The only humans in a world of Magic

Noah looked around the attic. There were boxes with dust on them, crates with more dust, dust, blankets thrown over large objects. He peeked under one of them, revealing a couch. He kneeled near the trapdoor. It was a simple wooden plank with an iron keyhole at the side. A ladder was connected to it in such a matter it would slide out when the trapdoor was opened from downstairs. Through the cracks, a much cleaner hallway with expensive-looking blue carpet was visible below.

Noah frowned. Going downstairs would mean more risk. “Let’s make sure there is nothing of value here. We might not get another chance to look,” he suggested as he stood up. “Maybe there is something in those boxes.” It was unlikely they were going to find something from value here, but he wanted to make sure before getting further into the house. He opened up a box filled with notebooks. “Violet,” he called. “Would this be useful?” He held up one of the notebooks. Like the others it had a red cover and a date written on the front of it, with a cursive nearly intelligible handwriting. The papers inside barely hang on to the cover.
 
Axise accepted the handkerchief gratefully and wiped her nose, then put it in her pocket and looked around. There wasn't much that caught her eye, but she knew most treasures had to be dug for.

She dug around the boxes nearest to her, trying not to make too much noise. There wasn't much of interest where she searched, except for a few leather-bound notebooks and some sort of bejeweled cane or something. She brought these objects back to Noah.

As she approached him, she took out the handkerchief and sneezed into it again, silently cursing the dust. "Do you think these'll be of use?" She asked, flipping through one of the notebooks. The pages were yellowed from dust and age, most likely having not been touched in a while. She loved old books. The smell, the feel, all of it. The smooth paper was covered in near unintelligible cursive, scribbled down hastily with blue ink. She focused on each word, trying to read the handwriting in case there was something useful.
 
Axise attempted to read a few words from the very scribbled book
-Dare Diary, today was my 14th birthday, but things didn't go as planned. Unfortunately, my friends couldn't attend the party. It is no one's fault there was a huge riot that made it too dangerous to go outside. Apart from that, Derek is SO adorable oipn aongo ausbgoa fnavo ibfipva nvbo uv bas ovna! Ain. this is slightly inappropriate-
Words become even more unintelligible, and halfway through the words aren't even written in the same script. Best not to examine someone's thoughts though. Some secrets deserve to be buried in time.

"Noah... That's some kid's old notebook for language class...That might be very useful." Violet said to Noah. But she continued to look around for a little bit. Going through old boxes and so on, "I doubt we'll find anything valuable covered in dust. Science has been focussed on cleanliness for consistency. I read in a 20-year-old textbook."

She looked down the stairs and quickly made her way down. And WOW, full of useful stuff to steal. A couple of vases were right ahead. And there were a few paintings. A nice flower pot too. But there was some specific they were looking for so she opened one room. Nope, bedroom. Still full of good stuff. Then another room, bingo.

This place looked like a mini lab. Engineering with all kinds of sciency stuff. She can tell cause 'lab room' was written inside. There were all sorts of piled notebooks as well, just less dusty. And there were a bunch of instruments to use.
"Okay guys, so this might be the place. Start with the shinest stuff first." Violet said.


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"I'm just telling you. It's a little bit immature to be working with explosives in your mother's house," a well dressed elven teenager said, "This kind of work needs to be done in the university! Under your professor's supervision."

"Don't worry I'll transfer to the university. I just need to get the theory right before anything else." the voice of a slightly older teenager, male elf.

The two were right by the door while carrying a bag of groceries. Smelled like a fine catch of fresh lobster, fish and other sea food from the market.
 
It had been a while since the rest of the group had descended into the apartment. Marth had succumbed to minor boredom, impatientness rising. He had taken a rather comfortable position, hanging and moving his feet off the edge of the roof. Eventually, he had given up attempts to entertain himself, flopping down on the roof tiles, gazing at clouds, and taking a rest that wasn't for once polluted by the dirty air of the slums.

Then, a voice. Two voices, Marth recognized. Coming a little closer than the ever-constant slight murmur of average city dwellers. Marth rose up, peeking off the roof. He was met by the sight of two males standing in front of the door to the apartment. They were about to enter the apartment. Shock hit Marth, who is naive thought had assumed that the apartment dwellers wouldn't be home until later on. The two men were gonna find the rest of the group. They'd be done for.

Marth had to act fast. His body moved faster than his mind, acting on pure wild thoughts and adrenaline. Marth glided down the drainpipe of the apartment, ducking in an alley. He took a deep breath, before racing towards the two men. Marth snatched the bags out of the men's hands, throwing them over his shoulder. He bounded across the streets in hope that the men would follow him. The group would be done for otherwise. He knew he shouldn't look back, but he did. His plan had to work.
 
Noah frowned, tossed the book back in the box and pulled the blanket back over it. He took the cane from Axise and weighed it in his hands. “We can surely get a good price for it, but we are here for science things.” He handed the cane back. “We can’t afford to bring stuff that is not sciency.”

He then walked over to the trapdoor. “I Guess Violet is right. Let’s go downstairs.” He kneeled in front of it and pulled at the trapdoor expecting it to be locked. And initially, it indeed didn’t botch until Noah pulled a little harder and it flew open, sending Noah tumbling backwards.

“There we go. Not locked after all,” he said as he got back to his feet and lowered down the ladder. He followed Violet down to the floor below and like her started to peek through doors to find the lab.

“Good catch,” he complimented Violet as they found the lab. “All right we have about 15 more minutes before the residents would come home. Be careful, not to break anything.”
 
Axise nodded put the objects back where she found them, making sure they were back in their place. The owners didn't need to know they were there. She looked longingly at the cane for a moment, then shook her head and followed the others down to the second floor. Maybe she'd come back for it at some point, if she could.

They quickly found the lab and Axise started rummaging through drawers, looking for something, anything important. She found some important-looking papers, which she immediately brought over to Noah. "What about these?" She asked, handing them to him so she could continue to look.

She found a few cool-looking substances in test tubes, which she carefully capped and put in her bag. Those would definitely be good.
 
"Thief, thief come back there!" the older elf screamed out. At first, he just ran after Marth, leaving the other guy by the door. But it was just after a few seconds of a sprint that he stopped. Already out of breath. These guys aren't exactly used to exercise. Especially since he's a rather skinny guy. "Ugh..."

But luckily, or unluckily...A cop had just managed to walk into the area. So the two elves pointed to Marth who was still just close enough to be noticed. That's all the cop wanted. He immediately blew his whistle and ran. That drew some attention from a few more cops who started to chase Marth.

Unfortunately, the two elves had their key in the stolen bag and neither knew how to break in. So they were just waiting until the cops brought the bag back
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"Ohhhhh!" Violet spoke out. She grabbed a big looking machine. It was a microscope. And a really big one designed to zoom in to really small. Such a model looked to be a more expensive kind. "Yeah, we hit jackpot. Everything here should be very valuable."

And then she found a lab coat. A white dusty thing that had sciency googles with them. "Oh nice," she smirked. So of course she happily tried it on. "You may call me Doctor, Professor Violet."

And then she walked across the room to take a better look. "Student Axise, make sure to use pour the chemicals into smaller test tubes then cap them tightly. So we can get a much wider variety of chemicals," she said to him. And Violet started to collect the beakers, the pipettes and then there was something that caught her mind. A chest.
 
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Noah took the papers from Axise and looked at them. There were a lot of calculations and sketches of some sort of stone and mechanics. “I don’t know. They look like they are about some sort of invention, could be just doodles, too.” He held them up for Violet to see. “Vi, what do you think?”

“Vi?” he turned around to Violet, sort of hug/holding some lab equipment. “I don’t think we can get that out of here without being seen,” he remarked, but she was already off dressing up in a very white not useable for camouflage or roof climbing lab coat and goggles.

“Vi, we don’t have time…” he started, but Violet being Violet was already ordering Axise around gathering the chemicals, efficient in her own special way. He sighed, rolled up the papers and put them in his bag. Then as he looked for more papers his eye fell on a closet bolted to the wall. As he opened it, he discovered more journals, similar to those upstairs, but less fallen apart. He put his hands on his sides and did a step back. These could be useful, but it would be too much to bring along, especially if they wanted to bring Vi’s microscope.
 
One of the men had begun giving Marth chase. Marth attempted to slow his pace slightly to give the man the impression that he was almost about to catch him, prompting him to chase him further. He ducked behind a corner to continue his chase before finding out the elf had stopped running. "Damn scientists cant run let alone sprint!", Marth huffed to himself, thinking it was over now.

So why weren't they going back inside? Marth peeked his head out of the corner as something clinged in his hands. Their keys. His face lit up once again, understanding the implication of him having their keys. He'd allow the elves to deal with the vastly confusing authority system in order to buy some time. By the time they would regain control of their house, they'd be gone.

But from the corner of his eye, Marth caught something else. Something moving, and fast. He heard the blow of a whistle as tightly suited officers began sprinting his way. "Crap crap crap crap," Marth swore as he began to run once more. He ducked into the alley he had begun to enter before, weaving through various crates, plants, and other miscellaneous objects. The bags were beginning to weigh him down, he couldn't outrun this many cops at once. He stuck his hand into the grocery bag he had stolen, coming in contact with a slimy scaled sea creature. His face turned in disgust as he flung a few slippery fish at the faces and feet of the cops. He slipped through some boxes and gardening equipment, throwing the objects behind him, the metal rakes and shovels clanging to the ground in front of the approaching cops. He hoped some would be caught in the tightly entangled mess he had made. He also hoped he'd know the way back after he had finished dealing with this mess.
 
Axise smiled and collected the chemicals, arranging them carefully so the tubes wouldn't break. Once she had finished that, she scanned the room for anything else of interest when something caught her eye.

She carefully approached the desk in the corner and picked the object up. It was no bigger than her palm and had a shiny gold color to it. It wasn't heavy, but it still had weight for something its size. Axise fumbled with it for a moment before it popped open, revealing what looked to be some sort of clockwork power source. But she knew it wasn't a pocket watch, it had different markings and no hands.

Axise brought the object over to Noah and handed it to him. "It looks like it's powered by clockwork, but it's not a pocket watch. See those markings? Those aren't numbers. They might be some sort of rune or something? What do you think?" She asked, thinking back on all the books she had read about anything that could possibly have explained the markings.
 
"Good eye Axise. I'm not sure what it is, but it could be very valuable. SO let's take it," she quickly responded. Violett was still feeling fashionable in the dusty old lab coat. She decided to take a closer look at what Axise had picked up. So Violet stepped closer and loved over Noah's shoulders. She wanted to see what it would do if it does anything at all. She even reached to just give it a little touch. Yet nothing happened. It looked cool enough though.

"Okay listen guys...We should begin packing up. The longer we stay here, the more at risk Marth is, since he's out there keeping watch." Violet said, "Do you agree? Leader Noah?"

So Violet continued to look around a little, to just find one final object that they could potentially steal. And she came across another journal. This time it was next to ink and a feather, so she assumed it to be a newer bit of research. So maybe it was newer. Violet opened it to take one quick look. And then she dumped it into the bag. Then she looked at other clockwork items and shoved them into the bag as well. That should just about be almost everything.

But wait, the lab had one other door to the side. It could have even more things to steal
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The cops were slowned down at the very least. A lot of them were even too big and a little bit to cubby to fit into the alley way with all of the junk there. So for now Marth had managed to get away from them. But for now at least. The local community had gotten alerted to the little thief so now everyone was on high alert. Many residents started to lock their doors and close their window shut, while others decided to patrol the area to find the little bag thief.

One such vigilante elf had managed to meet Marth at the other side of the alley. "Come here you little bugger," the elf said. He was the typical elf dad. Chubby with a neatly combed mustash. Wearing a generalize dlabour uniform and he still had some coal dust on his fingers. "Just return the groceries and no one would hurt you."
 
Noah took the clockwork from Axise and held it so Violet could see it too. “Indeed, good work Axise,” he agreed with Violet, and carefully put the clockwork into his bag.

He nodded at Violet. “We don’t have much time before they come home.” He piled a collection of smaller versions of Axise clockwork into the bag. “How far are you with filling your bags?” He looked around at the others. Axise had already gathered a significant amount of chemicals, which may or may not be valuable. Violet, still in a labcoat, carried also a more and more filled bag.

Then he saw Violet stop and look. A door. They hadn’t had much time, but what if behind this door was what they were sent here for. He stepped forward, waited, listened, opened the door a crack, peeked inside, and finally when he assured himself it was safe, opened it completely.
 
Marth had gotten a chance to breathe after his nimble escape. For the moment. A city dweller elf had cornered him, blocking his path from the other side of another alley that he had slipped into. Marth was getting worn out by all the groceries he had been hauling even if most of the contents had been significantly reduced.

The elf spoke to him, demanding the usual surrender. Marth panted as he spoke, "you dont look like you need the groceries any more than those coppers did. Everyone just likes to make big deals about everything in this city". Marth sensed that his words weren't going to get him further with the unrest he'd caused. He also needed to start finding his way back to his friends.

Marth took one last breath, heaving a deep sigh to hopefully propel him to run for a little while longer. He tightened his muscles, grocery bags in hand. Dust parting from underneath the boy's feet he launched into a full sprint at the elf. If he could reach a drainpipe past the alley, he could climb back up to the rooves, he'd be safe there. His steps began parting further distances into leaps as the distance between him and the elf began closing. Right as the impact was inevitable, he launched himself sideways, across the alley wall. His foot caught the wall for a minuscule of a second as Marth squared his height to match the elf. He swung the grocery bag in his hand, aiming for the head of the elf.

Marth didn't have time to see whether the impact had left the elf prone. He dropped his bags stumbling to the other side of the alley, past the elf. The impact rattled his ankle bones as he scrambled up and made his way to the drainpipe. Marth began scaling the drainpipe to the rooftops above. His muscles clenched as he could rest his legs. Marth scaled the building in hopes that he was in the clear.
 
Axise stopped and surveyed the whole room to see if there was anything they missed. Her eyes landed on Noah and Violet, whose gaze she traced to a door off to the side. "Good find!" She exclaimed quietly, striding over to the door where the two resided.

Once it was opened, Axise was the first one in. She's the strength of the group, so she decided to go first in case there was anything dangerous. To her, it looked like a storage room, but it could be something else. So, she started rummaging through boxes looking for something, anything.
 
"This seems a little bit more relevant," Violet said. First, she looked at all of the dumb and sciency stuff and books. This room was old, really old. A bunch of boxes for storage and a single blackboard with unfinished equations. It seemed to catch her attention, she couldn't just leave the equation unfinished. "Oh look, here's a derivative someone didn't get the chance to finish. Let's see (dy/dx^2) blah, blah, blah... equals." She grabbed the chalk. "confused curses This doesn't look right...I'll just switch the 'x' here and 19.6."

She wrote on the blackboard and then stole all of the chalks and all of the books here. The entire board was full of scrap, unfinished equations like someone was trying to deduce something. All the tools here looked really valuable so fun to steal. Violet was here grabbing mostly the books and so on. "Jackpot...Everything here is math stuff, long abandoned but cool. We can grab lots of stuff here."

She turned to the blackboard one more time. "Hey Axise, an expensive-looking chest. You think you can grab it?"
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Well just bad luck, the elf just ended up getting covered in minced meat and sausages. The elf wasn't hurt, but just having a bad day now. "And I just got a new suit. Dam kids!" the elf complained. But it wasn't worth chasing Marth. Besides, no one here was in shape enough to really chase him. So now, the cops just blew their whistles and tried to keep an eye on Marth.

All the attention was on Marth. But there was nothing the cops could do. They certainly didn't bother climbing. However, all the drama began to attract some more attention. More cops and more local elves began to surround the apartment. They were whispering and talking to each other. Creating just enough noise for the group inside to hear what was going on. Violet in particular stepped towards the window to see the commotion.

"LOOK, SOMEONE'S STILL ROBBING THE HOUSE!" an elf screamed.

"Oops..." Violet just blabbed.
 
Noah followed the others into the room, gathering the important looking notebooks, quickly his bag filled up. He hoped somewhere in the pile of paper and mechanics there was something to please the mob leader. It would have been much easier if he had told them what they were looking for.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Axise was also busy looking for a good find. Although Violet seemed to be distracted once more scribbling things on a chalkboard.

“Vi, we don’t have time for maths now. Here put this in your bag,” he called at her as he pushed a notebook in her direction. He nodded pleased when she continued pilling books and chalks in her bag. He doubt the chalk would be important, but this wasn’t the time to argue.

He looked up as he heard screams from the outside, pressing his finger to his lip to indicate the rest the be silent.

“Damnit,” he cursed below his breath as he pulled Violet away from the window. “We need to go. Hurry, hurry. Leave the chest,” he said as he ushered Violet and Axise back to the laboratory.
 
Axise had found a few more important-looking things, and stuffed them in her bag carefully. She noticed the chest just as Violet pointed it out, and moved to open it.

But then, she heard screams outside. Noah ushered her and Violet out quickly and quietly, forced to leave the ornate chest behind. Once they got back into the lab, Axise turned to Noah. "So, how do we get out? There are so many people out there," She whispered, fidgeting with the strap of her bag. Situations like these always made her anxious. She had only ever been caught a few times, and it never ended well.
 
Marth gripped the drainpipe, scaling up the dense maze of houses. He felt like his breathing has stopped, and only after he had scaled up to the rooftops and seen the elf scrambled on the ground, had he let out a large breath.

He picked up a steady pace to give himself a break from the constant sprinting during his nimble escape. He found himself leaping over rooftops in a quite steady jog, his eyes searching for the direction of the house. Marth found that, unlike the city's less shiny underbelly, the modern and well-crafted tops all looked the same. Roof tile colors blended in together like a dense dessert with curved tops resembling bouncy dunes. Marth gazed around aimlessly, struggling to find patterns of his escape route, his navigation skills slowly failing him.

If it hadn't been for the growing shouts and commotion across the city, Marth wouldn't have found his way back to the apartment. He had heard loud yells and had followed them in hopes of them leading to his friends. He knew from experience that commotion followed his family, and they would often find themself in the middle of it.

As he neared the apartment, he found himself ducking as the masses of people grew. Policemen, citizens, and the two scientists he had snatched the bags from. Screams were being targeted at the house. Had they been discovered? Marth made his way, nearly crawling to not be discovered to the window he had started from. He looked down to the empty attic, recognizing that the others must have still been downstairs.

If Marth could have paced along the rooftop, he would have. In the peculiar and deadly situation, he wasn't sure whether this could have been one of those "last resort" situations which Noah always talked about. Should he jump down and go warn them? But what if they already knew of the commotion? What if they needed help getting the materials and goods up back through the window? Then again, what if they had no idea police would soon burst in? Marth was in a state of growing panic. But his reasoned side vouched for him. Noah had told him to stay put, to not come down. Marth decided against his reckless idea and stayed on the rooftop. He began by whispering hastily down to the house from the window, hoping he would be heard by his friends. He escalated his calls to yells, hoping to be drowned by the commotion in front of the house. During of his panicked yells, he witnessed a flock of pigeons scrambling into the air a couple of rooves down the street, most likely startled by the rising commotion of the area. Marth stopped yelling for a moment. He came upon the memory of another important reminder from Noah. If anything were to go wrong, the emergency code sound would be a pigeons caw. Marth shook back into action, enacting an orchestra of pigeon calls down to the house.
 
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"We escape the same way we got in. From the roof," Violet immediately responded. With all of the running they're going to need to do, she started to only take some of the bare minimum stuff. Especially the items that weren't very fragile, that included some of the books. The chest itself would be too heavy. So she just dumped some contents in there to carry, better some than absolutely nothing. She looked to Axise, holding her hand tightly, and firmly. "Marth is waiting just outside, he'll pull you out first and we would all make it back home. Don't worry."

The crowd was getting a bit rowdier outside, but luckily it was mostly just neighbourhood drama.

SMASH! SMASH!

Violet looked outside to see what was happening. Oh boy, one of the residents was trying to break the door open with an axe. The door was made from thick wood, difficult to break through when locked so the elves had no choice but to try and destroy the door with raw violence. The humans still had some minutes left before they break through though. None of the elves had excellent upper body strength, even the cops.

But at that moment, she heard Marth's pigeon calls. That's good, it means he's just fine and ready to go too. So Violet held Axie's hand and quickly rushed her back to the attic, hoping that Marth would be there.

"Marth my man, help Axise up please," Violet spoke up. First thing was to get the youngest kids to escape.

SHASHY SMASH SMASH

Someone a little bit more fit was starting to make more progress. The door was almost wide open now.
 
Noah nodded at Violet as she explained the plan to Axise. “They won’t be able to follow us over the rooftops, but we have to be fast if they catch us before we are out we are in trouble,” he said as he ushered them through the hallway back up to the attic. Halfway down the hallway, a loud banging vibrated through the house.

“Hurry,” he called as he half pushed Axise and Violet up the ladder before him. Then he heard a voice from above, at first he thought he had imagined it, but as it got louder it was unmistakably Marth’s. He followed Axise and Violet closely on the ladder, eager to get to him as soon as possible. Marth was panicking and he knew panic was rarely useful, even lethal in situations like this.

He took a deep breath recollecting his thoughts, and then a louder crash downstairs followed by the breaking of wood boomed through the house. They didn’t have much time. He took out his rope ready to use when they are on the rooftops, as he made his way up, to Marth who now was using the correct warning signal.
 
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