Shadow Thief

"I stole 'em. They're mine now. It's what a thief does."

- Shadow Thief

Shadow Thief, also known as the self-entitled "Brilliant Thief", is a secondary character that debuts in Plagued Fear, and later returns in Metal Massacre. Despite being mostly a secondary character, he antagonizes the protagonists quite often, which usually leads to complications and deviations of the main objective. He is voiced by Alice.

Appearance
Shadow Thief is an impish-looking creature, confirmed by the creator to be an imp. He has gray skin, with completely white eyes and sharp teeth. His clothing consists only of different shades of gray. He uses a large hat, a bandana that leaves only his eyes showing, a white shirt with light gray stripes, slightly darker pants, a ragged dark gray cape, which ties around his neck, gloves about the same color as his pants, and shiny shoes about the same color as the cape.

Personality
Being a thief, and having given himself the title of "Brilliant Thief", gives Shadow Thief away as self-entitled. He is also very pesky and troublesome, usually creating unnecessary trouble for others. His most apparent personality however, is his massive greed and desire to steal things for money. He will do anything to get his hands on something valuable so he can sell for money. He gets very upset if the person he robbed follows him, but tends to continue running away. If persisting for a prolonged period of time, Shadow Thief becomes enraged enough to engage the pursuer in a fight, returning the stolen items if he loses the fight. He also speaks in a scottish accent, but it is unknown if he is actually scottish, or if he speaks like that just because he feels like it.

Powers and Abilities
Shadow Thief proves to be quite strong physically in his debut in Plagued Fear, as he is able to fight against a team of four all by his lonesome and still give them quite the trouble. However, in the follow-up game, Metal Massacre, he doesn't seem as strong, as he is easily taken down by a team of two.

Besides his strength, Shadow Thief seems to be able to be a master of trickery. He is able to go invisible, and can remain like so for an unknown period of time (though it is implied he can remain like that for as long as he wants). He can also make weaker copies of himself that act like him. However, this one takes away energy from him, and don't last for too long. Eventually, the copies vanish and he is left on his own once more. He also seems to carry around some smoke bombs, but doesn't seem to know the proper way of using them, as the only time he brings one up, he accidentally throws it too far to affect the party members (although it still handicaps the player by covering up their HUD).

Rarely brought up is the fact that he can create living dolls. This is shown in the fifth level of Plagued Fear, where he creates various dolls shaped like Deeman to attack the party members, and at the end of the first level of Metal Massacre, where he makes a huge cardboard version of Cheatso to attack the real one.

Faults and Weaknesses
Shadow Thief is completely prone to being angered if he steals someone, and that person pursues him in an attempt to get their stolen item back. Eventually, he gets angry enough to fight back, and if he is defeated, he will reluctantly return the item.

Despite being known as Shadow Thief, he is terrible at hiding. He challenges Cheatso and his friends to a Hide-and-Seek to see if they are worthy of getting the Jewel back from him, yet they very easily encounter him everytime.

His aim with his smoke bombs is not the best, since the only time he attempts to use one, he misses the target entirely. However, that still works out in his favor, as the smoke ends up covering the player's HUD during the fight.

Despite being able to clone himself, the duration of the clones is very limited, as in just a few turns, he runs out of energy and all the clones disappear.

Trivia

 * According to the creator, Shadow Thief has been based on the character Popple, who appears in the Mario & Luigi RPG series by Alphadream, Nintendo.
 * Shadow Thief's original speaking highlight was going to be holding the S in some sentences, like a snake. This was later changed to a scottish accent.
 * Apparently, "Shadow Thief" isn't his real name, but instead just a nickname. However, his real name is unknown.