Chapter One

Sirens blared as two figures ran through the deserted hallways of Neopia's most famous museum. The guards were far behind them as they vanished off into the distant with their loot on their backs. It's ironic really. Just yesterday the guards were complaining about nothing exciting happening, but watching "old crap collect dust".

The two figures stopped, both panting and saturated in sweat. The moonlight seemed to reflect off of both them, considering the droplets of sweat were illuminated through the darkness. Both thieves were Kougras. One had dark blue fur with black stripes along his tail and arms. He had black hair that had a stray strand that he had to blow away. He wore a leather top with black skinny jeans and black boots with black fingerless gloves. He had devilish blue eyes shown with deviousness as they shone in the moonlight.

"What a rush," He cried. He then turned towards his partner. "How you holding up, Ashton?" He asked. The other Kougra gave heavy pants in response. He had dark blue hair with black fur and blue stripes. During pants, he tossed a strand of hair back on his head.

"I'm doing good, Blake." He looked back at the museum, more or less a speck in the distance."But can we keep moving? It won't take long for those guards to catch up to us." Blake nodded. The two started moving towards their own little "home" You see, it was an old abandoned clock tower. After years of work, it had finally broken down. Mechanics tried multiple things to get it back on track, but it was just not meant to be. Though it was still as a sort of landmark since it's been here so long.

Guards would always run by because they found it melted into the background, which gave it the perfect hideout for the two mischievous thieves. Though there were problems. The gears inside made it hard for both of them to live in, so they had to move most of them away to make space. After stealing some furniture, the place turned out to be quite nice. Blake then kicks open the door and listens to the slam echo throughout the streets.

"Why you do that is beyond me." Ashton deadpanned.

"You just don't understand what it feels like, man. You just don't understand," Blake said, walking inside. He slams the door with his foot and hops on the couch, beside Ashton. The latter was rolling his eyes at his partner's loot. "So..." He asked. "What are we going to do tomorrow?"

"How about heading to Brightvale? I hear that a guard's been promoted to Queen Fyora status or something." Ashton suggested.

"Good idea. It's been awhile since I've pick-pocketed someone and I've been running low on loot.," Blake said. "Speaking of which, we better check and see what we grabbed." Blake answered. He grabs a random sack from the side of the couch and opens it up.

He started rummaging through the sack. "Okay... I got..." He pulled out a rather fancy landscape painting of the recently fallen Faerieland. "A painting." He then continues to rummage around. He ended up with one of those foreshadowing portraits of Xandra or another Xweetok.

"Another painting."

He kept on rummaging around in the sack. This time, he ended up with a sculpted piece of marble. A sharp intrusion dug into his paw. It was a crown. "A sculpture of King Hagan." He dug deep into the bag and pulled out the final item.

"What the hell? Where have I seen his face before?" He then starts taking out some noticeable features. The strange boots, the same hairdo and then he finally figured out who it was. "Hanso?" He yelled.

"I heard about him. He's that Ixi that helped save the Faeries and all of Neopia; after putting it in jeopardy in the first place." Ashton said nonchalantly. "But then again, you've got no brain to be exact." He said. Blake went from surprised to suspicious then to straight envioius.

"This is shit." He motioned to his handsome self. "How come he gets a statue when I'm obviously more handsome then him?" He complained. Ashton rolled his eyes. He then gets his own bag. It only had one item in it.

Blake shook his head at the sorry sight. "You only grabbed one thing? That's shameful."

"Hey! I would've grabbed more, but somebody went and tripped an alarm." Ashton said. He started rummaging through his bag, his back to Blake.

Blake glared at him. Ashton then pulled out some sort of artifact. It was round in the center and had markings around the circumference. (Math. XD) Interestingly enough, there was a knife sized hole in the middle of it.

Ashton fingered the damage. It looked deep and hazardous. "I wonder where that came from?" He asked.

Blake hopped off the couch. "Who cares? Let's just get some sleep, so we can get ready to set out tomorrow." He then set off towards his room. Ashton rolled his eyes at his partner's lack of curiosity. Wordlessly, he put down the artifact and headed for his own room.

Unbeknownst to both of them, the artifact glowed an ominous green.

End of Chapter One.