(Disclaimer: I don't own the Titans. If I did, I wouldn't have to worry about the essays I'm ignoring while I write this. Ugh.)
-CHAPTER TWO: QUESTIONABLE TASTES-
The next morning began normally enough for the Titans. That is, until Evelyn wandered into the living room around eleven o'clock (her door had been set on a timer that only allowed her to open it herself between seven in the morning and midnight, so the Titans could have at least seven hours of sleep free from fears of stabbity death at the hands of Raven's evil double—it seems that they needn't have worried, because said evil double had slept in). Evelyn stopped at the top of the stairs, threw her deep red cloak over her shoulders for a more dramatic look, and put her hands on her hips.
"I have decided!" she said. The Titans stared at her.
"Um…okay," said Robin. "What have you decided?"
"Several things, actually," Evelyn said. "First: my room shall from now on be referred to as my 'lair', as befits my evil nature." The Titans continued to stare, but Evelyn ignored them, clearing her throat before continuing.
"Second: I need clothes, therefore I will be going shopping today," she said.
"Oh, joyous!" Starfire cried, but was silenced by one of Raven's patented death glares.
"And what exactly is wrong with the clothes you have?" Raven asked.
"Well, I only have this one outfit, so unless you want me to walk around naked on laundry day I'll need to get something else to wear," Evelyn replied. "Also, the whole cloak and leotard look is kind of stupid."
"What did you just say?" Raven said, twitching slightly. Evelyn grinned.
"I said the cloak and leotard look is stupid," she said, saying the word with particular relish. "I mean, it's fine for a goody-two-shoes like you, Rae, but I'm pure evil. I need something …I don't know…probably something a little more revealing, that's for sure."
Beast Boy drooled a little, and Raven punched him in the face without even looking.
"Oooh! Ooooh! And cleavage!" Evelyn continued, beginning to get excited. "All the evil girls have their cleavage showing!"
"About that whole evil girl thing," Beast Boy said, recovering admirably from Raven's punch. "You're, what, that angry red Raven from inside Raven's head, right? The one that turned into that big red guy and was yelling about how hatred would rule, right? So if you're the embodiment of all of Raven's rage and anger, why aren't you attacking us?"
"Oh, silly Beast Boy!" Evelyn said, running up to him and pinching his cheeks, pulling his face in odd directions like she was playing with silly putty. "I only picked a red cloak because I like the colour! I'm the personification of all of Raven's darker emotions! I'm her anger, jealousy, hatred, malice, greed, you name it, all rolled into one slick package!" She let go of Beast Boy's face, allowing it to snap back to its normal shape, and flicked his nose.
"I'm also her lust…" Evelyn said, with a suggestive smile.
Three lightbulbs exploded, several cracks appeared in the nearby drywall, and the refrigerator spontaneously scooted forward a few inches—in short, Raven was fuming. Robin put his head in his hands and muttered something about never being able to have nice things, and Cyborg leapt in to change the course of the conversation.
"Hey, yeah, a trip to the mall sounds good!" he said hurriedly. "We could all go. I've been meaning to pick up some transistors for a project of mine anyway." Starfire, who had been slowly edging away from the angry Goth girl sitting next to her, joined in next.
"Oh, yes! I could aid you in your search for new garments, Frie…" she said, but was again cut off by one of Raven's death glares. "Err...Acquaintance Evelyn!"
"I guess I could go look at mopeds or something," Beast Boy said, rubbing his face where Evelyn had grabbed him.
"Yeah, right, grass stain," Cyborg said. "You're just going to go look in the toy stores, aren't you?"
"Hey! That's not fair!" Beast Boy cried. "I'll look in the candy stores, too!"
"I guess I could do with some new clothes myself," Robin mused, half to himself. Starfire beamed at him, and he realised, too late, that he had just unwittingly consented to hours upon hours of her playing dress-up-Robby.
"What about you, Raven? Will you accompany us to the mall of shopping?" Starfire said. Raven arched an eyebrow and glanced about at the hopeful faces of her teammates, before settling in a glare at Evelyn.
"I guess so, if only to make sure she doesn't cause too much trouble," Raven said. "Besides, I don't want anyone thinking that she's me, now do I?"
"Oh, awesome!" Evelyn cried, grinning broadly and throwing her arms around Raven's neck. "We'll be mall buddies!"
"Shut up," Raven said as she gingerly disentangled herself from her evil twin.
"Can we hold hands?" Evelyn asked, somehow managing to look perfectly innocent even with four glowing red eyes and fangs.
Raven just groaned. This was going to be a long day.
OOO
The Titans arrived at the mall an hour later. The trip itself only took a few minutes, mostly because of Cyborg's casual disregard for the rules of the road ("What? If a cop stops us, we can just say we're going to take care of some bad guy!"), but Starfire took almost forty-five minutes to prepare herself for the mall, like it was some kind of Zen ritual or something. Beast Boy also took a while to get ready, but that was largely because he had to conduct a full search of his room to find his piggy bank. The difficulty of finding his money in the mess that was his room was usually the only reason Beast Boy ever had any money at all—he might well be the only person on the planet who uses a messy room as a financial plan.
The T-Car was a little overcrowded, what with six people in the car rather than the usual five, so Robin opted to take the R-Cycle, leaving the others to fight over where they would sit. Starfire managed to take shotgun, a position she had not ridden in ever since the T-Car's inaugural drive. In order to avoid the same fiasco that occurred that time, Cyborg took great pains to brief Starfire on which buttons did what, so that she would not feel the need to press any, or rather all, of them in order to see what they did. He also made it quite clear that he was more than willing to test out the passenger ejector seat he had just installed.
This left Raven, Beast Boy, and Evelyn to sit in the back. Evelyn called dibs on a window seat, and Beast Boy was about to as well, but then he caught the death glare Raven sent his way. Muttering something about chivalry, Beast Boy resigned himself to the middle seat. While he initially came to terms with this minor defeat with the thought that sitting between two girls who were, for all intents and purposes, virtually identical twins might be 'hot', to use his term, he found that reality, once again, had a nasty surprise in store for him. Instead of finding himself between two coy but affectionate purple-haired beauties (Raven was always much nicer to him in his fantasies—a bit bustier, too, but never mind that for now), Beast Boy found himself caught between Raven's non-stop death glare on one side, and Evelyn's deranged and slightly fanged grin on the other. The combined effect was disturbing, to say the least, and for once Beast Boy spent the entire car ride in terrified silence—the only sound he made was a surprised squeak when, halfway through the trip, Evelyn casually placed her hand on his thigh. Although she didn't say anything, Beast Boy could tell that this annoyed Raven, because her death glare magnified exponentially. When Evelyn began absent-mindedly stroking Beast Boy's thigh, he could have sworn he saw the windows of the next car over shatter all at once. It was hard to tell, though, because the car in question suddenly swerved wildly and slammed on its brakes, quickly dropping out of Beast Boy's field of view.
When the Titans finally arrived at the mall, Beast Boy leapt out of the car as quickly as he could and ran towards the mall entrance, whimpering something about "the horror".
"What's up with Beast Boy?" Robin asked, as he took off his helmet and tossed it into the T-Car for safe keeping.
"I'm sure it had nothing to do with Raven's little freak-out on the way here," Evelyn said, laughing.
"What?" Raven cried. "I did not freak out!"
"Yeah, right," Evelyn countered. "Tell that to the people in that blue Subaru back there." Raven blushed furiously, and pulled her hood up to hide it.
"Well, at least I wasn't touching him!" she huffed.
"Wait, touching who?" Robin asked, but the others ignored him.
"I'd better go make sure Beast Boy doesn't do anything too stupid," Cyborg said, and set off after the errant shapeshifter.
"And you are coming with me so you don't get into any more trouble," Raven said, grabbing Evelyn's arm and dragging her towards the mall.
"What? That wasn't trouble! That wasn't even mischief!" Evelyn cried indignantly, her heels bouncing on the ground as Raven dragged her.
"Wait! Who was touching who?" Robin called after them, but again he got no response. "Dammit! Nobody tells me anything! Starfire, do you know what happened?"
"Sadly, no, Friend Robin, for I was far too engrossed in the many interesting buttons in the T-Car, although I was not allowed to touch any of them," Starfire replied.
"Oh," Robin said.
The two stood in silence for a moment, shuffling their feet a little, and then they looked at each other. Starfire grinned so widely that Robin thought the top of her head would fall off. She then struck a heroic pose, one finger raised high in the air.
"Onwards! To the menswear department!" Starfire shouted, and then slung a protesting Robin over her shoulder and flew off towards the mall.
"Oh, crap," Robin muttered, but Starfire ignored him.
OOO
"Hey, Cy! Cy!" Beast Boy called excitedly as he ran out of a candy store. He had quickly recovered from his ordeal in the car, aided in part by ungodly quantities of sugar.
"What is it, BB?" Cyborg asked, with just a hint of exasperation in his voice.
"Check these out! They're awesome!" Beast Boy said, holding up an orange and brown package for Cyborg to see. "Special edition Reese peanut butter cups!"
"It says they have fudge—what, like peanut butter-flavoured fudge or something?" Cyborg said.
"No, no, the chocolate coating is fudge-flavoured!" Beast Boy said. "Isn't that awesome?"
"Ummm…what, like chocolate fudge-flavoured?" Cyborg asked.
"Well, yeah," said Beast Boy. "Of course."
"So, the chocolate coating is made to taste like something that is, itself, made to taste like chocolate?"
"Well, when you put it that way it sounds kind of stupid."
"Yeah, that's pretty much my point."
Beast Boy sulked for a few seconds before his sugar-heightened awareness brought something new to his attention.
"Ooooh! Coin-operated mall rides! Sweet!"
Cyborg sighed as he watched the younger boy run blissfully towards the rides, and silently said goodbye to his small change. Then a blur of movement in his peripheral vision caught Cyborg's attention, and he turned to see Robin waving frantically at him.
"Cyborg! Cyborg! You have to help me! Starfire's gone crazy! She's…" Robin shouted, but he was interrupted by Starfire tackling him at high speed from behind. As she dragged him away by one foot, she scolded him like he was a misbehaving child.
"Now, Robin, you must not run from me! We have only just started to try on outfits!" Starfire said. "We still have to look through Old Navy, the Gap, Bluenotes, Jacob, Pantorama, and Sears, as well as many other stores!"
"But…but some of those are for girls' clothing!" Robin cried.
"Perhaps they have recently started lines of boys' fashions!" Starfire said. "We can afford to take no chances!"
"But…"
"SILENCE! We can afford to take no chances!"
Realizing the futility of trying to reason with Starfire when she was in mall mode, Robin began desperately clawing at the ground in an effort to break free, but to no avail. After the two disappeared around a corner, Cyborg just shrugged.
"Meh, he'll live," he said.
"Hey, Cyborg! I need thirty-seven quarters! Stat!" Beast Boy yelled from his perch atop a tiny bright red race car. Cyborg groaned.
OOO
"Come on, mall buddy! You have to keep up!" Evelyn called. Raven sighed in resignation and followed after her evil double.
Evelyn had broken free from Raven almost as soon as they had entered the mall. She had used her newfound freedom to lead Raven throughout the mall, with no real pattern or reason behind her movements. She would sometimes run ahead towards some distant store, other times she would double back to stores she had missed, still other times she would wind through a crowd of people almost at random, as if she was purposefully trying to annoy Raven. Raven suspected that this was indeed the case. To top it off, she had even caught Evelyn making several feeble attempts at shoplifting.
Well, I guess she is the embodiment of everything bad about me, Raven thought. But who knew I was a closet kleptomaniac?
"Oooh! The Goth Shop! Sweet! I love this store!" Evelyn shouted, and darted into the store in question.
"Oh, no," Raven grumbled as she tried to catch up. The Goth Shop was one of the few stores she could stand in this mall—whenever Starfire dragged her here, she usually just spent most of her time there, either browsing or just talking to the clerks, most of whom she was on a first name basis with.
If Evelyn ruins my reputation in this store, I won't have anywhere to hang out next time Starfire drags me here, Raven thought. Please, please, please, by all that is holy, don't let Evelyn do anything stupid.
"Wheeeeeeee!" Evelyn squealed as she ran past the cash register, where a dark-haired girl called Jess was currently sitting reading a book entitled "Increase Your Goth-Cred with Realistic Angst!" She looked up just as Evelyn ran by, and her eyes bugged out when she recognized the purple hair and cloak.
"Raven? Is that you?" Jess asked. "Did you forget to take you medication this morning or something?"
"Jess, I'm over here," Raven said as she entered the store. Jess turned to look at her, and her eyes bugged out even more.
"Oookay, maybe I forgot to take my medication this morning," she said. "I could have sworn I just saw…"
"Yeah, that's my evil double, created using dark magic. Don't ask," Raven interrupted.
"Oh, okay," Jess said, and then she chuckled. "Jon is going to have a bit of a surprise."
"Oh, is he in today?" Raven asked. Jess nodded.
Hmmm…good, I like Jon. He's cute, Raven thought, but then she frowned. Wait, if I think he's cute, then that means that Evelyn…oh, no.
Raven hurried to the rear of the store, where Evelyn had been heading the last time she had seen her. She rounded a rack of black T-shirts to find Evelyn locked in a deep kiss with Jon. Raven gaped. After another moment, Evelyn broke off the kiss, leaving Jon looking stunned.
"Whoopah! Beatcha to it, Rae! Eat my dust!" Evelyn yelled, and then ran off to continue browsing.
As Evelyn went about her business, wandering through the store as if nothing had happened, Raven quickly recovered. Jon, on the other hand, was still rather stunned.
"Red eyes…four of 'em…" he mumbled.
"Yeah, don't worry about it," Raven said. "And just so you know, that wasn't me, got it? So if you go telling your friends that you kissed a Teen Titan, I will find you and hurt you. A lot. Understand?"
"Fangs…little fangs…" Jon mumbled, and Raven took that as a yes.
"Ahoy there, pretty boy!" Evelyn shouted from the other side of the store. "Customer in need of assistance over here!"
This seemed to snap Jon out of his funk—his customer service training took over, and he hurried over to see what Evelyn wanted. Raven followed close behind.
"Uhhh…yes, er, miss?" Jon said hesitantly. "Can I help you with something?"
"Yeah, I'm looking for something that makes a statement," Evelyn said. "Something that says 'Don't worry, I'll eat your children last.'"
Jon's mouth dropped open, but before he could respond Evelyn skipped away singing to the tune of the Smarties jingle.
"Oh, when you eat your humans do you eat their children last? Do you chop off all their heads and stuff some garlic up their…Ow! Hey!"
Raven had beaned her with a rolled-up pair of black socks, thrown as hard as she could. They had a picture of a smiling teddy bear on them, as well as the caption "I'm going to kill you all!"
"Just pick something," Raven growled. "And no more singing!"
"Aww, you're no fun," Evelyn muttered, and picked out several T-shirts with slogans on them, such as "I'm only depressed because you're dumb", as well as two black skirts with matching tops, a few pairs of fishnet stockings, and a pair of elbow-length gloves with the fingers removed. As Evelyn paid for her choices, Raven reflected that it hadn't been nearly as bad in this store as it had been in some of the others.
FLASHBACK
"Hi there!" Evelyn said, holding her face only inches away from that of the store clerk she was addressing, a well-dressed and proper-looking woman in her early thirties.
"Errr…hello," the clerk said, adjusting amazingly quickly to the sight of Evelyn's four red eyes. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"Why, yes, actually, there is!" Evelyn said, not changing her position. "You see, I'm pure evil, so I'm looking for something that shows as much of my cleavage as possible!"
"Ummm…how old are you?" the clerk asked. Evelyn grinned, showing her fangs, but Raven grabbed her and dragged her out of the store before she could do anything.
"Oh, come on!" Evelyn yelled. "I wasn't going to do anything really nasty to her! Just some acid or something! After the first few minutes she'd barely even feel it!"
END FLASHBACK
Raven shuddered. To think that Evelyn had been a part of her was frightening.
I'm no social butterfly, sure, but she's a complete psychopath, Raven thought.
She turned to leave the store, and was immediately confronted with a haggard-looking Robin.
"Oh, Raven! Thank God! You have to hide me!" he said. "Star's gone berserk! Fifteen stores in the past two hours! I'm on my last legs, here!"
"There you are!" Starfire shouted, charging right at them.
"Oh, shit!" Robin squeaked, and hid behind Raven. "Quick, teleport me home or something! Anything!"
"Robin! We cannot stop now!" Starfire yelled. "We only have twenty-three new outfits for you! That is nowhere near enough! Come!"
Starfire grabbed Robin firmly by the arm and dragged him off. He struggled and whimpered the whole time, but even his extensive training was no match for Starfire's alien strength, coupled as it was with the sheer determination that being in the mall instilled her with.
"What's his problem?" asked Evelyn, one of her pairs of fishnet stockings stretched over her head.
OOO
The Titans spent a sum total of four hours at the mall. Robin could have sworn it had been at least eight, and to look at him afterwards you might have even have believed twelve. His repeated failed attempts to escape from Starfire's mall-crazed clutches had left him significantly worse for wear. Raven, as well, looked tired and irritable, although not nearly as bad as Robin. Spending four hours doing damage control for a rogue splinter of your own consciousness in a crowded mall is apparently an exhausting process.
The others, by comparison, were fresh as daisies. Starfire always found that trips to the mall left her feeling even more energetic than usual. Cyborg, while both he and his supply of spare change had been drained by keeping up with Beast Boy's antics, found the drive home unusually invigorating. Beast Boy himself was still riding the crest of his sugar high, and at the rate he was still consuming candy it seemed that he was going to stay like that for a long while—the only consolation for the rest of the team was the fact that he would most likely not be able to move when he finally did crash. Finally, realizing how annoyed Raven was getting with her, Evelyn appeared to be running on spite, an almost inexhaustible, and certainly renewable, energy source. Her satisfaction with her new clothes only served to enhance her mood—while most of her purchases had been fairly basic stuff to wear every day, she had also finally managed to find her perfect supervillain's outfit, which satiated her desire to show cleavage nicely. It consisted of glossy black pleather pants that fit her like a second skin, a very low cut tube top, also black, and a choker necklace with silver studs. She decided to save the ensemble for special occasions.
Evelyn was currently seated on the kitchen counter, letting her feet dangle off the edge. She was wearing one of her skirts, a black top, fishnet stockings (worn properly this time, on her legs), and the elbow-length gloves she had bought, and was staring at Raven, trying to be as annoying as possible while still remaining silent, and therefore irreprehensible. Raven, for her part, was nursing an herbal tea, and obstinately ignoring her evil double. Robin had retired to his room to recover from his ordeal, Cyborg was trying to put an end to Beast Boy's sugar-fuelled winning streak in Mega Monkeys Six: The Revenge of the Baboon King, and Starfire was floating somewhere near the ceiling, unable to come down, the joy of being able to use Robin as her own private dress-up doll finally having gotten the better of her. Effectively, Raven and Evelyn were alone.
Evelyn hopped off the counter and made her way to the refrigerator to retrieve a Mountain Dew. Now that she was free from Raven's mind, she could enjoy all the little things that Raven denied herself—sickly sweet soft drinks were only the beginning. Evelyn looked forward to sleeping in, watching mindless television, perpetrating senseless acts of malice when nobody was looking, and many, many other things. For now, however, she amused herself by irritating Raven.
"You know, Rae, I think I look damn good in these clothes," Evelyn said, cracking open her Mountain Dew. "You would too, of course, but that raises a question for me: why do you always wear that stupid cloak and leotard get up?"
Raven growled, but Evelyn continued unperturbed.
"I mean, it's not exactly the most flattering outfit, is it?" she said. "Sure, it shows off your legs every once in a while when the cloak is out of the way, but I don't really think that they're your best feature."
Raven tried to calm herself, combining reciting her mantra under her breath with frequent sips of herbal tea, but it didn't work. Evelyn still continued, gesturing every so often for added effect.
"I mean, Starfire showing off her legs makes sense, but she's the tall, leggy ectomorph type. With your, or rather our, body type, we should probably stick with stuff that shows off our curves more. Showing a little leg isn't a bad thing, of course, but your cloak normally completely hides both them and your curves. Not a good fashion choice, Rae."
"Do not call me Rae!" Raven snarled, her calm exterior finally cracking. "I don't care about 'good fashion choices', I don't care what looks good on my body type, and stop drinking that vile stuff! You're making me feel ill!" Evelyn looked at the half-finished Mountain Dew she held and grinned.
"Oh, come on, Rae, you know you want to try it," she said. "I wanted to try it, and I was part of you, remember?"
"Maybe so, but you aren't part of me anymore, remember?" Raven said with a scowl. "Every dark emotion that went into you has been cleansed from me. That was the point of the spell."
"Oh, right, of course. My mistake," Evelyn said with a smirk. She drained the rest of her drink and then turned to leave. "If anyone needs me, I'll be in my room."
Raven fumed, causing several fragile objects around the room to spontaneously break as her powers went on a brief rampage. However, one treacherous little thought nagged at her, breaking through even her bad mood.
What the hell was that little smirk for? Does she know something I don't?
Raven frowned, and her brow furrowed in thought, but her moment of reflection was interrupted by one of Beast Boy's cries of triumph from the sofa. She sighed, and took another sip of her tea.
-END CHAPTER TWO-
Author's Note: The plot thickens. Mostly humour this time, but some drama at the end. And who else was confused by the concept behind those special edition fudge Reese peanut butter cups? I actually wasn't making that up. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? And who the hell paid whoever it was for having that idea? I can come up with bullshit ideas all day, but I never see a red cent for it. Next time someone tells you that life is fair, punch them in the neck. Really hard. They lie!
Oh, and I don't actually know anything about clothing stores. I have no idea if any of the list I mentioned (Bluenotes, Pantorama, Jacob, etc.) actually are women's clothes only, as Robin contends. Oh, well. Feel free to substitute in names of other stores that make more sense in context. And speaking of stores, I just made up the Goth Shop. As far as I know, it doesn't even exist. If it does, I was not in any way referring to a real store, at least not on purpose. I could have used something like Hot Topic or whatever, which I know of by reputation only, but from what I've heard Hot Topic is really more along the lines of Pop Goth (i.e. "Nobody loves me, I'm so angsty, pay attention to me!"), which I don't think is really Raven's scene. I don't even think that she considers herself a Goth at all. She just does her thing, and if people want to apply ultimately meaningless labels to her, she doesn't really care.
Also, I actually like Mountain Dew. But really, think about it, do you think Raven would?
Okay, moving on!
To My Reviewers:
Febreese and Mini Black Raven: Okay, first off, I don't like thinking about relationships between characters in terms of "pairings". It sounds like I'm breeding sheep or something. Second, I hate it when people get up in arms about which "pairings" are the right ones, and I hate it even more when people start making demands about these "pairings" of other authors. If you only want to read stories that are "RaeRob" or "RaeBB" or "StarRob" or whatever, that's fine. Just don't get in my face about it. I'm a reasonable person, I think, and will consider requests from reviewers, but I'm doing this for fun—if I can't get interested in a request, sorry, but that request won't get fulfilled. And if anyone makes any demands, well, I'm a spiteful, anti-social bastard, so I'll probably deny those demands even if I do like them, just because I don't like being told what to do with my hobbies. I understand that these might not be demands per se. This is a remote medium of communication, so it's much easier to misunderstand things here than in person—I've had some experience with that kind of thing. I hope you won't take what I've said here as being with any kind of malice, since that is not my intention. Nor is it my intention to single anyone out. I just want to make my thoughts clear about these kinds of requests/demands/whatever, and you two just happened to raise the issue. Sorry that this turned into a rant. As for the "pairings", like I said, I tend not to think in those terms. You'll just have to read to find out. If you don't like it, fine.
kikyou's-reincarnation: Thank you!
ravenrocs4eva: Here's the update. It's not exactly soon, but whatever. And you should probably see someone about the running and screaming thing.
palekel: Okay, this name I recognize. I won't get into that here, though (wrong place). Well, if people can sense some RaeRob action in "Fear Itself" ("Dude, he, like, totally just swung down and saved her in the elevator shaft!"), I don't doubt that you could make a case for that here. I wouldn't suggest it, though. If you did that, you'd have to acknowledge the little "moment" at the end as RaeCy action, and having Starfire help protect Raven from the raging Evelyn as RaeStar action, and then the stuff in this chapter as definite RaeBB action, and then Raven would just seem like a slut. You might even be able to make a case for RaeEve action, and that would just be wrong. Wrong, I say!
nevermoretheraven: I've actually seen a few of the new episodes now (up to "Birthmark"), since I was able to download them on Kazaa. I know, Kazaa isn't the cool filesharing program anymore, but whatever. I'm lazy, and it's what's already on my computer. Anyway, I still haven't seen all of the third season, though—I have yet to see "The Beast Within" and "Can I Keep Him?" Oh, well. I'll catch them eventually. "Revolution" is kind of a weird episode. As much as Mad Mod and Monty Python references amuse me the episode kind of left me…well, it wasn't entirely satisfying. As a Canadian, the whole "Yeehaw, we're Americans and we're the best" jingoistic undertone (hell, it wasn't even under, it was just a tone) didn't impress me much, either. Beast Boy was funny with a British accent, though. It didn't last nearly long enough, in my opinion. Anyway, about the balance of humour with drama, like I said, this chapter was mainly humour, although some important (I think) stuff did come through regarding Evelyn's character, and there was some drama at the end. Basically, this whole story will be mainly humour, with the drama lurking just below the surface. Heh. Lurk. That's a great word. Lurk, lurk, lurk.