Recon

"This is not a good idea," Aarti said after listening dispassionately to Lucy's, admittedly, rambling plan.

Lucy ground her teeth. Aarti, as usual, looked as if she hadn't ran and snuck through an alien overlord infested mansion to the one room they hadn't gotten around to searching, even if her mom had insisted on her returning to Amazonian armor. Well, the invaders had searched, but as it turned out, Simone's four poster had a wooden canopy and about two feet of clearance with the ceiling. It hadn't been comfortable, but the guards had only given it a cursory once-over, checking under the bed, behind the drapes and in the closet.

Rena hadn't helped the issue. She'd been nervously muttering almost sub-vocally the entire time. Lucy had been half-expecting her to simply poison the little search team. The idiots hadn't even been wearing masks which was a good thing. It meant that Rena being here wasn't expected.

She wasn't hoping on that lasting past Jebediah being deposited into a cylinder. While it wasn't widely known that Rena was hanging out with Jebediah, all it would take was for one misspoken word from one of the other already captive children. Plus, the maids had already seen them talking to Simone.

"I thought you had a real plan. This is just throwing ourselves to the wolves," Aarti continued.

"Do you have a better idea?" Lucy asked.

"I have this." Aarti pulled out a black disk from the back of her phone case. "One-way ticket to wherever the hat is."

"And what if it's in a lab with researchers and guards?" Rena asked.

She'd tucked her sharpened heel into the back of her pants. Lucy couldn't figure out how she wasn't getting scratched. She'd stuffed hers in the gap between her shin and boot. It looked like something to stiffen the leather rather than something they'd torn off another pair of boots. The broken boots had been stuffed under Simone's mattress once the searchers had left. Lucy wasn't counting on them not coming back.

The overlords would, after all, love to get their hands on Rena and Aarti. Even after all the failures, they'd still managed to brew up Aarti after all. She represented years of work. At best, she'd be thrown into a variety of tests.

Lucy didn't want to think about at worst. She glanced at Rena from the corner of her eye. Rena was definitely going to get an at worst result from going back. Not even Jebediah knew how she controlled the chemical makeup of her clouds, and he was a genius.

As for herself, she'd probably be a bonus. They could use her to control the younger children to an extent. Those kids loved her.

"But we have Rena," Lucy argued. "Look! Rena!" She said, gesturing like a game show hostess showing off a brand new car.

Rena and Aarti gave her similar unimpressed looks.

"Hey! I'm trying here!" Lucy protested. "I know it's not ideal, but we'd have the power of surprise on our side."

"Until the surprise wore off and they dart us unconscious," Rena said. Aarti nodded in agreement.

"But maybe they wouldn't?"

"And they would because Pleja is there, and he's the one who was in charge of labs. Of course, they're not going to let us just waltz in, rescue people and run away." Rena crossed her arms. "I thought you had an actual plan, Lucy!"

"It was a plan. At least it was until you poked holes all in it," Lucy muttered, flopping down on Simone's bed. "Oh, you've got to try this! It's like laying on a cloud."

The other two exchanged glances before shrugging and flopping down next to Lucy, one to either side.

"Oh, that is an insult to clouds," Rena moaned. "Where did they get this and how do we get our hands on it?"

"Mmm, the decadent pleasures of a civilized age," Aarti mused. "We really should secure that hideout of ours. It's just so exposed."

"Which is the beauty of it," Lucy murmured. "Who's going to check a furniture warehouse for runaway kids?" She chuckled. "Well, not all of us are runaways."

"But yours are in jail again, so just what exactly are you again?" Rena teased.

"Liberated…again," Lucy promptly replied. "We can give Aarti's plan a try, I guess?"

"Are you sure?" Aarti asked, sitting up. She looked down at the bed with a wistful look. "We could do it tomorrow or something and just smuggle this bed into the hideout. We could strap it on top of a transport. With luck, Simone won't even miss it."

"I think Simone wouldn't miss it because she's somewhere none of us want to ever go back to," Rena said. She ran a hand over the comforter. "This bedspread probably costs more than I paid for my last purse."

"Jebediah paid for your last purse," Lucy snarked.

"But I was the one who wrote out the grant papers." Rena giggled. "They probably still don't know that we're fifteen. All that lovely, lovely money," she breathed.

"Just how much money is there in grants?" Lucy asked with a frowned.

"Enough that Rena's going 'lovely, lovely money' which says a lot," Aarti answered. She stared at the bedroom door. "They're going to be searching through this place again to see if they can find Rena, you know."

"Or they could be looking for you and your mom," Lucy pointed out. She sat up as well. "We should just go for it and see what happens."

"Court's going to be furious about this, you know." Rena stood up and straightened out her clothes.

"He's going to go all civil and polite." Aarti tucked her phone into her belt. There was a special little pouch just for it. "That last time he got mad at you… I was glad that I was stuck on Themyscira!"

"You're exaggerating." Lucy stood up and stretched. After a moment. "Well, just a little bit of exaggeration."

"He shorted out a power grid over it. There was looting everywhere!" Rena said. "I totally regret not getting more stuff!"

"I know! I was there! I got so much swag, it was not even funny. Do you know how hard it was to put in that second, secret closet without my parents knowing? Difficult!" Lucy gestured with her hands expansively.

Then she turned towards the door and held out her hand.

"Cute little device?"

Aarti grinned as she slapped it into Lucy's hand.

"Are we adorable or what?" Lucy asked.

"Of course, we are!" Rena answered chirpily as Aarti drew her short sword.

"Then let's go have a bit of fun!" Lucy said, tossing the device on the floor.

A couple of seconds later, a thin blue line cut through the air and opened up into a doorway. Through it, a lab was shown with a hat in a glass cylinder. The hat was glowing with the same blue light.

"I think it's worse than we thought it was," Lucy said thoughtfully.

"They figured out how to make it open doors without needing to hold it," Aarti breathed out.

"Now or never, ladies," Rena said, taking a step forward. "Don't forget to hold your breath, Aarti!"

The other two girls looked at each other for a long second before plunging through the doorway after Rena. The doorway silently collapsed into a line before fading away.

A minute after, the door was roughly shoved open as guards poured in, guns at the ready.