3.1 - Finder's Keepers

It was around 7:00 PM when Elaina and I infiltrated my old apartment complex. Elaina originally proposed that we Shadow Travel inside the building, but I neither knew what she meant nor did I want to take a risk with any transportation by Magic just yet.

Maybe some other time.

Luckily for us, we entered the complex through a back door to one of the kitchens for a lobby restaurant. The lobby itself was dark and devoid of the once-posh-looking furniture that reflected the kind of "high-rise high life" style of the Sunshine Luxury Apartments. Funnily enough to me, the place looked more like a bastion for the shadows. There were several bands of police tape that blocked off the main entrance doors, and even some of the old offices were labeled as off-limits.

We arrived at the elevators and I reached for the Up button, when Elaina held up her hand.

"Wait, what're you doing? Ain't this place out of commission? They probably cut off all the power already."

"So?" I raised an eyebrow, and I wondered if she could see my eyes in the darkness. "Wouldn't hurt to give it a—"

DING!

The elevator door slid open and its bright ceiling lights illuminated the ominous lobby.

"—try," I finished. I turned to my friend and smirked. "So, were you thinking of taking the stairs?"

"Funny," Elaina rolled her eyes. "Ok, Lucky Shot, come on."

We got off on the thirty-fourth floor, and as soon as the elevator doors slid open, there we were—back at the same hallway where we met two weeks ago. Elaina snapped her fingers and her right hand emitted a cyan glow, allowing us to see in the dark hallway.

I stepped carefully along the now-wooden floor, aware that the workers were in the middle of reconstructing the damaged walls and rooms around us.

But when we finally arrived at the large hole just before the blown out entrance to my old apartment, I breathed a sigh of relief.

"All right, here we are," I turned to Elaina. "Any ideas on how to locate the bomb fragment?"

She frowned. "Um...I'm open to ideas. I was hoping you'd know what to do once we got here."

I squinted at her.

"Kidding," she stuck her tongue out at me. "Gimme a second..."

Elaina unbuckled her Spellbook sitting at her left waist and it floated into the air in front of her.

I folded my arms and glanced around, waiting impatiently to see what Elaina could do.

"Ah, ok, here it is!" Elaina perked up. "The Item-Finding Spell! Ah, and as for the incantation..."

My eyebrow twitched. "That sounds super convenient for a name. And...incantation? So, you gotta say like a poem or something to get your Magic to work? Hmph. Why not just give it a word you can say on the fly to make it shorter, like...I dunnno...Acio!"

Elaina looked up from her Spellbook and stared at me for a solid five seconds. "Is that even a language?"

"Uh, I dunno, I just thought of it now. Could you at least, like, abbreviate your spells to make them easier to cast?"

Elaina sighed. "That's not how my magic works, Jace."

"How does your magic work exactly?"

"It can be...a bit complicated."

"How complicated?"

Again, she just stared at me, dumbfounded at my questions. "Look...Just leave the Spellcasting to me, homie. Hang out for a little and relax."

"R-Right. Sorry..."

Elaina took a step back from her floating Spellbook and sat down on the cold hallway rug. She weaved her arms a few times in a strange motion. Her movement was slow, until she brought her hands together in a praying gesture. She closed her eyes and placed her hands on the rug.

She exhaled and spoke softly in the darkness.

"Oh, humble Spirits, observe my mind's eye,

And return to me...that which is lost..."

I was half-excited and half-curious to see how Elaina's Magic worked like this.

She kept her eyes closed, and after looking around a few times following her incantation, nothing seemed to happen.

I turned back to Elaina. "Um...Are you sure that Spell worked—?"

"Shh!"

"Hm?"

"Need to...focus, please..."

I sighed.

Just then, I heard several objects move below us. One item obviously sounded like a chair sliding along a wooden surface—probably a kitchen or living room? Another was either a toolbox or some other container. Then there was the sound of several chunks of plaster and concrete falling along a pile of debris.

Then, I heard the faint sound of something tiny and metallic sliding on the same wooden surface below us. I glanced around, alert.

I pressed my left ear on the floor. "Is that...it?" I had to ask.

Elaina didn't answer at first. She kept her eyes closed and her arms and hands still outstretched, keeping them on the hallway floor.

I walked over to her.

She furrowed her brows as she kept her eyes shut. Even in the dim glow of the Moon, Elaina's face was covered with sweat—her focus unbroken. "Just...about...got it!"

The sound of a tiny metal fragment clanged on the floor of my empty, half-destroyed apartment.

I rushed over to the bomb fragment as it floated up through the hole in the ground—imbued with an outline of cyan light. I placed my hands together and held it gently as it rested on my palm. Picking it up between my thumb and index finger. I raised it to the distant city lights to stare at the fragment's irregular shape.

Elaina appeared next to me. "This is it, right?"

"Right," I said in disbelief. Though, admittedly, I had no observable way to confirm if this shard really was a piece of the bomb. I could only trust in Elaina's Magic at the moment.

But I pushed aside any of my lingering skepticism over her powers to relish in our small, shared victory.

"Your Magic...certainly is something," I said.

My friend smirked as her Spellbook closed by itself, levitating next to her. "I aim to please."

I met Elaina's eyes. "So then, Tracing Magic's next, right?" I held out my hands, hoping she'd take the fragment and do whatever funky hand-weaving or Spellcasting again.

But Elaina raised her hands. "Whoa, easy there, tiger. Maybe we should head back to my place first before I try that. Right here's not really a good spot."

"Right, right, sorry," I nodded twice, securing the fragment in the left zipped pocket of my jacket. "I just can't believe we—uh, I mean, you found it! Let's—"

Someone's footsteps echoed down the hallway.

Elaina and I turned quickly.

"And I can't believe..." the deep voice of an older male spoke up. "...I found the both of you."

A dark-skinned man wearing a forest-colored t-shirt and camo pants turned the corner down the hall from us, blocking the elevator. On his shoulders were two spiked plates of dirtied bronze armor. His muscular arms were well-toned, and his stubble-bearded, brown-eyed face glared at us as he stepped into the moonlight with his black military-style boots. On his wrists were unusually large braces that stretched up halfway along his forearms. Each brace had three circular tiers with spikes jutting out from their curved surfaces. Within the braces, I saw the makings of a few wires, gears, and...the orange flickering of tiny embers at work.

"Guess the Doc was right," the man grinned. "You would be dumb enough to come back here, after all. Lucky I found you snoopin' around first! On top of that, you even brought Anomaly with ya!" He cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, and the embers within his unusually large wrist braces grew with intensity. "The boss'll be very pleased..."

"You got a name, tough guy?" I called out to him.

The man glared from Elaina to me. "Lawrence Zodilo. Sergeant First Class and Engineer for the Ave Strata Elite Guard. Well, make that former to both. Now...you're face-to-face with The Rumbler."

Elaina snorted with laughter when he said his Abnormal name and tried to compose herself.

I couldn't say I've never heard people introduce themselves weirdly before.

"What brings you here?" I asked the former soldier.

"Could ask you two kids the same thing. There ain't a reason I could think of for why you'd come back to this waste of a place. Unless...you wanted to retrieve something."

"I'm surprised you can even think," Elaina remarked. "You said your boss sent you here. Mind telling us who that is?"

The Rumbler balled his fists and reeled back his right arm. As he did so, the circular spiked braces on his wrists spun around wildly. "Doctor Molecruel sends his regards."

He brought his right fist down, and the entire apartment floor shook as a violent shockwave of wood, steel, and torn up rugs cascaded towards us.

The floor beneath us cracked violently, and we fell through, landing on the 33rd floor in someone else's abandoned living room.

When we raised our heads, most of the central hallway from the 34th floor was gone—collapsed into a concrete ramp of rubble.

The Rumbler walked down the slope, cracking his knuckles again and causing the embers in his braces to burn even brighter.

"Thought you might've been a challenge, Vector," he grinned. "Where'd you even get your name as the 'most infamous,' anyway?"

He readied his left fist.

Elaina stood up beside me and weaved her arms twice in a circular motion. At once, a transparent, oval shield of cyan light appeared in front of her, and I allowed my eyes to dart around the abandoned living room.

I glanced back at the Rumbler and waited for him to be on the same surface as us.

As soon as he stepped off the debris ramp, I reached for the nearest objects I could find—a burnt out wooden desk, a chair with three legs, and an incinerated sofa—and imbued them with as strong of a trajectory I could muster.

First, the desk slid quickly towards the Rumbler, then the broken chair, and finally the burnt sofa.

"Nngh?!" he grimaced.

Before he could punch at the floor again, he had to dive out of the way as the desk slammed into the base of the debris ramp, followed by the chair. But as the sofa got to him, the Rumbler jumped out of the way and fell against the wall to his left.

He regained his balance as he reached along the wall. Then, I saw the spark of innovation on his face, and he grinned at us.

"Hrrgh...HYAAA!!" The Rumbler pulled back his right fist again. His spiked braces rotated rapidly once more, and he punched into the wall.

It exploded as another seismic discharge gunned straight for me and Elaina—cascading sideways.

I ran behind Elaina as she raised her arms to expand the already thin-looking shield, and I wondered if it could even resist the shockwave.

Elaina slid back on the flat living room floor as the wall shockwave crashed into her shield, destroying it. She fell to one knee, and I could see her arms shaking furiously from the momentum.

Part of me wanted to reach out to her and dispel it from her arms, but I knew better than to even touch someone else's skin. There was no room, no time for accidents.

"Ela!" I called out. "Are you all ri—?!"

"F-Fine!" she answered. "F-Focus...on...Rumbler!"

I turned back to where our enemy had been and a cloud of dust and smoke now obscured our vision.

Then the Rumbler emerged, staring daggers into me, and brought his fist down once more.