Leto Atreides II vs. Emperor of Mankind

## Description

*Which emperor of mankind with the title of God Emperor will be left in the dunes?*

## Interlude

Hiro: In a technologically advanced, dystopian future, these two are on top of the world.

**MBStarscream: And there's nothing they won't do to "save" mankind.**

Hiro: Leto Atreides II, the God Emperor of Dune.

**MBStarscream: And the Emperor of Mankind, the God Emperor of Warhammer 40,000.**

Hiro: I'm Hiro Hamada.

**MBStarscream: I'm MBStarscream.**

Hiro: And it's our job to examine both warriors' strength, abilities, weapons, and weaknesses to see who would win in a fight.

## Leto Atreides II

Hiro: Far in the distant future, a galaxy-spanning empire is ruled by feuding nobles, arcane religious sects, and Byzantine corporate monopolies. The Atreides family has gained control over the desert planet Arrakis from their longtime rivals, House Harkonnen—but this turns out to be a cunning plan by the Harkonnen and the Emperor to eliminate House Atreides, whom the Emperor had come to see as a threat but could not move against directly.

**MBStarscream: Wearing the uniforms of the Harkonnen, the Emperor's unbeatable Sardaukar stormtroopers assaulted the Atreides compound on Arrakis and destroyed it, leading the way for the Harkonnen to retake the planet and capture Duke Leto Atreides, who died in a failed attempt to take the Harkonnen Baron with him.**

Hiro: But not all hope was lost. Leto's son Paul Atreides would grow to become the Kwizatz Haderach, a long-awaited messiah with the power to see into the future. Taking the name Muad'dib, he united the Fremen tribes into a jihad to defeat both the Harkonnens and the Imperium, ascending to the throne.

**MBStarscream: And everyone lived happily ever after, right? Wrong! Turns out looking in the future means that whatever's gonna happen in the future is *gonna* happen, and despite Paul's best efforts to prevent it, the war he began on Arrakis beaome an interstellar jihad that sterilized entire planets and made him one of history's greatest murderers.**

Hiro: The remaining powers in the galaxy—the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit sisters who controlled religion, the Bene Tleilaxu masters of genetic engineering, and the children of the deposed Emperor Shaddam, one of whom had been married to Paul for political reasons—began to conspire against him, resulting in his blindness and indirectly, the death of his beloved concubine Chani, while giving birth to his twins: Ghanima and Leto II.

**MBStarscream: Because of the melange ingested by their mother, which causes unusual effects for the Atreides bloodline, the twins were "pre-born", meaning that as fetuses they had been awakened to consciousness and to their genetic memories; they had been born as fully matured human beings in the bodies of infants. However the hell that works.**

Hiro: Paul's sister Alia ruled as Regent in Leto II's name, however her increasing paranoia lead her to continue to consume more and more Spice, exposing her as a pre-born to increased risk of possession and "abomination". She pressured the similarly pre-born Leto and Ghanima to do the same in order to use oracular vision to suss out threats to their empire, and as fate would have it, the remaining House of Corrino planned a move against the Atreides twins in a scheme to re-take the throne.

**MBStarscream: So Leto did what any normal person would do and fused himself with a sandworm to make himself more powerful than any man alive. He took back the throne from his aunt and ruled the galaxy for the next 3,500 years as God Emperor.**

Hiro: Leto became superhumanly fast strong after his metamorphosis, enough to knock aside fully-armed combat troopers and topple afrigade by lifting one of its landing fins. As his metamorphosis progressed, he became largely sedentary, yet is still capable of astonishing speed when the need arises.

**MBStarscream: In addition, Leto possesses the ability to see through time and experience the memories of his many ancestors, allowing him to draw on their knowledge and experience to guide his empire to greatness. He can also manipulate the mental state of others by using his voice and presence, as well as control the behavior of his massive armies of Fish Speakers and Sardaukar through his powers of persuasion.**

Hiro: Leto is able to read the minds of others, allowing him to predict their actions and thoughts so far ahead that any attack against him is doomed to fail from the start. His prescience is so powerful that it allowed him to see many possible paths for humanity and, thanks to his long life, he could choose the best one: The Golden Path.

**MBStarscream: The Golden Path was a long-term plan to ensure the survival of the human race by spreading the human gene pool throughout the galaxy. This process would involve a series of drastic and painful changes to the way humanity lived, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that humanity would never be able to be eradicated by a single disaster, such as a planet-wide catastrophe.**

Hiro: There was no line Leto wouldn't cross to make this future a reality, but just when his ultimate success is at hand, Ix sent a new ambassador, Hwi Noree, designed to seduce Leto and make him vulnerable. Despite Hwi's best intentions to betray her Ixian superiors, her very presence did exactly what was intended, and for the first time in millennia, Leto doubted his choice. His Golden Path was further compromised as the Tleilaxu are schemed throughout, the Spacing Guild and the Bene Gesserit attempted to influence events to the best of their comparatively feeble abilities and Siona lurked ready to pounce on the tyrant she resented so much.

**MBStarscream: It all came to a head when Leto was assassinated crossing a bridge and fell into the Idaho River alongside Hwi and Moneo, with his last vision that of the Golden Path, shining brightly in humanity's future.**

Hiro: All part of Leto's plan. In the years following his death, sandworms reappeared on Arrakis housing a fragment of his consciousness, and renewed the flow of the all-important spice melange to the galaxy. The complex economic system built on spice collapsed, resulting in a period of famine followed by trillions of people leaving known space in a great Scattering, and a new civilization had risen, just as Leto wished.

**MBStarscream: He may not have lived to see his efforts pay off, but Paul would be proud of how powerful his surviving son was in life as the God Emperor of Dune.**

*Leto II: It is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.*

## Emperor of Mankind

Hiro: 38,000 years into the future, our galaxy has been twisted into an unfathomable horror where an eternal, impossibly vast conflict occurs between several absurdly powerful genocidal, xenocidal, and omnicidal factions, with every single weapon, ideology, and creative piece of nastiness imaginable cranked to an outlandish extreme. This is the world of Warhammer 40,000.

**MBStarscream: Amidst this great war, some guy's just chilling on a Golden Throne.**

Hiro: Correction: Someone is locked up in an arcane life support mechanism that anchors his soul in his withered corpse and requires the souls of a thousand psychic humans to be consumed as fuel per *day.* This husk of a human being happens to be the Emperor of Mankind.

**MBStarscream: No one knows exactly how the Emperor of Mankind came to be, certain sources indicate he was born around 8,000 BC in Central Anatolia as the reincarnation of a thousand shaman souls who ritualistically sacrificed themselves to merge together and create the perfect being who would stand against the rising forces of the Warp. As he grew older, his potent psychic powers began to manifest - his psychic power was so great that its energies altered his genome and physiology in the womb and rendered him immortal.**

Hiro: And so, he watched humanity's development over the course of human history, at times guiding it from the shadows, at other moments taking a more active role and serving as a prophet, general or sage as needed. When galactic civilization collapsed following the Age of Strife, the soon-to-be Emperor fully revealed himself, and with an army of gene-modded soldiers he won the Unification Wars for Terra, brokered an alliance with the Mechanicum of Mars, and led a Great Crusade to reconquer and reunite the galaxy with the aid of the twenty Primarchs, his clone-sons, and the Space Marine Legions formed from their genetic templates.

**MBStarscream: But just when a new golden age seemed imminent, the newly-forged Imperium was wracked by civil war as half of the Emperor's sons turned against him. The Horus Heresy was ultimately quashed, but at a terrible price: countless worlds were left in cinders, untold trillions were dead, and the Emperor himself was mortally wounded and forced to "ascend" to the Golden Throne, the arcane life-support machine Hiro mentioned earlier. Didn't see that comin', did ya, Emperor?**

Hiro: The Emperor is an Psyker - an individual with psychic abilities that draw their powers from the Warp - of immeasurable level. A base psyker can read and control minds, levitate, control elements and perform what some people would regard to be sorcery.

**MBStarscream: The Imperium ranks the Psyker's most powerful level as Alpha Plus, described as being able to "turn a man inside-out with a glance", "snap a Battle Titan in half with a flick of the wrist", and "a muttered syllable can turn an army upon itself in a frenzy of blood lust". They're even capable of destroying entire worlds, sometimes unintentionally.**

Hiro: The Emperor's own power is so massive that it cannot be graded by any standard, though he has never performed such a feat. The greatest demonstration of his power was at the end of the Horus Heresy, where he unleashed a psychic wave so massive that banished every Daemon on Terra, completely obliterated Horus' soul and conscious in a way he can never be resurrected and severely assaulted the Gods of Chaos across the Warp.

**MBStarscream: Unlike most individual Primarchs and Space Marines who were merely long-lived, the Emperor was truly immortal - having not aged past his physical prime and being over 38,000 years old before his ascendance to the Golden Throne. His immortality allowed him to hone his psyker powers and his intellect beyond any genius could hope to achieve.**

Hiro: The Emperor posssesses a superhuman physique to go with this, having a body that is two or three times the size of a human being and empowered with vast physical strength and stamina, which was later reflected on his sons and the Space Marines in general. Though he ultimately proved to not being completely invincible due to being mortally wounded in his fight with Horus, it should be noted his opponent was none other than a formidable demigod of his own right, backed the four Gods of Chaos and Emperor also held back his own power, as he hesitated to strike down his favorite son with all his full might.

**MBStarscream: Even when hanging by a thread on the Golden Throne, the effect of trillions of human beings expressing a deep faith in his divinity has massively empowered the Emperor's mind and soul within the psychically-reactive Immaterium, where reality is shaped by the collective beliefs and unconscious desires of the galaxy's most populous intelligent species. Whatever he may have been before the Horus Heresy, the Emperor now truly is a God within the Warp, equal in power to any one of the four major Chaos Gods, and very likely as powerful as all four of them combined, as he has become perhaps the strongest spiritual force for Order in the Milky Way Galaxy.**

Hiro: The Emperor's main weapon is his flaming sword, a famed relic blade that, when swung, draws pyrotechnic arcs through the air, able to slice through the stoutest of armor with ease. The Emperor also wears the One True Armor, a highly customized master-crafted Terminator armor that turns him into a walking tank, and uses a customized personal Bolter whose shells can tear a human apart.

**MBStarscream: The Astronomican also gives the Emperor 50 lightyears worth of range and vision with Psyker abilities, and he also has a Lightning Claw that can penetrate almost any material.**

Hiro: One downside, however, is that it requires exactly 1,000 souls being sacrificed daily so it can power its psychic connection with the Astronomican, the warp-beacon that allows Imperial ships to navigate galaxy-spanning distances. Should this connection ever go down, long-range interstellar travel would become impossible for humanity and the Imperium would fall apart. And in spite of the Emperor's great power, he will not use its full extent when forced to face his close friends or "sons" unless absolutely necessary.

**MBStarscream: And of course he's currently a husk of what he used to be, what with him being bound to the Golden Throne for millenia and all. Even worse, the Golden Throne has begun to fail and it will be a matter of time before the Emperor's mortal coil properly ceases to be if there is no solution.**

Hiro: But until the Emperor of Mankind kicks the bucket, there is no denying how much of a champion he was in his heyday. The Emperor protects, and he will protect to his dying breath.

*Emperor of Mankind: No world shall be beyond my rule; no enemy shall be beyond my wrath.*

## Fatal Fiction

*Mario flips a coin.*

Hiro: Well, Leto beats the Emperor of Mankind in terrain, but which God Emperor will live to continue their reign?

**MBStarscream: "God Emperor" sounds so badass, though.**

Hiro: Agreed.

*House Atreides, Arrakis*

A monster who was once a man sat on his throne, waiting for his challenger to arrive.

**Leto Atreides II** had sent his armies of Sardaukar and Fish Speakers to deal with the threat once he had sensed it, but he was even quicker to sense their failure. In his mind, he could see the giant gold-decked immortal storm through his palace, and the man could see him. They could see each other.

They could see who they were.

Each saw the kind of person they were.

Not the hybrid sandworm or the golden warrior, but the person.

Leto saw every action that would be taken and the character of the man approaching him. The **Emperor of Mankind** looked into Leto's soul and saw the child who sacrificed everything for humanity. They knew the one standing before them was a shining beacon, a light pushing back a dark universe.

But they also knew a hard truth.

One had to die for the other to live.

The Emperor stood before Leto, taking in the beast that he had become. "Son of Atreides," he began. "You are a tragic man."

"'Man' is no longer a word for me. Only tyrant." Leto responded, his great form slouching lazily where he sat.

"A tyrant you became to help billions find their way."

"I know where they will all go," continued Leto. "I know their path. The path I have chosen for every one of them... it is golden. I know perfectly what to do, what to say, and how to act."

"Nothing you could do, nothing you could say, no matter in which you act... can delay the inevitable, fellow God Emperor."

He drew the Emperor's Sword and pointed it at Leto. "This throne is no longer yours."

**FIGHT!**

Before a man could blink, Leto's throne was sliced in half and he had already appeared behind the Emperor. They darted across the room too quick to process as the sword of flames cut through the air. Each strike of his blade missed his nimble target as they danced in the throne room. Leto swung his tail and the Emperor swung his sword. Leto grabbed the fiery blade and tossed the Emperor towards his wall, as the golden monarch bounced back toward him with his feet and readied his sword again. Leto ducked under the swipe and struck with his tail, sending the Emperor to the floor.

"Impressive." Muttered the Emperor as Leto's tail came swinging down. He countered the strike with his Lightning Claw and attacked with it and his sword in tandem, forcing Leto to move back as the Emperor fought without mercy. He could see every move that the Emperor would pull, and the Emperor could see every move *he* would pull. He saw every dodge, block and attack, and so did Leto.

The Emperor knocked Leto into the air and swung his sword, clashing with the God Emperor's tail before he grabbed it with his Lightning Claw and slammed him downward, sending pieces of the earth flying in all directions. He came down with his sword, but Leto had rolled out of the way too quick to be comprehended. The tail whip that came forth was just as fast, and it knocked the Emperor into the nearest wall.

Leto charged towards the Emperor in a savage fury, but a flash briefly flickered in his vision and he crashed into the wall instead as his target stood behind him. He yanked his head out of the wall, forming a gaping hole as he turned back towards the Emperor just in time to block a blow from the Psyker's sword once more. The emperors continued to block and counter each other's strikes, seeing everything that the other was about to do in advance and responding ahead of time flawlessly.

Just then, Leto and the Emperor sensed the arrival of more Fish Speakers, their weapons drawn in their ruler's honor. They charged blindly to their own fate as the fighters broke apart so the Emperor could remind the Fish Speakers just who they were throwing themselves at. "Enough of you!" With this great cry, his sword struck the ground and the Fish Speakers flew across the room lifelessly, their bodies hitting the floor like puppets who just had their strings cut.

Even after dispatching his attackers, the Emperor could see Leto's next attack coming, and he grabbed the despot's tail before it could strike him, instead tossing Leto up towards the ceiling. Leto came back down and swung his giant tail, hitting the ground as the Emperor practically teleported away with how quickly he had dodged. Leto brought up his tail to block a blow from the Emperor's Lightning Claw, sparks flying between the two monarchs.

Leto used his tail to block further strikes from the Emperor's Sword until he was pushed back far enough for the Emperor to stab his fiery blade into the ground, sending orange cracks spreading across the throne room floor. The entire surface soon gave out beneath them, sending them plummeting into the earth itself. The Emperor's Sword was his only light in the dark underground as Leto slithered through the sands of Arrakis.

His sword illuminated the jaws of a charging sandworm moments before he was devoured and forced to travel down the beast's throat. As quickly as he had entered the creature's stomach, he cut his way out, his sword lighting up the sand once more as the sandworm's cries echoed beneath the surface. He left the creature to die as he dug his way up and exploded out of the sand, finding himself face-to-face with a dozen more approaching sandworms.

Drawing his sword again, the Emperor cried out, "Die, vile creatures!" as he charged into battle, cutting down the colossal serpents that came his way. Leto felt every one of their demises, them being his hive mind. He charged across the sand at the Emperor once the last sandworm had been cut down, but his approach had been sensed by the mighty Psyker, and his attack countered with a swing of the Emperor's Sword. Sand was kicked up between the two emperors as they clashed in close combat, flames flying from the Emperor's Sword and singing the armor of Leto's monstrous body.

When Leto burrowed under the sand again, the Emperor was furious. "You flee?!" he bellowed, raising his sword into the air. "You will FIGHT, God Emperor!"

He struck the ground so hard a gigantic crater was formed, big enough to reveal Leto's visage slithering across the sand. Leto turned and was greeted with the Emperor's blinding light, forced to shield his eyes lest he go mad. The Emperor readied his sword and charged at Leto, something the sandworm hybrid had seen forthcoming. His tail swung through the air and knocked the Emperor's Sword away.

"No!"

Another whip of Leto's tail knocked him back onto the sand. The sword was poised to land on him were it not for Leto's tail wrapping around the handle, and getting ready to swing it down onto its wielder. Another crater was formed as the sword seemingly hit its mark, sending dust into the air. The Emperor himself did not lay inside the crater, but he did come from behind with a Lightning Claw at the ready. Leto saw this, and as he turned, the Emperor found himself pierced by his own weapon as his claw dug through Leto's flesh, sending electricity coursing through his serpentine body.

The Emperor raised his head into the air as his eyes went pure white. The gutteral roar that escaped his throat made everything stop at once. Time had ceased crawling, all going still. His voice had shaken all of Arrakis and the system beyond, even when time itself had stopped flowing under his divine influence. But Leto's voice still echoed in the Emperor's mind as the Perpetual started to climb his hulking body, but not before the Emperor had torn the Lighting Claw out of him.

"Foolish emperor... I see all... when all has stopped. I see the end... when it has stopped approaching!"

The Emperor continued to climb, like he was braving a great mountain whose peak reached the heavens themselves. Leto continued to try and break the Emperor's conscience with his words.

"You can't stop what is already coming! We both see it! It still comes!"

The Emperor was almost at the top.

"You can't stop the Golden Path, Emperor!"

He pulled out his Bolter as he got to Leto's neck. He pointed it at Leto's frozen face.

And fired.

The moment time started moving again, Leto's body slumped back, a gruesome wound where his face used to be having taken its place. The Emperor looked upon the body and did not wait to see if it would rise again. He raised a hand, and a sand whirlpool quickly appeared underneath Leto's prone form, swallowing him into the earth. This still was not enough for the Emperor. With a raise of his hands, a geyser of water erupted from the ground where Leto once lay, shooting into the sky until it came to an end... and Leto's rule with it. A hole in the ground was all that remained of him.

The Emperor stabbed his sword into the ground and leaned on its handle, bowing in respect for the God Emperor of Dune.

"Rest well, great emperor. The future is golden."

**FATALITY!**

## Results

**MBStarscream: Everything I imagined a battle of God Emperors would be!**

Hiro: Leto and the Emperor of Mankind were two sides of the same coin, both being so alike that either could've ended the fight at any time in their own way.

**MBStarscream: Both could see what the other was gonna do by reading the other's mind and both were immortal in different ways, with water being the only thing capable of killing Leto and pretty much nothing putting down the Emperor for good.**

Hiro: But the Emperor's own advantages were what made the tide turn in his favor. On top of his shared immortality with Leto, the Emperor was far superior in physical stats, able to reach solar system level feats even at his weakest, which does *not* count his near-death state in the Golden Throne.

**MBStarscream: The Emperor also had far more experience and versatility as both a fighter and a ruler, living far longer and fighting far, far deadlier foes.**

Hiro: Simply put, for every area Leto equalled him in, the Emperor of Mankind outperformed, and with his greater experience, stats and versatility, there was nothing Leto could do against him but delay the inevitable.

**MBStarscream: *Dune*n't even think about it, Leto.**

Hiro: The Emperor of Mankind wins.

## Advantages

### Emperor of Mankind (Winner)

* Took stats handily
* More experienced
* More versatile
* Could see everything Leto would try and do
* Could drain Leto's soul or drive him mad at any time
* Immortaily made it impossible for Leto to put him down