"The thief is sorry to be hanged, not to be a thief."
- Anonymous
A thief is one who is always pursued, always persecuted for the crimes he commits. Dark did not take offense at his negative role among the stricter citizens who witnessed his raids. He knew it was only right and proper that the attractive bad-boy must outwit those who carried out the laws of the land. It was written in the invisible codes that governed humanity itself. The dashing hero makes his way through his quest, he is met with opposition, perhaps encounters a few intense points where those who support him think that surely even the great Phantom Thief could not escape this trap, and then he slips away, laughing as he vanishes into the shadows with the quest's obtainment in hand. Logic itself nodded that yes, this is in fact the correct order of things. Of course in the Phantom Thief's case, Logic often tended to look the other way, and instead devote its attention to making sure lesser-villains were captured and that soba noodles always made a "splat" sort of noise when they were accidentally dropped by a shaky hand. When he had first been thrust into the human world by a somewhat catastrophic accident, Logic had in fact been out to lunch.
In the early days of his existence in the mortal world, when merciless warriors on massive horses had policed the towns of Japan, they too had hunted the already-legendary Phantom Thief. But they were wiser than their 21st century descendants, for they had pursued him in a slightly different manner. In parties of at least a dozen armed men, they'd head out into the night, some on foot, some on horseback. The husky war-horses would be adorned with bright saddle pads and bridle plumes of purple and gold, and the soldiers who traveled by their own legs carried banners whose colors were so vibrant that they pierced even the murky darkness of the moonless nights. Hunting hounds would mill at the feet of the warriors, baying their pursuit to the stars overhead, and there would always be a trumpeter or two accompanying the hunting parties, so that the entire quest really had more of a festival air than the steady eagerness of a true hunt. Those who instructed the warriors were intelligent enough to realize that the only way the Phantom Thief could be pursued at all was to make the occasion so magnificent that he would be lured to come out and take a look at it.
Of course, Dark was never caught by a conquest such as this, but the soldiers certainly gave it a better try than the policemen of later ages. Those fools pursued him with nets and guns and pathetic ambush squads laying in wait along the path to the artifact. As the centuries progressed, the new policemen began giving chase only to a clever thief (granted, an extraordinarily clever thief, but merely a mortal thief none the less), never in the merry, reverent procedure proper for the hunt of a Phantom. It bored him intensely, as he had little to do during the hours when the sun lit the landscape but dream of his Sacred Maiden and anticipate the upcoming trials of the next thieving mission. Therefore he often was forced to put his excess energy to use in other methods, such as irritating his host every thirty seconds or so on the average day. Daisuke himself would testify to that particular fact.
The darkness didn't really mind, though. Whether his vast reservoir of tricks was needed or not, there would still always be the night. And that was all the darkness really required.
Author's Note: Eh…it's a drabble. That's kind of obvious. I just recently got a piece of hatemail. Apparently someone does not appreciate my valiant Mary-Sue flaming. Therefore I am using this Author's Note as an excuse to recruit more people to flame Mary-Sues. Because there's too many Mary-Sues out there for this particular writer, however irritating she may be, to get them all. So remember, flame a Mary-Sue (defined in next paragraph), make the world a better place. Maybe I'll put up more drabbles up here, but it's more likely I'll forget.
Mary-Sue: Female Fanfiction Original Character who is often quite pretty or talented (or both), usually has a mysterious past, often but not always has magical origins, sometimes but not always is enrolled in main characters' school, and ALWAYS has at least one of the main characters of the show in question falling in love with her. In other words, the second most extraordinarily irritating thing you can think of (the first being a tie between WolfBane2 and the way "Ciao" is spelled).