Xephian Fanfic

Chapter 10

Teep scrunched up his nose, squinting his dinosaur eyes at the paper. The poemish thing seemed familiar, but he didn’t know from where or what the words were. This was definitely strange. Since he was the life-guardian of the Enderborn family since Rythian was six years old (Zoeya was 3), he should know everything that was going on. This time, he drew up a blank.

Sure, Zoeya had frequently disappeared from her home castle hours on end, but he still got to hear what was going on. Now that the three had survived to this century (he didn’t bother to check, it never made sense.) he even huffed in agreement with Zoeya that the three should join a gang and have some more fun, because the castle was destroyed and the desert was too hot to enjoy living in.

Where was Rythian (and Xephos) and what in the hell was going on?

Bump. Bump.

“Ow! Sips! That hurt!”

“You little babby!”

“You mean, space babby! Be dum bumpch!” Honeydew decided to cut in, alerting the men to their presence, as if the massive pile of fried pig leftovers at the bottom of the ladders wasn’t enough.

“Huh?”

“The Dropper? Remember?”

“Ohhhhh.” Sips still looked utterly confused, but refused to say and simply brushed off the extra fried pig bits off his spacesuit. Nobody knows why they still wear those costumes.

“Hey, Sips! Look what these jokers are doing!”

“He-Hey! Goggle-boy and dino-man! Do you guys know where Silk-Shirt is?”

Zoeya smiled at the duo, and then scrunched up her nose at the nicknames the two gave people around the compound, still not completely used to the two being anywhere remotely near the lab where she worked or the table at which the five friends sat ate at. “Who do you mean by ‘Silk-shirt’ and ‘Goggle-boy’? I mean, ‘dino-man’ is pretty self-explanatory...” she said, earning a light, yet nervous chuckle from the dinosaur in question.

Lalna turned steely-eyed at Sjin, who shuffled uncomfortably at the attention, since everybody knew that Sips never bothered to find out what people’s names were. “Um… he means Xephos.” Zoeya turned her fiery gaze at him and he rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

“We don’t know where he is, but it would be a great help if you got over here and… helped us out.” Honeydew spoke up.

Sips sighed, whining out, “Look guys, I know you’re all busy, but I’ve got some dirt to dig…”

“Sipsy! We need Xephos to help us out with that thing!” Lalna immediately got interested.

“What thing?” Sjin quickly turned around and stuttered out  a suspicious ‘No thing!’ that Lalna decided to let go with a huff.

“As long as nobody blows up the labs…”

Sjin had, at this moment, already sat at the table everybody else was crowded around. He squinted hard and then shook his head, a clear look of confusion displayed on his features, his brown mustache twitching in annoyance.

Sips stood apart from all of them, huffing in boredom. Then, at one point, he just walked toward the group and pushed through, sitting at the table next to Sjin. He plucked the pencil that was sitting on his ear and looked over the sheet, starting to scribble on an extra sheet of paper.

“What did you get, Sips?”

“What is it?”

“Did you get something, Sipsy?”

As soon as Sips finished writing, he got up and yawned, walking out of the laboratory.

“Got some dirt to sell…Some more dirt needs sorting...” he muttered under his breath, walking off to wherever he wanted to. One look at the sheet, and Sjin rushed off after him, yelling “Sipsy! Wait up!” The laboratory was daringly silent after a moment, everybody wondering what in the world Sips wrote down, and, in Lalna’s case, how he managed to find out something useful in a search, where he usually was absolutely horrible.

Soon after, Ridgedog walked in, his coat shifting behind him, almost as if he was flying. Curiously, he picked up the sheet of paper.

“Sips knows more than we think. I believe he decoded the message the other people wanted to give to Rythian and Xephos.”