Your eyes narrowed as you faced down the feral Cheetah, her prehensile tail waving through the air behind her. A single Batarang drawn in one hand, you narrowed your eyes, matching hers.
An irritable look on her face was quickly replaced by a confident smirk, her claws sliding out of their furry sheaths.
“I figured you’d show up once I tripped the silent alarm a few hallways back. You never could keep away, even for your own good,” she smirked, crossing her arms.
“How about for your own good, Barbara? You know what happens when someone takes super-soldier formula, or has General Eiling not dropped the memo yet?” you pointed out, nodding towards the closed briefcase behind her.
“My employer hired me to complete a mission, Batman. I try not to worry about the...specifics,” she said, tilting her head playfully.
You merely arched an eyebrow behind your bat-shaped cowl. “Innocents dead on the streets, destruction for miles. That’s what happens when that formula mixes with homicidal, delusional, and depraved psychopaths, i.e Lex Luthor.”
An irritable twitch surfaced in her mouth at the revelation of her “employer,” before she reaffirmed it with a sly grin.
“So you have been following me?” she purred, in a seductive drawl.
“I hardly call cross-referencing your current anonymous bank accounts with a fourth of Lex-Corps remaining monetary assets, and using the GPS I planted on you back in Metropolis to trace your last known whereabouts in Lex Luthor’s personal living room a romantic inclination,” you deadpanned, reading off your leads over the past 24 hours like a badge of honor.
“No wonder they call you the detective,” she remarked dryly.
Unbeknownst to you however, Cheetah was doing some “detective work” of her own. Her tail, hidden from your immediate view, began creeping up the table behind her, snaking around the various test tubes and containers.
“It doesn’t take Sherlock to know that you’re carrying dangerous cargo, Barbara. It also doesn’t take a PhD to figure out the kind of havoc Luthor can wreak with an army of perpetual Supermen at his side,” you countered.
“I don’t ask questions, Batman; I tend to feel dissatisfied with the answer. But perhaps you should ask yourself how you intend on stopping me, all by yourself,” she smiled, her lips parting to reveal her razor-sharp teeth.
Your eyes narrowed. “Don’t do this, Barbara. There’s still hope for you, hope to be human again.”
“Don’t patronize me, Batman. We both know there’s nowhere for me to go else than back to Belle Reve. And besides, it’s not like I have a choice here. Luthor’s got pockets, deep enough to fund an expedition back to that God-forsaken temple in Africa to undo this curse,” she sighed, her voice coming off a bit weary.
At this point, you were so invested in the back-and-forth that you neglected to notice her tail circling around a bubbling test tube, before beginning to coil around it.
“Think about what you’re doing, Dr. Minerva. What do you think will happen when Lex Luthor, CEO of the single largest domestic and international company in the world, archnemesis to the Justice League, gets his hands on a formula that could make people of mass destruction?” you urged, trying once more to appeal to her more rational side.
And for a moment there, it seemed like your words were getting through, finally piercing her feline shell. A look of conflict washed over her face for a split second, a glimmer of the former explorer, before her criminal instincts kicked back in.
“I get paid.”
With that, she suddenly flung the test tube at you via her prehensile tail, nearly catching you off guard.
Instincts quicker than the Flash, you shielded your cowl with your cape, which acted as a protective barrier against the volatile chemical. And just in time too.
As soon as you waved the cape in front of you, the test tube exploded into miniature glass shards and a purple liquid that stained the fabric. A residual smoke began rising out of the liquid, nearly burning through the fabric entirely.
After the first initial moments, you waved your cape to the side, only for your primary line of sight to be clouded by Cheetah.
“RAAWWRR!”
Her feline claws sliced through the air in a downward arc, before clawing the spot where your throat had been mere seconds ago.
Skidding across the floor, you barely avoided the near fatal maneuver before it connected, leaving Cheetah to continue her barrage.
Her figure soon became a snarling blur as she lunged at you yet again, unleashing another feral barrage of blows. Her claws collided with your steel gauntlets, inciting metallic screams from both sides. Slashing and thrusting madly with her claws, you continued to deflect her blows with your gauntlets.
Snarling in frustration, she aimed a crisp roundhouse kick to your cowl, but you quickly brought your right gauntlet up to deflect the top of her foot.
Almost out of sheer desperation, the feline fury aimed a swift throat jab, her fingers poised into one collective arrowhead. Telegraphing this move, you easily parried the jab by intercepting her forearm in an X-Block.
One hand clamping on to her wrist, her eyes widened in shock but before she could think to counter, you reared your other fist back, before letting it fly.
Punching her right across the mouth, she staggered backwards in an almost drunken stupor for a bit, before recovering. Wiping a trail of blood from her mouth, she gave you a resentful glare before standing to her full height.
You two circled each other in a meticulous fashion, almost anticipating each other’s movements.
“Interesting. Not even Diana managed to avoid my claws without her safety bracelets,” she remarked in her native English accent, before flicking her wrist.
“And you’re just a mortal,” she added in a mocking tone.
“Glad you noticed,’ you remarked, before beckoning her forward.
A vicious grin crossing her face, showing her pointed canines, before she lunged at you yet again.
Her slashes and thrusts sliced through empty air, as you shifted your feet back in perfect timing with her attacks. In turn, her moves began to lose its fluidity, instead relying on pure emotion instead of strategy.
In doing so, you were able to capitalize when she tried for a desperate rake across the face.
Just when she was about to connect with the move, you expertly sidestepped the move, instead watching as she sliced through the air where your neck was merely seconds ago. The blind lunge caused her to lose her footing, allowing you to capitalize.
You grabbed on to her right forearm and twisted it behind her back, causing her to shriek with pain. Performing an improvised wristlock, you continued to twist her arm backwards, until her knees started to buckle. Now with both hands grasping her wrist, she winced in pain, before glowering up at you resentfully.
Before you could reach for your handcuffs, Cheetah swung her back leg forward, and managed to land a brutal roundhouse to your torso, forcing you to give up the upper hand. As you forcibly grunted and leaned forward, the feline fury took advantage by raising the same leg and hooking the back of her knee on the back of your neck.
Still stunned from her concrete-shattering kick, you were entirely vulnerable when she used your own height as a kickstand, and in a superhuman act of flexibility, backflipped off of your neck, escaping the vice grip in a most creative way.
You stood upright as soon as she landed on two feet, only to realize that the tides had turned, literally. Now, she had her forearm wrapped around your gauntlet, instead of the other way around.
Uttering a feral cry, she grasped your elbow with her free hand, trapped your forearm in her armpit, and judo threw you over her shoulder all in the span of about three seconds.
You grunted as you were involuntarily swept off your feet by the momentum, and sailed overhead. Still, you managed to lessen the impact of the floor by landing shoulder first.
Rolling to your feet, you turned back towards Cheetah with a bat-shaped compact taser in your left hand, and without any hesitation, pulled the trigger.
“Arrrghhh!” She cried out in pain as the two electrodes began arcing electrical discharges through her body after latching onto her shoulder. As she recoiled back, the discharges continued pulsating through her feline body, her knees already starting to succumb to the electric shock.
Unfortunately, Cheetah just barely managed to slice the two cables in half in one sloppy swiping motion. Grabbing her shoulder numbly, she regained her footing within the next second.
Snarling, she lunged at you yet again, only utilizing one hand to maximize healing time for her bruised shoulder. You methodically skipped back as she clumsily tried slashing your chest emblem, only to feel empty air course through her fingers. Gritting her teeth in pain, she tried for another backhand, but you intercepted her fist mid-blow.
Catching her wrist with one hand, you wrenched it towards you while delivering a hard right cross that would've staggered Mike Tyson in his prime.
As she lurched backwards, rendered groggy by your combo, you could see the stars beginning to dance in front of her eyes. Her arms hanging limply from her shoulders, she was definitely done for.
Twirling around on one foot, you launched into the air with a crisp spinning heel kick, a move that would've decapitated a giraffe for sure. But as your leg knifed through the air, your peripheral vision saw Cheetah somehow duck the kick, and intercept you just as you completed the spin.
Before you could throw a punch, she suddenly leaned in underneath your armpit, and in a truly primal moment, sank her feline canines right into your right shoulder, eliciting a pained cry from you.
Clutching your shoulder, you discovered to your utter horror, two bite marks beginning to bloom through the Kevlar, almost penetrating the skin.
Smiling ferally, Cheetah licked her lips, before...
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