Lights! Cameras! Vibe and Kid Fl…action! We’ve been picking up the superhero slack since Barry sacrificed him to the Speed Force and Caitlin bailed to figure things out. I have to say, in the face of so much loss, we’ve been a pretty dynamic duo. Hey Hollywood! Feel free to launch an entire Vibe and Kid Flash film franchise and don’t forget the Big Belly Burger Kids Meal toyline tie-in. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re still ironing the kinks out of the operation. While we always get the job done, it’s been taking longer than it did when The Flash was leading the charge. This means zip, zilch, zero downtime. It’s so bad that I’ve missed every single summer movie blockbuster. Epic fail!

Then finally, after a whole day with no sign of trouble, I rolled the dice and bought ten movie tickets to binge-watch the day away. As I strolled up to the theater, naturally, Iris sent an alert. A new criminal mastermind was on the scene. He wasn’t a meta, but rather a run-of-the-mill-genius-robotics engineer who built these coconut sized metal spheres that seemed harmless at first, until they opened up and released flying mini-bots with razor sharp teeth. They’re basically pokeballs filled with death instead of cuddly creatures. Iris pinpointed the metal spheres attacking the gala opening of a graffiti-tagger-turned-legit artist’s gallery. It was filled with the richest hipsters of Central City, along with their fat wallets primed for robbing.

Cue Vibe and Kid Flash, ready to take on… sigh. Okay, sidebar. Wally kept begging to name a baddie, and Iris suggested I give him a go. Wally took one look at all of this guy’s gadgets and named him… Steve Jobs! Steve Jobs? I flipped out! Steve Jobs was a brilliant tech-influencer, not the inspiration for a super villain name. After running through a list of alts: Evil Bill Gates, Evil Elon Musk, he finally landed on The Robomanipulator. Don’t worry. Part of Wally’s superhero training going forward will be a crash course in naming villains 101, taught by yours truly.

At the gallery, Kid Flash sped around and swatted all the flying mini-bots into my breaches. Can’t rob people if all your thieving bots are frozen in Antarctica! Yes, it was a job well done… if you ignore the online news articles reporting how the super-speeding and breach action sort of (immensely) frayed all the artist’s one-of-a-kind prints. But a win’s a win, right? Besides it allowed CCPD to track down Steve Jobs Robomanipulator and throw him behind bars.

Still, even after saving the day, it’s clear it’s not just exhaustion weighing us down. I wish we had Barry and Caitlin back. Not just for the superhero stuff. TBH, spending the day in a movie theater isn’t as fun if you aren’t there with your best friends.