Happy Mother’s Day Everyone! And For this year I thought It would be cool to do a Verse Challenge of Sorts between two rather Mother Centric Series. Steven Universe and OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes! have always been rather interconnected shows, airing on Cartoon Network around the same time, Crossing over on a few occasions and the fact that both series Creators are married IRL. So I thought it would be fun to see which series’s Main Character would win a school yard ‘My Mom can Beat Up Your Mom’ argument ala Dexter. Who’s the Stronger Mom between Pink Diamond and Carol Kincaid!
Backstory:
Pink Diamond was the youngest member of the Diamond Authority, the all powerful leaders of the mighty Gem Empire. Thought of as too immature and inexperienced by her fellow Diamonds, Pink was coddled and oppressed by her mothers all her life until her begging eventually made them yield and give her Earth as a planet to turn into a Gem Colony. But Pink quickly fell in love with the Earth and wished to preserve it rather than destroy it like intended. Unable to convince the other Diamonds to allow her to do this, Pink Diamond took on the false identity of Rose Quartz and staged a Rebellion against her own forces with her own ragtag group of Rebel freedom Fighters, The Crystal Gems. Eventually Pink faked her own death, effectively ending the war, and gave up her physical form to instead become a part of her half human Son Steven, who would go on to become the savior of the Galaxy and stop the Gem Empire’s oppressive regime.
Carol Kincaid was once a young heroine from the Neutral Zone in the cartoony superhero world in the year 201X. Going by her Superhero name Silver Spark, she joined the P.O.I.N.T. organization of the greatest heroes in the world, working alongside legends like Foxtail, Doctor Greyman and Laserblast, the latter of whom she took quite a liking too. After a particularly bad disaster on their missions causing Greyman to lose his powers, and Laserblast to seemingly be killed, leaving Carol pregnant with his child, she retired from active service. Carol moved to the suburbs and got a job as a Fitness Instructor at Lakewood Plaza Turbo while being a wholesome single mom to her son K.O., all while secretly being an undercover Agent for P.O.I.N.T. to help keep the world safe from various nasty villains. With Carol’s own Son K.O. eventually going on to save the World and become the most powerful hero ever.
Power:
Pink Diamond, as one of the Diamonds, is easily one of the most powerful characters in the entire series, above that of any normal Gem’s in the empire including beings like Lapis’ who can easily steal the entirety of the world's Oceans and Terraform Planets with their Hydrokinetic Might. During the End of the series, Steven, utilizing Pink’s Power, was able to directly overpower and defeat The Cluster, a gigantic Gem Geo Weapon that would have Violently Shattered the Earth just by forming. This power was also able to knock around White Diamond on 3 different occasions, and White is cited as the reason that Homeworld is split into two pieces.
Carol, despite her fairly pedestrian job, is a Level 8 Hero for the majority of the series and even gets up to Level 11 by the end of it. With this in mind Carol scales above the feats of Level 5 or lower Heroes to a great degree. Rad when he was a Level 4 Hero was able to make a gigantic crack across Planet X just by shaking hands with his Grandpa too intensely. Enid at Level 5 was able to tank being sucked into a room sized Black Hole and dragging a Moon into Cosma’s chest as a projectile weapon, as well as endure some hits from her. Cosma is a Space Dragon who can Eat Planets and once casually destroyed the Moon with her Telekinesis, yet she is only a Level -9 villain meaning Carol can at least somewhat downscale from her being Level 8 herself, eventually surpassing her.
Speed:
Diamonds are also REALLY Fast. Steven, when accessing Pink’s Power, is able to move so quickly relative to other Gems they appear to be moving in hyper slow motion. Diamonds like Yellow have been able to blatantly outspeed and score hits on Lapis, who is able to physically fly between Earth and Homeworld in a short timeframe. And Gem Tech like surveillance drones could travel this distance in under an hour yet could still be fought by the Crystal Gems. Considering that Homeworld is located in the Andromeda Galaxy, this means she’d scale to over 25 Billion times Light Speed.
As Mentioned Previously, Carol would be Above the speeds of Lower Level Heroes like Enid, who was able to pilot a bike to the X Nebula in Minutes as well as Fight Cosma who could travel this same distance in a fraction of a second. And Carol should be at least relevant to her in speed. Lowballing this speed by using the distance to the closest Nebula from Earth would still put this over 2 Billion times the speed of Light.
So as one can plainly see, by happenstance Pink and Carol end up being essentially On Par in terms of Raw Power and Speed. You can do more detailed Calcs to get into the nitty gritty of exactly how strong and fast they are relative to each other, but they are clearly both an unknown degree more powerful and faster than their Scaling presents given how casual these things were done. The Point is, they are super close to Even in Stats and could clearly Scrap with the other any day of the week, so this fight is going to come down to their Secondary Stats and their Powers. Let's go over Secondary Stats first.
Stamina:
Pink is a Member of the Gem species, and Gem’s…Do not get tired. Gem’s are Inorganic Rocks that project bodies made of Hard Light from the Gem itself, and as such do not require Rest, Sleep, Food, Water, Oxygen or other such things we humans do. All the Energy Gems use to do their stuff exists in the Gem itself and we have never seen or even heard of Gems ever running out of energy even when doing tasks constantly for literal Eons at a time.
Carol is an extremely well trained and physically active hero who has shown very impressive stamina on multiple occasions, fighting for literal days on end at times as part of her day job. She scales to her Son K.O. who even early into the series could spend the day winning hundreds of battles while grinding IRL with The Hero. That Said Carol can and will eventually GET Tired and has been defeated via Energy Draining in the past.
Stamina clearly goes to Pink, because duh, She cannot get tired, at least for thousands of years if at all, while Carol eventually will. However, Carol’s own impressive stamina makes this a bit of a hollow victory. Sure if this fight lasts like 30 hours or something then Carol may gas out, but what are the odds of that happening? With them both having impressive Stamina the chances are the fight will end Long before either becomes exhausted.
Range:
Pink, in her Rose Quartz persona, was more of a direct melee sword fighter who doesn’t take advantage of long range combat often. However, She is able to make and throw hard light constructs as a projectile and as a Diamond she should have the ability to fire laser beam projectile attacks which is a standard ability other Diamonds possess, giving her the option to fight from at least hundreds of meters away if need be.
Carol is a dedicated Melee fighter who specifically focuses on Martial Arts and does not have the ability to use projectile attacks naturally. However, her primary superpower, which I will get into later, does allow her the option to Gain projectile attacks to use whenever she is fighting against an opponent who has them.
With this in mind TECHNICALLY they should have equivalent fighting range and this should be a Tie. Though if I had to give an edge here I’d give a slight one to Pink as she’s MUCH taller and uses actual weapons which would give her a big reach advantage in Melee specifically, and she's also the one who Naturally has Projectiles for what it's worth.
Intelligence:
Okay so Intelligence is interesting to consider. Pink is an Immortal Alien who is at LEAST 20,000 years old, and likely much older, and is a leader of a Type 4 Galactic Empire. The Door is wide open for Pink to be vastly superhumanly intelligent, and yet she never really shows it. Pink is never shown building super tech, or piloting space ships or being unbelievably wise. Pink was a sheltered princess figure most of her life and was shown to be goofy, immature and naive, the other Diamonds not believing she’s ready to control a colony. There is a statement from Jasper praising Rose Quartz as a tactical Genius and whatnot, but this was made before she knew Pink and Rose were the same person, and yeah Of Course you’d look like a tactical genius to the losers if you are the one in command of both forces. Thus leaving how Smart Pink is pretty dang speculative overall.
Carol on the other hand isn’t necessarily a supergenius either, but she has been shown to be a very competent and tactical superheroine who worked undercover for years without being found out by anyone. She has been involved with numerous tactical operations in the past to bring down dangerous foes and organizations and regularly has to solve complex dungeons of traps and riddles.
Intellect is a BIT of a tossup, but I think I would overall give the Edge to Pink. Carol is more professional overall than Pink, but Given just how much older Pink Diamond IS, I think Carol would need something Greatly impressive to be considered above that. NTM if you believe Pink scales at all to the intelligence of Scientific Gems like Pearl or even Peridot then yeah she clearly would win. Pearl has been able to build giant Robots and a Relativistic Spaceship out of scrap metal before.
Skill:
Okay now this is the real shortcoming to Pink in my book. Pink Diamond was kept safe and secure under the watchful eye of the other Diamonds for almost her entire life, who protected her from having to do combat of any kind. She has no formal combat training and all of her experience comes from the Crystal Gem Rebellion. Now on paper, that Rebellion sounds really good because Pink was the enemy general and fought directly in battles for thousands of years. BUT the problem is Pink is a goddamn Diamond and while sure, she was pretending to be an ordinary Rose Quartz Soldier, in reality she was insurmountably more powerful, faster and versatile than every other person involved in the conflict. Pink Diamond never struggled in combat, she Couldn’t have, the only characters that could make her have to push herself are the other Diamonds and we know she didn’t fight them.
Carol is a seasoned Superhero and Expert Martial Artist living in the action packed world of OK KO, where everyone down to school kids, news anchors and babysitters has superpowers and stat sheets and regularly get into Power Battles. Carol has years of formal combat training and regularly fights Villains and Keeps up with other heroes who are comparable or even somewhat superior to her in Raw stats. She is even accredited with singlehandedly defeating the Kactus Krew, comparable and more experienced villains, in a 4 on 1 fight. She also would Scale to Enid who can do stuff like fire projectiles with such precision as to cut a bunch of food into sliced pieces and fall in such a way as to form a perfect sandwich upon landing.
Okay Skill wise, yeah Carol takes this no contest, at most Pink has some rudimentary swordsmanship training from Pearl while Carol is out here being a highly seasoned war veteran basically. In a purely skill based fight Carol is quite easily going to outmatch Pink. You can’t even argue Pink could cross this with her reach advantage as Carol is accustomed to fighting giant monsters, as well as a genuinely much larger variety of foes than Pink.
Stealth:
Pink doesn’t really utilize Stealth much, she has always been powerful and flashy with her combat and isn’t properly trained in the art. She DID successfully fool all of her forces on both sides into believing she was Rose Quartz, though that is in part thanks to her shapeshifting abilities that we must go into later. She also was able to lead a guerilla warfare campaign against her own forces, but again she controlled both sides and likely hindered her side from actually searching areas the Crystal Gems were using.
Carol has ample experience working undercover and infiltrating dangerous enemy bases from her many years as a Superhero and Subsequent work as a Spy for the Superheroes. She is quite capable of using stealth to her advantage and more likely to pull it out.
Overall I have to give Stealth to Carol here, she can and has used it just a lot better and more often than Pink who really just doesn’t go for it on any major occasion that we know of, often trying to do the opposite to try and make the other diamonds see how much of a problem the Gem Rebellion was to try and justify her giving up the planet to them.
So when looking at Secondary Stats, Pink has more categories overall, securing three to Carol’s two, but two of those are to such a slight degree that it essentially doesn’t yield a net advantage, and Stamina, the one she locked down hard, likely doesn’t matter much. Carol has a more sizable advantage over Pink in the two she secured, ESPECIALLY In Skill, which I believe will be the most important of these secondary Stats to consider. With their Stats and Traits so close otherwise besides Skill, I do believe in a pure fist fight Carol would quickly beat the crap outta her with that, and that makes me want to award the overall edge in Secondary Stats to Carol. BUT this isn’t all the stuff they bring to table, let’s see how this plays out when we consider Powers!
Pink Diamond is a Gem and thus has all the Standard Abilities that come with the Territory. Gems are a race of Alien Rocks that generate projections of Bodies out of Hard Light shined from the Gem itself. Because their Bodies are just a solid projection, Gem’s can shapeshift their form in essentially any possible way they want at will, including changing size, spawning wings to fly, or disguising themselves as others, as well as Regenerate their bodies from literally Any injury that befalls them so long as their Gem Remains intact. One needs to Destroy their actual Gem to permanently finish them off. Gem’s also can live essentially forever, survive in the vacuum of space as well as any kind of planet due to their ability to adjust their body to match any type of Gravity, immunizing them from Gravitational Manipulation. Gem’s including Pink can create Bubbles around objects or beings and teleport them away to their home, and even store beings inside of a personal pocket dimension housed inside the Gemstone itself. But as a Diamond, Pink also has several powers that are unique to her. Much like Steven, she is able to make Pink Hard Light Constructs including shields, Domes, Spikes etc, and use it to block attacks, fire off as projectiles, or to trap and crush people. She can spawn these things at will as well as move them with her mind and alter their shape after making them. Pink can Levitate with her float power, Create sonic screams that can shatter whole buildings, Fire laser beams, and summon forth a Sword and Shield from her Gem Stone. Like all Diamonds, Pink can project her Aura out as a damaging attack or even simply use it to feel and understand the feelings of others. This attack works like a barrier on the Physical, Astral and Mental plane as seen with Steven’s brief mental combat with The Diamonds. But above all else Pink is known for healing, her body can produce Tears capable of repairing the Damaged Gemstones of Gem’s including her own, and when used on organic beings it has all sorts of crazy effects. This is most commonly seen when her Tears are applied to Plant life which causes the plants to become sentient, able to move and serve her, fighting for her side and essentially letting her create a plant monster army. If used on dead animals or people, it will essentially turn them into a pink zombie creature which no longer requires food and has hair leading into a pocket dimension only Pink can access for some reason. In terms of Weaknesses, Pink’s is the same as basically any other Gem, if you break the Diamond in her belly, she dies instantly.
After talking all about a lot of the random and unorthodox powers Pink has, Carol is a Lot more simplistic in terms of arsenal. Apart from a similar building shattering scream attack, Carol essentially has One Power, That being Imitation. Imitation is the ability to instantly copy a power for yourself after seeing it in action only once, an ultimate martial arts prodigy ability. If Carol sees someone do something then she can essentially go ‘Hey, I can do that too.’ as it not only copies powerful fighting moves like Mr. Gar’s atomic Elbow drop, but also unique powers like K.O.’s Powerfist energy projectile. Now admittedly it is hard to pin down what the limitations are for What Carol can copy with this, as we have never seen her copy an ability that does not line up with her anatomy like shapeshifting or regeneration, it all appears to be powers that don’t require a change to her body to replicate. In terms of weaknesses, Carol can only have One copied power at a time, the instant she uses Imitation to copy another power, she will lose the one she had, so she has to be strategic with her resources when using this.
Okay so with all that laid out, Pink Diamond VS Carol Kincaid is essentially an Unskilled Wizard like character against a Highly skilled Warrior, with both having equivalent stats. Can Pink manage to keep Carol off her with her wacky alien powers until she can score a killing blow? Or would Carol be able to blitz through these and beat Pink into submission? One important thing to note is, What Powers of Pinks COULD Carol replicate? I very highly doubt that Carol could replicate Pink’s Shapeshifting, Regeneration, or Pocket Dimensional Stuff with Imitation. These powers are all based around Pink’s crazy Gemstone and the fact that the rest of her body is a projection, which is just too different from the flesh and blood Metahuman Carol for us to just assume Copy works like this. However, powers like Pink’s bubbling, Levitation, Lasers and Especially her Light Constructs I think are all totally free game for Carol to copy as we have seen her do that with similar abilities in the past. And Remember, Imitation makes her as much an expert in the technique as the one she copied it from for the duration she has it Imitated. Something I am more speculative on is if Carol could Copy Pink’s Healing Tears ability. Assuming she could do that, she could in theory heal herself from battle damage she amasses during the battle, but again, that is speculative. The Plant Monster Army on the other hand is probably not too much of a factor in this fight, as these plants just don’t scale anywhere near the level of these two and likely can’t help. After assessment I easily think the BEST Power Carol could copy from Pink from a tactical standpoint is her ability to make Light Constructs, As it gives Carol a really good and versatile long range attack option to equal out Pink’s own, plus it can also be used for Defense as barriers to protect Carol from essentially any of Pink’s other attacks. The Bonus is this would be the easiest Power for her TO Take as it is the primary attack method both her and Steven use in combat. Effectively little else in Pink’s arsenal matters compared to that in terms of battle, and we haven’t really seen her make much use of things like shapeshifting or such to fight people. Bubbling wouldn't really hinder Carol as she can just break out, or track Pink down again if teleported to her home, and Carol doesn't relay on any items Pink could potentially separate her from with this power. Sucking Carol into her Gem's pocket dimension on the other hand WOULD defeat Carol, but we've never actually seen or even heard about a Gem doing this in combat to a being that was fighting back, it's most likely rather difficult to pull off and does at least require someone to be in very close range.
With all this said, I think that ultimately Carol would win this fight, when both of them have the Light Construct power to utilize and effectively equal stats, Carol having a very large skill advantage just seems like a much more important edge than Pink having a handful more abilities which honestly feel a bit redundant when used against someone her equal. Most likely they will start using their constructs to hurl and block attacks from the other, but Carol will be much better at doing so, and either score a lucky shot at a distance, or eventually get into Melee combat and unleash a long combo string on the giant pink space lady. Now granted, Carol would need to Break Pink’s Gem to beat her permanently, and she doesn’t know that and thus would need either a lucky shot to do so, or to somehow deduce that's a weak point midfight, meaning its likely Carol beats Pink, but leaves the Gem intact allowing Pink to come back. But if that happened and she tried to attack Carol again I think Carol is smart enough to realize her mistake was that Gem that was left behind and do it again. I will admit, this was a pretty dang close debate in my eyes with the two matching each other in a surprising number of ways while both having some very clear advantages. I didn’t know who I was going to give this to going in, but I will say at least for me, I think the better mom won. Happy Mother’s Day Folks!