"Huh, really?" Sis whispered. "Well, s'posse always I'm down to interfere with officers of the law. What's the plan?" She said, stretching a bit. 

"Not sure, honestly." I said. I figure we can just go in there, see what's up, and, should we get caught, things get hairy, we just run away, hope that they just see it as a childish prank or something. 

But, first things first, a little scouting. I put my hands together. I put a hole on the back of my hand, and I tucked my hand down near my stomach, so that, hopefully, no one could see what I'm up to. The other hole I put, like, way, way up there. Well, maybe 2 'way'-s is a bit much. It was up there, though. 

Point is, I got a birds eye view of the place. No obvious alternate point of entry or anything, except maybe a window on the other side. Cant discern anything else from up here, though I do take particular mental notes of areas with large concentrations of guards, especially ones that seem like they're just chatting with each other. 

"Alright, let's move." I said, trying to sound like an action hero, and closing the holes.

Sis nodded, we made our way to one of the many secluded dark alleys this place has to offer. Man, I owe the city planner a drink. A nonalcoholic one, because, regardless of what Sis claims this world says, I still think of myself as a child. Just a really cool one, with rad superpowers.

Once I was fairly certain nobody, or, at least, nobody that would care, was nearby, I reopened the holes, this time with one up in the air near us, at around ear level, and one really small one on the ground in one of the areas of interest. Hopefully, some unsuspecting guards will be idly talking about the situation, and we'll have more information to go off of. Best part is, they won't know a thing. It's the perfect crime.

Well, this isn't actually a crime as far as I know, at least not yet anyways, but... Whatever.

Alright, here goes...

"Man, I'm hungry. When's lunch? Can we get lunch yet?"

"Gregg, we got donuts not even half an hour ago. How the f**k are-"

Okay, moving on, next spot next spot. See if the guys under the logo are still chatting...

"Holy s**t dude, you gotta check this out, that chick way over there behind you's got HUGE knock-"

OKAY, MOVING ON AGAIN, NEXT SPOT NEXT SPOT! Geez, man! You're on the clock! At least talk about, like, anything else! Gah, y'know what...

"Man oh man, I'd do- Ow!- the hell w-" 

I reopened and fenagled with the hole and pinched the guy that said that, and before closing it, hopefully before anyone noticed my hand appearing out of thin air.

Sis looked at me skeptically for a moment, before shrugging. "Fair enough..." She said. "... Was he right, though?" 

What the hell, Sis.

Moving on from that, let's see what the next group has to say.

"Man... I just don't get it. How'd they even manage pulling somethin' like this off? You'd think that, what with all of us runnin' around at all hours someone would've seen something."

"Yeah, you're tellin' me." A more tired sounding guard said. Ooh, this seems interesting. "But what really gets me," The guard said, before a brief interruption by a yawn, "why go through all the effort, right, breakin' in and stuff, only to do, what, track mud all over the floor?"

"Hah, yeah. Who knows. Maybe there's somethin' the old man is neglecting to tell us." 

"Could be. 'Tis a magic shop, after all."

"Yeap."

"Maybe the old bastard did it himself after a night on the town." Another guy chimed in. The guards seemed mildly amused by their joke.

"Well, witness testimony says otherwise." A new voice chimed in.

"God, you are such a party pooper, you know that?" 

Oh yeah, that was good, that was juicy. Except for that last bit that was just a really odd thing for a grown man to say.

"Wait, so someone just broke in, but didn't do anything? That's weird." Sis said after I closed the hole.

"Yeah. And if that's the case, what's with such a massive response?" I said. I mean, there are a lot of guards out there.

"Probably just 'cus they have 'em all on hand. Maybe the fact that it's a magic shop has somethin' to do with it, as well." Sis suggested. 

"Yeah, that could be it. Anyways, think we should head in?" 

Sis shrugged. "If you wanna. You been there before?" She asked.

"Yeah, once. I think I should be able to get us somewhere safe." I said, putting my hands together.

Sis nodded. "Gotta say, kinda surprising you're actually doing this. I kinda figured you were just gonna turn around when we saw all those guards."

"Probably would've, but I'm being impulsive today." I explained.

"Huh. Cool." 

"Naturally."

"Speaking of, I bet S would think you look pretty cool right now."

"Th-"

I stopped. I felt my face run hot.

"Th-think so?"

Sis shrugged, again. "Eh, I dunno, but I figured you could use the encouragement."

"I-I see..." I said, opening up a small hole in front of me and one in a familiar light brown, beige-y room with nothing more than a simple table and chairs inside. As well as a bit of text on the floor.

"What's that say? 'serious room'? the heck?" Sis whispered as we carefully peered into the hole.

Oh, so it does say 'serious room'! I've been wondering about that! Well, no I haven't but, hey, now I know for certain.

Uh, regardless, as I suspected, there wasn't anyone in the room. Though there were some footprints, and the table had been knocked over and the chair was completely out of place. Plus, there were muddy footprints around everywhere, seemingly randomly in all directions. Ehk. Gross. Hardly looks like a 'serious room' at this point, if you ask me. Also, the door was open, meaning they've probably searched this area already, and I doubt they'll be coming in again, 'cus it's basically empty.

With that in mind, I moved the hole in the room down to the ground, and made the one we were looking through larger. We stepped through, and we crouched over by the door, intending to eavesdrop on the people inside. Ah man, this is so cool! This is spy movie stuff, dude! Man, my heart's racing! Or, at least, it feels like it does, but, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't actually have one, so... Anyways, cool!

"Wait, if we're just gonna keep eavesdropping, why didn't we just keep doing what we were doing earlier?" Sis asked.

I opened my mouth to speak.

. . .

Oh, yeah. Kinda didn't think about that. Yeah, I could've just moved them around in here.

"Uhh... This is... Cooler?" I whispered back. 

I wasn't looking at her, but I get the feeling Sis shrugged in response. 

I peered into the main room for a moment, just to see what the damage was like in there. The whole place was a mess, every shelf and all the crap on them was knocked over and scattered about. The muddy footprints continued the same way out there, too. 

"Bah. It's all just baffling. Baffling, is what it is!" A very loud raspy, nasally, old man-y voice echoed throughout the shop. Yep, that's Maurice alright. "Alllll these guards, and nothing? Preposterous!" 

"Yes, indeed. We are very sorry about this. I can assure you we're doing everything we can to figure this out." Said another very loud and gruff voice. This one was familiar, too, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it... "Isn't that right, boys?" The man said, quite menacingly. 

"Y-yes, captain sir!"

Ohhhhh, that guy! Been a while since I last saw him! Wonder how he did with the rabbits? 

"Captain, with all due respect, there's little more we can do." Baldy, I think, said, a decent bit more mellow than the rest. "We don't have a single lead. According to witness reports, the perp was here for mere seconds, far too briefly for anyone to get a good look at them, and they were reportedly wearing a full body cloak and a mask, nobod-"

"What kind of mask!?" 

I think I heard Baldy sigh, even from way over here. "Novelty, captain sir, we've been over this."

"What about-"

"We've checked with the mask shop, sir. This particular mask was of a variety that was sold several weeks ago, meaning witness testimony isn't reliable or consistent, and even if it was, it's possible the perp could've simply gotten it from someone else. And nothing, to our knowledge, was stolen from this place, so we have no trail to follow." 

The captain let out an angry, guttural grunt in response. Sounded almost like the roar of a lion.

"Bah! And here I thought this town was safe enough that I could leave my store unattended for, what, a day and a half?! Silly me!" Maurice said.

"Well, Maurice," The captain said, dropping the formalities, "Certainly could've been a whole lot worse if our boys hadn't been on sce-"

"That's easy for you to say, Blondie!" Maurice shouted. 

"Y'know," Sis whispered from behind me, scaring me a little bit, "it's real nice that we always happen to be listening in right when they're getting to the important bits." 

"I guess, yeah." I said. 

Baldy cleared his throat. "Actually, I don't think that's the case. I don't think it would've made a difference either way. If anything, they found it more desirable." He said, with a twinge of regret in his voice.

"Whadduyou mean?" The captain said.

"Well," Baldy began, "According to witnesses, the perp simply broke down the door, ran in for a brief moment, and fled. Yet, look at all this damage. Unless they had some incredibly high intensity wind magic, there's no way they could've knocked everything in here down so quickly. And the footprints don't make sense, either, as there's no evidence of dirty footprints outside, nor was it present in any witness testimony." 

"What're you sayin' Baldy?" Maurice said.

"I'm saying that someone actually broke in, more subtly, yesterday, soon after Maurice left. That's when they messed up the place. Then, today, they had someone burst through here, in attempt to cause mass confusion and waste our time."

"But what's the point? Why go through all that trouble?" The captain asked.

Baldy sighed regretfully once more. "They probably knew that we'd figure it out by now. If I had to guess, we're gonna find out an-" 

He was interrupted by very loud screaming from outside. That's it, I'd wager.

After a moment, which I'd like to imagine was filled by some cartoon esque 'I told you so' interaction, some sort of sense was found within the screaming. 

"T-THE STATUE! THE STATUE!" Shouting from the street filled the shop. "THE HERO! THE STATUE HAS BEEN DESTROYED!"

Immediately, the sounds of all the people and guards who were standing around simultaneously running out of the shop and towards where the statue is, or perhaps was, assuming Guy From Street is credible, filled our ears. It was especially loud, 'cus a good portion of them were wearing armor, which is not a quiet thing.

One particular guard, however, did not run. 

I peeked out, and saw Baldy peering down at the floor, defeated. He sighed once more.

"Damnit." His voice, though a whisper, still seemed to fill the room.

After a brief moment, he too ran out of the shop, presumably heading towards the statue. Soon, it was just Sis and me.

. . .

"We're totally doing that next, right?" Sis asked.

"'Course." I said, already putting my hands together.