Arguments

Aarti fiddled with her phone. For all the fanciness, the reception at Simone's house sucked. The signal was intermittent at best and kept her from doing her favorite thing: shopping.

She sighed internally. She'd gone to all that trouble to have Court set up her accounts, and now she couldn't use them. Granted, she'd nearly run through all the money from the Dime Store and had been thinking about actually trying to find that hat. Of course, finding the hat meant actually dealing with the overlords, and to be honest, Aarti would rather not do that ever.

She looked up at the adults who were still arguing about inanities. Who really cared who took credit? And truly? Why did it matter whether or not the overlords really came?

Having seen Sol and Kuro trailing after Lucy like happy little puppies, Aarti couldn't really believe that the overlords would let that go. Plus, both Court and Jebediah were in the same place. Why wouldn't they chase after some of their favorite research subjects as well as one of their more brilliant researchers?

Aarti wasn't dumb. Even when she'd broken out of the creche cluster she'd been birthed in, she'd had a sense of crisis underneath all the anger. The experiments had become increasingly pointed. More and more of the children had been altered or eliminated while some started carrying worrying designations she'd only seen on container cylinders during the experiments Aarti had been forced into.

Aarti was broken out of her worrying reverie by the beep of the computer projector in front of her. She studied it for a second. No one had bothered to change the presentation for a while now, arguing over some U.N. restrictions over the Amazons.

She looked at the projection on the wall. It cleared to out to just a line of text: Invaders.

"And they'd be?" She said aloud, ignoring the looks a couple of the adults directed her way.

Pleja.

Aarti froze. Her memory conjured up so many images and sounds associated with that evil creature that she could barely keep from jumping up, screaming and throwing herself out of the nearest window. It stood to figure that Pleja wouldn't want the attention of the Amazons outside on him without hefty support. The lessons of the Liberation had to have been well learned.

"Who is Pleja?" Batman asked, his voice even more gravelly than usual. It sparked a bit of suspicion through Aarti's panic that he knew more than he was letting on.

"Pleja is the one who oversaw the labs," Aarti replied, realizing that it was true even as she said it. The other overlords had seemed to defer to him in the labs, no matter what the outrageous suggestion he'd offered up.

And then she added, "he's supposed to be dead."

*****

And he wasn't. Aarti scowled at the overlord idly chatting with a traitorous maid as his guards walked through the cursed blue portal with Jebediah, Simone and Kuro slung over their shoulder. Nearby, Sol and a couple of other maids were sitting in uncomfortable looking chairs, eyes glassy and nonresponsive.

Aarti wasn't sure what to make out of that. Just what had happened while she'd been locked up with the adults, listening to them and their inane arguments?

The only relief she felt was that she didn't see Lucy or Rena. Obviously, Pleja wasn't above replenishing his supply of containers while picking up errant experiments.

Aarti eased backwards towards the small door. The foyer, or 'Grand Foyer' as Simone's grandfather referred to it as, had very high ceilings. It was pretty much the size of the rest of the house, three very generous stories. To facilitate the ease of dusting and changing of lightbulbs, there was attic access portals set amongst the eaves. Aarti couldn't imagine anyone being brave enough to actually walk along the eaves to winch up any of the many chandeliers to change anything.

"So, that's Pleja?" Aarti's mother asked. Her whole expression was cold and icy, a complete contrast to the usual warm indifference she showed Aarti.

Aarti was startled. Her mother was always pleasant to her. She'd never seen her do so much as raise her voice. Of course, being the princess of the Amazons, she commanded instant obedience and devotion from them.

Just not from Aarti which baffled all of them. Aarti didn't feel a need to obey anything her mother said. Her grandmother had merely laughed and said that it was karma. Aarti still hadn't figured out that part yet.

"If we eliminate him, we strike a blow to their operations," Batman said next to them.

Aarti glanced at him. She was starting to increasingly agree with Dawnie's assessment of the man. She just wished that Dawnie had returned in time for this venture. It would be so much easier to retrieve the hat and cut off the overlords' impromptu harvesting sessions if Dawnie was here.

"It's not like you can shoot him," Aarti said as the little door to the hatch slid shut behind her. "He's got personal shields on all the time." And she would know, having tried to sneak attack the alien on more than one occasion when she was younger.

"Then we need a plan, and fast before they leave through whatever that is," Batman said.

Aarti watched as the adults huddled up into a group, whispering. She rolled her eyes. If it was up to her, she'd rush them, trying to break through to the other side of the portal. Even her own instincts told her that that was a bad idea.

Her communicator vibrated, shaking her wrist slightly. With a wary glance to the adults she sidled around to the back of a pile of old furniture.

"Meet us in Simone's room. It's on the second floor, right of the stairs," Lucy whispered through the communicator.

Aarti couldn't help but frown. Then she shrugged. At least going to meet up with Lucy would be better than listening to the adults and pretending to be a good Amazon princess-in-training.

With another disdainful look at the planning adults, she slipped away towards the stairs.