Chivalry of a Dark Knight [Batman x Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry]

CH17: Monster (prt 2)

"So you're one of them, huh? One of the 'ascended ones'." Venomous regarded her.

What she said didn't escape Batman's attention and he looked on wondering what did she mean. What was going on?

Nene walked slowly with eyes angled with a crazy glint while barring a sharp tooth grin.

"What can I say? You were right about me. I was a monster back then." her voice came out with an otherworldly reverb. "And in more ways than one way, I still am!"

The Killer Queen licked her chops with a long tongue.

"Then killing you will be even sweeter!"

An explosion of Mana surged around the gelatinous woman and her body grew even more with her pink hair morphing into two buffalo horns, her arms turning into a wriggling mass of tentacles and the sclera of her eyes shifting to black. As it would turn out, she was a Desperado herself.

Dropping on fours, Nene snarled and bounded towards her like an animal and then tackled the tentacled monstrosity. While the two Desperados tussled and fought, Batman stood back to silently observe them.

While their transformations did surprise him, he pushed away his focus from that and keyed in on Venomous. In some respects her abilities were similar to a foe he had faced a year ago, Matt Hagen, but at a more dangerous capacity. He had compared the way she had fought in the earlier match to now and it made him take notice of a few things.

For one, everyone else had made the assumption that her Device, which was apparently named 'Ouroboros', were the pair of whips that she wielded but it had become very evident to him that the whips were actually part of her own body. Which left the question: If the whip wasn't her Device, then where is it?

His suspicion was confirmed when he noticed that there one thing about her body that didn't change and from there, he began to formulate a plan. Now the only problem was what to do about Saikyou?

"DEATH REAP!"

"JIBAKUJIN!"

When both Desperados activated their Noble Arts at the same time, it was Nene who gained the upper hand. By the time Venomous's arms extended into long sharp blades, the Jibakujin's area of effect had already pulled her to the ring's floor which cracked into multiple shifting pieces.

No longer restrained by the Gleipnir, the circular area of effect extended all the way past the ring and over the stands where some of the spectators screamed in fear and retreated upwards as the structure close to them broke apart. The portion of the ring effected nearly crumbled on the spot and it caused the surrounding force field to flicker before dissipating.

Venomous, her body flattened like a thin rubber sheet, grunted and struggled against the gravitational forces exerted on her and was only able managed glare and bear her teeth through her stretched face. But surprisingly, she managed to contract her body into a smaller shape and crawl with sliding/pushing motions like how a worm would.

She did so with such rapid speed that she was able move out of the area of effect and within striking distance of her opponent where she quickly formed a barbed tentacle and attempted to slash at her.

Nene reacted and jumped back in time, which allowed her opponent to reform again albeit panting a little from exhaustion.

"Give it up, Midget!" she yelled at her. "I can take whatever you throw at me!"

"You haven't even begun to see what I CAN throw at you!" Nene fired back with an evil grin.

In that moment when she had said that, Batman saw a white flash and then a roaring inferno among wreckage of buildings, bodies being carried by paramedics and what looked like the site of a terrible bombing. Except he knew that couldn't be the case; no bomb could do something like that. And then he saw nothing else.