A/N: This is a fic that I challenged myself to write. The idea, the characters, the plot, and the setting are all things I want to test myself in. Basically because I am always into writing fanfics with magic powers or unrealistic strength- you know what I mean -that I feel lacking in the realistic department. This fic is more of a test for me but I also did not forget that it is supposed to be fun to write, which it was. Anyways, just to clear things up: this fic may have a specified pairing that I like but the idea I had worked especially well with these two, that it was too irresistible to not go through with it. What is interesting to note is that, out of all the pairings I like…this idea worked best only AND only for them.

And here is the disclaimer, only to appear here and only here on the first chapter.

Disclaimer: I do not own Black Cat. Any characters that do not appear originally in the manga (which is the only of Black Cat I will ever get into), belong to me. I also own this fic's plot-line. Without wasting anymore of your time, please read and enjoy the fic.

Cuffed

Chapter 1: Mansion Raid

Target: A vault containing large amounts of money. Location: The mansion of Mateo Seco, who ruled this town of Barsol with an iron fist and was a man with no morals and a cruel heart. With the elusive female thief-for-hire, Rinslet Walker, having her eyes on it, there was nothing that could stop her. Dressed in her usual black furred coat, red spaghetti strap, dark shorts and black boots, the thief looked up at the huge mansion before her in the cool night air.

"This shouldn't be too hard. I already know the layout thanks to the map I got," she said, her lips forming a cat-like smile.

Standing outside the mansion's gates, the woman checked once again to see if there was anyone watching or coming. The streets were clear of cars, people, and even lights. The town of Barsol was strange at night but it was all thanks to the dark merchant whose loot she plans to plunder tonight. It was a sorry sight to look at Barsol at night but all those residents who live near Mateo's mansion feared for their lives and by turning off their lights, refused to take part in any such events that would occur in the night.

Reaching into her bag, the lilac-haired woman pulled out a rope with a grapple at the end. Carefully, she aimed for the second floor as her sources of the third contained the rooms of the merchant's bodyguards. Being an infamous thief, she did not need to worry about the government chasing after her. Instead she has quite the number of discontent people that would love to get their hands on her. She wouldn't really need to go to the third floor since the room where Seco keeps his money is on the second floor, across from the Men's Dormitory.

Rinslet couldn't keep from smiling. Lady Luck was certainly smiling down on her so much to allow a robber of her caliber to walk out unnoticed with the loot. Spinning the rope with enough force to hook the second floor's balcony, she let it go, sending it soaring into the air until the sound of the grapple hitting an object and staying tugged for a while gave her the signal that the mansion workers were truly asleep. If they weren't, one of them would have slid the window open, walked to the balcony and noticed even in the dim light, the grapple before waking the whole mansion.

The woman gripped the rope firmly and began to climb up. When she reached the top, she unhooked the grapple and put the rope back into her bag. After checking through the window to see if there was anyone inside, Rinslet took out her lock pick and unlocked the sliding window and walked into the room before closing it shut quietly. It felt strangely quiet but that only meant that there was no one besides her in the room. What she really needed to worry about was trying to get to the vault without setting off any traps. Cautiously, she walked over to the door and carefully opened it to check for any patrolling guards in the dimly lit hallway.

"This is just too easy!"

The thief had snickered to herself, seeing that there was no one in the hallways. Either Mateo Seco was too cocky for his own good or that his guards were just lazy, all Rinslet was glad about was making the easiest thieving of all her career. Not checking any longer, Rinslet hurried down the hallways, keeping her wits about her as she neared the vault on the opposite side.

A few minutes after Rinslet had intruded Seco's mansion, a man with chocolate spike-ish hair wearing a blue coat with two brown straps, a white shirt, blue pants and black boots, appeared before the gate of the mansion. What was most notable was the bell choker he wore and the Roman Number XIII on the upper left of his chest. Train Heartnet checked his surroundings before leaping on top of the tall brick wall and dropping down to the wet grass which had recently been sprinkled with water an hour ago, soaking his shoes. The cool night air did nothing to his skin as he remembered the floor where the bounty was. "Third floor, past the bodyguards' rooms. That is where Mr. Seco is," he recounted with a grin.

What a shock. She had known it was too good to be true but she fell for it Luckily, after walking out of the vault which turned out to be the storage room, she was able to knock out the waiting guards outside. But when were they outside? The thief tried to remember if she had triggered any of the alarms, which she obviously did not activate. There were only two things that could be behind this: Someone else had either tried to do what she is doing and tripped the alarm or it might be some cocky Sweeper after Mateo's bounty. After all, being a merchant of the black market, Mateo's bounty was rather high, almost on par with the late Torneo Rudman.

Rinslet then heard the sound of gunshots, which she was sure she didn't hear the last time as she heard yelling that sounded like, "Get him! Protect my money!"

A grin appeared on the thief's face that was reminiscent of a cat's. "Thanks for telling me where the money really is, Mateo," she said as she began to hurry down the hallway.

With her goal close at hand, the thief-for-hire rushed towards the third floor, not knowing what to expect next.

Bullets ricocheted off the walls of the hallways, damaging the lights above as the guards continued to fire at the bouncing ex-assassin who dodged all of their bullets without suffering a single scratch. The men in the blue suits were stunned by his performance as the intruder made a face at them. "You guys have bad aim. Were you really hired to be guards?"

A guard pointed his gun at Train. "Shut up," and fired at him. But the bullets never made contact as the man looked back at the holes where the hail of bullets ended at. "N…no way?"

In-between the area where the bullets were shot at was the intruder, standing with a hands in his pocket while the other held a black decorated gun that bore the engraving of the Roman Numeral XIII. It was this engraving that caused one of the men, whom was apparently the leader due to the dark red band he wore on the right sleeve of his suit, to reach into his pocket and pull out a transceiver and contact the merchant while the men just looked on at the man standing before them. He was now twirling his gun up in the air, wondering what they were up to. The leader of the suits relayed his report to Mateo without haste. "Mateo…"

From somewhere on the same floor of the mansion, in his bedroom, a fairly short, plump man already showing signs of the loss of his red hair, was handed the transceiver from one of the many guards remaining with him, a man with dark green spiked hair dressed in a black jacket with ripped sleeves, as he put the device to his ear. "Hello?" he answered in a curt and gruff voice. The guard on the other end relayed the message to him. During that time, the transceiver was out of Mateo's hearing range but the dark green-haired man heard the name, the infamous name that made every person in the underworld shake, come right out of the man's mouth. "Black Cat?"

"Black Cat, the Black Cat? So…the rumors were true?" He thought to himself. Mateo had turned off the transceiver before pointing at all of the guards before him.

"Listen, I want ALL of you to protect me! If I die, there will be no money for either of you!"

Back down in the hallway, the leader could hear Mateo's frantic words as he nodded as a response before adding, "I understand, we won't let him get away," before he turned the transceiver off, upsetting the man on the above floor.

"What? Hey, HEY! Why that- Hunter!"

The dark green haired man looked at him. "What is it, Mateo?"

"Why you- why aren't you down there stopping the intruder?"

"Because as your bodyguard, you're my highest priority," as he dodged the thrown glass cup that shattered into the wall behind him.

"Well, then stop guarding me for now and go take care of the intruder, Black Cat!" the man shouted in wild rage. He couldn't believe what was happening but he wasn't going to lose everything he owned without a fight. Hunter did as he was told as the man left the room and began in the direction to the stairs to the bottom floor. Little did he know, he had just passed a woman with lilac hair, who was running in the opposite direction but he had no time to think.

"Find and eliminate Black Cat, that is my job."

The leader of the band of men gritted his teeth in annoyance as Train looked down at the holes on the bottom of his coat. "Aw man, you put holes in my coat. It's hard to find something good like this."

"Why you, be quiet and die!" a man shouted, shooting once again at him. Train easily danced around the bullets before shooting the gun with perfect-precision out of the man's hand. The man and the other men became fearful for their lives and ran away, leaving their leader behind. He watched his men disappear around the corner.

"Hey, get back here you cowards!"

Train stepped up from behind. "It looks like you've been deserted?"

"Why you!"

The man turned to face him and threw a punch at him, which Train dodged, leaning to the left as the man punched at his left, leaving Train to dodge to the right before striking him with a kick to the side of his face, knocking him into the wall and knocking him out. Train fixed his coat before putting Hades back into its holster and hurried on through the hallway to the third floor…

Rinslet hoped that the man she ran past did not recognize her as she neared Mateo's room. But as she neared it, she found a number of men in suits running towards her in the hallway as she drew out her trusted whip. "Jeez, I don't have time for this!"

The crack of the whip sounded throughout the hallway as the men felt the sting in their hand, causing them to drop their guns as Rinslet carefully made her way past them, tripping some over in the process as she saw a short, chubby man with bits of red hair on his head, wearing white pajamas with blue ducks, ahead of her. The man then began to shout for his bodyguards as Rinslet quickly responded with using her whip to interrupt him, the leather rope grabbing his left foot and pulling it as he fell and stopped in mid-yell. She quickly bound and gagged him before hearing the sound of footsteps racing towards the bedroom. "Great, just great!" as she abandoned the vault in the room and instead rushed out to save her skin.

Meanwhile, down in the second floor, Train had just dodged the devastating kick from Hunter, whose kick made a large dent in the side next to Train. "I see, so you truly are the legendary Black Cat?"

"The one and only," Train replied, mocking his own "legendary" status. Another kick was dodged as Train now stood with his back to the hallway that would lead to the stairs to the first floor. "Sorry about this but I'd like to continue fighting a bit more but I have a bounty to take, see ya!"

The bodyguard watched in bemusement as the ex-assassin put his gun back in its holster and ran past him, down the hall to the third floor. "What in the- he's much more different then what I expected? And why did he run that way? Wait?" as he remembered that Mateo's room was on the third floor. "Dammit!" as he began sprinting after Train.

Never mind about what she said about Lady Luck; she can be fickle sometimes. "Stop or we'll shoot!"

Rinslet didn't. Rather, she did not want to stop and risk getting captured. Everything was going so well for her. How did things turn out like this? "It's got to be some idiot who tripped the alarm. There's no way it could have been my fault."Little did the thief know, that same idiot was running down the hall on the third floor towards Mateo's room. "Once I get the cash, I'll be able to go an all-you-can-eat buffet without having to dine & dash for once!"

Rinslet turned the corner and right before she could enter into the next hallway, she froze at the face of someone she did not expect to see again. "Tra-"

Before she could even finish, she fell to the floor with the aforementioned gunman on top of her in a compromising position. Completely embarrassed at seeing the ex-assassin after so long, she could only look at his face before he said, "Hey Rins, long time no see?"

"Get off of me!"

She punched him in the jaw, causing him to fall off her and lie on the floor while rubbing his jaw as she got up, her back to him as she was trying to hide her embarrassment. Train watched as she began to run in the direction he came. He got up and chased after her. "Hey, Rins, wait up!"

She pretended not to hear him. But no matter how fast she ran, the gunman was right behind her and as if that wasn't enough, she also had the guards chasing after her as well. "Stop following me!" she shouted, only to duck a bullet.

"Sorry but I don't think they care about that?" Train replied back.

Rinslet ran through the hallways with the ex-assassin and a bunch of guards behind her as she spotted the stairs that led to the second floor, only to see it blockaded by other guardsmen. Seeing the stairs to the roof her last option, the thief made a run for it, fooling the guards first by making it seem she was going to try to break past them but instead making a sharp turn to the stairs to the roof.

When she got outside into the cool night air once again, she made a move to shut the door but it was pushed aside by Train, whom had followed after her. The gunman did what she had planned to do and barred the door shut before dusting his hands and walking casually over to the woman standing on the roof. "That should hold them o-" before he heard the clicking of the gun triggers.

Turning around, he saw the thief-for-hire with her hands up, the whip she used earlier now on the ground. It wasn't long before he felt one of the guns poke him in the back. "Wow, they're good?"

A/N: Yes, it is a cliffhanger. This was originally supposed to be longer but I cut it in half to keep from having difficulties writing it. Anyways, I'd like a nice, good review about what you felt about the first chapter. Feel free to give constructive criticism as they are encouraged.