[The following fevered writhings should be understood as an affectionate fair-use PARODY. All characters of the Lupin III franchise are the property of their original creator, Monkey Punch, for whose work I am forever grateful. Oh, and the lyrics quoted in the epigrams are the property of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, for whose work I am also forever grateful. I earn nothing from these writings except entertainment value. Thanks, and carry on!]
Would you like to take
a yoyo for a ride?
Zombie, I can see
you’re qualified
--Steely Dan, “Sign In Stranger”
Okay--time to party. As Nessa aims the car for the thinnest part of the crowd, I throw my spare gas mask at her, slap the sunroof out of the way, stand up through the opening, ditch the disguise jacket to reveal my own underneath, and reach into a pocket for some party favors. One of my latest toys and I love this thing--little battery-operated airgun that fires ping pong ball smoke bombs. Man, can these little buggers travel if I get a good air current under ‘em. In seconds I’ve got the whole room awash in thick choking smoke.
But I gotta shelve that thought for now, because a bullet has just grazed the roof inches from me--and instead of a dent, it leaves a tattered fibrous gouge.
I dive back inside. “Shit, this thing’s just fiberglass!”
“What, you thought they’d use real metal on one of these glorified go-karts?” Nessa’s steering a damn fine evasion course through the display area, clipping the corners of booths as she ducks various tag-teams of pursuers. But there’s a tension to her jaw that tells me she’s feeling like she might have bitten off just a tad more than she can chew this time.
We’re out in the main hall now, where there are a lot more civilians, none of whom have any idea of the ruckus we’ve been causing. Nessa’s face is red and sweaty, and not just from the gas mask she’s pushed up onto the crown of her head.
“Let me drive!” I yell, pulling off my own gas mask.
“Are you crazy?!? I can’t stop here!”
“No need!” I hop my ass over the gearshift and slide into her lap--tight fit under the steering wheel, but man, she feels yummy under me--and grab the wheel from her.
“Jesus!” She struggles out from under me into the shotgun seat. “Give a girl some warning when you’re gonna do shit like that!”
“Okie-doke--warning you right now to hold on to your hat!” And I make a beeline for the nearest bank of escalators.
There’s a certain knack to getting a car’s nose to pop up so that you can jump it onto someplace it’s not normally supposed to be--you have to work brake, clutch, shift, and gas just right, play games with momentum and inertia. Jigen and I refer to this whole class of stunts by the label “circus driving.” I honestly don’t know if this little fiberglass electric will circus for me properly, but once again my luck is with me--its nose pops up just like one of my ping pong balls, and suddenly we’re gunning right up the escalator, tires just barely finding purchase on handrails.
“Holy fucking shit.” Nessa’s eyes are wide, but she gets it together enough to draw her gun and start laying down suppressing fire behind us. In the rearview mirror I see the pursuit goons dive for cover.
I hop the car down off the escalator railings onto the mezzanine floor. A bit less crowded here, and we now have all our pursuit following us from behind, which makes it easier to start losing them. Now where’s that monorail station I remember seeing from the maps? Aha! There it is…
Nessa sees where I’m steering. “You gotta be fucking kidding me…”
“Nah, I do this shit all the time.” Probably not the most comforting words in the world coming from me, especially when I can feel that I’m grinning like a madman.
I smash the car through a barrier, zip across the platform--just grazing some startled civilians waiting for the next train--and hop the car over to the monorail trestle.
“Get ready to lean left!” I yell. I get the driver’s side front and rear tires landed on the left-hand, oncoming-traffic monorail track. We’re now traveling down that track at a good 60 mph, the car balanced at a more-or-less 45 degree angle, just those two driver’s-side tires making contact with the rail, passenger-side wheels sticking up into thin air. Nessa has tumbled across the car into me, swearing a blue streak. I wrap my right arm around her to keep her from wiggling and throwing off our balance. Man, what a fine armful of lady. Jigen doesn’t get this lucky this often, so out of loyalty to him I’m not about to mack on his girl. But just because the restaurant’s closed, baby, doesn’t mean you can’t still read the menu…
Several goons rush out onto the platform just in time to see us heading out into the gathering dusk in the direction of the Strip. They waste precious seconds gawking before they remember to shoot, and by then we’re out of their range. Which is one of the main purposes of circus driving--I mean, besides the fact that it amuses me, and all.
“You doing okay?” I yell to Nessa.
“Christ on a crutch. When Jigen told me you were fucking nuts, I had no idea…”
“Here he comes.” She points downward. “Plus a whole shitload of pursuit.”
I snatch a brief glance down to the street. Rounding the turn off the Strip into Convention Way are a good half-dozen city police cars, running full lights and sirens … and gunning headlong at them, currently behind us but catching up fast, is Nessa’s Bitch. The J-Man is behind the wheel, wearing the same madman grin as me; Goemon-chan is serenely standing on the roof with the sheathed Zantetsuken at the ready. No, I have never found out how Goemon manages to stand on moving vehicles without getting blown off; I mean, I do it too, but I cheat--a combination of special sticky soles on my shoes and careful shifting of weight. But Goemon can stand stock-still upright on a vehicle doing over 100 mph, nothing but traditional zori on his feet, and never budge an inch. Must be part of that training he’s always doing.
Jigen guns the big bad Dart and zooms through the midst of the squad cars, whose drivers are too startled to do anything except make way for him. Goemon draws; the all-cutting blade traces a network of glittering curves on the air; the Dart speeds on past, and, seconds later, all six squad cars groan and split neatly in half from grill to tailpipe. Ooh, pretty--
“LUPIN!!!” Nessa cries.
A monorail train is rounding the curve and coming straight at us.
“Yikes--hold on!” I do the circus-jump again, pop the car into the air, and land front and rear passenger-side tires on the opposite track, seconds before the train roars over the spot we just vacated. Nessa is making more vivid blue air--I swear, she must have pulled drill sergeant at some point in her military career, her vocabulary is truly awesome.
Jigen’s now traveling more or less under us. “Lupin, get the fuck down here!” he yells out his window.
“Can’t! Lost my grapple!” I holler back. We’re out on the Strip now, neon signs and outdoor attractions whizzing by us left and right as we gain on the next monorail station. I gun it--the electric engine is beginning to labor, but still responds acceptably--and bounce us off the track onto the station platform. Civilians scream and dive out of the way as we carom across the sky-bridge connecting the station to one of the big new casino hotels--I honestly have no idea which one; they fling the new ones up so fast in this burg, they don’t register on my memory like the old classics they replaced.
We’re in the mezzanine level of the casino now. I start looking for an escalator to zoom down, but then glance out through the plate glass onto the street and see reinforcements pulling up, this time more of those Darkpool Humvees. So instead of zooming downstairs, I zoom us down a hallway into the guts of the building.
“Jigen!” I bark into my watch’s comm link, “meet us at the loading docks!”
“Gotcha,” he says. “Nessa okay?”
“I’m fine, you fucker!” she bawls over my shoulder into the comm link. “But your partner is fucking dead meat!” We hear Jigen’s guffaw. Despite her threat, she’s actually regaining her smile. I knew she was a natural.
Suddenly we’ve got more security guards charging after us on foot--bet somebody radioed ahead to this casino’s security staff. I vroom us away down a service corridor, punch through a set of security doors--
And lo and behold, we’ve managed to blunder into the dressing room for the female casino staff. Yowsa. The ladies are in various states of dress, or not, and furiously Not Amused at our zoom through their room. But still I score a couple of souvenirs as we zip on through: one sequin-encrusted brassiere, size double-D … and one big red handslap-print across my face.
“You are fucking out of your mind,” says Nessa.
“Gee, what was your first clue?” I throw the bra around my neck like a scarf, and we speed on.
It actually looks like we might have given our pursuit the slip, at least for the moment. I find a stairway and we bump our way down it, tool down a few more service corridors, and burst through the freight entrance back into the open air. Yatta! We’ve found the loading docks. Jigen’s got the Dart parked out on the access road, headlights off in the gathering night; Goemon serenely sits in seiza posture on its roof. And we’ve met up with them not a moment too soon, for our little electric is starting to make death rattle type noises. It grinds to a halt with a sickening jolt; Nessa and I leap out and run like hell for the Dart.
Jigen moves over to let me behind the wheel, while Nessa flings herself into the back seat. “Howdy, Boss,” says Jigen, picking at the brassiere around my neck, “see you’ve been having fun again.”
“Mine!” I cry in a mock two-year-old voice, slapping his hand away. “You go get your own!” He snorts at me.
Our little moment of merriment is interrupted when a half-dozen more Humvees come bearing down on us, three each from either end of the access road, all glaring their high beams at us. No exit either of those directions.
“The fun just never stops, does it?” I throw the Bitch into gear. On the far side of the access road is a huge rambling construction site, soon to be another huge rambling casino. I floor it and we vroom into the site, Goemon obligingly slicing the chain link fence ahead of us so Nessa’s bumper doesn’t get too screwed up.
Goemon hops off the car as we pass a huge crane, draws and strikes its massive boom, and it crashes to the ground, managing to land on two of the Humvees. Two down, four to go. The tireless samurai then leaps over the fallen crane boom, slices up the two Humvees trapped behind it, and knocks out their occupants with back-of-blade strikes--two more down, two still on our ass. He runs to catch up with us.
There’s a huge deep excavation pit dead ahead of us. I swerve left and start following it around clockwise. The two remaining Humvees are trying to outflank us to left and right. Jigen skrags a tire on the passenger-side one and it goes end-over end into the excavation pit; there’s an explosion and flash as its gas tank explodes on impact. The other Humvee, though, seems strangely impervious to his best shots. Even Nessa’s big .45 can’t make a dent in the damn thing--she scores a direct hit on the front passenger tire and it bounces off like a Nerf ball. Not good …
Then someone in that Humvee hauls out a bazooka.
“Lupin!” shouts Goemon, from somewhere behind us. He’s a damn fast runner but he’s still too far away to intervene. Jigen and Nessa both fire away at the bazooka operator; the bullets seem to pass through him as if he were a ghost. The bazooka levels off, targeting our rear license plate. All I can do is watch like a hawk in the rear-view mirror, and prepare to take evasive measures …
But then, at the last minute, the bazooka operator shifts his aim from our car to the upper floors of an incomplete five-story parking structure a few hundred yards ahead of us. He fires; the missile hits a weight-bearing beam; the top floors collapse and tumble to the ground, blocking our path. I have to throw on the brakes hard and skid us sideways to a stop to avoid running into the debris. The Humvee squeals to a stop a few dozen yards away, its high beams nailing us; the bazooka is pointed at us again, but the operator does not fire.
They apparently want us alive, not dead. Interesting.
“They wanna stand and fight, they got it,” Jigen growls. He hops out of the car, slapping a speed-loaderful of fresh ammo into his revolver as he goes, and makes a dash for the rubble left from the collapse of the parking structure. Nessa and I follow, guns drawn and ready. I don’t see Goemon--I’m betting he’s watching and waiting for the right moment to strike.
Someone gets out of the Humvee; he saunters out into the open with the insolence of one who knows he’s invulnerable.
Now that I get a good look at the guy, it’s glaringly obvious that this is not just another Darkpool goon--no, this guy is giving off vibes a whole lot nastier than that. Tall skinny wiry dude in jeans and denim cap, with a red bandanna round his neck, a sneer on his leathery deep-brown face, and a machete thrust into his belt. The unmistakable uniform of the Tonton Macoute, the feared and hated secret police of Haiti’s old Duvalier regime --right down to that sneer.
“That’s what you think,” I holler back from the shelter of the rubble. “I haven’t even begun to play you yet.”
“You think so? You don’t realize, but it is you who have just been played.” His three compatriots exit the Humvee, come to stand by his side and … they’re identical. Carbon copies. The exact same clothes, weapon, face … right down to the sneer.
The one with the bazooka grins and points it at the Dart. “The Ghedes are upon you,” he says--his voice is indistinguishable from that of the first to speak. “No escape vehicle for you, except a hearse.”
Ghedes … that’s right, I remember reading up on these dudes.
Yet more entities out of Voudoun--they’re a clan of lwa associated with the
dead. Baron Samedi is counted as one of their number, something like their
leader and king. So these must be Morningstar’s personal enforcers, brought
with him when he got kicked out of Haiti …
“Little fuckers,” Nessa mutters under her breath, eying that bazooka pointed at her car. She had accepted our warning that the Bitch could take some damage if we used it in a job, but this guy’s spitefulness is even pissing me off.
And that’s when Goemon falls from the sky, his screamed kiai echoing to the far corners of the construction site. He lands right on top of the bazooka Ghede; the bazooka goes flying from his hands, and is intercepted by a flashing flurry of Zantetsuken strikes. Slices of bazooka clatter to the ground.”
“Goemon-chan! My hero!” I cry.
He looks over his shoulder for the briefest second, meets my eyes, and flashes one of his rare smiles. “Ikouse!” he roars.
“That means ‘Let’s roll,’ babe,” says Jigen to Nessa. She nods; they leap out and dash into the fray.
“And it’s my line, goddamn it!” I laugh, following them.
All four Ghedes draw their machetes simultaneously. Creepy. But even creepier is what happens when I go to shoot the machete out of the hand of the nearest one: the blade doesn’t even budge. The bullet does the bounce-off-like-a-Nerf ball trick again. And creepiest of all, we hear a teeth-rattling clang as Zantetsuken meets with one of those rude cheap steel machete blades--and also bounces off. Creepy and scary. Our trump card has just been trumped and we’ve not even gotten busy yet.
All four Ghedes laugh simultaneously--fuck, are they telepathic clones or something?--and leap in among us, separating us from each other. I am immediately up to my eyeballs in dodging strikes from this grinning blade-wielding psychopath. I’m just barely faster than this dude--I feel the scorpion-sting on my cheek as one of his thrusts goes right by my ear. But his move gives me a perfect setup; I put a hold on his arm and shoulder, yank him past me, and throw him good and hard--slam--right into a concrete slab fallen from the parking structure.
But it doesn’t faze him a bit. He just clambers back to his feet, still clutching his machete. Man, look at the death-grip he’s got on that thing …
Aha! That’s it!
Now if I just yell my brainstorm out, the Ghedes will of course immediately know it too; so I choose to pass the word in Japanese, and hope to hell that Nessa catches on fast. “Disarm them!” I cry. “The blades get their power from contact with their flesh!”
“Been trying to do that,” yells Jigen, blocking a machete thrust with his Magnum. “Got any ideas?”
“How about this?” I aim my Walther at my opponent’s machete-wielding hand, and fire right across the full set of knuckles. Before my eyes, I see the flesh part, and immediately start to knit together again … but before the hand can regenerate any further, my foot connects with it, hard. Caught in that split-second when the fingers are still severed, the Ghede’s fist tears open and the machete flies free, taking the fingers with it. The Ghede screams like a damned soul.
“Nessa! Like this!” Jigen barks, executing my move on his Ghede. Simultaneously, Goemon is letting loose a storm of blade-flashes on his Ghede’s blade-hand.
Nessa makes to do the same, but that split-second delay while she watched Jigen demonstrate the new move costs her. Before she can line up her shot, her Ghede kicks her gun out of her hand.
“Nessa!” bellows Jigen. His Ghede takes advantage of his moment of distraction and tackles him, grappling him to the ground.
Now it’s my turn to cry out: “Jigen!” And my turn to get tackled by my Ghede. His intact hand closes around my throat. He just laughs, unmoved, at the knee I drive into his crotch and the fist I plant in his solar plexus. Things are beginning to spiral out of control here. The edges of my field of vision are starting to go black--
“Villains! Miscreants!
Unhand my beloved!”
It’s Lola’s voice. But strangely transformed--lots and lots of otherworldly reverb.
The hand crushing my windpipe suddenly releases and disappears. I roll onto my hands and knees, catching big breaths, and then look up … to see Lola, resplendent in gold lame plunging down to here and slit up to there, floating gently out of the sky to hover a few inches over the roof of the Dart. She hangs there, glowing in the darkness, her eyes glittering amber coals, her hair and her skirts floating as if stirred by breezes though the air is still. The Ghedes cower together in a group, staring at her, transfixed, as her voice echoes around them.
“You! Rude boys! You! Corrupted
Ghedes! You! Who terrorized a generation of my sisters and brothers across the
sea! It is I, Erzulie, who call you out! It is I who cast you out! Release your
chevaux, you renegade lwa, and be gone from this place!”
She raises her hand--in it is an old-fashioned hand-held mirror, as ladies used to always have in their boudoirs. The mirror flashes with the brilliance of about twenty of our August suns. All four of the Ghedes seem to shrivel in on themselves, and then collapse to the ground.
The eerie glow fades from Lola as her feet touch down on the roof of the Dart. She stands a moment, looking drained; then starts to slump. I’m already there to catch her, Nessa just a couple of steps behind me. Between the two of us we lower her to a reclining position on the ground. Jigen and Goemon come running up to join us.
“No, no, I’m fine,” she insists, her voice back to normal. “It’s just the backwash after expending so much energy.”
“What, did you fly here all the way from the Convention Center?” I’m frankly gaping at her at this point. She is weary, but triumphant, and as beautiful as a blooming rose.
“Oh yes, dawlin’,” she says, raising a hand to caress my wounded cheek. “I was in the middle of my next-to-last number when I felt the Ghedes manifest. I made quite the dramatic exit, let me tell you.”
“I bet. Hope they don’t stiff you for your fee.”
“You kidding, doll? I’ll probably get a tip for the unexpected special effects.”
“Not to piss on all the warm-and-fuzzy,” says Jigen, “but maybe we should be getting the hell out of here while the getting’s good.”
And then we hear that inimitable bellow: “Lupin! That’s fourteen vehicles you’ve managed to trash, and a whole convention turned upside down!” God damn that Tottsan. I groan and hang my head.
He comes bounding towards us, leaping over bits of debris, whirling his handcuffs over his head. So intent is he on his quarry that he leaps right over the fallen Ghedes without noticing there are lifeless bodies under his feet.
“Aw, Pops, for God’s sake, give it a rest!” I indicate Lola. “Can’t you see I’m busy tending to this lady’s needs?”
He grinds to a halt a dozen yards away, visibly confused. Heh. Pops can be almost as awkward around the fair sex as Goemon … but unlike with dear sweet Goemon-chan, I have no compunctions about using this knowledge to manipulate the Old Man right into the ground.
“Uhhhhh … a-are you hurt, Miss? Do you need me to call an ambulance?” Zenigata takes his eyes off me a split-second to fumble in his trenchcoat for his cell phone. That’s all the opening I need …
“Damn you!” he’s wailing a minute later, face-down on the ground, hogtied with his own handcuffs. I stand over him, laughing, dust myself off and straighten my tie …
Stupid stupid stupid. I have just wasted too damn much time being cocky.
A black shadowy something the shape of a bat and the size of a man shoots past me from behind, snatches Lola, and flies with her up to the top of the garage-rubble. It assumes the shape of a man and touches down, arm wrapped tight around Lola’s throat. The shadows drop from the figure, but in the pit of my stomach I already know who it’s going to be.
“Aha. Michael Morningstar. We meet again.” I assume the casual slouch that my gang knows means I am really seriously dangerously pissed off. I hear slight crunches of gravel to left and right, as Jigen and Goemon assume their battle-stances as well.
“So we do. But this time the advantage is mine.” He’s now in full Baron Samedi drag -- the top hat, the dark glasses, the white suit, the cane, the panatella clutched between evil grinning death’s-head teeth.
He tightens his headlock on Lola; she struggles, but she’s still too exhausted to put up a fight. “I suggest you and your compatriots drop your arms and back away, if you’re interested in the continued well-being of this lady.”
“And if I say no?” I raise an eyebrow at him. My hunch-circuit is buzzing away, urging me to stall him just a few moments more, keep him focused on me …
He pulls at the head of his cane, unsheathing from the shaft a nasty-looking sword. “Then it will be my great pleasure to send her to my kingdom of the graveyard.”
“But you wouldn’t do that, would you?” I bare my teeth at him. “For your master plan to work, you need her alive, not dead. This whole little ring-a-round-the-rosie was just a ruse to flush her out, and then get her to expend her energy on your pawns so she’d be defenseless when you struck.”
He starts ever so slightly, then his smile broadens. “Ah. So the rumors about your cleverness are true, Monsieur Lupin. Pity it will do you no good. I do need her alive, but it matters not whether she is intact--“
Before he can raise his sword to threaten her, a roar of machine-gun fire rings out. Bullets spit out from Morningstar’s chest. His arms fling wide as he staggers forward; Lola seizes her opportunity and leaps clear.
Standing a few yards behind him on the rubble heap is Fujiko, looking her most luscious in a skin-tight black catsuit, a still-smoking Uzi under her arm. “I’m upping my share to 60 percent for this, Lupin,” she smiles.
“Fujiko, look out!” I cry, bounding up the rubble heap at top speed. For Morningstar’s as impervious to bullets as his Ghedes were; the sheer kinetic energy of the submachine gun blast knocked him over, but he’s already drawn himself back together and stood up again. He turns, towering over Fujiko.
“Oh shit,” she mutters, dodging to the side.
I tackle Morningstar from behind. We tumble down the backside of the rubble heap together, grappling and punching, me struggling to keep him from getting a grip on me while I try to figure out how to stop an invulnerable assailant. I hear shouts from the others as they scramble up and over the rubble heap after us. If I can just sever his head and then kick it away before it can reattach …
I reach for my garotte wire--only use this baby in extenuating circumstances, but that’s what we got right here. But while I’ve got a hand busy doing that, he breaks through my guard, delivers a belly punch that has me seeing stars, and while I’m doubled over, grabs me by an ankle.
He whirls me around his head like a bolo. He releases me and I go flying. I do a little aerobatics and right myself -- in time to see that I’m hurtling towards the excavation pit.
I get my fingernails on the edge of the pit, but of course the dirt crumbles under my grip and I go tumbling in. Nothing for it but to tuck and roll. Fortunately the bottom’s dirt rather than concrete, but it’s hard-packed enough, and the drop is deep enough, that the impact nearly knocks me out. Every fiber of my being is screaming at me to get the hell out of this spot, but I’m just too stunned to move.
I’m only out that way for a second or two, but by the time my head clears enough for me to look up and see the side of the excavation pit caving in on me, it’s too late.
Blackout.
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