Cheetah's vision was gone, at least for the moment. The burn in her eyes kept stabbing at her thoughts, but on sheer animal instinct, she still barely twisted away from Diana's strike.
"Hm?"
Blind and disoriented, Cheetah had no idea Thea had dumped a whole field of Grease under her feet. As she slipped away from Diana's lunge, she naturally stepped back.
Her foot landed on something slick and gummy. On a normal day, with her balance, she could have sprinted across an oiled floor. But now the throbbing in her eyes had shredded her equilibrium. She staggered to keep from falling—
—and Diana's sword bit into her shoulder. Yellow blood surged out in a steady flow.
Once Thea saw they were properly engaged, she dropped the Darkness spell—just as she and Diana had agreed beforehand. In this timeline, she and Minerva weren't especially close, but they were still technically friends. Diana felt she owed her at least one serious attempt at a rescue.
Of course, when you spend too long around Thea, some things rub off. Even Diana, for all her righteousness, had picked up a devious streak. Her request had been simple:
Create a "fair" battlefield.
Thea obliged with pleasure.
Within several miles, Thea had layered close to fifty different slowing and hindering spells. Then, worried Cheetah might still turn the tables, she used one of Minerva's stumbles to stack a Gravity hex and an extra Slow on her. She dug two deep pits along the most likely retreat lines and strung ankle-high tripwires between several trees.
Every dirty trick you'd use on a blind opponent, she used. Even if Cheetah escaped with her life, the memory of today would leave her scarred for life.
Right now, though, Cheetah couldn't see a thing. It felt like someone was stirring an iron spike around inside her skull. The ground under her feet was uneven, treacherous; her whole body felt like it was carrying an extra few dozen kilos of lead.
That was the "fair" dueling ground Thea had built for her girlfriend.
With the darkness gone, Thea finally got a good look at Cheetah. "Half-human, half-beast" was no exaggeration: pointed ears, prominent fangs, fingers and toes all turned into hooked claws. Her body looked wrapped in a layer of singed yellow hide, covered in dense rosettes, with a long tail dragging behind her.
On looks alone, she'd rate a solid seventy out of a hundred on the intimidation scale. The only pity was her eyes. Those yellow vertical pupils should have been burning with menace; right now they were ruining the whole effect. She had no time to rub them—Diana was already crashing in again—so the raw ache in her eye muscles just triggered her tear ducts. Tears spilled down uncontrollably.
Diana's sense of rhythm in a fight was razor-sharp now. She didn't just rush in recklessly; she controlled the tempo, deliberately creating the illusion that their gap in strength wasn't that big.
Cheetah, who had very little real combat experience, took the bait. Blind as she was, she could still feel there were two enemies nearby. She had no idea what Thea was up to; all she could do was hammer at Diana, trying to force the fight into a one-on-one.
Diana's defense, though, was unrivaled in the multiverse. At least as far as Thea had seen, nobody used a shield better than she did. Facing a Cheetah whose speed had already been cut in half, Diana fought with complete ease—blocking, parrying, slipping aside—folding her footwork and technique into one seamless flow. If it weren't for the timing, Thea would've liked to applaud.
Cheetah couldn't break through. The messed-up terrain dragged at her every move. Both her stamina and her focus bled away at an alarming rate. She realized she couldn't keep this up.
She feinted, driving Diana back a step, then spun a full hundred eighty degrees and bolted, not even checking where she was going.
She got exactly two strides in before something sticky wrapped her up. If she'd been going full tilt, she might have torn straight through the Web spell, but she'd barely started moving—there was no momentum to speak of. She was built for agility, not raw power. Arms swinging wide, she dragged her claws through the web and managed to rip herself free—
—but that one second was all Diana needed to be on her again.
"Diana, let me go! Aren't we friends?"
Cheetah had lost track of how many webs there were, how many pits, how many invisible tripwires were waiting. She was sick of this place; she didn't want to stay here another second. Her predatory cunning saw that brute force wasn't getting her anywhere, so she immediately switched tactics, playing the victim.
"Minerva, I am helping you," Diana said, genuinely. "Come back with me. Accept judgment. You can't keep going down this road."
"So it really is you, Diana... I thought your scent felt familiar. Didn't expect I'd guess right." Cheetah's nose twitched. "So this is the strength you've been hiding all this time? My god says you're one of the Immortals—a lifeform higher than ordinary humans. Is that true?"
Diana fell silent. There was no good way to answer that, so she chose not to answer at all.
"The one who built this battlefield... that's your partner, right?" Cheetah continued, voice dropping, hard and cold. "She's one of you as well—another supernatural. I'm so envious..."
It didn't sound like envy. It sounded like bone-deep jealousy.
"Come back with me," Diana tried again. "Atone for what you've done. There's still hope for you."
"Heh—"
Cheetah's laugh was downright horrifying—three parts human, seven parts beast. Whatever humanity she had left was slipping fast.
"Atonement? Me? What sins are mine? Look at me—I'm already like this. There's no going back. Save your pity, Diana. You can't save me."
Her voice cracked into a shout, eyes wild. She threw herself at Diana with both hands and feet. She'd used the conversation to claw back a little vision and stamina. To her, Diana felt about as strong as she had a minute ago when she'd been weakened. She thought she'd found an opening to go all-in and finish Diana in one go.
But she'd underestimated Diana, and overestimated herself. The whole storm of blows was blocked cleanly, her newly recovered strength burned off for nothing.
"How are you this strong?! I sacrificed so much, and I'm still not as good as you!"
Right then, Cheetah was wrapped in pure fury. Jealousy, grievance, rage at the unfairness of it all—every negative emotion she had braided together. Her attacks grew more and more savage. She'd forgotten about escaping entirely. All she wanted now was to indulge the bloodlust and tear Diana apart.
Negotiation had failed. Diana felt she'd done what she could for the scrap of friendship between them. At last, she stopped holding back.
The power sealed in her Bracelets of Submission roared to life.
At first, Cheetah could still barely meet her head-on. But ten exchanges later, Diana's strength and speed were climbing like they had no limit. She still wasn't hitting Cheetah's theoretical top speed, but for the Cheetah in front of her, it was already more than enough.
The Sword of Hephaestus felt its master's rising battle-lust. Flame licked up along the blade. Every cut, every thrust, every slash and feint went straight for Cheetah's vitals.
Cheetah might have the Cheetah God's body riding her, but those instincts weren't hers. Taken as a whole, she was being crushed on every front.
"Yield," Diana said.
Her speed spiked again. Using the narrow space as they passed each other, she sliced under Cheetah's ribs, then brought the shield down hard on the back of her head.
Dazed and reeling, Cheetah didn't even have time to curse before the Lasso of Truth snapped around her, binding her up tight.