author's note. Yeah, I suck. No excuses, just got lazy and uncreative. But
here's chapter 7, for the one person who's still readin' (Musetta).
Disclaimer: Since the record industry's undoubtedly out to get me, better clear myself with the Anime industry. I do not own or profit from Lupin III or any of its elements. Man, I don't profit from ANYthing...nobody's fooled by the rocks that I got...I am definitely still Jenny from the Block. Boo.
Chapter 7: Are You Experienced?
"But who in your measly little world / are you trying to prove / you're made out of gold, and you can't be sold?/ So tell me,/ Are you experienced?/ Or have you ever been experienced?/ Well. I have/ Let me prove it to you."
--The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Are You Experienced?"
Late-morning sunlight was already slanting through the blinds when shouts and scuffling noises dragged a reluctant Jigen from another cloudy sleep. Instinctual paranoia carried the day, however, and cleared the clouds. In an instant, he'd rolled from the bed to the window, left hand snatching his holster from the chair as he rolled. He ignored the stiffness and pain in his right arm as another shout drifted in through the window--an unfamiliar shout.
Someone here, he thought. How did they find this place?
Jigen nosed the Magnum under the blinds, slowly raising them just enough to see outside. Caught off-guard and injured, he tensed up and fought a moment of panic. Outside, Goemon and a little blonde woman stood squared off across a patch of lightly wooded ground. Jigen swore under his breath, irked at not having thought of it before. Of course, he thought. The new shout belonged to Alex.
Before Jigen could draw another breath, Alex and Goemon were rushing full- tilt at one another, swords raised above their heads. Goemon threw his lean samurai's body into a standard lunge, a single motion that made his sword arc downward at Alex's upraised blade. Instead of meeting his lunge, however, the girl slowed her own charge to a stop and took a single step to the right, bringing her sword around to maintain her balance. Jigen watched Goemon's sword breeze past Alex's with a sharp "whoof," before momentum sent the astonished samurai headlong into the grass.
"All right, damnit, I've seen enough!" Jigen snarled, tearing open the blinds and firing a single shot through the windowpane.
Alex gasped as the bullet screamed past her ear and tore the sword from her hand. Only at this moment of impact, one instant too late, did the sounds of a gun firing and glass breaking register in her ears. As always, her instincts rushed ahead of her brain, threw her to the ground, and rolled her to the cover of a nearby shrub. She drew a gun from the holster on her left ankle and lay in wait, ears primed for any new noise. Goemon--still recovering from his fall--scrambled to her side, waving his arms.
"Jigen," he called out, "cease your firing! I assure you, I am in no danger! We are merely practicing!" The samurai paused, looking down at his fighting partner with clear respect. "Fortunately for me," he amended.
Alex smiled. That morning, restless and untired, she had begun to wander, and soon found Goemon beginning his sunrise meditations. He invited her to join him, which she did; and they had spent the rest of the morning surprising each other with swordfighting techniques. She admired the rigor and precision Goemon applied to both his attack and defense--fighting him was like fighting an exceptional textbook model. Her own tactics, she thought ruefully, were effective but sloppy; she longed to have real technique at her disposal. Moreover, she admired the samurai himself. For all his aloof demeanor and dry elocution, Goemon had within him a deep vein of generous humor, the kind of humor only those at peace can afford to have. That vein was showing itself now, as Goemon lent her a chivalrous hand and pulled her from the shrubs.
"You will have to excuse my impetuous colleague," he said lightly. "Daisuke Jigen is quite protective ...occasionally to a fault."
"I see," Alex replied, dusting herself off with a wry grin. She walked over to examine her sword, which lay bent and broken in the grass. "I also see that he merits his reputation, even injured. That," she said, pointing downward, "is what we call shooting like you mean it."
"Yeah, well I did mean it," drawled a voice full of gravel. The voice belonged to the lanky gunman stalking across the yard, hands in his pockets. "And you're lucky I got a single gentleman's cell in my body, or I wouldn't have settled for your sword."
"Please send that cell my gratitude," Alex replied with a small bow. Goemon permitted one corner of his mouth to curl up in a smile. The girl's delicate, youthful exterior belied her self-possession; and Goemon had seen in her fighting that she knew to turn underestimation to her advantage. The ability to seem harmless: an indispensable skill for the con man, and (in combination with the willful blindness of many men) a tactic of which countless con *women* took advantage.
And yet, Goemon thought, where Fujiko must put on an act of vulnerability, this woman simply retreats into the basic facts of her appearance--her size, her age--and lets her opponent draw the conclusion on his own...no doubt never noticing the deception until it is far too late. It is fortunate for us that she is on our side...
A tingle at the edges of Goemon's senses reminded him that this was far from given.
*******************************************************************
Fujiko ran a single manicured finger down Lupin's nose, punctuating the motion with a friendly poke.
"So," she cooed, "how does our new little friend check out?" Lupin set aside the papers he'd been thumbing for the last twenty minutes, and pulled Fujiko down onto his lap. She lodged only a mild squeal of protest, then settled herself, hands folded expectantly. "All squeaky-clean?"
"She's not a cop, she's not Interpol, she's not FBI, if that's what you mean. Other than that, her record's appropriately dirty." Lupin reached past Fujiko's ample bosom and pulled a few marked sheets out of the pile. "Asaka Marumi Rhodes, goes by Alex in the States--and everywhere else. Born to a British Royal Army captain and a Japanese schoolteacher in Kobe, twenty-four years ago..."
"Japanese!" Fujiko interrupted. "No wonder she looks so damned tan." Lupin favored his pale seatmate with a raised eyebrow, and continued:
"...Half, Fuji my dear. Takes after dear old dad with those nice light eyes, but that blonde hair came out of a bottle. Now let's see...Raised in Tokyo. Mother dies when Asaka is a vulnerable fifteen years old, and her father takes her back to London. Age sixteen: runs away from the public school--some prestigious boarding school near Windsor--where she's ranked number two in her class. Returns to school in a police cruiser five days later, having been caught running a con to raise train fare to Italy. Age eighteen: graduates from said school under police observation, suspected of grand larceny. No arrests made, never charged. Also at age eighteen: takes off for New York, gets a job at an investment bank. Detained and questioned when, three weeks after her arrival, $4 million in company money takes a little walk..." Fujiko laughed. "Again, no arrests...no charges."
"Three weeks, huh?" she said. "She's fast. Tan and fast." Lupin chuckled, and flipped a few more pages. When he reached the packet's end, he slapped it onto Fujiko's lap and sighed.
"Well, Fuji, I'll bite. Little Asaka is suspected on twenty counts of grand theft auto, sixteen counts of embezzlement, one hun--Jesus--one hundred and three counts of grand larceny...and yet she's never spent a day in jail."
"What?"
"She was arrested once, about a year ago. But it looks like that one didn't stick either. Humph," Lupin ran an idle hand through Fujiko's hair. "She's starting to sound like some other people I know." Fujiko batted her lashes.
"Oh really," Fujiko replied, rolling her "l's" expectantly. "Like who, lover?"
"Mmm," Lupin moaned in dreamy reply. "Like me." With a gasp, Fujiko leapt out of the chair, and stalked out of the room, muttering indignantly. Unbalanced, the chair promptly overturned; Lupin landed on the hard floor with a bump.
"Ow!" Lupin exclaimed, rubbing his backside. "Aw, man, what'd I do NOW?"
**************************************************************
Washed and dressed, sipping at a cup of steaming coffee, Jigen left the house again and propped himself up against the base of a tree. Goemon and Alex had resumed their practice runs, and the gunman watched as they dove and lunged across the clearing, meeting and separating with the grating sound of steel on steel. Alex, deft and fluid, bested the formidable samurai about half the time. Her trick, Jigen noticed, was to yield to his oncoming force; when he struck, she absorbed it without trying to beat it back, and he was thrown off by his momentum.
"It is like fighting the Tao Te Ching itself," Goemon said with a chuckle, after a particularly bad run. "The inflexible stone has been eroded by the flowing river." On the next run, though, Goemon deflected Alex's attack and tossed the woman lightly to the ground.
"The inflexible stone," Alex said, catching her breath, "shouldn't be so hard on himself." She leapt up, sword in hand, beckoning Goemon to have another try. Everything small and petty in Jigen screamed, "careful, old man, or she'll step into your shoes, too."
But the samurai's laughter stopped his tongue. The laughter bothered Jigen in a way he couldn't fully understand. It seemed to cut right through him, setting him at ease and then unsettling him again in an instant. He heard himself laughing in a cloudy memory, almost in a dream, laughing with the little blonde girl until it hurt. He'd felt something different then, in that first consciousness; he'd let her minister to him, talk to him, all without any misgiving. And he had suddenly been filled with concern for her...but that was all before, in the fog of injury; before he'd known the damage she could do.
Jigen closed his eyes, Lupin's words from the night before ringing in his head. "You're not shaking me off that easy... doesn't mean it was a bad decision... We gave her a little test-run. She's good, Jigen...". Well. Maybe she was good, Jigen thought. But that doesn't mean I have to like her. Or trust her...no; I sure as hell don't have to trust her. Friggin' women, he thought. Why doesn't everyone else see they're nothing but trouble?
The gentle poke of a toe broke through Jigen's bitter reverie.
"Hey there," came a voice. "Feeling OK?"
He opened his eyes. Nothing But Trouble was looking down at him with a worried face. The same worried face he'd seen when he opened his eyes the night before. But now he was ready to fight it.
"Fine," he growled. The face persisted. "What?!" Jigen half-roared, "I said I'm fine!"
"All right, all right," Alex assured him, palms up. "Goemon and I are done for the day, is all."
"Well, kudos to you," he said, dismissing her with a wave. To Jigen's horror, the woman ignored his gesture and sat down beside him, looking off across the clearing.
"Jesus," she groaned, rubbing the back of her neck. "Sore already. I'm gonna pay for that little workout tomorrow, I can tell you." Jigen answered her with static-filled silence. Alex felt the air between them crackling, and decided nothing would be settled until there was a nice, big explosion. Fine, she thought. Then I'll just go ahead and trigger it.
"Well," she said mock-expectantly, "aren't you going to apologize for almost killing me?"
"Hmph." He continued to look at some invisible point in the distance, blocking her out as best he could. But her presence was nettling him, and it took some restraint for Jigen to avoid blurting out, Fat Friggin' Chance.
"Anyway, it was a good shot," she put in absentmindedly. Jigen focused all his attention on the cup of coffee at his lips. Alex took an imperceptible breath, bracing herself. "How's that bum arm doing?" Jigen raised himself to his feet with a roar.
"Just who the HELL do you think you are?!" He hurled the coffee mug across the clearing. "I've had it up to..." But the sound of gunfire cut him short. The coffee mug, still feet above the ground, shattered into glittering china shards. "What the...?"
He looked down to his feet, where Alex sat with a pistol in her hand, her eyes on the poor mug's remains.
"Sorry," she said, without looking up at him. "Force of habit."
Jigen slumped back to the ground, arms folded across his knees. So Lupin had been right; she was good. And against his better judgment, his anger cooled a bit; the furious tirade died on his lips. He had just needed some proof, he supposed. But it didn't matter, he told himself. She wasn't going to get to him, oh no. Not Daisuke Jigen, he wasn't going to melt. She might get the samurai and the gentleman thief, but that was their business.
Still, he couldn't stir up any more rage just now. Jigen rested his bearded chin on his arms and sighed.
"I really liked that mug," he said. Now, she looked at him. And just like before, the laughter bubbled up between them until it hurt.
Disclaimer: Since the record industry's undoubtedly out to get me, better clear myself with the Anime industry. I do not own or profit from Lupin III or any of its elements. Man, I don't profit from ANYthing...nobody's fooled by the rocks that I got...I am definitely still Jenny from the Block. Boo.
Chapter 7: Are You Experienced?
"But who in your measly little world / are you trying to prove / you're made out of gold, and you can't be sold?/ So tell me,/ Are you experienced?/ Or have you ever been experienced?/ Well. I have/ Let me prove it to you."
--The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Are You Experienced?"
Late-morning sunlight was already slanting through the blinds when shouts and scuffling noises dragged a reluctant Jigen from another cloudy sleep. Instinctual paranoia carried the day, however, and cleared the clouds. In an instant, he'd rolled from the bed to the window, left hand snatching his holster from the chair as he rolled. He ignored the stiffness and pain in his right arm as another shout drifted in through the window--an unfamiliar shout.
Someone here, he thought. How did they find this place?
Jigen nosed the Magnum under the blinds, slowly raising them just enough to see outside. Caught off-guard and injured, he tensed up and fought a moment of panic. Outside, Goemon and a little blonde woman stood squared off across a patch of lightly wooded ground. Jigen swore under his breath, irked at not having thought of it before. Of course, he thought. The new shout belonged to Alex.
Before Jigen could draw another breath, Alex and Goemon were rushing full- tilt at one another, swords raised above their heads. Goemon threw his lean samurai's body into a standard lunge, a single motion that made his sword arc downward at Alex's upraised blade. Instead of meeting his lunge, however, the girl slowed her own charge to a stop and took a single step to the right, bringing her sword around to maintain her balance. Jigen watched Goemon's sword breeze past Alex's with a sharp "whoof," before momentum sent the astonished samurai headlong into the grass.
"All right, damnit, I've seen enough!" Jigen snarled, tearing open the blinds and firing a single shot through the windowpane.
Alex gasped as the bullet screamed past her ear and tore the sword from her hand. Only at this moment of impact, one instant too late, did the sounds of a gun firing and glass breaking register in her ears. As always, her instincts rushed ahead of her brain, threw her to the ground, and rolled her to the cover of a nearby shrub. She drew a gun from the holster on her left ankle and lay in wait, ears primed for any new noise. Goemon--still recovering from his fall--scrambled to her side, waving his arms.
"Jigen," he called out, "cease your firing! I assure you, I am in no danger! We are merely practicing!" The samurai paused, looking down at his fighting partner with clear respect. "Fortunately for me," he amended.
Alex smiled. That morning, restless and untired, she had begun to wander, and soon found Goemon beginning his sunrise meditations. He invited her to join him, which she did; and they had spent the rest of the morning surprising each other with swordfighting techniques. She admired the rigor and precision Goemon applied to both his attack and defense--fighting him was like fighting an exceptional textbook model. Her own tactics, she thought ruefully, were effective but sloppy; she longed to have real technique at her disposal. Moreover, she admired the samurai himself. For all his aloof demeanor and dry elocution, Goemon had within him a deep vein of generous humor, the kind of humor only those at peace can afford to have. That vein was showing itself now, as Goemon lent her a chivalrous hand and pulled her from the shrubs.
"You will have to excuse my impetuous colleague," he said lightly. "Daisuke Jigen is quite protective ...occasionally to a fault."
"I see," Alex replied, dusting herself off with a wry grin. She walked over to examine her sword, which lay bent and broken in the grass. "I also see that he merits his reputation, even injured. That," she said, pointing downward, "is what we call shooting like you mean it."
"Yeah, well I did mean it," drawled a voice full of gravel. The voice belonged to the lanky gunman stalking across the yard, hands in his pockets. "And you're lucky I got a single gentleman's cell in my body, or I wouldn't have settled for your sword."
"Please send that cell my gratitude," Alex replied with a small bow. Goemon permitted one corner of his mouth to curl up in a smile. The girl's delicate, youthful exterior belied her self-possession; and Goemon had seen in her fighting that she knew to turn underestimation to her advantage. The ability to seem harmless: an indispensable skill for the con man, and (in combination with the willful blindness of many men) a tactic of which countless con *women* took advantage.
And yet, Goemon thought, where Fujiko must put on an act of vulnerability, this woman simply retreats into the basic facts of her appearance--her size, her age--and lets her opponent draw the conclusion on his own...no doubt never noticing the deception until it is far too late. It is fortunate for us that she is on our side...
A tingle at the edges of Goemon's senses reminded him that this was far from given.
*******************************************************************
Fujiko ran a single manicured finger down Lupin's nose, punctuating the motion with a friendly poke.
"So," she cooed, "how does our new little friend check out?" Lupin set aside the papers he'd been thumbing for the last twenty minutes, and pulled Fujiko down onto his lap. She lodged only a mild squeal of protest, then settled herself, hands folded expectantly. "All squeaky-clean?"
"She's not a cop, she's not Interpol, she's not FBI, if that's what you mean. Other than that, her record's appropriately dirty." Lupin reached past Fujiko's ample bosom and pulled a few marked sheets out of the pile. "Asaka Marumi Rhodes, goes by Alex in the States--and everywhere else. Born to a British Royal Army captain and a Japanese schoolteacher in Kobe, twenty-four years ago..."
"Japanese!" Fujiko interrupted. "No wonder she looks so damned tan." Lupin favored his pale seatmate with a raised eyebrow, and continued:
"...Half, Fuji my dear. Takes after dear old dad with those nice light eyes, but that blonde hair came out of a bottle. Now let's see...Raised in Tokyo. Mother dies when Asaka is a vulnerable fifteen years old, and her father takes her back to London. Age sixteen: runs away from the public school--some prestigious boarding school near Windsor--where she's ranked number two in her class. Returns to school in a police cruiser five days later, having been caught running a con to raise train fare to Italy. Age eighteen: graduates from said school under police observation, suspected of grand larceny. No arrests made, never charged. Also at age eighteen: takes off for New York, gets a job at an investment bank. Detained and questioned when, three weeks after her arrival, $4 million in company money takes a little walk..." Fujiko laughed. "Again, no arrests...no charges."
"Three weeks, huh?" she said. "She's fast. Tan and fast." Lupin chuckled, and flipped a few more pages. When he reached the packet's end, he slapped it onto Fujiko's lap and sighed.
"Well, Fuji, I'll bite. Little Asaka is suspected on twenty counts of grand theft auto, sixteen counts of embezzlement, one hun--Jesus--one hundred and three counts of grand larceny...and yet she's never spent a day in jail."
"What?"
"She was arrested once, about a year ago. But it looks like that one didn't stick either. Humph," Lupin ran an idle hand through Fujiko's hair. "She's starting to sound like some other people I know." Fujiko batted her lashes.
"Oh really," Fujiko replied, rolling her "l's" expectantly. "Like who, lover?"
"Mmm," Lupin moaned in dreamy reply. "Like me." With a gasp, Fujiko leapt out of the chair, and stalked out of the room, muttering indignantly. Unbalanced, the chair promptly overturned; Lupin landed on the hard floor with a bump.
"Ow!" Lupin exclaimed, rubbing his backside. "Aw, man, what'd I do NOW?"
**************************************************************
Washed and dressed, sipping at a cup of steaming coffee, Jigen left the house again and propped himself up against the base of a tree. Goemon and Alex had resumed their practice runs, and the gunman watched as they dove and lunged across the clearing, meeting and separating with the grating sound of steel on steel. Alex, deft and fluid, bested the formidable samurai about half the time. Her trick, Jigen noticed, was to yield to his oncoming force; when he struck, she absorbed it without trying to beat it back, and he was thrown off by his momentum.
"It is like fighting the Tao Te Ching itself," Goemon said with a chuckle, after a particularly bad run. "The inflexible stone has been eroded by the flowing river." On the next run, though, Goemon deflected Alex's attack and tossed the woman lightly to the ground.
"The inflexible stone," Alex said, catching her breath, "shouldn't be so hard on himself." She leapt up, sword in hand, beckoning Goemon to have another try. Everything small and petty in Jigen screamed, "careful, old man, or she'll step into your shoes, too."
But the samurai's laughter stopped his tongue. The laughter bothered Jigen in a way he couldn't fully understand. It seemed to cut right through him, setting him at ease and then unsettling him again in an instant. He heard himself laughing in a cloudy memory, almost in a dream, laughing with the little blonde girl until it hurt. He'd felt something different then, in that first consciousness; he'd let her minister to him, talk to him, all without any misgiving. And he had suddenly been filled with concern for her...but that was all before, in the fog of injury; before he'd known the damage she could do.
Jigen closed his eyes, Lupin's words from the night before ringing in his head. "You're not shaking me off that easy... doesn't mean it was a bad decision... We gave her a little test-run. She's good, Jigen...". Well. Maybe she was good, Jigen thought. But that doesn't mean I have to like her. Or trust her...no; I sure as hell don't have to trust her. Friggin' women, he thought. Why doesn't everyone else see they're nothing but trouble?
The gentle poke of a toe broke through Jigen's bitter reverie.
"Hey there," came a voice. "Feeling OK?"
He opened his eyes. Nothing But Trouble was looking down at him with a worried face. The same worried face he'd seen when he opened his eyes the night before. But now he was ready to fight it.
"Fine," he growled. The face persisted. "What?!" Jigen half-roared, "I said I'm fine!"
"All right, all right," Alex assured him, palms up. "Goemon and I are done for the day, is all."
"Well, kudos to you," he said, dismissing her with a wave. To Jigen's horror, the woman ignored his gesture and sat down beside him, looking off across the clearing.
"Jesus," she groaned, rubbing the back of her neck. "Sore already. I'm gonna pay for that little workout tomorrow, I can tell you." Jigen answered her with static-filled silence. Alex felt the air between them crackling, and decided nothing would be settled until there was a nice, big explosion. Fine, she thought. Then I'll just go ahead and trigger it.
"Well," she said mock-expectantly, "aren't you going to apologize for almost killing me?"
"Hmph." He continued to look at some invisible point in the distance, blocking her out as best he could. But her presence was nettling him, and it took some restraint for Jigen to avoid blurting out, Fat Friggin' Chance.
"Anyway, it was a good shot," she put in absentmindedly. Jigen focused all his attention on the cup of coffee at his lips. Alex took an imperceptible breath, bracing herself. "How's that bum arm doing?" Jigen raised himself to his feet with a roar.
"Just who the HELL do you think you are?!" He hurled the coffee mug across the clearing. "I've had it up to..." But the sound of gunfire cut him short. The coffee mug, still feet above the ground, shattered into glittering china shards. "What the...?"
He looked down to his feet, where Alex sat with a pistol in her hand, her eyes on the poor mug's remains.
"Sorry," she said, without looking up at him. "Force of habit."
Jigen slumped back to the ground, arms folded across his knees. So Lupin had been right; she was good. And against his better judgment, his anger cooled a bit; the furious tirade died on his lips. He had just needed some proof, he supposed. But it didn't matter, he told himself. She wasn't going to get to him, oh no. Not Daisuke Jigen, he wasn't going to melt. She might get the samurai and the gentleman thief, but that was their business.
Still, he couldn't stir up any more rage just now. Jigen rested his bearded chin on his arms and sighed.
"I really liked that mug," he said. Now, she looked at him. And just like before, the laughter bubbled up between them until it hurt.