[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!]
Up
on the hill
They've
got time to burn
There's
no return
Double
helix in the sky tonight
Throw
out the hardware
Let's
do it right
Aja
When
all my dime dancin' is through
I run to you
--Steely Dan, “Aja”
My crazy nervous system tends not to play nicely with most painkiller drugs. They dope me up but can’t keep me knocked out for long, so I wind up hovering in this bizarre hypnagogic state--not necessarily unpleasant in itself, but hardly restful. And to add insult to injury, the narcotics don’t do much more than take the edge off the pain.
So I spend some untold number of hours thrashing around in murky stupified waking dreams, of which I can remember little more than nonsensical fragments, until the sound of quiet conversation starts hauling my consciousness back up towards the surface.
“So how's he doing?” a woman’s voice has just asked. It’s not until Jigen replies that I get the woman’s voice matched up with Nessa’s name.
“He’s pretty fucked up right now.” A pause as Jigen takes a drag on his Pall Mall. “You can tell by the way he’s breathing that he’s in a lot of pain.”
Oh yeah--I guess I’ve been doing the shallow breathing thing without even thinking about it, haven’t I? But now thinking about it causes me to spazz and draw a deeper breath than is prudent. Bad mistake: I get a jolt from the cracked ribs that almost knocks me right back out. I guess I vocalize a bit here, because when my brain clears again, Jigen and Nessa are right by my bedside.
“Well that was nasty,” I stage-whisper. Not going to chance putting any more breath than that behind my voice right now, not after that little spasm. From the fragrance of piñon pine on the air and the bit of the room I can see without moving my head, I reckon I'm back in Lola's house.
“Easy does it, man,” says Jigen. From this angle I can see his eyes, and the worry in them.
“Trying to, partner.” I give him a pretty strained version of my million-dollar con smile. “What day is it, anyway?”
“Still Sunday. You’ve been out about eight hours.”
“Is that all? Feels more like eight months … yikes!” Made another false move there; the stab of pain puts black spots before my eyes for about five seconds.
“Looks like the dope’s wearing off. You want a re-up?”
“Not yet. Want the use of my brain for a little while longer. When I can’t stand it any more, you’ll be the first to know.”
Jigen manages a relieved half-smile in response to my smartass tone. “Man, you should get a load of yourself right now. You look like you’ve been in a prizefight.”
“Feels like it. Got a mirror?”
Nessa interjects, “Got one right over here.” She disappears out of my line of sight and returns with what must be one of Lola’s makeup mirrors--it’s way too femmy for Nessa’s tastes. She holds it up before my eyes. My face does have an impressive amount of bruising.
“Whoa, look at those shiners. We should send a photo to Pops. Scare him out of about eight years’ growth.”
“Hey, by the way,” says Nessa, “Fujiko was wanting to know when you woke up.”
"She was? ... ow ow ow ... " Oops, got a little over-excited there.
Jigen growls in annoyance at the mention of Fujiko's name. “Aw c’mon,” says Nessa, giving him a look. I can’t help grinning when he caves almost immediately, pulling his hat brim down as he concedes to his woman.
“Let me guess,” I say. “She’s getting ready to head on over to Darkpool on her own.”
“Got it in one.” Jigen snorts and takes another drag on his cigarette.
“That’s my Fuji-cakes, eyes on the prize. Though I notice she could have left hours ago.”
“Yep,” said Nessa. “Waiting on you. That girl may be crazy, but she does have some priorities.” She leaves to fetch Fujiko.
“You know she’s gonna fuck shit up,” says Jigen.
“Yeah. I know.” My grin is becoming a little lopsided--even this brief amount of talking is tiring me out. “But that’s okay, we need a stalking horse. Plus it’s all part of the game, you know?”
“Yeah. I know.” He regards me somberly. “Game got pretty fucking scary this time, man.”
“Yep. And weird. I’m not sure I’ve fully grasped yet exactly how weird. Still trying to sort it all out.”
“All I care is that you managed to beat the Reaper again, partner.” He lays a hand on my shoulder and gives me that crooked death’s head smile of his, the one that speaks of too much knowledge of both ends of the gun. I tend to forget, having worked and played with Jigen for so many years, that there's this other side of him. He’s seen the deaths of too many people he's cared about.
“Lupin!” Fujiko, still clad in that yummy catsuit, bursts through the door and distracts me from this morbid line of thought. Rushing to my side, she throws her arms around my neck and showers my banged-up face with kisses.
“Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!” I gasp. But I’m also grinning full-force again. This makes twice in less than 24 hours that Fujiko has flung herself upon me with genuine passion.
“Oh Lupin, I’ve been so worried!” she coos.
“That’s it, I’m out of here.” Jigen stands, straightens his hat, and heads for the door. Over Fujiko’s shoulder I see Nessa catch up with him and shoot him another look. “What?!?” he responds to her as the door closes behind the both of them.
Fujiko slides into bed with me--fully clothed, but hey, I'll take it. She cuddles up close, drawing my head to her chest so that my face winds up pillowed in her cleavage. God, she knows me, and my fetishes, way too well. Even in the state I’m in, even with a bed sheet and that catsuit between us, I feel my incorrigible dick spring to attention.
“Ohhhhh, Fujiko-chan ...” I flash her one of my cheesier smiles. “You know, if you wanted to ravish me for a change, I couldn’t lift a finger to stop you …”
She smiles at me. A genuine, not-conning smile. “I might consider doing that at some point. If you behave. And if you’re really up to it.”
Though my back is none too happy about it, I manage to scoot my hips forward just enough to press my erection against her thigh.
“Oh, I’m up to it, alright ... Ow!” She’s pinched my ass cheek with those nasty sharp acrylic nails of hers.
“God, you’re such a perv,” she pouts at me. “But at least I know you must be on the mend.”
“Hey, you’re the one who climbed into bed with me,” I pout back at her. But I simmer back down and just cuddle, as I know she prefers. And frankly, despite all my smart talk, I am up to little more than that after all.
“I am glad I’m getting to say goodbye before I leave,” she said, caressing my head.
“Be careful, lover. Morningstar is not finished.”
“I wondered about that.” Yep, that’s my Fuji-cakes. Never misses a beat, doesn’t even stop to ask how I know. “Do you think he’s found another body to possess?”
“I’d bet cash money on it. In fact, I figure he goes through bodies at quite a clip. When I hacked GeoDynamics’ computers the other day I wondered why there was this strangely high turnover in the elite security team that guards the corporate VIPs. Now I think I know why.”
“Charming. Well, thanks for the warning.” A pause. “Lupin. This one really scared me.”
I sigh. “First Jigen, now you. I’m sorry, lover. I truly didn’t see it coming.”
“You never do, you know.” She plants a long, luxurious kiss on my bruised mouth. I start feeling like I really could rise to this occasion after all ...
And then all of a sudden she’s out of the bed and on her feet again, straightening her outfit, all business.
“F-Fujiko-chan!” I struggle to sit up and reach after her, but fall back, leveled by a surge of pain. “Not fair, not fair at all …”
“Now now, you need your rest.” She strides briskly to the door, pauses and turns. “You know, usually for an advance sortie like this I’d jump my cut of the take by ten percent, but just to show you how much I care, I’m going to give you a get-well present and keep my share at sixty percent.”
And then she’s gone.
Jigen rushes in, evidently alarmed at the strange hiccupping/coughing/moaning noises I'm suddenly emitting. "Oh Christ, it hurts to laugh," I wheeze at him. But I keep on laughing, or trying to, like the crazy bastard I am. He just shakes his head at me, and slaps a fresh morphine patch on my neck.
Dear sweet Fujiko, I think as I drift off into wacky-dream land again. She has never quite gotten it through her pretty task-oriented head that I don't do these extreme jobs for the money. Though yeah, it does annoy my ego when she jerks me around about the split. But even my annoyance amuses me. Like I said, it's all part of the game.
For the next thirty-six hours or so I drift in and out of consciousness. Various of my friends manage to get some food into me, though the morphine guarantees that I have some trouble keeping it down. At one point I regain consciousness to find my body being grasped by strong hands--Jigen's and Goemon's--so that my head is over the edge of the bed, while other strong hands--Nessa's--hold a bucket for me into which I shamelessly heave until I'm empty, and then heave some more. "Geez, and I don't even have a nice rip-snorting drunk to show for all this effort," I quip. All three of them roll their eyes at me.
Another time I come to sprawled on the bedroom floor. Apparently I must have felt the call of a full bladder from deep in my drugged sleep, and decided to get up and go to the can on my own. Only problem, my feet are still numb and clumsy from my little pseudo-zombie experience, so my legs go right out from under me within a few steps. More strong hands haul my sorry ass back upright and drag me into the bathroom, at which point Lola and Nessa chase the guys out and take over. Ooooh, how 'bout some funky nurse-and-patient water sports action? Nah, dream on; still way too crapped out to engage in any such shenanigans. But just thinking about it sends me off into more fits of giggles, despite the same painful consequences as before. And then it's Nessa and Lola's turns to roll their eyes at me. I get that a lot.
All of this is reassuringly standard behavior from me when I'm convalescing. I just don't make a very good patient. I mean, c'mon, me? Patient? Get real. But totally separate from all that, totally apart from the bone bruises and cracked ribs and concussion, I feel this indefinable but undeniable not-rightness within me.
“It’s that Eleggua dude, isn’t it?” I say to Lola sometime Monday evening. She has gotten me turned over onto my belly without too much discomfort, and is giving me a tough but helpful massage.
She laughs as she digs into my shoulder muscles. “Yeah, dawlin’ … that ‘dude,’ as you insist on calling him, has definitely got his hooks still sunk deep in your psyche, I can feel it. He’s got some unfinished business with you for sure.”
I grunt as she presses hard on a particularly locked-up muscle. “Any idea what that unfinished business might be?”
“Other than guessing it has something to do with you being such a perfect child of his, I can’t say.” She begins working down my spine.
I flinch and suck in air sharply. “What does that mean anyway, to be the ‘child’ of one of these supernatural doofuses?”
“That you are a manifestation of that 'doofus' in the living world.” She smiles at me as she begins careful exploration of my poor abused ribcage. I grit my teeth.
“What? Like a … an incarnation? What the Hindus call an avatara?”
“Not necessarily. Sometimes, it’s more a matter of your natural self echoing the divine's natural self. In this case, it makes all the sense in the world that you’d be a child of Eleggua. He is the Trickster par excellence, doll.” She’s gently stroking the sides of my ribcage, making me alternately flinch and sigh.
“Trickster, huh? Yeah, I can groove on that … ow! Though I bet I could do it a whole lot better once my Trickster papa gets those hooks of his out of me.”
She finishes working me over and lies beside me, sheltering my beanpole frame with her abundant one. “I’ve got a ritual we can try, to see about fixing that. But first I think you should get a good night’s rest. We’ll give it a go tomorrow.”
“Crap. That long?” I manage a smile.
She just laughs and kisses me.
* * * * *
Some time late that night, I awake out of the first sound sleep I've managed since being injured, strangely free of pain and grogginess. I feel a presence in the room. Gingerly I pull myself up into a sitting position.
I address the empty room. “It’s you, isn’t it … Eleggua?”
“What a perceptive mortal you are.” One of the shadows in a corner of the room detaches itself from the others and steps forward into the moonlight. He is still, or again, presenting as my dark-skinned doppelganger. I feel that chill down my spine again, but this time I ignore it.
“So what do you look like, really? Or is it that you can look like anyone you damn well feel like?”
“Both, really--I do have a form that is mine, but it’s so boring to stay limited to just one look. As you know for yourself.” He comes close, smiling slyly, and cups my chin in his hand.
"Look," I say, "I'm flattered that you're so into me, but I think you know damn well that I'm just not wired to swing that way."
"I notice you're not pulling away, though."
"Like I could evade you? Even if I weren't recovering from being beaten to a pulp?"
"Hah. You’ve become a bit more sure of yourself since our last meeting." He keeps that leer on his face, but does drop his hand.
“As long as we’re being all chummy," I say, "would you mind telling me what you want with me, anyway? I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but ever since you saved my ass I have just not been feeling quite right. If I didn’t know better I’d swear you planted the supernatural equivalent of a tracer on me.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “You are a bold one, Arsene Lupin the Third. You are quite right--I did place my mark on you. Because I have been waiting for a chance to come back and do … this.”
And suddenly I’m flung out of bed. The room lights up and whirls around me like Dorothy's house in the tornado. Next thing I know, I find myself, fully clothed, face-planted into the sands of a desert.
I climb to my feet. My body is mysteriously and completely healed. I pat myself down--it’s my actual gear, not an illusion. There’s my Walther in its holster, the extra ammo clip in my left hip pocket, four remaining smoke bombs from Saturday’s mayhem inside my right jacket pocket, and the other random assorted toys just where I remember putting them when I last loaded up. The desert I’ve landed in looks like the barren pancake-flat playas of northwestern Nevada, home of land speed records and intentionally remote hippy art festivals. It's full daylight, and oven-hot.
Eleggua is standing several yards away with the sun at his back, hands in pockets, legs planted wide -- the pose I often adopt before I’m about to pull something.
“Oh c’mon,” I say, planting my hands on my hips. “What the hell do you want--a duel?”
“I want to see what you’re capable of.” With the sun silhouetting him, only the shift of his jaw and his tone of voice tell me he’s smiling.
“Ridiculous,” I say. “What kind of a fair duel is that, a mortal against a god?”
“I’m not a god, I’m--“
“A divine being, yeah yeah yeah. I got that part. Whatever you are, you still have lots more going for you than a mortal. Which means it’s an unfair fight. You hold an unbeatable trump card.”
“What if I swore to use no abilities other than the ones you possess?” I’m still hearing that shifty smile in his voice. Hey, it takes a con to know a con.
“Oh sure, like you came by my abilities naturally in the first place. What do you think you are? That insufferable Q busybody on Star Trek? Why--yow!”
This Eleggua dude may have magically copied all my natural abilities, but that doesn’t mean he automatically has the smarts and experience to run them like I do. So: all the while I have been deliberately pitching my little hissy-fit at him, I have also been watching for that telltale tensing of his right shoulder muscles. So by the time he draws his gun, I'm also drawing; and when he fires, my bullet meets his in mid-air with a flash and bang.
Even before our bullets meet and explode, I’m off like a jackrabbit on speed, dodging his follow-up shots with a somersault and a leap that carries me behind the nearest rock outcropping.
“That was pretty damned impressive, boyo.” I hear him change clips and pump the slide in his copycat Walther. Amateur--he wasted eight whole shots trying to hit me.
“You're impressed, huh? Well, I’m not.” I slowly and calmly stand up, step up onto the rock that had briefly been my hiding place, and turn my back to him, dropping my head onto my chest.
“And just what do you think you're doing?” he asks in the tone of an annoyed parent.
“I've decided I don’t want to play this game," I answer, back still turned to him. It's my turn to stick my hands in my pockets. "If you want to kill me, even after having expended all that effort to bring me back to life, I can’t stop you. So you might as well just plug me and get it over with.”
“You know I can’t just shoot you in the back.”
“Well, you’re going to have to, because I’m not up to gratifying your divine sadism when I know I’m overmatched. You wanna shoot at me, go ahead and get it over with. But leave me out of your first-person-shooter re-enactment fantasies, okay?”
And so I bloviate along. Only I am no longer where Eleggua thinks I am. I have slithered out of my clothes, leaving them hanging, scarecrow-fashion, on my handy-dandy little folding framework. Because my head had been lowered out of his line of sight and my hands were concealed in my pockets, he cannot now tell that my head and hands are missing from the scarecrow.
Meanwhile, stripped down to underwear
with Walther in hand, I stealth my way around the perimeter of our little patch
of desert, all the while throwing my voice so that it sounds like it's coming
from my effigy. Oblivious to all this, Eleggua keeps trying to reason with the obstinate
little mortal he thinks is still before him.
“Gotcha,” I grin, stepping back and sticking my gun into the waistband of my boxers.
He turns and stares at me for a moment, openmouthed and wide-eyed. Who knows, when you're faking out a faker? But my little hunch circuit insists his shock is genuine, and profound.
Then he snaps out of it and starts to laugh. "You did it. You really did it. You unequivocally got the drop on me. Even though I was watching, and sensing your presence there in front of me--"
"Wait a minute. I thought you said you were going to restrict yourself to my abilities."
"Oh, I wasn't technically using my divine powers, in terms of taking advantage of that sensory data in our little game. But it's a moot point, because my supernatural senses were as totally fooled as my mundane eyesight." He grins big. "So congratulations, you have won our little duel. Though I may have succeeded in achieving a more important goal."
"And that is?" I eye him suspiciously.
"Proving a point." He gestures, and a bistro table and umbrella materialize there on the cracked dusty surface of the playa. "Come. Sit. Talk with me."
Like I have a choice? I think to myself. But I follow him to the table--after retrieving my clothes and folding frame from the rock.
When I straighten up from pulling on my pants, there's an ice-cold gin and tonic at my elbow. I take a sip. Tanqueray. "Nice."
"Only what you deserve, after I dragged you out of bed to play first-person shooter with you." He smiles wryly, sipping a lemonade. "Now about that little display of your skills just now ..."
"And about that little incident of cheating ..."
"Ah, yes. Actually, it wasn't just a little incident. I was cheating throughout the entire thing. Watching and listening. When you stood up and turned your back on me, I fully expected you to pull your slipping-out-of-your-clothes trick. After all, I know your methods, boyo--I've been inside your head."
"You mean to say you were faking your surprise just now? I don't believe that."
"No, that was no fake. I was indeed shocked to the core. Because even though I knew what you were going to do, I could not catch you at it. When I felt your gun against the back of my head, I was still watching your goddamned clothes, waiting for you to do the slip. You got the drop on a full-fledged orisha, boyo. Do you have any idea what that means?"
"No. I don't.” I let my exasperation show in my voice. “All this supernatural stuff--spirits and possessions and divine beings--I just don't get it. It makes no sense to me. I'm a thorough-going pragmatist so I don't doubt the evidence of my own eyes--let alone the evidence of the heart still beating in my body--but it's like terra incognita to me. I was much happier being on the periphery of all this ... stuff, only coming as close as the occasional treasure with occult properties. And even that’s been more than enough to get my ass bitten at least once that I recall. But otherwise, forget it ..."
He starts laughing. "You really can't see it, can you?"
"See what?"
"This supernatural stuff that you claim is so alien to you--you're living your whole life up to your eyebrows in it. Everything you do and are is steeped in it."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"That business of slipping out of your clothes, for instance. Such a bizarre skill, and yet so useful to your unique way of doing business. How exactly do you do that? Can you describe your method in words?"
"Oh. That." I relax a little; I'm still on weird ground, but it’s a recognizable weirdness. "Sure, I'd be the first to acknowledge that it's not a normal ability. But it's completely and totally natural--for heirs of the Lupin family genetics."
"Ah yes, the naturalistic explanation. And you use it to explain away a host of other freakish abilities as well. The sudden bursts of lighting speed. The acrobatics and vehicular stunts that defy the laws of physics. The moves that look like sleight of hand, but aren't--poor Zenigata could have had you arrested about a hundred different times now if handcuffs behaved on you the way they behave on any normal mortal. And above all, the twin guardians of your skinny little ass--your unerring hunches and your unfailing luck. That whole portfolio of oddball abilities runs in your family as surely as that lantern jaw and ear-to-ear grin. But you're going to sit there and give me this reductionist cant that it's completely and solely genetic? Surely you must be joking."
"Just because the abilities themselves are paranormal, doesn't mean that they can't be accounted for without resorting to supernatural mumbo-jumbo." I can't believe I'm sitting in the middle of a desert arguing philosophical crap with a god. Divine being. Whatever the fuck. This is insane.
"You think so, hmm? Well riddle me this, boyo. Is it not true that, while some level of the Lupin family skill set manifests in every one of your many blood relations--including the insatiable horniness, apparently, because it's a pretty large family--is it not true that these abilities are realized most powerfully and completely in the heirs of the family line?"
"Well, yeah. So they are. But what does that--"
"If the inheritance were solely based on genetics, then birth order should not mean a fucking thing." He punctuates each word with a stab of his index finger into the tabletop.
"Wha-wha-wha-what?" My brain freezes.
"Simple Mendelian genetics. Each offspring should have a statistically equal chance of getting the full complement of Lupinosity. Yet you yourself acknowledge that the heirs, the first-born descendants of Arsene Lupin the First, have an odds-defying edge in manifesting the family legacy. Why is that, oh Prince of Coincidence? What the fuck do you call that shit, if not supernatural?"
And as my jaw drops, he leans back in his chair, wearing the Con Artist Smile of the Universe, and laughs and laughs and laughs.
Holy shit. Busted.
And then I start laughing too, and laugh until I tip my chair over backwards and hit the ground with a crash, and then I continue to laugh, rolling in the dust of the playa. Holy fucking shit. Right there in front of my nose, plain as day. Stupid stupid stupid--what an idiot I've been. Could the entire family have been conning me? Or perhaps just Grandpapa, the old devil? But I think back, and I swear the entire family sincerely believes the genetic explanation. So the whole lot of us have been blinded by denial, even the family members who specialize in card-sharping and thus know statistics inside and out.
Because Eleggua the Trickster is dead right, it can't be genetics--at least, not any type of genetics I've ever heard of. It's not just biological. I really am some kind of magic man.
"Wow," I gasp, still laughing, "there's a whole bunch of assholes who have been trying for ages to clone me, who are in for one rude surprise."
He just smiles at me, the smile of one who knows he has won.
"Okay," I say at last, picking myself back off the ground and righting my chair, "so ... what the hell does this mean, then? And I still don't understand why you've gone to such lengths to wake me up to this crap."
"Well, on a certain level, waking you up was an end in itself. After all, isn't that what your mother's familial religion is all about? Achieving enlightenment, the state of being awake and aware of one's true nature. I've been trying forever to find a way to get through to you, but your own powers were making that damned near impossible. It took lying in wait until you came within a hair's breath of snuffing it, but then Miss Lola called, and gave me at last the opening I needed through which to slip your wakeup call."
"Okay. So I'm awake. I think." I finish dusting myself off, and sit back down at the table. "But there's more to it than that, isn't there? This wakeup was not just an end in itself, but a means to some other end you have in mind."
He laughs. "Correct, my child. I have a job for you. Or to be more exact, you are already deep into the job I was needing done."
"So you're after Morningstar too. Not so surprising in hindsight--he's much bigger than I could have dreamed. But why do you need a mortal's help--even a mortal as freaky as me? Is there a reason you can't go after him yourself?"
He sits back and sips at his lemonade. "Boyo, the spirit world doesn't work that way. Just because it violates the rules of the mundane world does not mean it is not governed by rules of its own, and one of those rules is that the divine cannot directly intervene in the mundane. We must ever and always have intermediaries, channels for the energy, mortals who are willing to serve as the instruments of our will. Chevaux."
"So you want me to be your man against Morningstar. Interesting." I sit back and consider. "Well, obviously I was going after him anyway. But even though you can't act directly, can I count on you for a little assistance here and there?"
"I was going to insist on it if you didn't ask. You're damn good, there's no two ways about it, but even with all your friends and allies, you're going to need some extra muscle." He stands and offers his right hand to shake. "So ... do we have an understanding? Partner?" He winks at me.
Damn, I think to myself, he's pulled my own turn-the-adversary-into-an-ally gambit on me. Is he bound and determined to have me experience all my favorite moves from the receiving end? But I'm alright with it--I've come out the other side of this confrontation feeling I can trust this crazy dude.
"It's a deal." I seize his hand and shake it whole-heartedly. "And now, partner, here's a few thoughts on what kind of assistance I think you could provide ... "
* * * * *
Some time later, I awake back in Lola's spare bedroom, with wan pre-dawn light filtering through the curtains. I am sprawled on the bed still fully clothed. When I sit up, I discover the miraculous healing to be no dream.
Quietly, I rise and make my way through the house, feeling the unusual need to confide in someone, to fully re-ground myself in this reality. In my new reality. I hear Jigen's snore from behind his closed door. Lola's door is ajar and the room unoccupied. In the kitchen I find a half-pot of coffee keeping warm in the coffeemaker; as I pour myself a cup, the headline on a recent newspaper left on the counter catches my eye. That's right, the currently lame-duck President of the US is making an appearance in Los Angeles in a few days. Yet another hunch (where the hell do those keep coming from, anyway?) tells me to file this factoid away for future reference.
Now caffeined up a bit, I slip out the front door into the dew-wet early morning grass. Movement over at the horse paddock captures my attention; it's Lola and Nessa, exercising their horses and having a moment alone together. Something (again, where do these premonitions come from?) suggests to me it's best to not announce my presence.
From a vantage point just around the corner of the barn, I see them lean towards each other across their mounts and exchange the kind of comfortable kiss only long-time lovers share. Yes, this does get my libido's gears grinding--hey, I'm not proud, I'll cop to my share of yuri fantasies. But it also somehow gladdens my heart to know these two sister-lovers are there to take care of each other. Because I don't need my hunches nor even my new guardian angel to tell me our next move in this little war is going to be hazardous as hell.
Suddenly I'm aware that I don't sense Goemon's presence in the barn, but it does feel like he's nearby somewhere. (How, how, how do I know that? Man, this new knowledge has definitely blown a hole in my beginner’s mind.) I walk around the back of the building, study the nearby treeline, and spot him sitting in seiza on an east-facing rocky outcropping, watching the sun come up.
As I approach, he neither turns to face me nor makes any other move, remaining serenely at rest, Zantetsuken also at rest against his shoulder. "I rejoice in your recovery," he says.
"You and me both." For awhile, we both watch in silence as the sunrise paints the east crimson. Presently, I clear my throat. "Goemon. I need ... advice."
"Hmph. Unusual." As a long-time Goemon-interpreter, I can hear the amusement--and warmth--behind the gruffness.
"I know. But I'm a little out of my depth here ..."
"You have had an encounter with that kami. I felt the energies moving in the night." Somehow his use of the Shinto term for divine spirit is comforting; it's a more familiar terminology.
"He told me things about my nature that I'm still having trouble trying to digest."
"That you are akitsu mikami." Now, that particular term for manifest divinity, freighted as it is with Japanese Imperial history, is nowhere near as comforting. Yet Goemon uses it easily.
"You're not surprised," I observe.
"I began to suspect as much not long after our first encounter." He rises and faces me, wearing one of his rare smiles.
"So that's why you've put up with my shit for all these years." I smile back.
"That, and the comradeship of brothers in arms." Though still smiling, he lowers his eyes in deference. "And speaking of my putting up with your 'shit,' as you term it, I must offer you an apology."
"An apology?!? Whatever for?"
"All these years, I had respected your destiny--but in spite of what I viewed as your objectionable behaviors. I regarded your womanizing and childishness as defects impeding your potential for greatness. But when I witnessed your re-awakening ..." here he blushes beet-red, but doggedly soldiers on ... "I came to realize that, for you, these are no defects at all, but qualities as essential to your soul as your life's blood is to your life."
He draws himself up to his full height. "We walk very different paths. I am guilty of having judged your path by the standards of my own, and for that arrogance I beg your forgiveness." He bows deeply and with great seriousness.
"Goemon." I bow just as formally, deeply moved.
"And that advice?" he asks.
"I think you just about covered it," I smile.
He nods. "So. We continue the job, then."
"Yep. Shall we?" And we make our way back to the house to gather the others and flesh out my plan.
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