Chapter Three: Snake in the Grass

The alarm had come from the Jump City Museum of Antiquities. Someone had recognized Puppet King among the invaders and called it in. He was being assisted by masked figures who were either ordinary henchmen in good body armor or else life-size puppets; no one was quite sure. The museum's security guards had fired a few bullets at the invaders without eliciting so much as a yelp of pain in response. That was when they, along with the first police officers to arrive, had decided to fall back and just try to secure a perimeter outside the museum while they waited for the Titans to arrive and handle this weirdness.

Probably a good call, Beast Boy reflected.

Robin had decided to divide the team until they had a better handle on the shape and size of the problem. He would take Starfire and Cyborg and enter the museum's west wing. Raven and Beast Boy would sweep through the east wing. They'd stay in touch via communicators.

Now Raven and Beast Boy moved down a hallway, Raven checking the rooms on the left, Beast Boy those on the right. He was the first to spot anyone else, when he passed under an archway into a room full of Egyptian artifacts. Standing across the room from him, examining a collection of scarabs, was a statuesque woman with wavy blond hair cascading down to her hips. As for her wardrobe . . . well, she looked as if she'd been interrupted in the middle of getting dressed.

She was wearing what looked like a metal bra, covering most of her breasts. Aside from a few simple bracelets on each arm and a headpiece shaped like a coiled snake, holding her hair back so that it spilled down behind her, the metal bra was about all this woman wore above the waist. The waist itself was girded by a belt of shiny metal ovals, which seemed to be holding up a gauzy pink skirt that nearly brushed the floor, but it didn't conceal much; you could get a good idea of what her legs looked like.

Beast Boy estimated the blond's measurements at 36-24-36, standing about five foot nine, age somewhere in her twenties . . . not that he really cared or anything; those numbers just happened to pop into his head after the first admiring glance.

"All right, lady!" he snapped, bound and determined to show he could take the job seriously even when confronted by such a total babe. "What do you know about the gang that's invaded the museum? And if you're not with them, why are you wandering around in here, dressed like that, after visiting hours?"

The blond woman turned toward him and languidly raised her empty hands above her head as if to emphasize her lack of dangerous weaponry. (Beast Boy had to admit it was darned hard to figure out where she could be concealing a handgun, fr'instance.) "You don't like my apparel?" she asked. "What'sss wrong with it?"

He wasn't touching that one with a ten-foot pole. "It's not a question of what I like—it's a question of why you're wearing it here and now!"

"I jussst love old Egyptian thingsss," she explained. "I mussst have lossst track of the time." She was stepping slowly toward him now, her body undulating a little, but her eyes were staying locked onto his . . . were those eyes oddly shaped, or was it just an illusion created by the dark makeup around them and the odd way each of her eyebrows seemed to twist upward in the middle . . . she was coming closer and closer . . . . his eyes couldn't seem to shift away from hers, but he heard her saying, "Fassscinating. I sssee you are more in touch with your reptilian ssside than mossst men. Perhapsss that makesss you more sssusssceptible to my influenssse . . ."

Raven, having heard voices while she was across the hall, peered in through an archway and saw a glamorous, golden-haired, blatantly feminine stranger moving closer and closer, in a hip-swaying sort of way, to Beast Boy. The fact that the woman was dressed like a go-go dancer didn't do a thing for Raven . . . but might explain why her green teammate was being uncharacteristically still and quiet.

"Hold it! Who are you?" Raven demanded.

The blond woman's head snapped around with a displeased expression on her face—then she regained control remarkably fast and smiled a sweet smile. "Jussst a friend of your charming teammate."

The woman's hissing was annoying, but perhaps she couldn't help it. Raven wanted to hear Beast Boy himself vouch for her good character, though. "Beast Boy? Is this lady actually an old friend of yours?"

The woman looked back at Beast Boy as he spoke carefully. "Yes . . . she is my friend. It's all right . . . you can leave us . . . alone."

The blond woman smirked at that show of support.

Beast Boy's voice was a slow monotone; not at all the way he would normally express himself. In fact, he sounded depressingly like Raven herself might sound when telling him to go away and stop pestering her! But she didn't think he was trying to mimic her as a joke. He hadn't even bothered to turn his head to face Raven when he spoke; it seemed he only had eyes for the blond. And since when did he so suddenly lose interest in an ongoing mission, such as hunting down and fighting Puppet King and his minions?

Of course Beast Boy wasn't usually face-to-face with such a sensational distraction. At his age, those masculine hormones must really be running wild in his bloodstream, and most of the women the Titans met in their line of work didn't try so hard to pander to the likely tastes of teenage boys, so Raven didn't have much of a baseline to use in gauging whether or not it was "normal" for BB, upon encountering such a woman and perhaps really recognizing her from elsewhere, to be standing there like a lump on a log, just staring at the woman and oblivious to all else.

Was it possible that the blond really wasn't using anything except her looks and personality to make Beast Boy seem almost mesmerized? In which case Raven would look a total fool if she tried to forcibly separate the two of them when Beast Boy wasn't in any danger of bodily harm . . . on the other hand, right now she wasn't inclined to assume nothing bad could possibly happen if she turned her back on the pair of them for the next ten minutes . . .

Raven took another hard look at the stranger. What did this hussy really have going for her, aside from that eye-catching mass of blond hair and those sizeable breasts and all that smooth, soft, normal-looking skin and those barely-veiled legs and those pouting lips and those exotically shaped eyebrows and the classical beauty of her facial features and that shameless way of flaunting her obviously flawless body and all those other characteristics which must add up to make the package deal a heck of a lot more alluring to most red-blooded American boys than a half-demon freak such as Raven could ever dream of being, what with her unhealthy-looking complexion and the way things broke when she started to lose her cool and the even scarier habit of having her eyes glow like burning coals in the darkness whenever she really lost her temper, not to mention all the miscellaneous psychological baggage which made it so hard for her to so much as show any appreciation on the occasions when some nice guy actually made a sincere effort to try to get to know her better?

(Yes, Raven realized her train of thought had veered away from the original point, somewhere along the line, but she didn't have time to worry about that just now.)

While she had been studying the blond bombshell, the older woman had been studying her right back, not looking particularly impressed by the results of the survey, and now their eyes met again as the woman said, "Sssatisssfied? You heard your friend. Now run along, child! We have persssonal busssinesss to conduct and you can sssee I'm not one of thossse dangerousss ruffiansss you are ssseeking . . . can't you?"

Raven's head jerked in shock as a psychic thrust slammed into her like a punch to the chin from a heavyweight boxer.

This was when years of training made the difference. Azarathian conditioning automatically raised Raven's mental shields to full strength while her conscious mind was still reeling for a moment—but then she recovered her focus, and felt confident that she could hold out indefinitely against that woman's preternaturally hypnotic gaze, now that the problem was identified!

It had been a near thing, though—if the first few seconds of mental contact had gone a little differently, Raven would already be meekly turning away and marching down the hall, ready to assure the other Titans (when she found them) that Beast Boy was in good hands!

Instead she was just annoyed. Raven stepped forward, out of the archway, saying: "Nice try, but I think you've shot your wad now. I'm going to tie your hands and I'm going to blindfold you, and if you want to put up a fight then I'll—"

That was when Beast Boy suddenly changed into a ram, lowered his head, and charged forward, knocking the blond woman down. She shouted—more in frustration than pain, it seemed—and then something fell from overhead and thudded against Raven's raised hood. Not heavy enough to be painful, but distracting.

If Raven hadn't already been pumped on adrenaline, she might not have reacted quickly enough. As was, she instantly (and magically) shoved backwards her hooded cape and anything clinging to it, getting the unseen threat far away from her body. A few seconds later she could spare the time to refocus on the enemy—and then she froze for an instant.

The woman was now a snake-woman . . . a Lamia, maybe? Everything below the waist had become a gigantic serpent's tail when Raven wasn't looking, mostly green with a pink underbelly, and the woman appeared to have just bitten the green ram's neck. It screamed and morphed back into Beast Boy's human form as the snake-woman sneered at Raven, showing the snake-like forked tongue she now possessed (several inches long?) and the protruding fangs which likewise hadn't been there a minute ago.

"Ssstruggle with me or sssave your friend, little witch? The bite of Lady Viper isss deadly if untreated!"

Raven had once read of a case where a bunch of teenagers were out in the desert and one of them got bit by a rattlesnake. Angered by the attack, the victim's friends spent the next several minutes chasing and killing the serpent. Then they put the poisoned boy in a car and drove him to a hospital for treatment—but he died there. The time wasted on revenge had made a fatal difference.

She didn't care to repeat that mistake in setting priorities. And Beast Boy was already on the floor, groaning, apparently too weak to move . . .

"Beat it," Raven growled. She wanted to deliver a dramatic threat about what would happen the next time they met, but there just wasn't time. She rushed over to Beast Boy and looked at the wound, but kept herself turned to face in Lady Viper's direction so she'd notice if that bimbo came any closer . . .

Showing remarkable prudence, Lady Viper didn't say anything further to rub Raven's nose in this defeat. Instead she slithered away through another archway off to the left, and after a moment one could hear the sound of running feet, suggesting the villainess had shifted back to her fully human form.

Raven noticed this, but couldn't afford to worry about it any further. They didn't have Girl Scouts in Azarath, but she still knew some basic first aid. Even for a sorceress, it could be vitally important to know the conventional ways to buy time for a critical patient before you started trying to apply magic to the problem. With a venomous snakebite, a quickly-applied tourniquet was sometimes desireable. Unfortunately that wasn't practical when the wound was on the neck. Despite anything she might have said on other occasions, Raven did believe that cutting off the flow of blood to Beast Boy's brain would have a deleterious effect on his IQ. So skip that step and move on to trying to drain some of the poison before it could all be dispersed through the bloodstream.

(She wasn't thinking all this in complete sentences; she was just reacting according to trained reflex.)

You were supposed to cut an X near the wound—which, she noted, was already started to swell.

Raven didn't carry any blades in her costume. But with one thought she shattered a light bulb and then seized the longest resulting shard of glass with black force so it wouldn't slice up her fingers. A couple of careful slashes into Beast Boy's flesh, and then she pressed her mouth over the wounded area and started sucking. Nasty flavor—the blood on her tongue was definitely tainted. Which was good news, in a perverse sort of way; it meant a fair amount of venom was still lingering in the area of the bite, instead of having been pumped through the circulatory system already.

She spat to one side and repeated the process. (Beast Boy was already unconscious at this point.)

Again.

Again.

The blood oozing from BB's neck tasted reasonably normal now—not that Raven had ever tasted his blood before, but she'd tasted her own, and this was much the same. She decided not to keep sucking this time—medieval physicians might've thought draining off more blood was a good remedy for lots of ailments, but this wasn't the Middle Ages. In a moment she'd need to start casting spells—then she glanced up and saw Robin standing in the archway off to her right, surveying the room. How long had he been there?

In a flash, Raven realized what this must look like. A teenage boy lying on his back on the floor; a teenage girl kneeling beside him, with her mouth evidently pressed against his neck . . . and from that angle, Robin couldn't possibly have seen the marks on BB's neck to clue him in! She raised her head, glared ferociously at the team leader, and snapped, "It's not what it seems!"

Robin cocked his head. "Really! You mean you haven't been sucking out some sort of toxin from a fresh wound on the theory that your magic can then do a faster, better job of countering whatever amount is left in Beast Boy's system?"

She blinked. "Okay . . . so maybe it's exactly what it seems to be! At least when the person doing the looking is the protégé of the World's Greatest Detective." As she spoke, she was putting her hands gently around Beast Boy's neck and concentrating on a healing spell. After several seconds, she added, "Most people would have assumed Beast Boy and I were . . . necking."

"Well, maybe, if they didn't actually know you," Robin said judiciously. "But of course I realized you'd never put your lips against Beast Boy's skin for . . . frivolous . . . reasons. It would take a life-and-death emergency to make you even consider it!"

Something deep inside Raven's mind objected to that blithe assumption. Robin had certainly reached the correct conclusion when diagnosing the situation, yet there was something . . . irritating . . . about how he had gotten there in the first place.

"He was bitten. Did you see a blond woman, metal bra, might be wearing a pink skirt or might look half-snake where her legs should be—"

"No," Robin said. "We were kinda busy with a bunch of life-size puppets until a couple of minutes ago. That's all taken care of now. But your description sounds like Lady Viper."

"Yes, that's the name she used! You know her?"

"Never met her in my life. Batgirl got bitten by her once in Gotham. Barely survived. Later, using a venom sample, a lab was able to produce an antidote. I'll make a couple of calls and see if we can get some of that flown out here—or maybe the formula is something a Jump City hospital lab could whip up in a jiffy once they saw it?"

"Any unusual effects I need to know about?"

"Well, Batgirl managed to extract some of the venom from her own neck, which may have made a difference, but she still collapsed for awhile. After she woke up, and before anyone found an antidote, she discovered she could turn the bottom half of her body into a gigantic snake's tail, just like Lady Viper." Robin eyed his unconscious friend dubiously. "Of course, in BB's case, I don't see that being much of a change."

Raven didn't argue the point. "By the way, something landed on my cloak, so I . . . threw it away. Can you check it out? Might still be dangerous."

Robin disappeared for a minute. When he came back, just as Raven was finishing up a second healing spell for luck, he said, "Must've been the small coral snake you felt land. I killed it."

"Coral snake?

"Yes. Lady Viper has complete control over snakes in general. Where were you when it attacked?"

"I'd just come through that archway."

Robin studied the terrain. "It must've been resting on a ledge overhead, lurking in ambush. When Lady Viper sent the command, it dropped over the edge. Your hood was up?"

"Yes."

"That's it, then. The poor creature had orders to bite whatever it fell on, but all it did was snag its fangs in the fabric. Then you threw it across the hallway and stunned it, I think. If you'd been bare-headed, you'd need some emergency treatment yourself!"

Author's Note: If you never heard of Lady Viper before—which you probably haven't—don't worry; you haven't been missing much! She's a comic book villain—but an incredibly obscure one. Not an old Titans foe; she simply fought the original Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) way back in 1982 and has never been heard from since. (I merely assume that old clash also happened in the timeline of the Teen Titans animated series.) Lady Viper's powers included: 1) superb mental control of snakes, 2) some ability to use a hypnotic stare on human beings as well (although I don't think the effects lasted long), 3) the magical ability to change into a giant snake from the waist down, and 4) a poisonous bite when she was in her half-snake form and had venomous fangs in her mouth. However, her personality never amounted to much of interest (in my opinion).

I had never planned to use her in anything. It happened almost by accident. When I posted the previous chapter, I hadn't made up my mind which villain the Teen Titans would be confronting in Chapter 3, but I intended to use someone from the animated series.

But then I started thinking about embarrassing situations I could work into the plot . . . and I thought it would be funny to have a scene with Raven sucking at Beast Boy's neck and terribly afraid that people would get the wrong idea. That meant something or someone with a venomous bite had to attack Beast Boy first. A sentient supervillain would be more interesting than just having BB encounter an irritated rattlesnake, for instance. So I asked myself: "Okay, which DC villains are likely to attack a superhero that way, instead of using super-strength or energy blasts or whatever?" The first who sprang to mind was Lady Viper.

Even so, I hesitated over whether it was worth the trouble to refresh my memory of her characteristics and then use her . . . but then I remembered the way Lady Viper used to dress (it goes back to before she got her powers, when she was working in a carnival sideshow, letting snakes slither all over her), and I suddenly realized I might get some mileage out of Beast Boy's reaction to that provocative outfit, and Raven's reaction to his reaction, and so forth. I decided Raven is a tad self-conscious about her own failure to look like a walking, talking Barbie doll, whereas Lady Viper's human form comes much closer to achieving that "ideal" . . .

P.S. Today—after I was almost ready to post this chapter, including the notes about Lady Viper—it belatedly occurred to me to check what Wikipedia says about recommended treatment for a patient who's just been bitten by a venomous snake. In writing this chapter, I'd been working from memory—back in the 1980s I was a Boy Scout studying for my First Aid merit badge.

Apparently modern medicine has since decided the following things are not worth the trouble of doing, and may even do more harm than good: 1) applying a tourniquet to isolate the bitten area, 2) making a new incision on or near the wound, 3) sucking out any lingering venom. In other words, if a friend or relative of yours gets bitten by a rattlesnake tomorrow morning, you probably shouldn't follow Raven's example! (If you want to know what is recommended, try searching on Wikipedia for "snakebite.")

That came as a shock. I had no intention of rewriting the entire chapter, however—so now I'm working on the hastily-devised theory that Raven, growing up in a separate dimensional reality, was taught basic first aid from printed materials decades old, which still recommended those methods. Robin presumably has more up-to-date training, but came in too late to stop her from cutting and sucking at Beast Boy's neck, and decided it wasn't a great idea to waste time, right then and there, arguing about the pros and cons of what she had already done. Especially since he had the considerable comfort of knowing that this was a special case. It was a cinch that Raven would also cast healing spells on BB in just a moment, and that would almost certainly prevent the incisions on his neck from getting infected. Later, when things are much calmer, Robin will find a way to tell her that recommended emergency first aid methods have changed when she wasn't looking!