Thieves 101
Noah
11\17\09
“Pull over and nobody will get hurt!” the furious police officer called out to the dark, speeding object in
front of him. The object in front of the cop was a person, but not just any person. It was Jonah Grafler, the most
respected thief of all time making another theft getaway in his infamous, dark-black and crimson chopper. Ding!
The sound rang out throughout the whole city.
“Hey, that’s a new paint-job!” Jonah yelled back at the pursuing cop. Jonah took an oddly shaped,
crimson boomerang out of his coat pocket and slung it over his shoulder at the shooting cop.
“Ouch!” the police officer screamed out as the gun was knocked right out of his hand from the red
boomerang.
“That’s what you deserve for trying to catch the amazing Jonah Grafler!” Jonah called back.
“Beeeeppp!” the sound was coming from the cop’s mouth, but did not sound like a noise that would
come from a human being. Jonah looked back and saw that the officer’s head had changed into a clock of some
sort.
“Beeeeppp!” Jonah fell out his bed and looked up. He was not on the streets of downtown New York in a
black and red chopper. He was in an orphanage, St. Mark’s orphanage.
Jonah had light brown hair and was tall and skinny. Jonah was a little bit over average height for a
fourteen year old and was an orphan. He had been an orphan all his life, as far as he knew. He was also very
sneaky and conniving, while having a large mass of brains, too.
“Jonah, get down here. Now! It’s time for breakfast,” an unfortunately familiar voice called up to Jonah
from downstairs.
“Calm down. I’m coming, Miss Algenta,” Jonah replied.
Miss Algenta was the owner of St. Mark’s orphanage and a ruthless one at that. She was always trying to
control everyone at the orphanage.
After Jonah ate breakfast, he took the bus to school. He walked up to his locker and grabbed for the lock.
57, 2,49,4 Jonah said in his head as he put in the locker combination. He opened his locker and took out all
honors books for his classes.
Jonah’s first subject of the day was Algebra II. “Okay, everybody,” the monotonous voice of Mr. Fletcher
spoke to the class, “I will be handing out your math test from last week…” Jonah had tuned out the boring voice
of Mr. Fletcher and was thinking about a way he could find who his birth parents were and finally get out of the
horrible orphanage. Suddenly he heard, “ . . . handheld, super computer, blah, blah, blah, blah. Can find anyone
by using their last name and a piece of their DNA?” Jonah knew that was how he was going to find his birth
parents.
When Jonah was dropped off at the orphanage, he was left in a basket with a comb that had his mother’s
hairs on it. Apparently, she wanted him to find him one day and finally be reunited.
Jonah saw his returned paper on his desk and flipped it over A+, no surprise. He turned and walked out
of the classroom.
That night Jonah finally escaped the horrid orphanage, stealthily. Jonah was running straight toward the
government technology building at 2 a.m. The door had a card insert lock and guards, just as he had expected.
Jonah hid in the bushes and waited for the nearest guard to approach his bush. He grabbed the guard by the legs,
and he fell to the ground, “What the . . . “ the falling guard called out right before he hit the ground with a thud.
One guard down, one more to go Jonah thought to himself as he picked up the guard’s Billy club from the hitch
on his belt.
“H...h…hello?” the nervous security guard stammered, “Is anybody there?”
“Your worst nightmare,” Jonah whispered in to his ear and then slammed the Billy club down on his
head. The unconscious guard groaned. Jonah took his card key and then opened the door and then ran inside.
Almost there, Jonah said to himself. He made his way stealthily over to an air vent and climbed in. Jonah was
trying to find his way over to the main computer to hack the security cams and find the room where the handheld
super computer was hiding. Oh, no, Jonah thought, below him was the main computer, but he could hear talking
inside the room. Jonah was ready. He took out an object that looked almost identical to a bottle opener and
drilled a small hole in the vent. Jonah dropped a silver titanium ball, about the size of a ping-pong ball, in the
room through the opening. A surprised guard spun around. He was too late. The ball had opened and knockout
gas was coming out of it. Both the guards collapsed. Jonah put on a gas mask and dropped inside. He looked at
the map, found the location of the super computer, figured out the encryption to hack the cameras, and turned
them off. He ran out of the room and down the hall. The door he was looking for was on his left. He threw a disk-
shaped object at the door, and it exploded, silently. Jonah threw himself at the super computer and flung it above
his head. He had succeeded! Just then, he saw a dark figure walk into the room and take out a weird looking
device, in the shape of a triangle from his pocket. The figure hit a button, and all of a sudden, Jonah’s vision went
black, and he collapsed. The super computer hit the ground, and he was dragged away.
As Jonah’s eyes opened, he felt a smooth, cold wall against his face.
“W…W…where am I? What happened?” Jonah asked in a confused voice. By the looks of it, he was in a
submarine. When he looked out the window, he saw no life, just dark water. Jonah knew this meant they were
too deep under water to see any life
“Hello. I know what happened to you because it happened to me, too,” a nerdy voice said from the other
side of the sub.
Jonah jumped, “Who are you?”
“Hi, I’m Felix Martinez,” he said. “What happened to you was that you were shot with a strong, electric,
concussive bolt. The device they used is called a stunner.
“Weird… oh, hey, I’m Jonah Grafler.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Jonah.”
Jonah was still in his dark camo pants and black t-shirt and black beanie. Felix was wearing checkered
pants way above his waist and a plaid shirt tucked into his pants. Felix was also wearing a pair of glasses with
tape on them. He had curly black hair cut short and was pale white.
The submarine came to stop and a robotic voice said over an intercom “Please make your way to the
nearest exit, for we have reached our destination.”
Jonah and Felix stepped out into a room in amazement as they saw many other kids their age in a glass-
walled room that made them almost feel as if they were under water, not in a building, or wherever they were.
“Welcome, welcome,” a booming voice echoed throughout the room. “My name is Dr. Greck. I’d like to
introduce you to Thieves 101 where you will be staying for the next four years!”
Many whispers were heard throughout the mass of people. The man speaking looked as if he was in his
mid-fifties and was wearing a black tuxedo with slicked gray hair.
“Don’t worry you have all been hand picked to be trained here to become the best thieves you can be,
but this means no leaving.” Behind him, a presentation rolled on a screen that had dropped down from the
ceiling. Jonah was starting to like this place.
Throughout the day, Jonah and the other kids were escorted on a tour of the underwater school. They
made their way into a room with many tinted tubes.
“Here is where you will collect your Thieves 101 uniform. Please step into one of the tubes, and you will
be scanned then given a uniform. When you are done changing, please dispose of your clothes,” the guard said.
The uniforms were navy-blue, had a “T” on the left shoulder, and had one star on the collar for your
years of experience. On the right sleeve there was a large yellow “O.”
“The O stands for Omega, for you will be the Omega group, and you are destined to be future leaders in
crime,” the guard said.
The guards escorted them over to the living area where there was a large room with couches to relax and
on the sides were dorms. “Felix Martinez, your roommate will be Tom McPherson,” the guard called out the
names of roommates. “Jake Rosner, your roommate will be Jonah Grafler.”
Everybody went straight to their rooms as soon as they were called. Jonah took the elevator up to floor
six where his room was.
“So, you’re Jonah Grafler,” a stocky, well built kid said from the other side of the room, who must have
been Jake.
“Ya, that’s me,” Jonah replied.
“I hear you broke into an official government building,” Jake stated.
“Ya, nothing much, though,” Jonah answered.
“Man, all I did to get into this aquarium was pick pocket a US Senator.”
Jonah and Jake became friends instantly. They both realized how horrible it would be to stay there for
four years without leaving, so they started to devise a plan to escape.
After the subject right before lunch, Stealth Ed., Felix asked what Jonah had been talking about to Jake.
“Can you keep a secret?” Jonah whispered.” We’re trying to find a way to escape this place.”
“Really? Can I help? This place is starting to feel like a prison,” Felix replied.
At lunch the three of them sat with each other and tried to find a way to escape. Jake had pick pocketed
a map from Professor Vendetta, and they were looking for some exits and transportation.
Over the next few weeks, the three boys worked together to make some tools and an “unstoppable” plan.
They always worked in Jonah and Jake’s room, and one night they finally decided to make their big break.
“You ready?” Jonah asked Jake.
“I was born ready,” Jake replied, and he woke up immediately.
The two boys climbed their ways through an air vent in their room and crawled for some time before
they met up with Felix. They then crawled to a small opening. Felix took out of his pocket a device that looked
almost similar to an Xbox controller with a keyboard on the bottom. It also had an antenna sticking out the top.
He typed in a code and stuck it to the opening.
“Access granted,” a soft computerized voice spoke. The boys silently crawled in. They were in the main
control room for all security for Thieves 101. The room was teaming with bright green lights. Jonah took out a
square gadget with many buttons on it and stuck it to the device in the center of the room. Jonah pressed a
button. All of the lights in the room went off, and the boys took out flashlights. “So far everything’s according to
plan,” Felix said.
“You’re right, but the plan’s going too perfect. We should keep our eyes and ears open,” Jake said.
“That’s agreed on,” Jonah and Felix said unison. They crept out the door leading to the room they were
in and made their way through a series of walkways. As they were walking down the hall, they heard a troop of
guards coming around the corner.
“Quick! In here!” Jonah cried. The boys listened and followed him into the science lab. While Jonah was
dashing into the room, he dropped a small device on the ground.
“What are you boys doing here? Security! Please help!” Professor Vendetta cried out as he fled the room.
Just then the wooden door was thrown open and a troop of guards came in.
“Freeze!” the troop leader called out.
They were trapped. Jonah and Felix obeyed, but Jake dove across the room and grabbed for something.
“No!” Jake cried. He took the object and pulled the trigger and a blue beam shot out of the gun-like weapon. The
troop had frozen in the doorway.
“Nice, Jake,” Felix said while giving him a high five.
“No time to celebrate. We need to move,” Jonah warned.
The boys scrambled down the hall over the sound of the emergency siren. They reached the room titled
Submarine Pen, and Jake took out a card key he had taken from a frozen guard. The door slid open to reveal Dr.
Greck sitting in a chair in a storage room clapping mockingly. “You had a very nice display, boys, but not nice
enough.” The boys stood awestruck. They had thought they had finally escaped. “You see, every year a group of
undisciplined, new students try to escaped exactly the same way . . .” Boom! Dr. Greck stopped mid-sentence
because of a huge explosion coming from the direction the boys had just come from. Jake and Felix were just as
surprised as Dr. Greck was, but Jonah just stood there with a steely look in his eyes and a mischievous smirk on
his face. “Grafler, why, what did you do?” Dr. Greck asked furiously.
“I did just what you and your retched school deserves!” Jonah spat.
“You will pay for this! Do you hear me, boy? Twelve, no twenty seven weeks of detention . . .” Dr. Greck
threatened as he impulsively sped down the hall.
“Go, Jonah!” the other boys congratulated him. They all ran to the docking area where they had come in.
They loaded a submarine and made it back to the surface. Driving a sub was surprisingly easy for the boys. They
had luckily arrived in a popular tourist area of Japan, so most natives spoke English.
“We need to take a flight back to where we lived before Thieves 101,” Felix said.
“I’m a step ahead of you,” Jake said as he pulled out a huge wad of cash from his pocket. None of the
boys questioned him about the money, for they knew he would just say he had had it the whole time.
When Jonah arrived back in New York, he decided to go back to St. Mark’s orphanage. It turned out that
one of the children had reported Miss Algenta to the police when she hurt him, so she was arrested. Now there
was newer and nicer staff. Jonah lived here for some time, but a few weeks after Thieves 101, Jonah had an
extremely, unexpected visitor.
“Jonah, could you please come downstairs. You have a visitor?” Mrs. Todd, the new manager, called
from the first floor.
“I’ll be right there, Mrs. Todd,” Jonah replied.
“I’m sure you will be very surprised when you see who it is,” Mrs. Todd said with a chuckle.
When Jonah came downstairs, he saw a woman with light brown hair just like his, and next to her was a
tall and skinny man with many of the same features as Jonah.
“M…mom? Dad? Is that you?” Jonah asked with tears of joy running down his cheeks and a large grin on
his face.
“Jonah, I’m so happy we finally found you!” Mrs. Grafler replied happily. Jonah ran into his parents’
arms, and they embraced him, too.
Unfortunately, the next day Jonah received a phone call from Felix. “Jonah, you have to run. They’re
coming for you!” Felix said.
“W . . . what are you talking about?” Jonah replied nervously.
“There’s no time to explain. Just meet Jake and me at the market. Now!” Felix replied.
“I . . . I . . .” Jonah did not know what to do since he had just been reunited with his parents.
“Come on. You have to hurry!” Felix said.
“Okay. I’ll be there as fast as I can.” Jonah replied. His decision was made. He put the phone down and
ran upstairs to pack some supplies. He had no time to say good-bye. He had to run. Jonah knew if Felix was trying
to tell him to run then he had a phenomenal reason to listen to him. Jonah may not have known much about what
he was doing, but he knew a grand adventure was waiting for him with his name on it.