Thanks for reading, reviewing, and all that guys! I just read Assadart's review, so now I need to come up with a logical explanation for evacuation. Haven't watched TT in a while, so I completely forgot that they don't typically do evacuations. I think I'll just say it was because I didn't want to write in scenes of screaming civilians. Or...maybe there will be a character death. Not a bad idea. But who? Honestly, the only person I'd sacrifice at this point is T'irance, but I'm kinda still deciding whether or not he'll be important later on… -.- choices
Welll...disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans or anything else I mention or refer to here.
Chapter 7- Venom
Robin dashed down a street, his eyes constantly darting to shadowy alleys. He knew Cobra would attempt to mount a surprise attack on unsuspecting Titans. Raven quickly followed, flying through the air and scanning the streets from above. The two Teen Titans searched for anything suspicious: mutant cobras, Cobra, and most of all, T'irance. Robin hid his worry for the three other team members left to fight Cobra. Would Cobra successfully take them down? And there was always the slight flaw in his plan. Something he'd failed to consider before. Maybe Cobra also had a plan.
Cobra lurked in the darkest corner of an alley, narrowing vicious red eyes as she watched Raven and Robin pass by. She smirked evilly. T'irance immediately perked up, waiting to hear her next master plan.
"Really, T'irance, I didn't expect even the Teen Titans to be so foolish. Can't you already see the flaw in their plan?"
T'irance stuttered, "Um...y-yes. The f-foolish p-p-pl-plan. Because…"
Cobra whirled on her dimwitted henchman. "Do you even know what their plan is?"
T'irance shook his head in terror, and Cobra rolled her eyes, drawling, "Somehow, that fails to surprise me. For the sake of your poor simple mind, let me put it in 3-year-old terms. The plan is divide and conquer. Such a cliche."
When T'irance hadn't lost his expression of bewildered confusion, Cobra was aghast. "How do you still not understand? They split us up! They take us down separately. We die, and they win! Classic."
Comprehension dawned on T'irance's face. "So, er, they...want to take us down...not together?"
Cobra exhaled in relief, but it came out as more of a hiss. "Yes, finally! Some spark of intelligent life in you! But the thing is, T'irance, divide and conquer can go two ways. It appears the two birdies are chasing you, as they have left behind three for another purpose. To take me down. Unfortunately, I don't think the birds would be expecting a snake. So I suppose I'll just crash the party."
Seeing T'irance's face melt back into blankness, she slapped him, and began to shout something, then stopped.
In a whisper, Cobra said, "T'irance, we are effectively ruining their plans by reversing our roles in it. You go after the three, and I go after Raven and Robin. They are harder to take down, but I can also put into place a sub-plan. Another divide and conquer...on our part. Once I quickly disable those two, I will launch a surprise attack on the three. Don't try to defeat them. Just delay. Go!"
Cobra shoved T'irance out of the alley, slithering off in hot, silent pursuit of Raven and Robin. With no choice, T'irance trudged off towards Starfire, Cyborg, and Beast Boy,
Beast Boy, Starfire, and Cyborg cautiously formed into a triangle in the town square. Beast Boy was fluidly shifting from animal to animal to prepare himself for battle, Starfire balance two glowing starbolts as her eyes glowed green, and Cyborg held his sonic cannon out to face a dark street in front of him. Robin had warned them of a possible surprise attack. When something dark began to crawl out of a small alley, the three Titans all whirled to it and began to fire wildly. The darkness struggled to pull together, then flooded out into the square. Starfire squeaked and launched into the air.
"It is those unpleasant snakes!" she shouted, the terror evident in her voice.
"Someone's paranoid. It's just fog or something," said Beast Boy, grinning.
But as the Titans peered closely at the dark, tightly packed wave rolling towards them, they glimpsed slitted eyes and fangs. It was, indeed, a wave of cobras. And to top it all off, a wave of dark fog rolled over the city, completely shrouding the square.
Cyborg angrily shouted into the mist, "You just had to say it!"
Raven and Robin slowed as they reached a dead end. In front of them was a laboratory. It was all too familiar. They exchanged glances and stopped suddenly. They stood back-to-back, ready for T'irance to launch himself out of nowhere, or for a flood of snakes to suddenly emerge from a crack in the wall of an abandoned warehouse next to them.
Nervously, Raven questioned, "So why are we evacuating Jump?"
Robin paused, then replied, "Actually, a few reasons. First, the police commissioner panicked when he heard about mutant snakes. I tried to assure him it would all be under control, but he feared that people would die from inability to control the insane number of snakes Cobra can summon. For once, I'm almost doubting us. They're just snakes, but Cobra can create as many as she wants, and we'll be buried under their weight. Plus, there is no way civilians wouldn't panic if snakes took over the whole city. Therefore creating more for us to work around in order to find Cobra."
Raven spoke sarcastically. "Because it's definitely impossible to find a giant snake lady in a crowd of humans."
Robin smirked, and in a matter-of-fact tone, he said, "As you may recall, Rae, Cobra is capable of disguising as a human, and T'irance appears humanoid, so it would be difficult to spot the two in a crowd, particularly if they split up."
Darkly, Raven added, "You forgot something else, Robin. Without an evacuation, Cobra would surely take hostages. She's not the remorseful type. And unlike the villains we've faced before, I'm sure she would have no problem holding us off with those mutant cobras, while she slowly slaughters our city's people, until we surrender. A hostage situation where we'd have no choice but to surrender, unless we wanted to see many people die. More than those who die here today."
Robin whipped to Raven. "Nobody will die. I promise."
Raven could not help but note the uncertainty in Robin's voice. She swallowed. "Yeah..sure."
Cyborg blasted his sonic cannon at the snakes, only for the blast to be absorbed by the front row of snakes, who immediately flew backwards as smoking reptile carcasses. Still, Cyborg felt the need to celebrate.
"Boo-yah! Come on Star, BB, we can do this!"
However, the half-robot Teen Titan paled as much as his companions had as he glimpsed two more rows of snakes pouring in to fill the square. Starfire's eyes lit up as she formulated a plan.
"Friends, I will take them from above!"
However, their hope was soon crushed. After Starfire annihilated a few rows of cobras, the mutants sprouted various sorts of wings and flew into th air, snapping at the alien girl. She shrieked and floated backwards, desperate to escape the flock of flying snakes. Cyborg cursed, and he and Beast Boy ripped savagely through the snakes, only to be pushed back by more.
Beast Boy piped up, "Hey, this is kind of like that time with the cow-powered laser-blasting saucers! And that asshole who wouldn't give me a day off from work because he was secretly made of Newfu! They're like the cobras, and the Source is like T'irance and Cobra, and for us, it's T'irance!"
Realization dawned on Cyborg. "You said something smart, BB! We just need to find the weakness in these things! And we can do that by getting T'irance!"
Starfire almost facepalmed as she flew. In a sarcastic monotone to make Raven proud, she said, "And how do you plan to do that?"
Looking around, the boys became aware of how impossible it would be to even reach T'irance.
Starfire managed to bat away a flying snake, then caught sight of a man in a trench coat standing in an alley. Her eyes blazing, Starfire streaked towards him, pursued by yet another wave of flying cobras.
T'irance was too busy grinning dumbly at the carnage in the town square to see Starfire land silently behind him. Abandoning use of her starbolts and laser beams at the last second, Starfire delivered an extra-hard slap to T'irnace, then jabbed his pressure point as she had been taught by Robin.
"Oh glorious day!" she shouted gleefully, clapping her hands.
Beast Boy and Cyborg failed to notice Starfire heading towards their adversary, but grew more and more confused as the layers of snakes began to thin. A pile of cobras grew in the middle of the town square grew, and after a while, the last snake was vanquished. Suddenly, Starfire burst into the square.
"Friends! We are victorious! After this we shall eat the iced cream! T'irance has been defeated!"
She hefted an unconscious man into the air by his collar, eliciting a cheer from Beast Boy and Cyborg. Suddenly, the grins disappeared from their faces. At the same time, they all thought the same thing. If T'irance came after us...Cobra is after Robin and Raven!
Sharing a look, theyall sprinted down the street where Robin and Raven had vanished.
Cobra hissed, and a rolling fog covered two costumed teens.
When did he get that power? thought Robin and Raven.
As if she could read their minds, Cobra called, in an imitation of T'irance, "A spell, actually. A simple one, from a beginner's guide abandoned in a library. Left behind by Raven."
Robin glared pointedly at Raven, who drove her eyes into the ground. "So he's magic now?"
Raven whispered, "No, thank goodness. That's a spell that doesn't require magic from you. Just spices, herbs, and other...stuff."
She cut off her explanation to fire a bolt of dark energy into the fog. Something hissed in surprise. Robin sprinted forward and lifted it. Surprisingly light. Too light. He had only caught a small cobra. In anger, he threw it far into mist, resulting in many more hisses. Clearly, the tossed snake had bowled over its brethren.
Robin did a victory dance, believing nobody to have seen it. Raven, however, proved him wrong, and stepped up behind him, then delivered a smack to his head.
"Idiot," she hissed, in a tone parallel to Cobra's.
Cobra smiled hideously, then mentally congratulated herself on the successful release of her snakes. She listened to their conversation.
Robin murmured, "Listen, Raven. T'irance is trying to hold us back with his snakes. He knows he can't take us down alone, s-"
Cobra slithered up behind them, cutting him off. "Oh, were you expecting someone else? Please accept my sincere apology."
On the word 'apology', her tail coiled behind Robin and struck him in his pressure point. Robin's face filled with horror as he blacked out. Raven's horrified expressions mirrored Robin's. She glared at Cobra, hate in her eyes, then gently lifted Robin, struggling to hold him up.
"Once again, I have to play hero. Now I feel bad for them. Princesses never learn," Raven bantered, as she stumbled through the fog with Robin.
Raven caught sight of Cobra closing in. If an all-powerful demon couldn't hold her back, Raven didn't see why an alien snake-woman should. Wiith determination in her eyes, Raven cast a dark barrier around herself and Robin. Cobra hissed in frustration as she struck the wall of black energy repeatedly, to no avail.
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps echoed through the thick fog.
Beast Boy shouted, "Hang on, guys!"
Instantly, Raven's face changed. First to relief, then to horror. The cobras in the fog! A telltale shriek pierced through the mist. A cobra bite. But who had been bitten? And was there time to retrieve an antidote. She roared in anger, and the dark barrier exploded outwards into a swirl of dark tendrils, all reaching for a fleeing Cobra.
T'irance groaned, then caught sight of a snake-woman slithering out of the fog. His eyes widened, and he knew it was time to go. T'irance stumbled to his feet and wobbled after his mistress, the cobras following.
A scream of fury blasted through the remaining fog, and a straggling cobra collapsed under one last attack.
Four Teen Titans huddled in a circle around the fifth, their faces coated in anguish and pain. Raven struggled to withhold the emotions threatening to burst out of her. Tears rolled shamelessly, and shoulders shook without any attempt at control. Their teammate, who had been through so much, was on the ground, dying from a simple cobra bite, and there was absolutely no time to fetch an antidote.
Raven managed to speak. "There's...no time. I can't heal poison in the veins of others. And given the strength of the venom of these mutant cobras...well…"
Her voice cracked, and a crystalline tear splashed onto the sidewalk.
AGHHH IT'S TOO HARD! I don't know if I have the heart to kill a Teen Titan, and if I did, I wouldn't know who to pick :(
So, I know my evac explanation was pretty bad, but let's just say it was also because I didn't feel like adding problems with civilians this early on, kay?
As always, R+R, and…
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me if I should kill off someone, and who should it be, or if I should come up with a plot twist so the person survives next chapter. Let's count it as a poll(s).
Who should be the poisoned one: BB, Cyborg, or Starfire
Whether or not they should die: Um...Yes or no?
Byeeeeeee