The Criminals' Wealth

5 - The Discovery

"What're you doing here??" Ruby asked with her shrill, high pitched voice. Maddie couldn't say any words, she just stared at Ruby with interest, but also fear.

"Uhh," said Lenny. "Hey there... ummm... why did you just throw something potentially sharp at us...?"

"You're intruding on criminal property, that's why!" Ruby replied, while also being annoyed that these kids didn't answer her question.

Roy's eyes widened. "Are you a criminal?" he asked. "It's kinda obvious that I'm a criminal!" said Ruby, crossing her arms. "I just threw a ninja star at you! You should be glad that I intended to miss."

Maddie backed away slowly. "Um... we don't want any trouble, we can leave here right now!" she said quickly. "Now hold on just a minute," said Jenzi, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, making everyone jump. "We can't let you go, you'll tell the police that I'm here, and we can't have that." Ruby nodded in agreement. "So, what should we do?" the rabbit asked.

"We want to be criminals, like you!" Lenny blurted. Maddie looked at her brother in shock. "Lenny!" said Maddie. "We can't just run off with--"

"Yeah, we wanna be reckless and steal things!" interrupted Roy. He gave Maddie a look. She had no clue what her brother and friend were thinking. Jenzi examined the three teenagers that stood before him. The two boys seemed confident in the words that they said, but the girl seemed frightened and shocked.

"What are your names?" Jenzi asked. Lenny stood up to his full height, which was about two inches shorter than Jenzi. "My name's Lenny," he said. "and these people are my sister and my friend, Maddie and Roy." Jenzi held his hand out to Lenny. "I'm Jenzi Backturn, nice to meet you." he said. Lenny shook hands with Jenzi. "And I'm Rubannon Jasphire, but you can call me Ruby." said the grey rabbit.

'This is interesting,' thought Maddie. 'I thought for sure that these guys would be extremely rude and violent! But they're actually kind of civilized... at least, Jenzi is...' Maddie relaxed a little, and she decided to ask a question. "Sooo..." she started. "Do the two of you live here? It seems kind of... old."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," said Jenzi. "But I like that there's almost no one here. Mainly because they think it's haunted. No one is here to be suspicious, and there aren't any other criminals to compete with."

"I see," said Maddie, looking at the building from the inside. It looked like a giant metal room, and the ceiling was at least twenty feet above her head. In one corner there was a lone dusty armchair with a book on it, and a bookshelf next to it. There were white feathers scattered about that area, and she wondered why they were there. Ruby looked at Maddie, then what she was looking at. She threw a ninja star at her, missing her left ear by less than an inch.