Author: I just want you to know that I'm no longer a teenager and don't really know what they act like. I could have done research, but deliberately chose not to, with intent to produce a quality of work that is in every way slightly, or in some cases deeply, wrong. You're welcome.

(*)

Part One: The Advent of Miss Sparkles

Lena Luthor looked at the ruins of her dream, and wondered if going on was even worth it.

She sat alone, under a dim light, in her official laboratory in L-Corp HQ, a pale shadow of the true laboratory she had been forced to abandon after the DEO had stopped her Q-wave projector. That had been the beating heart of her plans, and even if she personally had escaped its loss was indescribably catastrophic. The Myriad device, the Q-wave projector, even Hope... even if she could start over, many of those resources had been effectively unique. She certainly couldn't recreate Myriad in particular without a trillion-dollar research budget to discover some way to synthesize the alien materials involved.

She had her freedom, her research notes, and the money and resources to start over, and it was not impossible she could one day salvage some version of the operation. But for now… for now, Kara had won. All that time, and effort, and all those resources and all those dreams, everything she had chosen for her life's work was ruined.

Supergirl had ruined her life.

Again.

She would find a way, of course. She would scratch, and claw, and drag herself bloody and broken toward the future she dreamed of, and she would never, ever surrender, particularly not to Supergirl. She was the planet's last hope for real peace and freedom in the face of a false idol who had never truly saved anyone, glorying in fighting the symptoms while the disease ran unchecked. But she had to admit that after what seemed to be an entire life of disappointments, after the constant breaking down of everything that she was, from the day her mother passed to growing up in a den of psychotic monsters, to the betrayal of every true friend she had ever made… it was easy to think that the world just didn't want a hero. That it cared less about being saved than it did about ruining the life of one Lena Luthor.

(*)

Three floors up, at the entrance, evidence presented itself to suggest that Lena might not be entirely wrong about that.

"Heyyyy, have you seen Lena Luthor, I'm totes penned in for her 3PM? LOL! JK, I don't do appointments, I'm what you call a free spirit? You probably wouldn't get it, you seem like… I don't wanna say poor, totally un-PC, but financially challenged. Miss Sparkles can always smell it, you know? Credit limits make her sniffle."

"Woof! Woof!"

"… Excuse me?" the front desk receptionist asked, looking back and forth between the two sets of eyes staring at her: one set perched behind a pair of sunglasses produced from the finest Parisian plastics and above what she really hoped was not the fur of a real polar bear, and one set in front of a dog collar that she suspected was more expensive than her car.

"O. M. Goodness! I just love that look on you! Like, you are just the… quintessential embodiment of middle American uneducated lower-middle class ennui. I have to Facetatweet this. Smile!"

"WhOH GOD" the receptionist said, as her retinas were permanently damaged what she initially assumed was a flashbang, but which was in fact the ultra-exclusive Obsidian North Flashburst 8.0 Deluxe ($1,899 on Themyscira Prime, with free next-day shipping) which came with a seventy-watt flashbulb to ensure the highest possible quality of digital photo for upload to the ObsidiCloud.

It didn't work, but only seventy people owned it and one of them was the Queen of Kaznia.

"Thaaaaaank yooooou! Hugs and kisses, this will be the highlight of my lunchtime feed once my salad stops trending you are a deeeeeeeear, but I really gotta go right on in and meet with L-dog! She likes being called that, right?"

"MY EYES, OH GOD I'M BLIND"

"Ugh, you're being a buzzkill now. And you were being such a sport before! Right, Miss Sparkles?"

"Woof, woof!" Miss Sparkles said.

"Yeah, we should get her fired."

(*)

Lena blinked at the silent alarm going off; it was tied to the building's AI, of course; not as advanced as Hope, but able to accurately assess threats to the building's security. If this were an alien threat or a DEO incursion, it would not be a silent alarm for her eyes only, but a blaring claxon telling her entire staff to clear the building. So whatever it was that had entered the building, it was something that her security protocols thought she needed to know about, and be worried about, but not so bad it justified causing a building-wide panic?

… Hmph. It's almost a relief. A problem to focus on is something I need right now, she thought with a bitter smile. Truthfully a part of her wanted to grab one of Lex's old plasma cannons from the restricted section and blow the intruder into their composite atoms, even as she was fully aware it was most likely some corporate saboteur, or Kara trying to lie to her again and claim she was capable of feeling guilt for her countless crimes. But of course, she would never willingly take…

"AUNTIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" screeched a voice from the supposedly secure door of her personal lab in her personal building, and she reconsidered going for the plasma cannon because her first instinct was that the metahuman criminal Silver Banshee had somehow entered her lab.

It was kind of worse than that.

Lena Luthor was, by most standards, a genius. But her mind could not quite grasp the… thing that had stepped into her lab, eight-inch-heels clacking against her psyche with every step and either a dog or a giant rat under her arm in a sequined pink purse, staring at Lena with undisguised hate in its eyes. She was in her late teens, twenty at the latest, with pale skin and raven hair very similar to Lena's own except where it had been streaked with pink dye and glitter. And she was loud; not merely her screeching and her walking, but everything about her. Her coat was an eye-searing nightmare of neon pink, neon green, white fur (was that a polar bear's face on the back, for the love of God why) and rhinestones… no. No. Not rhinestones, real diamonds, a Luthor could always tell… that spelled out 'NASTY' across the chest.

Well. Not the sort of intruder she had been expecting, but… well. She'd gotten used to surprises. Without a word, Lena raised her personal side-arm, a small but highly concentrated sonic device that could put a grown man in a coma for a week (or stun a Kryptonian for about five minutes, not coincidentally). "I don't know who you are or how you got past security, but-"

"Like duuuuuuuuuuuuuh! Auntie, you're like, totes ignoring the anti-encryption security nullifier in my necklace, you goose! Like, I see a computerized security lock, and it's just 'LOL no, head your smexy butt on in! If you're living your best life, ain't nowhere you don't belong!'" the girl said cheerfully, jangling a pendant that looked a bit like the worst dinner plate Lena had ever seen. "Best Christmas present Uncle Lex ever got me! So! Fetch!"

"Woof! Woof!" the rat dog said.

"Not that kind of fetch, you needy little bitch! Haha, it's not an insult 'cause dog! You run free and rock the venue, baby!" the girl said, opening up her purse and letting the dog out into the highly sensitive lab full of million-dollar equipment.

"You can't-"

"Oh, no need to thank me, Auntie! I mean, sure, she is totes like, a supermodel for dogs and you're lucky she's here, really should be taking pictures, everyone on Facetagrammer will be blowing up your inbox asking for them. But I found out last week, dogs like being out of purses! Cray-cray, right?! I let her out everywhere we go, now, and we're even more popular than ever! Get ready, auntie, because you are gonna be soaking up the exposure! By the time I'm done, I bet you'll have like, twenty people who know your name!"

And that was when the haze of confusion (and let's be honest, annoyance) that this girl seemed to project over the brains of everyone around her. "… Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You've been calling me…"

"DUUUUUUH! Auntie, it's like you don't even recognize your favorite niece!" the girl said, rolling her eyes. "I mean, I know we've never met or talked and I don't follow you on social media because, I mean, you kinda don't pay enough attention to your feed, no offense, but you must follow me. Nasthalthia 'Nasty' Luthor, social media superstar? I have lits twenty thousand subscribers on my Shudder stream alone, and my blog, 'Ms. Nasty if You're Nasty', has been described as 'a unique experience' and 'like watching a drug orgy get hit by a train', haha! I had that reviewer killed. JK! Or am I? LOL! Aaaaaaaaany-who, I'm here to visit my favorite auntie! Suuuuuuuurprise!"

Lena's mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came out.

Miss Sparkles began humping the leg of a lab table.

"I… um… Nasthalthia…"

"Auntieeeeee, please, we are sooo close now, you're practically my older, older, older sister! you can call me Nasty."

"What."

"Nasty! It's like, my faves nickname from all my peeps, you must use it now that we're! So! Close!"

"I'd really rather not," Lena said a bit numbly, barely managing to avoid saying that what she actually felt was really more like 'I'd really rather die.'

"All my BFFs dooooo! I would reeeeeeeeeeeeally consider it like, a family bonding with my faves aunt!" Nasthalthia squealed.

"Yes, about that, I just can't-"

"PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE?!"

"Good God, fine, it's Nasty!" Lena snapped, once she was able to focus her thoughts through the keening agony as her… niece?... hit some kind of ultrasonic pitch that was apparently perfectly measured to dissolve the human skull. Miss Sparkles showed her own objection by nosing open a closet of lab coats and beginning to chew on one.

"Yay! See, I knew we'd get on! That's what I told Mom when I decided to come here for a month!" Nasty squeaked.

"What."

"I mean, at first she was like, 'Ohhh, I don't think it's safe for you to stay with Uncle Lex, he's a mass-murderer and he turned the Sun red that one time' but I was like, 'Mooooom, it is just so humiliating that you don't know Uncle Lex is totes dead! Lex Luthor is sooooo five seconds ago, and Lena Luthor is! The! Future!' And Nasty Luthor is nothing if not hip to all the trends. Like sure Obsidian North has their contact lenses, I have three pairs, including the ones that only Cat Grant is supposed to know about, but do they have a brainwashing satellite?! That is soooo retro, and the past is totes the future now!"

"Alleged brainwashing satellite," Lena said automatically. "Now, can you please explain what you meant by 'a month' and-"

"HA! Classic auntie. 'Nasty, you didn't tell me you were coming or that you existed or that you were already moved into my penthouse!' Like that matters to women of action like me and you!" Nasty said with a bemused chuckle. "Hold on, gotta Facetatweet about this one my Bookstagram feed. 'LOL, MOVING IN WITH GAY AUNT LENA, ALREADY BFFS, #TeamLuthor #BestAunt #OldLesbians."

"Wait wh-"

"Oh, it's fine. My grandmama on my dad's side was like, super gay, and as soon as I saw that you like, dress exactly like her, I just clicked! It's cool if you're still in the closet too, because Nasty rocks all closets! I'll drag you kicking and screaming into the light so you can be! Your! Self! Look, you're already trending! I'll re-twitstagraph you. #LenaLuthorIsSecretlyGay #OldLadyShoes #GLAOD."

"Nasty, I need you to stop th—wait, GLAOD? Isn't it…"

"Oh, no, GLAAD is for poor people, honey! I'm in GLAOD: 'Gays and Lesbians Are Okay, Dude.' It's like, similar-ish, but waaaaaaay more exclusive. Only twenty-three members. We don't even allow gay people to join!"

"…."

"I know, I loved the idea too! But hey, enough about your grandma pants, let's talk about my pants. Like which of your bedrooms should I hang them in when I ROCK! YOUR! LIFE! NASTY IS MOVIN' IN, BITCHES!"

"I… I need…" a drink "… you to answer a few questions, here. For starters: Lex and I don't have any other siblings, so you can't be…"

"O. M. GOOOOOOSH!" Nasty squealed. "I never get to tell this story! Like, okay, so before you got adopted to live with Uncle Lex, but maybe not before he lost his hair, there was my mom, #BestMom, Lorelei Luthor! But, and this is gonna be crazy here, she like, fell in love with my dad even though he was super poor! I'm pretty sure that's where I got my social awareness, because thanks to her I know that poor people and brown people and gay people have all the same feelings as us normal people."

"… Yeah, you're a saint."

"I know! But anywaaaaay, mom was all like, ain't no bitches gonna stop her from getting her freak on, and she elopes all! The way to Europe! And they like, don't have laws over there, so you can even marry a poor person. She tried to get back in touch a few times, because she was like, OMG I miss my bald brother and they bought me a new sister, I want her to know what I smell like so she doesn't bite. But…"

Seventeen years earlier…

"Mother… it's been six years since we last spoke. I have missed you. I know we parted on poor terms, but I just want you to know that despite your rejection of Alejandro as a husband to a child of Luthor blood, he is a good man and we've made a good life. I've remembered your and father's lessons, and we have built much for ourselves. We want for nothing, we are wealthy and beloved in our community, and soon we shall have a child. So… I hope that perhaps your anger has cooled, and perhaps I could reconnect with Lex, and meet my new sister. I know we parted poorly, but we are still fam-"

Lillian Luthor hung up the antique phone, made of fine brass and polished black wood, unhooked it from the wall, and threw it into the blazing fireplace.

"Who was that, mother?" Young Lena asked.

"Just a prostitute. Now go re-do your homework."

"But you already made me re-do it three times!"

"Re-do it again or you shall get an extra beating at supper, bastard spawn of an Irish whore."

The Present…

"… Granny Lillian can be a bit… prickly."

"… That may be the first thing you've said we can actually agree on," Lena said.

"But I said earlier that I'm Best Niece!"

"Yes. Well. While I would… probably enjoy getting to know you, and your branch of the family certainly seems… unique… I'm afraid you have caught me somewhat off-guard. And since I have no proof that anything you say is true, and since a creepy old woman broke into my home and tried to murder me for exposing her conspiracy lately, I feel like perhaps I will have to insist you stay in a hotel."

"Oh auntie, like duh I brought proof, do you think I'm stupid?" Nasty said fondly, digging into her purse, which apparently was used for carrying more than the dog that had stopped in the center of the lab, near the refrigeration unit for sensitive samples that needed to be kept sterile, and began to shed, seemingly on command.

… I wasn't going to say it out loud, Lena thought.

"Heeeeeeeeeeere, we go! I bought a new phone just to hold this one video, that's how important it is!" Nasty said cheerfully. "Take it away, Uncle Lex!"

"Hey, sis!" Lex's voice said from the screen on Nasty's phone, and just the sight of his smug smirk set Lena's skin crawling and made her hair stand on end. "If you're seeing this, I'm dead, and I assume it's Superman's fault because I finally managed to break down his façade of heroism and reveal him as the false and uncaring god he is. Since you're too generally disloyal to kill him and avenge your only brother, I'm going to assume you're at home wasting your time on something else, and well, the thought of you cooped up in that lab all day weighs heavy on my heart. You simply must put more time into family, dear Lena! So I arranged in my will for your personal contact information and a first-class plane ticket to be delivered to dear Nasthalthia, our only living niece and a bright young lady who I feel will really help you socialize. Included with this video file was another, containing the DNA tests proving that she is, in fact, my niece. And yours. Oh, you can have your people look over them if you want, but they're real. You know they're real. It's always been my personal motto to never tell a lie when the truth is more fun. Enjoy the family reunion, sister dear!"

Translation: I have chosen to make you terribly unhappy from beyond the grave, because I am a bastard.

Presumably Lex hadn't realized she was going to be the one who killed him when he'd recorded this, but she assumed that in whatever Hell had taken him, he was laughing. Loudly.

On the Monitor's satellite base, secured in the void between the Infinite Earths, Lex Luthor laughed, loudly.

"Hahaha! Oh, man," he said, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye as he flipped the page. "That Garfield. He just hates Mondays so much. It never gets old."

"Lex Luthor," the Monitor said.

"Hm?"

"Did you write 'Superman Sucks' on all of my instrument control panels in permanent marker?"

"Nope, must have been somebody else."

"I do not believe you."

"Why do you never trust me? I thought we were friends now."

"Because you are a sociopath."

"Well, yes, but that doesn't mean I'm not a good friend."

Lena sighed. "All right. Well. I am… not amused. But I believe this might be for the best, in the long run."

"Ooooh, no, I hate long runs. Like, totes bad for your legs! Nasty only! Does! Hot yoga on weekends and all! The! Pilateeeeeeeeees!"

"… Sure. In any event, Nasthalthia-"

"Nasty."

"Stop it. I believe, that in a particularly dark period of my life, this may be an opportunity for me to… to practice what I preach. You see, I have determined that I cannot in good conscience leave you to wander the streets of Central City alone, because you will definitely be murdered. And I could insist you go to a hotel for the duration of your stay, but I don't think you'd listen to me and I definitely don't think you could make a reservation for yourself."

"Yeah, making reservations is the Hotel Butler's work."

"So. As much as I don't want you to, I think… I think the moral thing to do is to allow you, as one of my few living relatives, to stay in my home for the week you are staying in this city."

"Pssssssssshaw, bitch, you already know it's a month! Nasty does it big or she doesn't! Do it! At aaaaaaaaaall!"

Lena didn't sob, which she felt was a great triumph on her part. "You see… ugh, Nasty… you, perhaps, could be… the sign from the universe that I needed to keep going. I believe that you… you could potentially be a good person. Deep down. Deeeeeep down. If I can… I can help you turn yourself around, then maybe… maybe I really am the hero I have considered myself. Maybe I'm not doomed to failure. I can still turn this around. Does that make sense to you?"

"Wow. Auntie Lena, you are like… deep. I have got to Instratweetify this! Smile! " she squeaked, holding up what Lena assumed was a small personal weapon and projecting what she assumed was a small but focused laser directly through Lena's brain. "Perfect! Candid shot! Auntie Lena you! Are! Trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrending!"

"OH GOD MY EYES"

"Yeah, I think they're pretty in this pic too! We are like, so in sync! Two strong independent women, painting the town red! Like, we are such social heroes now! I make everyone happy with my awesome pics and bitching vlogs, and you probably do something here that people like! We're like twins except one of the twins is like, old."

Lena wiped the tears from her eyes. "Y-yay. I… I know we are on a bit of a rocky start here, but I… I think I'm really looking forward to helping you turn your life around. I am. Grand gestures of heroism might be more inspiring, but to really set myself above Supergirl, I can't overlook the small things. So I will guide you on a better path, and in so doing prove that I myself have risen above my nature as another viper of the Luthor brood! I think this will go great. I'd go so far as to call it fate, perhaps. The redemption of the Luthor bloodline."

She fell silent for a moment, apparently basking in the moral superiority of her new chosen path. A few seconds later, she spoke again, her tone full of goodness and the love of human potential.

"Nasty. I smell something awful. Am I correct in assuming if I was able to see anything right now, I would see that your dog pooped in my billion-dollar laboratory complex?" Lena asked.

"Yeah, Miss Sparkles is a total free spirit," Nasty said.

Lena smiled widely. So widely a casual observer might have thought she was trying to hide just how hard she was grinding her teeth. "Yeah. Yeah. So much redemption."

Author's Note: Lex Luthor's evil niece, Nasty Luthor, is a real thing that someone really came up with to put in real comics. She wasn't very much like this, of course, because what I've created here is more like some… some amorphous teenage golem that I can best describe as 'what a Gen-X'er thinks a Boomer thinks Millennials are like'? But yeah, Lex Luthor's Evil Niece, Nasty Luthor. Really happened. The 70's, of course, the time when everyone at DC was on so much drugs that someone could say 'You know who would be an appropriate enemy for Supergirl, the girl of steel, the maid of might, a planet crushing demigoddess from another world? Lex Luthor's evil niece Nasty Luthor' in a boardroom and not immediately be laughed out of the building.

Go on, try to say it without laughing. I sure can't do it. Say, out loud, 'Lex Luthor's evil niece, NASTY LUTHOR.' Say it right now. If you don't at least crack a smile, you just have no soul.

So anyway as soon as I found out about her, I knew I had to hurt Lena with her. Lena is a target, and my arrow is Lex Luthor's evil niece, Nasty Luthor.

Enjoy! This should be a fun palette cleanser to inspire me to get off my butt and work on my more serious stories.

… LEX LUTHOR'S EVIL NIECE, NASTY LUTHOR.