Just a Little Light

“...Please move.”

The colorful, glowing Xero just sat for a moment, staring up at Rhys. It was hard to tell if he was just that shocked, or if it was admiration. Either case was irritating.

“Seriously, this thing is heavy-”
“Oh, gosh! Sorry!” The little one rolled and tumbled past Rhys’s legs. The older Xero shakily lowered down, letting the big, metal cylinder groan and creak until it touched down, now resting against the machine that the pair were next to.
“...I wasn’t here checking on you. I just saw that thing about to fall from a kilometer away.”

“Th-thank you anyways! I’m glad you were here!”
Dammit. Why did he have to be so endearing? He wasn’t even being annoying about it.

“You’re welcome. Be more careful, yeah?”

Before Rhys could take his third step away from the project the other Xero was working on, though, his tail was grabbed. “Hold on, sorry...” He skittered around in front of Rhys and grabbed his wrists, and began wiping down his paws and forearms with a light blue cloth. It was uncomfortably rough, but before he could complain, he saw the sheer black that was coming off on his arms. “This’ll get most of it,” the little one said, “but you’re going to need cleaning alcohol to get the rest out. Don’t bother with soap, it’ll just make it so you can’t see it, but it’ll still be there. Mostly.”
Rhys curiously eyed him while he wiped off his arms, and even reached in to get a big blot of black across his shoulder. He couldn’t have been more than a few cycles past the first classes Xeros took. “So you like machines, huh?”

The smaller Xero’s reaction was immediate. His face brightened up, and even his glowing spots and antennae all literally got brighter too. “Yeah! I mean, I really like bugs and animals and stuff too. But there’s a lot of stuff that you need in order to go exploring, there’s some dangerous stuff. You need gear. You need teammates. Probably a pilot. I gotta be useful too, right?”

Rhys stood dumbfounded, and turned back to the project. “You… you do know that being a biologist is something you can do with the survey teams, right?” He said slowly.
“Well yeah, but I don’t really need to know all the sciencey stuff, I just wanna look at cool, glowing bugs and rocks. If I’m able to take care of some engineering stuff, I may as well. Everybody tells me I’m good at it anyways.”
Rhys blinked, turned back to the little Xero, then back to the project. “Wait, so you want to what, collect neat looking bugs and rocks, and you’re-”
“And anything else that I can find that’s neat!”
“...and you’re just casually learning engineering so that you can get there?”
“Well yeah, I wanna be able to make and fix any containment units, exploration gear we might need, make some enviro suits and armor for more dangerous places, you can’t really do the things without the right gear!”
Rhys’ own little touches of bioluminescence lit up, while a smile grew on his snout. “What did you say your name was?”
Finally, he pulled away and balled up the nearly black rag. “I didn’t! My name’s Wish! X-312!”
Rhys lost it. He bent over, cackling loudly. He just wasn’t prepared for this tiny, naive little Xero that was so innocently enamored with “glowy stuff” to so casually use his number designation as part of his introduction. “I’m Rhys,” he finally said when he began to recover. “X-195.”
“Nice to meet ya! Sort of!”
“Yeah, I… don’t really talk to people.”
“I figured that much out, eventually,” Wish said with a grin. “I’m almost finished up here, I can show you where to get the cleaner!”
Rhys mirrored his smile. “Let me help, I’m already going to need to clean up after.”