Arthur was enjoying his well earned break, at least well earned in his mind. From his perspective, all things earned by him were earned in a matter deemed 'well', but the same could rarely be said for the rewards of others. This place would fall apart were it not for his diligent efforts, and as a result there's nothing wrong with taking the occasional break to catch up on social media. While this is quite true, some parts of this theory more than others, the fact that this break had started roughly forty minutes ago calls into question just how hard working and essential his presence truly is.
He is brought back to reality, a place one rarely wishes to return to, by a deafening crash. For the briefest of moments he considers simply ignoring it, letting one of the peons handle the matter, but his desire to place blame and hurl verbal abuse at said blamed individual ends up winning out. He curses under his breath, rises to his feet and steps outside ready to berate someone, whether it's a customer, an employee, or a natural physical law. Someone is going to get an earful, either way.
Minutes before...
"Maybe we should wait until it leaves?" Mia says, as the three mice look down at the human who doesn't look to be on the verge of going anywhere anytime soon. "If we're patient, we might get a better opportunity."
"Or, they'll get up and take the treasure with them when they leave. Sure, the situation will likely change if we wait long enough, but there's no guarantee it will change for the better. The treasure is right in front of us, and who knows how long it will stay that way." Kay grumbles back.
"You're not seriously considering fighting a Maker, are you? For one thing, that's really bad luck. For another, you'll probably die." Fred says, even if, contrary to his words, his mind is concocting elaborate fantasies of the triumphant victory, no matter how implausible the more reasonable portion of his brain tells them they may be.
"Of course not. What we need is a distraction. Just enough to make that creature curious enough to step away, but not urgent enough that they'll bother taking the treasure with them." Kay says.
"...then one of us grabs it, and hides again before they get back. It's pretty small from their perspective, so I'll bet they won't even notice it's missing right away." The armored mouse replies. "They'll need to be a fast runner, though. As for the distraction, something large knocked off of one of the outside shelves should do it. Someone strong can handle that."
"I guess that leaves me out." Mia murmurs.
While neither physically strong nor agile, the young sorceress does end up with an important job: lookout. She is to keep her eyes on the doorway, just in case someone returns early and calls out a warning. A good idea, in theory, even if it didn't end up working out quite so well in practice.
The nameless mouse volunteers for distraction duty, with Frederich insisting that he can outrun almost any mouse even in his relatively heavy armor. Mia has some serious misgivings about this plan, of course, but keeps them to herself. Even if she had a better idea, she'd be too shy to state it, and as it happens, she doesn't have one anyways. Kay once again leaps through the doorway from one shelf to another, looking for just the right item. A single small object won't do, it would hardly make any noise at all, and there's a good chance someone else will deal with it instead. Similarly, she doesn't want to cause anything destructive enough to raise suspicions. Sure, even a single object flying from the shelf entirely on its own is questionable, but ideally the Makers will be more focused on cleaning it up than worrying about whar exactly had caused it, at least for a few minutes.
She needed something that would make a lot of noise and ideally keep them busy for, well, for as long as possible. The longer the better, really. After minimal searching, she found her target: A blue plastic tub full of metal bolts which just happened to be placed precariously close to the ledge of the shelf. This was by necessity, the container just a little bit too large to fit on the storage device naturally, but still stable enough that it wouldn't fall on its own. Unless, of course, it had a little help. The naked mouse slides in behind it, between the plastic container and the white painted wall, pushing her back against the plastic, looking over her shoulder at the rest of the store to make sure nobody happens to be looking her way. Nobody is. She grits her teeth, giving a hard push. Each of those metal bolts are rather heavy. Not too much so for a mouse to reasonably carry, of course, but they aren't light either, and the container is filled to the brim with them, the container a mouse's height and a good several lengths in either direction. It requires a lot of force to move, more than can be reasonably expected from a single, ordinary mouse. Given how easily she could carry her axe which Frederich struggled with, however, it was clear that for whatever reason, her strength was far from ordinary.
Little by little the container slid further and further until the intense effort required to move it vanished entirely and gravity took over. At this point, Kay knew she had less then a second until a whole lot of Makers eyes were pointed in her general direction. They might not be actively searching for a mouse, but that wouldn't help her much if she remained in clear view where the blue plastic bin had originally sat. She dives between a set of boxes even as the deafening clang of countless metal bits chiming against the hardened floor fills her ears, not stopping there, climbing down two layers of the shelf, finding a space where she can just barely see outside, reasoning that it would render her far less visible.
All the while, the other two mice similarly climb down their individual shelves, bringing themselves just a little closer to the wooden desk. The Maker sat at it curses, stands up with seemingly considerable effort, and angrily stomps back into the store, immediately yelling at the first person they see, whether they are to blame for the incident or not. They're not, of course. Once fully around the corner, Frederich leaps from the shelf, tumbling onto the table. He finds himself disoriented, everything looking so much bigger from down here, briefly losing his bearings, but it's only a matter of a couple of seconds before he spots the target: The incredibly shiny flat piece of metal, which he scurries over to, and grabs in both hands. He smiles, admiring his reflection within it, only for a moment before turning to leap back onto a lower shelf when a massive shadow encompasses him. He leaps to one side quick enough so that the huge hand doesn't come down on his body, but it does catch his tail.
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What was Mia doing all this time? Her job, exactly as instructed, of course. Her eyes were locked on the open doorway, ready for any hint of a Maker passing by. What neither she nor her two compatriots had considered, was that this office had two doors. Sure, the heavy metal one looked more like an immovable vault than a proper passageway, and one would imagine that even were someone outside it preparing to enter, it would be a slow and noisy affair. This didn't prove to be the case. A young staffer just happened to be finished their smoke break at just the right (or in this case, wrong) moment.
Mia calls out in alarm, purely because that was the plan if she had seen anyone. This plan was based on her seeing a Maker before they had seen Frederich or anyone else, much less captured one of them. She has no idea what to do, but fortunately it seems that her body does, as she reacts purely on instinct, leaping down onto the desk, a further jump than she thought she was capable of making, before locking eyes with the thin, confused human. She raises her staff over her head and calls out "Orbs of light!" Which sends out six spheres of bright blue energy which float from the head of the staff, and drift upwards towards the still confused oversized face of the human before each one bursts into a blinding spray of light.
That's when Kay arrives. Her keen ears heard Frederich's surprised squeak even from outside the office and knew something had gone wrong. With stealth no longer an option, she leaps down to the floor, runs in through the open doorway and enters the scene with three jumps, one onto the seat of the plush chair, one onto the surface of the desk and finally, one more, her weapon raised, which she slams down hard onto the hand. She takes no time to consider how much damage she wants to inflict, rightfully figuring that she couldn't afford to pull her punches in this situation. The bright lights stung at the Makers eyes, as expected, but it's the heavy blow from the axe that finally makes the human release poor Frederich's tail.
"Come on!" Kay calls, the time for stealth having passed.
All three make a beeline out of the office and towards the front door of the store. For all of Mia's insecurity over her own athleticism, she manages to jump down from the desk and, full sprint, keep pace with the other two, just barely bringing up the rear. By this point, it's clear to the Makers within the store that something is going on, even if they aren't entirely sure what. Despite their comparably massive sizes, most of them step away from the path of the running mice, with only a single human, the overweight office-dweller even considering giving chase. Even with the huge stride of the Makers, mice are still faster runners so it would be an easy race, aside from one non-trivial hurdle: The front door is shut tight.
There really isn't a back-up plan here. Turning and fighting the Makers is, quite obviously, not an option, nor will hiding do any good at this point. All they can do is keep running forward and hope for the best. Thankfully, 'the best' is exactly what happens. Just before the three are about to slam directly into the metal frame of the door, a new customer arrives, stepping onto the rubber mat before nearly falling backwards when three mice rush directly into their path. Even as they reach the outside world, the three don't stop, racing across the parking lot, up over the curb and deep into the grass before they all collapse, panting, looking back, confident that they are no longer being followed.
Meanwhile, the large human glowers at the entrance, having not put together the fact that the mice had toppled his precious merchandise, much less stolen the spare office key, instead simply angered that such pests had dared to enter his inner sanctum. As he stands there, a thinner man in a white shirt approaches from behind him, the back of his thumb in his mouth, sucking at the blood from the wound. It's small enough to not require stitches, but considering where the weapon came from, a tetanus shot would probably be well advised.
"Did... did that mouse just cut me with an axe?" He asks, incredulously.
"Just get back to work." The larger man grumbles, having no time for such nonsense.
Kay, Frederich and Mia all lay within the tall grass, the storefront barely in view.
"I was sure I was going to die!" Frederich says between quick breaths.
"Did you get the treasure?" Kay asks, trying to sound considerably more relaxed, even if she's hardly feeling it.
Fred grins, lifting up the strange metal ornament. "I don't know what this is. It's got these sharp points here, so maybe it's a weapon? Doesn't look all that dangerous, though, and really awkward to use."
"No, I've seen pictures of these before. It's a 'key'. They're used to open things." Mia says, taking even longer to sputter out the words, her lack of stamina finally catching up to her.
"What, like a door knob? I don't see how this would open anything." the armored mouse replies.
All this while, Kay is simply transfixed on the sight of the object, the meticulously carved bit of metal bathed in a pure, green energy. She turns towards the store to see that the green pillar of light has since vanished, and the aura from this treasure, this 'key' is neither blinding nor painful, it's simply warm, soothing and inviting. She lets out a sigh, turning away from the pink and blue pillars, and closes her eyes, embracing the calming darkness which she hasn't been able to appreciate in what feels like forever.
"Are we sure this is the treasure?" Fred asks. "Sure, it looks pretty fancy, but not that much different from all the other stuff in there."
"Yeah, that's it." Kay says in a soft voice, taking the heavy metal bit from the other mouse's outstretched palms.
"Alright! So... what does it do?" He asks. Kay doesn't respond for a few reasons. One, she's still regaining her breath, two, she's still taking in the serenity of the moment after the chaos of just moments before, and three, she has absolutely no idea. Aside from the bright color and the unnatural warmth, she feels nothing in particular from the key. It doesn't fill her head with knowledge, or offer her any sort of grand, new power, but that's fine. Even if it does nothing at all, that's somehow enough for her.
"We probably need all three for anything to happen." Mia finally speaks up. "It would make sense for any sort of significant power to work this way. The world has been heavily explored and if all it took was finding a single object, well, someone surely would have by now. It's getting all three together that's the difficult part."
"What, more difficult than that? I wasn't planning to facing Makers on our first outing." the armored mouse says.
"Well, the other two won't necessarily be harder than this one, but we can't expect them to be too easy. Even if they weren't well guarded at first, I'm sure someone has found them and they are heavily protected now." the young sorceress says.
"I just hope the next one isn't another stealth mission. I'm in the mood for a proper fight!" Fred grins.
"Um..." Mia replies, not so much at him and his words but the general situation. She looks about the grass, which throughout the entire journey has been filled with the dull eyes of assorted fiends who completely ignored their presence. Now, countless creatures of varying colors, shapes and sizes all stare at the three. Significantly sooner than anticipated, Frederich finds his wish granted.