Death Battle: Penny VS Mack

by GoldenMewtwo

RWBY vs. Power Rangers! Two mechanical creations with the heart of a human clash, but which would prove victorious and which will face the scrap heap?

2. Q&A

Connections between the characters, for those who don't know.

Both are robots created to be perfect replicas of humans and act as children to the one who created them. They fight alongside other colorful heroes against ancient evils who are trying to collect ancient artifacts that can be brought together to accomplish their goals (the 4 Relics and the Coronoa Aurora with its 5 jewels). Both of them utilize a defense that protects them from hits, but can be overtaxed and broken if it takes too much punishment, they both have been infected by a virus at some point, both have seemingly died only to subsequently return, and both gained a power from an ancient source that made them substantially superior to their peers (Penny inheriting the Winter Maiden powers and Mack combining with Excelsior and Sentinel Knight into the Red Sentinel Ranger). In fact, they both got those powers because of their robotic bodies' hardiness; Penny's artificial body let her push through the extreme cold the previous Winter Maiden was generating, leading to her being in her last thoughts, while the technology that produces the Red Sentinel Ranger was designed for robots and was stated would kill a human that tried using it. Both have struggled with the clash between their robotic forms and their more human feelings, believing at times that they weren't real, but came to terms with it thanks to the acceptance and support of their friends. Both have moments of ultimate sacrifice and were eventually transformed into actual humans by one of the previously mentioned artifacts (the Corona Aurora and Staff of Creation).

Can you go into more detail on the calculation of the Terra Venture's speed? Is there anything else to support Rangers having lightspeed to FTL reactions?

The first thing we have to do is figure out just how fast the Terra Venture can move at full speed. In 'Journey's End Part 1', Commander Stanton states that it has been 212 days since they left Earth, and in the episode 'Destined for Greatness', he states that they have traveled 5.6 lightyears from Earth. This would place its top speed at a minimum of about 6,465,756,555.08 MPH, or about 9.6x the speed of light. Keep in mind, it's most certainly far faster. 'Destined for Greatness' was Episode 16, while 'Journey's End Part 1' was Episode 43, so they've traveled much further in those 212 days (not to mention that they weren't constantly moving at top speed the entire trip). However, since we have no specific number for how far they've gone at 'Journey's End Part 1' and no specific time traveled for their position in 'Destined for Greatness', it'll have to do for a lowballed minimum. One problem though: it wasn't moving at full speed when the Torozord outpaced it. In 'Raise the Titanisaur', they lost one engine and the remainder were put at half-thrust to lessen stress on them. It's not until AFTER the Torozord outpaces them that Commander Stanton orders them returned to full thrust. We need to figure out how much the lost engine(s) would reduce their speed before we can factor in the half-thrust though, so let's figure out how many engines the Terra Venture has and how losing them slows it. From multiple behind shots of the colony, we can tell they have a total of 5 engines. There are 20 burners on the back of the ship. When one engine failed, four of them go out, and in 'Journey's End Part 1' when they have only one engine remaining, four burners are still firing. Thus, 4 burners=1 engine, and 20 burners means they have 5 engines. They had at least 2 still working when the Torozord outpaced them, as we can see more than one's burners still firing and Commander Stanton's subsequent order is to return the remaining "engines" to full thrust, but it's possible there were up to 4, as the angle of the shots prevents us from seeing the exact number of burners still going. Next, speed reduction. In 'Journey's End Part 1', Stanton states that being at 1 engine puts their top speed at 1/10, or 0.1x, the usual maximum. Scaling from this, we can determine that 2 engines would put them at 0.325x their usual top speed and 4 engines would put them at 0.775x their usual top speed. Now we have all we need. Factoring in the reduction in engines, the half-thrust, and the already calculated minimum top speed, we can determine the Terra Venture's minimum range of speed to be anywhere from approximately 1,050,685,440.2 MPH, or about 1.5x the speed of light (at 2 engines), to 2,505,480,665.09 MPH, or about 3.7x the speed of light (at 4 engines). The Torozord outpaced that like it was nothing! And again, it's likely even faster, as the top speed of the Terra Venture we used was a lowballed minimum. Increasing that number would, of course, only increase the numbers of its speed at less engines. So yeah...the Defender Torozord is most definitely faster than light, and the Magna Defender was able to react while piloting it in order to perfectly stop in a wormhole's opening.

There are other potential feats to support this. Jindrax, an Org the Wild Force Rangers regularly matched, raised a mirror fast enough to bounce an attack from Onikage back at him. Said attack is depicted as a bright flash, bounced off the mirror, and creates "shadows" of whatever it hits, so it's not unreasonable to believe it moved at lightspeed. Cole, the Red Wild Force Ranger, also reacted to one of Signal Org's flash attacks. Signal Org is a stoplight transformed into a monster, so again, should be fairly reasonable to say he gives off light. Then there's the Omega Ranger in SPD. The villain Mirloc has mirrors on his chest that trap anybody whose reflection appears on them. When he tried to use them on Omega, who had realized this earlier, Omega managed to leap and punch the mirrors before he was trapped. You can literally see that his reflection is not on the mirror as he's leaping at it, only appearing right as he punches it, meaning he apparently matched the speed of the light carrying his reflection back to arrive at the same time. He also, for that matter, stated that his body was "crystallized into light energy" when he traveled back in time to join the Rangers, so you could make an argument that he's inherently lightspeed just based off of that. Not everything the Omega Ranger does directly scales to other Rangers, given his Morpher is an advanced futuristic one with special features, but he wasn't using any of those during the Mirloc punch or during standard hand-to-hand. In Mystic Force, Yellow Ranger Chip Thorn at one point chased and dodged a beam of literal sunlight. Also, in Dino Supercharge, the monster Leisure flew from Earth to a position near the Sun in a couple seconds, which should put her well over lightspeed. By measuring her distance from the Sun and subtracting that from the distance between the Sun and Earth and given the timeframe, her speed comes out to just shy of 500x the speed of light (and she would have to be able to react at that speed in order to stop where she wanted). The Rangers had no issue keeping up with her and her twin brother Loafer. Most of these alone wouldn't be solid enough to grant that level of reaction to Rangers, but taken all together, they serve as a solid batch of supporting evidence to a couple more clearly calculable ones such as the Terra Venture, Chip, and Leisure feats.

And that's without going into more dubious higher end Ranger speed feats. Leo, the Red Galaxy Ranger, flew his Jet Jammer from Mirinoi to Earth during the events of Forever Red. Given the 5.6 lightyear minimum distance between the two, this can give the Jet Jammer speeds approaching 50,000x the speed of light, depending on how long you presume it took him. And again, that distance is lowballed quite a bit out of necessity. This of course completely ignores that there is a portal between Mirinoi and Earth's moon that Leo knows about and has used before, so that's probably how he made it (there's several other intergalactic travel feats across the series as well that can calc even higher, though all of them are somewhat dubious in one way or the other), but if we're going to be overly generous to Penny and give her relativistic reactions based on Pyrrha dodging her beams, then we have to do the same for Mack and Power Rangers. Which, on the subject of Penny's beams, they are probably not legitimate light lasers. They do share some properties with them, such as moving in straight lines, having consistent speed, and burning on contact, but they are never referred to as lasers and can be used for propulsion, which is not at all how lasers work. And in RWBY Chibi, which isn't canon but we can use it for supporting evidence, Penny has actually stated "laser eyes" that act more like legit lasers and are clearly shown to be different from her usual beams. So yeah...probably not actually light.

On the subject of RWBY speed, how do we know Penny scales to Mercury?

Penny fought and kept up with Pyrrha, who had previously kept up with Mercury. She also keeps up with Cinder, who can keep up with Neo. Neo dominated Yang, who is relatively on par with Mercury. Or you could scale her to Ruby and thus to Mercury through keeping up with the Ace Ops, including Harriet, who is relatively on par with Ruby. Honestly, take your pick. Most RWBY characters can scale to lightning-dodging in speed in one way or the other, and Penny is no exception. (And yes, there are other lightning dodging feats to support it, including Oscar dodging shots from Hazel's Lightning Dust (Dust has been described as "nature's wrath", which would imply it to be comparable to natural lightning) and Blake and Sun dodging the Sea Feilong's electric breath (no clear indication this one is natural lightning, but given the other two, it can make a good supporting piece)).

What's up with Carter Grayson and the Bansheera punch feat?

So, in the Lightspeed Rescue episode 'Wrath of the Queen', the other Rangers are being blasted by Queen Bansheera as they try to get into her mountain lair, and Carter, the Red Ranger, manages to make it inside trying to save them. When he finds Queen Bansheera, he puts all the power he can muster into one punch that immediately results in a whole series of explosions across the mountain. Bansheera was not destroyed by it, but it did manage to get her to let up the attack on his team so they could escape. There's two ways to look at this. One is that the explosions were caused by Carter's attack rebounding off of her, and the other is that, since her lair is evidently tied to her (it literally dissolves away after she's gone in the finale), that he damaged her somewhat and the explosions were a result of that. Probably the latter is the case, since she did let up her attack on the others; it wouldn't make as much sense if his attack just bounced off for her to do that. Either way though, the energy can reasonably be directly attributed to Carter and his strike. I couldn't find any existing numbers on this feat, so I had to run my own. Now, the mountain was fine, so we can't use fragmentation, pulverization, vaporization, or anything like that, but what we CAN do is measure the explosions' size. In the finale, the same mountain fortress is moved into the city of Mariner Bay, and that provides us with a way to determine its size compared to the nearby buildings. From there, we can go back and measure the explosions' size one by one. Adding them all together, the final energy output comes to around 1.6 kilotons of TNT in total.

You can support these measurments by comparing the Rangers to a wide variety of monsters and villains that have feats on a similar level or even greater (for example, see the below question about Moltor), but this was the most impressive direct display I could find of a base form Ranger doing something crazy, so I chose to focus on it.

Didn't Penny use her Maiden powers to push Amity? How is that a base feat?

This is something of a moot point for this fight, since we're using Penny herself; whether it's a base or Maiden feat, it still applies to her in some regard. That said, it can become important when trying to scale other characters to base Penny, so I thought I'd at least discuss it. Penny starts pushing Amity without using her Maiden powers. You can tell because when the four Maidens use their powers, their eyes glow, and Penny's aren't. Not only is this consistent visual language, but it's actually a plot point in Volume 5. It's why Raven had to wear her mask and Vernal close her eyes when they were faking that Vernal was the Spring Maiden; otherwise Cinder would've noticed that Raven's eyes were glowing and Vernal's weren't. That said, towards the end Penny does tap into her Maiden powers for the final bit and to subsequently hold the stadium in place and keep it from drifting. This makes it admittedly a little debatable that it can apply as a base feat, but the thing that people often forget is the context. Penny was not at her full strength when she went to push Amity. She had just come out of a close battle with Cinder moments prior that left her worn and beaten down, and thus low on Aura to use for boosting strength. Given this, it's not unreasonable to presume that had she been at her full strength, she probably would not have needed to tap into her Maiden powers. She clearly thought she didn't need them, or else she would've just been using them from the beginning, and if she thought that knowing she was tired, surely she would actually be capable of such at full strength. It's also fairly well corroborated by things such as Ruby smacking the Colossus down hard enough to shake the city of Argus, Vine partially smothering Ironwood's city-busting bomb with his Semblance, and pre-Maiden Penny (as well as other baseline Huntsmen/Huntresses) not getting insta-stomped by the Maidens. All in all, I think it's fine to use as a baseline feat, though it's debatable enough that I can understand people disagreeing. In any case, doesn't really matter for this fight.

What about scaling Penny to Oscar destroying much of Monstra, the Grimm Tempest Storm, or Weiss's meteor feat?

So with the Oscar feat, the idea is that Penny has equal power to Cinder, the Fall Maiden, who fought and defeated Ozpin, who Oscar is the reincarnation of and should have the same power as. While that is true, the problem is that the Monstra blast wasn't Oscar's own power; it was from his staff, which had collected and stored kinetic energy for years that he unleashed all at once. It's not something he can just do in a standard fight, and thus not something Cinder or Penny could scale to. We can see that pretty clearly looking at its aftereffects. Oscar's blast easily obliterated Salem and kept her down for a good chunk of time, until the season finale, in fact. Far in the past when Ozma's first reincarnation fought with Salem, they were evenly matched and he was just barely able to put her down; she was up and coming to kill him within moments. And Ozma was MUCH more powerful then; between then and Ozpin's fight with Cinder, he had given a significant portion of his power away to create the Maidens in the first place. Effectively, Ozma at that point had the power Ozpin had when he fought Cinder AND all four Maidens' power combined into one, and it still barely trumped Salem, while the staff's blast took her down far more easily and kept her down longer. That said, even if you do scale Penny to it, the numbers you can actually calc for it are less impressive than the Amber storm's high ends anyway. Assuming it's comparable to Ironwood's bomb (given that Ironwood mistook the blast for the bomb going off, implying they're similar), you can only get up to around 10 megatons of TNT for it. Directly measuring the blast itself gets you even lower numbers. It's probably much higher, given Salem's superiority to the Maidens and the blast's effect on her, but that's the highest we can visually measure.

The Grimm Tempest is the huge grimmified storm that rolls in over Atlas and Mantle when Salem and Monstra first show up. According to some behind the scenes interview or something, it was apparently created by a Grimm we never saw onscreen. Penny has no way to scale to it. Salem can probably scale, but like we previously discussed, Penny and the Maidens shouldn't scale to Salem's full power. Even if you did, the high-ends of the Grimm Tempest clock it at 1.2 teratons of TNT. That's less than 1% of the power Flurious should've possessed when Mack fought him. Still not enough to help Penny match up. Though, for the record, this feat is why I used the high end of the Amber storm. Even the low end of the Grimm Tempest storm clocks at over 44 gigatons of TNT. Since Cinder as the Fall Maiden could match Ozpin, we know their power is relatively equal, meaning Ozma when Salem matched him was 5x stronger than the Maidens. Downscaling from this feat via dividing by five lands us at 8.8 gigatons of TNT, almost exactly the high end of Amber's storm. Since Salem should be above this feat, this provides us with support for the storm's high end.

As for Weiss's meteor feat, that's from a non-canon gag in the manga and is unsupported by the primary canon. Let's throw it in for argument's sake though, and let's assume it is also comparable to our dino extinction meteor (even though it's likely not that high). And since Penny's Maiden powers are stronger than Weiss, let's upscale a bit. Penny held her own solo against the same four members of the Ace Ops that Team RWBY, including Weiss, took on in a four-on-four fight, so let's presume that the Maidens are 4x stronger than your typical Huntress. It's not a very irontight method and not a very huge multiplier, but we are talking about a highballed non-canon feat, and considering that some Huntresses have managed to hold their own against Maidens despite being outpowered (see: Pyrrha fighting Cinder, pre-Maiden Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury fighting Amber, or the Ace Ops fighting Penny), it's not entirely unreasonable. That would put Penny's Maiden output at 400 teratons of TNT, a full 100 teratons less than Mack's. Remember, Kamdor created the meteor from just one jewel, the Blue Sapphire. The full Corona Aurora that Flurious used had 5 of those in it. And here's the thing: the 100 teratons on Weiss's meteor is a highball, but on the Kamdor meteor, it's actually a low end estimate, based purely on the thing's initial kinetic energy (Rose is very specific that it's the size, and thus the kinetic energy, of the meteor that threatens to cause extinction). However, this was not a normal meteor. When the Ultrazord's beam strikes it, it stops all forward momentum immediately; in other words, it matched and canceled out the meteor's kinetic energy. A normal meteor at that point would've been pushed back and flung away, but not this one. It continued to output more energy and push against the Ultrazord's beam for some time, to the point of nearly overwhelming it, before at last starting to get pushed back. And it's not like the Blue Sapphire was being continuously used to feed it or anything. In fact, it wasn't even in Kamdor's possession anymore; it was just used in one go to produce the thing and then Norg stole it immediately after, before the Rangers actually went to stop the meteor. So, how much energy did the meteor actually contain? Well, given how immediately the Ultrazord's beam stops it, it's fairly reasonable to presume it had to re-output its initial kinetic energy at least once per second in order to stay in one place. Timing the scene from the moment it's stopped to when it finally starts getting pushed back, it takes anywhere from 35-168 seconds (depending on if you presume the scenes with Will fighting Kamdor and the Megazord stopping the meteor are happening in tandem or sequentially). Applying that to our initial value and then multiplying by five since all this was from one jewel would yield a range of 17.5 to 84 petatons of TNT. That's 43.75x to 210x greater than Penny's power based on the highballed Weiss meteor. And even that isn't the absolute high-end of the meteor, as it didn't simply run out of energy after that time. Rather, the Ultrazord had to push itself harder and output more power to overwhelm it and blow it apart, so the actual total energy it contained was higher than that to an unknown degree. No matter how you look at it, Mack's Sentinel Ranger form is just in another class compared to Penny.

How solid is the Kamdor meteor feat? Can it be considered dubious since it relies on a statement?

Not really, no. For one thing, generally the first thing you should do when looking at a statement is consider who is saying it, what they know, and whether it should hold weight. In this case, the answer is yes. The claim was made by Rose Ortiz, the Pink Overdrive Ranger, who is a super-genius and an expert in pretty much every field of science and history known to man. If she indicates that thing to be extinction-level, I'm inclined to believe her. The couple shots of the meteor approaching Earth also indicate it to be big enough for her description to be accurate.

As for supporting evidence, we can do that by looking at the other artifacts the Rangers uncover and the various monsters they go up against, which include...

- Moltor casually causes a volcanic eruption. Measuring the scope of the mountain that's blasted away and considering that it's forceful enough to have lava pouring through the city below in seconds, I got 24 megatons of TNT at minimum, with a high-end easily topping 100 megatons. I repeat, this was done with total ease. Moltor must be way less powerful than the jewels, otherwise he wouldn't need them.

- Moltor's Weather Machine creates a storm. Estimating the mass of the clouds and the speed of its formation yields anywhere from 7 megatons to 11 gigatons. The jewels should dwarf this thing, given that the Drivemax Megazord: Drill Formation destroyed it, while a single gem could nearly match the more powerful Ultrazord and Flurious with all five took down their strongest Zord assembly, Arsenal Ready (Drivemax Megazord + Battle Fleet), like nothing.

- The Cannon of Ki Amuk detonates multiple mountains in a single shot. Estimating their size, this should be about 54 megatons of TNT at least (that first shot was implied to have not been at full power, by the way). The five jewels are the endgame artifact and should trump other artifacts like this, otherwise the Cannon would've been the endgame. Plus, the Flashpoint Megazord (which is overall in a similar range as the Ultrazord; maybe a little weaker, maybe a little stronger) could directly match and counter this thing's full power, and Flurious with the five gems took down the Rangers' strongest Zord assembly. (On the subject of which, you can argue that Arsenal Ready was also wielding the Sentinel Sword when destroying Agrios while they weren't against Flurious, but even before bringing that out, they were able to easily block the same shots from Agrios that had done major damage to every other Zord assembly. Should still be superior.)

- Blothgaar creates a storm while empowered by some valley's energy, and the Piedra Aztec del Compás is able to counter and disperse it. The storm creation measures at about 2.4 megatons at minimum, up to around 5 gigatons. Not only should the compass inherently be weaker than the jewels, but the Super Drivemax Megazord, a combination weaker than the Ultrazord, destroyed this guy.

- The Octavian Chalice empowers Miratrix into some bird-monster thing that creates a storm. (It's easy to miss because there's an eclipse darkening the sky, but at one point she flies up, her eyes glow, and it suddenly starts flashing lightning and pouring rain.) It's kinda rough to calculate this one due to its presentation, but I got around 12 megatons at least, potentially up to 18 gigatons. The Octavian Chalice should be inherently inferior to the Corona Aurora's jewels at their full power.

- After Flurious uses the Blue Sapphire to destabilize Moltor's volcano base, it ends up explosively erupting with him inside, and he survives. The blast was strong enough to destroy the entire volcano (it gets covered by a fire effect, but if you look closely you can see it getting destroyed). Estimating the mountain's size, this should come in at around 76 megatons of TNT at least. The jewels should be more than capable of overwhelming Moltor's durability, considering that they're obviously superior to base form Rangers. Base Rangers Will and Tyzonn destroyed Kamdor and Mig, who should be relatively on par with Moltor.

From these and the jewels being way more powerful, the 500 teraton number on the crown fits perfectly. Sentinel Knight, probably the best authority on the crown, also describes it as "powerful enough to destroy all life", which would fit with an extinction-level meteor feat very well.

It's also not the only Corona Aurora feat we have. Flurious himself uses it to ice over the entire city of San Angeles while creating by far the biggest storm in the series. I approached calcing this in several parts. Firstly, the basic ice on the ground. The city of San Angeles is located in California (we see this on a map during 'Way Back When') and given its name is likely based on San Francisco or Los Angeles (both are also between 30 and 45 degrees north latitude, where San Angeles is confirmed to be in the same episode). Applying the size of these cities to find the area of the ice and judging it from the coating on the Rangers themselves to be two inches thick at least, we can apply the fusion and vaporization energy to determine this is somewhere from 1.3 megatons to 2.8 megatons. (Every person, car, sign, etc. would only add to this surface area, so this is actually lowballed.) Then, there's massive ice slabs stretching up buildings. They're all at least four stories tall, so using that and their thickness, we can determine their volume. Looking at the number of high-rise buildings in those two cities (as all high-rises would be tall enough to have these at that height), we can then multiply that and determine a collective mass. Applying fusion and vaporization energy to that nets another 3.1 megatons to 4.3 megatons (this is also lowballed because there are probably smaller slabs on smaller buildings too that we're not accounting for, we're not accounting for multiple sides of the building, and some of the buildings we can see have more than one on just one side of a building). Then, the storm itself. Taking the size of the cities and using that as a starting point to measure the storm's total distance and coverage (given it's shown to extend to the horizon beyond them) and considering the clouds are clearly shown as being pushed outward to cover this area (meaning we need to use kinetic energy values instead of simple condensation), we can measure this to come out to about 1.7 teratons to 2.6 teratons. Combining them all together, the final tally comes to about 1,796,487,311,071 tons of TNT on a low end or 2,645,768,631,477 tons of TNT on a high end. That is anywhere from 199x to 293x the Amber storm feat. And this is lowballed in multiple ways, including the ones I mentioned as well as leaving out the frozen bay near the city (oh yeah, that's iced too). Meteor feat isn't so out of the realm of possibility with this display to support it, but it's a lot easier to comprehend and put a number on in a script than me having to explain all of this, isn't it? Flurious also indicates that this attack wasn't the crown's full power, as when he fully puts it on and transforms moments later, he proclaims "Let's raise the stakes!", which further supports it being a bit higher than this feat's measurements. (Side Tangent: RangerWiki claims this attack actually covers the whole planet. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence for that. It's only shown affecting the city and the area immediately around it, and after performing it, Flurious literally says "Goodbye, San Angeles!". Not "Goodbye, Earth!", just the city. They also seem to attribute it to Flurious's own power and not the crown, which...no? He blatantly uses the crown. It glows and you can see energy from it feeding into his attack. Fans who edited the wiki, can you please do better?)

Don't Power Rangers have planetary capabilities or higher? What about 'Insert crazy feat/scaling here?'

There's a lot of these, so let me go through them one by one.

- Rita's solar eclipse Rita forcibly creates a solar eclipse in Mighty Morphin. Probably can't really be scaled to the Rangers, given Rita is usually depicted as superior to them. There are weird instances in which they hold their own against her or people who should scale to her, but they're not as consistent. Remember that the power that makes monsters grow giant through early Mighty Morphin, enabling them to fight on par with Megazords in several cases, comes directly from Rita. That is her power. It would make zero sense given this for Rangers to be as powerful as her, given that Megazords are obviously more powerful than they are.

- Furio petrifying Mirinoi Furio petrifies the planet Mirinoi at the beginning of Lost Galaxy. Leo can one-on-one Furio, so the Rangers should scale to him. However, nothing supports it. Furio and co. were trying to destroy the Terra Venture colony, which they should've easily been able to do if he was really that powerful, and he has no other feats on the same level. Hell, he self destructs later and it barely collapses a cave. Trakeena, who in base should scale above Furio, had to turn into her Green Trakeena state to move the Terra Venture, which also would make no sense if Furio and thus she was that powerful. There's also an inconsistency within the feat itself, because despite it showing the whole planet being petrified, when the Rangers return there 212 days later, the only thing still petrified is the people. The oceans, the jungles, everything else had returned to normal, so...I don't know what to make of that. In any case, this is probably some specific magic ability that isn't really combat applicable. (Perhaps one that started fading after Furio was destroyed? Maybe?)

- Kendrix and the Savage Sword Kendrix, the Pink Galaxy Ranger, pushes through the Savage Sword's energy and destroys it, though it kills her. For a while, anyway. Said sword was producing an energy surge across an entire planet. No real way to know the planet's size, though you could just use Earth's measurements as an estimate, and more importantly, no way to know the energy density of the surge, so we can't put a number on it without making some hefty assumptions. (Contrary to what some people online claim, it was not an actual storm that you can apply mass to. I know it LOOKS like cloud, but it's specifically called a "high energy disturbance". If it was a storm, they would've just said that. Not to mention it doesn't act like clouds would act when it spreads into space. You can also literally see actual clouds within the surge when it first starts; if the red stuff was cloud, it would've just mixed with those.) Psycho Pink was being fueled by this energy and was beating the Galaxy Megazord (which is obviously superior to base form Rangers) until the Space Rangers and their Megazord joined in and they tag teamed her. Would make no sense for Kendrix to scale to this. I've also seen it argued that this energy was drawn from Cassie's Morpher (since the Savage Sword was stabbed into it at the time), but that makes no sense either for the same reasons. Like many things in Power Rangers, the mechanics of how the Savage Sword works are never actively explored, though I can propose a theory. The Savage Sword is stated to grow stronger with every strike, and this seems to be through absorbing power from whatever it connects to. When Psycho Pink presses it against Cassie for a longer period of time, it is shown to be continuously absorbing power from her that whole length. Given this, being stabbed into her Morpher, which directly is connected to the Morphing Grid, probably gave the sword a direct connection to the Grid and allowed it be continuously draining power from there. This is ultimately little more than speculation on my part, but it's the only explanation that makes sense to me. It should also be noted the whole Savage Sword thing wasn't even supposed to be in Lost Galaxy and was only added because they needed to kill Kendrix off due to her actress's health struggles. You can make a pretty solid plot-induced stupidity argument based off of this, given how little sense it generally would make for her to be on that level.

- Jinxer's eclipse Jinxer creates an eclipse in Lightspeed Rescue. Rangers have matched this guy solo, so they should scale. Not much else supports it within the context of Lightspeed Rescue though. When the demons, including Jinxer, first showed up, their entire goal was to destroy Mariner Bay so that their queen's palace could be rebuilt before she fully returned. That's it, just destroy a single city. 161 yottatons of TNT (the energy required to create that eclipse) is enough power to destroy the entire Earth several times over. If that was just something Jinxer could do, wouldn't he, or the others like Diabolico who should be more powerful, have just...done it, easily? Makes no sense. Much like Furio's petrifying a planet BS, it's probably a magic-based ability that's not combat applicable.

- Nayzor reversing an eclipse The Org General Nayzor seemingly undid Animus's eclipse in Wild Force. Merrick, the Silver Ranger, directly matched and destroyed this guy. However, this is probably more down to Animus just running out of power to maintain it (he was not fully back from being destroyed previously, and we later see he can become exhausted when he uses his powers), or Nayzor adding a little extra, much smaller push to overwhelm him. Alternately, it may have somehow been connected to the power in Nayzor's crown that would later be used to revive him as Super Nayzor, who was significantly superior to base form Rangers and required new special weaponry (the Falcon Summoner) to take on (and before somebody argues 'But Toxica used its power to turn into Necronomica and the Rangers beat her', she only tapped into a portion of the crown's power. Super Nayzor was using the full thing). Regardless, directly scaling Nayzor to Animus, even in his weaker revived state, makes no sense. The only Org on par with Animus is Master Org in his final state (and maybe Zen-Aku at his full power, if you buy arguments for scaling him to Master Org). Mandilok, specifically stated to be the strongest of the three Org Generals, fled before Animus, even when he was weakened. Nayzor (without his crown's boost, anyway) is the weakest of the three; even Retinaxe managed to casually block five Rangers' combined power.

- Cole destroying Serpentera Cole, the Red Wild Force Ranger, survives riding the Wild Force Rider directly through Serpentera's beam. Serpentera is blatantly more powerful than Rita and even Zedd, so you could upscale considerably from her eclipse feat for it. This was probably down more to the Wild Force Rider (which was a gift from Animus) than it was Cole himself though, given the aforementioned thing about Rita being more consistently shown as much stronger than the Rangers. Zedd is even more clearly so; one of the first things he did in the show was trump the Megazord with his own power.

- Gruumm destroying a planet Gruumm destroys a planet at the beginning of SPD. The Shadow Ranger can match Gruumm one on one. Gruumm most definitely didn't destroy the planet himself though (he orders his subordinates to do it, and we never see exactly what is used to do so. Maybe they just did it through their own power and Gruumm can upscale, but we have no way to prove and support that.)

- Moltor's Weather Machine This applies to the Sentinel Ranger specifically, not base form Rangers. When Moltor's Weather Machine creates its storm, the news reports it happening "across the globe", Moltor claims it will "wipe out the mortal world", and Rose worries it will drown "the entire planet". That said, Spencer mentions there being sun while it's supposedly happening across the globe, the Rangers go out and fight in still sunny weather, and even after the machine goes nuts and nobody is restraining it, there's still clear sky when Mack comes out in the Drill Driver. It's probably more that the storm will be continuously fed and maintained, as a storm that never stops would travel across the globe and eventually over time drown and wipe out the world, technically fitting the descriptions given while still making sense with what we see. And considering that it was attached to a Subatomic Energy Generator and after splitting off from it, the thing seemed to lose the power to maintain the storm (no other reason why it lets up later), I think this is probably the most likely case. Moltor also traveled from Austrialia to San Angeles with it, so that would explain why it was going across the globe.

- Corona Aurora universe statements The Coronoa Aurora is directly stated to be able to control and destroy the "universe". That would potentially put Flurious with at a universal level, and Mack's Sentinel Ranger should scale to him. That was most DEFINITELY not meant to be taken literally, it was more just a flashy way of describing the thing as being powerful and capable of warping reality (as shown when it turned Mack human). Using them as a measurement of power is unsupported as sin.

- Vrak's eclipse The Megaforce Rangers were not on par with Vrak. It took all five of them to match one of his attacks, and even more to destroy him. They had to combining all five of their power and boost it "a thousandfold". Evne then, Vrak most likely didn't create it, as he stated when it started that "The appointed time has arrived.", indicating he was waiting for it to happen naturally. He also tells the Rangers to "Witness my new power!", so the eclipse was boosting him, which...would make no sense if he had already been powerful enough to create it in the first place. Plus, he was trying to destroy earth, so if he was that powerful, he wouldn't have needed the eclipse and his whole "use it to power these giant drills" plan in the first place. He would've just done it.

- Lord Arcanon destroying Sentai 6 Lord Arcanon does major damage to the planet Sentai 6 in Dino Supercharge. Not a lot of good arguments to scale Rangers to Lord Arcanon, given how little he directly interacts with stuff, and much of the time he's using the Dark Energem's power when he does (we'll get to that thing in a moment), but you can make one through Sledge destroying him, iffy as it would be, given that Sledge was stated to fear Lord Arcanon and only destroyed him with the Dark Energem. It's also possible given its presentation that this was meant to be more symbolic rather than something Arcanon actually did, though we have no way of knowing for sure.

- The Dark Energem's black hole The Dark Energem creates a black hole. However, the Dark Energem is clearly superior to the Rangers' Energems, given it restricts all 10 of their power simultaneously just by existing and all the Rangers' power (and their Zords' power too) combined wasn't enough to destroy it. We have no idea how much stronger; it could be hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of times or even more, for all we know. Assuming they're anywhere close to it is a hefty stretch.

- Various statements There are multiple statements throughout the series of characters being referenced as destroying planets and even galaxies. Sledge in Dino Charge even paints it as casual, claiming "we've all destroyed galaxies". Without seeing it though, we have no way of knowing if any of these were in one attack or over time. Much more than likely it was the latter, especially in regards to the galaxy statements.

In summary, the 'feats' used to push Power Rangers to higher levels of power are vague and/or rely on questionable scaling, and most of them are unsupported by what we typically see from the Rangers. I think a lot of it is because of people grabbing random moments taken completely out of context and calling them feats, but that's just not how I like to analyze characters. Supporting evidence is very important, and it just doesn't line up with these.

Could you make an argument to scale the Rangers in base form to Moltor's volcano feats?

Sure, I could see it, potentially. They do fight him several times, and while the Rangers never fully destroyed him, they do hold their own and defeated him a number of times, even one-on-one in some cases. And as mentioned above, Tyzonn and Will also did outright destroy Mig and Kamdor, who can pretty solidly be argued to be on par with Moltor and Flurious as well (Kamdor fought Moltor one and one and seemed evenly matched, and later Kamdor, the Fearcats, and Flurious get into a three-way fight that ends inconclusively). Tyzonn also destroyed the revived Vulturus, who uses the same gyro technology that powers Mig and Benglo and is probably on par with them, if you need further support. Though on the flipside, you could argue that Moltor has fought and beaten multiple Rangers at once on several occassions and they fled the volcano before it erupted, implying they weren't going to survive it like he did. You can really go either way with it, but I decided not to worry about it too much, considering the Sentinel Ranger is his full potential.

But what about that one time that Moltor beat the Red Sentinel Ranger?

Aside from the fact that he was caught off-guard, every series has inconsistencies and outliers like that, because they aren't written with the idea of keeping consistent for VS debating in mind. That's why you have to find supporting evidence and figure out what is most consistent. In this case...

- Base Rangers have fought, taken attacks from, and defeated Moltor and beings comparable to him on numerous occassions.

- The Red Sentinel Ranger easily beat Benglo, who should be on par with Moltor.

- The Red Sentinel Ranger easily handled Kamdor, who should also be on par with Moltor.

- The Red Sentinel Ranger fought evenly with Flurious while he was boosted with the Corona Aurora's power. Base Flurious should be on par with Moltor, and the boosted Flurious way beyond him.

It's more consistent the other way.

Could Penny use extreme cold and ice to freeze Mack solid and render him vulnerable?

Possibly, but probably not. There are instances of Rangers and their Zords being frozen throughout the series. However, there are also the opposite. The Wild Force Rangers were able to resist Freezer Org's initial freezing attempts (though his later self-destructing freezing move, essentially like Gray Fullbuster's Iced Shell, worked to freeze their Zords and morphers). In Dino Charge, the Red and Pink Rangers were able to break free of being frozen solid simply by their Energems bonding to them, and when the same monster tried to freeze the Red Ranger again while he was morphed, it failed (keep in mind they were frozen through and through; the monster was planning to shatter them before they countered it). The Overdrive Rangers themselves also directly resisted Flurious (using the Corona Aurora, mind you) trying to freeze them while they morphed. So we know they have some degree of resistance to it at least. And considering that Flurious (even without the Corona) was able to easily freeze his brother Moltor (dude lives in a volcano and has a body temp so high ice starts melting on contact) completely solid (he shattered him seconds later) and the specific attack he used to try and freeze the Rangers also froze an entire city in the process, I don't think a good argument can be made for Penny being able to overwhelm that resistance. Even if she somehow could, she'd still have to hit him with it. Mack has enough speed to dodge any ice blasts she tries and enough ranged capability through the Drive Defender, Drill Blaster, Transtek Armor, and the Sentinel Ranger's energy waves to avoid an area of effect similar to what the previous Winter Maiden did if she tried that.

You can't scale Power Rangers to different teams. Super Megaforce proved they don't all share the same levels of power.

At first, that does seem like the case. The Megaforce Rangers have their base form, then a more powerful transformation called Ultra Mode (it trumps beings that beat them in base), then another super form called Super Megaforce Mode that's even stronger (It's specifically stated to be stronger than Ultra Mode), and then Legendary Mode is a transformation on top of that which mimics the powers of past Rangers. It would seem reasonable to assume that this means Legendary Mode is stronger, and thus that the other Rangers' powers were at a different level than the Megaforce Rangers, and if they can be at a different level, how do we know any teams are on par with each other? But unfortunately, we're looking at Super Megaforce, where the writers didn't give a shit and nothing makes sense. Believe it or not, Legendary Mode is actually WEAKER than the forms before it. There are multiple instances in the series where the five Rangers will be in Legendary Mode and combine their power against a monster, only for it to tank it like nothing. They then end up going back to Super Megaforce Mode and combining their power in that form, which overpowers and defeats said monster, demonstrating it to be the stronger form. In addition, during the Legendary Battle, they team up with all the past Rangers they were mimicking the power of to fight an army of Xborgs and Bruisers. The Megaforce Rangers only use their base forms in this fight, so if that form was indeed way weaker than other teams, they would naturally have a harder time holding their own than the other Rangers around them, right? Except they don't; they do just as well. Then there's the two most damning pieces of evidence. The Silver Ranger (who has no base form or Ultra Mode; he just starts in Super Megaforce Mode) at one point uses Legendary Mode to mimic the power of Robo Knight, the sixth Ranger of the original Megaforce season, a guy who was only on par with base Megaforce or Ultra Mode if you're generous. And later, the Blue Ranger uses Legendary Mode to LITERALLY TURN INTO HIS OWN ULTRA MODE! Literally, turn into a form that is CONFIRMED weaker in the same series! So if Legendary Mode can be a weakening transformation in those cases, why would we assume that it's not also weakening them in all the other cases, especially when the other evidence we discussed indicates that it is? If you're going to argue "But wait, that's so stupid!"...yes. Yes it is. But the writers didn't care; they just needed some cheap nostalgia grab to compensate for clearly having no idea how to make a good Power Rangers series, so this is what we get. (It's main benefit is versatility, giving them access to weapons and techniques like the Red Wind Ranger's Air Assault that they wouldn't have otherwise. Though personally, I don't think it's worth the difficulty to maintain Legendary Mode, but whatever.)

To sum up the logic, all base Rangers should by roughly physically equal to each other, with only the most minor of disparities between them. Obviously, unique weaponry, super forms, Battlizers, and Zords can't scale, but in terms of basic physical capability, they should be roughly on par. They all draw from the Morphing Grid in the same general manner to increase their capabilities. Even for characters with unique power artifacts, they're still indicated to use the Morphing Grid through them (for example, in Operation Overdrive, Mr. Hartford had to reinforce the Legendary Rangers' connection to the Morphing Grid so Thrax couldn't cut it off like he did the Overdrive Rangers. One of those Rangers, Kira, uses a Dino Gem). More recently, in Dino Fury, it was revealed that a group of beings called the Morphing Masters created artifacts that use the Morphing Grid's power to form Rangers. The Ninja Nexus Prism that powers the Ninja Steel Rangers, the Energems that power the Dino Charge team, and the Dino Gems that power the Dino Thunder team are all confirmed to be among these creations (the Quasar Sabers that powered the Lost Galaxy team and the Zeo Crystal that powered the Zeo Rangers are probably also from them, though that's not specifically confirmed). The Power Coins that the original Rangers use were actually forged by Ninjor following books written by the Morphing Masters. You can further support comparing different Ranger teams by looking at their various teammups, which link just about every team to the others. (So far only Dino Fury, the current team, hasn't teamed up with anyone, and let's be real, they probably will at some point.) To run through them...

- The Alien Rangers fought alongside the Zeo Rangers in 'Rangers of Two Worlds'.

- Justin, the Blue Turbo Ranger, fought alongside the Space Rangers in 'True Blue to the Rescue'.

- The Alien Rangers fought alongside the Space Rangers and the Gold Zeo Ranger (not Jason, Trey) in 'Countdown to Destruction'.

- The Space and Galaxy Rangers fought together in 'To the Tenth Power' and 'The Power of Pink'.

- The Galaxy and Lightspeed Rangers fought together in 'Trakeena's Revenge'.

- The Lightspeed and Time Force Rangers fought together in 'Time for Lightspeed'.

- The Time Force and Wild Force Rangers fought together in 'Reinforcements from the Future'.

- Red Rangers from Mighty Morphin, Alien Rangers, Zeo, Turbo, In Space, Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, and Wild Force all fought together in 'Forever Red'.

- The Ninja Storm and Dino Thunder Rangers fought together in 'Thunder Storm'.

- The Dino Thunder and SPD Rangers fought together in both 'History' and 'Wormhole'.

- Rangers from Mighty Morphin, Ninja Storm, Dino Thunder, SPD, Mystic Force, and Operation Overdrive fought together in 'Once a Ranger'.

- Scott, the Red RPM Ranger, fought alongside the Samurai Rangers in 'Clash of the Red Rangers.'

- Rangers from Mighty Morphin, Alien Rangers, Zeo, Turbo, In Space, Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, Wild Force, Ninja Storm, Dino Thunder, SPD, Mystic Force, Operation Overdrive, Jungle Fury, RPM, Samurai, and Megaforce all fought together in 'The Legendary Battle'.

- The Ninja Steel Rangers fought alongside Rangers from Mighty Morphin, Turbo, In Space, Wild Force, Dino Thunder, RPM, Samurai, Megaforce, and Dino Charge in 'Dimensions in Danger'.

- Koda, the Blue Dino Charge Ranger, fought alongside the Ninja Steel Rangers again in 'The Poisy Show'.

- Rangers from Beast Morphers and Dino Charge fought together in 'Finders Keepers'

- Rangers from Beast Morphers, Dino Thunder, Dino Charge, and Mighty Morphin fought together in 'Grid Connection'

In every single one of these, Rangers from different teams were shown to be capable of fighting against the same enemies with the same degree of difficulty. And that's just the show. There's also Shattered Grid, Super Legends, Battle for the Grid, and various other supplementary materials to further back it up. The case is pretty solid for scaling them.

Though it's worth pointing out that Mack would still win even if you looked exclusively at Operation Overdrive and exluded all other Ranger series. He would still have the Kamdor meteor feat and all the other supporting feats for it that I mentioned earlier, he would still have his resistance to Flurious's freezing attempt, and while I couldn't find any lightspeed or FTL reaction feats in OO directly, Mack does have lightning feats. He dodges a bolt of natural lightning summoned by Moltor's Weather Machine, among others. So at minimum, Mack would be equal to Penny in speed, and combined with his power dwarfing hers, it would be plenty to seal the deal. Skill and versatility aren't going to do crap when your opponent is powerful enough to one-shot you, fast enough land it, and resists your only good hax option.

Do Maidens' durability scale to their power output? How do Maiden powers connect with Aura?

This is somewhat up in the air, but theoretically, yes. I have heard people argue that because Maiden powers are magical in nature and operate separately from Aura, which is what characters in RWBY typically use for enhanced physical strength and durability, the Maidens' durability cannot be scaled from their power output, but that's not necessarily true. How Maiden powers connect with Aura isn't made entirely clear. One the one hand, we know that you can use them without Aura. Amber was able to use hers after Cinder and her crew depleted her Aura. Cinder had her Aura depleted during her fight with Raven and yet could still use her Maiden powers afterwards with no time to regain it in order to escape Raven's ice and kill some random woman. Also, as the Maidens' powers are just pieces of Ozma's power, technically Salem has the same abilities, and while she chooses to focus mostly on her Grimm powers, she is still entirely capable of using them despite having no Aura due to her Grimmification, as seen by, for example, the fire blast she used to kill Ozma's first reincarnation (that's an elemental Maiden power, not a Grimm ability). Pre-Maiden Cinder was also able to break Amber's Aura with her exploding arrows, something that shouldn't have been powerful enough to if her durability was that high. Regardless, for people who have both Aura and Maiden powers, there's clearly a connection formed between them. Ironwood stated that Amber's Maiden powers were bound to her Aura and planned to transfer them to Pyrrha by transferring said Aura. Ozpin's reincarnation works via his soul merging with that of another like-minded individual, and his soul (which Aura is directly stated to be a manifestation of) brings his powers with it. It's also implied that Maiden powers can be used to amplify and enhance a person's Aura capabilities. Winter's Aura was depleted during her fight with Ironwood, yet after becoming the new Winter Maiden, she had Aura again despite having no chance to rest and recharge it. We know because she uses her Semblance in the subsequent fight. Semblances are simply a unique usage of Aura that varies by individual and cannot be used unless one has Aura. Speaking of Semblances, Cinder was shown to be able to use hers more easily and effectively after stealing Amber's Maiden power compared to before. Maiden powers have also been used for physical feats before, the best examples being Cinder and Raven shaking Haven Academy all the way from the Vault below and Penny tapping into hers to help push Amity, and this is most likely due to this amplification effect (in the latter case in particular, as previously discussed, Penny was running low on Aura before tapping into them). There's not really much of a way to explain these other than the amplification theory, but the flipside can be. Just because Maiden powers CAN be used with Aura doesn't mean they have to be. As for Cinder breaking Amber's Aura, Aura, as explained by Ren in Volume 5, is not a passive defense that is always on. It is something a person must choose to use. Huntsmen and Huntresses train with it so much that it becomes second nature to them, something they do subconsciously during fights, but that doesn't mean they can't slip up if caught off-guard or their focus is elsewhere. There are numerous examples of this across the series. Weiss's scar comes from a blow she took from the Arma Gigas while still having Aura (she uses her Semblance afterwards) because she wasn't expecting it to move fast enough to punch her like it did. Blake got stabbed in the stomach by Adam while still having Aura (she uses her Semblance afterwards as well) because she was so shook up by him being there that she wasn't focusing properly. Yang still had Aura when Adam cut her arm off (she was using her Semblance at the time and you can see her trying and failing to heal her severed limb with it afterwards) but was hit because she was blinded by rage at seeing Blake get stabbed. Hazel got impaled by Weiss's Queen Lancer summon while still having Aura (again, uses Semblance after) because she attacked him from behind while he was focusing on the White Fang's battle outside. Just to name a few. It makes sense that if using Aura for defense is something you must consciously choose, using Maiden powers to enhance it is probably also something you must choose to do. Amber was specifically noted to be young and inexperienced with her powers and was clearly not expecting Cinder's arrows to explode like that, so she most likely wasn't actively enhancing her Aura during that moment. Given all of this, it's reasonable to presume that Maidens' durability can prooooobably be scaled from their power ouput. Not that it helps Penny either way.

Your analysis pegs the Sentinel Ranger as stronger than the team's Zords. Are Battlizers really that crazy?

Depends on the Battlizer. Like I mentioned above, they don't scale to each other, as they all draw from different sources. In many cases, no, Battlizers wouldn't trump Zords, but there are exceptions, and Mack just happens to be one of them. Makes sense, given that a big piece of his Battlizer is the sword Excelsior. Even before bonding to Sentinel Knight and being upgraded with the Sentinel Ranger technology, that thing one-shot Vulturus, a monster that was dominating the Drivemax Ultrazord and Flashpoint Megazord simultaneously. After bonding but before being upgraded, it one-shot the Flashpoint Megazord. Mack at one point used the sword's power to stop a giant robot's stomp attempt and fling the whole thing back (just the sword, not his Sentinel Ranger form). And Mr. Hartford specifically said that the upgrade that provided the Sentinel Ranger form was "meant to enhance Zord capabilities". So effectively, Mack turned a Zord powerup into a Ranger powerup.

Wait, morphing grants skill automatically? When was that a thing?

Throughout the whole series. It's most specifically called out in the comics, wherein Trini and Jason are discussing how their powers work. Trini talks about how when she first used her Zord, she knew all the controls by heart out of nowhere, and Jason then states that "Billy's got zero fighting ability, but then he morphs and he's a lethal weapon. Maybe they download something into our brains, like...preset instincts, or like a sixth sense." This is shown repeatedly throughout the show, not just with Billy, but with numerous characters who have little to no combat training or experience morphing and suddenly being able to do advanced fighting moves, in some cases even going toe-to-toe or trumping monsters who have been fighting for thousands of years. Hell, the Wind Rangers in Ninja Storm were literally the most inept students at the Wind Ninja Academy, and yet after morphing they suddenly were masters of their school's techniques and could fight and beat beings who had previously dominated the other students. Same applies with the Overdrive Rangers; out of the original five, the only ones who MAYBE have some combat training are Dax and Will (Dax was a stuntman on action movies and Will was an international recovery specialist who tracked down stolen goods), but they all became master combatants after morphing.

The one maybe exception you could kind of argue is Ziggy in RPM, but honestly, even he is a way better fighter after morphing than he has any right to be. He's still goofy and clumsy, but the skill IS there. It's also worth pointing out that TECHNICALLY it's not confirmed that the Bio-Field the RPM Rangers use is the Morphing Grid under another name, although it almost certainly is, given how similarly it functions, that the Megaforce Rangers had RPM as one of their Legendary Modes, and that Lord Drakkon's Black Dragon Cannons, designed to disrupt connections to the Grid, could disrupt Bio-Field connections as well. The Grid is also outright confirmed to span multiple alternate dimensions and thus theoretically can exist in RPM's world. Regardless, the Grid clearly provided Mack with a skill boost. He had no combat experience and could fight on par with experienced warriors like Moltor after morphing.

To be clear, this doesn't completely negate the fact that Penny has better training and skill, but it does narrow the gap, while Penny doesn't have a way to narrow the stat gap in a similar manner.

Are you sure the Tri-Laser covers targets in concrete? I thought it petrifies them.

To be fair, Power Rangers doesn't explicitly explain those sorts of things. The Tri-Laser's design is somewhat similar to the Cement Drive Zord when it fires concrete at stuff, and later one of the Fearcats, Benglo, breaks out of the Tri-Laser's effect, and when he does we visibly see him shatter a shell off of himself. Taken together, I assume it's coating targets instantly in a layer of concrete. (RangerWiki also claims it has this effect, for what that's worth.) Which would mean Penny can probably break free of it, given it's been broken free of before and Maidens have escaped similarly immobilizing effects in the past. But if you really want to go with the interpretation that it petrifies targets, then be my guest. Not like Mack doesn't already win the fight anyway.

Who did I want to win this fight?

Penny, easy. Don't get me wrong, I like Mack. I'm that one guy who thinks Operation Overdrive was actually a good series and doesn't deserve all the hate that gets thrown at it, and Mack is my favorite Ranger in it. But between the two characters in this case, I like Penny far more. Especially after watching her die twice in the series itself, I really would've rather not written her dying again, but... *shrugs* Didn't turn out that way, sadly.

In Summary

While Penny may have better training, more skill, more manuverability, and more options at her disposal thanks to the broad elemental abilities of her Maiden powers, it ultimately matters little. Mack's morphing grants him enough skill to stand up against opponents with better training and experience than him, he has plenty of weapons to keep Penny on her toes, and his superior speed even in base coupled with him not being that far behind Penny in terms of power and durability (and potentially even superior, depending on how you scale him) means that he should be able to hold his own long enough to realize her strength and break out the Red Sentinel Ranger. Once he does, there's little Penny can do to reasonably hurt him. He can resist better freezing abilities than she has, he's far faster and would be hard for her to consistently land hits on, and even when she does hit him, his durability being able to stand up to Flurious with the Corona Aurora's power is just too high for her to damage in any meaningful way even with her Maiden powers. Penny's best option is to tap into her full Maiden power right away and one-shot him in base form, but Mack's higher speed would mean that if they both went for their full power right away, he'd win out and become the Sentinel Ranger before she could land the hit. Not to mention that Death Battle doesn't work like that; it's about who would win most often, not in specific instances. Having one possible win-con doesn't help when your opponent has more and better ones. The Sentinel Ranger's raw power is so much greater than Penny's durability that he would realistically shatter her Aura with one good hit, which he is more than fast enough to land. Penny, conversely, would need to survive a protracted fight against somebody much stronger, faster, and tougher than she is while consistently landing hits in order to wear Mack down and demorph him, which is just something she is not equipped to do.

Penny

- Speed: Can react to things at Mach 287

- Base Power Output/Durability: Low Kilotons

- Winter Maiden Power Output/Durability: Low Gigatons

- Versatility Summary: Can attack at close, mid, and long range with both blades and blasts. Can grapple to move objects or herself. Can immobilize foes with ice. Can enhance physical stats through Aura. Can fly. Can utilize various enhanced vision modes. Can manipulate all elements. Can summon storms.

- Training/Skill: Trained in the Milataristic Kingdom of Atlas. Can match its best warriors. Can match up to Pyrrha, one of the most skilled Huntresses-in-Training of her generation.

Mack

- Speed: Can react to things at near 500x lightspeed

- Base Power Output/Durability: Low Kilotons, potentially Low Megatons

- Sentinel Ranger Power Output/Durability: At least Mid Teratons

- Versatility Summary: Can attack at close, mid, and long range with both blades and blasts. Can grapple to move objects or himself. Can immobilize foes with Tri-Laser. Can enhance physical stats through Red Sentinel Ranger. Can summon extra armor.

- Training/Skill: Granted combat skill from Morphing. Can keep up with experienced warriors like Moltor and Flurious.

Credit Where It's Due

Not every calc in here was my own. Many of them were done by others on the internet, though I at least looked them through to make sure there were no obvious issues and went diggint through the series to find their context. These guys did good work and they deserve credit. If I don't name a calc here, then I did it myself. (Pretty much all of mine was on the Power Rangers side (especially in Operation Overdrive itself, which apparently nobody has analyzed, or at least I couldn't find any), though I did do some scaling with the RWBY calcs that they didn't mention, such as downscaling Maidens from the Grimm Tempest and scaling Oscar's blast to Ironwood's bomb instead of using its own lower calc.

- Death Battle for the calc of Trini's boulder push

- TheRustyOne for the calc of Penny moving Amity

- SobekApep7 for the calcs on Amber's storm and the Grimm Tempest

- ShadowWhoWalks for the calc on Ironwood's bomb

- Imperator100 for the calc of Jinxer's eclipse

- AmeliaLonelyheart for the calc of Leisure's flight to the sun