Don

Don Don is the blue lobster who travels with Gomi and Bill in Fallen Angels. His story is short, but what happens to him affects quite a bit of what comes afterward. One detail worth keeping straight is that his blue coloring and his enhanced abilities aren't the same thing. The story identifies his unusual color as a mutation, but the abilities he shares with Bill come from their cybernetic enhancement. So even with these two little characters, the book is distinguishing a natural difference from something technology added later. Don is already part of Gomi's everyday life when the others meet him. Gomi speaks to him, worries about him and tries to keep him from getting into trouble. There's even a moment early on where Don heads toward a seafood restaurant and Gomi has to stop him. The danger of being a very small creature in a world full of much larger people is right there from the beginning. Then Devil Dinosaur accidentally steps on him, and Don dies. It happens amid the group's confusion rather than as some planned attack. A character who could easily have remained a running joke suddenly becomes someone the others have lost. The aftermath reaches beyond Gomi and Bill. Devil Dinosaur has to live with causing it, and Sunspot sees a connection to his own guilt about hurting Cannonball. Those situations aren't identical, but putting them beside each other forces Roberto to think about responsibility instead of only running away from what he did. Don doesn't get a huge history or a heroic final battle. What the story gives him is a place in this group and people whose behavior changes because he was there. Gomi and Bill grieve him, and the others reveal quite a bit about themselves in how they respond.