Disclaimer: I don't take nearly enough drugs to be able to invent this show myself.
Continuity: Red jacket series somewhere.
Morning People
There is a tiny apartment somewhere in Innsbruck (a lovely old city in western Austria, surrounded by mountains and forests and forests of tourists) which spends most of any given year unoccupied. But the rent is never late, nor the regular paychecks to the sweet little grandmother that keeps the place tidy, and so no one is particularly concerned by the arrangement. Occasionally one neighbor will gossip with another while both occupy themselves with the laundry, but speculating about mysterious unseen tenants is nowhere near as immediately exciting as whose daughter is marrying whose son, or what happened last week on someone's favorite television program, or even politics.
But something has changed in the tiny apartment on this cold, rainy day: lights are on in the living room. The tenants are here.
Goemon is nearly always the first awake, and so these small, dim hours of the morning are his. He spends them cross-legged on the sofa, already fully dressed and alert, intently watching the television without having to quarrel over the remote first. Most of their safehouses and backup homes have at least one of his samurai movies tucked away safely in a cabinet (along with a few westerns and action movies and Bond films and then Lupin's personal favorites, which are best left to the imagination). The tiny apartment in Innsbruck is no exception; the television screen is currently overflowing with severed limbs and showers of animated gore. Truly, this is art.
Nearly an hour of movie passes before anyone else stirs. The floor creaks a little, and there is a muffled thunk in the hallway followed by a sleepy curse: Jigen noises. Three minutes of movie pass while the sound of running water filters lazily through the bathroom door. The floor creaks again.
Goemon doesn't look up from the tv, lest he miss his favorite decapitation. "Why are you awake?"
"Mffhgn."
He considers this information carefully. In the kitchen behind him, the coffeepot begins to make quiet coffee sounds. The decapitation is no less awesome than the last fifty-seven times he's seen it. In fact, it might be more so. Goemon rewinds the tape and watches that part again, just to be sure. A lighter clicks in the kitchen.
Minutes pass. Forty-three ninjas and two oni die messy deaths in lovingly-animated detail. Jigen wanders in with a mug of coffee and a nearly-finished cigarette and flops into an overstuffed chair like it was the longest journey of his life. He's still dressed for sleep (long sleeves and heavy pants, because it's friggin' freezing and look here Goemon we can't all be crazy bastards like you) and apparently in mourning for the three more hours he should have gotten.
The showers of blood and death step back a moment to allow a flurry of cherry blossoms to take center stage during a deeply poetic monologue. A demon-possessed warlord is violently eviscerated.
"I could take him, you know."
"Goemon, that's a cartoon."
He folds his arms stubbornly. "That would not save him."
Jigen is trying not to laugh into his coffee; he knows the samurai means it. Instead he leans forward to put out the remains of his cigarette in an ashtray on the table. Then pauses.
"Wait. That cartoon is a guy?"
Groan. "Yes."
"Huh." The cigarette butt is disposed of without further comment. Another dozen ninjas appear, but these are better. The battle has its rough way with unwilling laws of physics. More cherry blossoms fly prettily across the screen for good measure.
A key turns in the front door's lock, and in sweeps Lupin. Nobody tries to figure out just how early he must have gotten out of bed to get past Goemon. That way lies madness. "Morning, guys, I found breakfast and heeey. She's cute."
"She's a guy."
"...I feel so conflicted."
Goemon reaches for the remote, turns up the volume, and resolutely ignores them both.