Vanessa (The Hollow)

Vanessa is one of the three main antagonists in Season 1 of The Hollow and later, one of the six protagonists in Season 2. She possesses the power of flight. She, Reeve, and Skeet comprise the rival team that opposes Adam, Kai, and Mira in Season 1, of which she acts as the leader. She and Kai are the youngest main characters. Physical Appearance Vanessa is a small and skinny Caucasian teenage girl with dark purple hair and pink highlights, she wears a purple spotted t-shirt of various shades, light blue jeans with a black belt and black high top Converse sneakers. Personality In Season 1, Vanessa proves herself to be cynical, machiavellian and fierce: conniving, malicious, manipulative, often feigning innocence and possessing great determination, willing to do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She often interrupts her teammates mid-sentence or looks at them askance to prevent them from giving away too much information or saying anything too explicitly revealing of their malicious intents. In Season 2, Vanessa's clone becomes neurasthenic and apprehensive and shows great remorse towards her and her real self's past actions. She also reveals her parents' disapproval of her fondness of The Hollow game and wanted to prove herself. She is remarkably more kind and helpful, yet still competitive. Reeve says that Vanessa hates losing. History Throughout the Series The rival team's existence is hinted at in "The Desert." In "Ishibo," we first meet Vanessa and her teammates when they steal the Ishibo from Adam. They leave as quickly as they appear. In "Cocoon," Vanessa and her teammates fight their rival players for possession of the Ishibo in the Battle for the Ishibo. In "Colrath," the real-life version of Vanessa looks quite smug despite having lost the game. Vanessa never glitches within the game, but after she returns to the real world, her left eye glitches. The fictional characters within the game that glitch, such as Dave and the Spider Leader, are unaware of their own glitching, but by contrast, Vanessa not only seems to be aware of her glitch but somewhat proud of it. She smirks when she sees Kai react to it. In "Alchemy", Kai, Mira, and Adam find Vanessa and Reeve in trances, working as servants in the home of Jules Voulcan. Reeve and Vanessa, unaware of what they were doing, attack the trio. A fight ensues. When Adam becomes similarly entranced and is cured by a vial with his name breaking, they seek out the vials that say Vanessa and Reeve and break them as well. They find Vanessa and Reeve and realize the same thing that happened to them happened to Vanessa, Reeve, and Skeet. The trio informs Vanessa and Reeve of Skeet's death. Reeve doesn't believe them until they show him Skeet's hat. They then come to realize Louie is under a spell and controlled by Jules. Louie nearly kills all of them, but they are able to find his vial and free themselves. They then set off to find Weirdy, aided by a poster indicating his presence at a jazz club. In "Dead End," the new group of five visits Skeet's grave before setting off to find Weirdy. Reeve confides in Vanessa that he still doesn't trust the others and thinks the glitch in the game might be responsible for them not exiting the game when Skeet died. When they come to a division in the road, Reeve and Adam argue over which way to take until Mira finds a hidden metro entrance and they decide to go that way instead. They enter a train, which immediately starts moving. They quickly realize it is full of spirits, ghosts of people who had died in a metro accident and were being forced to re-live it. The group rushes to try to stop the train, but Reeve and Adam can't stop arguing. Kai looks at the control panel and uses a nearby map and Vanessa's knowledge of French to stop the train just before it crashes. The doors then open and they exit at Montmartre, the location of the jazz club. Outside the club, they meet up with another trio: Nisha, Iris, and Tyler. They quickly figure out that those three are the game team for the current game. The two groups fight and during the fight, the game team takes the key Adam has around his neck. With the knowledge of this team, they come to believe that their game has ended and a new one has started, but they somehow remained in the game. Inside the jazz club, they spot Weirdy, but struggle to get near him until he ends up noticing them. He is surprised to see them and snaps his fingers to open a portal and send them away. They end up on a platform precariously balanced on a peak, with Mira in the center and the other four each on a corner. In "Unbalanced," Reeve and Adam argue over who should make a plan for how to escape. During their argument, Vanessa flies away and Kai follows her. While they are gone, the other three tip off the edge. Kai and Vanessa both fly down to catch them. Vanessa is able to catch Mira, but Reeve and Adam both fall into the water below. Reeve surfaces immediately, but Adam does not, forcing Reeve to rescue him. As she and Kai carrying Mira come down to retrieve them, a sea monster emerges from the depths and eats all three of them without chewing. The sea monster takes Mira, Kai, and Vanessa to a deep cave, where she regurgitates them, but only to eat them back at midnight (if not before). Inside the cave, Kai and Mira notice something is wrong with Vanessa, but instead focus on trying to solve what they believe is a puzzle. When they do try to talk to Vanessa about it, she denies any difference. When Tursas suddenly wakes and comes closer to them staring at them greedily Mira, Vanessa and Kai get a common fright, but instead of chewing them like little treats, as she intends to do, she just leaves, Mira decides to follow her, leaving Kai and Vanessa alone. Vanessa confesses to Kai that she had known all along it was a game, which is how she knew he wouldn't die. She believes she is the reason they are stuck in The Hollow. In "Fang," Vanessa explains to Kai that she wore a special contact lens so she would remember that she was in a game. She believes the tech in her lens caused the glitch. She worries Kai will tell the others, but he agrees to keep it between them. When they are all back together, Mira puts the retrieved fang in the empty spot across from another fang-like protrusion. She and Adam simultaneously pull them and after a moment, and entryway opens up. They end up in a fairly tale world, where they spot some pixies with Weirdy's scarf and sunglasses. They follow the pixies, but are stopped by a troll on a bridge. He demands a goat as payment to cross. They make a goat out of plants and present it to the troll, who accepts it and gives it to Malthezor, who rejects it and eats the troll instead. The force field then disappears and they are able to cross. They follow the pixies to Weirdy. They get the scarf back from the pixies and use that to get answers out of Weirdy. Weirdy tries to send them away again, but stops when Mira reveals she knows his real name, convincing him they aren't just code. Weirdy explains that Hollow Games is making digital clones of all the players and their families and everyone they know. They are using it to make a simulated-life game. Vanessa has the idea that Weirdy can take their digital lives offline and they can go on to live their lives. He agrees to try and tells them they need to survive the game and keep the game team from winning. When they see an explosion in the distance, they realize the game team has figured out how the weapon works. In "Fire," Vanessa and Kai spy on the game team, trying to figure out what they were doing. Kai tries to convince Vanessa to tell the others the truth, saying they're friends now and they'll forgive her. The team continues to disagree about whether or not they should try to remain conscious until Vanessa interjects and confesses about the cheating, saying it's all her fault they're stuck. She tells them how she had a lot of prove going into the last game and so she cheated. Adam, Mira, and Reeve leave, angry with Vanessa. She decides to go off on her own to give them space to process. Vanessa single-handedly takes on the game team, trying to keep them from winning. When they open a portal, she follows them through it. In "Race," Vanessa rejoins the group just in time to catch Iris, who has fallen off a cliff, to keep the other team from losing the game, which would erase them. She explains she was caught in a sandstorm while trying to slow the other team down. Eventually, despite their efforts, the game team finishes the boss battle. The portal to exit appears and the game team starts to run for it. Weirdy appears again to tell them he's ready to take the game off line, but they have to get to their own portal. They go to run, but Reeve is injured, so Vanessa and Kai carry him, unwilling to leave him behind. They race to get to their portal before the game team gets to theirs. They end up reaching their portals at the same time. They wake up back in their "home" neighborhood. Later, they gather at Mira's house for a cookout. They grieve the lost Skeet and toast to their lives. Relationships Reeve In the first season, Vanessa acts as the boss of her teammates, much to Reeve's resentment. Vanessa and Reeve get into an argument in "Cocoon," when Reeve calls her and Skeet useless because they cannot find the Ironwood Tree, even though Reeve himself hasn't tried looking. He confesses he would rather win the game alone, but he cannot because of the game rules. Reeve continues to work with her in the second season, but he becomes angry with her confession that her cheating was the reason they were still trapped in the Hollow. Their friendship is remedied in "Race." Skeet Vanessa sees Skeet as a coward and weak, and doesn’t agree with him to join Adam and his teammates to get out of the game’s glitch invasion. In Season 2, she's shown to feel great remorse and guilt after learning of his death, as she knew that it was indirectly caused by her cheating in the first game. She appears to have a panic attack in "Unbalanced" due to the guilt eating at her. Kai Vanessa and Kai officially meet in "Undead." Vanessa notices that Kai feels an instant crush on her, so she uses this to her advantage. Impressed by his power of pyrokinesis, Vanessa manipulates Kai with the intent that he will help her team win the game. She reveals her true intentions to him in "Ice" just before dropping him from a potentially fatal height. Vanessa and Kai reconcile in season 2 and become close friends, to the point that Vanessa feels comfortable enough to confess to Kai first that she caused the glitch that trapped them in the game. Kai forgives her and encourages her to come clean to the others as well. After she does, Kai motivates the others to forgive her too. Mira Vanessa has low opinions of Mira and considers Mira's powers "lame," which she unabashedly expresses to Mira in "Cocoon." The two girls fight each other in the Battle for the Ishibo. In Season 2, Mira shows concern for her in "Unbalanced." Vanessa later expresses a desire to be friends with Mira - as revealed in "Fire," when Mira confronts and yells at her for causing the glitch. When the group reunites in "Race," the two share a hug. Adam Although Vanessa and Adam do not talk to each other much, they are both leaders of the their respective teams and are shown to distrust each other. They begin to work together in "Alchemy." Powers and Abilities Powers Flight: Vanessa can levitate and propel herself through the air, and is able to support the weight of at least one other person while flying. Her power of flight is restricted only by the barriers of the map, including the invisible barrier in the sky that she and Kai crash into in "Undead." Abilities Bilingualism: Before the events of The Hollow, Vanessa had taken three years of French lessons. She puts this experience to use in "Dead End" when trying to stop a runaway train. Culinary skills: Vanessa claims to be a good cook and uses her culinary skills to fashion a "veggie goat" in "Fang." Equipment Digi-Block Contact Lens: Before the events of The Hollow, Vanessa had acquired a special contact lens that blocked the Hollow's memory inhibitor system. Thus, unlike the other players in her game, Vanessa kept all her memories and knew it was a game from the beginning. The technology in her lens caused the glitch in her game. Notable Quotes "It's so hard to tell your friends from your enemies in this freaky place." – "Undead" "You know what, Kai? I'm tired of arguing, so let's just drop it." – "Ice" "So, yes, I knew it was a game. But I didn't know cheating would cause all this." - "Fire"