion was directly behind him at the start of the issue, so we can assume it's in the same room, meanwhile Tony specifically states that his armor was in a different room in the narration.

Not only has Samus displayed at least comparable combat speed feats to Iron Man's, despite Samus being mentally hindered...but the descending stepped ladder of lightning travels at about 1/2,000 the speed of light, so that feat is not necessarily even comparable to Samus's reaction speed, not even accounting for her pre-cognition on top of that perception speed.

In addition, from this CaV:

Also, verification that said attacks are not only lightning, like actual, natural lightning, but are also the specific type of lightning that moves around mach 260 would be nice, since there's a multitude of artificial and actual lightning and lightning-like events that move far slower than that: This tesla device sends bolts at less than a meter per 10 milliseconds (ms), which is 100 m/, or about a third the speed of sound. The bolts do sometimes move quickly in staggered bursts, but the overall movement is what we're counting.

Other sources talk about different types of lightning, including ball lightning, of which an artificial variant moves much slower than mach speeds. More on ball lightning.

A plasma cutter sends ionized gas (plasma) out at 20,000 feet per second, which is around mach 17.7.

Also, there's different types of lightning. Anvil lightning is much slower, as its propagation is visible to the human eye.

The electricity generated by this is from the Mandarin's lightning ring, which was described as emitting atmosphirc electrical energy. So it was not ball lighting, tesla coil lightning, plasma, or anvil lightning.

Thus, you haven't shown conclusive proof that Iron Man's perception/reaction speed is anywhere near Samus's.

In terms of perception/processing speed Iron Man could process and analyze a signal in the span of picoseconds (a time frame wherein light moves less than an inch). (Iron Man #32 - With Iron Hands, Part 4 of 4) He has also run a diagnostic test on his enemies in a Nano-second time frame. (Iron Man Annual #15 - Minds in Collision; Wargame; The Media Takes on Tony Stark) So clearly in terms of thinking/processing/perception speed Iron Man can stack up to Samus, and in terms of reactions it only take a micro-second (a time frame in which sound moves about 1/10th of an inch) for the Iron Man armor to physically react to Tony's metal commands (which I've already established can happen in the Pico and Nano-second range). (Iron Man #273 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part II of IV) - Here There Be Dragons) So I'd say that Tony's reactions, perceptions, and combat speed are all on par with Samus'

The very scan you posted shows Vision's hand phasing through Iron Man's armor; it's just that Iron Man was able to use that contact/proximity to reboot Vision's systems before Vision could do damage. Seeing as how Iron Man can't hack an energy shot (or Samus, more on that below), that particular example does not constitute proof that Iron Man can prevent phasing attacks from slipping right through his shields.

Did you even see the scan? Yes Iron Man could hack into Vision's arm but before he did that Vision tried to phase through him (as explicitly shown on panel), and Tony stated that Vision (who was trying to "pop his heart") couldn't break through his armor. So Tony no-sold Vision's phasing and then hacked into Vision, in that order.

First of all, I never said "Samus can tank mountain level strikes by scaling off of Goyagma." Rather, the fact that Samus's Varia Suit is completely unharmed by said attempt at crushing more than outweighs the difference between Goyagma's strength and the whole mountain, like in my explanation of Ridley and the mountain-side above.

I already throughly debunked the Ridley feat, but this is even more extreme. The mountain surrounding the lava in a volcano is many dozens of times larger that the magma that's inside, I mean just take a look at this image:

-http://eschooltoday.com/natural-disasters/volcanoes/what-is-inside-a-volcano.html

And, once again, by applying your own equation that means that the power of Goyagma=M/12+ yet we only saw Samus endure two blows from Goyagma, so that feat does not prove that she is mountain level, these arguments are boiling over into head canon, so let me give you another example of why this style of argumentation makes little sense. This is akin to saying that if a person endures a punch which destroys a few city blocks with no visible damage, this means that they can endure a city busting punch. Do you understand why that makes almost no sense? I'm sure the voters will.

On the flip side, while you point out that the amount of lava Goyagma supported is a fraction of the volcano, your scan of Iron Man being slammed by an animated mountain that you claim is "mountain level" mentions "The fallen boulders are large enough that there is space between them." Clearly, the whole weight of the mountain isn't on Iron Man: if it were, the portion of ground directly beneath his feat/legs would have to also support that weight and would instantly collapse. Rather, the weight of the mountain is spread out all over the structure beneath the rubble, so you claiming that such a feat is "mountain level" is a double-standard.

Well, narration actually confirms that half the weight of the mountain slammed down on Iron Man's armor, so the feat is mountain-level, or at least next to that. (Iron Man #273 - The Dragon Seed Saga (Part II of IV) - Here There Be Dragons)

That's also not even including how a machine that can "punch through mountains" you mentioned elsewhere would be tunneling through the mountain, and yet somehow being able to tunnel through a mountain is mountain-level, but carrying the magma chamber isn't?

I don't believe that no-selling the machine is a display of mountain-level durability, but by your (extremely flawed) logic no selling it would be mountain level since Iron Man took less damage than the mountain.

You bring up scans of Iron Man and his suits destroying mountain sides and mountain tops with multiple hits to claim that he has mountain-level energy projection, and destroying cliff-sides is "obscenely powerful," yet in your first response post, you say this:

I never used those scans to claim that he has multi-mountain level energy projection (I used other evidence) I used those scans to claim that he has mountain level energy projection. And while Iron Man didn't outright destroy the mountains while blasting their tops off being able to blasts the tops off of several mountains in the span of a single sentence conveys that if all of that energy had been concentrated on one mountain that the mountain would have been destroyed. And in the scan with Rhodey in the Iron Man suit he explicitly states that he's blowing the mountains to itty bits, so he was destroying the mountains, no just the mountain faces.

This is the scan again. The amount Ridley destroyed in one blast is greater than the damage shown here, comparable to that here, and considering the relative sze of the people in this scan, Ridley's blast absolutely dwarfed Grey Voice, a human-sized being, so that one is also inferior to Ridley's blast. Yet, somehow your scans show mountain level damage output, but Ridley destroyed a "relatively small in comparison" portion, and is "undisputably" "sub-mountain level"?

Here's the problem with this argument though, you're only using the visual evidence of what's happening in those scans even though you have explicit narration telling you what's happening, confirming the power of Iron Man's repulsor beams. Iron Man explicitly states that he's blowing up the tops of multiple mountains, and Rhodey explicitly states that he's "blowing mountains to itty bits". So when you consider the visual evidence and the evidence that's layed out in the narration of the scans, then Iron Man's feats in those instances are mountain-level. Meanwhile there is only visual evidence for how powerful Ridley's blast is, and that visual evidence displays her blast as significantly sub-mountain level.

Anyways, Samus is well-defended against sonics. She's fine with test-firing the Sonic Boom in an enclosed space. The Sonic Boom is described on page 7 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Nintendo Player's Guide as "The most powerful Charge Beam Combo in the game, the Sonic Boom projects a wave of sonic force that can strike multiple targets almost instantly." This means the Sonic Boom is more powerful than the Sunburst, which page 71 of the same guide describes as "The Sunburst Charge Combo is an incredibly powerful weapon that could eliminate scores of people and even small towns if it were to fall into the wrong hands."

Another example of Samus's ability to ignore sonic-based offenses is with Ridley's Clone. The infant Ridley (aka little birdie) has a cry able to agitate the entire nest of Kihunter creatures. In his adolescent form, his cry was strong enough to drive the other creatures of the Bottle Ship into a frenzy (for reference, the Bottle Ship is much larger than a city, as shown here, and just one of the three environmental sectors contains the volcano and surrounding regions that Goyagma, mentioned in my opener, dwells in). However, even when the adult Clone roars directly in Samus's face, she's perfectly fine.

In terms of sonics it seems that the most powerful sonic attacks that Samus has faced are of city magnitude, however Iron Man has sonics that are powerful enough to provide energy to entire continents when combined with repulsors. (Original Sin #3.1 - Hulk vs Iron Man, Part 1)

For one matter, absorbing electricity should be far easier than absorbing other types of energy, seeing as how I'd imagine Iron Man's suit uses electrical power.

Iron Man's armor is powered by an arc fusion reactor, not by electricity.

For another, doesn't Thor often hold back while fighting foes on Earth, so he doesn't kill most of his foes?

Mate, you didn't even read the scan (which seems to be a theme in this CaV) Thor was being mind controlled by Moondragon and Iron Man explicitly stated that if he hadn't absorbed Thor's lighting blast that it would've killed Captain America and Wasp.

Samus in just the Varia Suit is able to tank a few hits from the SA-X's beam, which includes the piercing Plasma Beam, the Wave Beam, and the rest of Samus's strongest equipment. Thus, she can take multiple hits from a piercing/phasing-freezing weapon, each of which is over 19 times stronger than the Mount Saint Helens eruption that blew out a 396 meter tall mountain-sized crater off of Mount Saint Helens, making the Varia Suit at least over 38 times more durable, taking the low end of "a few hits."

I've already throughly debunked the notion that Samus' change beams are 19 times more powerful than Mount Saint Helens explosion (in fact, going off of the more consistent power of tsunamis, they are less powerful than an atomic bomb, which on average are a fraction of the power of the Mount Saint Helens eruption). And Iron Man's energy sword has far better feats than piercing MODOK's shields. They could cut through an amped Gray Gargoyle like butter. (Invincible Iron Man #505 - Cracked Actor) And Grey Gargoyle's piercing durability is extremely impressive. He endured an axe blow from Desak and remained conscious. (Thor #48 - By Fire Born Part III of V) And in that same issue Desak overpowered a Mjolnir strike from a pissed off Thor wielding the same weapon that he hit Gargoyle with. (Thor #48 - By Fire Born Part III of V) Yet Iron Man could cut through an amped version of Gargoyle.

Now, at first glance, it might seem the matter-antimatter beam is unquantifiable. However, Samus acquires said matter-antimatter Beam from Quadraxis in the form of the Annihilator Beam. Considering recoil is directly proportional to the mass of the projectile, based off of the conservation of momentum, it's more than fair to assume that, given said recoil is greater than that of a 12 gauge shotgun's, we can use the mass of a shotgun round as a low-end. For a 12 gauge shotgun like the one in the video, Wikipedia explains "a typical 12 gauge shotgun slug is a blunt piece of metal that could be described as an 18 mm (.729 inch) caliber that weighs 28 grams (432 grains)." In matter-antimatter annihilation, the entire mass is converted into energy, according to e=mc^2, so using the proper units (kg for mass and m/s for speed of light), 0.028 * (299792458^2) = 2.5165145e+15 Joules, which is over 0.6 megatons. While this scaling of energy per shot isn't quite as good as the Wave Beam's, the fact that every single shot of the Annihilator Beam produces over 1/40th the energy in the Mount Saint Helens Eruption establishes consistency, especially seeing as how the Sonic Boom (mentioned earlier) is the Charge Combo of the Annihilator Beam, combining the 30 of the Light and Dark ammunition with the Charge Beam and five missiles, while the Annihilator Beam's regular shots require only one light ammo and one dark ammo. Yet page 20 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Instruction Booklet notes that for the Samus in Metroid Prime 2, "Impediments made of Denzium can only be destroyed by Power Bombs." Thus, the Sonic Boom is at least 30/40ths of the energy in the Mount Saint Helens eruption, the Power Bomb is even stronger, and yet:

Generally, I don't love using complicated fan calculations, especially since they almost always rely on pretty shoddy assumptions, but your own evidence completely counters this. The shoddy assumption that you made here was scaling the recoil of a shotgun to the recoil of the anti-matter beam, which is hard to quantify. The best example of this problematic recoil scaling is the fact that the regular Annihilator beam and the Sonic Boom charge combo (which per your own post is 30 times more powerful than the regular Annihilator beam) have the same level of recoil. (Annihilator Beam) (Sonic Boom) Hell even the Sunburst beam which is expressly less powerful than the sonic boom has the exact same amount of recoil as the Sonic Boom. (Sunburst) All in all I think that I've made it very clear than the Metroid games don't take the physics of recoil very seriously, so your entire calculation is pretty much null, so the feat is, in fact, unquantifiable.

Adding on to this, page 27 of the Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Nintendo Player's Guide states, "To get a new weapon, you must defeat a new enemy. Dark Samus may look like you, but she lacks your wit and charm--not to mention tact. It's a tough battle, but one that you should be able to handle with a couple of Energy Tanks and 20-25 Missiles." By comparison, Samus in Metroid Fusion has 250 Super Ice Diffusion Missiles (number in the top of the screen). As mentioned in my opener, the Super Missile enhancement is 3 times more powerful than regular missiles, and Page 141 of the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion Two-in-One Guide states, "Missiles don't hurt the SA-X, so you must use charged-up Wave Beams."My Opener Dark Samus already wields an enhanced version of the Varia Suit, and the Diffusion and Ice enhancements further increase the missiles power, but even ignoring that, we have: 25 normal missiles, plus the Power Beam and Charge Beam, is capable of putting down Dark Samus. By contrast, the SA-X is absolutely unfazed by Samus's Super Ice Diffusion Missiles, despite each being over three times more powerful than the normal ones and there being 10 times as many. 10 * 3 = 30, so the SA-X is at least 30 times more durable than the Varia Suit (though that doesn't even account for how the normal missiles help put Dark Samus down, while Metroid Fusion Samus's missile arsenal doesn't do any damage to the SA-X. Considering that just using the fact that the Varia Suit tanks a few shots from the SA-X's Beam, each shot of which is over 19 times more powerful than the mountain-busting blast of Mount Saint Helens, that means the Varia Suit is at least 39 times more durable than a mountain, making the SA-X suit at least 1170 times more durable. By itself, the SA-X suit is clearly mountain-range level in durability. But it's not by itself. There's another huge jump in durability: As the Prima Two-in-One Guide for Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion explains on page 142, "Suddenly, the blue X floats by and morphs into the SA-X. It steps in front of Samus and attacks the Omega Metroid. It fights valiantly, but another claw swipe turns the SA-X back into X. Jump up and grab the X to restore Samus's weapons and energy...as fast as you can while staying away from its claws. The Omega Metroid advances to the left each time Samus is hit, and it is easy to be trapped in the corner..." Thus, the difference is from the SA-X being one-shotted by the Omega Metroid (X parasite creatures turn back into their original X forms when their body is destroyed) to Samus with the SA-X's suit being able to take hits from the Omega Metroid. By the end of Metroid Fusion, Samus can tank multiple SA-X one-shotting hits, making her at least twice as durable. Thus, she most certainly is mountain-range level in durability, no matter how you slice it.

Except, once again, this entire scaling chain is based on a faulty premise. As I've already covered in depth the average tsunami is no where near as powerful as the tsunami you cited (you used a massively outlying tsunami which was arguably the most powerful tsunami in recorded history). As I've shown more usual tsunamis are sub-nuke level in terms of power. and the average nuke is sub-megaton. So essentially the pulse beam=the power of a consistent tsunami<the average nuke<1 megaton<<<<Mount Saint Helens's explosion<regular sized mountain level. You have yet to post a feat that displays actual mountain level durability or damage output. And just to hammer home one more time that Iron Man has above mountain level damage output he has matched the power of a massive earthquake with his repulsors in his Neo-Classic armor (which, as I've already shown, is massively less powerful than his current armors). (Iron Man Annual #15 - Minds in Collision; Wargame; The Media Takes on Tony Stark) And keep in mind that this was no normal earthquake. It was destroying buildings right off the bat and Iron Man estimated that it would only be thirty seconds before the entire city was destroyed. This level of damage to a city is consistent with an earthquake of a magnitude 9.0 or greater as you can see here:

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

And using this converter you can see that an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 is equal to 4.768791e+8 tons of TNT, or 476 megatons of TNT. (http://www.convertalot.com/earthquake_power__calculator.html) Keep in mind that this is about equal to the amount of power that the Sumatra tsunami had, and again, he did this in an armor that was massively weaker than his current armors.

Opener for Iron Man:

• Went through feats for the stats for Iron Man, including reference to mid-tiers, nuclear explosions, and mountains, as well as bullrushes, explosion reaction, and comparisons between suits.
• Claimed: "Even back in his classic days Tony had some absurd striking feats, his updated Armor was able to casually plow through his previous armors with his blows and crumple them with his casual grabs. (Iron Man #159 - When Strikes Diablo) Now what makes this impressive is the fact that even his Mark I armor could trade blows with Savage Hulk without sustaining heavy damage (Avengers: The Origin #4 - Rumble Fish) Now obviously Iron Man doesn't strike harder than the Hulk, but this should give you a good idea of how durable the armors that Iron Man was obliterating are."
• Claimed: "First, it is worth noting that Iron Man isn't exactly a speedster; he doesn't really run around willy-nilly dodging attacks at super-speed and blitzing his opponents down, but when he needs to use his speed, he certainly does." and "Tony rarely blitzes his opponents because that's not a key part of his power-set, but every time that his speed is tested he displays very solid feats."
• Brought up sonics as a potential hax.

Opener for Samus Aran:

• Went through feats for the stats of Samus, including mention of Ridley, Goyagma, Diggernaut's excavation to the center of planet Zebes for the Chozo colony, and matter-antimatter shots.
• Brought up the Screw Attack as being more potent for Samus's defense and offense, as well as comparisons between suits.
• Hax brought up included the piercing Plasma Beam, the Ice Beam, and the phasing Wave Beam.
• In terms of hypersonic+ speed, brought up explosion reactions, shooting down enemy ships while escaping into space on top of a spaceship, and scaling with the Queen Metroid and wounded Clone Ridley, while also bringing up mental hindrances with all of these.
• Brought up pre-cognition, reaction speed, and the Scan Visor as advantages.

Iron Man's Side First Counters:

• Made comparison with a sledgehammer to use against scaling with Ridley.
• Brought up Iron Man's piercing resistance against Terrax, Iron Man's ability to move despite multiple system failures against temperatures Iron Man described as absolute zero, and showed Iron Man shutting down Vision during Vision's attempt to attack his heart by phasing.
• Claimed: "So even though her wave pulse is many times more power than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, that would put it at mountain-level+ levels of energy output, and it's her absolute strongest attack, meanwhile I've already shown that Iron Man has mountain range levels of durability, and those aren't even his best feats."
• Brought up Iron Man's repulsor blade.
• Claimed: "Fair enough, in terms of pure reaction Samus probably is slightly faster than Tony, but that doesn't matter much given he has equal, if not superior combat speed."
• Brought up energy absorption as a potential defensive hax.
• Did not address Scan Visor, Screw Attack, Samus's speed feat on the spaceship, matter-antimatter blasts, or the Diggernaut.

Samus Aran's Side First Counters:

• Brought up how the Wave Beam is not Samus's strongest attack (as it is inferior the the Charged Wave Beam, the addition of the Ice Beam, and her Screw attack) nor is being many times more powerful than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens only mountain-level+.
• Brought up how the SA-X can tank repeated charged Wave Beams and continue fighting.
• Made the point that a sledgehammer deals too little a percentage of damage to a mountain to make a meaningful comparison, unlike Ridley's blast.
• Pointed out double standards, such as Iron Man causing an avalanche with multiple blasts to mountain tops being considered mountain level but Ridley's one blast being considered far less.
• Explained properties of explosions with regards to the differences between size, energy released, and energy absorbed by a target.
• Brought up areas where values were being highballed and the proof did not match the claim, like avoiding a railgun shot underwater.
• Countered energy absorption by using the comparison of the Ice Beam enhancement on the energy absorption of Metroids.
• Mentioned counters to sonics, piercing damage, and other hax Iron Man might use.
• Used recoil and conservation of momentum to find a reasonable low end and high end for the mass of Samus's Annihilator Beam shots and Ice Beam shots.

Iron Man's Side Second Counters and Conclusion:

• Used verbal gymnastics to justify moving the helicarrier as a mountain-moving feat.
• Backtracked from admitting that the Wave Beam "is many times more power than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens" to saying "I doubt that Samus' wave beam is as powerful as the explosion of Mount Helen's (24 megatons) let alone 19 times more powerful."
• Despite claiming in his opener, "First of all in his Superior suit completely no-sold blasts from multiple other armors at once. (Superior Iron Man #9 - Chapter 9: Freedom)" and other instances of no-selling attacks, also claimed that there;s no way to tell if Samus no-selled Ridley's blast.
• Brought up the Ice Beam being colder than absolute zero as impossible (though I said it simulated a temperature below absolute zero), despite anything reaching absolute zero (including Iron Man's armor) also being physically impossible.
• Displayed a misunderstanding of how recoil was to find a low-end value for the matter-antimatter beam, by bringing up the Sunburst, which is not a weapon dependent on matter-antimatter annihilation.
• Brought up nanosecond and picosecond perception speed feats for Iron Man.
• Claimed that energy attacks and blunt force attacks are different, despite not applying this logic to Iron Man's defense against phasing energy attacks.
• Made claims that the arguments for Samus being dependent on outliers and fan-calculations, when the arguments for Iron Man included one-shotting an opponent who can tank Mjolnir-level strikes and a pixel-counting argument for the "Manhattan-sized" mountain that relied upon generous assumptions.

In terms of scaling with explosion speed and mountain-level suits inferior to, Samus can stack up to her competition. However, while Samus has defenses against Iron Man's hax, her beam has enhancements designed to shut down systems by freezing, phase through defenses, and shred through the interior, all at the same time, and she has an indefinite supply of said beam. Considering my opponent admitted that Iron Man doesn't typically abuse his speed, Samus is guaranteed to score hits with said beam shots. Her Screw Attack, in conjunction with the Space Jump, grants her even greater defenses and close-range offensive support, and the Scan Visor provides her with one of the most crucial advantages in a fight: information.