Title: Strange Metal
Author: redsixwing
Fandom: Xenoblade Chronicles
Characters: Shulk, Reyn
Rating: G
Length: 450 words
Summary: Shulk tries to figure out what the Monado is made of.

The sun never got down to the workbench. The single sliver of window in the lab's solitary door was so far up the hallway that any errant afternoon sunbeams found a wall to warm well before they made it all the way down the stairs.

The Monado gleamed anyway, defiant of atmosphere. Against the cool grey metal of the table, its casing blazed crisp red. Shining inlaid lines of ether-blue defined its shape, and in the mysterious open circle just below its grip, a pane of something transparent and harder than glass caught a stray lamp's glow and briefly shone.

Shulk frowned at it.

Whatever the case was, it wasn't any familiar metal - or ceramic, or any of the various plastics the Homs had been refining from plants since the Colony's foundation. Or shell, or horn, or another organic. Or anything that he'd been able to sample, for that matter.

It was heavy, yes, and very hard, and cool to the touch. It didn't react with acids (how Reyn had hollered at him for that test, even though the result had been overwhelmingly boring) or allow itself to be scraped, or drilled, or cut, or even its brilliant surface to be dulled.

"With half the secrets you hold, I could reinvent the Colony," Shulk muttered. Carefully, he slipped a microscope slide beneath the thumb-width spine of the strange weapon. Without thinking, he held his breath as he gently rasped at it with his latest tool - a thin strip taken from a fallen Mechon's saw blade. The edge of it was useless; good steel, but dull and unlovely. The side bore a fine coating of tiny crystals, rough to the touch. He used it like a file, generating an annoying screech.

Dust fell free, and briefly, Shulk smiled. He leaned in just a little closer to inspect the site of the cut and the tool's surface.

His face fell. The Monado was unmarred. The file, on the other hand, bore a strip of bare metal where the abrasive crystals had been torn away.

Reyn's voice echoed down the hallway, louder than anyone else who ever came in that door. "Shulk! Are you going to spend the whole afternoon in here?"


"Coming!"

Going out to scavenge sounded suddenly more appealing than another failed test. Shulk left the slide in place. The useless file he consigned to the scrap bin. Metal was precious, even a little thing like that - he'd find a use for it.

He closed up his lab before Reyn was even halfway down the long hall. "Think we can scrounge up some more Mechon weapons?"

"I bet we can."

Two shadows blocked the sunlight. The door closed behind them, unheard.