You'd think that Roxanne and Emmet would have a natural rapport.

Like Emmet, Roxanne is an Australian marsupial, the sole member of her species in town, and she's a hard-nosed (or rather oval-nosed) skeptic. She doesn't believe every nasty rumor she hears and she always follows the evidence. The difference is that Emmet is a scientist (of sorts) and Roxanne is a journalist.

When Roxanne learned that Yomprin County's only wombat was about to open his burrow to the public she decided to schedule an interview with him. I need to stress this: she planned it to be a puff piece, a "human interest" story about an eccentric but harmless wombat who likes to tinker with his gadgets. She thought she was doing this unfairly maligned fellow marsupial a favor.

And the interview exactly suited Emmet's interests. All he had to do was sit there, sip his tea, occasionally veer off topic in a controlled but organic fashion while confirming to the local media that yes, he has nothing to hide and he is open for business. Then he'd walk her into the newly constructed workshop and show off some of the perfectly benign inventions he'd built specifically to allay any suspicion.

But Emmet could not move past her being a koala.

He could have done his research and learned that she'd lived in Lindenton for 11 years and if she'd been "sent" there specifically to investigate him she could have done so at any time. He couldn't get it through his skull that the fact she was a marsupial with an Australian accent was one of the universe's many interesting but ultimately insignificant coincidences.

As the session drew on he tried to make the interview about her. When she wouldn't give in, his responses only became increasingly circumspect and passive-aggressively confrontational. Roxanne walked away absolutely convinced that the wombat was hiding something.

What fortified her suspicions was that at various points during the interview she saw a ferret slinking around. When she asked if she could speak with him she was told that he "doesn't talk to press" and to "pay him no mind."

So where does that leave us?

Well, it's two years later and Roxanne still doesn't have her big scoop, although she has plenty of leads. Simply hanging around Burrow Prime has led her to look into countless reports of cryptids, monsters, species mixups, AIs run amok, supervillain attacks, more monsters, disturbances at the county fair, strange noises, nude robberies, OSHA violations, dimensional rifts, causality violations, curiously wombat-shaped kaiju and UFO sightings... just to name a few.

Her dilemma is that Emmet has convenient cover stories for all of them and she is still a serious reporter who has a professional interest in not putting out stories that look completely unhinged.

Meanwhile Emmet's protocol for Roxanne is to treat her a little bit like Maurice: she's officially welcome to come in and browse around, but follow the established script and make sure she doesn't wander into any restricted areas.

No word yet on to what, if any, degree Emmet likes her.

Character design by  fortunatafox