Death Prediction: Valentine vs Nightmare Nurse

 

Happy Halloween! A classic Halloween costume archetype is the Scary Nurse. Nurses are meant to be wholesome figures of health and wellness, though some nurses in fiction are anything but; and can be sadistic, sexualized, and pseudo-villainess examples of mad science and occult sorceries, creating figures of terror like the two combatants today. 

Valentine, the culmination of Last Hope

or Nightmare Nurse, the Mystic M. D.

Long ago humanity was cursed with the emergence of the sentient mystical artifact called the Skullheart who through Faustian Bargains turns women with wishes of imperfect purity into the dreaded Skullgirl, a monstrous entity created to bring about the end of the world. In the face of such a terror it would seem humanity should be doomed, but humans are nothing is not resilient, resourceful and ruthless in the face of certain devastation. Where there is a will, there is a way. A sentiment most perfectly materialized in the form of Valentine. 

Valerie was once a normal nurse and scientific researcher working under the royally supported program, the Anti-Skullgirls Lab, a secret organization dedicated to finding some way to ending the Skullgirl threat that hung over the world. Times grew more and more desperate, and in order to prepare some line of defense against the Skullgirls, the members of the Anti-Skullgirls Lab experimented on themselves, causing strange physiological changes such as grey skin and cross pupils. With their new abilities they began to train themselves into an elite squad known as "The Last Hope," each receiving a codename based on one of the holidays. Despite being born on Christmas, Valerie was given the codename "Valentine," and served as the group's second-in-command.

However their successes were to be brought short. When the new Skullgirl, Marie Korbel, was newly transformed, their leader Christmas led them into attack her while she was still relatively weak. But the shapeshifter Double had infiltrated the Last Hope's ranks. The entire squad ended up sacrificing themselves to give Valentine, their best agent, the chance to defeat Marie and....she failed.

She was strong and smart, but Marie's regenerative power was too much for Valentine alone. However the Skullgirl offered Valentine a choice; join her or die. Valentine, above all a pragmatist, allied herself to the Skullgirl, solely for the purposes of getting information about her and eventually finding a way to kill her and avenge her fallen comrades.

Superhuman Physical Capabilities:

As part of the experimentation done on her, Valentine gained massively superhuman physical capabilities. This includes:

Superhuman Strength and Durability:

Valentine is considered clearly the strongest member of Lost Hope, able to defeat three other members in a sequence of one on one fights including Easter which is important as Easter was able to hold the shapeshifting monster Double and incapacitate it. Double, due to her shapeshifting abilities can vary somewhat in physical capabilities however at its weakest Double was able to maintain the dimension of Gehenna within itself. Gehenna contains the remnants of an ancient civilization showing it has been maintained continuously even at Double's weakest. Destroying an area extending to the horizon like Double's dimension has been calced numerous times to being around 100 kilotons of energy worth as a lowball, and could potentially be as high as over 300 MEGAtons of TNT. Valentine and Double are typically partners who fight the others members of the cast as secondary villains which also suggests the two are probably not radically far apart from each other in terms of strength usually supported by Valentine actually beating Double herself in one timeline, and when Peacock defeated Double, Valentine still believed she could defeat Peacock suggesting she viewed herself as at least comparable to Double.

While Valentine is on the lower end of the power distribution for her tier, she has other things suggesting she maybe at least comparable. She's suggested she fought Gigans in the great war, Gigans being physical powerhouses with even the reanimated skeleton of one beating Patty and Easter. She was able to canonically at least do some damage to Marie, though Marie had just become the Skullgirl and would get far stronger, and she was able to defeat the tragic monster Painwheel, created as a weapon to stop the Skullgirl, though Painwheel's powers also somewhat vary based on her mental state and proximity to the Skullgirl. This would suggest Valentine may downscale from the feats of most of the Skullgirls cast including the Skullgirl Marie, somewhat early in the timeline lifting and throwing the top half of a Tower across a megacity, calced by my friend ThorGundersen1058 as requiring over 8 Megatons of TNT as well as the weapon Hungern being stated to devour "civilizations. While the timeframe is not stated it is stated that Hungern must be stopped "now" or it will consume half of New Meridian, strongly suggesting it would do so in a short timeframe, New Meridian being a Megacity comprised of a former nation.

Superhuman Speed:

Valentine seems to be on the faster side for the Skullgirls cast. Even a year before the "present", Valentine was able to avoid bullets so casually she mocked the idea.  As mentioned before she was able to defeat Painwheel who can jump into the air and strike an airborne enemy five times before they fall a frame, calced at Mach 11. She was able to escape with Princess Umbrella before Parasoul could reach her, possibly in part thanks to Double's intervention. Krieg, Parasoul's weapon was able to rotate so fast it blurred in the brief time it took bullets to cross its diameter which one calc put anywhere from Mach 47.6 to Mach 142.76, though I am more likely to believe it's the lower-end. Similarly the magical girl Annie of the Stars, who Valentine should be comparable to in speed, was able to fly through a town-sized dimension rescuing people quickly. This is somewhat hard to calc but should be somewhere in the same speed value of middle double digit Mach.

Enhanced Stamina: 

It's unclear if this comes as a result of training or experimentation, but Valentine has a high degree of stamina, able to battle three other members of The Last Hope in one on one battles without any degree of tiring, and then engaging in the battle against the Skullgirl.

Skills and Abilities:

She is an extremely skilled fighter, being a veteran of the great war. In combat she often uses her Kunoichi skills of stealth, agility, and using her sexuality to distract her opponents in order to throw her enemies off guard and find their weaknesses. She has developed many techniques mostly taking advantage of her enhanced agility and stealth or knocking an enemy into the air to disorient them.

She's also developed special special techniques that give her supernatural type abilities.

Enhanced Mobility:

Valentine has developed the ability to double jump or glide through the air slowly. This is used for one of her iconic techniques:

EKG Flatliner:

Valentine darts back and forth at faster speed than normal, even in midair, ripping into her enemy with her Ripsaw.

Teleportation/Possible Afterimage Creation:

Somehow through training Valentine has developed the ability to deconstruct her body and reappear elsewhere, sometimes with covering smoke or creating force to knock away enemies as she does. There is some debate over whether a particular move of hers is creating an afterimage or another instance of her teleportation though she very clearly can teleport. She does it several times.

Time Stop and Potential Resistance:

Valentine has also demonstrated the ability to stop time for a couple of moments, leaving her opponents immobile, and allow her to attack them freely. Due to the briefness of the power, she generally only uses it as a last resort, when her enemy is going to get a hit in to turn the tide of battle. Valentine uses it for her most iconic move:

Command Code (Potential Mind and Memory Manipulation):

Valentine demonstrated the ability to implant a command code inside the brain of Painwheel to force her to perform actions and remove memories, though Painwheel was able to resist it via her will and rage. It's unclear how long this took and whether it would be combat applicable.

Dead on Arrival:

Valentine's most famous move, she stops time, traps her opponent in a bodybag and performs an impromptu surgery designed to empty their body of blood and cause presumably excruciating pain. 

Possible Fourth Wall Breaking:

Valentine asks why Hallow put quotations around one of her words. It's clear could not have made air quotes given her hands are syringes, so it's possible this is meant to be fourth wall breaking, which is something several Skullgirls characters demonstrate.

Equipment:

Valentine has a wide array of medical equipment on her person at any time, which she uses in combat. This includes ripsaws, stethoscopes, knives, knock-out gas, calipers, hammers, and of course the most famous medical equipment

cross-shaped shuriken which she can throw or use as an extended melee weapon with bindings. You didn't have that at your hospitals?

She also carries the primary weapons of her fallen comrades, so that she is truly the representation of The Last Hope. This includes the scalpels of Christmas used for slicing and dicing

The Naginata of Patty for ladylike slashing and dashing

The bodybags of Easter which can be used to restrain an enemy, or as a parachute for even further aerial ability.

as well as Hallow's syringes including purple which which can be used to poison, green to cause paralysis, and orange to weaken their reaction times. 

Valentine also has on her a Defibrillator which can be used to shock enemies or resurrect the recently deceased and dark chocolate to amp her regeneration.... somehow. 

Intelligence:

Valentine is a scientific supergenius by real world standards, having, along with Brain Drain, created Painwheel, a rage-powered monster using two synthetic parasites capable of threatening the Skullgirl, a threat to the world. As the utilization of parasites is one of the most important weapons in the Skullgirls-universe, this can be viewed as being the leader master of arms development in a world where characters can create esoteric type weapons that can affect higher planes. As the two worked together on this goal, this might suggest she's actually comparable to Brain Drain in intelligence which is especially impressive given he created Robo-Fortune, a fourth-wall breaking super-machine as well other ASG agents that have created time travel, which suggests overall she'd be a Type 3 intellect.

Valentine is especially a master of medicine, a unique fighting style called Medical Ninjutsu of which she is a master, and manipulation. She is infamously good at finding the weaknesses of other entities and exploiting them. She even manipulated Double into thinking they were on the same side, Double being a monster of likely 4,000 years old who has spent that timeframe learning to manipulate and deceive others and regularly tricks the rest of the Skullgirls cast.

Weaknesses:

Valentine doesn't have too many weaknesses. The biggest of which however is that she seems to be on the lower end of the power distribution for the verse, and has been overpowered by almost the entirety of the Skullgirls cast. 

Beyond that Valentine can be a bit overconfident and has the biggest fault of hyperintelligent people, an extreme ability to convince herself of that she is right, leading her to do horrible things totally contrary to her overall goal because she can justify it to herself. She is a villain not because of her goal, but because her ambition blinded herself to realizing her noble goal is the opposite of the villainous means she uses to get there.

Personality:

Valentine is pragmatic and utilitarian to a fault. She has little concern for whom she deems to be "crybabies" and is more than willing to murder or torture the innocent in the pursuit of a higher good. In her hobbies, her career, and her general lifestyle, she seems to fashion herself as entirely results-based. What gets the optimal result is de facto justified and all else is meaningless sentimentality.

With that said behind those cold eyes is a broken heart. She showed a noticeable affection for her companions and in an interview Alex Ahad stated Valentine acts like a jerk to disguise her good intentions and her emotions. Valentine is constantly trying to find or make the greatest skullgirls weapon, even torturing one young girl to try and force it to be as with Painwheel. But she accidentally allowed the true greatest skullgirls weapons to be born ironically when she disobeyed an order and worked to preserve a young refugee girl's life, who would become Lab 8's greatest Anti-Skullgirl weapon, Peacock, expressly Painwheel's superior despite both having two synthetic parasites. It was not a ruthless merciless utilitarian approach that created the hero to save humanity, it was a moment of sentimentality.

This is the true tragedy of Valentine, that she can not see that in her desperate drive to honor the sacrifices of her comrades, she pushed herself to sacrifice what they were fighting for. Valentine is a woman of many masks, but while a mask can hide oneself from the world, it can also hide the world from oneself. Poetically, Valentine's own route ends in her becoming the Skullgirl herself and allowing herself to be destroyed by her own creation, her own monster, to save the world. Valentine's grand ambition, intelligence, and ruthlessness may someday allow her to save the world, but the real question is can she save herself?

Nobody's perfect. Every Hero has a failing, every Achilles a hell, every Superman a kryptonite. Of course when you are a demon, your idea of moral failings might be...a little bit different. Asa was by all appearances a paragon of demons; violent, perverted, arrogant, power-hungry. But though she tried to hide it, the demon Asa had the most contemptible trait one can have in Hell; compassion and kindness. The Greek Deities long ago, seeing this hidden trait, forced her into the Hippocratic Oath; to preserve life, to do no harm

Bound to the gods will, the Demon made her way from Hell to the living universe, forced to work as a healing specialist. She traveled by possessing humans and would work on healing magics on those she came across. In the guise of an old woman she worked as the nurse for a young woman named Alice Winter. Alice grew increasingly sick from a disease eating at her body and soul. Minutes before Alice would die, Asa, knowing there was no other way to preserve Alice, possessed the girl.

Thus was born the Nightmare Nurse, the Healer from Hell. Asa piloted Alice's body into various magical journeys, most often as the lover or ally of John Constantine of the Justice League Dark. Most don't understand Asa's motivations and falsely suspect Asa gave Alice the disease herself. The truth is the Nightmare Nurse is one of creation's most confounding entities, a mixture of the vile sins of a Demon, and the compassion of an Angel that confuses even the wisest entities of Creation

Demon Physiology:

Nightmare Nurse is a demon inhabiting a human body. Demons are immortal conceptual entities from the Sphere of the Gods, a conceptual realm. Asa's true self being a higher plane entity, she can easily enter the consciousness of other entities. This gives Asa a particularly nasty hax in that when the Nightmare Nurse had administered herself to someone, her memory is tattooed on their brain. Mere memories of her contain bits of her magic which can attack someone mentally. These versions of her are based on that person's perspective on her. Her true self can possess people even including Zatanna. Her demonic possession of Alice has given Alice some additional abilities physically as well.

Levitation:

Nightmare Nurse can levitate.

Enhanced Durability and Regeneration:

Nightmare Nurse was easily able to regenerate from being pierced at numerous points along her body and was later hit by "22 megathaumatons" of mystical force, frying half her body, and could regenerate. This is equivalent to a Mid Regen. Asa possessing Alice made her body instantly return to full health. Asa  also seems to have made Alice's body more durable as she withstood her own magic blast.

Enhanced Speed:

While Nightmare Nurse is not especially fast for her verse, she's fast enough to attack John Constantine before he can react, and took a defensive position against Sea King. John Constantine in the New 52 was fast enough to fight Vampires that could overwhelm Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) in numbers, scaling to Batgirl (Stephanie Brown) having been able to lightning-time against Livewire. Sea King is the Earth-3 equivalent of Aquaman who could quickly swim to the four corners of the Earth and scales to Mera who lightning-timed. Overall Nightmare Nurse downscales from lightning-timing.

Enhanced Senses:

Demons commonly show the ability to sense despair and fear. Some demons have also shown other enhanced senses, but it is unknown if those are standard for demons. 

True Demon Form:

Asa's demon form is vastly stronger. She was able to withstand Etrigan's hellfire breath and was able to damage Blight, the embodiment of humanity's sins. Blight was a cosmically strong villain and while he was getting stronger over time, by this point he had already darkened the Sun. Nightmare Nurse rarely uses this form; either because exposing her true self is dangerous, it would end most fights too quickly for her playful sadistic self, or as is probably most implied, to use her true form requires a level of hostility and lethal intent that she is reluctant to use.

Hell Empowerment:

The metaphysical realm of Hell exists conceptually within the minds of all people, and transcendent of the real outside space and time. The metaphysical self of a Demon, equivalent to a New God's godhead, is much stronger than any physical manifestation they might make, able to fodderize the souls of mortals which can create their own universal afterlives for themselves. They also have control of reality around them similar to a mortal soul.

Enhanced Willpower:

Demons have to an extraordinarily high willpower to withstand living in Hell which can hurt the psyche of even Green Lanterns. Asa's is strong even for a demon, able to briefly resist absorption from the Green and forcibly control her true form keeping herself and Demon Constantine from killing Blight and his human host, something Constantine couldn't do. 

Healing Magic:

Nightmare Nurse's specialty as the Healer from Hell is healing and protective magic. She has millennia of healing experience.

Extrasensory Perception:

Nightmare Nurse can perform an "astral biopsy" to find the traces of Deadman's consciousness and can probe a wound to find etheric residue. She can absorb someone's wounds, physical or otherwise, to learn of their trauma history and was able to heal Swamp Thing's mind, sifting through his memories as she did so.

Bodily Stabilization and Creation:

Nightmare Nurse stabilized the Swamp Thing despite the disappearance of the Green into Pralaya.  She was also able to grow her own Swamp Thing from a piece of the original. Hers is female. Though this plan backfired as every piece of Swamp Thing contains the whole so it just became more of Swamp Thing, another extension of the Green. Asa also suggested she could give Deadman a body.

Anti-Toxins:

Nightmare Nurse has serums for various toxins on standby, and has inoculated herself against various magical toxins. She was even able to heal Blight's toxins, with difficulty.

Astral Healing:

Nightmare Nurse was able to heal soul-loss from the Phantom Stranger, something neither Zatanna or Constantine could do. Her ability to heal it was, in fact, the very reason Nightmare Nurse was summoned to the Justice League Dark.

Forcefield Creation:

Nightmare Nurse was able to block Blight's fire-breath turning trees and buildings to ash and creating a massive trench in the street. Her shield absorbs the energy used against it.

Nightmare Nurse can also create mental plane shields and Thoth Pyramids to protect against mental plane beings. This was potent enough that Nightmare Nurse thought it was possible, though was unsure, it could stop the power of Blight.

Divine Protection and Resurrection:

Nightmare Nurse is able to use the Airmid Enchantment to call on the Celtic Goddess of Protection and Resurrection to aid her, though the Airmid is a dangerous and unpredictable spell that could kill Asa.

Rod of Asclepius: 

Nightmare Nurses uses the Divine Rod of the Greek God of Medicine, Asclepius given to her thousands of years ago to perform her miraculous healing. It is attuned to her psyche and will act to her will even when she is unconscious. She can use it to reverse the Dun-Kon-Wei which induces a deathlike coma. It channels Asa's inner compassion, her light, as life and healing so potent it was able to drive away the Beyond itself, the beyond being the personification of the border between the conceptual realm and the great void.

General Magic:

Nightmare Nurse is a magician with millennia of experience even more skilled a magician, though without the raw power of, New 52 Zatanna, and while she is a healing specialist, can you some other magical abilities. Asa maintains her spells via concentration.

Reality-Warping/Conjuration:

Nightmare Nurse can use the backwards speaking magician Magicians use though she has no feats of using it on humans, which only experienced backwards talkers can. Mostly she uses it for conjuration, summoning everything from mystical scapels to ships that can sail across the ocean of nothingness through the beginning of the universe.

Mystic Scalpels:

Nightmare Nurse's mystic scalpels are her iconic weapon. These ignore durability completely and could embed themselves into the demon Belial and penetrate the hand of Pandora. She can throw these with enough precision to pin John Constantine to the wall. She also created these little magical pyramids which worked on Blight.

Energy/Elemental Projection:

Nightmare Nurse can create magical energy, lightning, fire, and a tornado to attack with. The potency of these are unknown but given just her appearing caused the House of Mystery to shake to its foundations, it's likely at least in the building level range. It's also higher as 35 years into the future, Nightmare Nurse and several other mystical heroes created a mushroom cloud level explosion with their magic. Given Nightmare Nurse has thousands of years of experience, she probably hasn't grown that much stronger in that time, but it's a high-end. 

Her magic attacks can also hit intangible things including creatures made of nothingness.

Telekinesis:

Nightmare Nurse was able to telekinetically grab and move a bunch of people.

Illusion Creation:

Nightmare Nurse disguised herself as Zatanna.

Metamagic:

With a few minutes, Nightmare Nurse can create a counterspell to any magic, and she was able to use her magic to bolster Constantine's tracking spell.

Teleportation/BFR:

Nightmare Nurse can teleport in a puff of smoke and teleported the Justice League Dark. She can also create a portal between realms including all the way to the Beyond. She can forcefully teleport someone to the Beyond though it takes all her energy to do so. Doing so is especially dangerous as the Beyond can absorb her entirely.

Potential Time Freezing:

Zatanna, Nightmare Nurse, and Madame Xanadu were able to freeze time across the multiverse. It's unknown if she can do it by herself. 

Dun-Kon-Wei:

Nightmare Nurse knows the mark of the Dun-Kon-Wen a dangerous magic inscription which causes the individual to enter a deathlike coma not even professionals can tell from death. The Dun-Kon-Wen shows nightmares and delusions to the one it's used upon which ends up driving most people insane and also leaves the psyche open and vulnerable.

Blackmare Curse:

The more dangerous asset in Nightmare Nurse's arsenal, the Blackmare Curse manifests Asa's hatred and malevolence and evil turning her to her demon form. It tears apart one's mind and soul though Nightmare Nurse has a stronger resistance due to her insanity.

Intelligence: 

Nightmare Nurse is a vastly intelligent entity, gained from thousands of years of experience. She may be the only entity even more crafty and duplicitous than John Constantine himself. She obviously specializes in medical and healing magic knowledge, including psychology. She is the demon who taught Jung of psychological aspects. She is especially good at getting under the skin of others and crafting schemes to play with them.

Weaknesses:

Nightmare Nurse has a wide variety of weaknesses. Like all demons she has a massive weakness to holy powers. Even Lucifer Morningstar, the greatest of them, was hurt by the baby Etrigan shooting a cross of fire into his back and was rendered powerless and mortal in realm of the Shinto Kami Izanami. Holy things completely neutralize demons power and immortality. Mystical cold and iron are also weaknesses of demons, though not to anywhere near as extreme an extent. Also entering into the minds of others is dangerous. Nightmare Nurse can be overwhelmed by strong desires in the collective unconscious or minds characterized by inner demons which can attack her, or the power of hope which can give mortal souls strength to rival powerful demons. 

More then that, Nightmare Nurse is characterized by massive psychological weaknesses and insanity. She is a reckless, perverted, arrogant sadist who plays around if she doesn't feel immediately in danger. However her biggest psychological weakness is her compassion, that forced her into the Hippocratic Oath.

While Nightmare Nurse can fight an enemy with lethal intent if she thinks they are a massive threat to the world, for the most part she can't. In those cases, she has to resort to tricking them into stopping themselves or incapacitate them without harming them. Nightmare Nurse generally tries to hide her compassion as sadistic playing with people, but smart enough entities like Blight and Light Pandora were able to quickly tell her inner nature. 

Personality:

Nightmare Nurse is one of the strangest "heroes" of the DCU. She is arrogant, sexually perverted, rash, and every other vice you can attribute to a mortal woman. She is, as a demon, a representation of humanity's failings and weaknesses. She is seemingly a hero only because she is bound by an oath forced on her by the gods. That is what people who don't know her think. Yet those who do know her regard her as something far more complicated.

The thing that is brought up most about the Nightmare Nurse is what a strange confusing creature she is. Sadistic but compassionate. A megalomaniac but a hero. The Nightmare Nurse is a lover to some, and a horrid killer to others. Just like the medicines she wields she can be used to save lives and ease pain, or to bring people to an agonizing death. It's all just based on ratios and quantities you get of her injected into your life.

Asa is to her own people a tragic entity, a demon of all the gloriously wicked traits of demon-kind brought low by her own "damning virtue." For this she ended up helping to save the multiverse against Blight and all of creation against Pralaya. Nightmare Nurse is an indication that just as a hero only needs one sin to fall and bring down the world with them, even someone villainous in every regard only needs that one virtue to save the world.

Beneath the streets of New Meridian, Valentine worked diligently at her latest creation, her brow furrowed in concentration. Little did she know, far above the city skyline, a demon hovered over the city, knowing her prey was in this dimension. The demon known as the Nightmare Nurse disappeared in a smoke.

Valentine finished her calculations on the page in front of her. If her theory was right, this serum may be the key to neutralizing the Skullgirl's regenerative properties. Valentine turned only to find, to her shock, that the serum was gone. A creaking noise caused the Ninja Nurse to tilt her gaze upwards where, in the lab doorway, was a figure dressed as if to mock her, in a sexualized nurse outfit, and with two eyes blazing with otherworldly energy. In her hand, she held the serum. 

Valentine immediately took a defensive crouch. "If you know what's good for you..." she said "You'll hand that back."

Nightmare Nurse shook her head. This was the villain she had heard of experimenting on people? She sensed a despair from her...but moreover Asa liked the revealing nurse outfit...such a sexy style wasted on such a serious person. "Tsk tsk tsk" Nightmare Nurse responded. "All work and no play...makes a nurse a frigid virgin."

"Hmph." that got a little laugh out of Valentine. "Frigid huh?" Valentine prepared herself for combat, already thinking up plans to retrieve the vial without damage. "How about I show you....just how hot-blooded I can be?" Valentine adjusted her position to emphasize her chest's size, and make herself seem smaller, watching her foe's reaction and studying it.

"Ooooh." Nightmare Nurse thought. "Maybe she WILL be some fun..."

Fight!

With a shining flash in the lab's pale light, Valentine launched several scalpels at the Nightmare Nurse. With a vain laugh, the Nightmare Nurse casually raised her hand creating a barrier to protect against the attack. However this was only a part of the kunoichi's plan, as she teleported next to the demon and kicked the vial from her hand.

The two girls saw the vial go flying through the air and smoke filled the lab as both teleported after it, the two grabbing for it in the same moment. Asa grinned at the intimate position and swiftly launched a kick at Valentine's midsection. The blow caught, and it was though the demon had kicked as Kryptonian, her blow glancing off harmlessly. Valentine's eye lowered slightly in annoyance before attempting to shock away the Nightmare Nurse with her defibrillator.

Nightmare Nurse made an unearthly moan as horrid electricity ran through her and made her hair stand up. "ooooooh, harder mommy!" she said in mocking ecstasy.

Nightmare Nurse, acting quick, teleported herself and the vial in a puff of smoke away from Valentine, but Valentine smoothly glided towards her, slamming to Nightmare Nurse's arm. A sickening noise was heard, as Valentine's heel dug into the arm ripping through a chunk. Asa cried out in pain and dropped the vial causing the kunoichi to teleport to the bottom and grab it. She hadn't expected her blow to do such damage, and she certainly wasn't expecting what she saw next. 

Quickly the arm of the MD from Hell regenerated, flesh and bone and blood squelching together in disgusting detail. With an angry twitch of her hand, the levitating demon sent down a rain of mystical scalpels. With expert skill, Valentine darted to and fro avoiding the scalpels however behind her the demon nurse teleported, striking her with demon lightning. Valentine instinctively moved to shield the vial with her body.

Valentine's teeth clenched. That....stung. Valentine turned with surgical precision and uppercut the demon, knocking her into the air and cratering Asa's midsection. Valentine was not content to leave it at that and jumped into the air and with a quickdraw of her hacksaw, slashed off the limbs of the Nightmare Nurse.

Nightmare Nurse cried out in horrific agony before smoke engulfed at them and she teleported again at the edge of the room, her body already recovering. 

"Just Kidding!" she said with a sinister grin. She held up with her telekinetic powers the vial throwing it to get caught on the ceiling girder, a clear challenge to Valentine's ability to stop her.

Valentine felt her heart catch in her heart. Memories flooded back to her. That day. She recalled another monster who refused to die despite the wounds she dealt to it... that day seemed to stretch eternal. 

The bloody romantic surged forth to strike at Asa but giving an exaggerated yawn, she brought up a shield. Valentine tried to quickly shift and teleport to attack her from behind but Asa simply produced another shield to guard her. Asa gave an exaggerated yawn. "Just give up." she said with a grin, "my shield is absorbing your energy."

Valentine stopped to catch her breath, her chest heaving, her skin red and flushed, stooped over in exhaustion. The demon licked her lips watching her exquisite body. Her concentration broken, her shield dropped and in a swift motion, a vial of orange liquid came from Valentine. Asa found suddenly Alice's body unable to move quickly.

"Wha....what did you do?!" she demanded, her body sluggish as though she were a drunk. Valentine smiled under her mask. "You reminded me of someone." and with a single strike, Valentine knocked the Nightmare Nurse out the building onto the busy streets, laying on her back on the New Meridian streets.

Slipping some dark chocolate into her mouth to aid her regeneration, Valentine quickly leapt out of the building, but she couldn't find remains of her enemy. She crouched and took a defensive position, knowing her enemy could be anywhere. Civilians ran scared in all directions, not knowing what was going on. The loud noise was deafening.... almost too deafening for Val to hear...

At the last moment she turned to the side as one of the "civilians" threw a scalpel that just grazed the size of Valentine's ripping the edge of her outfit.

"Hahaha" Nightmare Nurse laughed as she floated up into the air and released her disguise. "Good reflexes." Telling peoples psychological states was a major part of Valentine's job and while this strange being's psyche was still oddly guarded, she could tell that the slowing agent she had used was still active. It was a bluff.

Valentine leapt into the air at Nightmare Nurse. The demon smirked. How predictable could these mortals be? Valentine however did not just leap once, but leapt again further into the air catapulting over Asa and slicing downwards with the hacksaw towards the demons brain. 

In a flash however the Demon was gone. Thoughts raced through Valentine's mind rapidly as she realized that the slowness had been a bluff, a double bluff! In the distance she heard the real Asa call out words in some arcane tongue "parT, gremE!" and on the ground an iron maiden appeared on the ground to brutalize the ninja.

But as she flipped over in the are, Valentine launched a cross shuriken, throwing herself off course of the flashy trap.

The cross dug into the demon's side, and she screeched, feeling REAL pain for the first time in ages. Valentine landed safely on the other side of the trap, kicking it aside with ease. "Maybe try something less over dramatic less time." Valentine suggested "The plan was sound, but far too theatric inefficient."

But Asa was in a rage from the pain. "You hurt me, you bitch!" she yelled in a fury. The rage in those eyes...the two girls blazing eyes met, and their anger reflected. The demon waved her hand and mystic pyramids appeared, the first digging into Valentine's hand and making her shake from sudden pain. 

A demonic smile crept across Asa's face and she summoned more and more. Valentine in recognition used the scalpels of her leader and blocked projectile after projectile, memories of practice long gone coming to mind. She saw the demon's eyes blaze and felt a pulling at her scalpels. But her strength was greater.

Still all these strange spells worried Valentine. Whatever this demon was, it presented a real threat. Her eyes shifted as time came to a stop and teleported to a side of the demon, writing down a prescription for DEATH on her clipboard and injecting her with a purple fluid.

The Nightmare Nurse seemed to crumple on the ground. Valentine fell to the ground beside her. She spoke.

"You can stop acting, I know you aren't actually dead." Asa levitated. "Ah, spoilsport!" she complained. "Ruining my trick. And on Ol' Hallow's Eve too!" Nightmare Nurse waved her hand. "Well let's see if I can't REALLY make you cross-eyed!"

Down deep underground the two combatants appeared, in the pitch black. Valentine had scarcely collected herself as the world turned to blank when she felt an aching lightning fast slash of Asa's blade. The demon could easily sense the nurse's inner despair, and was used to the pitch black pits of Hell.

Valentine attempted to strike back but by the time the blade bit into her flesh, and she lunged with her scalpel to strike at the demon, she was already gone from her position. Valentine didn't know where they were, seemingly a deep cavern apart from the light, dampness covering the ground, she attempted to take to the air only to smash immediately into the cavern wall. 

Nightmare Nurse laughed at Valentine's misfortune. She was fun to play with and get some vengeance for the pain earlier. "I know it's tight..." she said with an invisible sneer in the dark "but that's what makes it..." and as she appeared behind Valentine to slash at her from behind. "funnnn."

However with a single backwards strike, Valentine brought the cross extension from her foot outwards, spreading from her foot bindings. This tore into Asa's stomach, causing blood to spurt out onto both of them, as Nightmare Nurse was kicked, screaming a devil-banshee shriek to the end of the cavern. 

Valentine attempted to lunge onto her, but her hands collided only with smoke and stone.

Thinking fast, the bloody romantic took her cross shuriken into her hands, knowing even the threat of them would keep her enemy off guard and less confident. Val had never been a particularly devout woman, knowing the Trinity were the true threat to the world. But time truly makes strange bedfellows of us all. 

Asa tries to regain the advantage and attempted to scalpel at Valentine again. However the slight tinge of fear of Valentine's crosses kept the Mystic MD moving ever so slightly slower, and Valentine was able to block her blows, but before she could counter-attack, Asa escaped again. The two were at something of a standstill. 

Valentine's eye blazed, and suddenly the Nightmare Nurse felt the burning cross attack her brain. Valentine quickly tried to implant a command code, but Asa simply grinned as her psychic shield warded off such an attack. But in the meantime...she was wide open. Nightmare Nurse conjured an orange and black magic spiral to stylishly finish off this nuisance. 

However, this created a brief light which shone throughout the cavern. Val knew this would only last a brief time and leapt over the magic blast. Asa prepared to teleport out of the way of Val's scalpels at the last minute again, but Val switched to her naginata and impaled the demon girl through the arm, tearing it off with one motion. Val brought the cross closer and closer to Asa, weakening the writhing demon.

Thinking quickly, Asa created a portal back to the surface, beneath her and sunk into the ground, followed in quick pursuit by Valentine.

The two girls appeared back on the surface, both severely bruised and battered from the fight. Both quickly took to healing themselves and patching their bodies together. Asa was briefly distracted by Valentine's ripped clothing barely hiding her curvaceous form. Val noticed her distraction and quickly threw a cross shuriken at Asa, who was only just able to teleport away in time.

"You're a real tease, you know that...." the Nightmare Nurse said with a laugh. 

"What can I say?" Valentine responded "I use whatever I can." As Valentine made a quick lunge for the Nightmare Nurse, who teleported away in the last second, Asa commented "I wonder what drives a villainess like you..." Asa raised her hands which produced a light as she sifted through Val's memories....

One memory was clearly paramount.

Friends, comrades, innocence, slaughter, betrayed. A girl, a monster, a lady of death standing above her...

"Get out, get out of my head!" Valentine said. She threw some scalpels at the Nightmare Nurse, and though they penetrated Alice's soft skin, it seemed to make no difference to her. 

"Bit hypocritical, don't ya think? Pot asking the kettle to stop being black." as the image of Carol on the experimenting table appeared. 

Valentine breathed hard from the exhaustion of fighting, fighting for minutes, fighting for years. "I am doing what must be done."

With her words Valentine glided over the street to Asa's position kicking at a precise angle, but Asa dodged out of the way again.

"What do you even think you're doing then?" Asa asked, her voice a mix of sarcasm and concern.

"This." Valentine said, her voice more sinister than the Nightmare Nurse had heard her the entire time as Valentine quickly froze time around her and charged right into the Nightmare Nurse sending them crashing into the building behind her that Valentine had so meticulously angled for her to be in front off.

Asa came to awareness again outside fully of Valentine's head.....her body burned. Her magic felt weak. The building was large and old and formal.

"Welcome to the temple to the trinity." Valentine said. "This is where all sinners are judged...and given your reaction to the cross earlier.... the prognosis looks grim."

Nightmare Nurse tried to teleport away, but the building's holy aura diminished her powers and she watched helpless as the woman once known as Valerie walked right up to her and engulfed her in a bodybag.

"One chance!" Asa thought as she cast the dun-kon-wei......

Later Valentine had the Demon's body strapped to the operating table. She wanted to study her but she also didn't want to take any chances. She took the cross and prepared to lower it to the demon heart but the Rod of Asclepius, sensing the threat to her, revitalized the Mystic MD who levitated off the table.

"Impossible!" said Valentine, her eye wide. "You were dead!"  Unseen to the Nightmare Nurse, Valentine held a syringe in her hand.

Nightmare Nurse laughed at her masterful deception and summoned mystic scalpels throwing them with infernal precision at the kunoichi. However expecting this, Valentine leapt over the scalpels and threw the syringe which embedded itself into Alice's shoulder.

"Wha...WHAT DID YOU DO?!" Nightmare Nurse roared in agony, more than she had ever felt.

"Obviously you wouldn't die so easily, and if you did I have the sense that this sequence would be finished." said Valentine calmly. "That right there is a syringe of concentrated opium. Did you know the Egyptians revered Opium for its ability to bring painless death? You could call it a...holy poison."

Asa had no choice but to flee Alice's body. She watched as the girl she had watched across these years finally pass into the other world, unable to come to her body, warding her away as it was with its toxic holiness.

Valentine stood there, watching and expecting this to be the end of the fight, but instead bent over, hands on her head as she felt a malevolent spirit enter her, and horrid memories come to mind.

Endless darkness passed Valentine by as she felt the world race around her. Memories of times long gone by bubbled along like a river, melancholy of times long since thought passed. 

Her mental form laid upon the ground, a barren ground like the Moon. The world was cold and dark. She rose to her feet unsteadily, looking out into the black sky out unto the horizon onto a blue world like the Earth, only to find it suddenly be engulfed. A massive face resembling Alice's emerged from the darkness, holding it like a jewel in her hands. 

Valentine felt the ground shift beneath her and become the purple of her enemy's garment, mountains and valleys becoming her body, as she stood upon the giant Nightmare Nurse. Valentine tried to strike back, tried to run to cover, but there was no weapons, no land that was not hateful to her, that was not part of the grinning demon's form.

 Hands the size of continents gripped her and brought her into the air dropping her into a gaping laughing mouth, giving the laughing chorus of demons in mockery of angels and virtues and sacrifices.

"Beyond space....Beyond time....  Not even your trinity can help you now. But that's okay because..."

Valentine came to awareness again in the blackness, as she felt her limbs affixed to a cross. Standing in front of her were three Nightmare Nurse, each slightly different, each more bloodied and wounded than the last. The middle one's head changed into a horrific demon head.

"You know you belong here!"

The world swarmed around Valentine, as though SHE were the one intoxicated by opium, shaking and twisting. The demons laughed and prepared their scalpels to dig deep into Valentine's mind, into her soul, until there was nothing left.

However as the first one moved to stab her, suddenly a shadowy silhouette holding two scalpels blocked the Nurse's with one hand and knocked her back with the other. She with expertise and precision pinned the demon with her blades.

A second smaller silhouette jumped in, energetic, darting and dashing, appeared and with a long naginata knocked another Demon Nurse down, flipping around her blow and pushing her down with her Naginata. 

A third silhouette, large and stoic grabbed the final Nightmare Nurse, restraining her and dropping her lower section into a bad, holding her still. 

The three demons came together forming one Nightmare Nurse again, who knocked the shadows aside with a demonic roar, shifting into her demon form.

However the binds on Valentine were broken by a final silhouette, a woman with claws for fingers, slashing through Valentine's bind. She helped the Valentine to her feet and gave Valentine a kiss on her cheek, making Asa's eyes flash in shock. The silhouettes disappeared entering Valentine. Val's eye blazed with a red intensity, and Asa covered her face from the cross in her eye. The gaze of the two met briefly, and in that scant moment recognition filled their gaze. Valentine closed her eye briefly.

"I am beyond the trinity's help. But I am something more. All I have, and all I am is something that which withstands this Hell" Valentine's eye snapped open "A LAST HOPE!"

As this mental reality moved to trap the Nightmare Nurse, she quickly conjured a Pyramid of Thoth to protect her from the shadowy breaking of perceptions. Knowing her shield couldn't last forever she summoned a portal back to the physical plane to escape, quickly followed by the ninja.

The two landed back on the streets of New Meridian above Valentine's secret laboratory. However this time Asa was in her demonic form. She spoke with a guttural growl. "I'm done playing around with you Valerie. I've seen the blackness of your soul and your self-righteous hypocrisy. It's time for this game to end."

The demon darted forwards fast as lightning only for Nightmare Nurse to teleport away at the last second. She threw some scalpels at the Demon which entered her flesh...and was immediately regenerated. Asa looked into Valentine's eye with mockery. 

Nightmare Nurse swung her clawed arm down and Val once again just barely managed to avoid the strike, Asa's fist striking the ground sending shockwaves across the Canopy Kingdom, and indenting the entire city of New Meridian into the ground. Across the world, the power of the unleashed demon sent alarms everywhere warning of a threat on the level of the Skullgirl.

The Skullgirl. Memories flooded into both their minds...that day...that day had come again. As Valentine tried to paralyze Nightmare Nurse with one of her syringes only for her demon flesh to reform around the syringe, memories of that day flooded into her mind, the eternity trapping her. 

Asa knew what she was thinking.

"We both know how this is going to end. Your Hell calls for you." Valentine could swear she heard a tinge of...sadness in the demon's voice.

Nightmare Nurse breathed fire, a fire that could burn Valentine's whole world to ash. Rising above, Valentine soared on thermals using the body bag as a glider. From the smoke, Asa's demon form leapt. The ninja quickly threw some syringes into the distance. The slight collision of the demon with Valentine broke her glider, and dislocated her arm, sending pain coursing through her body. 

But Asa was thrown off as she saw the green syringes headed towards civilians. She teleported away, bound by the Hippocratic Oath to save them. Valentine knew that a single moment more and the demon would have rent her in two. 

As the demon appeared in great fire and smoke, knocking aside the green syringes, Valentine appeared behind her and trapped her in a bodybag, raising the Mystic MD into the air and slamming the two back down to the ground quickly in a slew of blood, the collision sending them through the ground and into Valentine's laboratory. 

However Nightmare Nurse simply burst out of the bag, with a demon roar, knocking Valentine to the ground, with enough force to shake the city again, and behind her, Valentine could see the anti-regenerative vial knocked free from the ceiling girder. 

Asa performed a final swipe at Valentine's midsection but Valentine, one arm dislocated, leapt up into the air and in a stolen moment, a stolen eternity, dashed forwards with surgical precision, slashing at the demon with the cross on her boot until she was sliced to bits. The bloody romantic fell to the ground and raised her still active arm to grab the vial.

She struggled to catch her breath, as the insanity of what just transpired all caught up to her at once, making her feel like she wanted to vomit. 

Her mind raced. Memories of that final slash. "That last attack...." she thought "it was too slow....she would have killed me first... but she pulled back at the last moment." The nurse thought back to Hell, of the recognition in their eyes....of the sorrow and compassion she had seen in those eyes and the friends she thought were long lost....

The nurse looked out through the hole they had made unto the skyline. "Who would have thought..." she asked herself "that when a demon falls...she keeps her heart."

KO!

This matchup is a matchup where one character has a lot more versatility but also a lot more weaknesses.

Comparing the two characters in power, Nightmare Nurse is either in the low tons of tnt range from shaking the house of mystery, or kiloton level from creating a mushroom cloud explosion. Meanwhile Valentine is either upper kilotons to lower megatons from scaling to Double maintaining a dimension, and downscaling to other characters or upper megatons scaling from Hungern devouring cities and megacities and a higher interpretation of Double's dimension feat. This means that most likely Val is either thousands or millions of times stronger and more durable than Nightmare Nurse. The only way to get them to be similar is to highball Nightmare Nurse and lowball Valentine, and even then she'd be tens to hundreds of times stronger.

What this means is that any strike from Valentine can incapacitate Nightmare Nurse, while Valentine can tank the elemental/magic attacks from Nightmare Nurse. However this isn't as big a deal as it might sound. Defensively, Nightmare Nurse typically utilizes her forcefield and regeneration and doesn't rely on raw durability. Valentine can hypothetically get around either of those. She can teleport to one side of a forcefield or within it and she can use her cross weapons to nullify Nightmare Nurse's regeneration, though both would be certainly annoying to get around. Conversely, Asa typically relies on her scalpels for offense rather then elemental attacks, which negate durability. While Valentine can regen using dark chocolate, and can heal herself, she has nowhere near the regenerative properties and healing of Asa. If Asa goes for a lethal or disabling strike, Val can't really recover very well. However if Valentine hits Asa with a cross weapon, she would have to abandon Alice's body to survive, and if it's demon body she would just die. This means that functionally both sides CAN kill the other one out of nowhere very fast, despite this being seemingly a fight between healers. Asa's demon side doesn't really change the equation as while her attack potency and durability are massively higher than Valentine, she would have the same hypothetical capacity to one-shot and the same weakness to holy weapons. The only real difference is Valentine would not be able to incapacitate her even temporarily with non-holy attacks.

As a quick aside, one may quarrel on whether or not Valentine's cross weapons would be considered holy in the Skullgirls universe that has its own deities and work on Nightmare Nurse. However Etrigan harmed Lucifer with the Cross while they were in Hell, outside the mortal universes. Plus Christianity does actually seem to exist in Skullgirls. Double disguised herself as a Nun, and all the members of the Last Hope are named after Holidays with Christian Origins (Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and All-Saint's Day)

In terms of speed, Nightmare Nurse is likely a few times faster than Valentine as Valentine scales most likely somewhere in the middle double digit mach, while Nightmare Nurse scales likely somewhere in the lower triple digit mach. This is notable, though given the immense skill difference Valentine should be able to compensate, especially if Nightmare Nurse is just playing around. Nightmare Nurse is an immensely skilled magic-user, but she has basically no combat skill feats, given she is a healing specialist. Conversely Valentine is a master Kunoichi who is considered a highly skilled fighter in a world where people can perform superhuman feats from combat skill. A difference of a few times in speed would be pretty reasonable for Valentine to match.

If you compare both fighters ability to quickly kill each other, Nightmare Nurse could hypothetically do it far easier if she was fighting 100% optimally.

Most of Valentine's weapons can hypothetically incapacitate non-demon form Asa but could not permanently kill her. Her command code,  may help rid memories of Nightmare Nurse from herself, but it's definitely not working on Asa herself, even if she can use it in combat, given her willpower which has far greater feats than Painwheel, and has mental guarding magic of her own. Knockout gas and standard poisons are more unlikely to work given how much Nightmare Nurse has inoculated herself against. Her only surefire way to kill Nightmare Nurse is her cross weapons. It's not like this would take her very long to figure out. This is one of her more standard weapons, she is good at reading people and Asa is not especially subtle about pain. What Valentine DOES have is lots of ways to temporarily incap Asa including just beating her up with her normal weapons, using paralyzing and slowing syringes, and outright freezing time. While Asa can maybe freeze time by herself, Val can also maybe resist time stop, so you'd once again really have to give Asa the benefit of the doubt to say she could do the same. 

Conversely Asa could hypothetically kill Valentine in plenty of ways. A scalpel to her wrists or her throat at any time would immediately kill her. She could also just teleport her into a pit of acid. She could go into her demon form at which point even a grazing blow from her, strong enough to hurt Blight could probably vaporize Valentine. She also doesn't have that many offensive options being a healing specialist. While her elemental/energy attacks wouldn't do anything, most of her options would be an immediate threat. While Asa DOES have a large arsenal of abilities that wouldn't help here, most are things she wouldn't really think to use in most situations. Even if Asa tried to control Valentine, she would probably find it difficult to do anything as Valentine's internal drives are incredibly strong, as are her inner demons. While she could probably protect herself in Valentine's mind, it's unlikely she could puppet Valentine.

However this fight has several other factors that really change the dynamic. Both characters can travel through the air pretty freely, and both can teleport. What that means is both can adjust the range at will. This is interesting because at long range, Nightmare Nurse has a massive advantage in that her shield can block any of Val's attacks, but at close range Valentine has the advantage, due to her vastly superior physical strength, combat skill, and the fact that even a normal attack would force Asa to regenerate. That means this is a fight where the two would keep teleporting around to get into a better position. Nightmare Nurse technically has the advantage that she can teleport Valentine as well, but unless she uses it offensively to teleport Valentine somewhere her fighting is hindered, this isn't different then just teleporting herself away.

With two characters that can both one-shot each other, teleportation, and similar-ish speed, this really became a match-up about who would land a one-shot strike first. And that's where Nightmare Nurse's weaknesses are crippling in this match-up. While she has arguably a stronger powerset in general, Valentine counters Nightmare Nurse's biggest weaknesses in basically every way. Not only is a holy weapon one of her most commonly attacks, she regularly uses sex appeal to distract her opponents which would break Asa's concentration and her magicks, she is a skilled manipulator while Asa is characteristically arrogant and reckless, and Valentine a secretly despairing girl who is violent and sexual is exactly the type of girl that Nightmare Nurse would want to play with. While Nightmare Nurse can kill Valentine any time, and in a way that would be fairly intuitive, she wouldn't and even couldn't kill Valentine quickly. She's only ever used lethal force against non-humans threatening the world due to the Oath of Asclepius, while Valentine is actually working towards the saving of humanity.

In fairness, Valentine is a bit arrogant herself and Nightmare Nurse is hyped as one of the most dangerous manipulators in the DCU so maybe Asa could prolong things that way? While Valentine is overconfident she's also brutally efficient and Asa wouldn't have much to manipulate.

I think you could argue that as the fight went on Nightmare Nurse would be able to get past Valetine's standard manipulation; realizing this human is tricky, realizing she uses sex appeal to distract, that Valentine is, willingly or not, aiding the biggest force of destruction in the setting. That seems plausible but it seems like Valentine would be able to find her weaknesses much quicker including her biggest weakness; her compassion.

Valentine is treated as probably the best manipulator among the normal Skullgirls characters, regularly finding out everyone's weaknesses. Meanwhile Nightmare Nurse is treated as this huge mystery as to her motives in the DCU. So how can one figure if Valentine would figure out Nightmare Nurse's weakness, arguably the central point of this debate, literally and thematically.

While humans, even clever humans like Zatanna fail to see Nightmare Nurse's hidden compassion, such WAS seen by Blight, embodiment of human sins, and Pandora, embodiment of human virtues. These are cosmic entities but they don't particularly have intelligence feats outside their domains, suggesting their intelligence would be comparable to half each of Modern Humanity's collective intelligence. This has a term in DC, a 6th Level Intellect, someone with the intelligence of modern humanity collectively, or the intellect of a Type 0.73 civilization roughly. Does Valentine pass this marker? Easily. Valentine is considered a top intellect in a world where technology that can break the fourth wall and time travel are invented. This would put her at relatively speaking a Type 3 intelligence which in DC terms would be closer to a 9th Level Intellect than a 6th. 

You might argue this would at least take time, but Pandora didn't say that Nightmare Nurse's compassion was some mysterious deep thing, but claimed it was "barely hidden" suggesting if anything Valentine would be able to quickly figure it out and deliberately manipulate it via playing up her own tragedy, taking civilians hostage, threatening them and so forth. While the Phantom Stranger did comment on Nightmare Nurse's confusing-ness, this was only in regards to the strange mixture of compassion and "demonic" traits within her, not that he couldn't tell she had compassion in her at all, in fact it demonstrates he DID see it in her. Valentine has even manipulated Double, a thousands of years old demonic entity who deceives people it meets, exactly like Nightmare Nurse and with far less obvious personality-based weaknesses.

This is a fight where one character CAN kill the other anytime, but wouldn't for a while at least, while the other couldn't initially, but would as soon as she figured out how too. And it seems far more likely that Valentine would figure out how to given her intelligence and how relatively common this type of attack is for her, before Nightmare Nurse is able to convince herself that killing Valentine is for the greater good AND decides to stop playing with her AND gets past Valentine's own manipulation.

The winner is....Valentine.

Next Time:

Big thanks to my friend ThorGundersen1058 for making this excellent next time trailer and for providing the soundtrack and some of the GIFs for this blog.