What can you say about a character who spells his codename without an 'H'? Who was actually ditched by Artie and Leech, tiny grotesque mutant children with relatively useless powers? For those of you without a side interest in sad, forgotten characters, Taki Matsuya is a wheelchair-bound mutant with the ability to 'technoform': that is, to manipulate glass, plastic and metal into any form he can imagine, including complex machinery. He's turned his wheelchair into a helicopter, added jets to it, etc.
Which leads the first obvious question about this character, which I will illustrate from a (paraphrased) dialog between Jaybeans and his girlfriend, who has never heard of Taki.
Jaybeans: So this character, he's confined to a wheelchair, but his power is, he can manipulate glass, plastic, and metal, So he--
Girlfriend: Wait.
Jaybeans: What?
Girlfriend: Why doesn't he make legs?
Yes, friends, this question, which occurs to most people within 30 seconds after hearing the situation, has never occurred to Wiz Kid over the months and years he's had his powers. He is actually bitter about being in the wheelchair, forever scarred by this accident which also took his parents. But no, no cybernetic legs, no exoskeleton. So, if we're talking rehabilitation, the first step with the character would be to establish that he can make legs if he goddamn well feels like it. Well, no, the first step would actually be to retire the name 'wiz kid', leaving his days of being the middle school urinating champion to the dustbin of history. Then establishing that he can make himself walk. Well, no. the first step is to take this photo:
"Now that I've got these elbow pads and this safety helmet, mama says no-one's gonna hurt me ever again! Especially me!" (glances away) "I hurt myself sometimes. I fall over. (beat.) If only I could walk."
Destroy all extant copies and never have him in that outfit again. Sure, it'll mean a few scraped elbows and skinned knees, but dignity isn't free. I think, um, Proust said that. Then the next step, retire the name Wiz Kid, then establish he can walk.
Or is that too easy? After thinking about this fifty times longer than I should have (read: 30 minutes), I thought of another aspect to it. Taki was a mechanical genius before his powers manifested, in fact a lot of his self-image came from that mastery and the work he'd put into it. So, yeah, it's cool that he has these amazing powers and can create anything he imagines with little work... but it also takes little work, and no true understanding of the process. It kind of makes a mockery of his intelligence. Not only has he lost his legs, but in a sense, his vast intelligence has been amputated as well. It doesn't matter how smart he is now, anybody with that accident of genetics could invent this shit. When people compliment him on an invention, he feels like a fraud. Even if he forces himself through the process, can he be sure his power isn't working? Was it ever due to his own effort, or has his entire life been dictated by blind chance, both beneficial and detrimental? Maybe he refuses to leave the chair until he can be sure, until the solution he creates is his alone, and not due to any 'cheating' on behalf of his strange abilities.
Of course he knows he can leave the chair. Maybe he did it five minutes after figuring out what he could do. And yet he doesn't. He won't. Not until he can do it without any fucking help, from God or anything else. Otherwise, what good is he? What value does he have, as a human being?
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