Title: Friendship by Moonlight
Friends: Rito & Goldar
Chapters: 1-1||Words: 1,952
Genre: Friendship||Rated: G
Summary: Two friends sit in the moonlight and talk about the past that might've been and the future that may yet be.
He had no idea how many times he had stared up at the moon. He just knew that he did it every night, for hours at a time. It was only when shadows covered the town that he and his friend could freely wander the area. During the day, it was too dangerous. Exactly who it would be too dangerous for, he wasn't very certain.
Not to mention, he wasn't all that certain of why it was too dangerous, only that it was. Their caretakers made sure they knew that. Of course, the fact that they looked so different from said caretakers, as well as everyone else, probably had something to do with it.
A quick look down at his hands showed the differences quite clearly. Theirs were small, pale, and had nothing that resembled muscle at all. His hands were at least twice their size, grayish, and stronger than anything he could remember seeing. Of course, since his memory covered only the last two or three months, it wasn't that impressive of a memory.
They were also a lot shorter than he was. His companion was the only one who was really his size. They were both humanoid shaped, at least in the sense of two legs, two arms, and a head, but other than that, there wasn't much to them that was like their caretakers or anyone else that he'd caught a glimpse of in the few stolen moments away he had achieved.
"You're looking up there again." His golden friend stood beside him suddenly. It amazed him, over and over, at how quiet someone this big could be. Shouldn't he have been noisier?
Somewhere in the back of his mind, behind the black curtain that kept him from his past, he heard the click of clawed feet upon a floor and the wild laughter of someone who enjoyed their work all too well, especially the work of evil.
"Yeah, I know." He stared up at the shimmering white orb as if it held the answers he wanted. For all he knew, it did. "I can't help it."
"I know. I do it too." His voice was gruff and harsh, but there was something underneath it all. Rito wasn't sure how to define it, only that it was something he kind of enjoyed. Maybe it was friendship. It did kind of remind him of the way Bulk and Skull talked to each other, or to be precise, how Bulk talked to Skull.
Did that mean that he was the Skull of their friendship? Rito wasn't entirely certain he liked that. Even if he did resemble an animated skeleton, there was no need for fate to pull a trick like that on him. Or was there? After all, with their memories being Swiss cheese, he had no idea of what he could've done to bring Fate's wrath down upon himself.
Goldar settled in beside him and stared up at the star-filled sky. "I don't know why I look at it," he continued. "It just feels right to do it."
Neither of them had ever considered asking Bulk and Skull for any kind of answers. From the way that Skull looked at them at times, Rito thought that they could tell their charges a few facts. They just didn't want to. "You ever wonder who we were before? You know, before here?
"Sometimes." Goldar reached out and picked up a stick, staring down at it as he ran one hand across it. For a moment, Rito didn't see a dry old piece of wood there. He saw a gleaming, incredibly large sword in his friend's lap, something that reeked of blood and chaos and a dark kind of magic that wouldn't stop killing until there was nothing left alive in the entire universe. "Sometimes I have dreams, too."
Rito looked over at him, a few images of his own nocturnal wanderings flickering through his mind. "What kind of dreams?"
"Weird ones. People in armor, like on television when they're watching the news reports. I think they called them Power Rangers." Goldar shrugged and the faint image of the sword vanished from Rito's mind, leaving only a dirty stick where it had been. "And me, fighting them. And you, too."
The skeleton creature blinked, trying to figure out just what Goldar had said. "I was fighting you or them?" Maybe he should try to read more of Bulk and Skull's schoolbooks. They were a little more advanced than he thought he could deal with, but it might help. Or just give him a headache.
I have such a headache! The cry slipped through his mind, fading away before he could really grasp it, and he shook his head again. It was too weird even to think about.
"You were fighting them," Goldar grunted his reply. "You weren't too bad at it, really." Rito flushed at what he supposed was the closest that his friend would ever get to a true compliment of him. "But you lost almost all the time." There was a moment of silence, then, "And so did I."
Again silence fell between them, broken at last by Rito. "Do you think that's what happened to us? We went up against the Power Rangers too many times and they did this to us?" He had never really thought too much about that heroes and hadn't even watched them on the news that often. Skull and Bulk hero-worshipped them as much as they did the Stone guy, and watched their exploits religiously. Rito was almost certain he'd caught Skull fantasizing about the Pink Ranger once or twice.
Heh, I thought he had a crush on that blonde girl. He couldn't remember her name offhand, but every once in a while he'd seen his caretaker (or was he a friend too? Naming people was hard. He probably shouldn't bother doing it anymore) watch her while she was with her friends. He never did it enough so that anyone would notice, but Rito had seen it a few times.
"I don't want to think about it." Goldar had taken so long to answer that Rito had to think for a few minutes himself just to remember what he'd asked him.
"Why's that?" He thought he might know why, though. It was the same reason he didn't want to think about it a whole lot. Watching the Rangers on TV, even if they weren't quite dressed like the ones in his dreams and the occasional terrifying memory, put thoughts into his mind that he really didn't want in there.
Goldar stared down at the dark earth beneath him, poking at it with his sword. His stick. It was a stick. That was all that it was. "Because I think if I did, I'd figure out who we are and why we're here, and I don't want that."
Those weren't words that he could say he had expected to hear. But they were there whether they had been expected or not. "Neither do I. Goldie, I like it here with them."
"Even with the way they treat us." Goldar didn't say anything about the nickname, not this time. Rito poked into the dirt beside him with one gray finger, remembering gray dust and a castle that never seemed to be warm. Farther behind that in his mind was a palace that stretched out for miles under a sky of deepest shadows.
Dad's place. It held the tang of 'home' in his mind, but the thought did not come with warm feelings and companionship that he got when he thought about the little shed where he and Goldar slept now, much less the acceptance that Bulk and Skull gave their monstrous servants. There was anger and grief and rage looked up in that magnificent home in his mind, and he wanted it to stay there. That was where it belonged, not with him.
"Yeah. They're just kids." Rito rarely felt old. It was a part of his charm, he thought. No matter how long he'd lived, and it had to have been a really long time since he was a skeleton that hadn't stopped walking yet, he was still young on the inside. "I bet we were little monsters when we were that age."
Goldar turned to him and there was something that Rito was almost certain was a smile on his lips. He couldn't remember ever seeing one there, so he couldn't be all that certain. But it sort of looked like one. "Of course we were. Because we're big monsters now." Well, that made sense.
"I don't really feel like a monster, though," Rito declared. He had decided that he was going to be contrary. It would give him something to do until bedtime. And it would be fun. That was what mattered most, having fun and having fun with one's friends and family.
A man with no skin, but a cold attitude that demanded everyone and everything around him serve him, or suffer. He carried a staff with a 'Z' on the top and every time that he spoke to Rito, it was cold, uncaring, insulting, and harsh.
A woman, far too sharp-featured for beauty though she believed she had it, who was just as cold as the other, but held a little more emotion and warmth when it came to him. She teased him a lot, but somewhere underneath the anger that flared so easily whenever he did something wrong, there was caring for him.
Goldar grunted, his eyes flickering with what could have been his own memories as he stood up. "I'm not in the mood for this." Rito wasn't certain if Goldar was ever really in the mood for anything. Without another word, the gold-armored one stomped into their shelter and shut the door behind him. Rito hoped he hadn't locked it; he wouldn't want to have to try and break it down to get in. Bulk and Skull had been pretty upset the last four times that had happened.
But he wasn't quite ready to go to bed just yet. He stared up at the moon, letting what few memories that wanted to tease him do so. He had no names for any of the people in his mind, but he liked to call them his friends. He was fairly sure that they wouldn't want to be called that, but since they couldn't read his mind, they'd never know.
Maybe he'd know who they were one day. Maybe one day they'd all sit in some out of the way place, with the moonlight shining down on them. It wasn't that wrong to dream, even for someone like him, was it? Would it be such a bad thing if they woke up in the morning with all of their memories, knowing whether or not they were the enemies of the Power Rangers?
After all, what if they weren't? What if they were friends of the old Rangers, who had been hurt in some massive battle against a powerful evil, and these new Zeo Rangers didn't know them and that was why no one had come to bring them home. It sounded good. You never really knew, after all.
Maybe it just didn't matter. Right now, he had friends, and a good home, and deep inside, Rito Revolto knew that he couldn't ever want for anything more.
What he didn't know was that something much more was on the way to claim him and Goldar for itself once more. It was probably best that he didn't know, after all. Even a monster might want to have a little bit of innocence, once in a while. Perhaps in the moonlight. With a friend.
The End