Lupin woke up with a pounding headache. After accidentally tumbling off the bed, he got dressed, sleepily muttering curses the whole time. He left the hideout, but when he stuck his head out, he saw he was in the middle of an unfamiliar street.
"What the..." He looked around. The street looked oddly flat, and the blacktop was brown. On either sides of the road was a sidewalk, and it was a bright, candy pink.
Lupin climbed out onto the street, where not a single car was driving by, and jumped up and down on the brown street. It made a clacking noise. On a hunch, Lupin licked one of his fingers, and rubbed it against the road. He tasted it. It was chocolate.
Before Lupin could investigate further, he heard Jigen and Goemon call him, simultaneously. "Hi, Lupin! Come over here!"
Lupin looked back toward the sidewalk. He saw his friends, and his jaw dropped. He blubbered and shook as he absorbed the sight of them. Jigen's beard was gone, his chin shaved immaculately clean. He was wearing a different hat and jacket—they were snowy white with gold accents. Goemon had on a rainbow kimono, bright with all the colors of a discount store Hawaiian shirt.
"Aw, Lupin, we're so glad you could make it!" Goemon's left eye twitched.
Jigen nodded vigorously. "You're just in time to hear the love song we've been working on all day!"
"Uh..." Lupin was focused on Jigen's chin.
"One, two, three, let's go!" Goemon and Jigen shouted simultaneously. A canned, bubbly, four chord pop song's backing track plays.
JIGEN AND GOEMON:
Love me deedle dee, love me diddly doo,
I want to spend all my hours with you!
When you're in love, the bestest parts,
are the cute little kittens and candy hearts!
Lupin is about to retch his guts out all over the pepto-bismol pink sidewalk. "Don't tell me the candies have messages on them," he says.
"Oh. Of course!" Jigen pipes up.
"They all say, 'twu wuv!'" Goemon smiles.
The mopey way we were before,
we don't miss.
Every problem can be solved
by an indirect kiss!
Jigen stretches out his right arm and pulls a malt out of a cloud, and Goemon pulls two straws out of a mysterious hole in the sidewalk. With psychotically happy grins on their faces, they take sips out of the drink together.
"No way in hell that's sanitary." Lupin cringes, unable to look away. After a few seconds, he sings himself.
LUPIN:
Don't you guys remember,
how great things were before?
Back during those jobs,
it didn't matter if we sped away
in a Fiat or Mercedes Benz,
since we were partners and friends?
I know, I know,
you two are freakishly sunny.
But don't you wanna run back to me
when you see all this cold, hard, money?!
Lupin pulls out a wad of cash from one of his hidden jacket pockets, punctuating his verse. He grins madly, like a famished shark. When the cash has no effect, Lupin pouts and throws it at Jigen and Goemon. It whacks the malt out of their hands, and the drink crashes to the pink pavement, and melts the sidewalk in a whirlpool of sugary sweetness. Jigen and Goemon spin around to face Lupin. Their eyes roll back and glow a radioactive pink.
JIGEN AND GOEMON:
You still don't trust in the power of rainbows and chocolate?!
You're stupid, stupid, stupid!
Send in the Cupid!
Cupid, Cupid, Cupid!
The two of them point at Lupin as if he's a heretic. They continue to chant "Cupid," ad nauseum. Suddenly, the entire street shakes. Cracks form in the road, and a monstrosity arises from underground. A metallic baby head smashes through the pavement, a machine with jagged steel teeth and bulbous eyes cut from sapphire. Two needle-encrusted wings shoot out of the ground and flap vigorously, sending pavement showering over Lupin.
Lupin screams and tries to run, but his shoes are sinking into the melting pavement. He pulls off his fake legs and dashes down the road, but no matter how far he runs, the metal Cupid is lurching behind him from the exact same distance away, its menacing machinations ever lurking in the corner of Lupin's sight. Lupin steps into a sinkhole filled with chocolate sauce, and it hardens around his feet. He cries like a toddler throwing a tantrum as the Cupid opens its gaping, Lovecraftian maw with the screech of a hundred demolition vehicles and closes in on him and sucks him into its ink-black mouth no escape now and the teeth jutting out everywhere sharp as bladesnapclosedhescreamterrordarkofnightdeadforever—
"I'm way too handsome to die!" Lupin shrieked. His vision was slightly blurry, but he saw he was in a much darker, less technicolor place than before. His eyes darted around the room, his room, scrutinizing every detail, from the fifty-two cracks on the ceiling, to that ugly stain on the wallpaper in the left corner. It had all been a nightmare.
Just as he was sinking into the bed, relieved, Goemon and Jigen burst into the room.
"Hey man, were you having a real bad dream?" asked Jigen.
"We heard you scream," said Goemon.
Lupin blinked. He looked at his friends, and discovered they looked utterly normal. Both of them were wearing their usual, drab clothes, and Jigen was no longer a clean-shaven abomination, his beard as bushy as ever.
Lupin smiled, tears glistening in his eyes. "Only the worst nightmare ever. But seeing you two all right makes everything all better."
Jigen and Goemon shared a look. "That's uncharacteristically sentimental of you, Lupin," said Goemon. "We were seriously injured in this nightmare of yours?"
"Infinitely more twisted." Lupin gagged. "You'll never believe this, but you two were in love! And you sang a musical number about it!"
Jigen winced. "Well, this is awkward. I don't know about singing outside the shower, but..."
"We are in love," said Goemon.
Lupin opened his mouth wide, but it felt like sandpaper inside. Neither words nor shrieks came out. He bolted out of the bed, tossing the covers on the floor. He flung
the bedroom door open, and raced out like a whirlwind. He crashed through the second door he encountered without bothering to pry it open. Splinters scattered every which way, and got jabbed into the carpet. Lupin left an outline of himself in the wood, clean as a hole-punch in a piece of paper.
Jigen walked to the ruined door, careful not to snap any of the splinters in the rug. "Lupin does know he's nude from the top down, right?" He asked Goemon.
"The indecent exposure charge should clue him in."
Lupin raced, barely breathing, to the base of a large tree. Without stopping for a breath, he grabbed a zipper on the tree trunk. He unzipped it, revealing the tree to be a disguise for his Fiat. He almost tore open the door, leapt inside the car, and started the engine. Lupin had to get out of there, to find the one person to pull him away from all the insanity—his very own Mine Fujiko.