"That trick with your bracelets is still as impressive as ever."
Cheetah took two steps back, a sly gleam flashing in her golden slit pupils. "But I still landed a hit."
Diana turned to look. There was indeed a cut on her left upper arm, its trace of blood striking against her snow-white skin.
"I barely even felt it!"
Wonder Woman smiled contemptuously, but a second later, Cheetah's face suddenly blurred in her vision.
"What's going on?"
She was confused for a second, then immediately snapped out of it.
"Dirty tricks... you used poison!"
"Ha!"
Cheetah backflipped, her boot heels skimming the deck railing, and landed on the glass dome of the cruise ship's top-floor restaurant.
"Then come catch me for the sake of that tedious sense of honor of yours. If you can."
She licked the remaining beads of blood off her claw tips, leaned backward, and dropped into the night like a streamlined shadow.
A muffled splash seemed to rise from below the deck, but Diana knew that beast would never drown. She would be waiting on the concrete at the docks, picking her teeth with her claws as though this were nothing more than a game of cat and mouse.
"Stop!"
Diana followed without hesitation, leaping over the railing. Her battle skirt snapped in the wind as her body traced a golden arc in pursuit.
Thud!
The drop of dozens of meters shrank to a single instant beneath her feet. Diana landed on one knee, a ring of spiderweb cracks spreading through the concrete beneath her.
She looked around. The docks were deserted. Dim yellow lights buzzed overhead, and the mast that had fallen earlier still bobbed in the water.
Cheetah's presence, her claw marks, even that nauseating animal stench-all of it had vanished.
"Stop hiding." Diana