Girl Reporter

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  “How big is it really?”

  “The Palace Zone? Approximately the size of Jupiter.”

  “It’s all her house?”

  “There are also gardens. But I would avoid them, if I were you. Her taste in flora is… carnivorous.”

  “This is him enjoying himself,” Joey whispered to me. “He’s less uptight than usual.”

  “Maybe it’s a magic jacket.”

  “I can hear you both,” The Dark said sharply. “There is nothing magic about this jacket except the manner in which it is constricting my shoulders.”

  “That’s what you get for spending so many hours in the gym,” pointed out Griff.

  Astra hit a button on a small remote strapped to her wrist, and Audrey shimmered, to be replaced by a giant Venus Fly Trap in a steel pot, matching several similar plants around the bathroom.

  “Nice,” I said admiringly.

  “I could also disguise you as a fern, if things get dangerous,” Astra said.

  “Please don’t.”

  “This way,” said The Dark, and led the way up and out into a long metallic corridor.

  “This looks familiar,” I frowned. “I’ve definitely seen something like this before.”

  The corridor was an odd, ovoid shape, and the doors set into it were heavily over-designed, all steel and glass and spiky joints. “It looks like…”

  “The Machine,” said The Dark in a very low voice. “It looks so much like the Machine. Isn’t that interesting?”

  Could this be the secret my mother had risked her life to uncover? Was this why she was so desperate for the Megadethra interview? Was she searching for the answer to a question no one even bothered to ask any more, because it had gone unanswered for so many decades?

  (Who sent the superhero machines to Earth in the first place?)

  “This is cute,” said Astra.

  “Don’t touch it,” said The Dark automatically.

  “You don’t have to treat me like a child, I don’t… ow,” she said suddenly.

  Something metallic and whirring pushed out from the wall and rolled towards her. A shape that might have been a head or possibly a hammer unfolded with a creak of gears.

  I lifted my phone again. “It’s an itsy bitsy robot!” Awww. Like, seriously. It might be about to kill us all, but it was super adorable.

  It made a rusty kakking sound and then said something high-pitched that sounded like “Take 2!”

  “Yep,” said Griff. “Take us 2 your leader.”

  “Ugh,” I said. “We should have left you on Audrey.”

  The robot said “Take 2!” again and spun on its wheels, lurching along the corridor.

  “So many different traps it could be leading us into,” I noted.

  “Or,” said Joey. “It could be… taking us to its leader?”

  “Gonna have to step lively,” said Griff. “Or it won’t take us anywhere, because it will have left us behind!”

  It’s at times like these, chasing a small robot down a corridor in an intergalactic palace, surrounded by unreasonably attractive superheroes, that I wonder what my life might have been like, if my mother went into teaching or science or politics instead of journalism.

  The corridor widened out. As we hurried after the robot, we tumbled through an enormous arched doorway, on to an enormous metallic balcony covered in…

  Here’s the thing. I’m aware that I overuse descriptive words such as “alien” and “intergalactic” and I’m aware that they aren’t remotely helpful and do rather add to the illusion that my life is a space cartoon.

  But when it’s time to describe something like the flora on that balcony, tangling out of pots and tiles, climbing up the sides of this enormous, cavernous space like a waterfall of green and pink tentacles, the main words that come to mind are ALIEN and INTERGALACTIC.

  I had my phone out without even thinking about it, and swung it around to film the space, because goddamn.

  That was when I noticed the flora draped down all the way into a giant high-tech greenhouse-boudoir. When I leaned over the edge of the balcony, side-stepping the persistent tiny robot to do so, I saw a massive bed, about twice the size of our extra-dimensional spaceship, in the centre of the room below, surrounded on all sides by the aforementioned intergalactic, alien plant-life. Trees sparkled with little lights that were actually budding directly out of the bark. Sticky, magenta stamens lolled out of bright, sumptuous flower heads. The ground was carpeted with a thick, velvety moss the colour of sunshine.

  There were butterflies floating everywhere, above and below us, at least I thought they were butterflies until one of them landed on Griff’s face and I saw that they had six wings.

  There was our host. For a glam vixen space tyrant who peaked in the 90’s, Megadethra still looked good. She was about six and a half feet tall, with silver-platinum coloured skin and bright green hair that looked like it had been permed during an electrical storm. Right now, her extraordinary body was stark naked, sprawled on her luxurious space bed (silver silk sheets, which must be tough on laundry, were the robots the ones in charge of her domestic arrangements?).

  The first thing I noticed was that despite all rumours to the contrary, Megadethra did not have six breasts.

  The second thing I noticed was that Megadethra was not alone in that bed. Draped underneath one of the silver satin sheets, and a lot less blonde than the last time I saw her, was my mother. Tina Valentina.

  I dropped my phone.

  I Caught My Mother In Bed With A Homicidal Space Queen and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

  MY PHONE FELL, SLOWLY AND spinning, off the balcony and down into the gaping plaza below. It disappeared into a thicket of bulbous, glowing plant life featuring orange tendrils and fierce green flowers. On the one hand, the alien flora might have saved it from breaking. On the other hand… I did not want to go rooting around in that stuff to get it back. It looked radioactive. Maybe I’d end up with six breasts.

  Mum didn’t even see me at first. “Aaron!” she shouted furiously up to the balcony, dragging the sheet up to wrap more thoroughly around her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Who’s Aaron?” I hissed, still so stunned by the loss of my phone that I couldn’t come to terms with anything else that was happening right now.

  Griff looked as if all his birthdays had come at once. “I think—” he said, and glanced at The Dark.

  He had a name. Wow.

  “That’s off the record, Tina,” The Dark growled down at her. “Isn’t it obvious why we’re here? We’re your rescue party.”

  Megadethra laughed, tipping back her long silvery neck and cackling like every B-grade villain ever. Her flat stomach rippled with amusement.

  Tina Valentina’s impatient gaze flicked over the rest of us and I saw the moment that she recognised me. I gave her a small wave. “Hey.”

  She stayed very still, like if she didn’t move, this might not be happening.

  “You know,” said Griff in a low voice. “Probably the reason I never understood the terror of walking in on any of my parents having sex is because I’m an orphan. But I’m starting to get it.”

  “That is really not helpful right now,” I sighed.

  Megadethra was enjoying this situation far more than anyone else. Effortlessly naked, she called for “refreshments” which apparently meant fancy cocktails and shellfish that looked alive but also possibly delicious?

  Leaving The Dark in charge of making sure Griff didn’t eat or drink anything that would kill him, and ignoring the “we feel your pain” expressions I was getting from Joey and Astra, I pulled my mother aside for something like a private conversation. She had managed to find some silk pyjamas and recover her first wave of embarrassment, so she was her usual irritated, businesslike self.

  Which meant she was scolding me. Tina Valent
ina, caught mid-hookup with a sexy space tyrant and known supervillain, was scolding me about my life choices.

  “Why on earth they thought it was appropriate to let you come, I know you have this superhero obsession, but it’s hardly…”

  “Obsession?” That one stung. “When you devote your life to superhero journalism it’s a career, but with me it’s an obsession?”

  “You’re not one of them, Friday,” she said sharply. “You’re not a superhero, no matter how much you want to be one.”

  Another cut. How little did she know me to think that was what I wanted? I never wanted to be Solar, or Astra, or Kid Dark. If I wanted to be anyone, it was Tina Freaking Valentina. “You’re not a superhero either!” I raged. “You never fretted over journalists running into danger when it was you doing it.”

  “What you do isn’t exactly journalism, sweetheart,” she said, in a side-swipe I hadn’t seen coming.

  An embarrassing squeak came out of my throat. Really? I’d spent the last several weeks wondering if she was dead. I had travelled across dimensions to find her. Was our first conversation seriously going to be a throwdown about the changing definitions of media in the 21st century?

  Low blow, Mum.

  “You may not respect what I do,” I said, numbed by her dismissal. “But you wouldn’t catch me in bed with the subject of my story.”

  We stared at each other, barely breathing for a moment, letting all the unforgiveable things we’d said wash around us in the weirdly warm, steamy atmosphere of Megadethra’s garden shagshack.

  “Wow,” said Mum. She sat down on a decorative boulder, or possibly some kind of ornate tombstone that stuck out from a sea of flowering moss.

  “Yeah,” I said, and sat next to her. She swung an arm around my shoulders and I leaned into her. I only ever felt safe, really safe, in her presence. It reminded me of being a kid, trotting around in her shadow while she marched through the world, kicking ass and taking names. “I missed you,” I said in a small voice. “You were gone so long.”

  “Oh, darling.” She kissed the top of my head. “Megadethra promised me that this was a pocket dimension, and time travelled differently here.”

  “Mum, it’s possible she only said that to get into your pants.”

  “Ha!” She elbowed me, and we both snickered.

  “I didn’t mean to—you know,” she said in a low voice. “It wasn’t some kind of scheme to seduce my way into the story.”

  “You do not owe me any explanation. Or details. At all.”

  “Meg and I have a lot more in common than I thought,” she admitted. “It’s surprisingly hard to meet people who get me, you know? Shared life experience and all that. We both spent the nineties trying to prove ourselves, contributing to the superhero discourse.”

  I blinked. “You remember she’s a supervillain, right?”

  “And everyone assumes that both of our lives revolve around Solar,” said my mother with something of a sad smile. Oh. Wow. There was… a lot to unpack in that.

  “So this wasn’t just a—is she your girlfriend now?” I blurted.

  “We haven’t exactly done the DTR conversation yet, we were kind of busy…”

  Don’t panic, don’t panic. Imagine the extra views my channel would get if people found out Megadethra was my stepmother. No, don’t imagine that. It might melt the Internet. “It would have been slightly helpful to know about the whole you banging girls thing back when I was going through my own bisexual crisis.”

  My mother pushed away an enthusiastic plant tendril that was trying to give her a hickey. “We don’t all figure things out as early as you did, Friday.” Before I could process what that might mean, she added, “Sorry I said that thing about your blog. It was unfair.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, though it wasn’t. We could pick it up in family therapy next month, assuming we survived this jaunt. “It’s not your fault you’re too old to understand what I do.”

  Mum let that one go, which was for the best. She peered over at the impromptu non-cocktail party happening between my rescue squad, and her new (no, I was not going to select a noun to Define The Relationship on their behalf) friend. “Did you actually drag Griff along on this snipe hunt of yours?”

  “I resent that. This was a successful rescue mission. Also, I know he’s your favourite, but he is a grown man, and he makes his own decisions when it comes to dimensional travel…” I trailed off because clearly Mum wasn’t paying attention.

  “Come on,” said Mum. “Better get in there before The Dark challenges Meg to a duel over my honour.” She hip-checked me as we went. “Also, you’re my favourite.”

  “Shut up, whatever.” It didn’t suck to hear that.

  “You’re cosplaying as me now, is that something we should raise in family therapy?”

  I glanced down at my retro suit. “Is your evil naked space girlfriend something we should raise in family therapy?”

  “Meg’s not evil,” my mother said with great certainty. “She’s retired from all that.”

  “She literally kidnapped you to bring you here. Also, her name is Megadethra. Don’t try to normalise her evil ways of evilness.”

  “Meg heard that I was investigating ways to travel to her dimension for the interview, and she very helpfully cut through the red tape to bring me here personally,” Mum corrected.

  The point was probably not worth pushing, though I did make a mental note to raise the topic of Stockholm Syndrome in our next family session.

  Megadethra turned to us, still resplendently naked, holding a tray of tiny cakes that no one would accept from her. The Dark was surrounded by small, adorable robots, all bumping against his big black boots as they tried to hand him drinks.

  “I’m touched that you came all this way,” said Mum, her eyes on The Dark, though it was Griff that she reached out for, giving him a quick hug around the shoulders and making an approving comment about his red hair, which made his face flame on almost as bright. “But as you can see, I’m in no danger whatsoever.”

  A robot bumped against my ankle. I looked down, hoping for a mimosa at the very least, but instead I saw my phone. It had purplish sap oozing over one corner, but it was otherwise undamaged. “Excellent.” I took it back, and opened my camera app, pointing it directly at our host. “Megadethra. Care to comment on the rumour that you have retired from evil? Are you prepared to sign a contract to this effect?”

  The space queen turned her eyes on me. They glowed a deeper silver than her skin. She had no pupils, only metallic shine. If anything, her enormous green hair grew even larger and more imposing. “Friday Valentina. I watch your channel.”

  That was actually weirdly flattering. “Thanks.”

  “Really?” broke in my mother. “YouTube? Meg, you told me this dimension didn’t have wifi.”

  “Oh, Tina,” said Megadethra, only slightly regretful. “I told you many things. But this was never about you. Please don’t take this personally, but for an experienced journalist, you really are rather credulous.”

  For a moment—only for the briefest of seconds—I saw hurt cross my mother’s face. Then she hardened, pulling on her Tina Valentina camera presence like a designer coat. “So what was it all about, Megadethra?”

  “What it’s always been about,” said the nine-time invader of Earth and the murderous supervillain who singlehandedly inspired the platform shoe revival in 1993. “Conquering Solar.”

  Joey stepped back a fraction, tensing up. Astra moved to her side, both of them ready to fight if they had to. Sparks of light flickered off Astra’s hair, and the entire room went up about five degrees in heat when Joey glared. So hot.

  The Dark swore. It was a strange, utterly human sound that felt like it didn’t belong near him. I’d never heard him do that before. “Really, woman?” he growled. “Still? This was old back when your megalomania was
new. Solar is gone. He’s not on the board any more. You can’t touch him.”

  “Wow,” Joey mouthed angrily. “I am right here.”

  “I didn’t mean you,” he said dismissively.

  “No, you never do,” she snapped back. “If this witch has a beef with Solar then it’s my turn to step up. That’s what being a Legacy means.”

  “You’re not his Legacy,” The Dark snarled. “You never could be.”

  Joey looked like he had slapped her. Her eyes brightened with tears, and in that instant, I wanted to kill him. “Four years, I’ve fought by your side,” she said flatly.

  “He was on my team for twenty-five,” The Dark said, crossing his arms.

  “Okay, this is clearly a conversation the two of you need to have in depth, possibly with your superhero family therapist,” I broke in sharply. “But we can go to the source for clarification, right now.” I faced down Megadethra, trying not to think of the number of times in the past she or her robot minions had incinerated civilians for asking questions she didn’t like. “You want Original Solar. That’s why you kidnapped my mother?”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Mum. “Is this really another Girl Reporter as Bait scenario? You’re years too late, Meg. He’s not a hero any more.”

  Megadethra rose to her full height, queenly and patronising. “Do you think I was really going to let him retire? Without one last battle to prove which of us is superior?”

  “He’s a small town shop owner, taking evening classes on how to build his own greenhouse,” said The Dark furiously. “Conquering him isn’t going to be much of a challenge.”

  “Oh, he will challenge me,” said Megadethra, smiling with all her teeth. “I have the technology.” She indicated the room around us, with a wave of her jewelled wrists. “I can bring him back, in all his glory. I can make him Solar again. All I need is to draw him here. The Girl Reporter was right. I needed bait. Not her, though. An hour into our interview, I knew she wasn’t the one. To bring the real Solar back into the field, I needed someone a bit more personally inspiring.”

  She looked at me. They were all looking at me, except The Dark, who was glaring at Megadethra like his visor could set her on fire. I lowered my phone. There were no pockets in this stupid fake mini-dress. “I’m not Solar’s daughter. You know that, right?”