I mean, I did admit that Obito outranges with his longest-ranged attacks, but that doesn’t prevent the factor of Mercer wining via outliving Obito.
As for overcoming Regeneration, Obito (or any of the other Naruto characters) will need to explicitly show feats of being able to atomise characters with superhuman durability via sheer AP for him to AP atomise Mercer, and I don’t recall that happening in the Naruto universe from what I can recall. Mercer has Mid-High Regeneration, and the CRT that upgraded Mercer’s regeneration includes Vapourisation, so Mercer should be able to regenerate from vapourisation. There was already a matchup that pitted Mercer against a 5-A character, and it actually ended up being arguable due to lack of explicit feats of atomising superhuman characters with sheer AP, so unless the Naruto universe was shown to be able to reduce a superhuman character to atoms through sheer AP like the Dragon Ball characters (e.g. Buu dying to the Spirit Bomb because the sheer AP atomised him), Mercer’s regeneration can’t be overcome that easily with AP.
As for outside influence, Standard Battle Assumptions says this:
“
Outside Influence: None. No characters of either verse, aside from those participating in the battle, may influence the outcome of the battle in any way. That means they may not join the fight, grant buffs, create shields, provide information etc.
Exceptions are things like blessings, calling upon some higher entities power for a spell,
summoning familiars to battle for them, having another character as equipment or more generally spoken
the things which are listed on the profile as part of a characters own powers and abilities”.
Characters can have exceptions of using outside influence as long as it’s explicitly listed in their profiles as part of their abilities. Alex Mercer summoning and creating Blacklight beings are listed as part of his own Powers and Abilities in his profile, and we have matchups such as The Thing (John Carpenter) using humans in the environment every time as well since using humans such an essential part of their abilities. In Mercer’s case, he has summoning and creating creatures listed in his profile, so he should be allowed to use humans in the background (as they help facilitate his summoning/creation of creatures) via being an exception to outside influence rules.
As for Shapeshifting into something smaller, it’s more of the fact that he shapeshifts into a pile of tendrils every time he shapeshifts into
anything, and all biomasses Mercer possesses also includes blood and water from his victims bodies (and his tendrils appear to look slimy as a result). It’s like how enough lubricant or sliminess can allow you to slip out of a constraint like a ring on your finger, or the handcuffs when the hands are smaller than the wrist (or just simply positioned right). Mercer’s Shapeshifting isn’t just limited to Shapeshifting to other people, his Shapeshifting is also literally what almost his entire power set his derived from (his arms Shapeshifting into various offensive weapons, his arms into Shields, his entire body to form armour, his tendrils, him using Devastators, etc.). This link
here explains that Mercer can manipulate his entire body (and in Prototype 2, he was shown to be able to manipulate all traces of the targets that is infected by the Blacklight Virus, thus also manipulate all traces of himself by extension as he
is the Blacklight Virus itself) at the genetic/molecular level, and it should not be implausible for him to do such, especially when Mercer has prior knowledge that allows him to use his Shapeshifting to escape restraint when he knows being restrained for too long could lead to his defeat. Prior knowledge can change a lot of things.
Fair point for only using Deva Path to push Mercer back for a small time if Obito has no other options, but like you said it takes a toll on him, so all he can do is delay the inevitable using it. While it’s possible for Obito to keep up not being absorbed or infected for his entire lifetime, he still has a lifespan (unlike Mercer) and can still die of old age, which allows Mercer to win that way. As for sacrificing his Edo Jinchuuriki, that’s so he can use his Rinnegan abilities, and I recall that using both Edo Jinchuuriki
and Rinnegan is too costly when combined, so using Deva Path and such that you’ve mentioned wouldn’t seem plausible as long as Obito still has Edo Jinchuuriki draining away his chakra to command them.
Yeah, the Prototype mindhax thing and the resistances to it has surprisingly high numbers with surprisingly decent applications of Mind Manipulation. XD
My intention isn’t to underestimate Obito’s skills, so it’s my mistake if I accidentally give off such vibes. Obito does have the skills to fight multiple powerful targets with various abilities, yes, but I’m not speaking of Mercer joining the fight in the long game I’ve mentioned, I’ve mentioned that Mercer will send the Evolved after Obito as distractions and then disguise as some other random human since prior knowledge allows Mercer to know that he can outlive Obito when it comes down to it. Basically, think of it as by the time Obito deals with the Evolved: “I am finally done with those monstrosities with strange fleshy abilities… Wait, where did that man in the hood go?”.
I mean, Obito has shown he can fight multiple opponents at once, but has he shown that he can fight multiple opponents at once
AND look at targets at a great distance (possibly kilometres away) at the same time?
With how Obito can’t use his other Kamui abilities or use any of his Jutsus properly (thus likely being unable to use his Mangekyou Sharingan’s long distance visual prowess) while his Intangibility is active, it’s not unlikely for Obito to get his attention diverted away from Mercer by the Evolved enough to use his Shapeshifting to hide away, especially since Mercer is skilled enough to evade an entire military organisation with massive support from the Government such as Blackwatch (the U.S military are basically forced to obey them, along with Blackwatch being such an influential organisation that they have the authority to track people down via cameras, phones, and such) actively chasing him down with his Shapeshifting, and Blackwatch knows about
his Shapeshifting beforehand. It’s why a skill called “
Patsy” exists within Prototype, where Blackwatch has such prior knowledge of Mercer’s Shapeshifting that they will open fire on anyone who is accused of being him (which Mercer uses their paranoia to their advantage). If Mercer is skilled enough to use his Shapeshifting to escape being hunted down in near plain sight,
and deceive entire groups of said people with prior knowledge over his Shapeshifting actively hunting him down through his disguise and the memories/skills of his targets that he has absorbed, it shouldn’t be impossible for him to do so while Obito is being distracted fighting and dealing with multiple Evolved at the same time.
As for Mercer spamming gasses, he uses gasses to infect anyone or anything that isn’t already infected, and literally has a goal of infecting all of Humanity in Prototype 2, so there’s no reasons to suggests he won’t spam them when he’s also given prior knowledge over Obito (and the knowledge he gains suggests that he can’t let Obito get close without risking getting BFRed, which is where his gasses comes in to help prevent such).
For prior knowledge, the OP also replied later stating that both Mercer and Obito has prior knowledge over each other’s
everything, which means Mercer will know about Obito’s Kamui BFR as well.
