To prevent Cheetah from escaping, Thea froze her limbs again, leaving only her fierce head exposed. Unless her neck could stretch like a snake, she wouldn't be able to bite the two women standing ten meters away.
Amanda Waller was delighted when she received Thea's call. She readily agreed to come personally to take custody and mentioned that Thea would see her "huge favor" very soon.
Trading Oliver—a guy with a surplus of self-righteousness—for Cheetah seemed like a profitable deal for Waller, Thea thought to herself.
A.R.G.U.S. agents couldn't pop out immediately, so the two had to wait on the spot. Cheetah was still screaming curses. Thea originally wanted to ask where the God-Killer Dagger was, but the opponent refused to communicate, spewing only profanities. Seeing a perfectly fine person turned into this ghostly state, Thea didn't really want to touch such a wicked weapon anyway. She'd leave it for Waller to solve.
After tossing about fifteen psychic shocks to knock Cheetah unconscious, Thea finally felt the surroundings quiet down.
In such a humid environment, it wasn't convenient for the two of them to do any "intimate activities," so they could only chat idly to pass the time.
Just as Thea was recounting a story about surfing with Oliver during their childhood, a woman in traditional Middle Eastern clothing ran into the clearing, pursued by a man wearing a black diving suit and a massive, strangely shaped helmet. The two exchanged blows constantly, fighting from the dense forest into the clearing before Thea and Diana.
Cheetah had chosen this place as a battlefield after analyzing the environment; it was the only relatively open space nearby.
These two strangers naturally made the same choice. However, they didn't expect outsiders to be here.
The man's head was wrapped extremely tightly. The helmet was oval-shaped overall, with two large red crystals covering where the eyes should be. From a distance, he looked like a giant red-eyed fly. While the diver's expression was hidden, Thea and Diana exchanged a glance and saw the confusion in each other's eyes.
The Middle Eastern woman glanced at the frozen Cheetah. She didn't know the background of the two women before her, but she still shouted kindly, "Run!"
The diver behind her seemed to treat Thea and Diana as innocent bystanders. Although it was strange to meet living people in the rainforest, he didn't take it to heart. He continued chasing the woman silently, simply raising his arm toward Thea and Diana. His wrist seemed equipped with some kind of launcher; two extremely long and thin metal darts shot out toward the center of their brows.
In his mind, Thea and Diana were already dead. They weren't worth wasting a deliberate glance on.
But two seconds later, he was dumbfounded. In fact, for a long time afterward, whenever he thought of this encounter, he would want to bang his head against a wall.
Why did I have to get itchy fingers?! If I had just pretended not to see them and ran past, wouldn't it have been fine?!
But he didn't have the ability to predict the future. Even if he did, he couldn't predict that far ahead.
The appearance of the two women was simply too deceptive. If it had been Deathstroke, looking like a mountain of muscle, sitting there, the diver might not have meddled. But Thea and Diana had changed back into casual clothes after their battle. Coupled with the hot and humid weather, they were dressed quite coolly and held no weapons. No matter how he looked at them, they were just two harmless pieces of eye candy.
"Uh?..."
The diver ran past them for more than ten meters. The expected screams and smell of blood didn't appear. He was slower than the woman, and only now did he notice the half-frozen Cheetah. Although unconscious, the beastly aura emanating from her body was still very eye-catching.
"Hey! You're Black Manta, right? Here, have this back!"
Thea and Diana had played with the steel darts he shot for a moment. They couldn't figure out the material, only seeing that they were extremely sharp. Thea played with it, found it boring, and threw it back with a flick of her wrist.
Although she hadn't specifically trained with Batarangs like the Bat-Family, Thea's Ranged Attack Proficiency was nearly maxed out! She could play any ranged attack smoothly, and this steel dart was no exception.
The man whose identity had been exposed was none other than Aquaman Arthur Curry's nemesis: Black Manta.
A very famous treasure hunter in the criminal underworld. Because Aquaman accidentally killed his father, he had only one goal in life: Revenge!
Using years of savings and his outstanding knowledge of mechanical engineering, Black Manta—an ordinary person with no superpowers—built his diving suit and various deadly weapons, embarking on a lonely road of vengeance.
In the criminal underworld, his reputation was illustrious. He always wore that eccentric helmet; no one had seen his true face. Whether on land or sea, his usual appearance was the diving suit and helmet, so quite a few people recognized the gear. But being identified instantly by this young, beautiful woman in this place made him tense up immediately.
Facing the dart thrown back at him, he cautiously chose to dodge.
"Strength and speed exceed normal humans? Is it the enhancement from your combat suit?"
Thea gathered magic around her face, creating a hazy blur like a mask. Her voice, vibrated by magic, sounded completely different from usual.
"Metahuman? Another metahuman! Are you Arthur's companion too?!"
Black Manta's voice was obviously processed through a voice changer, sounding a bit ethereal, but his tone made it clear he wasn't happy.
"Leave this place!"
Thea didn't want to care about their messy business. She just wanted to hand over Cheetah quickly and go back for a good bath.
But perhaps her tone was a bit unkind, or maybe having been in a high position for years, she naturally carried a sense of condescension. This was unbearable for the sensitive Black Manta. Misunderstanding her meaning, energy rippled across his helmet, and two beams of orange laser shot out from his eye lenses.
Holy crap! Is this idiot deaf?!
My meaning was for you guys to go fight somewhere else! How did you interpret it like that?
Thea was speechless. Diana took out her shield and easily blocked the lasers. If she could block even Doomsday's heat vision, these lasers created by human black technology were nothing to worry about.
Bad news!
Seeing his strongest attack fail, Black Manta's heart skipped a beat. He finally realized that these two women dressed as passersby were not ordinary people.
He intended to continue chasing the woman, but the warm-hearted Diana wouldn't let him go. Originally, with one chasing and one fleeing, it was hard to judge who was good and who was evil. But seeing Black Manta acting so viciously now, she didn't hesitate anymore. Raising her sword, she slashed down.
Black Manta could only draw two long blades to block Diana's Sword of Hephaestus.
Clang!
A crisp sound reached Thea's ears. Watching from the side, she immediately noticed something unusual. The material of those two long blades was extraordinary. They didn't look like they were made of any existing Earth metal.
Combined with the future knowledge that Black Manta could use these blades to contend with Aquaman's Trident, and seeing them withstand the Sword of Hephaestus now, plus his profession... it wasn't hard to analyze that they were likely forged from metal salvaged from some undersea ruin.
Intelligent, talented, would be an excellent subordinate.
But Thea thought about it and decided against it. Black Manta was single-mindedly focused on revenge, ignoring any cost or moral code. This had become the sole meaning of his survival. Even the strongest Suggestion Spell couldn't change that. Thea could only give up the idea of recruiting him.