He'd been thinking about leaving for a while.
It's not that Victor hated going on adventures or defeating bad guys. It's wasn't as though he wanted to fall into obscurity and become a used car salesman or short order cook or something, hidden away in a random small town far away, where history would quickly forget him.
Victor needed to be something – be somebody – but he was afraid of where his life was going.
He was tired of being treated like U.Z.Z.'s personal guinea pig, subjected to "highly dangerous" experiments and prolonged exposure to what was surely radioactive or otherwise toxic substances. It was any wonder why he hadn't sprouted a third arm or turned purple or something.
He was tired of being blamed when everything went wrong. He did tend to do stupid things, but come on, his coworkers weren't saints, either. For example, if Professor Professor and Anita hadn't pressured him into pulling that random switch in the briefing room, the base wouldn't have fallen miles underground, leaving them vulnerable to the Reptogators and Imposters. It was partly their doing, too. Why didn't anybody care about that part?
And there was Anita. Victor was in deep, and he didn't know how to handle it. He'd tried many times over the years to look cool in front of her, to impress her in some way, but she was always too busy yelling at him or scolding him or fawning over Alphonse to notice.
He liked to think they were buddies, but while she did save his hide more times than he would admit to, he couldn't say she'd gone out of her way to do things with him outside of work. Interactions were typically centered around the task at hand.
Victor finally figured out that his love would never be returned when Anita didn't seem to care that he'd shown interest in another woman, however platonic and impossible the situation was. It was just after they'd rescued the solar system from the bedroom of a Floaty Head princess. Professor Professor was having a field day teasing him about his friendly attachment to the princess who'd helped them escape. She'd simply laughed along with the bespectacled scientist, grinning like a Cheshire cat with a canary in its mouth. She showed no signs of jealousy or anger. She never once told him it wouldn't work, never once stormed out of the room, never gave him the silent treatment. If it did bother her, she was darn good at hiding it.
He loved her a lot, but he needed a different kind of relationship, one where two people were on the same page. If she ended up marrying Alphonse, he wouldn't object. He wouldn't say a word. She could live in Alphonse's luxurious home and eat vegetable sculptures for the rest of her days like she'd probably always wanted.
It wasn't that he didn't want her to be happy. Naturally, he wished her all the happiness in the universe, and he knew the rich Italian would give her that and then some. He just didn't want to be around to see or hear about said happiness.
He was going to make sure he wouldn't be. It would hurt too much.
It was time to move on. He had to let her go, had to let his current reality go.
U.Z.Z. had smaller bases located around the planet, and one in particular had his attention.
Detroit.
Detroit never had too much going on – it wasn't like New York or San Francisco – so there would be fewer or less important missions for him to screw up. It wasn't exactly a hot spot for mainstream villains like Doctor Doctor (he doubted it was even on her radar), so he wouldn't have to put his neck on the line if he didn't want to. Sure, the city had its share of standard crimes like bank robberies and drive-by shootings (what city didn't?), but unless the criminals started using space ships or laser cannons, U.Z.Z. tended to focus on "save the world" scenarios.
Yes, that's where he would go.
Maybe, just maybe, he could make a name for himself in Detroit. Maybe he could be somebody, not just another lab rat or stool pigeon. He could still have his adventures without falling flat on his face.
And he'd never look back.