Volume 1: The Crystal Ephesoziel
Last time, on Rexers…
After
the little prince fled to Celestial Era 2005, the Draispans tracked him there and
attacked, killing a multitude of people. Escaping to an edge of time, he met
Nebuer who gave him a protoDigiRex device. He successfully transformed into one
of the legendary Rexer soldiers – Black Rex. However, his fatigue undid the
transformation and he fainted.
EPITAPH 0.002 – Cousin
Cosmic Age, 5990.
Saint Gabriel Hooskas.
“So
it seems that the device is a little bit unstable. Still, our theories were
proven. All is well,” asserted Nebuer to himself.
“Well,
well…” begun a rough, teasing voice, “thanks for the data, little prince.”
“How
long have you been there, Sonsi?”
Fej
Sonsi’s father, the splitting image of Fej save the absence of dimples on his
visage, appeared from behind a calculated gap. The gap opened from one of the
Titanium-made, reinforced bookshelves covered with artificial oak layers. The
wooden surface lining of every furniture piece provided the aesthetic
camouflage necessary to keep their laboratory passages a secret. Sonsi’s
no-nonsense attitude bore a sharp contrast with Quinoa’s calm look, a thing
that often amused outsiders who saw them. That was if there were any outsiders.
Still, Engle Sonsi remained an outstanding scientist in his field.
“Since
he came,” Sonsi proudly replied. “For starters, our sleeping prince needs a
name and some roof.”
Flipping
an odd silver coin as he walked towards Nebuer, he continued, “The house on the
hill should be fine for stray cats,” emphasizing the word ‘stray’. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here, Sir Quinoa.”
“Please.
Have a seat while I call in my children.”
As
soon as the word left Nebuer’s mouth, he called in his twins through the
picocommunicator. Mitt arrived in the same fashion as Leizah, who was waiting
outside the hallway, did earlier. Unlike Leizah who was usually clumsy, cheerful
and easygoing, Mitt kept his body in top form even as he studied. Serious and strict
with himself and those he care about, Mitt was more-or-less oblivious to people
who admire him for his good looks and strong sense of justice.
“Mitt!”
Leizah,
excited to show her brother the ‘alien’ that their Dad was talking to, beamed
with a smile and hugged him.
“Whoa!
What’s the deal, Leiz?”
“Mitt,
tell Dad you’ll go with us to Neleh
Palace. Super pretty
pleasey.”
“Go
where?”
“The
‘alien’ wants to see our colony’s ruler who lives there… at the Neleh Palace,”
bragged Leizah, proud that she knew something she thought her twin didn’t.
“You
mean the replica? Sure. Been there before,” said Mitt confidently.
“Cool!
Dad’s been talking to it for a while. Maybe it couldn’t convince Dad,” worried
Leizah, “but I bet you could.”
Mitt
entered the principal’s office first, followed by Leizah. Mitt was talking to
their Dad when Leizah saw the ‘alien’ lying on the sofa. Rushing over by the
little prince’s side, she shook in the hopes that the ‘alien’ was still alive.
“Hmm…
hmm… hmm…”
“Leiz,
weren’t you listening? Dad told us to bring our cousin home.”
“Hmm…
hmm… hmm…”
“Leiz!”
“Oh!
Our cousin’s coming to visit? When?” wondered Leizah, still trying to wake little
prince up.
“That
‘alien’ you brought is not an alien. That’s our cousin, a member of the Am
Guzden clan sent to train with us this summer,” stressing on the words ‘our
cousin’.
“What’s
it’s… I mean his… his name?”
“Dad
doesn’t know which child was sent. Ask him later when he wakes up. For now,
we’re going home,” ordered Mitt as he slung one arm over his shoulders and
Leizah took the right arm.
“You
can use the fourth tube from here
kids,” Engle added. “I’ll open it for you.”
“Sweet!
Thanks, Dr. Engle. You’re the super best!” said Leizah.
Quinoa Residence
In
a matter of minutes, the twins reached their house near the hills. Traveling
via tube with others was a first time
for Leizah. Switching their anti-gravity shoes, they went from one of the back
entrances and sped towards the second floor.
“I
thought the tube can only hold one person at a time. There were three of us in
there,” wondered Leizah.
“One
adult at a time, Leiz. Actually, it’s more of how heavy instead of how many,”
smiled Mitt. “Up and there. Okay!”
Mitt
and Leizah placed the little prince on one of the spare beds in the guest room.
As they laid him there, the prince stirred a bit. The twins had no idea of the
little prince’s frightful dream, or of his past, when suddenly, he grabbed an
arm. His grip on the wrist was hard and firm. Painful.
“Ahh!
That hurts!”
“Why
you! Let her go!”
Mitt
tried to pull the hand away from Leiz, but it wouldn’t budge. Taking the
nearest vase, he poured water on both of them. After water soaked them, the
little prince snapped out of it and immediately woke up. He was, however, still
gripping Leizah’s arm tightly.
“Ugh…”
groaned Nosneb.
“Let
go of Leiz, or else…” threatened Mitt.
“Um,
Mitt, you don’t have to scare him,” interrupted Leizah. “So, what’s your name,
cousin?”
“Nosneb
zi Rha Faan…” said the little prince slowly, as though in a trance and
withholding his last name, Ephesoziel. In their planet, Ephesozen princes
traditionally said the Ephesoziel surname first and attached their mother’s
last name last. He had the sense to drop ‘Ephesoziel’ after waking up in a
semi-conscious manner, following Nebuer’s warning. Still, the images from his
dream looked clear as the water that drenched him that he hardly noticed the
cold.
“That’s
an awfully long name, cousin. Can I call you Nosneb?” said Leizah, as she
forced a smile while her arm still hurt.
“Nosneb
zi Rha Faan Am Guzden,” shrugged Mitt, “is an awfully short name compared to
most of our other cousins. And… I see you were named after the ‘Rha Faan’
tribe.”
“I
wasn’t named after them. I was one of them,” corrected Nosneb in his mind. “Am
Guzden? Wherever did you get that? I hand it to your quick thinking, Nebuer.
Thanks,” he continued in his mind, gazing at a blank point in space.
“Let
go of my sister now, Nosneb zi Rha Faan. Let go of Leizah.” demanded Mitt in an
authoritative tone.
Nosneb,
seeing that he grabbed her arm by accident while asleep, quickly released it.
Leizah, smiling as she walked towards the door, said, “Gotta go, cousin. Make
sure to change those clothes.”
“Clothes
are on the second drawer to the left,” said Mitt.
“Thanks,
Quinoa.”
“It’s
Mitt.”
As
Mitt walked away, Nosneb knew that he needed to make as many allies as he could
if he were to fight the Draispans and restore Ephesoziel. He had best start
with this lad.
“Thanks,
Mitt,” replied Nosneb.
Surprised
that he was thanked twice, he looked back. He wanted to doubt this cousin
because of the way he hurt Leizah before he woke up, but because their Dad
instructed them to take care this cousin, he held back.
“No
problem. Just don’t…”
“Don’t
what?”
“It’s
not important,” said Mitt as he closed the door and left.
Nosneb
took a quick shower and changed. Worried about what happened with his smartbots
– Araco, Balco, Coco, Duco, Ezreco, and
Fauzco, he wanted to set off and find them. He barely stepped out of the room
when Leizah came running on the hallway.
“Hello!
So you’re done changing? Wanna go play at the Sonsi’s?”
“P-Play?
I’ve got other things to do than play, child.”
“Whatever!
You’re a child too. Let’s go! Let’s go!”
“Don’t
pull me. I can walk,” Nosneb asserted.
“I
know! I’m sure you can eat too. Now let’s go! Dr. Lucia’s cheesecakes are the
best! I won’t miss them for the world!”
Drawn
to Leizah’s innocence and optimism like a magnet to a pole, half of the little
prince wants to regain his innocence and youth, while another half needs to
bring justice to his people. He found it relieving that this child treated him
as ordinary as possible, even though his silvery hair and auburn eyes betrayed
his origins. He thought about dyeing his hair to a different color, at least,
before he went meeting other people. When they left the back door entrance,
Nosneb broke the silence.
“Child,
how do we get to the Sonsi’s? Do we fly?”
“Um…
if you call me ‘child’ ever again, cousin, I’ll call you ‘alien’,” teased
Leizah. “And right, we’ll fly so highey high… or not! It’s pretty near! We can
float!”
“O-Okay.
If you mean something like this…”
Nosneb
activated his ATP-powered spaceskates to glide in the usual manner. Like a boy
proud of his toys, Nosneb smiled as he soared in those freestyle moves he used
to do on gaseous surface. This gaseous surface was not exactly air like from
the old days, but a clean version of it devoid of contaminants like Argon.
“H-h-hey!
Let me on that thingy!” Leizah shouted. “I wanna try that! Nosneb!”
The
little prince didn’t want ‘the child’ to shout his name out in the open that he
sped his way down. He was still floating when Leizah climbed on his back.
“W-w-what
are you doing??” said a puzzled Nosneb.
“Piggyback
ride. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Straight to the east!” Leizah answered excitedly.
“E-e-asier
said than done,” said Nosneb as he lifted the two of them to the air. “And quit
moving!” he ordered.
Unfortunately
for Nosneb, Leizah had no sense of direction and barely paid attention to
landmarks, let alone coordinates. Nosneb’s GPS watch worked quite normally in
this world that it puzzled him a little. While airborne, Nosneb noticed a small
crater and wanted to check it out. As he descended, Leizah finally remembered
something.
“That’s
it! See that white chimney? It’s Fej’s place!”
“I
was looking at the crater,” Nosneb replied blankly.
With
all that fidgeting around and Leizah’s crazy direction-telling as they glided,
it took them two hours to get to the Sonsi’s, when it was a mere thirty-minute
walk. Fej saw Leizah from the window, so he rushed out to greet them.
“Hey!
Leizah! Glad you could make it!” shouted Fej, his voice echoing through the
hills. “Over here,” he waved.
“Oopsie.
I was gonna surprise Fej, but… the window’s fine too,” Leizah shrugged. “To the
window!” she rallied.
“It’s
not proper to enter from the window, but… I can live with that,” Nosneb thought
as they flew to the window.
Nosneb
and Leizah entered smoothly through the life-sized, colored glass windows
panes. Fej’s windows used a special type of strong glass, reinforced to
withstand a variety of weather and pressure. Occasionally, Dr. Engle and Dr.
Lucia used those panes to serve like classroom H-boards whenever they taught
Fej. Since the Sonsi’s were usually immersed with their research, they had a
full-scale, operational laboratory at their residential area, complete with
assistant robots. Whenever Fej wasn’t playing with the Quinoas or with his
other playmates, it was almost too sure that he’d be somewhere in one of the
household laboratories. This time, however, since it was four in the afternoon,
Fej was bored doing his afternoon summer homework when he happened to saw Leizah
coming. That woke him up from routine.
“Great!
You brought your pet robo too. This’ll be fun!”
“He’s
not my pet robo, Fej,” corrected Leizah, “He’s my alien cousin. Sorry. Didn’t
tell you earlier.”
“Cousin?
No way!” replied Fej, as he stared back at Nosneb again. “He doesn’t look like
a Quinoa to me. As far as I recall, all of you are black-haired and black-eyed.
Had a DNA shift?” wondered Fej.
“A
what???” asked Nosneb, completely lost with whatever Fej was saying. In the
previous edge of time where Nosneb was, elementary students never studied the
word ‘DNA’. He had no clue what Fej was talking about and he hated not to know
something.
“A
DNA shift means that your DNA shifts or moves towards expressing something
which your DNA does not normally have towards something it now artificially
has. It could also be something that your genes normally have that is turned
OFF that was switched ON because of the shift,” explained Fej. “For example,
when a certain amount of light hits your hair and eyes, it turns black because
of the shift. Whenever light is not enough, your hair and eyes goes back to its
original color.”
“Fej,
you’re talking strange again,” grunted Leizah. “Did you memorize that from Dr. Lucia’s
notes?”
“Not
telling,” answered Fej. “Well, so was it a shift?”
“It’s…
uh… dyed,” Nosneb reacted in a hurry.
“Dyed?!
Didn’t think your alien cousin would be old fashioned, Leizah. Some hobby.”
“Don’t
say that.” Leizah defended. “So Fej… where’s that thing you were gonna show
me?”
“In
the lab. Found it outside the house near the cave. You’d be surprised.”
“Really?
Is it pirate’s treasure! Gimme! Gimme!”
“Nope.
It’s even better… an ancient robot!”
Fej
led his friends downstairs to their lab, which, for most purposes, Fej called
‘garage’. With all the glasswares and instruments safely stowed away, the lab
did look more like a garage workshop than a laboratory. Scrap metals, motor
oils, gears, tires, and all sorts of mechanical tools lay around. There, Nosneb
wasn’t prepared when he saw one of the smartbots he was searching for that he
couldn’t speak in shock. It was Fauzco, sixth of the six smartbots his second
parents gave him.
“Here
it is. I can’t get it to work yet. There’s nothing on the cosmonet about
ancient robots that look like this,” complained Fej. “Maybe I’ll pry it open
and study it.”
“Nah.
You won’t be able to put them back if you did. You broke too many robots,”
replied Leizah.
“I’ll
do anything to get this thing to work. If only I knew how.”
“If
you showed it to Dr. Engle, I’m sure he could fix it.”
“No
way! This is my loot! No grown-ups are touching it.”
“But…
it’s pretty super useless if it doesn’t run, Fej. What do you think, cousin?”
Nosneb,
who was thinking of a way to take Fauzco, finally got his thoughts together.
While he was thinking of how to say it nicely, Leizah, who was getting
impatient with Nosneb’s stiff silence, was shaking the little prince hard when
Fej interrupted.
“Leizah!”
said Fej as he tried to restrain her, “Stop it.”
“But…”
“It’s
impossible for this old-fashioned cousin of yours. I bet he can’t,” said an
arrogant Fej.
“That’s
an interesting bet,” said Nosneb suddenly. “If you can’t do it, how could I? I
can’t possibly win against you in robots even if I tried. You’re an expert.”
“Tell
you what. I’ll give you one shot. Make it work on one try,” said Fej, still
smiling over Nosneb’s praise.
“Are
you sure? What if my cousin gets it to run?”
“He
can have this robot. That’s only if he could make it work,” Fej replied, highly
stressing the word ‘if’.
“But
surely…” Nosneb feigned hesitation.
“I
don’t think it’s broken. At first I thought that it’s solar powered, but the
panels don’t seem to work. I also checked the circuits, and they’re fine. I
don’t know what’s wrong!”
“All
right,” agreed Nosneb. “Let’s go outside while the sun’s up.”
As
Fej led the way outside, Nosneb quickly deactivated the encryption code and
turned the backup power cell while they weren’t looking. Fauzco’s eyes blinked
once as it looked at Nosneb, waiting for instructions.
“Hush,”
Nosneb signaled. “Wait ‘til your name is called. Do it with style.”
They
headed to some open space near the crater. Nosneb opened a compartment,
revealing a compact grid that could harness solar energy. He positioned the tubular-based
solar panel at an angle to gain maximum exposure from the fading sunset.
Evening was about to come, but with the secret technology of this smartbot at
the time, thirty minutes was enough to recharge it at 50%.
“I
already tried that,” said Fej, “and it didn’t work. I exposed it to sunlight
since I found it.”
“Patience.
We wait until the sun’s down to charge it. It’ll run,” answered Nosneb
confidently.
“How
can you tell? You weren’t sure earlier,” asked Leizah with great curiosity.
“How
about you name the robot? Consider it my thanks,” answered Nosneb.
“Really?
I can? Hurray!” said Leizah, beaming with excitement. “I know! Can I call it
Jean?”
“Jean
it is.”
Rising
from where he stood, Nosneb walked slowly towards Fauzco, the sixth of his
smartbots. “Fauzco, one of the sparkling stars that protects us, people of the
Celestial Era, please grant me some courage. The fated time has arrived.
Awaken, and be known as Jean to Leizah Quinoa.”
As
planned, Fauzco, the smartbot who enjoyed acting much as its young master,
pretended to have just been awakened. It slowly opened its eyes and walked
slowly, like toy robots did in the Celestial Era. Since this era was way past
that timeline, the smartbot appeared more ancient than it had to.
“Creatures
of this time who dare call forth my name without an offering, for what reason
have you awoken me from my slumber?” said Fauzco.
“The
purpose is…”
“…to
play with me! C’mon Jean! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Leizah interrupted.
“Wait!”
called Nosneb as he chased them.
Carrying
the cylinder-shaped robot with her, Leizah was happily smiling as she ran when
Fej stood in her way. Fej, burning with anger, took his charged whip and aimed
to hit Leizah when Nosneb pushed her out of the way. In catching the weapon
with his hands, the excited atoms its motion’s path created released energy.
The impact rippled through the surrounding air and the little prince fell on
his knees.
To be continued on EPITAPH 0.003
