Power Rangers RPM, Dillon
This ficlet has been bothering me, more and more intensely, pretty much since RPM aired. It isn't finished, but I need both to do actual work today and get somebody else's reaction before I go crazy, so I'm tentatively posting this now until I can finish it. Reactions, pretty please?
Dillon's expression is complex, but his mind is simple.
He doesn't know where he comes from, or why Venjix technology is welded to his bones. He doesn't know how old he is. He doesn't know if the name he gives to the few people he meets in the wasteland the earth has become is really his. He doesn't know so many things, in fact, that it's easier to list the things he does know, and that's exactly what he does. He calls himself Dillon. He has a car. He's going to Corinth.
He also has a fondness for lemon lollipops. It is the first thing he discovers for himself, in those hazy, confused days at the beginning of his memory when he wakes up in a dusty street with nothing in his head but a language and a feeling that he should know more than this. He gets up, which proves to be a mistake as it attracts the attention of a group of robotic figures marching around the corner of the street. A few moments later he stands over their broken bodies and learns that he can fight. For lack of anything else to do, he enters one of the nearby buildings, which lies as silent as every other as far as he can see. A box of yellow lollipops sits on the counter, and he tears the wrapper off of one and puts it in his mouth. The flavor surprises him, and he almost smiles.
When he leaves the abandoned town, helping himself both to food supplies and a black car he finds behind the building, the lollipops are in his backseat.
During the undeterminable period after this day but before Ziggy, Dillon learns more. He learns the best places in similarly abandoned towns to find food, and what to do when the black car starts to sputter and the little pump-shaped light on the dashboard starts to glow. In one city, he discovers a small enclave of actual human beings - the only living things he has seen since his first fight that are not made of metal. It is from them that he learns that humans have names, and answers their inquiries with one that falls from his lips from a place in his mind that he cannot access. He resides first in their makeshift prison, then in a room under a supposedly discreet guard when the metal things come and Dillon makes it perfectly clear that he could have walked out of their "secure enclosure" any time he pleased. He offers to bend the bars back, but he is refused.
Time with this group passes both quickly and slowly, each day flowing like the next, and Dillon changes as the days do not. There is much for him to see. Humor at first is strange to him, but he quickly discovers that sarcasm comes easily to his tongue, and that he enjoys the reactions he obtains when he surprises others with his voice. He comes to know that he is significantly stronger, faster, and more durable than the people around him, facts which are tolerated only because his strength is needed so much. The men and women here are hard, survivors all, but life pulses through them with all its loves and hatreds and friendships and misunderstandings, all of which Dillon drinks up like the parched earth outside does the infrequent rain. His mind has been empty, so empty, but in this place he drinks in what it means to be human.
It is precisely this refreshment that eventually makes it necessary for him to leave. When he arrived he had been empty, as content in prison as free because he knew of no other place to go, no other way to live. Now, after months spent living in close company with this little group of humanity, "Dillon" has begun to take shape, a self defining its boundaries and acquiring desires of its own. When he arrived he had been so lost that he had not been able even to conceive of what stability might be, but now he feels it, solid within his mind and beneath his feet - he may not know his name, but he knows who he is, and he knows he does not belong here.
Corinth is a name spoken with equal parts derision, hope, and despair, and no one knows if the coordinates spat out irregularly over their one working radio represent a place that is, was, or never came to be. Everyone does agree, however, that if it does exist, it's the only place left on Earth worth trying to reach. The only place Dillon might be able to go to find out what his name actually is, if he ever decides he wants to know.
He leaves his unnamed, unlooked-for sanctuary with a car that now has extensive modifications and a backseat full of explosives, the rations he's been able to save or barter for (no one can afford to give him anything, not even for this), and the half-full box of lemon lollipops that he's managed to keep safe. He readies his facts around him, the vague sense of apprehension lifting as his mind simplifies and clears. He calls himself Dillon. He has a car. He's going to Corinth. Corinth might have more to teach him, but if it doesn't, he still knows who he is.
Simple.
He has no way of knowing, when he picks up the boy by the side of the road who is anything but, just how much less simple his life is about to become.
Dillon's expression is complex, but his mind is simple.
He doesn't know where he comes from, or why Venjix technology is welded to his bones. He doesn't know how old he is. He doesn't know if the name he gives to the few people he meets in the wasteland the earth has become is really his. He doesn't know so many things, in fact, that it's easier to list the things he does know, and that's exactly what he does. He calls himself Dillon. He has a car. He's going to Corinth.
He also has a fondness for lemon lollipops. It is the first thing he discovers for himself, in those hazy, confused days at the beginning of his memory when he wakes up in a dusty street with nothing in his head but a language and a feeling that he should know more than this. He gets up, which proves to be a mistake as it attracts the attention of a group of robotic figures marching around the corner of the street. A few moments later he stands over their broken bodies and learns that he can fight. For lack of anything else to do, he enters one of the nearby buildings, which lies as silent as every other as far as he can see. A box of yellow lollipops sits on the counter, and he tears the wrapper off of one and puts it in his mouth. The flavor surprises him, and he almost smiles.
When he leaves the abandoned town, helping himself both to food supplies and a black car he finds behind the building, the lollipops are in his backseat.
During the undeterminable period after this day but before Ziggy, Dillon learns more. He learns the best places in similarly abandoned towns to find food, and what to do when the black car starts to sputter and the little pump-shaped light on the dashboard starts to glow. In one city, he discovers a small enclave of actual human beings - the only living things he has seen since his first fight that are not made of metal. It is from them that he learns that humans have names, and answers their inquiries with one that falls from his lips from a place in his mind that he cannot access. He resides first in their makeshift prison, then in a room under a supposedly discreet guard when the metal things come and Dillon makes it perfectly clear that he could have walked out of their "secure enclosure" any time he pleased. He offers to bend the bars back, but he is refused.
Time with this group passes both quickly and slowly, each day flowing like the next, and Dillon changes as the days do not. There is much for him to see. Humor at first is strange to him, but he quickly discovers that sarcasm comes easily to his tongue, and that he enjoys the reactions he obtains when he surprises others with his voice. He comes to know that he is significantly stronger, faster, and more durable than the people around him, facts which are tolerated only because his strength is needed so much. The men and women here are hard, survivors all, but life pulses through them with all its loves and hatreds and friendships and misunderstandings, all of which Dillon drinks up like the parched earth outside does the infrequent rain. His mind has been empty, so empty, but in this place he drinks in what it means to be human.
It is precisely this refreshment that eventually makes it necessary for him to leave. When he arrived he had been empty, as content in prison as free because he knew of no other place to go, no other way to live. Now, after months spent living in close company with this little group of humanity, "Dillon" has begun to take shape, a self defining its boundaries and acquiring desires of its own. When he arrived he had been so lost that he had not been able even to conceive of what stability might be, but now he feels it, solid within his mind and beneath his feet - he may not know his name, but he knows who he is, and he knows he does not belong here.
Corinth is a name spoken with equal parts derision, hope, and despair, and no one knows if the coordinates spat out irregularly over their one working radio represent a place that is, was, or never came to be. Everyone does agree, however, that if it does exist, it's the only place left on Earth worth trying to reach. The only place Dillon might be able to go to find out what his name actually is, if he ever decides he wants to know.
He leaves his unnamed, unlooked-for sanctuary with a car that now has extensive modifications and a backseat full of explosives, the rations he's been able to save or barter for (no one can afford to give him anything, not even for this), and the half-full box of lemon lollipops that he's managed to keep safe. He readies his facts around him, the vague sense of apprehension lifting as his mind simplifies and clears. He calls himself Dillon. He has a car. He's going to Corinth. Corinth might have more to teach him, but if it doesn't, he still knows who he is.
Simple.
He has no way of knowing, when he picks up the boy by the side of the road who is anything but, just how much less simple his life is about to become.