Death Battle Analysis: Valentine

Time for another Skullgirls character already? SWEET! It's pretty clear by this point I love talking about this verse, and HELLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOO NURSE! Is there a lot to talk about today. Valentine is one of the many fan favorite characters in the verse, and there's some pretty clear reasons for why that is, and it’s about time I covered her. So strap in and eat whatever Valentine’s Day candy you have left, cause we covering Val.

Background

Valerie was once a normal genius medical nurse and scientific researcher who was hired for King Renoir’s new program, The Anti-Skullgirls Labs. These 9 Labs were secret black ops facilities designed to study all facets of science and produce a solution to Skullgirls above all else.

Valerie along with a ‘metric bunch’ of other medical scientists ended up working for ASG Lab 7, which specialized in Medical and Drug research. Soon after however, The Grand War began and Lab 7’s program was soon shifted to trying to create super soldiers. The times got so desperate that Valerie and her fellow nurses weren’t just in charge of these tests, but test subjects themselves. Valerie, along with her fellow nurses Christine, Holly, Esther and Patty, injected themselves with an experimental super drug which permanently altered their bodies, giving them cross shaped pupils, grayer skin, and most notably giving them superhuman physical stats and powers.

Because of the success of the test, the 5 Nurses were made into the latest installment of ASG’s elite black ops enforcement squad known as The Last Hope, and they would all chose code names based off of one of the five Saint Holiday’s.

Valerie would choose Valentine (Despite ironically being born on Christmas) and be dubbed the second in command of the team, behind Christine who was now Christmas. This also started somewhat of a friendly rivalry between the two as Valentine constantly tries to over achieve on their goals and take on a leadership role.

Valentine’s mischievous best friend (...with benefits) Holly, became the spooky fun trick-or-treater known as Hallow.

Esther became Easter and Patty became…..Patty. Anyway the new Last Hope began training against each other in numerous martial arts and going on stealth assassination missions as a collective unite, all while still doing their jobs of making other superhuman soldiers for the war. Since the Nurses were all superhuman physically already, the new goal was to develop psychic soldiers with mind manipulation abilities. This had pretty disastrous results, as during one of the tests, subjects overloaded with power causing an explosion that destroyed all of Lab 7, and cost Val her right eye.

They were successful in creating one psychic soldier however, Brain Drain, who was made the head of the infamous Lab 0. After the war, all the ASG Labs were permanently shut down except for Lab 8 and Lab 0.

Last Hope came to work with Lab 0, going on all sorts of reconnaissance and stealth missions, raiding villainous strongholds with the ASG Agents, and preparing to battle the next Skullgirl.

Unbeknownst to her teammates, during a raid Valentine happened upon a civilian girl caught in the crossfire who happened to have the ultra rare blood type perfect for Brain Drain’s Skullgirl blood enhancement program. Knowing that stopping Skullgirls would save countless lives, Valentine put her morals aside and kidnapped her.

She then helped Brain Drain turn her into the tragic Skullgirl slaying monster known as Painwheel. All this secrecy created some tensions in her team, as she was regularly absent from their sparring sessions due to begrudgingly helping Brain Drain work on this project.

Even though Valentine was the most capable fighter on the team, they needed to function as a cohesive unit to succeed. But wouldn’t ya know it?

Right as they were confronting this issue, a new Skullgirl has just came to be, Marie Korbel, otherwise known as Bloody Marie. The squad rushed out to No Man’s Land to get a visual and do reconnaissance as they waited for the ASG Agents of Lab 8 to arrive so they can attack the Skullgirl in full force.

However seeing that the Skullgirl was alone and just a young girl, Valentine boldly proposed that the team should hit her now in an all out ambush. While her and Christmas argued about this, the shape shifting monster Double was able to sneak into their ranks and surprising attack them.

In the attack she killed Hallow right in front of Val...RIP you mischievous little trickster. And the attack soon went into an all out war as the Skullgirl summoned forth her massive zombie army and the remaining Last Hope members were surrounded in the fight of their lives.

The fighting was as intense as it possibly could as they beat back countless zombies and monsters who just kept on coming and getting right back up.

Eventually it lead to all of The Last Hope members sacrificing themselves to give Valentine a chance to take the Skullgirl down, as she was the strongest and had the best chance of pulling it off. Valentine attacked Marie with all her fury she sliced her, shredded her, poisoned her, damaged her in any way she knew how.

...but no matter what she did, Marie refused to die. She just regenerated immediately from whatever Valentine did, there was no way for her to win.

Defeated, and her team laying dead all around her, Valentine was completely out of options and basically resigned herself to death. Surprisingly though, Marie was impressed that their super science had enabled them to find her so quickly, and offered Val a way out.

Marie above all else wanted revenge against the Medici Mafia, and did not actively want to kill innocent people, alas she knew she couldn’t use her powers on a rampage in the Canopy Kingdom without meeting official resistance. So she cut Valentine a deal, if she helps her take down the Anti-Skullgirl defences, she along with numerous others would be spared.

Valentine didn’t want to help Marie, but she had to consider her options and one thing was clear, if she ‘helped’ Marie she could study and gather massive amounts of data on the Skullgirl up close, data which would advance ASG for Years to come afterward and possibly yield a solution to Skullgirls altogether.

Above all else Valentine refused to have her teams deaths be in vain, knowing that Painwheel was out there to stop Marie, Valentine agreed to her terms. Too at least somewhat fool Marie, Valentine went full on villain mode and acted clearly evil and cold blooded to everyone she encountered.

This includes fellow members of ASG as she used her security clearance to let the Skullgirl into Lab 8 and even personally murdered its director Dr. Avian, as the data she was collecting would save more lives in the long run than she was taking, which was justification enough. Valentine didn’t just help Marie cripple the ASG defences however, she also used her ninja reconnaissance skills to gather information on the Medici mob she seeked to destroy, gathering lists of all affiliated people and keeping tabs on key members of the organization. All the while however she was gathering tons of crucial information on the Skullgirl and Skull Heart, and relaying it to Brain Drain in secret as she went deeper and deeper undercover.

She even also took notes of other things she found on the way, like Ms. Fortunes inability to die being seen as a potential way to bring back The Last Hope, as Obviously trying to use the Skull Heart to do that is a stupid idea.

How the story ends from there depends on which timeline of the Skullgirls multiverse you are following, generally Valentine betrays Marie but usually only after some other character knocks her out and takes care of Marie themself. It is however, worth mentioning that in the timeline Valentine herself stops Marie she decides to make amends for her crimes and sacrifices herself by wishing on the heart to become the Skullgirl.

Valentine does this to gain more intel about how the Skullgirl and Skull Heart function than one could possibly gain from observing and relaying all of this intel back to Brain Drain.

Val knew she would eventually lose herself as the Heart overtook and corrupted her, but she trusted her own tragic creation Painwheel to put a stop to her. Wow never seen a move that perfectly told how a character has huge balls but an inner soft side at the same time.

Valentine is a complex character, and her actions are divisive, but one thing is clear, she is determined to stop Skullgirls forever, no matter what.

“Everyone has a weakness...”

-Valentine

Personality

Valentine is a very driven, hardworking and above all else pragmatic person, who does everything in her power to succeed, and can convince herself to justify any action if the overall benefit of taking it is largely greater than the cost. Valentine is actually very caring and empathetic on the inside, but due to her pragmatic values, tends to bury this underneath a cold emotionless and sometimes even sadistic cover-mannerism in order to do what she feels needs to be done. She is often described as being an overachiever type character and this is definitely true as during operations she often tries to take on a leadership role and get herself involved in every facet of the plan at hand. This has also lead to Val having a rather large ego, she thinks very highly of herself and her capabilities and is not easily impressed. In conversation Val is always strictly business getting right to her point, she does sometimes use playful banter, but that is generally when she's stalling for time or trying to throw off a foe. She does however have a genuine love of medical science, helping the world and learning in general. Her other likes include Alcohol, The Scientific Method, Studying things from afar, Snakes, Wolves, Classical music, Punctuality, Careful planning, Taking things apart, News, Non-Fiction Reading, Mind games, Chess, Acoustic guitar, Meat, Eastern culture, and Dark chocolate. While her dislikes are Needless formality, Sentimentality, Weak people, Cooking, Bedside manner, Brain Drain, Back pain, and Candy.

Intelligence

Valentine by human standards is a total genius medical scientist and doctor skilled in all sorts of complicated procedures and experimental forms of science. As evident by her position at ASG which only houses genius level scientists, and her hand in creating numerous cybernetic ASG Agents with esoteric powers, not to mention helping to turn herself into a superhuman. Valentine is also extremely talented in her martial arts and is great at espionage, reconnaissance, gathering intelligence and more. This is all because Valentine has a very pragmatic personality and is a total overachiever who won’t settle for less than the top. The most notable thing about Valentine’s intelligence is how manipulative she can be, she can easily fool numerous members of the cast into acting in the manner in which she wants them too and quickly think of ways to better her position at a moments notice.

Powers

The super serum that The Last Hope took did more than just give them superhuman physical stats, it also gave them a few handy powers that greatly help them in their covert missions. Such abilities include:

• Aerial Mobility Increase:

Valentine possesses the weird but useful abilities to double jump and also dash mid air, to surprise attack her enemy by suddenly gliding towards them at alarming speeds.

• Teleportation:

Valentine possess the ability to teleport around the field like that of a true ninja. Her teleport appears to deconstruct her physical body and reconstruct it in another location. Valentine uses this ability in a variety of ways, including just normally teleporting, teleporting away in a cloud of smoke to confuse her foe, after getting knocked down, teleporting into an upright position for instant recovery, and even using the teleports deconstructing nature to knock her foes backwards.

• Healing:

As you might expect of a Nurse character, one of her powers is the ability to heal things. Valentine can activate a minor healing factor through consuming Dark Chocolate which she caries, which slowly repairs her injuries as she fights, though not to the extent of regrowing notable portions of herself. Basically she can heal from anything a normal person could, but faster.

• Time Stop:

Valentines primary hax is her ability to freeze her opponents in time. While she can only freeze someone in time for a couple moments, Valentine makes good use of this power. Generally she saves it for when her foe is about to hit her only to then freeze them and leave them helpless for a counter attack.

Instruments of Torture

As comes naturally with being a badass ninja chick, Valentine has a large, large arsenal of different killing tools to operate on even the most unruly patients. Valentine keeps this arsenal largely in her magic satchel of a medical bag, worn on the back of her belt. Her tools include:

• Ripsaw:

The Ripsaw is Valentine's primary weapon, an extremely sharp bonesaw that has been modified to have Tsuka sword handle and a stabbing point to turn it into an effective combat weapon.

And true to her ninja motifs, she wears it holstered horizontally behind her hips for quickdraws.

This weapon is so sharp it can cut through multiple steal bars like a sword, completely on accident, and when used in Val’s wide swings and sawing attacks it can shred through most other characters as well.

• Dead Cross:

Dead Crosses are Valentine’s versatile side weapons which she uses for distance attacks and area control. She wears these pink, red cross shaped shurikens in large quantity on her kneecaps, where she can quickly grab handfuls and toss them at her foe.

In addition when coupled with the medical wrappings Val wears on her shins, she can use them in mid-range combat, shooting them out from her legs on the retractable cloth, as well as pulling on the cloth to spin them.

• Knee-jerk Hammer:

It’s a doctor’s office classic, a small hard pocket hammer to hit things with.

• Stethoscope:

A device so sinister...So Icy Cold when it touches your bare flesh it...AHHHHHHHHH!

• Caliper:

This giant pair of tweezers is great for clipping ankles to throw off her foes.

• Knife:

Val usually keeps a large knife on her person to use to trip someone up with a slash to their achilles.

• Anesthesia Tank:

One of Valentine’s favorite ways to take down a stubborn foe is to grab hold of them behind and force a mask full of knock-out gas onto them, reducing them to their knees in seconds.

• Defibrillator:

Valentine’s Defibrillator is arguably her most powerful weapon, not only does it send massive amounts of electricity into her foe to the point where they explode backwards with a ton of damage,

but she can also use a technique called Forbidden Procedure, which in true Frankenstein manner she can resurrect a deceased alley with 33% of their health.

Mementos:

Valentine also took the primary weapons of all her fallen Last Hope comrades and incorporated them into her arsenal in their memory, these Weapon’s include:

• Scalpels:

From Christmas she got her enormous collection of Scalpels which Valentine uses both close range and as throwing weapons in large quantities.

• IV Naginata:

The primary weapon of Patty, this deadly polearm has two razor sharp blades at the top and a counterbalancing stand on the other side, making it extremely fast and powerful with its slashes and even more so with its stabs.

• Body Bags:

An odd yet versatile weapon, Easter’s body bags are strong enough to restrain Double for a notable amount of time and can be used effectively as parachutes and gliders. In combat their have two different uses, one is to quickly net it around your foe to completely restrain them before seismic tossing them to the ground.

The second is to use a bag with a cadaver already inside to shield yourself and have deliver physical strikes by pressure pointing the thing.

• Syringes:

Syringes were Hallow’s speciality and can be used both up close and as a thrown distance weapon. Hallow often referred to these as Tricks and Treats due to the fun little status effects she loaded into them, making them now the most versatile weapon in Valentine’s arsenal. These syringes can be loaded with one of 3 types of toxins, the Orange toxin causes her foes reaction time to be severely nulled, the Green toxin causes minor paralysis in foes making them more prone to freezing up, and the Purple toxin...is just straight up poison that causes hemorrhaging, diminishing the foes health overtime.

Skills

Height: 6’

Weight: 160 lbs

Age: 27

Valentine is heavily trained in numerous martial arts, stealth and assassination, and is considered the best member of The Last Hope in all of the above, to the point she was able to beat them all in back to back one on one fights. More so useful to her in combat is her trickster like strategy with throwing her foe off. For example, Valentine is 6 feet tall and 160 pounds, by womens standards she is a very large and imposing person, but most of her stances have her crouching down and taking up as little space as possible. This is partly to leave less area open to strikes, but also to trick her opponent into thinking she's smaller and less of a threat than she actually is. She also employs a well known art of sexually distracting the foe with her revealing outfit and suggestive comments and gestures before striking.

Some of her more famous tactics involve using objects as a cover.

Pulling out weapons as a distraction for her to use a physical attack.

And knocking foes high into the air where her powers are most advantageous. While in the Air she can use her two most famous attacks without much issue.

• EKG Flatliner:

This attack moves both on ground and in air as Val blitzes back and forward ripping into her foe with her Ripsaw until she causes them to flatline.

• Dead on Arrival:

Valentine’s most iconic and deadly move as she throws you in a bodybag, stops time and performs a horrifying involuntary surgery on you that spills you’re blood everywhere.

Feats

Strength:

• In her origin story she canonically dealt damage to Marie Korbel and thus scales to her.

Marie is so powerful she can pick up Medici Tower, a building so tall it passes the clouds, and chucked it into the Bay. A building of Medici Towers class would weigh upwards of 700 million kg, and the conservative distance Marie must have thrown it is 5 miles, as Medici Tower is located in the center of downtown, and the entire port town of Little Innsmouth lies between it and the coast. Gravity would have pulled the building to the ground in about 2 seconds so the building must have been thrown at speeds of over 4000 meters per second. The Kinetic Energy of this would equal 1.34 Megatons of TNT. That is nearly 90 times more powerful than the nukes in WW2 btw.

• Can Cause Earthquakes in the Area with her physical strikes.
• Defeated Painwheel, Ms. Fortune and Double.

Speed:

• Can dodge point blank automatic fire, casually teleporting out of the way after the bullets were fired and proceeding to mock the shooter for even using a gun.

• Has Numerous times fought on par with Painwheel, even defeating her half the time. Painwheel is fast enough to jump up and strike her opponent 5 times in midair before she begins to fall, which would require speeds of Mach 11.
• Has also shown to be pretty even with Ms. Fortune, one of the verse’s premier speedsters.

Durability:

• While she did lose her eye in the process, she endured the destruction of Lab 7, which is an enormous facility the size of a stadium.
• Immediately got up after beatings from Ms. Fortune, Painwheel, Beowulf and Robo-Fortune.

General:

• Has such High Stamina, she was able to defeat 3 of her fellow Last Hope members in back to back fights then immediately go into an all out battle against the Skullgirl and her forces.
• Is the best member of The Last Hope in basically every way.
• Her intelligence is enough to match wits with other ASG scientists and even Marie herself.

Summary

Advantages

• Small City Level DC/Durability
• Hypersonic Speeds
• High Intelligence
• Martial Arts and Stealth Skills
• Increased mobility
• Teleportation
• Time Hax
• Status Effects and Toxins
• Healing
• Resurrection
• Diverse Arsenal of Weapons

Disadvantages

• She has like, been defeated by literally every character in the cast at one point or another, most often when she had Double as backup.
• She has also lost to Painwheel and Ms. Fortune and equal number of times to the amount she beat both of them.
• Is very Pragmatic and can get too focused in on single details.
• She's very overconfident sometimes.

Recommended Opponent:

Nightmare Nurse:

Nightmare Nurse would be perfect as she plays into all the same themes that Val does, being a superpowered Nurse superhero in the moral grey area and pulling that same horror and evil is sexy trope. Valentine has a significant advantage in DC/Dura but she's going to need it due to Nightmare Nurse’s diverse arsenal of defensive haxes and offensive powers that completely make this anyone's game.

Next Time: