Death Battle Predictions: Natsu VS Ace

Five months and six episodes ago, One Piece and Fairy Tail made their Death Battle debuts with their resident sword fighters, Roronoa Zoro and Erza Scarlet, clashing blades. Now, we see the return of the two franchises once more, and they’re turning up the heat with their own masters of flame. Natsu Dragneel, the Fire Dragon Slayer, and Portgas D. Ace, 2nd Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates. Time to see who’s got more fuel to their flare, and who’ll go out in a blaze of glory.

Shoutouts to Ramonzer for helping us make this blog. He’s not in the verdicts, but he still deserves credit for helping us with Ace research. Thanks a ton, man.

Backstory

Natsu

"Well now, lookie here. Some pretty strong lookin' dudes all lined up for us... Now that's what I call hospitality."

400 years ago, Natsu Dragneel lived in a small village with his older brother, Zeref, and two unnamed parents. But while they lived a peaceful life, one day a destructive dragon came and razed the entire town to the ground, killing Natsu and his parents and leaving Zeref by himself. Desperate to return some bit of his family and after many years, Zeref eventually managed to save Natsu by turning him into an Etherious, a type of demon from the Book of Zeref. By turning him into E.N.D: Etherious Natsu Dragneel.

However, due to researching ways to bring back life and forbidden techniques such as that, Zeref had been cursed by the gods to kill anything he loves and to forever be immortal, thus rendering his life a nightmare of endless suffering. So what was the solution? His brother; E.N.D, and Zeref’s final resort to die and attain peace. But in order to do so, Natsu would have to become quite strong, and due to how dangerous he had come to be around, Zeref left Natsu as a very young demon baby to be cared for by Igneel, the King of the Fire Dragons, who Zeref had come to befriend. But don't worry, Igneel was a cool dragon who didn't resent humanity, and thus had no problems raising Natsu as his own.

Growing up with Igneel, Natsu was taught by his foster father to speak, write, and use his very own magic, Fire Dragon Slayer. During this time he was gifted with a white and black scarf made of Igneel’s scales from his other mentor, Anna Heartfilia. But as part of the arrangement with Zeref, a young Natsu and another four dragon slayer mages would be sent 400 years into the future, to a time with a far larger abundance of magic, in a last ditch effort to destroy the dragons’ greatest enemy once and for all: the Apocalypse Dragon, Acnologia.

However, upon arriving in the future on July 7th x777, Natsu was separated from all the other children, while Igneel had seemingly completely disappeared as well. Not knowing what was going on, Natsu quickly began looking around the forest he had landed in to find his dad. Yet while he didn’t do that, he did meet Makarov Dreyar, the third and current guildmaster of the Fairy Tail guild. Excited by learning of it, Natsu quickly joined and, after being a bit of a loner for the first while, made friends (and rivalries in some cases) with Erza Scarlet, Gray Fullbuster, and Lisanna Strauss. During this time he also found the egg of his lifelong companion, Happy, who he came to hatch and become the best of friends with. And throughout his missions and due to his Fire Dragon Slayer abilities, Natsu came to receive the nickname “Salamander”.

Years down the line, while still searching for Igneel, Natsu and Happy came to the town of Hargeon, where they met Lucy Heartfilia, a novice mage looking to join Fairy Tail herself. After helping her to fight off a number of thugs that day (along with destroying the harbor and escaping the kingdom’s army), Natsu took her back to the guild. Soon after, the teens plus Happy formed a team, later joined by Gray and Erza, and Natsu has since faced numerous impossible odds and gone on countless adventures.

Ace

“I don't wanna live a thousand years. If I just live through today, that'll be enough.”

Nicknamed the “Fire Fist” because of his Devil Fruit powers, Portgas D. Ace was born as the son of the Pirate King Gol D. Roger and Portgas D. Rouge, although his parents were not around to see him grow up: Roger was captured and executed while Rouge died shortly after giving birth. As a favor to Roger, Monkey D. Garp adopted Ace, who grew up with Garp’s grandson and his soon-to-be foster brother, Monkey D. Luffy, as well as another boy named Sabo. The three boys vowed to live a life of freedom together, and spent most of their childhood in each other’s company.

When Sabo left the group to become a pirate and supposedly died, Ace and Luffy reinforce their shared drive to live free. After training for several years, Ace set sail and became the captain of his own band of pirates, the Spade Pirates. He also consumed a Devil Fruit called the Mera Mera no Mi or the Flame-Flame Fruit, which granted him various pyrokinetic abilities. With his crew, Ace sought out the strongest pirate captain in the world - the infamous Whitebeard - and attempted to defeat him to become the strongest in his stead. However, Whitebeard soundly defeated him, and assimilated the Spade Pirates into his crew. Ace continued to make attempts on Whitebeard’s life, but soon began to respect the captain as a father-figure of sorts and stopped trying to kill him altogether. His dedication to the Whitebeard Pirates’ cause earned him the rank of the 2nd Division commander, as Ace ventured into the open seas to experience many an adventure, such as reuniting with Luffy and hunting the traitor Blackbeard, until his death at the hands of the marine Akainu.

Abilties

Natsu

In Case You’re Wondering

While Natsu has several, and we mean several, different kinds of ways to boost his magic power, we’ll only be covering the ones we believe Death Battle would reasonably give him, which in this case are the Lightning Flame Dragon Mode, Fire Dragon King Mode and Dragon Force.

His Black Flame Dragon Mode was anime-exclusive and doesn't make an appearance in the manga, not to mention doesn't add much to this particular match. And it's unclear how exactly Natsu accesses his E.N.D form, and even then we don't know much of its actual abilities aside from using curses instead of magic, despite them appearing quite similar to his magic attacks regardless. And again, doesn't add much to this particular match.

Fire Dragon Slayer Magic

Dragon Slayer is a Lost Magic, incredibly powerful and rare types of magic which are said to have been eliminated from history due to their ferocity and side-effects on the user. Dragon Slayer magic in particular allows the user to have the physical characteristics of a dragon. They can thus transform themselves with their respective element to use both offensive and defensive styles. Dragon Slayer Magic, as the name implies, is also the only known way of killing or even hurting a Dragon. So we're talking some pretty powerful stuff here.

Natsu uses fire for his respective element here, which is useful for a hot-headed guy like him, as it appears the angrier he gets the stronger his fire becomes, which is useful for when you seem to be in a losing situation. Natsu can create fire from any part of his body including his feet, which can give him temporary flight capabilities. The fire Natsu makes is equal to that of a dragon's and can easily melt solid metal, small mountains in the anime and vaporize a decently-sized lake. He can also produce different kinds of flames, like ones that burn out on their own after a certain amount of time.

Basic Spells

• Fire Dragon's Iron Fist: Natsu gains the talons of a dragon, which are "wrapped in fire" as Happy put it. As such, he ignites his fists to increase the power of his punches.
• Fire Dragon's Claws: Natsu wraps his feet in fire to increase the power of his kicks. This is also the spell he uses for that brief flight.
• Fire Dragon's Roar (shown above)​: Natsu gains the lungs of a dragon to breathe fire. You can probably guess what that means.
• Fire Dragon's Wing Attack: Natsu grabs his opponent, then sets his hands ablaze to send his adversary flying.
• Fire Dragon's Sword Horn: Natsu engulfs his entire body in flames, rushes towards his opponent and headbutts them.
• Fire Dragon's Brilliant Flame: Natsu ignites both his hands then brings them together. This either creates an explosion or a large fireball for Natsu to throw at his opponent.
• Fire Dragon's Flame Elbow: Natsu creates a torrent of flames from his elbows to propel himself forward, increasing the power of his punches.
• Fire Dragon's Crushing Fang: Natsu once again sets his hands ablaze. He then slashes at his opponent with in a claw-like fashion to burn them.
• Fire Dragon's Grip Strike: Natsu grabs his enemy and blasts them at close range.

Secret Arts

• Crimson Lotus: Fire Dragon's Fist: Natsu sets his hands ablaze and repeatedly punches his target. Natsu used this attack to defeat the Iron Dragon Slayer, Gajeel Redfox, who was at the time using his Iron Dragon Scales spell to up his defense as well as defeat Erigor in their first battle.
• Crimson Lotus: Exploding Flame Blade: Natsu moves his arms in a circular motion to create a powerful and destructive torrent of flames which bombards the target to cause heavy damage. This is commonly used as his finishing move, using it to defeat S-class mage and 2nd Generation Dragon Slayer, Laxus Dreyar, 3rd generation Dragon Slayers, Sting Eucliffe and Rogue Cheney while they were in Dragon Force. And while he didn’t defeat him, Natsu pushed Gildarts Clive, Fairy Tail's strongest mage, back a few steps while the powerful wizard didn't take any steps at all during their battle. Though in a later fight Natsu could push him back considerably more.

Fire Consumption

As part of his Dragon Slayer abilities, Natsu can eat his respective element to restore his energy and power himself, in his case that element of course being fire. He can either just rip it off a torch like a piece of meat, or he can suck up just about all manners of flames surrounding him from a distance in a matter of seconds.

And he’s eaten plenty of different fires before. Hot fire, cold fire, sticky fire, smelly fire, god fire, hellfire, and just general explosions. Heck, he even once managed to eat some of a living dragon made of fire, not to mention in extreme cases lightning and lacrima infused with every type of magic and not just fire, but we’ll cover that soon. However, doing so will harm him to a large extent that will kick in hard after the fight is over, or even sooner if it doesn’t have high enough magic to recharge Natsu and keep him going. He’s also incapable of eating fire he’s created himself, and instead has to eat that of other mages, stuff blowing up, torch sticks, candles, that kind of stuff.

Second Origin

To make this section a little clearer, we’ll explain how magic works on Fairy Tail. Essentially, each wizard has a container of magic in their body, and with each spell they cast, they use up some of that magic energy depending on its potency. But whenever it’s running low, the mage’s body is slowly absorbing magic particles in the air known as Eternano to replenish their container.

After returning from the seven years missed on Tenroujima Island, Natsu and the gang were told that recent research had discovered that each mage had a second container of dormant and unused magic that most mages weren’t able to access known as Second Origin. With the help of Ultear Milkovich and her Arc of Time magic, Natsu gained access to this Second Origin, which allows him to have a far greater supply of magic to burn out slower than before, keeping him in the fight longer and allowing him to access his alternate forms a lot easier.

Lightning Flame Dragon Mode

After eating all of Laxus’ lightning magic on Tenrou Island during Natsu and his team’s battle with Master Hades of Grimoire Heart, the flames and lightning fused within his body, giving his Fire Dragon Slayer Magic an enhancement with Lightning powers. Natsu can activate this at will, as seen when he and Gajeel fought Tempester and Torafuzar, but he gets worn out extremely quickly after using it. Luckily, this happens less now thanks to unlocking his Second Origin, and its sheer power ensures that his opponent definitely won't leave without a few burns or bruises. Let’s move on to its spells, shall we?

Basic Spells

• Lightning Flame Dragon's Roar: Natsu gets fire along with lightning in his mouth, then shoots them as a giant beam of destruction. It's so large and powerful that it blasted through Tenroujima Island, destroying a ton of stuff along the way. It drains his magic more than the other attacks however.
• Lightning Flame Dragon's Fist: Natsu wraps his hands in both fire and lightning and repeatedly punches his opponent, not only burning them but also striking them with lightning.
• Lightning Flame Dragon's Firing Hammer: Natsu ignites his fist and forearm in fire and lighting, then smashes it against his opponent. Even while defense magic is in use, the attack is strong enough to destroy most of a large building's top floor.
• Lightning Flame Dragon's Brilliant Flame: Natsu gathers lightning in one hand and fire in the other, then brings them together and proceeds to throw the sphere at his opponent, creating an explosion of flames and bolts around them to cause massive damage.

Dragon Slayer Secret Arts Revision

• Crimson Lotus: Exploding Lightning Blade: Natsu gathers fire in one hand and lightning in the other. He then spins his hands in a circular motion to create a powerful spiral of the two elements.

Fire Dragon King Mode

During his year-long training journey, Natsu learned to harness the power of Igneel’s magic which still resided in his body, which came in the form of the Fire Dragon King’s Mode. Natsu intended to use this power to kill Zeref when the two of them fought again, and from what we saw the Dragon Slayer was quite capable of doing so with this power. The one drawback is that once activated, Igneel’s power would leave his body and not return, yet he can still use it himself with his own magic power acting as a substitute, though it doesn’t appear to be as powerful as it was back then.

• Fire Dragon King's Demolition Fist: A super powered-up version of his Fire Dragon’s Iron Fist technique. It's so powerful, he managed to one-shot the humongous Ikusatsunagi, who could create giant crevices in the ground in a single sword strike.

• Fire Dragon King's Roar: A super powered-up version of his Fire Dragon’s Roar. In just one breath, Natsu can burn up a huge amount of ground, and this is again without full usage of Igneel’s magic.

Dragon Force

Natsu can enter the legendary state of all Dragon Slayer mages known as Dragon Force. In this state, his skin gains dragon-like scales while his eyes turn cat-like, and his magic prowess gets a tremendous boost. While he normally had to eat things with high concentrations of magic in them (such as Etherion or Jellal’s Flames of Rebuke) which forced him to be unable to use it quite often, he has learned to enter it by himself without such things. In this final and most powerful state, the Salamander’s magic power, abilities and physical stats are increased by an incredible amount, said to be capable of rivaling that of real dragons themselves. He gains only one new spell from this form, but it is certainly the most powerful one he owns.

Hidden Fire Form - Crimson Lotus: Phoenix Blade wraps Natsu’s entire body in fire, before he headbutts his foe and flies away with them, smashing them through any object in their way and burning them at the same time, such as when he used it against Zero for his finishing move.

Dragon Force does burn him through his magic faster than his other forms, but with the power it packs and how much magic Natsu can use, his foe is sure to be in for one hell of a fight.

Hand-to-Hand Combat

While not having any actual training in it, Natsu is astonishingly good at hand-to-hand combat, with or without his Dragon Slayer magic. His style mostly revolves around using hard punches, kicks and headbutts along with his great physical strength and quick reflexes in order to beat enemies down fast. He managed to crush Sting and Rogue double teaming him while they were using Dragon Force with very little trouble or magic usage, and one-shot three members of the Avatar guild in quick succession after his year-long training journey, only one of which was with magic usage.

Enhanced Senses

As part of his dragon slayer abilities, Natsu’s hearing and sense of smell are all heightened beyond that of a normal human’s. In terms of smell, he managed to tell that a man was poor by differentiating his smell from that of the expensive-looking mansion they were in, and could track a person he only met once some time ago via their smell. And the above picture involves Natsu detecting an invisible Lucy through her scent as well.

And in terms of hearing, he was able to hear Flare threaten Lucy with Asuka as a hostage when the two were battling in the middle of a large stadium filled with hundreds of audience members and commentators over the speaker. And even from quite a distance offshore, he was capable of hearing what people at the harbor were saying.

Combat Intelligence

While not the smartest guy in your average situation, and certainly not one who necessarily resorts to strategy from the get-go, Natsu has skill in finding and exploiting weaknesses in an opponent’s attacks. When Sting had him paralyzed from a magic stigmata placed on Natsu’s stomach, the Salamander set his body heat up in order to burn off the spell and regain mobility. When Natsu was unable to defeat Cobra due to his foe’s extremely heightened sense of hearing allowing him to predict the Salamander’s attacks, he roared at a volume comparable to that of a dragon’s to overwhelm Cobra’s hearing and severely harm him. And after taking a beating from Sting and Rogue, Natsu picked up on all of their fighting habits such as their postures when they defend, the rhythm of their breathing and the positioning of their feet when attacking. He then used the knowledge he gained to beat back against his foes.

But before he tries to do any tactics such as those, Natsu of course needs to analyze his adversary in combat. And before he gets to that, he’ll follow his standard rule of set things on fire until they’re dead. And if that doesn’t work, then resort to thinking to find a way to make it work.

Ace

Mera-Mera No Mi (Flame-Flame Fruit)

Sometime while leading the Spade Pirates, Ace consumed a Logia-type Devil Fruit called the Mera-Mera No Mi, or the Flame-Flame Fruit. As its moniker implies, eating it has given Ace a variety of pyrokinetic abilities, earning him the nickname “Fire Fist”. That said, here are some of the notable skills Ace has picked up:

• Kagero (Heat Haze): A flamethrower-style stream of fire.
• Hiken (Fire Fist): Ace’s signature attack, and the source of his nickname. He launches a pillar of fire through his fists.
• Higan (Fire Gun): Ace points at his targets with his fingers formed like guns, and shoots bullets made of fire.
• Enkai: Hibashira (Flame Commandment: Fire Pillar): For Enkai, Ace collects a large collection of fire before launching those flames either above or below him to destroy a target with Hibashira.
• Hotarubi (Firefly Light): Ace creates a group of small, floating projectiles which home in on Ace’s preferred target.
• Hidaruma (Fiery Doll): A possible follow-up to Hotarubi, where Ace blows up the projectiles and sets the target on fire.
• Shinka: Shiranui (Saint Elmo’s Fire): Ace tosses two javelin-like projectiles made of fire.
• Jujika (Cross Fire): A projectile attack shaped like a cross. In One Piece: Burning Blood, Ace can use this as a follow-up after shooting enemies with his pistols.
• Enjomou (Flame Fence): Ace creates a wall of fire to prevent enemies from leaving or entering a specific area.
• Kyokaen (Mirror Flame): A defensive technique used to guard against attacks.
• Dai Enkai: Entei (Great Flame Commandment: Fire Emperor): Ace’s strongest technique; he gathers a large amount of fire to form a large sun-like projectile, which he tosses at his target.

Fire-Based Intangibility

Aside from being able to perform all of the above attacks, Ace can become intangible by becoming fire itself. As such, Ace can become immune to physical attacks which pass through his body while also burning the attacker at the same time. This also gives him a massive resistance towards other fire-based attacks; the only way to hurt him at this point is through hitting him with magma, which is hotter than fire and can affect Ace even while intangible.

Haki

Haki is a mysterious power which lies inside all residents of the One Piece universe, similar to ki or chakra mentioned in most East Asian religions and philosophies. While it lies dormant normally, two variants are available to almost anyone if they receive training with a third variant only available to specific people.

This is Haoshoku Haki, and the list of users who have access to this include the likes of Boa Hancock, Whitebeard, Shanks, Luffy and obviously Ace himself; he specifically awakened to this power at 10 years old in a confrontation with the Bluejam Pirates. While using this, Ace can overpower those with weaker wills with his own, knocking them unconscious. Other users of Haoshoku Haki have been able to take down entire groups of people save for those with strong wills of their own with this; as noted, should a target’s willpower be strong enough, they will remain unaffected and conscious.

Hand-to-Hand

Ace had a lot of training over the course of his life in hand-to-hand combat, primarily thanks to Garp as a child. Luffy went on to say that even after getting his own Devil Fruit powers, he was never able to be Ace in a one-on-one fight. His skills in combat were so great, the Blackbeard Pirate Van Augur praised Ace for his skills, and is recognized as one of the strongest members of the Whitebeard Pirates to date, possibly second only to Whitebeard himself.

Feats

Natsu

Power

• Swung the mass of a ship in the very first chapter
• Upon picking up the large slab of rock in the picture above, Natsu smashed it down on the demon in front of him until it shattered. The feat was calced here.
• Natsu stops the Dorma Anim mech from stepping on and crushing him, after being weakened from previously battling it and being out of magic, and then proceeds to throw it on its back.
• Honestly wrecks Sting and Rogue while the two are in Dragon Force. And he’s already been weakened at this point from their battle when Gajeel was around, and doesn’t even use that much magic at a number of points.
• One-shot the huge Ikusatsunagi, who as you can see reached far up into the clouds. Granted, to one-shot it Natsu used Igneel’s magic, which is now gone, though he could most likely replicate the power with enough of his own magic.
• Destroys a large mansion in one punch with little to no magic in use
• Smashed Zero through numerous floors and then into a lacrima, shattering it. This was in Dragon Force.
• With the help of Wendy to speed Natsu up, smashes through a metal many times harder than steel with resistance to all magic types except Dragon Slayer
• In his first time activating the Lightning Flame Dragon Mode, used a roar that blasted off the side of airship he was in and across Tenrou Island. Should be noted that Tenroujima isn’t that big of an island, and you can see that Natsu didn’t destroy the whole thing, but it was a decent portion of it.
• Attacks Future Rogue and Motherglare while wrapped in fire from Atlas Flame. He carries them all the way over to the Eclipse Gate, burning them along the way, before smashing them into and breaking the large machine.
• To put this into perspective, Lucy and Yukino used the power of the 12 Zodiac Celestial Spirits combined and were unable to so much as dent the gate. The reason for this being that it’s composed of Maginium, a metal with a high resistance to magic. So while it’s unreasonable to say Natsu can match the power of all 12 spirits since his attack lacked magic, it’s still impressive he brought the huge dragon crashing down on with the force to break it.
• With no magic and the help of Gray, punches a massive tree numerous times with enough force to shatter it
• It’s possible to say that Natsu did most of the heavy lifting on this, as he’s shown off far more physical strength feats than Gray, but the two regularly get into fights so you could say they’re equal in that respect regardless
• Punched a guy really high up with the force to crash all the way through an airship
• While Bluenote Stinger’s Gravity magic could pin down Wendy, another Dragon Slayer, and Chelia, a God Slayer mage, Natsu never even noticed it. And when Bluenote kicked it up a notch, Natsu still managed to escape with relative ease.
• Keep in mind Bluenote could combat evenly with Gildarts Clive eight years ago.
• After finishing his training journey, Natsu could give off enough heat to melt the clothes of the audience members and the Domus Flau stadium

Speed

• Dodged Laxus' lightning magic in the Fighting Festival arc
• Beats down Jiemma at high speeds
• Saves Wendy by intercepting the missiles coming at her
• Rushes through a large army before any can react to and stop him
• Blitzed Sting before he could react, and dodged his attacks as seen above.
• Though despite them being described as lasers, there’s nothing to say they can actually move at light speed.
• Catches a throwing knife in his mouth by busting through the floor

Durability

• Catches Sting’s Holy Nova attack quite casually. We get a clearer shot in the anime to see that it engulfs a large area of the stadium. And keep in mind that Sting is being powered up on his White Drive technique here.
• Took a gunshot in the mouth and simply complained that it hurt
• Tanks an explosion, then eats the fire from it
• Takes hits from the Poison Dragon Slayer, Cobra, whose poison is said to be highly corrosive
• Survives an explosion from Hades. Later no sells this to attack Hades
• After surviving this, Natsu resists having his soul taken
• Takes numerous blasts at once
• Natsu has regularly gone on fighting entire days, such as when he fought Oracion Seis, the battle with Grimoire Heart, the fifth day of the Grand Magic Games and Fairy Tail’s wars against Tartaros and later the Alvarez Empire.

Overall

• Has fought and defeated numerous threats throughout the series
• Zeref’s ultimate and most powerful Etherious
• His training and experience includes:
• Being raised by Igneel when he was a child, and trained in Dragon Slayer magic during that time
• Has been a Fairy Tail member for at least seven years
• Has gone on countless jobs during that time, and was good enough to be given a chance to take on the S-Class Mage promotional trial for his work
• Fought in numerous battles throughout the series
• Spent an entire year away from the guild in order to train
• First known Dragon Slayer to enter Dragon Force
• Escaped Zero's Genesis Zero, which is said to erase a person’s soul and very existence
• Survived eating Etherion, which is composed of numerous different elements and magic other than fire, despite those being like poison to Natsu
• Should scale to Erza’s recent meteor feat, which… has gotten a lot of different calculations with a lot of different results. For the most part though, it gets placed between massively hypersonic and sub-relativistic speeds, along with city to country level destructive capabilities
• Stomped Sting and Rogue while the two were in Dragon Force
• Melted the Domus Flau arena
• Destroyed the Eclipse Gate by crashing a dragon into it

Ace

Power

• Was strong enough as a kid to kill animals much larger than himself.
• And break a tree in half with a single kick.
• Destroys a building with his fire.
• Destroys a bunch of ships with a blast of fire.
• Matches the power of Blackbeard the pirate with an attack that covers half the island they’re on at the time.
• Matches an attack from Aokiji in the midst of a marine war, and buys him and Luffy enough time to run away.
• With his presence alone, temporarily changed the weather of an island where it’s always snowing to make it sunny and near-cloudless.

Speed

• Reacts to Van Augur's bullets which have been calc'd here
• Reacts to a bunch of bullets
• Jumps over multiple ships in a single bound, as seen above
• Kept up with Jinbei and Aokiji

Durability

• Ace’s intangibility makes him immune to most forms of attacks
• Endures Blackbeard’s punches, which are strong enough to send people flying and can easily break stones. Blackbeard was nullifying Ace’s intangibility.
• When he was a prisoner in Impel Down, he was dumped into an iron kettle filled with boiling water, and he didn’t even flinch. Considering that Impel Down uses Sea Prism stone shackles which nullify the abilities of Devil fruit users, Ace endured this without his fire abilities.
• He has a lot of stamina. He fought Jinbei, whose Fishman Karate is basically waterbending, for five days and then challenged Whitebeard.
• Took blows from Blackbeard, who could nearly break Ace's neck with one punch

Overall

• He was a notorious pirate with a bounty of 550 000 000 Belly (One Piece currency).
• He was the 2nd Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates, one of the most powerful pirate crews in the world of One Piece.
• Was offered to become a Shichibukai (Seven Warlords of the Sea) by the World Government. The Shichibukai are strong pirates whom the Marines allow to pirate under restrictions and the Government would rather have on their side. Ace refused.
• He was trained by Monkey D. Luffy’s grandpa, Garp, since he was young, and Garp would gladly toss his own grandson into a bottomless ravine, leave him alone in the jungle at night and tie balloons to him and send him flying into the sky if he thinks it would make him stronger.
• Even as a kid he can easily beat adults, pirates and wild animals by himself.
• Luffy stated that he could never beat Ace before he ate the Flame Flame Fruit.
• His Fire Fist was said to pierce through battleships with its flames, burn cities to the ground and leave hellfire in its wake.
• Should scale to other Division Commanders in Whitebeard’s crew like Marco the Phoenix, who reacted to Kizaru’s attack and Flower Sword Vista who briefly fought the strongest swordsman in the world.

Weaknesses

Natsu

While not a terrible combat strategist, Natsu does prefer to punch and burn everything in his path until he wins, and typically only resorts to strategy when that plan isn’t working out. And his magic reserve, while large and further boosted with his Second Origin release, is still limited and also linked to his energy/health. Running low on it will put him in a dangerous situation where he can’t attack as powerfully and he’ll be easy to deal big damage to. Dragon Force and Lightning Flame Dragon Mode burn through this even faster too.

Natsu is also incapable of eating his own fire to refuel himself, and he gets really, really bad motion sickness, to the point that sometimes just thinking about a vehicle can make him want to throw up.

Ace

One of the drawbacks that all Devil Fruit users, Ace included, have is that having any part of their body submerged in water restricts the use of their powers. However, as demonstrated in most cases, small amounts of moving water like rain does not affect them.

In Ace’s case specifically, he cannot phase through magma attacks, as they still harm him even while intangible. This was how the pirate hunting marine Akainu, who ate a Devil Fruit that gave him magma powers, was able to mortally wound him. It is speculated that this was the case due to magma being hotter than fire, thus overriding Ace’s powers. The intangibility has to be activated consciously, but he has trained to activate it reflexively. Also, his Haoshoku Haki is useless if his foes’ willpower is strong enough to resist being knocked unconscious.

He also has a weakness that most Logia type Devil Fruit users share: without the intangibility he is relatively frail. The second punch he received from Blackbeard almost broke his neck, and even the first one caused him to cough up blood.

Summary

Natsu

Advantages:

• Any fire attacks of Ace’s can be eaten and used to get stronger
• This renders the pirate’s main form of attacking useless
• Even if Natsu can’t use his own fire to attack Ace, he has his hand-to-hand and Lightning Flame Dragon Mode
• Could potentially attack Ace’s fire body
• Constant fire eating, and the scale of which we’ve seen him eat, kind of prevents Ace from disappearing into any fire he spreads
• He can resist Ace’s Conqueror’s Haki
• More blatant feats that don’t rely on power scaling
• A large majority of his feats have been performed in his base, and he can reasonably get them a lot stronger with his various forms
• Could potentially find and exploit a weakness of Ace’s
• If Ace is immune to Natsu’s fire attacks, he’ll avoid using magic as much as he normally does and will be able to conserve energy better this way
• Second Origin boosts his magic abilities
• His various forms increase his magic by a lot
• Can satisfy your desire for a pirate vs ninja fight

Disadvantages:

• While he can avoid Ace’s fire attacks, Ace can do the same
• Less stamina
• Using magic burns through his energy faster than Ace does, though fire eating gets it back
• Ace is most likely too fast for Natsu to get a chance to completely eat
• While Ace can be burned by high enough temperatures, we haven’t seen any feats of Natsu’s to say he could reach those temperatures
• Black Flame Dragon Mode and E.N.D forms are likely to be excluded, potentially along with some of what we’ve listed
• Most likely will start the fight shooting fire off everywhere before he realizes it doesn’t work on Ace, and only then will start strategizing
• And even then, he can’t exploit any specific weaknesses of Ace’s such as water or extremely high temperatures

Ace

Advantages:

• Can resist Natsu’s fire magic with his fire body
• Natsu cannot exploit Ace’s weakness to magma, water or Haki
• Has a lot more stamina
• Using Devil Fruit powers does not rely on some sort of magic meter. It does not tire the user out faster than normal actions.
• Because of this, Ace can use his bigger attacks more frequently.
• Has good manners
  

Disadvantages:

• Natsu can potentially bypass his intangibility
• Without intangibility his durability is low
• Without intangibility Natsu can easily beat Ace in hand-to-hand combat
• His attacks will keep Natsu refueled
• His Conqueror’s Haki can only make Natsu flinch at best
• Some of his best feats come from scaling, and Death Battle rarely uses scaling
• Has some narcoleptic tendencies

Verdicts

Grand Blazer

*ahem*

Ha.

Haha.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA.

I am not okay with this. At all. This is so wrong. This should not be happening. Here's the short version to my salt's existence.

Here’s the long version:

You can all probably guess who I want to see win this, based off my avatar, the fact that I wrote practically all of the Natsu analysis, and that I’ve said in the past that Fairy Tail is probably my favorite anime/manga (yes Internet I know about my shit taste feel free to laugh your fucking ass off about it). So lemme just say, you guys have NOOOOO idea how much I have riding on this match. I won't go too far into the details, but there's a lot. If you read our Zoro VS Erza blog, you can probably guess that I was pretty upset by the verdict of that match. It was right, but then kinda it stopped doing that like a month later. At least, depending on what you accepted for that controversial meteor feat. So that was just a spectacular feeling. I was just thinking "Oh boy, I loved that feeling. It was a great feeling. I really want them to do that a second time so I can experience it all over again but even worse".

And boy is it worse this time, because not only was Natsu already fighting Zeref when the fight was announced, and has been for like six chapters now (so it’s been like a month and a half since then), but friggin’ four days after the reveal for this, what do we see except Natsu going Dragon Force during the fight! Then a week after that, Zeref just got a huge power boost that Natsu is still probably gonna take on later! And just like a month ago we got a trailer for the new movie where he’s turning into a dragon, A MOVIE WE KNEW WAS COMING SINCE 2015, BY THE WAY, so you know. There is absolutely no better time to do this match-up. And by no better time I mean this is literally 100% no questions asked the absolute worst fucking time to do this fight.

Okay. Venting done. Actual verdict time.

So people have actually been pretty divided over who should win this match. Some are voting Natsu, some are voting Ace, and I can see the argument for both sides. The general gist of these One Piece VS Fairy Tail matches, at least in my opinion, kinda boils down to "both series have stakes that are continuously rising and One Piece has just had more to raise those stakes". You could say that's the most basic argument for why Erza lost to Zoro, why Natsu would lose to Luffy, why Gray would lose to... idk Sanji? But it's a bit different this time around with Ace having died before the timeskip and big power boost, which closes the gap of power between him and Natsu. So does that change enough to mean I can get my win?

For starters, the main issue with this match is that obviously both characters use fire but neither can be affected by that, right? Natsu eats it and gets stronger, Ace resists it and gets stronger. So when the fight starts, they'd probably both shoot off some flames, resist the attack and get powered up from it. Neither of them are going to continue with that if it's not working.

So that means they'll both mainly be relying on their melee skills, plus lightning powers in Natsu's case. Most Ace supporters are saying that he takes the strength and speed category, so he could easily take Natsu out in a hand-to-hand fight.

Here's my personal problem with that argument though. For the most part, Ace's big DC feats come from him blowing stuff up with his fire powers, and we don't actually see much of him with just hand-to-hand and such. This wouldn't be so much of a problem, but in VS there's kind of a clear difference between things like attack potency and striking strength, and the feats Ace supporters seem to keep using rely on the first one.

Of course, it's not that big an issue if they're all pulling from the same source of power that is Ace's logias power. Goku can use his Ki with the Kamehameha to blow up a planet, so his fists powered up with the same Ki should be capable of the feat too, right? Sure. But then consider that Natsu is gonna be affected by the actual fire of the attack and just what Ace is packing without it and I gotta ask; what's his power then? He was trained in hand-to-hand as a kid, okay, he killed some big animals as a kid, okay, he was said to be really skilled even without his Logias powers, okay. But that doesn’t seem to be anything clear cut for what the current Ace is like. So then from what I can tell, Natsu has done more things without his magic than Ace has without his logias, such as when he stopped the Dorma Anim from crushing him and then made it fall over. And that thing ain't weighing anything small.

Basically; neither will be harmed by the magic/logias, so once you remove their main sources of power, it seems to me Natsu is stronger in physical strength. Plus, Natsu’s got the Lightning Flame Dragon Mode and Dragon Force to close the power gap (the latter of which he’s currently in and fighting Zeref with because good-ass timing). So while Natsu and Ace should have similar durability (since their magic and logias don’t really affect that) and they should be at about the same speeds due to scaling to the meteor and tsunami freezing feats again, I’d say Natsu is physically stronger when you remove the fire aspect of everything. So it’s really a melee contest between the two, so it’s time cover the arguments there.

Most people would of course say Ace has his intangible flame body to prevent Natsu from hitting him, and then most would fire back with the argument of Natsu eating Ace. While it’s not incredibly time consuming to eat fire for Natsu, it can take about 3-5 seconds depending on how much is around. But this is probably the best feat we’ve seen of it, and I made that gif myself and it came out to be about 4.6 seconds. All that fire, and more since you can see stuff coming in from off-screen, was eaten in the span of 4.6 seconds. With Ace up-close and being a far smaller meal than that, it shouldn’t take him that long to eat him up. Maybe a second or two, but with MHS speeds, Ace could potentially still turn back in that time to get out. And if Natsu just got in an arm or something, Ace could regenerate it. If Natsu got all of Ace in, as unlikely as it may be, it’s a bit trickier. When the Salamander eats fire, it seems to get converted into energy right away and doesn’t stay fire. The problem is we don’t know at what point that happens, the mouth, throat, or stomach, so maybe Natsu kills him, maybe Ace reverts back inside and blows Natsu up, who knows? It’s a thing we’re unsure of. But at the end of the day, Ace has the reaction speed to turn back into being not-fire in time to avoid being eaten. Simple as that.

By the way, with all the cool shit Natsu can do with like the Phoenix Blade or Exploding Lightning Blade, I’m gonna be kinda disappointed if the kill is just him eating Ace. I get it’s not as accurate, but c’mon. It’d be badass to see.

So Natsu eating fire prevents Ace from using fire attacks, but he can’t really eat Ace himself in his fire body, so how is he supposed to harm him? Well the easy answer might be the Lightning Flame Dragon Mode, but I have an alternative one. While Natsu doesn’t have the heat like Akainu's magma to harm Ace, he has fought someone with a fire body before, that being Atlas Flame, who we see resist both physical attacks and non-physical attacks, claiming that “breath and the like are ineffective against my flame body”. Remind you of a certain pirate? And yet despite that, Natsu is able to latch onto Atlas Flame like it’s a solid being no problem. There’s nothing to say he couldn’t have punched or attacked the thing, so it’s possible he could. At the very least, grabbing Ace is certainly with the range of what we know, and from there it could be pretty easy to eat him, though that’s already been discussed. And if you wanna try saying that the only reason he could touch it was because of his dragon slayer qualities, we’ve seen him grab fire like it’s a solid before. And even more than that, we saw Gajeel grab Rogue with the former in a physical form and the latter in a non-physical form of the same “element”. The problem with this is that there’s still no direct attacking to any of this, so it’s still kind of speculative as to whether or not Natsu can actually hit Ace.

That’s kind of a reoccuring problem that I’ve been seeing with this match at least. Natsu can eat Ace? Okay but where does it turn into magic and kill Ace? Natsu can touch fire creatures? Okay but he didn’t necessarily attack them.

So, to recap up until this point again because this verdict is almost 1200 words long even without the salt section at the beginning, I believe:

• Both can absorb the others fire to get more powerful, making their main forms of attacks useless
• Via scaling, Natsu and Ace should have about the same speed and durability, with one maybe slightly edging over the other depending on how nice you may want to be, but Natsu has greater striking strength when you strip the two of their magic and logias powers
• My reasoning for this is that Natsu has shown off greater feats without his magic, such as pushing back against Dorma Anim, than Ace has without his logias, at least as far as I know. I didn’t research him for this match, and I’m basing it off of what I’ve seen others bring up for him.
• While most people think Natsu can eat Ace, we don’t really have a set speed for how fast he can suck up fire. I believe this is best feat we’ve seen of it. Given the range Natsu covered in that short amount of time, he could definitely eat Ace in a fair bit less. That could still wind up being too slow mind you, given the reaction speed on the pirate, but it could be possible to pull it off.
• Another problem to this is that we’re unsure when exactly Natsu turns the fire he eats into magic, but we do know that if Ace didn’t revert back in time he’d be converted to this energy and die.
• While a lot may argue that Natsu can’t harm Ace’s flame body, we see him touch Atlas Flame no problem, along with other fires to help us say it’s not just because of Dragon Slayer magic, so it’s possible he could do the same for Ace
• However, I only say “possible”, not guaranteed. All speculation.

So that leaves us with Natsu maybe being able to hurt Ace’s flame body with both his hand-to-hand abilities and his lightning in LFDM, his greater striking power, his ability to resist Ace’s main form of attack, thus leaving Ace without logias powers and a fair bit weaker because of it even if he can handle it decently well, and the potential chance to eat Ace should he turn his whole body into fire and be up close to Natsu.

Of all of that, the two biggest problems I find is in that Natsu turning Ace into magic and attacking him in the fire body are still just speculative. But with the former, since I doubt Ace is actually gonna pull a strategy of letting himself be eaten, it’s countered by Ace being fast enough to turn back. And with the latter, what I’d say is the deciding factor, there’s really about as much there to say one answer as there is the other from what I’ve seen. Maybe my want for Natsu to win is letting be too nice to him, or my fear of being bias along my stress is letting me think Ace is stronger than he actually is, but them’s the breaks, and this is what I got from them.

Honestly, if it was any other VS match, I’d probably be incapable of making a decision on that matter. But this is Death Battle, and at the end of the day one of the big things keeping this from being easy is that I think the stats between the two are pretty dang close to each other, but most of it still comes from scaling to others. So once you remove a good majority of it as DB does, Natsu just overall seems to have it better there.

The main two things I see for just Ace are changing the weather of an island when he showed up and then blowing up part of another one in an attack collision with another guy, but those were obviously with the logias he won’t be able to use on Natsu. But if you take Natsu being able to harm Ace even in his fire body, boost up his pushing over Dorma Anim, melting Domus Flau and one-shotting the mountain-sized demon feats with a Lightning Flame Dragon King Force Mode… Well, I don’t think Ace has what it takes to handle that. I’ve said it before that I’m definitely no One Piece expert, so for all I know I’ve misinterpreted a couple of things to the Ace side of this match, and I guess it’s kind of a cop-out to go via DB standards as opposed to your own. If I end up being wrong, gg no re bye. But from everything I’ve seen?

I think Natsu’s gonna be coming back to Fairy Tail with one huge bounty cashed.

Jokerke12

Hello, my name is Jokerke12. It’s an honour to finally be on the G1 Death Battle Fan Blog.

Firstly, I have to say when I first saw the hint Ben posted on his Twitter about this fight I didn’t think it was gonna be Natsu vs Ace, since Zoro vs Erza was not that long ago. I was willing to bet money on it NOT being Natsu vs Ace. Luckily, I didn’t.
What do I think about the fight itself? Well, I knew they were gonna do it sooner or later, so I’m not surprised by it. What I AM surprised about is the fact that they didn’t wait. It has been confirmed long ago that Fairy Tail is in its last arc, and it was obvious even before that. I thought that they would at least wait for the end of the year to do this fight, but I guess I was wrong. Also I hear Ace is getting a spin off manga this year, so even more reason to wait, but whatever. Personally, if they did decide to wait longer, than I could’ve even see them doing Natsu vs Sabo, since Sabo now has the Mera Mera no Mi and he has some dragon motif going on, unlike Ace.

I was mainly invited because I read/watched One Piece and have knowledge on it, though I also watched/read Fairy Tail. But I have to confess that while I read every chapter of Fairy Tail, I skipped a lot of One Piece to be up to date with the manga. Most of my knowledge on the parts I skipped come from AMVs, discussion videos and Wikipedia/Wikia articles (and of course the research I did for this blog).

So, overall I know a few things about both combatants, but as to who wins? Well, let’s take a look.

First, let’s compare stats (without scaling):
Speed:

Natsu has shown to be faster than the eye of a trained fighter (Sting) can track, intercepted missiles and dodged Laxus’s lightning.

Ace could react to gunfire and activate his intangibility in time. Since he reacted to Van Augur’s shots, that means he can at least react to objects moving at around mach 100.
It’s a close call, but I give this to Natsu.

Destructive capability:

Natsu can destroy a mansion with a single punch, melted a colosseum with his presence alone and he destroyed a GIGANTIC god-like being with his strongest attack.

Ace can easily destroy buildings and multiple battleships with a single Fire Fist and match a single attack of the Marine Admiral, Aokiji.

It might look like Natsu has this too, but you shouldn’t forget the fact that Ace does not have to conserve magic like Natsu, so he can use his heavy-hitting attacks more frequently, so I’d say they are even. Although Natsu has a clear edge in pure physical strength.

Durability:

Natsu can effortlessly stop Sting’s Holy Nova and he survives giant explosions regularly, but his magic reserves are finite and run out quickly, if he’s not careful.

Ace can reflexively turn intangible which makes most attacks useless against him, his Devil Fruit ability does not tire him more than regular activities and has enough stamina to fight someone equally for five days.

Durability goes to Ace due to Logia intangibility and better stamina. Without intangibility, however he can’t survive Natsu’s stronger attacks.

So, it’s pretty even stat-wise, and scaling doesn’t change it much. You can scale Ace’s speed to Admirals and other Commanders in Whitebeard’s crew, but since he doesn’t have Observation Haki he can’t be compared to Marco intercepting Kizaru’s laser beams, since Marco most likely has Observation Haki. It can help close the gap between him and Natsu, but if we also apply scaling to the Dragon Slayer he also gains a big boost via Erza’s meteor feat. We’re back where we started. But I hear you saying “It doesn’t matter if Natsu’s faster or even stronger, he cannot harm Ace.”

...Or can he?

What are the weaknesses of a Logia DF user? Being submerged in water, getting touched by Seastone, getting hit by something coated in Haki, having their element’s natural weakness exploited and lastly, getting hit by a superior version of their element. Which can Natsu exploit? Seastone and Haki are obviously out of the picture. Natsu cannot use Haki and has no access to Seastone. Being submerged in water and exploiting fire’s natural weakness like water and cold depend on where they fight, since Natsu has no access to either of those things. Then maybe his fire is hot enough to hurt Ace, just like Akainu’s magma did. If we’re talking about normal magma, then Natsu can actually make fire that hot, however magma isn’t as hot as you might think, it’s only around 700-1300 Celsius (1290-2370 Fahrenheit) which is around the same temperature as the melting point of steel, something Natsu can melt. However, saying that it’s enough to hurt Ace assumes Akainu’s magma isn’t hotter than normal magma and if you look around calcs of Akainu’s magma then you’ll find that his magma is much-MUCH hotter than normal magma.

So, what? Is Natsu out of luck? He cannot harm Ace, therefore he loses? If you only take One Piece concepts into account, yes, but maybe not if you take Fairy Tail concepts into account.

If you know a little bit about Fairy Tail, you should know that Natsu can literally eat fire. So, an obvious question comes to mind: “Can Natsu eat Ace?” In theory, yes. But it’s not that easy. You might be reminded how Natsu died in One Minute Melee. Ace overfed him with fire, but that most likely won’t work as Natsu can consume LARGE amounts of fire and it seems to get turned into magic almost instantly, and nothing suggests Ace can force his fire down Natsu’s throat. But can Natsu just absorb all of Ace while he’s in fire form? No, Ace can choose to deactivate it and he can’t take a bite out of Fire form Ace as it is likely once fire is disconnected from him it no longer counts as part of his body. Natsu would have to eat him all at once. Since Natsu can grab fire, he could potentially grab Ace and try to eat him then, but again, Ace can just turn back to normal. Technically Natsu can eat Ace, but not during a fight. If Natsu can grab Ace, then he might be able to attack him, but grabbing something and damaging something are two entirely different things.

What now? Natsu COULD POSSIBLY harm Ace, MAYBE, but nothing concrete that would definitely prove or at least suggest that Natsu can bypass the Logia intangibility.What do we do now? I’ll tell you what do we do now. We look for answers in the real world.

Remember how I said the weaknesses of fire are water and cold? Well, when you think about it water and cold are strong against fire because they destroy it one way or another, but from Luffy’s fight against Crocodile and Enel, the guy made of sand and the guy made of lightning, we know you don’t need to destroy a Logia’s element to damage them. In Crocodile’s case water causes his sand to stick together, thus allowing physical attacks to land, and in Enel’s case Luffy’s rubber body does not conduct electricity, thus allowing Luffy to touch him. So all we need is something that doesn’t pass through, but interacts with fire and isn’t absorbed, or destroyed by it.

What if I told you that fire conducts electricity?

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/45105/does-fire-conduct-electricity-why

Fire is made of plasma and plasma conducts electricity, meaning even in fire form the lightning from Natsu’s Lightning Flame Dragon mode would enter Ace’s body and damage him like electricity normally would. And that’s it. With the durability to tank Ace’s attacks, the speed to outpace his movements, the destructive capability to crush his physical body, the hand-to-hand combat prowess to overwhelm him, the constant fuel from his flames, the ability to outright negate his fire by consuming it and the ability to bypass his intangibility. All of these facts point to one single outcome: Natsu wins

And if you still doubt that lightning could harm Ace, well…

One of the primary components of flames is water vapor. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-fire-made-of-607313

Kirby Kid

Whoo boy, there definitely seems to be a lot riding on this match.

At the risk of not being similar to the others verdicts, both of which are INCREDIBLY LONG and cover just about EVERYTHING about this match, I'll try to be as original as I can here.

Like, really guys, thanks for leaving me with the scraps.

The way I see it, as is the case with other Death Battles, it all depends on what they allow with powerscaling. It's nothing they haven't deliberately been against before. As it stands, Natsu scales to A LOT of the Fairy Tail higher ups, which includes Zeref, a guy who Acnologia to an extent respects as an equal. They both wedge a hole in each other's plans. Natsu, meanwhile, is seen beating the shit out of Zeref, who by the way, is in no way giving Natsu an easy fight.

Statistically speaking, Ace's win/loss record is great. Except, we don't get to see a lot of that, because he dies.

Even if you allow scaling, Natsu's has been shown to be more.. direct, seems to be a better term.

Ace is scaled to a guy who froze an entire Tsunami sure, but said ice guy clearly was not using the same level of power as he did in the aforementioned feat, as he was fighting Whitebeard (the strongest pirate in the One Piece universe) at the time, so I doubt he went all-out or even got close to using that amount of power when fighting Ace, with their confrontation being barely a minute long, and Ace and Luffy running away amidst the chaos of a war that likely was keeping Aokiji busy.

Natsu meanwhile has feats that either surpass, match or is eaten by Ace’s stats depending on what you accept, and this is all done with Natsu's base level feats without Dragon Force. Most of his feats, one-shotting a mountain-sized god, roaring through an island, and evaporating a large lake, all done without Dragon Force. Add in the fact that Natsu can touch and affect Ace's flame body, an important ability that Logia users spam the shit out of, Ace will be left high and dry when trying to deal with Natsu's onslaught of attacks.

Natsu will undoubtedly get stronger by the end of the series, which is already nearing the finish line. So while I feel that Natsu takes the fight as he is now, even if you don't believe Natsu will win this match, he will get a ton stronger by the end of the series, and while it may be my bias talking, I'd hate to see Natsu lose a fight he’s basically set to win.

Ace is going to meet his E.N.D... again.