A\N: Why am I torturing Jen? Um...I honestly have no clue. But yeah, I figure she's smart enough to know the anti-mutant stuff is racist, so why is she so vehemently anti-mutant? Hence, fic. Enjoy.
Re-uploaded because apparently formatting is pure evil. *grumps*
Location: Central Correctional Facility, Nevada Desert
Date: Unknown
Time: Unknown
"So tell me, Pink Ranger, how does it feel to lose?"
Jen didn't speak. She didn't even look at him. She stared instead at the corner of two walls. It was concrete and a small spiderweb was in it.
Ranisk smirked.
He'd won, of course. She was chained to the wall, her form tiny against the heavy, huge chains meant to restrain bulky mutants, and he was standing free and victorious, his sword still stained with her teammates' blood. He hadn't been able to kill the bitch, though.
Between them, it was personal.
He'd designed a setting worthy of that sort of personal battle, a simulation of the prison he had liberated just before creating his utopia. An irony, wasn't it, how the Pink Ranger had probably feared her whole life that someone would send her to just this place...
"Not talking, then?" Ranisk moved closer, intimidating her, then laughed. "Bah. I don't care." He lifted a sword. "Soon, little girl, you'll talk all I want..."
Jen watched him lift the sword. Watched him press it against her, sawing, slowly slowly sawing...
The blood on the sword was her teammates' blood. The blood of her brothers-in-arms joined with hers.
It was the only goodbye she would ever have.
*PRTF*PRTF*PRTF*
Location: Same
Date: Unknown
Time: Unknown
Jen had never really known pain.
It was horrifying at first. She'd been so afraid of what came next and what came next and then finally she'd just experienced the pain, the sensation of agony.
Slowly her head had drooped...
She'd had anti-torture training. She was a Time Force officer of high enough rank, it came with the territory. The important part was to focus on disrupting your own thoughts, the shrinks had told her. For her, naturally prone to depressive spells, it was important to practice thought-stopping, to bring herself out of her own agony in at least her mind, if not her body.
She tried.
It wasn't working. Not completely. The shrinks had their data wrong, just like always. Jen's mind was traveling to lonely, strange places; to thoughts of Alex and Katie and Wes and Lucas and Trip and Alex, always Alex, always that first moment that had crumbled her...
Ranisk came back in the midst of her thoughts. "Well, my dear. Are we ready to start again?"
He always started by torturing her with something bladed.
After a few more unconsciousness-pain cycles, Ranisk left again, saying something about Nadira and father-daughter time. Jen began the routine of shaking herself mentally awake and then...stopped.
She didn't want to jar herself out of her thoughts.
It was one of her depressive spells, of course, but the more that she thought about it, the more right she realized she was. It wasn't like she had anyone left to live for. Her future was gone. She was alone.
It was like a horror movie that ended in her death.
She shut her eyes. No. She couldn't give in. She had survived everything, even...
Even...
She was strong.
Years of her own forced battle held back the sob that threatened her at that thought. She took a deep breath, steeling herself. Yes. She was strong. Now, focus on something else. Something strong.
She would be all right...
*PRTF*PRTF*PRTF*
Location: Same
Date: Unknown
Time: Unknown
Ranisk reached out and grabbed the Pink Ranger's arm.
She flinched away, whimpering, a sound that would have made Ranisk's lips quirk up if he weren't so curious. He wiped the blood away from her elbow, quickly-
There.
It was just visible. The skin was torn, of course...but not just torn, it crept back together, healing before Ranisk's eyes.
The bitch was a mutant.
Ranisk looked up. It was a mistake. He saw the terror and panic and shame in her eyes and nearly melted at the sight of this girl so broken. It was natural, after all, to protect those of your own species.
Perhaps that was what made her so evil.
"I've seen that look before." He said quietly, releasing her elbow. She shrank against the wall, terrified of what he knew. "Do you know when..." What was her name, he could hardly keep calling her 'Ranger' and 'bitch' now that she was a mutant...ah, yes. "Jennifer?"
She glared. A final vestige of defiance.
"When I found children trembling in their own houses," Ranisk said coldly, stepping forward to loom over her, "covered in bruises from where their parents had tried to 'train' them to not show their gifts to the police." His eyes met hers. "When I saved them from you."
Jennifer didn't look at the ground. Her eyes had a strangeness in them, as if she was left barren now, with nothing left to lose. "You knew the whole time."
"What?" Ranisk blinked. The hell?
"When I fought you. You must've seen. And then when I was taking you to jail and you said 'the future is always in motion'." Jennifer explained.
Ranisk paused, then burst out laughing. He laughed and laughed and laughed, turning away from her in his mirth. When he turned back, his eyes still carried the amusement, and Jen saw it then, a bare glimpse, of a leader who laughed even as he defended, who could protect his people and still love them.
"You think that it's that obvious?" Ranisk shook his head. "My dear, I had no idea you were one of us." He sighed, turning away. "Poor girl. It must have been hell, mustn't it, thinking you were alone in the world..."
He rested his fists on a desktop.
"Mutants always feel that way." He explained. He didn't show her his face. He wasn't sure what was written on it, and no matter how much a traitor, the girl was one of his own kind now. "Alone. Helpless. And yes, some of them obsess over me the way you did. They're convinced I'm their father or meant to marry them or that I somehow know part of them they don't. That's because I save them from you."
"What?" Jen shook her head. "You...you killed everyone, everyone-"
Ranisk laughed darkly. Yes. He had. In that final battle, he had made his machine for unfreezing mutants work on multiple mutants instead of just one at a time. Together his army had simply beaten the Rangers into demorphing. He'd dragged them to a television station to declare their crimes and mutant freedom.
Then, one by one, he sliced their heads off.
You have no choice now, my brothers, Ranisk had thought then and thought now. Join me. No more peace. No more 'trying to work with them'. No more planted illegal drugs or living off garbage. Only freedom.
"But you left me." Jen whispered.
"Yes." Ranisk said, straightening and turning to face Jennifer. "I did. And I wondered, just like you...why am I doing this? Why her?" Ranisk shrugged. "I thought, well, maybe I just want information. Maybe I'm bored. Maybe I want a concubine. But then I realized that I've always been fascinated on some unconscious level with how quickly you heal."
Jennifer shook her head.
Ranisk studied her for a long moment. Then he sighed. "Fear not, my dear. It's over now."
"Like hell it is." Jennifer snarled, but Ranisk could see her heart wasn't in it.
Ranisk smiled and walked over to a wall. There were curtains there to cover a large window, and he yanked them back.
*PRTF*PRTF*PRTF*
Location: Second Holocaust Museum, Capital City
Date: Year 3,000
Time: Midday
Ranisk had taken the chains off.
Jen stumbled over to the window. After so long hanging by her arms, she could barely walk, and she leaned against the glass as much for support as to try to change it. "No. No..."
"Yes."
Jen fell to her knees.
It was completely bare. Green earth, without any sign of life, human or mutant. The world grew, and it would be serene, except Jen saw no life, anywhere. Ranisk had killed the whole world.
"You are in the Second Holocaust Museum." Ranisk said. So odd. His voice almost sounded gentle now. "It's devoted to the wholesale slaughter of mutants in your universe. This," He waved his hand at the green, tower-like hills, "Is a better world."
Jen shook her head.
Ranisk sighed and walked over, pressing a hand to her head. "Your name is Scott. Jennifer Scott. I know that now. I can give you another chance. You can grow up with your own kind. I know Nadira would love a sister." He sighed again. "But you're too old, Jennifer. Too broken." He stroked her hair a final time. "I'm sorry."
He left.
Jen knew he was going to get a weapon to kill her. Or maybe freeze her in cryogenic suspension. Who knew. She shut her eyes against the tears, pressing her forehead to the window.
She wasn't wrong, was she? Was she? No, she'd...she'd had to fight, because mutants were evil, everyone knew that. That was why Ranisk had destroyed the world. The only perfect world was a world without mutants. Ranisk knew that on some level...He'd gotten rid of all the mutants, he knew, he had to know!
And she'd had to fight. She'd had to make up for whatever evil she did by being a mutant. She had to.
Jen opened her eyes, drawing her knees up to her chest. Maybe it would be better now. If Ranisk killed her or froze her...she could die, could be frozen, and her evil would be contained. That would be mercy. She wouldn't have to always guard against the broken thing inside of her.
She looked around. She could almost imagine those tall hills as towers. Maybe she could see the year 3000 in this world, the real year 3000, just one more time...
Jen frowned.
There was a door swinging open from one of the hills. Two small figures emerged, climbing out. Children. Jen's brain took a moment to catch up with what she saw, and then she laughed aloud in relief and joy. Children! There were people here, the world wasn't dea...d...oh, no. No. That was too cruel.
Six-year-old Jen and six-year-old Nadira were playing side-by-side.
Jen watched them play. They could have been almost any children, they really could, except that when Ranisk and the adult Nadira walked up to them, the children flung themselves at their guardians wholeheartedly, dragging them over to the section of grass they'd been playing on to play alongside them. If it weren't for the sheer outlandishness of the costumes, it could have been anywhere, anyone.
Ranisk patted the girls on the head and turned away, Nadira distracting them with some sort of game. Jen leaned her head against the glass. So that was it. She would grow evil and hateful and...and who knew. Maybe she would be a Power Ranger again.
Odd, how peaceful they looked. Like some sort of second chance.
Ranisk came in. Jen didn't bother looking up. She could hear him drawing a sword, felt a bitter laugh that it wasn't containment. Some high-and-mighty ethical ruler he was, murdering an unarmed prisoner. She wanted to strike him, to break free, to sit at this window forever and just stare...
The sword touched her throat and paused.
"You can see them from here." Ranisk mused. "Hmph. Didn't realize."
"Whatever you're going to do, it'll never work." Jen whispered, trying to be defiant, and maybe failing. "I'll always hate evil."
Ranisk snorted. "My dear, you've never been evil. Neither have I. We're only what the world asked us to be." He raised the sword. "In the next life, maybe they'll ask for less."
Jen looked up at the sun. Maybe there was forgiveness there-
And then it didn't matter anymore.