Thief

Thief
"Oh, I steal souls and secrets"
Basics
Full Name	Prince Elf of the Khee'Bler clan
Nicknames	Thief
Age	Unknown, but somewhere OVER 9000!!!
Height	Unknown
Weight	Unknown
Gender	Male
Race	Elf
Position
Alliance	Neutral
Home	Traveling
Franchise	Final Fantasy/8-Bit Theater

Thief, also known as Prince Elf of the Khee'Bler clan, is character from 8-Bit Theater. Thief is one of the four Light Warriors and of the four, he is the most greedy.

Role in the Comic

A cunning, racist, cruel, and diabolically skilled pretty-boy thief and lawyer who was formerly known as the Prince of Elf Land, Thief secretly left his kingdom in order to raise money for a cure for his dying father. He secured funds by stealing anything and everything around him that wasn't both nailed down and on fire (and some things that were just nailed down, yet in one comic he said he couldn't steal anything that is nailed or on fire), pawning it all off and sending the money to his "overseas account". He also maneuvered Fighter into signing a binding contract over the then-forming Light Warriors, making Thief the permanent group leader and entitling him to first dibs on everything the group discovered (especially treasure), with the exception of any swords Fighter decides he likes. He rarely fights, preferring to let others do his work for him while he furthers the team's goals elsewhere in secret. When he is forced into combat, he can be seen using and twirling twin knives at high speeds. Thief also has a tendency to ambush opponents from above and delights in backstabs. Thief and almost every other elf are incredibly egotistical. He tends to say points using A's and B's. For example, he says "A. Dragons are huge and B. they are largely fictional." in Episode 909: Plausibly Deniable.

Elves firmly believe that they are superior to all other races and are happy not to know too much about them (for example, preferring not to know about "the incomprehensible mating rituals of [us] filthy non-elves"). Their mythology goes so far as to explain that all other races and even some of the Gods exist in order to have gotten all the terrible genes out of the way so elves could be made as the ultimate creatures. However, Thief has implied that the elves were among the first races to populate the world, so this is a strange contradiction. Continuing the elven superiority complex, as well as their self-contradictory mythology, elves believe that the Gods made themselves in the image of elves. Despite their high opinions of themselves, Thief and elves in general are not above making stupid mistakes; for example, Thief failed to sufficiently answer the question as to why elves have technology on par with humans, despite having a 9,000-year head start as well as being reminded that the Elves are hardly a united race.

Thief's extremely long life (possibly immortality) is tied to the status of the Earth itself. This is further developed when the Light Warriors visit Elf Land and eventually defeat Lich von Vampire, who was tainting the Earth Orb. When the situation with Thief's sick father was resolved, Thief continued stealing and scamming just because he could. He can steal almost anything, even if it isn't necessarily real; he attests that he can "steal souls and secrets.]" He has command of an elite group of elven warrior lawyers known as law-ninja, who help him enforce the various binding contracts he has over the team. He is also the inventor and copyright holder of "Super Ultra Fine Print", an extremely tiny font which he adds to every contract in which he is held responsible for something, allowing him to opt out of it (mostly by adding the word "not" or "do not" right before important sections). Finally, he is responsible for dissolving Elfland's collection agency and instituting the I.R.S. (International Revenue Service), which collects taxes from everyone in the world and audits those who can't come through with the money. Interestingly, the auditors are the former Giant Cannon operators.

Thief shares with his race a pathological hatred for dwarves. But somehow his beating from Berserker were never related to it. In their first meeting Berserker threw an axe on Thief's head because he attacked his partner Ranger. In their second, Thief angered Berserker for calling him a hobo, and the following beating almost killed Thief. Thief then fell into his own personal Hell, where he had every single thing in the world, thus, depriving him of his ability to steal. It was at that moment when Thief met Raven, a trickster God (sent by Cleric), who managed to out-con Thief with a mysterious contract. The only other characters to ever trick Thief are Matoya, Doctor Malpractice, Akbar, the Dark Warriors and, recently, Red Mage.

Black Mage has a certain level of respect for Thief's willingness to wantonly ruin or kill other people for his own gain - even when one of those people is often Black Mage himself - as well as being relatively smarter and saner than others. Thief was supposed to face the representation of Greed, or Avarice, in the Castle of Ordeals, but due to a mix-up, Black Mage ended up facing and beating it, making Thief the only Light Warrior who didn't actually face his personal ordeal.When Thief changed his class to a Ninja, he gained the abilities to "throw anything" (including teammates) at foes and to counter-attack with blinding speed. He stole his class change from himself when Sarda sent him to the future to Episode 1174 to reverse his own class change. He gained improved stealing skills (although, considering his amazing skill at stealing before, it may be impossible to improve his abilities in this regard), "Darkvision" (his term for night-vision), the ability to Double-Jump, and (though he has only threatened Fighter with this and has never used it) a special "Ninja-Punch" as explained in Episode 744.

Thief, as Fighter, starts to play less of a pivotal role (though one could argue he didn't really do that much in the first place) as the series progresses to the Temple of Fiends arc. He avoids fighting, preferring to flee or backstab the opponent instead. At least he still has lines, unlike Fighter.Recently, as the battle with Sarda continues, the Light Warrior's were all deleveled by Sarda, except Thief. However, Fighter mysteriously took a blow to the head, and when Thief turned around to look at him, the Thief of the past (from episode 651) appeared, and stole his class, a fact that didn't seem to surprise him that much because he already did it.

On Dimensional Clash

Thief, like all canon 8-Bit Theater characters, is used by PAC. He was killed, along with Fighter and Red Mage, by Black Mage, but was then revived as a zombie to serve as the lead singer in the satire band, the Boneyard Warriors, the satire being of how some authors on the internet can horribly mutilate the concepts of the characters of a franchise in a story to the point where they're no longer their former selves. He was most recently used when Black Mage was fully brought back to life for the purpose of the final battle, BM flew away and lit the crypt in which the others were located on fire, leaving their fate currently unknown.