A/N: I don't own any members of the Justice League. They belong to Cartoon Network, Marvel, and DC Comics. I do, however, own Taipana.

Chapter 7: Moments of Weakness

Batman and Green Arrow had arrived back at the Tower by now. Both Shayera and Taipana knew this. They also knew that they must have told the others what had happened. They would be less than thrilled, to say the least, on Shayera's part, but what did she care? She knew she had to be careful and watch her back around them, careful not to make any mistakes, but here she was, making a very big mistake. Did she care though? No, and Batman knew she didn't. Taipana had been where she had been before; they could relate to one another. That, leaving out Taipana's colorful past for the moment, was all that mattered.

"So, you're a bounty hunter," Shayera asked as they sat on the edge of the roof of their target.

"Just to pay for my piano lessons," Taipana replied easily.

"You play piano?" Taipana just stared at her, eyebrow quirked. "A joke, right. I got that. So what do you do with all that money you make? From the sound of that argument, you must live pretty comfortably. What did you do to keep living the way you do with the job that you have, tax fraud?"

"I may be crazy enough to take on Batman, but the IRS? No, thank you! And, if I know Bruce, the file the Question got for your friends will be on it's way to Gotham PD. It doesn't matter that I'm innocent though," she sighed solemnly. "I'll go back to Arkham when we leave here."

"If you're innocent, go down to the police headquarters with me and tell them your story."

"That's not my style," she stated. "Besides, would you," she questioned pointedly.

"Good point," she agreed. "But I've redeemed by myself; you haven't."

"Not yet," she corrected. "That's what this was about," she added with a nod to the skylight they were going to enter through. "Besides, you haven't redeemed yourself, not with everyone, and you know it." Shayera saw her point and nodded, thinking of Wonder Woman. "Listen, I'm as broody and self-destructive as the next girl. I was only doing what I had to do."

"But why did you do it? You have the perfect life, the kind of life everyone dreams about. So why give that up for some drugs, to hunt and kill people?"

"Because the life I had wasn't what I wanted," she answered easily. "I was born into the very same life I'm living now, and I hate it. I was an outcast then, and everyone knew, even Bruce. I suppose that's why we became such good friends," she mused. "The truth is, even then, I needed adventure, danger. I needed a life that my family didn't want to provide."

"So you ran away?"

"No, my parents disowned me, then I ran away," she replied with a bitter smile. "I found Crane and we became partners, working together on perfecting splicing. I was the test subject for the drugs since he was already…different from a previous experiment. The changes came in and I became Taipana."

"I've been meaning to ask you about that," Shayera commented, referring to her name.

"Good a time as any. Crane spliced me with a drug for the Inland Taipan of Australia. It has the most toxic venom of any snake. On me, the venom comes from my teeth and nails. Scratch, bite, die," she explained. "Crane once told me that the maximum yield recorded for one bite was a hundred and ten milligrams. That would probably be enough to kill over a hundred people. The snakes are rare, and are virtually unknown in collections outside of Australia. I'm an oddity in America. Yay, me," she added humorlessly.

"So, you're a poisonous snake that could kill hundreds of people with one scratch?"

"Basically," she answered with a coy smirk.

"You could take out the whole League if you wanted to," she stated in awe.

"Key word, "if." Besides, all those superheroes with their powers against little old me? I'd be overwhelmed in a second, I'm sad to say," she stated, knowing full well that any one of the superheroes could take her out. "Anyway, I did the vigilante thing for over sixth months, helping Batman and Batgirl in the shadows, continuing to take the drug. Then Crane told me about Bruce and his late night flying, knowing full well that I didn't know who the man behind the mask was. I decided to quit. I didn't want to fight Bruce; he was my friend, my only friend. So I left and I told Bruce, well, Batman, everything that very night, leaving out my involvement. He got Batgirl, Barbara, and we went to the docks. You know the rest."

"So what happened after that," Shayera asked with a nod.

"Bruce had me arrested as an accomplice and smuggling drugs with intent to sell, but, by then, I was already changed permanently. Because of that and my lack of fixes on the drugs, I went through withdrawal the likes of which no one had ever seen. It was very intense, extreme," she remembered shakily. "During my withdrawal, which only helped cure me of my need of the drug, some thought I'd gone mad. Others thought I always had been. So Bruce put me where everyone, himself included, thought I belonged: Arkham. And, like I said, that's where I'll be going back to when we're done, as Bruce avidly mentioned."

"That's all in the past now. You're trying to make things right. You don't deserve to go to prison," she assured her

"I know it's in the past; ancient history. I'm a new woman, but he probably won't figure that out until it's too late," she said solemnly, thinking of Batman.

P.S.: Three pages total.