EDIT: This is a [i]lore[/i] question. [i]Please [/i]don't comment just to answer the title by saying we shoot them. First, I'd like to thank foxburton99 for inspiring me to write this piece. You can find his post here: [url]https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/229432888?sort=0&page=0[/url] I strongly advise you read it first. Now, I want to scratch that itch everyone's afraid of touching: what good is it to fight the Vex? After all, they're a time-traveling hive intellect that can incorporate oodles of possible outcomes, collecting even more data that any unit can tap into. This leads to disturbing questions that Ikora asks from time to time: [quote]Does the world stand as it does because of the Vex?[/quote] Are current events the product of Vex manipulation? On the other hand, if they aren't what's keeping the Vex from wiping us from existence at some distant point in the past? I have a guess that's pretty speculative at best and almost bats**t crazy at worst, but by the time I'm through I hope it makes some sense (Lore people are more than welcome to contradict me if I'm completely wrong). To set up my argument, I want to talk a little about game mechanics (this may seem off-topic, but bear with me). Why can we revive/resurrect? [quote]No no no no no don't reach for that word. There's no 'reason.' That's teleology and teleology will stitch your eyelids shut.[/quote] Let me tell you why: It makes for a bad game if every time you die, you get reset to level 0 and your progress is erased. That's arcade gaming. Modern gaming uses a checkpoint system, where progress and experience is saved up to a certain point, and if you die past that point you only get reset back to that checkpoint. It's a modern gaming convention. What does that have to do with Destiny? Because the "revive/resurrection" is their in-game way of explaining away inconsequential death. They didn't have to do it; there's plenty of games that use modern conventions without applying lore to it. But here's the thing: they did. Now we have the possibility that gaming conventions/mechanics can actually play a role in lore. Keep this in mind. Now, back to the Vex. And more importantly, to their preferred mode of travel: time. I won't get too theoretical (or nerdy) here, but there are two predominant ideals for the way time behaves. First off, we have the multiverse theory. The number of timelines grows exponentially based on any number of possibilities taking place in their own timeline. It's a cornerstone of science fiction. Moreover, it gives us a sense that personal choice plays a large role in the timestream. Unfortunately, it also means that entire timelines can be annihilated by someone going back and time and altering events. Fourth-dimensionally, history is being constantly created, and destroyed if time travel is ultimately possible. Secondly, we have the deterministic outlook. Call it predestination, call it fate, call it what you will, it ultimately means that events are the way they are and they cannot be changed. You may feel like you made a personal choice, but it wasn't a matter of free will. Your choice and its succeeding consequences were inevitable. This seems unappealing at the very least. Unfortunately, there's significant evidence in physics that that [i]is[/i] how time behaves. To illustrate, imagine history is a book, and each page is a single moment in time. Now draw a line on all the edges. At any given moment, you might think that the black line has a chance to deviate. But when you look at the book as a whole, it can't. Furthermore, any alterations to the timestream are actually essential to the timeline itself. So why are the Vex dangerous? On one hand, a deterministic outlook would either completely rob them of their power over the timestream or make them the ultimate victors, with little to no room in between. On the other hand, a completely choice-based timeline would be too chaotic and infinite for even the Vex to accommodate for...unless they could, again making them severely overpowered. The best example of their ability is to erase you from existence. And we have records of Guardians being erased from existence...which is actually a paradox in of itself. Strictly speaking, if you were to erase something from 'existence,' you'd never even know it was missing. At the same time, this creates its own paradox: if the being that was erased no longer exists, then they didn't need to be erased in the first place, which means they might not have been erased...you can get a headache just thinking about it. If the Vex can't use time in a logical way corresponding to either of the theories, a new theory has to be drawn, possibly something that puts the two together. Let's say that each timeline is confined to itself, but there are still multiple timelines in existence that the Vex can communicate across to each other. This would explain their vast repository of outcomes while at same time keeping them from changing anything in their resident timeline. Their gates let them transport entities from one timeline into another one, therefor letting them modify it without causing a paradox. People are erased from existence by Vex from a foreign timeline, and missing minds can be replaced by the same one from a timeline where the Vex might already be successful. This could be the source of the Vex's power. But this would also be their weakness, if their enemies were also able to fight them on the fourth-dimensional front and prevent them from intervening or by duplicating successful attacks against the Vex in different timelines. But Guardians can't do this...right? Well...maybe not that we've seen explicitly. But there's evidence to suggest that the Exo Stranger does this very thing. Furthermore, remember our friends the modern gaming conventions? Turns out Destiny features another distinct feature: replay. After a mission/strike/raid is said and done, you're able to play again. There doesn't [i]have[/i] to be an explanation for this, but neither did the revive, game-mechanically-speaking. It's not a stretch to say we go back into another timeline's past to make sure events proceed as they did in our timeline. This would also explain why the Vex haven't defeated us while at the same time making defeat not seem inevitable; Guardians could be fighting across time [i]and [/i]space. As to how Guardians would have access to this capability, that requires more actual lore, in my opinion. The Exo Stranger could tell them how to do it, Osiris reveals his research on Vex gates, or something. It'd have to be written in, just like the revive was written in. At the very least, it gives the story some hope that humanity won't ultimately succumb to the Vex. Any comments/corrections would be welcome and appreciated. Thanks for reading!