Lupin III vs. Sam and Max: SHENANIGANS ON OVERDRIVE!
based on the 1998 rock anthem of the same name by Wesley Willis
written by Markie aka BurninatorBoombox

Prologue

New York was experiencing a third night of rainfall. A heavy, monotonous drizzle; a crackle of lightning, twice in the same place; a whistle of cold wind. It's the type of weather that would appear in any noir. Lost in the sound of the rain, the P.I. sits at his desk, the trumpet sings seduction through its mute, and the dame barges in with a mystery to be solved.

That's exactly the way Sam and Max liked to spend their self-imposed, paid vacations. Coincidentally, it was the third night of Sam and Max's break from solving crimes and being terrible influences for the American youth, and the two were still eager to keep it up, caring less if the soothing sounds of the rain enticed comical lethargy. Max, the white rabbit-thing, was practicing one of his various post-retirement careers, noisily hammering away – with a chainsaw, of all things – at various soda cans strewn on the floorboard. At his work rate, he managed to only get the right foot done for his completely awesome tribute to some pretty freaking awesome show about giant robots he saw four days ago. Max, not the type of individual to care about scale ratios, kept going on a whim for this tribute.

"Check it out, Sam!" Max pulled the string on the chainsaw and dramatically babbled something in what Sam faintly made out as a cross between Icelandic and Morse code.

A zip and a crash! later, Max converted a few cans into horribly mangled shells of themselves. Sam, sitting at his desk, his suit uncharacteristically hung over his chair and his feet on top of some dumb paperwork, shook his head as if to imply that Max was a misguided, indulgent rascal. "Max, keep it down!" He held a large, clunky cellphone to his dog ear, engaging in conversation with some interesting person he knew in high school or whatever. "Yeah," he said to the receiver, "that was my partner-in-crime Max. …yeah! You probably remember him as the guy who tried to unsuccessfully look into your ears to see if your brain was capable of common sense." He laughed for a bit before the guy on the other end became serious. "…what? What was that?" Sam abruptly sat up, carelessly pushing aside the paperwork off the table with his extra-large feet."You wanna go? You wanna take this outside, buster?" he half-growled.

"Sam, keep it down!" Max yelled from across the room, preoccupied with losing control of the chainsaw. In two minutes it managed to turn part of the wooden flooring into an effervescent design of straight cuts and irregularly-shaped holes before dying down on Max.

Max took the downtime to peer through a large square hole in the floor that he cut. As he stuck he head in, he bellowed, "DEATH FROM ABOVE!" and quickly grabbed his large tool bucket full of dangerous, pointy things to dump through the opening. He turned the container upside down and made the bald, grumpy neighbor downstairs rage and grumble a bit.

"…yeah! No! You wouldn't!" Sam, deciding that Max's antics were up to par once again, ended the call. "And good riddance to you too!" He slammed the cellphone on the desk, mistaking it for the actual telephone in the office.

"Questioning the Commissioner's sexuality, Sam?" Max was priming another tool bucket with nuts, bolts, and a whole slew of pointy things to puncture that bald guy downstairs with.

"That was an old high school jerk-off I was talking to," Sam glumly informed.

"Ooh! 'Jerk-off'! That's new!" Max buried a power saw inside the bucket.

"He was as much of a jerk as the last time I remembered him," continued Sam. "He was such a jerk, in fact, that every time he broke a bone, which was very often, the onomatopoeia would be an eerie, spoken-word 'JERK'."

"For all we know, your hormones were probably accentuating good old, unabashed teen stereotypes."

"I hope they were. Real life was a dangerous drug back then!"

From across the room came the delightful ringing of the telephone perched at its own small table against the wall. Sam and Max, engaging in one of their many weird traditions, looked at each other, and then the phone. Before Max could even fling himself forward, Sam slammed the empty tool bucket over his head, quickly lodging it tight, making it hard for Max to get it off of himself.

Sam quickly zipped to the phone and grabbed it. "Hello?" he said to the receiver. "Yeah, well, screw you too!" Anticlimactically, he put down the phone as soon as he had picked it up.

"Who was that, Sam?" Max tried to shout from inside the tool bucket. He yanked it free and accidentally threw it down the square hole, angering the bald guy downstairs even further.

Sam peered down the hole to make sure the bucket actually covered the guy's head. "The same jerk I was trying to have a highly intelligent conversation with earlier."

"Let's visit his house and shove some of this crap" – Max pointed at the remaining bucket – "down his crap-spewing mouth." That was the cue for the phone to ring once again.

Sam instinctively took the bucket, yanked Max's near-permanent, toothy grin open wide, and force fed the bucket's pointy and obtusely-shaped contents down his throat. Max, himself not accustomed to eating metals like lead, fell backwards from the sheer weight of the tools he held back inside his mouth.

This left Sam free once again to pick up the jittery telephone at the other end of the room. He initiated the usual conversation to the receiver: "Hello? …Yes! …Maybe. Not quite. Okay." He nodded. "Uh-huh. What was that?" Sam's eyes widened. "Great Freudian slip regarding an older sibling! We'll get on it!"

Sam put down the phone and directed his attention to Max, who regurgitated the jackhammer that was turning his face blue. "That was the Commissioner going off again! There's been a robbery at the Philadelphia Barbeque Museum, and we need to figure out who, what, where, when, why, and how!"

"We're saved, Sam!" Max coughed up some lug nuts. "The first plebth legitimate problem solving experience hurk in ack a long time hyagh hack cough augh!" He spat out a flathead screwdriver.

Sam began to pull his own blue suit through his arms. "When you've managed to throw up any kidney stones, let's skedaddle," he instructed. Max, burping out the chisel jammed in his cheek, was already making haste towards the door. "The first thing I'll do when we get to Philly is to get a Philly Cheesesteak," he said to Sam. "Once I've preoccupied myself with eating it then I'll clobber some weird old guy with it to make sure I'm not going insane."

"They outlawed the Philly Cheesesteak in Philadelphia recently," commented Sam. "I heard some right-wing crap about how they're corrupting the youth and making crime rates rise, and I heard some left-wing crap about how taking away this irresistibly cheesy artery-clogger is making crime rates rise."

Max leaned towards the doorknob. "If Prohibition taught us anything then it's that unhealthy things are worth dying for," he said, right as a mighty punt heralded the door smacking his face.

This new figure, this more traditional P.I. with the red tie and the white shirt and the dirt-colored pants and the no-nonsense facial expression with the graying hair, the five o'clock shadow and rectangular head of justice, jumped inside Sam and Max's office, aiming his semi-automatic pistol back and forth between his two fellow individuals.

"Alright, you creeps," Flint Paper began, "just what did you knuckleheads do with the real Sam and Max?"

Max stood up, still rubbing his jaw from the impact of the door. "Oh, hey, Flint!" he said, nonchalantly looking down the barrel of Flint's gun several times. "What's the problem this time?"

"You're the problem!" Flint's grip tightened.

"We can assure you, Flint," Sam tried to assure, "that Max and I would never ever think of disguising as ourselves or each other."

"Nice try, chumps," grunted Flint. "The real Sam and Max would never tell people that they aren't imposters!"

"Yeah," Max jested, "we would never tell people we aren't imposters if we just happened to pass by some of them and kick them in the crotches for no apparent reason whatsoever."

"And we would never tell people we're actually us," added Sam, "if we set them on fire afterwards because Max demanded it!"

There was a few seconds of hesitation on Flint's part before he holstered his gun to his side. "Alright," he acknowledged. "You're the real deal."

"Well, good grief, Flint. Imposters? Of us freaks?" Sam wanted to know.

"Freaks that would've been good imposters anyways?" Max quickly added.

"I'll get to that in a minute." Flint Paper rolled up his sleeves, and grappled both Sam and Max so that their faces could barely smell his distinct mixture of armpits and cologne under his right arm. "What I gotta do now," he said next, "is run the knucklehead sandwich diagnosis on you guys."

Flint began to rub his free left fist on the adorably furry heads of Sam and Max, throwing in a light jab here and there to balance things out. "Feels more like a knuckle sandwich," remarked Sam. Max giggled a bit. "I can't tell whether I'm being tickled or digested," he said in regards to the repeated klunking of his head.

After this crude display, Flint let go of his two comrades-in-arms. Dusting his hands off, he finally confirmed: "Yeah, you really are Sam and Max. Sorry for being so abrupt!"

"No prob, Flint!" Max twisted his ears back to their front-facing positions. "You can interrogate me anytime just as long as I can forgive you if you're invading my privacy so dramatically!"

"Anyways," interjected Sam, "what's this hubbub about Sam and Max imposters?"

Flint took out Exhibit A: a colored photograph of an organized crime meeting of Sam and Max imposters dressed up in crude Sam and Max costumes. "While you chumps were busy pretending to be lazy," he began, "I got a special call from the Commissioner about a secret meeting of Sam and Max knockoffs down by the wharf."

"Can I stop you for just a second to ridicule the poopy hatch flap on that guy's costume?" Max pointed a discriminating finger at the back of one scrawny guy in an elongated rabbit costume, with an elongated bunny head and hairy buttocks barely exposed by an eye-burning pink drop bottom. He laughed. "Ha! What a failure."

"Surprisingly," Sam noted, "all of the guys posing as me look like they're actually other dogs. Hyper-realistically featured, ugly looking dogs, nonetheless."

"Like your good ol' Flint would do for any mass meeting of organized crime," continued Flint, "I stormed through the doors and laid the smackdown on those guys!" He chuckled. "Oh yeah, and I was lucky enough to take some photographs during the event." Flint held up Exhibit B, a photo of his fist in some unlucky scumbag's face.

"Awesome!" Max gleefully exclaimed, thinking of ways to add to the Flint Paper shrine that would never be realized. "I hope you took one of your foot, too!"

"Way ahead of ya!" Flint displayed Exhibit C next; it was his foot driving into the jaw of an acne-ridden ditz wearing a purple shade of Sam's suit. "You're probably bored of this stuff already, so I'll skip to the really good stuff." The next photograph he whipped out was Exhibit BA: a whole spectrum of colored suits and terrible lagomorph costumes, hanging by hooks on a wall. "No, those aren't people," added Flint. "Woulda been nice if I hung 'em up to dry, though."

"Golly!" Sam said. "Who would've thought that tarnishing our reputations was such a profitable business? Besides us, of course."

"We don't get paid enough, either!" complained Max.

"As much as I would like to agree with you guys, there's still a truckload of organizations bent on illegally causing illegalities using your franchise without due permission," said Flint, quickly putting away his photographs. "Don't you worry, fellas! Think of me as your lawyer – I got the legal stuff down nice and tight, and by the time you're done with whatever completely unrelated case you've got, this will all be just a bad memory!"

Max scratched his head. "The image of a guy pretending to be me and his hairy hiney is still lingering in my noggin."

"Whatever, then! If it helps you rest easy at night..." For a few moments it seemed the entire building was faintly rumbling.

Flint's eyes suddenly lit up. "Damn! They're here! Them loan sharks are back and they've got working helicopters this time!"

"Remember where we stashed all twenty-seven rocket launchers inside the building, Flint!" informed Sam, shaking the P.I.'s hand.

"And if you run out of incendiaries," Max advised, also shaking Flint's hand, "keep rubbing your feet against a puddle of corn oil!" He was now shaking Sam's hand. "You'll burn down the place in no time!"

"Sam and Max, it's been an honor working with you guys." With that said, Flint quickly started for the ascending staircase, towards the roof. Sam and Max waved goodbye, confident that they wouldn't be seeing the last of Flint Paper. He was insane enough to survive a billion showdowns, that noir-breathing son of a gun.

"You can let go of my hand now, Max." Sam, for some reason, was still locked in the vigorous death grip of his little buddy's handshake.

Max let go. "Let's get out of here, Sam, before I get the urge to chew on the walls and blow myself up with a well-hidden backup grenade."

"I removed them all and donated them to goodwill societies," Sam informed him. "You should have no more problems getting a rearranged skull."

"Well, I hate to say this, but I'm relieved you did that!" Max began sliding down the wooden side rail of the descending staircase.

"It's a decision I will always regret," Sam mused with much chagrin. He began to walk down the stairs.

The rain stopped just as Sam and Max ventured out the front door of the building complex. A cold silence pierced the air, to which Sam replied, "If the rain stops just as we're getting down to business, you know something's up."

"Somebody decided to stop crying weepy baby tears somewhere and live out the rest of their lives to give a loved one meaning?" was Max's theory.

"Don't be so insensitive, Max!" scolded Sam. "Heartfelt ways to grieve for people and realize the meaning of their lives is but one of the driving forces of characterization and character improvement!"

"Wusses."

"You're in for a treat, you weird little heretic." Sam vaulted over the left side of the black-and-white, hoodless rendition of the duo's (surprisingly dry) DeSoto Adventurer, into the driver's seat. "Come on, Max," he invited, and Max followed suit, hopping like any lagomorph would, first on the trunk of the car, then into the passenger's seat.

Sam switched the ignition all the way with the twist of the keys. "Where are we going, Sam?" Max piped up.

"You should know where already," Sam said, the exhaust of the DeSoto Adventurer now eliciting an idle haze of smoke.

"A junior high-oriented, educational reenactment of medieval self-flagellation?"

The radio crackled a guitar riff in D minor.

"...Renaissance Fair?"

"Weren't you paying attention?" asked Sam, putting the shift stick forwards and tapping the gas pedal. He quickly switched the topic of conversation: "Isn't the weather beautiful tonight?"

"The perfect weather for a medieval flogging."

"Only when the skies are burning red with light pollution and rotting, smelly corpses, Max."

"Sam, how come we're not moving?"

"Well, gee, that's strange." Sam pressed on the gas a few more times and heard a sharp scraping of rubber underneath. "Aw, man! I hope it isn't what I think it is."

Max was already looking upside-down from where he was into one of the rear wheels. "That's funny, I don't remember ever chewing on the tires of the car while sleepwalking." Then he saw the yellow tire lock lodged into the tire's rim. "Wait, Sam, there's a tire lock here, and it smells of goody-two shoes peacekeeping."

"Just as I thought," Sam said. "The NYPD finally decided to crack down on highway surfing!" He quickly peeked at the other rear wheel. "By the way, Max, you chewed this one."

"And they had the nerve to leave us a ticket for 'disturbing the peace'!" Max crumpled the somehow perpetually dry police ticket that he didn't spot on the windshield beforehand and threw it at Sam, who caught and began to unravel it. "That's kind of tame," commented Sam. "You'd think they'd start by actually apprehending the offenders, the stinky, not-labeled-police kind."

"Undercover cops get arrested, too," noted Max, referring to a previous stint where the two of them went undercover in an underground Highway Surfing organization only to end up becoming the world champions of the entire underground Highway Surfing community.

"Look who's talking." Sam then realized it wasn't Max Payne he was talking to. "Anyways, Max, do you still have your chainsaw with you? I think it's about time we unintentionally sent a message to the real, boring police."

On cue, Max whipped the chainsaw out from hammerspace, blathering another mangled Polish-Ilocano-Chickadee phrase in an imitation of macho protagonist Hassuel Somethingfrasser of that TV show that Max got into less than a week ago.

Conveniently, before Max could even waste six to twelve hours trying to cut through the metal, a pinstripe-suited freak fell from above, yelling bloody murder. For some strange reason he crashed straight into the tire lock, and a sickening skull krrrack probably meant that he had served his purpose. Flint Paper was still alive in the hearts and minds of Sam and Max, helping them out even in death, or so they believed.

The tire lock fell into useless parts, and the chainsaw fell silent. Max put it away in his usual place. "Awesome!" He poked the apparently lifeless goon's thick arm with his finger. "From the squishyness of his skin," he deducted, "I declare that this poor chump is another statistic of American obesity."

Sam started up the engine again, flinching just as another Wilhelm screamin', half-naked goon collapsed into the back seat of the DeSoto. "Max, this one looks like he's a statistic of American malnutrition. Look at him, poor guy's as slim as most fencing techniques."

"I say we put him in the trunk and turn him into gasoline," decided Max, hopping into the backseat. He struggled to lift the wife-beater and purple boxers-wearing goon up a few inches. "I saw this in some old comic once. They put this guy in the trunk and the driver flipped this switch and his vividly lettered screams gave me nightmares for weeks! Not really." He suddenly realized: "Oh yeah, huh, we don't have anything like that installed." In one exhausting push Max flung the goon onto the sidewalk, quickly jumping back up front to sit next to his tall canine buddy.

"Max, it's illegal in forty-and-a-half states to privately digest horrible scumbags for fuel," Sam remembered.

"We're the other forty-and-a-half, screw those guys!"

"Alright, but don't complain if you get stuffed in one of those trunks and find yourself broken down by substances even I haven't heard of." Sam stepped hard on the gas, initiating a burnout. At long last, they were finally heading down the road. "Ironically, I hear that's the new bounty hunting technique these days, burning poor, redeemable criminals for fuel."

"I've heard of it in some old comic once," Max started up again. "They put this guy-"

"Shut up, Max."

Sam and Max, Freelance Police. One is a clean-cut dog, a rhapsody in blue formal wear dressed to kill, and the other is a naked hyperactive rabbity-thing with a penchant for violence and wanton destruction. Both are masters of their field of solving and catalyzing crazy shenanigans.

Nothing more needs to be said about Sam and Max, really. They can get away with almost any sort of situations they desire and look good doing it, too. They are an absurd, misunderstood, slightly sociopathic bunch. Tonight, as their DeSoto speeds valiantly into the shifting blue horizon, Sam and Max are about to partake in what would become the greatest shenanigans they would ever get into, maybe even for all time.

This is the tale of how Sam and Max met Lupin the Third.

Hello, everyone! I decided that the opportunity to fill in the niche that is the lack of Sam & Max fanfiction was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so now here I am trying my hand at this - an unexpected crossover of two awesome franchises. Their only similarity between the two that I've paid attention to is their tendency to have zero continuity across all media. So be it. I don't know what continuity this story is taking place in, either. Let's go and make a new one!

Coming soon, the first chapter of SHENANIGANS ON OVERDRIVE, in which the plot finally gets rolling! Keep your eyes peeled and don't be surprised if I take a month or two to crank it out!