Athena (Marvel Comics) - Powers and Abilities

Powers and Abilities

Athena is the mistress of many forms of knowledge. She is an extraordinary swordswoman, combat strategist, and hand-to-hand combatant. As the goddess of wisdom, Athena has devoted a great deal of time throughout the centuries to studying and mastering many areas of knowledge including all fields of non-technical science, the arts, literature, and humanities. Also, as the goddess of battle, Athena is highly adept at multiple forms of combat both armed and unarmed, possessing fighting skills eclipsing those of even gods as her brother Hercules and her father Zeus, but not of the likes of such as Asgardians Odin and Thor, and is a highly competent military strategist even superior to her half-brother Ares, being a super-genius even among the deities of Earth and possessing a degree of "cosmic awareness" that renders her essentially omniscient when using it, claiming to simultaneously run ninety-seven plans to "save the world" through her head at any moment. She is a master of the weapons used at the time of ancient Greece and Rome including the sword, spear, and shield (though has, in both ancient and modern times, preferred using only a mace and roundshield in combat in most instances), and has also demonstrated some level of proficiency with archery and horseback riding whilst on Olympus. While Athena does not project energy in the form of bolts often, she has done so while in combat with Thena during the assault on the Eternals of Olympia, albeit through her sword.

Athena possesses the conventional powers of the Olympian gods including superhuman strength, speed, agility, reflexes and stamina, the inability to age upon reaching adulthood as a sign of true immortality, immunity to terrestrial diseases and harm from conventional means and a regenerative ability that heals wounds rapidly should she indeed be injured, although she cannot regrow limbs. Even on Earth, she appears to still possess the power of immortality, as she survived a massive explosion caused by Pythagoras Dupree that was sufficient to annihilate an entire town, and her physical durability and resilience is such that Athena is bulletproof, more resistant to harm than even gods such as Apollo and Hermes and as much so as Ares. Like all Olympians, Athena is superhumanly strong, significantly stronger than the average Olympian female and somewhat stronger than the average Olympian male. Even on Earth, after many months, Athena has shown herself to retain some degree of superhuman strength, such as hurling her mace with such force it causes an explosion on a highly advanced Atlantean aircraft.

Athena possesses considerable magical abilities as an Olympian goddess. She can fly at great speed, change her size or form to appear as another person, animal or object, even altering her hair color on certain occasions (though her transmutation abilities have been described as "limited"), render herself and other beings invisible from mortal eyesight (for example when she was a secret participant in the Trojan War), create illusory images, animate inanimate objects, and control the shape and form of objects or people (notably she changed the physical appearance of Trey Rollins, the New Warrior youth aka Aegis). Athena can also project mystical energy bolts, cross the distance between dimensions (as well as grant others unlimited passage to and from the realm of Olympus, as she did with Trey Rollins) and materialize objects, as well as one time empowering the mortal Prince Argive so he could strike Ares a near-fatal wound. Athena has also cast permanent curses upon mortals, such as her enchantment which struck Teiresias blind but also opened his ears to the whispers of the gods, making him a great prophet, as well as casting the spell on Arachne that changed her into a spider and placing the curse upon Medusa Gorgon and all her descendants that stripped them of their beauty and made them into monsters, a curse which apparently cannot be broken through any scientific means, as the Delphyne Gorgon has claimed that the Gorgons have tried dozens of times in the past millennia without any success, leading them to believe that the only way to undo her spell would be to slay her, or, as proved to be the case, turn Athena into stone by channeling the power of Medusa herself. Athena's ability to project mystical energy is considered among the greatest of the Olympians, surpassed only by a few special deities of her pantheon, such as Zeus, Hera, Pluto, Poseidon, and Apollo. She is also accompanied by her sacred pet owl, Pallas, who is either perched on her shoulder or deployed in the field to gather intelligence.

While she joined with Hercules and Amadeus Cho, she has yet to demonstrate such wide use of her godly abilities (possibly greatly weakened on Earth, as in the case of the other Olympians and most Asgardians), though she has most commonly used it to change from her regular mortal garb into full battle armor or disguise herself as humans (such as Agent Sexton) as well as summon her mace and shield. She has also shown herself capable of pinpointing the current location of the Aegis breastplate mentally, as if it was her "own skin", and once vanished into thin air, apparently teleporting herself away, after speaking with Amadeus Cho. Athena also bears the gift of foresight, which she used to predict the future birth of Amadeus Cho and his eventual role as the Prince of Power, several millennia later, and is able to project images of such futures in thin air at will, and is also capable of engaging in aerial combat when necessary, even after many months on Earth, as she has shown when battling a group of harpies, demonstrating the ability of flight.

Athena possesses a scrying pool, enabling her to see into other dimensions, even into the dimensions of alien Skrull deities virtually unreachable, without detection.

Following the death of both Zeus and Hera, Athena has inherited Zeus's divine thunderbolt and is now capable of wielding it, making her the new Godhead for the remaining members of the Greek pantheon and the Queen of Olympus, raising her power to a much higher scale, potentially on a level to that of the other members of the Council Elite. Athena has since assumed the new godly title of Athena Panhellenios. Since then, Athena has shown herself capable of easily teleporting herself away, force back the gathered mourners at her temple, even Thor himself (whilst armed with her Thunderbolt), contact others on Earth from the Celestial Axis of the Council Elite by projecting her image in a scrying screen in midair and voice across planes of existence, and, even in a severely weakened state following the quenching of the Promethean Flame, was able to open a gateway between the Celestial Axis (meeting place of the Council Elite) and the Olympus Group headquarters in the Earth dimension. Her blessing that made Amadeus the new Prince of Power was also potent enough to shield him from the Chaos King's strike on the minds of Earth's mortals using the powers he claimed from the slain Nightmare, and she was able to project a minor projection of the Creation event to the Chaos King over her hand.