Chapter 1: My Allotted Share of You
نصيب (Nasib): "A share of what was allotted to you by destiny."
The shout started deep in the tunnel darkness of the hallway, growing with the clacker-beat of heels hitting linoleum, until it became a bellow bursting trumpetlike into the bright moonlight of the stairwell.
Inspector Zenigata threw himself palms first against the edge of the railing. All his momentum slammed up against the unreachable distance below, the empty stairwell that plummeted down seven stories. This close, the heaving of his chest was visible even underneath his coat and suit. His fingers clenched and clutched at the rail as he leaned over it, as if just an inch more would bring him just enough—
"Oooh, so close! But not quite close enough!" Lupin called to him. "Tell you what, best two out of three? See you at the bottom!"
And then he loosened his gloved fist around the rope, dropping like a stone away from the ravenous face with huge eyes, wide and glittering, and the belated voice that shouted—"Stop! Lupin! You're under arrest!"
The last time they'd seen each other, it had been somewhere in Switzerland. At the border of the Duchy of Cagliostro, in fact. After losing each other somewhere in the Alps, Lupin had gone to ground in a quiet way, shedding first his tail and then his baggage, and then, for a while, his team.
But there was nothing interesting to talk about, in Switzerland. He'd needed a break, that was all. To walk in some ruins. Trace some rivers to the sea. Eventually he'd found himself back in Japan—the place he always seemed to come back to when he was ready to start again—and scented the first interesting thing in a while on the wind.
Now, here, Lupin grinned into the wind of his fall and closed his fist with its thick glove around the rope again to slow his descent, just before the floor rose up to meet him. He'd be halfway to his prize before Zenigata even got down those stairs. But then there was a change in the tension of the rope as his feet met the landing, and he looked up just in time to see the inspector's long coat flapping above him. The stubborn old bastard had jumped onto Lupin's rope!
"Are you kidding me?" Lupin said, exasperated enough to talk to thin air. "Doesn't he ever get tired?"
With renewed urgency, Lupin dashed through the building towards the safe that contained his prize. He couldn't count on Zenigata rappelling at a safe speed, which meant he had only a marginal headstart if he wanted to be on the inside of the security system when it turned back on, conveniently locking Zenigata out. He hoped. You could time the delay of an electrical system down to the nanosecond, but you could never quite predict what insane bullshit Inspector Zenigata would do while hot on the hunt.
He darted into the final room, skidding to a stop before the glass case that held the Infamous Tokyo Guanyin. Just as described, it knelt in a pose of contemptuous rejection, face turned away, palm out. It was beautiful, in an unsettling way. The unknown mason had carved her from a single piece of jade, with delicate striation of white and yellow. But it wasn't the craftsmanship, or even the material, that made her such a hot item of speculation over the years.
Lupin carefully lifted the glass and tossed it aside, ignoring the smash.
"Well, hello there, Madam," he said, taking her tiny extended hand. "You'd like to come with me, wouldn't you? I bet you would. Don't tattle on me now, here we go…"
Just as he was lifting her from the pedestal, admiring the cool weight of her in his hand, the air shattered with noise.
Light from nowhere burned his sinuses; pressure filled the dark. Brick dust plumed the air, and heavy thumps rattled the ground as lumps—bricks, he assumed—went rolling and flying away from the source of the light. Without thinking, Lupin tucked his body around the precious statuette and clamped his eyes shut against the dust.
The bricks and all their accoutrements settled in a messy haze over the floor. Lupin sneezed, wiped his face, and bolted upright from his hiding place behind the pedestal.
"Excuse me!" he shouted, "I'm trying to work here, do you mind?"
The light resolved into a smooth, white, capsule shape. Which was wedged, like an ungainly plug in a dam, fully into the masonry. That annoying science fiction spectacle was one he was never likely to forget.
"Mamoh Kyosuke," Lupin grimaced. "Like a bad penny…"
The capsule door opened and Mamoh staggered out, hair and cape disheveled from the rough landing. He was well enough, however, to immediately spot Lupin and growl out a very rude "You."
"Haven't you learned your lesson yet?" Lupin asked him, tucking the statue to his breast and twisting away. "Do we have to break your time machine a second time?"
"You and what minions, Lupin the Third?" Mamoh replied. His one visible eye sparkled with a mad light. "You're all alone tonight. No bodyguards, no Zantetsuken—I'd like to see you try."
Lupin felt his pulse pick up despite himself. "Oh yeah?"
"Oh yes." Mamoh smirked. "You won't fool me again with your little misdirections, Lupin the Third. Not only have I fixed my machine, but I've improved the temporal lock. All I need is one little thing from you, and I'll be able to track you through time like a bird on a clear day. You'll never escape me again, you'll never lie to me again, and you'll soon cease to exist at my leisure."
"And what one little thing might that—"
It was at that moment that he registered the smack of footsteps rapidly converging on the conversation. He spun, clutching the statue, just in time to dodge Zenigata as he lunged. The big man dove forward, pinwheeling, and bowled over Mamoh.
"Very helpful, Pops, thank you!" Lupin called.
"Ugh," said Mamoh, kicking the dazed inspector off himself. "Get off, you dupe. I don't care about you."
Zenigata shook off the daze of his landing, and then did a double take at Mamoh. "Aren't you—"
Lupin dashed past them, statue in arms, towards the capsule. Zenigata snapped to attention like a hunting dog as he passed, scrambling over Mamoh to get at his quarry.
"Get ready for a taste of your own medicine, Mamoh!" Lupin shouted. "This time I'm erasing you from history!"
Up the ramp, into the glowing green interior of the machine, Lupin threw himself at what looked like a computer interface. Although it wasn't like anything he'd interacted with before, logic dictated there were only so many reasons a dashboard would have raised buttons on it. The trouble was that the buttons were labeled in hiragana, and he had no idea what to do with them…
Before he could begin to experiment with them, the (unfortunately very familiar) weight of Zenigata crashed into Lupin's back, crushing him against the blinking green lights of the databank.
"Pops!" he wheezed.
"I've got you now!" Zenigata crowed, wrenching Lupin's free wrist back from the dashboard.
While Lupin tried to wriggle free without dropping the statue, the capsule wobbled, and suddenly there was a new contender in the cage match—Mamoh shouldered into the fray, prying at both of them, rocking the capsule with each attempted grapple.
"Get away from the computer, you fools!" Mamoh snarled. "That's delicate equipment, I need that to—no! You idiots!"
Mamoh wrenched at Zenigata's back in vain, hauling on one elbow and the collar of his coat. But there was no getting Zenigata loose once he had his teeth in something. Lupin had twisted around, trying to knee Zenigata in the stomach as the inspector pressed him down into the databanks. Those big brown eyes were so close now, nose almost to nose, gleaming with manic delight, the grin wide and predatory. Lupin's heart thumped hard in his chest, coursing with adrenaline.
Their struggling arms—his wrist in Zenigata's grip—banged back into some piece of machinery that whirred and lit up as Mamoh howled at them. A bell dinged. Green light blazed into the small space. Mamoh let go all at once and rushed over to it, swearing. Zenigata fell forward into Lupin, suddenly off balance without the pull at his back.
For a split second, wide eyed, they looked at each other. Then, taking advantage of the opening, Lupin kicked Zenigata off and sent him tumbling out the door of the time capsule onto the floor.
The capsule came to life. Lupin turned to Mamoh, who was furiously punching hiragana into the computer interface.
"That's it!" Mamoh howled, "I have it! Goodbye forever, Lupin the Third, adieu!"
Time slowed. Ahead of him, Mamoh raised his hand to slam one final button—behind him, at the bottom of the retracting ramp, Zenigata pushed his hat out of his eyes with a bloodied hand and stared up at Lupin with a dawning look of something like fear—
Lupin swung his elbow into the dashboard, smashing the nearest button at random just before Mamoh's palm came down. In the noise and confusion, Mamoh missed this entirely. He was still laughing, wild and raspy, as the door to the capsule closed, sealing off once and for all one last glimpse of Zenigata reaching out.
Lupin felt the capsule rattle as it materialized, like a car crash from every direction, punching open a hole in reality. He grabbed at the edge of the nearest bank to hold himself up, but the smooth metal slipped under his fingers. Mamoh made an unmistakable "throwing it into park" motion with one of the protruding levers and then danced back, spinning in the small space, elated.
"Finally! A world without Lupin the Third! Or Fourth! Or Fifth! Or Fifteenth!" He threw open the door, "Right now you're out there, somewhere on the other side of this wall! A helpless infant, soon to become an infant mortality statistic!"
Lupin picked himself up off the floor, a hand on the holster underneath his jacket. Mamoh was a nuisance, a genius, and a petty bastard—a ruthless, vengeful loser—but to shoot him in the back like this, without even a gun in his hand…
And then Mamoh was down the ramp, out of sight, and Lupin had no choice but to grab the doorway and swing down after him.
"What?" said Mamoh. "This should be a hospital—"
The room they'd landed in was a wreckage. The top of the capsule had torn a hole in the ceiling, and the furniture from above was spilling through the hole. Loose papers fluttered down, a coffee mug shattered on the floor, and shouting from above filled the room. There was an ominous, heavy wooden creaking.
Mamoh spun slowly, eyes searching the room as if trying to decide whether Lupin had really, actually, somehow been born in a half-destroyed office building. Then his gaze landed on Lupin and his face twisted into a scowl. "You! You did this! What year did you—never mind! It doesn't matter! You'll be nearby, one way or another." At this, he drew out a pistol, gesturing wildly with it. "I'll find you and kill you as a child! And then, when I'm sure you're dead, I'll remove your ancestors one by one, back to the very first Lupin ever to take the name!"
At this point Lupin felt there couldn't be the smallest possible objection to just shooting the bastard, so of course that was when the door at the other end of the room banged open and a man in an olive overcoat burst in.
Whoever he was, he was visibly taken aback by what he saw ahead of him. He stumbled, and then his hand went to his nightstick, at which point it became obvious that he was a police officer.
"Sir, if you have a permit for that weapon, I'll see it now," said the officer to Mamoh, settling his heels into a stance that spoke of Kendo training.
Mamoh glared at him, then looked at the gun in his hand. And then, with hardly a change of expression, fired at the man.
Having been a desk-bound science-fiction author for most of his life, Mamoh was hardly much of a marksman, even at this range. The shot went wide and the policeman ran at him before he could reload. Lupin stepped back, content to let the two of them duke it out, only to freeze at the sound of a deeper, heavier creaking from above.
The ceiling cracked open, raining both dust and the enormous weight of a filing cabinet directly onto the floor an inch before the policeman, who stopped short in astonishment. He looked up. At that very moment, the fall of someone's potted peace lily reached maximum velocity as it contacted with the man's skull. In a crack of ceramic, the officer went one way, and the lily went the other.
There was no movement in the room for a moment. And then, apparently sure that the man wasn't getting back up, Mamoh made a dash past his body and broke for the exit.
Lupin circled the cabinet and bent down to check the man's pulse. Nada; still as the grave. He clapped his hands together and said the usual Amitabha for his soul. Then he got digging in the man's pockets.
The ID badge claimed to belong to an Inspector Mori Jirokichi, of the National Police. Lupin laughed a bit. What were the odds it would be another Jirokichi, dropped like a lucky penny directly in his path? Well, he could be a Jirokichi again, no problem. No point in letting a perfectly good disguise go to waste, especially with the potential for other versions of himself running around.
He had no idea where this was, and even less certainty what year. Better to be someone who belonged. And purloining a little undeserved authority had never hurt him before...
They didn't look too dissimilar. The eyes were the big problem, but that could be fixed with some latex and a bit of stage makeup. In the meantime… He retrieved the officer's hat, which had been knocked a foot or so away, and set it on his own head, pulling the brim low over his eyes. He considered the overcoat. It would make carrying the statue out of here unseen easier. Waste not, want not.
The ID went into Lupin's pocket, followed by the man's wallet. He had some pre-made latex pieces in the jacket, to cover his sideburns in a pinch…
He'd just managed to slap the things on when he heard a shout in the hall behind him.
A squad of beat cops flooded the room, not quite in perfect sync but very serious all the same as they took positions. Lupin automatically looked to the door, expecting in his heart to see Zenigata walk through the same as ever—smirking, hands in pockets, teeth gleaming. But the man who stepped through was just some guy, unfamiliar to Lupin, severe in that particular Japanese way that faces could be.
"Please stay where you are. We are with Tokyo Metro PD," the man said, glancing over the wreckage and Lupin and the body with narrowing eyes. "Officer Goro, give first aid to—"
"I'm afraid it won't do him much good," Lupin said, "the impact to the skull appears to have killed him instantly."
He stepped back to allow the officer to inspect the body. It was a bit gruesome, to be honest. The face was utterly crushed from the nose up, and there was a lot of blood. Lupin was confident it wouldn't raise much suspicion if they examined what was left.
"It's good that you're here," Lupin said, walking up to the captain. "I was just passing by when I heard the panic inside. I'm not on duty right now—Inspector Mori Jirokichi, of the National Police."
"Ah," said the captain, with an unhappy twist of the mouth. "Yes, we were expecting you in this morning. It's good to know that you are not wasting our time on purpose."
Lupin felt his eyebrows go up despite himself. "Thank you for your understanding, sir."
"Keishi!" called a voice behind them. Lupin turned to find one of the cops halfway into the belly of the capsule, and as they watched, he drew out the statue, holding it out to show his superior officer. "This was lying in the… the… automobile?"
The next nearest officer leaned in to look at it and immediately drew back with an expression of unease. The yellow jade seemed even more unearthly in this light, like marbled fat from some strange meat.
Crap. So they were doing this the hard way, then.
"I have no idea what that is. Put it in Evidence, thank you." The captain turned back to Lupin. "Did you see the suspect?"
The suspect… "There was a man here when I arrived—light brown hair, long coat?"
The captain nodded grimly. "We spotted him fleeing the scene with a handgun, but evacuating the building was determined to be more pressing."
"The kid chased after him," added another officer, who had been cordoning off the doorway. "Wouldn't be half surprised if he caught him either."
The captain's expression pulled into a thin, flat look. "He'll come limping back with a bullet in his hat, and then he'll see why we don't go off halfcocked like that."
All this was mildly interesting to Lupin, but he really would prefer to be further away from the corpse before anyone thought to ask for his identification. "I'll leave you gentlemen to it," he said. "Wouldn't want to get in the way of the properly conducted investigation."
"No, this isn't the place for National Police," the captain agreed. "We'll take your statement at the station later, once this is all bagged up."
Lupin saluted and got out of there. As he ducked out, he heard the tail end of an officer saying, "—Don't understand how it got inside the building."
Stepping out into the bright sunlight outside, Lupin took in the landscape of the place he'd landed in. Wooden buildings, fresh construction in some places, but down the hill to the river there was a patch of what looked like demolition piled along the avenue. Gaps in the roofline. A singed look on the concrete building near the dock.
In his own lifetime, there were only a couple of times when Tokyo would have looked like this. But the funny thing was, he'd never seen Tokyo like this.
He kept on along the street, scanning the shop fronts as he went, looking for a bookseller or a stand to grab a newspaper at. As he was going, he just caught the faint sound of commotion down a side street. On instinct, he turned and picked up speed. At the dead-end of the path, there was a tavern with a red lantern, through the open door of which was coming the major commotion.
Inside it was dim, a little smoky, and full of angrily shouting patrons. Lupin stepped over one of the abandoned low tables, which was strewn with a telling mixture of spilled sake and broken kebab sticks. The trail of upset drinks led straight to the back of the room.
"—Teach him to respect his elders!" the loudest, drunkest, largest man in the party was yelling. "This is a peaceful! Calm! Friendly! Establishment!"
There were a few men still sitting on their mats, yelling at this guy to let it go and sit down. There were also an awful lot of almost equally large men standing behind him, egging him on.
Lupin slipped around the edge of the crowd, pushed through, trying to get a look at what they were all yelling down at. On the other side of a sauce-splattered low table, looking as though he'd tripped over it, was a face Lupin would recognize anywhere, in any time.
But those intimately familiar brown eyes went right past Lupin, as if he didn't see him, as if he didn't know him.
"You're obstructing an officer of the law!" said the voice of Lupin's self-proclaimed nemesis, hitting an unusual crack in pitch. "This is—this is insubordination!"
Zenigata. Zenigata. Of all the bars in all the world—
"Excuse me," said Lupin, stepping up onto the table between the two parties. "Maybe a neutral third party could help things right about now. Has this boy disrespected you distinguished fellows?"
The leader of the little tête-à-tête rocked back on his heels, red-cheeked, and squinted at Lupin. "Who are you? His dad?"
"I'm Inspector Mori Jirokichi, of the National Police," Lupin said, gracefully extending and then retracting his stolen badge at just the speed to obscure his hasty patch job without meriting suspicion. "Is everything alright? I see there's been quite a disturbance. Has my troublesome junior caused you fine men any injury?"
"I'm in pursuit of a suspect!" Zenigata shouted, slamming his fist into a puddle of sake on the floor.
"He came running through here," the drunken man said, "knocking over drinks, shouting, causing trouble! He says he's chasing a criminal, but we didn't see any criminal! I've had a long shift and I'm just trying to have a nice! Peaceful! Drink! Is this the sort of hooligan the government is hiring now? He's too young to be a policeman! How am I supposed to take orders from this boy seriously!"
"My deepest regrets for the interruption of your afternoon, sir," Lupin said, giving the sort of short bow that these types liked to see. "It was unconscionably rude, there is no excuse."
The drunken man looked away, mollified somewhat. "He should at least buy us drinks. We spent good money on those."
"And the kebabs!" said another voice behind him.
"Yeah, and the kebabs."
Zenigata climbed to his feet. "I told you I don't carry any money, but I'll come back after I've made my arrest and I'll be sure to repay you—"
"Of course," said Lupin, easily. "But as his elder, allow me to take responsibility for the rash actions of the young man. He is still learning, and with your grace at this critical juncture, he will learn to be an upstanding member of the force someday."
He opened the wallet he'd stolen from the late Jirokichi, Namu Amida Butsu, etc, and offered the entire stipend of bills in one handful.
The drunken man blinked. "Oh," he said, "that isn't necessary…"
"Please," Lupin said, with a bright smile, "I would be embarrassed if you didn't."
As the man thumbed uncertainly through his unexpected gains, Lupin hustled the stunned Zenigata out onto the street. In the daylight, Lupin took a long, good look up and down him. There was no mistaking those eyes, that jaw, those broad shoulders. But he had an unfinished, youthful look about him too. The usual stress lines, the shadows under his eyes, those were all erased as if they'd never been. He was thinner, gangly even. And instead of his signature plainclothes suit, he was dressed in the silver buttons and cap of a beat cop.
Had Zenigata ever been that young? It boggled the mind.
Young and angry, at the moment. There was a very tense set to his jaw. Lupin gave him a bemused smile.
"Well? Go on, you want to say something. You might as well say it!"
The tension in his jaw flickered, and then—stiffly—Zenigata bowed to Lupin in the same way Lupin had done inside the tavern. "I'm not a boy," he said.
Lupin stuck his hands in his pockets. "Come again?"
Zenigata lifted his head, and fixed Lupin with a glare. "I'm a man, not a boy. And I pay my own debts."
"Okay," Lupin shrugged. "So you can pay me back what I spent, if you want to."
"I will!" Zenigata retorted.
Lupin had to smile. He looked the young man up and down, marveling at how the fire of youth lit him up almost the same as the thrill of the chase always had—more easily maybe, because at that age, he had more fuel to burn. This really was a novelty; it was like looking at baby-photos of the devil.
"I believe you," he said.
Zenigata startled, and then turned red. He returned to his bow, probably to hide his face.
"Hey hey, come on, enough of that." Lupin waved the young man up. "Did you say you were pursuing someone?"
"Yes!" Zenigata jolted upright. "There was a very shady character, with a gun—"
"And you saw him come this way?"
Zenigata frowned mulishly. "I definitely saw him turn this corner. Someone in that bar must be hiding him!"
"Mmn, I see why that argument was going so badly," Lupin observed. He turned and considered the layout of the street. "Mamoh isn't a local, so it's very unlikely that anyone would be willing to harbor him on such short notice…"
"Mamoh?"
Lupin glanced back at Zenigata. "That's the name of the man I'm pursuing."
"Is he dangerous?" Zenigata burst out. "Did he kill someone?"
Lupin only returned his attention to the street ahead of him. "You know, it may look as if the tavern is the only way out of here, but if you examine the façade more closely…"
He strolled over to the place where the tavern roof jutted out past the edge of the neighboring building. They had both been built by their individual owners, not a city planning council, which resulted in their awkwardly meeting at strange angles. Around behind the post of the façade, looking up, you could suddenly see where a window lattice was shoved up in just such a place as to access the lower floor roof of the neighboring building.
"There it is," Lupin said.
"He climbed up there?" Zenigata asked, peering up the side of the building. "How'd you know?"
"It's what I would do," Lupin said. "A dead end is only a dead end if you're looking at it straight on. There's always another way out, if you're creative enough."
Lupin took a deep breath and then let it all out in a resounding sigh, head tipped back in the falling sunlight. "Ah, well," he said. He cut a sideways look at Zenigata. "I guess that's that."
"I'll go after him!" Zenigata said, grabbing the lattice with both hands.
Lupin caught him by the back of the jacket. "Relax! He'll be long gone now. Anyway, I know what he's after."
"You do?" Zenigata demanded. "What is it?"
Lupin let go of his jacket. The young man turned to him, bright eyed, almost bouncing on his toes. Like a dog desperate to hunt, Lupin thought, pulling at the leash.
He lifted a finger. "That," Lupin said, "is confidential." And he pressed the finger to his lips with a wink.
Zenigata stared at him. Lupin grinned.
"Now," Lupin said, "if you really want to make yourself useful, you can show me to the precinct. I apparently have a statement to make…"