I might have to take back some of the stuff I said about Vector. Not all of it, but some. He's showing a surprising level of tact in his interviews with the press recently. Even though he's an ego-driven blowhard, I don't think this is the way he wanted to one-up Velocity. He's doing a lot better with the solar vampire thing than I expected, but he can't really play it up for the press like he usually does, because that would look like kicking the competition while she's down. It's easier for me to find Vector's admirable traits when he's not constantly trying to point them out to everyone. He might actually be a decent guy under all the macho posturing. For all his criticism of Velocity, he's got to respect her, since he did model himself on her, right down to the exact same flight capacities in his exoskeleton, and even the color scheme. He's got one hell of a chip on his shoulder about powers elitism, but I guess it is pretty hard for a metatech to hold his own among supers, and he has worked damned hard to get where he is.
Vector's most redeeming feature among his many, many flaws is that he's serious about helping people. No matter how much he cashes in on his moment of glory (Vector Cola? Seriously?), he's still willing to put in time on the unglamorous and hard work. It's not all kitten-rescuing photo ops, despite what his spin doctors would like you to think. He's taken on the Goorillas five times. Nobody else wants to do it even once.
It looks like Vector might be stuck in South Carolina for a while, since Warbird is still missing. Not even the government telepaths can find him. Come to think of it, has anyone seen him since The Paradox? Crap, I think he's a time traveler. That would explain the retro-futuristic plane, and his 60-year career. I really hope he didn't get caught up in The Paradox.
It's hard to believe in a benevolent, fair universe when things like The Paradox can happen. The Paradox didn't differentiate between the timeline-wreckers and the 9-to-5 precogs. It shut them down or made them disappear regardless of whether they made a difference in the course of history, or even wanted to. And it wasn't just outed precogs and professional time travelers that were getting killed. It was anyone who ever accidentally walked through a temporal vortex, or had one vision, even in a dream. They weren't even all supers, just people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I still don't know why Jack disappeared. I don't know what happened to him to make The Paradox take him away. It's terrifying, to think that the world is that arbitrary.
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My neck of the woods lost quite a few people to that Paradox thing... There was a lady who used to work in the 'burbs near me, seemed like a sham psychic with really good luck. She used Tarot cards and all that jazz, so it was really all kinda campy and goofy; at least, until you realized that she had at least a 95% accuracy, and actually gave concrete answers (I paid $10 to have her slap me in the face, because I hid my key in my shoe and told her it was lost. I was 14 at the time.)
ReplyDeleteShe's still around, thankfully, but she's not quite so effective. She kinda lost it when the Paradox hit her, so not only is she powerless, but she's also a bit... frayed around the edges, these days. Really makes me feel bad for the doubts I had about her.