Black Phantom

Chapter 3:

3 hours earlier:

Kuro Kaitou's latest heist was taking place in yet another western style mansion, this one more cavernous than the previous. Mai found that the library alone was larger than the size of her apartment and a sizeable section that was about the size of her kitchen, was devoted to the supernatural.

"Are all the cameras set up?" her narcissistic superior called out to her.

She nodded. "As per your instructions, Naru-sama."

An hour earlier he had handed her a map, marking out where he wanted all the cameras to be positioned. The plan even detailed which camera had to be placed in which room so she couldn't just pick up any old camera from the pile and set it up in one of the living rooms. She hadn't really questioned why, she had simply assumed that Kazuya Shibuya was a neat freak in addition to being a control freak and a narcissist. What Mai didn't guess was that several cameras contained incendiary devices and they were set to go off when the heist started, as they were likely to capture Kuro Kaitou's face due to the fact that they were in the path of his entry and exit route.

"Is there anything else that you want me to do?" she enquired.

The reply was simple. "Mai, tea."

"But we're in someone else's house and you are a Police officer- you should know better," she protested.

Naru sighed. "All you are going to use is the water. Lin has the kettle and the teabags. Off you go."

He resolved to use a light tranquilliser on her tonight. Some tranquillisers left you feeling like you had a hangover the next morning and he couldn't have her missing work and not making him tea. Over the past seven days he had developed a minor addiction to say the least. The look on Mai's face when she realised that she was going to have to hear about how handsome he was for the nth time was also a bonus.

The next few hours whittled by and were mainly filled with tea making and the occasional disagreement between Mai and Naru until it was fifteen minutes before the time stated in Kuro Kaitou's warning letter.

"Is everyone clear on their positions? We have extra officers at likely entrance points, but someone should be in every part of the building," Naru said as he consulted the floor plan. His placing of Mai, Lin and himself was deliberate to minimise trouble.

Five minutes before the heist start time all the officers were waiting in position. Mai was on floor above Naru who was just around the corner from Lin. However there was an unpatrolled hallway opposite him which he would be using as a route whereas Lin and the other officers would be running in a different direction once eight o'clock arrived.

"5,4,3,2,1," he muttered to himself as he glanced down at his watch.

At zero the lights faded due to something that had been installed in the fuse box. Simultaneously he heard shouting from officers posted on the west side of the building. Then he heard Lin ordering everyone to run to that side the of building and he darted into the hallway and squashed his body against the wall. Several officers ran past his hiding place in the darkness and he counted the number to verify that everyone had left the east side of the building.

Once the final officer had passed him he pulled on his Kuro Kaitou costume that had been concealed in a giant Ming vase. He wondered if Mai would enjoy the projections that he had created to mislead the task force.

Mai followed the stream of officers down the stairs to the ground floor where the shouting was coming from. When she reached the right area, she saw by the faint illumination of the crescent moon, a black outline running along the length of the dining room with the Chinese beanpole leading the chase.

She frowned, she didn't want to get caught up in that, but she didn't want to do nothing on her first heist. A weak light coming from a chair at the table caught her eye as all of the remaining officers joined the chase. Mai hitched up the cotton tablecloth to find a projector on the seat.

"It's a trick..." she gasped. Presumably there were other projectors in the house to maintain the illusion of an escaping Kuro Kaitou.

The brunette tapped her chin. She was now on the west side of the house and judging by all of the shouting and clattering of running feet everyone was above her. So everyone was on a different floor, but on the same side of the house, meaning...

"He is on the west side, on this floor."

This caused her to run out of the room trying to remember where the study was. At previous heists the only rooms that had been touched where study rooms. Mai pulled out a torch from her pocket so she could see where she was going. She pushed open the door that she thought was the study and the beam of light from her torch shone on a figure dressed in black who threw up his arms to shield his eyes from the light.

He dropped his arm as she approached and smiled sweetly at her.

"Good evening, Officer Taniyama is it not?"

Anyone else would have questioned why a notorious thief knew their name, but Mai bypassed it, assuming correctly that he was trying to distract her.

"Stop with the games, I'm here to arrest you."

"You have no ground to arrest me, I have never stolen a thing."

If he thought that was going to stop her, he was wrong.

"If you are going to get technical, I'm going to hold you down and call for backup. Then we will see what to do with you."

Her eyes widened when he reached out to grab her chin and she felt the coolness of his gloved hands against her skin.

"You can't scream for help when your mouth is covered."

Her brain seemed to shut down as he pressed his lips to her gently. One part of her brain idly noticed that it seemed to taste like Earl Grey tea which she had been forced to make for her superior earlier in the evening. When his tongue began to probe her mouth, she started to see black spots on her vision and she lost her grip on consciousness.

The Phantom Thief himself got a shock when Mai suddenly slipped from his lips and sagged to the floor. He caught her just in time and realised that she had fainted.

"At least I don't have to use tranquilliser," he muttered to himself before gently placing her on the floor. "And why did I do that?"

He glanced at his watch and knew that time was ticking. The projections and Lin could only distract the other members of the task force for so long. Naru handcuffed the brunette and blindfolded her for safety and carried her outside the study before she could wake up and interfere further with his plan. She had proven that she was not to be underestimated.

Once he had taken care of her he returned to the study and with a flick of his hand he sent all the books and folders off the bookshelves. He picked up a plain black leather folder and flipped through it, skim reading each page. Then he frowned and pulled out all the desk drawers with another hand movement.

Naru stepped into the middle of the mess and noticed that a notebook had been affixed using masking tape to the bottom of one of the drawers. He frowned sceptically, finding concealed notebooks was rarely something to celebrate; they were normally records of bribes, money laundering or betting, something that he had found out at a number of previous heists. He opened it to find the symbol of a cherry blossom printed on the first page.

Kuro Kaitou smiled the pocketed it. The sound of shouting became apparent, informing him that his time was up. He threw up the sash of the window in the study and climbed out. Underneath the window was paving stones so he did not have to worry about leaving behind any footprints that would trace his path. He rushed around the corner of the house until he came to the kitchen window and re entered the house through the window, unlocking and locking it with his PK. As this had been planned beforehand, the camera in this room was defunct and unable to record him changing clothes and removing his mask and hat. Now all he had to do now was rejoin the other officers which would not be too hard as the electricity had not yet been restored and everyone was stumbling around in the dark.

"Did Officer Taniyama get in the way then?" Lin questioned as soon as they arrived back at their shared apartment. "I thought she might have when I noticed that she was not in the group that I was leading around the house.

"She did, but I took care of it," Naru replied simply, neglecting to mention that the means had involved a kiss and tongue... Why had he done that? He stared out the window at the night sky pensively.

"It was kind of you to leave the handcuff key on the windowsill. Taniyama-san might have murdered you in the future if we were unable to get the handcuffs off her until we got back to headquarters," Lin said, noticing how distant his charge was.

"Hmm..." was the vague reply he received.

Lin hung up his coat and picked Naru's off the sofa. "Did you get anything?"

The narcissist twitched. That was right, he had found something, so why was he thinking about Mai? He pulled out the notebook from his inside jacket pocket and flipped through it to find a list of names written in English. He passed it to Lin.

"It's fortunate that the names are in English, you don't have to read any Kanji," the beanpole observed. "The person hiding this must have assumed that a Japanese person finding it would have trouble with reading the names in English."

His charge made no reply and looked deep in thought. Eventually he spoke:

"I know that we have had twelve fruitless heists, but... it was too easy to find that." He grabbed the notebook off Lin. "All the names are neatly written out and the notebook was amateurly hidden."

Lin made a face. "Then the notebook is a trap? When we go to the next heist there will be members of the clan out for us."

"We cannot be sure of anything. However if we get one step closer to Them, we will be one step closer to Gene."


Across the city a woman tossed and turned in her bed, pondering the night's events. The dreams that took hold of her in her brief snatches of sleep were centred around one, or rather two men in black, on opposite sides of the law.

One was a Police officer. The other a thief.

Both wore black, one talked flirtingly, the other disdainfully with a touch of amusement at her expense. Despite this, they melded into one in her dreams.