Character Analysis: Pit(Feat Lousy)

 Backstory

In the mythic world of Angel Land there existed 2 goddesses, Palutena, the Goddess of Light, and Medusa, the Goddess of Darkness. In typical Light VS. Dark fashion, Palutena did everything in her power to bestow happiness upon humankind, while Medusa did everything to bring them suffering. Fed up with her cruelty, Palutena changed Medusa’s appearance to reflect what was in her heart, an ugly monster, and banished her to the Underworld.

Angered, Medusa joined with the Underworld forces, eventually amassing an army so large, it trumped Palutena’s forces in a large-scale surprise attack. Palutena was imprisoned, most of her army was turned to stone, the 3 Sacred Treasures were stolen and hidden in the Underworld, and what was once her beautiful palace became the home of the Underworld monsters. All hope was lost.

Enter Pit, a young angel who, prior to being captured and imprisoned, was charged with commanding Palutena’s personal bodyguards. With the last of her strength, Palutena used her magic to bring a bow and arrow to Pit, and Pit promptly escaped from his prison. Using the magical bow, he was tasked with finding the 3 Sacred Treasures, destroying Medusa, and saving Angel Land - all of which he succeeded in doing. Pit was later trained in order to protect Angel Land after Palutena had a vision in a dream of a future world threatened by the malefic demon, Orcos. 

Once again, he donned the three sacred treasures and killed Orcos, thus becoming the Captain of Palutena's entire Guard and Sky World, as well as humanity’s first and only line of defense. Pit returned over 2 decades later where he battled the forces of Nature, an alien invasion, a mind-controlled Palutena, and the Underworld army yet again, this time led by Hades in secret. Barely grasping victory from the hands of the true Lord of the Underworld, Pit became an accomplished and (somewhat) respected hero in the eyes of the humans and the gods.

Weapons

There are 9 different weapon types Pit can use in Kid Icarus: Uprising. I’ll be covering the ones Pit uses in Smash, and the ones DEATH BATTLE might give him. According to Viridi, the Goddess of Nature, every weapon Pit can use in Uprising has been imbued with the power of the gods, and humans are incapable of using them. And according to Palutena, Dyntos, the God of The Forge, is credited for creating all of them, as well as the 3 Sacred Treasures and Great Sacred Treasure.

Pit’s first weapon of choice is obviously the Bow, weapons that are typically considered the 2nd most balanced weapon type behind the blades. They have a slight preference towards distanced homing shots, but are effective in close quarters thanks to their ability to separate into 2 short swords. Being loyal to the goddess of light, and being his weapon of choice throughout the entire series, Pit’s preferred bow is the Palutena Bow.

http://i.imgur.com/awMQNFT.jpg 

Palutena Bow - Pit’s primary weapon. Standing shots aren’t all that powerful, but the Charged Dash shots pack a punch and are the bow’s strongest attack (sans the screen-clearing Special Attack that can be used when flying). The arrows fired from the Palutena Bow gain speed as they travel and have decent homing abilities making them more difficult to avoid from further away. Spamming Dashing Shots while moving away from opponents is the ideal strategy. When split apart, Pit will use the bow’s 2 blades for fast, powerful melee attacks. Additionally Pit can join the blades together again at anytime to spin the bow at high speeds for a projectile deflecting melee dash attack known as the Angel Ring.

The bow is enhanced when it makes use of the Arrow of Light, one of the 3 Sacred Treasures Pit was specially trained to use during the events of Myths and Monsters. The arrow’s function in the older game and the newer game differs quite a bit. In the original Kid Icarus the Arrow of Light was a powerful singular shot equal to Pit’s own strength that pierced through all normal enemies. In Uprising shots fired with the Arrow of Light have a ridiculously high rate of fire, and home into just about anything, but have no piercing properties. Its Charge Shot however pierces through most enemies in a manner closer to the original games, with the homing property added for good measure. Adding more to the variation is Smash Bros. Brawl, where Pit can alter the course of arrows called the Palutena Arrows.

When not using the Arrows of Light, Pit makes use of 4 progressively stronger arrows that go from Bronze, to Silver, to Gold, to Sacred Arrow. The Fire Arrow was an additional upgrade with pretty self-explanatory properties, and the Sacred Longbow increased the range of the Palutena Bow. One bit of dialogue from Uprising makes fun of the ‘pitiful’ (pun intended) range of the Palutena Bow in the original game, so the Sacred Longbow has either been fused with the Palutena Bow, or the Palutena Bow got a nice range upgrade. 

He could also use oversized Mallets that inflict the same amount of damage as the Sacred Arrows at maximum power, and a magical Harp that temporarily transmutates weaker foes into said mallets, making them defenseless. The Harp would probably be excluded since there’s no proof it works on anything other than common enemies (plus, IIRC Sora has actually dealt with being transmutated anyway, so it might not even matter). And if we REALLY need to include it (we don’t and won’t), he used several gimmicky arrow types in Captain N: The Game Master.

The most balanced of the 9 weapon classes are Blades, the Jack of all trades, master of none weapons that bear a silly design philosophy uncannily similar to the Gunblades in Final Fantasy VIII (Pistol Grip duct taped to an Oversized Sword). Pit doesn’t use one of these in Smash, but figured since it was his default weapon in Uprising, his weapon of choice in the animated shorts, and he appears using it in most artwork, it would only make sense he’d bring one of the weapons into battle.

https://i.imgur.com/9krxWwm.png 

First Blade - The very first weapon Pit uses in Kid Icarus Uprising, and more or less the perfect beginner’s weapon. Opposite to the Palutena Bow, the First Blade’s shots become weaker with distance, which makes using the weapon a balancing game of maintaining a safe distance away from enemies while being close enough to deal significant damage. If that isn’t to Pit’s liking he can always go in for melee damage, something that is relatively easy thanks to the First Blade’s Melee Dash Attack being its best move. Like most other blades it projects a laser edge when melee attacks are used to increase its range, and power.

Orbitars are pairs of combat drones that float above Pit’s shoulders. Though their homing capabilities and distance game are typically excellent, and the 2 weapons can even target 2 foes at once, they are lacking in melee prowess, and won’t be able to maximize damage unless both drones are hitting the same target.

http://i.imgur.com/Pntxic6.jpg 

Guardian Orbitars - Perhaps Pit’s most defensive weapon. Their Charged Shots raise a large shield for roughly 3 seconds that nullifies virtually all incoming fire, and continuously damages any enemies that come in contact with it. It’s a common strategy for Pit to raise the shield and spam fire from behind it at his targets. Being Orbitars, they allow Pit a high degree of freedom, stamina, and mobility since he doesn’t have to carry them around like other weapons. 

Shots fired from this weapon gain power as they travel. However, the piss-poor melee strength that comes with being an Orbitar is only made worse by the fact that these weapons are designed for defense rather than offense. Smash Bros. 4 has added a new quirk to them. They took the Mirror Shield’s place as his projectile deflection tool in Smash, and can cover him from 2 different angles.

Arms are exactly what their name suggests. Giant mechanical devices that Pit attaches to his right arm with powerful melee attacks, a decent combo chain, pretty good rates of fire, but a range that is worse than any other weapon type.

http://i.imgur.com/aTUwKuS.jpg 

Upperdash Arm - An Arm with a disc shaped top known for its impressive Dash Attack - a powerful uppercut that produces flames. For ranged fire, it shoots disc-shaped energy projectiles with good homing ability, and features a Charge Shot that fires a small-sized tornado. Its Backwards Dash Shot launches foes into the air, allowing Pit to fire at vulnerable airborne foes, or melee them on the way down. By comparison to typical arms its melee attacks are weak, with the Dash Attack being the only extremely strong move. Thankfully, it has better ranged attacks than most Arms, and still does pretty well in close combat. Similar to Pit’s Angel Ring attack and Guardian Orbitars, it too can reflect projectiles (expect us to bring this capability up a lot).

I won’t cover the rest of the 108 weapons Pit uses in Uprising. If you want more details on the other weapons and the classes they are a part of you can check out the weapons list on the wiki.

http://kidicarus.wikia.com/wiki/Weapon

I will however, go over the parameters of the other weapon classes just to be thorough...

Clubs increase the damage of melee attacks immensely. These weapons can hit back projectiles, and deliver Charged Shots that usually travel long distances and go through walls. The tradeoff is they have a very low rate of fire since their Charge Shot is their only projectile, Pit’s speed and stamina suffer as well. Clubs use a special magic that significantly reduces their weight when being carried, but this magic wears off when being swung to deliver the full force of the blow to enemies.

Cannons decrease Pit’s stamina and have the slowest moving shots, making them ill-suited against fast opponents, but are fairly good in both ranged and melee situations. They also fire standard shots that ricochet off walls, and Charged Shots with large blast radiuses.

Staffs are the opposite of clubs. They have terrible melee capabilities and lack homing. In return they can be fired from a greater distance than any other weapon (aside from one specific club’s Charged Attack), and have powerful Charge Shots. These weapons specialize in sniping foes from afar, and gameplay-wise can reach hundreds of meters.

Last but not least are Palms, special tattoos that draw from Pit’s internal energy to fire different forms of energy blasts that typically have high homing capabilities.

Armor and Equipment

Aside from the Arrow of Light, the other 2 items that compose the Sacred Treasures are the Mirror Shield and Wings of Pegasus. 

As the name suggests, the Mirror Shield reflects any projectiles it comes in contact with, and in the Smash Bros titles can cover all of Pit’s frame provided he crouches. Uprising similarly shows the shield covering a large portion of his side. The specific damage a deflected projectile deals in his regular games is unknown, but in Brawl, all deflected projectiles deal 1.5x normal damage, and fire back at 1.7x their normal speed. It’s worth noting there’s a bit of kickback on Pit’s end when a powerful projectile collides with the shield.

With the Wings of Pegasus he can not only fly, but isn’t restricted to the 5 minute time limit that applies to Palutena’s Power of Flight. Like the Power of Flight, the wings let him deflect projectiles by using a Barrel Roll maneuver while flying.

When in flight Pit can also use Special Attacks, that vary in their form depending on what weapon he is using, but said attacks always cover a vast range, a couple-hundred meters at least, cancel out opposing attacks, and kill most weak enemies. Pit can hold up to 2 of these special attacks at any given point. Once one is used it takes around 50 seconds for Pit to able to use it again, regardless of the difficulty setting. 

There also appears to be a 4th addition to the 3 Sacred Treasures. That fancy helmet and armor Pit wears isn’t for show. It’s the Silver Armor that is bestowed to him whenever he uses all 3 of the Sacred Treasures. It’s only given mention in Kid Icarus of Myths and Monsters, but halves all damage taken from enemy attacks.

Several pieces of equipment only in Pit’s earlier games could help bolster his defense too. Both Kid Icarus and Of Myths and Monsters let him carry an oversized Water Barrel that can hold up to 8 bottles filled with the Water of Life, items that completely restore his health, and a pair of Protective Crystals that can be summoned to circle around him, damaging opponents while protecting him.

There is also the Great Sacred Treasure, but it’s a mecha/vehicle that I doubt will be considered standard fair for this fight.

Powers & Abilities

Beyond superhuman strength, durability, speed, and reflexes Pit has several different skills available to him...

Powers: Pit can implement a variety of attacks, buffs, and special abilities in the form of Powers. These powers consist of things like extended gliding, fireworks, giant lasers, temporary invulnerability, reflective barriers, meteor barrages, healing magic, speed boosts, and much more.

I’m unsure which of these specific Powers Pit would use in a fight, but the ones used by Palutena in smash is a good start. These include…

Autoretical: Auto-targets an enemy.

Explosive Flame: Creates a localized explosion.

Heavenly Light: Creates an area-of-effect attack from a ray of damaging light.

Reflect Barrier: Produces a large reflective barrier.

Angelic Missile: Pit fires off in a corkscrew motion, damaging anything he crashes into.

Rocket Jump: A powerful skyward jump that detonates a large explosion around the user’s feat when activated.

Jump Glide: Allows the user to glide a large distance.

Lightweight: Increases the jump height and speed of the user while making their fall speed slower.

Celestial Fireworks: Sets off explosive fireworks near the user.

Superspeed: A speed boost.

Counter: Counter-hits any damage inflicted upon the user.

Warp: A basic teleport.

Black Hole: A large, area of effect attack that sucks in opponents, and deals considerable damage. The black hole in question is obviously a pseudo-black hole that doesn’t have the functions or parameters of a conventional one, but is nonetheless quite powerful.

Mega Laser: A powerful laser that moves in a straight line, and damages and stuns any opponents that get in its path.

If anyone is interested in looking at the other powers available they can be found here.

http://kidicarus.wikia.com/wiki/Powers 

In case you were wondering...

Palutena is the one who bestows these powers to Pit (Viridi in the case of the arc where Palutena is mind controlled), so he can be more effective in combat. However, there is nothing that suggests Pit needs a Goddess’ assistance to use these powers, she’s simply the ones who gives him them. Kind of like how SHAZAM (I.E Captain Marvel) has his powers bestowed upon him. If Pit did need Palutena’s help to use powers he wouldn’t have had access to them when he was trapped in Hades’ stomach in Chapter 23, and had no contact with her. So it stands to reason they would still be kosher in a 1-on-1 fight.

Combat Strategist: While Pit acts young and naive at times, he is in charge of Palutena’s guard, was training during the 25 years before Uprising, and presumably has a good wealth of combat experience. Normally Palutena is the brains while Pit is the brawn, but in the rare case that Pit lacks the guidance of a goddess, he shows himself to actually be fairly analytical and will form strategies by talking to himself as if he was still in contact with the goddess he serves.

Telepathic Communication: Pit and Palutena (and seemingly most of the gods and supernatural creatures in Kid Icarus) are capable of communicating from long-distances, via what seems to be telepathy. This is how Palutena is able to guide Pit through most of Uprising.

Divine Protection: Thanks to Palutena, Pit has various protections that give him immunity to, or let him resist, several deadly abilities. This is mostly found in lore and idol descriptions, but just to give some examples...

-He can resist being petrified and escape from petrification, as elaborated upon in the Igniot's idol description.

-Palutena's protection can undo the transmutation done by the Eggplant and Tempura Wizards in Kid Icarus Uprising. Although reversing said transmutation does take time.

-It’s unknown if this is because of Palutena’s divine protection, but Pit is capable of surviving scythe slashes from Reapers. Said scythes are stated to be capable of removing people's souls in their idol descriptions.

4th Wall Awareness: With the introduction of Uprising, Pit became aware of the 4th wall. He regularly refers to enemies as ‘bosses’, mentions the ‘difficulty’ to his old games being brutal, flatout acknowledges that he’s in a game at points, and just about every character in his world has extensive knowledge of Nintendo’s franchises and characters. 

Feats

Strength & Destructive Power

-Can cut apart large boulders.

-Destroyed the Aurum Hive.

-Is superior to both Thanatos and Phosphora, who decimated a large floating boulder as a result of their fighting.

-Should be stronger than Palutena’s Centurion Strongarms, who can pull around the large chunk of rock that is where much of the fighting in Chapter 17 takes place on.

-Is more powerful than an Aurum possessed Pyrrhron, who casually burned through all the forestry created by a Reset Bomb.

-Viridi herself considers Pit more dangerous than her Reset Bombs, which are shown to be capable of decimating a large castle, and the surrounding field a battle was taking place on.

-Is stronger than Palutena, who could telekinetically throw around chunks of her kingdom.

-Is stronger than Dark Pit, who kicked away Medusa’s oversized, jet-powered, robot guardian.

-Is likely at least comparable to Poseidon, who parted enough water to make a path to the Seafloor Palace.

Speed & Agility

-Out-flew an erupting volcano.

-Flew from the upper atmospheres deep into space in a matter of seconds.

-Can operate the Lightning Chariot, which is capable of crossing vast distances in space.

-Can dodge Phosphora’s lightning, as well as keep up with Phosphora herself, who is said to move at the speed of lightning.

-Evaded a laser fired from the Lunar Sanctum (then proceeded to do it some more).

-He flew to the Lunar Sanctum in seconds shortly after.

-Weaves through a series of lasers.

Durability & Survivability

-Crashed head-first through the haul of a space pirate ship, leaving behind a large explosion.

-Survived blows from Hades, who can cut apart building-sized chunks of diamond-like material, and created a large impact crater in the ground. He’s arguably comparable to Hades in strength as well.

-Fell from hundreds of feet in the air, and survived the landing.

-Is stronger and tougher than Palutena who casually tanked being at the center of her castle exploding.

Weaknesses

Unless he has access to the Wings of Pegasus or the Power of Flight, Pit is incapable of flying, and his wings will burn up if he uses the Power of Flight for more than 5 minutes. When this happens he’ll be put into a heavily exhausted, near death, coma-like state, something that required the Rewind Spring to get him out of. The Power of Flight would probably be outside help since it can only be provided by goddesses such as Palutena or Viridi, leaving the Wings of Pegasus as his only option for for flying. His 3 Sacred Treasures are incredibly powerful, but have shown they can break, mostly due to them being old. It’s also heavily implied Pit either can’t swim, or for some reason needs oxygen underwater even though he’s been in deep space fine.