It turned out that Bruce Wayne's reputation for tardiness was well-founded.
I usually got quite irritated at that sort of thing. Fortunately for him, he was Batman, and-
Wait, if he's in Metropolis, that means he can't be Batman right now. Unless Alfred is Batman right now.
...The Batman Rule of Forgiveness still applied, regardless of if he was late directly because of being Batman or not.
However, just because I wasn't annoyed at Mr Wayne, didn't mean I couldn't be annoyed at my circumstances.
"-Super Singer Green is the best Super Singer!"
Currently I was very annoyed.
"Nuh-uh, Super Singer Red! He's so cool, so he's better!"
Small children will do that to you when you don't have the veto power that being a grownup brings.
Currently, I'd been sat on a table with a bunch of other people of similar age to myself. Normally people praise me for my helpful and tolerant attitude, but this group were what were known as 'a pair of little shits'. Introducing-
"That's stupid," said Ramona Chez, hailing from some perfume company that had hired Poison Ivy before she did the whole supervillain thing. "His... his screeching makes my ears hurt! Super Singer Green!"
"You're stupid!" said Charles Mephisto, hailing from some paint company that had suffered from a Firefly-induced explosion at some point. "And that's final," he added imperiously, obviously mimicking his parent or something.
Ramona reeled, trying to think of a comeback... before she turned to me. Dangit. "Lena!" she declared. "Tell him he's stupid!"
"No."
"So you are stupid!" declared Charles in triumph. Ramona sniffled.
"That's also incorrect," I said blandly, desperately trying to summon a supervillain attack with my feeble brain-meats.
"Wait- so who's right!?" Ramona demanded angrily.
Alpha Plan Uno- Attempt to make them both accidentally admit to being right. "Have you ever heard of subjectivity by any chance?"
"...Of course we have!" she declared, sticking her nose up in the air like a seal on a rock, except without all the chubby adorableness and amusingly keen balance that a seal on a rock is cute because of.
"Yeah!" said Charles. (So basically like a really ugly seal with no sense of balance. On a chair.)
"...So who's right!?"
Alas, Ramona had seen through my magnificent tactics. Or she was too dumb to be fooled. The latter seemed more likely, seeing as anyone here who'd been born from a rich family generally spent more money than time thinking. (I came from a cloning tube. Totally doesn't count. And the Bat Family isn't here yet.)
Either way, my initial plan had failed. Damnit. Beta Plan Dos is go- be correct and use the smugness to shield yourself from the fallout."Subjectively, Super Singer Pink is the best."
They looked at me like I'd grown a third head.
"They're all good singers," I explained, "but Super Singer Pink has the most fluorescent costume. And she sung Karate, which is the best one they've done so far. Thus, she is subjectively the best Super Singer out there."
They looked at me.
I sipped my ultra-classy my-dad-paid-a-lot-of-money-for-this lemonade, which to be quite frank was fairly similar in quality to the stuff you could get from any decent restaurant. Still, I accepted things regardless of their origin, and lemonade was most reasonably included within that rule.
Unfortunately, neither lemonade nor smug could not protect me.
"That's stupid!" they shouted in unison, before simultaneously starting a rant I couldn't actually hear because of the aforementioned shouting.
Sigh. For a few moments their ire was directed solely at myself, until a "No, Singer Red!" popped out and they turned to each other with renewed ire. As their shouting began to meander towards each other again, I did the only logical thing. Gamma Plan Tres is go.
The only logical thing to do, of course, was summon Batman to save me. I leaned on my wrists in a manner that would let me secretly perform a Bat Signal with my hands, and thought really hard about Batman crashing through the ceiling.
As if on cue, Bruce Wayne and Tim Drake finally walked through the door, the older Wayne putting on a convincing chuckle as he entered. My head popped up in interest.
Tim's eyes flicked over me, then over Charles and Ramona. I read his lips as he turned towards BatDad- "...You can't be serious," he said.
Oh. Yeah. I was technically one of those bratty kids about three years younger than him that he was nevertheless expected to sit near and get along with. My opinion was clear- Sucks to be him, I guess.
I attempted to read Batman's lips as well, but promptly found myself to be observing a load of incomprehensible gibberish. Because Batman, and also because I suck at lip reading. Probably the latter mostly.
Bat Jr huffed. "Fine," he muttered.
As he approached in the manner of a dead man walking, the two dueling sharks that were dominating the table's conversation smelled blood in the water. Charles turned towards him.
I glanced around the room. Their faces were poor imitations of a few of the adult's condescending looks. I suddenly got the sickening feeling that the little shits were going to say something they really wouldn't have wanted to say if they knew what it actually meant.
Alas, my faith in humanity had its regular shattering a few moments later. "You must be Mr Wayne's next pity project," he sneered.
I blinked. They did, I thought, gritting my teeth. They actually went and copied some rich jerk I wouldn't even feel bad punching.
"Oh, this is him? The world's a better place if his parents were as ugly as he is," said Ramona disdainfully.
Oh, that one is even worse, I thought, seething as I gave them both a pointed look. When I figure out whoever taught them that, I'm draining their bank accounts the moment I figure out how. They just rolled their eyes at my look.
Tim slowed fractionally, before he sat down. Then he locked eyes with the spoiled brats.
Behind the noise of the adults talking as they welcomed Bruce to the table, I could suddenly hear a distinct and ominous silence surrounding our table. Which was truly impressive, seeing as glares are generally not known for their sound-muffling properly.
"...Excuse me, I need the bathroom," said the first one. The second one didn't even do more than stutter before she hurried off after him.
I continued to sit there in stunned disbelief for a moment, as Tim picked up his knife and fork- the correct ones for needlessly fancy dining, may I add- and shoveled a too-large chunk of seabass into his mouth.
I took his cue, returning to my meal. The silence lasted for as long as I had food- which was not exactly a prodigious amount of time. I glanced at the time on the wall- it would be a few minutes before dessert.
"...Do you happen to know anything about hacking?" I ventured.
Tim gave me a look. "Why would I need to know anything about hacking?" he questioned in turn.
"The specifics would be impolite to mention at the dinner table," I told him, lowering my voice, "but the reason for knowing those aforementioned specifics is because I'm currently trying to figure out a more practical alternative to a top hat that would go with a domino mask and cape."
I watched it give him pause. Then I startled back slightly as he leaned in, his features twisted into a grimace. "You're planning on becoming daddy's little supervillain, aren't you?" he accused.
"I- no," I flatly responded. "A well-meaning but incredibly stressed-out alien and a certain bull-headed baldy are about to start the bickering of a lifetime. It's going to be like an old married couple directed by Micheal Bay. They're either going to blow up an extraordinary number of things or start kissing immediately before they take over the world, and though I'm sure either option would suit the two of them just fine, I happen to enjoy Metropolis remaining both unsploded and untyrannised. In the meantime, there's less criminals in Metropolis than in Gotham- but they're still here, and they still need fighting."
Tim gave me a look that made it quite clear on what he thought of that.
I ignored his silence for speech purposes. With lemonade in hand, I posed dramatically. "Someone has to be responsible. And that someone... is me."
"...You're six," Tim very reasonably hissed. "You can't fight crime. You're just going to get killed. Or worse."
"You're nine," I countered, before taking a moment to consciously keep my voice low. Bad habit of mine to speak much louder than strictly necessary, alas. "Since Batman approves of that age, all I need to do is make a super-serum to make up the difference and I'll be fine."
"You. Are. Six," he said, the absurdity of the conversation getting to him. "And you think you can both make a super serum and use it to fight crime."
"The preliminary results are promising. Even if there's a lot of dead rats involved," I clarified, just in case Batman hacked my computer later. "It's all very ethical but there's a lot of dead rats."
"Look, just..." Tim sighed. "Don't go sticking needles into yourself, it always goes wrong. You've heard of Man-Bat, right?"
"Yup," I agreed. "Which is why I'm specifically testing it until I can get reproducible results. And," I added, "making sure my dad doesn't get his hands on it. He'd be using it to try and get some schmuck to kill Superman within the week- oh, one second, dessert's coming."
A waiter, his clothes impeccable, approached bearing a glistening tray adorned with half a room's worth of sugary goodness. I gratefully recieved the apple crumble that father had probably told me I'd be having, Tim likewise thanking his waiter even as he gave me a surprised look for my own good manners. The waiters were mostly passive, apart from being ever so slightly confused by the two empty seats.
"Those two are probably coming back soon," I said dourly.
"Why are you so sure your dad's gonna try and kill Superman, anyway?" Tim said, frowning.
"Oh, he's totally jealous of him," I said, taking another sip of my lemonade- and frowning when I noticed I'd just emptied it. "Or he's about to become really mad he can't hire the guy. Metropolis loves him, he's unbelievably powerful, he doesn't seem the sort to accept a higher authority than the goodness of his heart, he's got a fantastic haircut-"
"He has good hair... so your dad's gonna kill him," he said, his deadpan reaching critical levels.
"Yup," I replied jovially. "History will prove me right, so I'll gloat later." I glanced at the side of the room, seeing movement behind the doors the two brats had gone through. "Last two things before they come back in- if you need any help in Metropolis, I'm sure you can detective up my phone number somehow; and second, if you're not gonna help hack whoever they copied that off, I'll settle for creating a mutual wall of smug against them."
His featured hardened. "This isn't finished," he said with an unnervingly good presumable Batman impression, before returning to the mask of 'perfectly normal rich kid eating pie' he'd presumably agreed with Batdad to keep up.
Guess that's a no on the wall of smug, then.
I projected my half of it regardless.