Things Lost and Found (a Waglington and Mianite fanfiction)

Chapter 46

"Mate," Steve growled. "You're in for a right rumble."

Good luck finding me, I thought as I muted myself again and picked up another fuel rod and started fixing it in place, glancing at the open manual Sparklez had lent me. Tom had built his reactor in another dimension to power a quarry. Unfortunately, this was also the dimension I came to to test out potentially dangerous spells, since it was mostly uninhabited. I had already fired my spell when I realized my mistake, and now I had an angry zombie expecting his reactor and quarry fixed by the end of the week. I hate technology.

About half an hour of angry searching later, Farmer Steve snapped, "Where the bloody hell are ya?!"

I chuckled darkly before unmuting to tell him innocently, "Nowhere." A string of wrathful expletives that would have made a sailor blush flowed out of the communicator before I replied, "Well if that's how you feel about it, you shouldn't have rejected her, 'mate'."

I was a bit mad myself. Martha hadn't smiled or been herself for several days after he rejected her proposal and abruptly left town. What gave him the right to do that to someone—let alone someone as sweet as Martha—and think they were still his? She was a person, not property. If I helped distract her and make her feel better after that, it was his own fault.

"Fight me like a man!" Steve bellowed.

I really did not feel like fighting just then, and Sparklez sending me a private message only reinforced my desire. "M8, Steve is seriously geared up, rn. I'd run if I were u."

I was about to text back a reply when Steve stopped me cold with a threat, "Wizard, I've got your house rigged. If you don't show up in the next ten minutes to fight me, I'm blowing it sky high." The color drained from my face as I fumbled for my dimension changer.

"No! You leave my tower out of this! What did it ever do to you?" I yelled frantically, my voice rising an octave above normal. True my tower was a piece of work, but it was still mine. I also had all of my expensive and rare spell books and magical components in there and Kevin Jr.!

"You should have thought about that before trying to steal me girl, mate." Steve said condescendingly.

"Well, you should talk to her about that, because she doesn't consider herself yours," I retorted as I quickly made my way back to the Overworld; I materialized outside my tower's front door to find Steve's threat was not idle. He did indeed have a few high explosives wired to the outside of my tower. My eyes widened in panic as I tried to find a way to defuse them safely, not sparing a glance for the man floating in the air behind me.

"You messed with the wrong acolyte, mate." I finally turned around to see Steve floating there with a smug grin under his sturdy thaumcraft armor. He held a steel cleaver to rest on his shoulder in one hand and was tossing a fireball up and down in the other.

"I don't want to fight you, Steve." That was true for more than one reason. I still reached for my spell book though. I had to at least defend myself if he did attack, but I didn't want to seriously hurt him. As far I knew, he didn't have respawn.

"Fine by me," Steve said. I saw him wind up to throw his fireball, and I quickly fired my Nether banishing spell. The fireball flew over my head harmlessly as he vanished from sight. I wondered how his aim could be so bad until I heard a fuse hiss behind me. F*ck. I didn't even have time to turn around before my tower and I blew up.

I respawned at the base of my mountain, aching all over. Steve didn't waste any time in gloating over his communicator. "I've got more where that came from. Now keep away from my girl!"

I was about to come back with something that would have made him even madder, but Lady Ianite showed up then and started ripping Steve a new one over the communicator. I decided whatever punishment she thought of would be far worse than anything I could do and turned off my communicator entirely. My shoulders slumped as I started the slow trek up the mountain to whatever remained of my house, wishing Steve would just disappear on one of his trips again and not come back.

~End Flashback~

I gingerly picked up the straw hat, noting the singed rim and a spot of blood staining it. I immediately regretted ever wishing he would disappear. I guess I should be careful what I wished for.

Hey, his body's not here, and there isn't that much blood. Maybe he's alive, and they took him with them? Memento looked in the direction the scattered footprints led.

Seems like our only lead, I agreed. Looking up to the sky, I urged him on. Let's go while we still have daylight.

So we set off, following the footprints and occasional discarded bit of trash out of the wasteland and into a wooded area until the light failed us. After we set up camp and ate our dinners, I lay in my sleeping bag, staring at the stars. Memento had already fallen asleep beside me, and I every once in a while felt him twitch in some dream. I was tired and emotionally drained as well, but sleep refused to take me. After lying under the turning stars for a few hours without any success, I finally decided to pull out one of my sleeping potions. Might as well get some use out of them. I moved carefully so as not to wake Memento, and drank the potion, only starting to drift off when I drained the last of it.

Okay, thinking ahead, I wanted to ask for suggestions on something. What are your favorite Jordan/S1 Ianite and Jordan/S2 Ianite (&/or Ianita) moments?

My class has started up now. I'm re-tackling the one I failed last semester. -.- *grumbles* Hopefully this attempt will go much better. I'll already sorta know all but the last 2 weeks' worth of material. The really annoying thing is I'll have to redo all of the lab projects. Yay, 7 hours in front of a microscope to look forward to.