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You don’t get to the rank of a world-class hitman without ruffling a few feathers – or picking up a few demons.
Pickling your liver only does so much for keeping them at bay too. They don’t just creep in, in the dark – as Jigen has discovered. No. His demons walk around in broad daylight as well as during the night. They walk with the faces of previous marks, of good people, bad people, and all those in between who found their end at the barrel of his revolver. They walk with the faces of people he tried to save but couldn’t – people who screamed his name in vain. Their blood is on his hands now, and no matter how many times he tries to scrub them clean, they are still dripping with red.
When is a monster not a monster?
Goemon Ishikawa is a killer. He knows it. His friends know it. And most importantly, his enemies know it. He has lost count of the amount of times he has seen a nameless face meet an early grave on the edge of his sword. All he has done, every last sacrifice, has been made in the name of duty – of loyalty. So why do their screams keep him up at night?
When is a monster not a monster?
Fujiko Mine may not have the kill count of Jigen Daisuke. She may not have the ruthless reputation of Goemon Ishikawa. But she has her own demons that visit in the night. They slither in and drag her kicking and screaming to a dank dungeon, to torture rooms, to a room so clinically barren it hurts to look at – the smell of bleach burning her sinuses. They walk her to the bedrooms of so many nameless men, nameless women – and leave her there while she shakes like a leaf and tries to forget.
Her family doesn’t speak to her anymore. Harlot. Slut. Whore. Money-Hungry Gold-Digger. Shameful. A Disgrace. That’s what they called her – time and time again, until one day she stopped picking up the phone. The words still rattle though. They’re still there in her father’s blocky script when she closes her eyes.
“You don’t have a conscience Fujiko,” Jigen says with a laugh.
She does – it’s just hidden because when it rears its ugly head she can’t sleep for days. She goes on bender after bender, drinking, smoking, fucking, just to drown out the violent noise in her head.
Lupin finds her – of course he does – he’s spent so many years chasing her now he’s almost good at it. He folds her up and doesn’t say anything as she cries unconsolably into his chest. He pats her head and rubs her back as she stutters through every breath “I’m a bad person…I’m a monster…”
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but you can’t argue facts. They’re all bad people in the eyes of the law. And Lupin is anything but stupid. He knows what Fujiko has done, what she’s willing to do – all to achieve her own goals. He might play up the act of the hopelessly infatuated idiot but he’s older now, and wiser. He knows exactly what his woman is capable of.
He holds her until her tears run dry, until she’s exhausted. Hugs her tightly so she knows she’s not alone, she doesn’t have to be if she doesn’t want to be.
When is a monster not a monster?
Where Fujiko seeks noise and distraction – Goemon seeks silence and focus. He travels near and far when his demons’ surface, when they threaten to overwhelm him. He attempts to drown them out – both literally and figuratively – the strong rush of a waterfall crashing down around him until he can hear nothing. Feel nothing but the thunderous roar shaking him to his very core.
He tries to freeze them in place – tries to leave them on top of a cold windy plateau where they can do no more harm to anyone. He tries to burn them – his feet still bear the scars where he stood in burning coals – gritting his teeth through the pain. Inhaling, exhaling, as for the briefest of brief moments he experiences a reprieve.
Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, it gets too much. When he looks at his sword and can only see red – or worse – when he looks for his sword and it is not there at all. When he feels his failures stab him in the gut as real as if Zantetsuken itself was hilt deep in his abdomen. It overwhelms him.
Lupin and Jigen watch with wary eyes as he scales a cliffside. The appreciation at how easily their friend finds handholds on a near vertical surface is apparent in the gunman’s eyes. They scramble up after him, and start running. They’ve pissed off the military and nearly come to a standstill in the next township. Goemon slices an armoured tank clean in two – he preens internally as Jigen wolf-whistles beside him – he doesn’t see the child until it’s too late. The explosion levels the nearby buildings. The ones that were all supposed to be empty.
Lupin doesn’t leave his periphery for days. There’s suddenly more rice than he knows what to do with in their shoddy apartment. One night he catches Jigen in the kitchen, hat tipped back, dark eyes focused intently on a crumpled slip of paper as he stirs something in a pot on the stove that smells hauntingly like home. Their collective gentleness suffocates him – so he runs.
Goemon is not impulsive. He has planned his own death many times – has several variations on the execution should one fail to go as planned. By the time he gathers the necessary supplies, Lupin and Jigen have caught up with him. He is tired by now, and his mind is loud. The two of them crash into his hotel room with slightly less bravado than they would normally employ, but the essence of the action is the same. They surround him on the sofa, Lupin slings an arm over his shoulders and gesticulates wildly at the TV that he has turned up to nearly full volume. Jigen’s hand is steady around his waist and the smoke from his cigarette fills Goemon’s own lungs, sliding into the dark crevices of his very being.
When is a monster not a monster?
The first time Lupin meets Jigen, they’re both young punks – trying to make their mark in the world. Jigen wears his hat and gun like a shield and wields a scotch glass like a weapon. Lupin is wily, prone to theatrics where Jigen likes to stay in the shadows so he doesn’t get caught. They don’t meet again for many years and when they do, they’re different men. Jigen’s kill count is in the thousands and it shows. He’s a ghost of the loud arrogant man he used to be. It’s still there, but it’s mulled – swept under the rug of countless bodies. Tempered by the sheer amount of death.
The disdain Jigen once held for Lupin’s dramatic shenanigans is gone, and it takes nothing more than the vague promise of excitement and cold hard cash to drag the gunman away from the elusive circle of professional hitmen that he wanders around these days. The scotch glass is no longer a weapon – it’s a vice, and Lupin wonders if Jigen always drank whiskey like it was water and he’d just never noticed. The once velvet smooth baritone that drew the thief in, is scratchy from years of tobacco and minimal use.
“Being the worlds fastest draw is no use if you’re too drunk to move your hand” Lupin says once, offhandedly, when they’re being chased by one of Jigen’s old associates. Jigen shoots the guys gun out of his hand out of the corner of his eye and follows it up with a slug in the centre of the man’s skull. Lupin doesn’t suggest that again.
Jigen doesn’t try to drown his demons out like Fujiko, or silence them like Goemon, Lupin realises. Jigen walks right up to them, shakes their hands and dares them for a rematch. His sense of self-preservation is too high to silence his mind himself – but he’ll take the chance that someone else might manage to do it for him. The moments that Jigen Daisuke looks most alive – are the moments that Lupin genuinely fears for his life. When he’s surrounded, with his back against a wall and the clicks of multiple safeties pierce through the white noise. That’s when Jigen faces his demons with a feral glint in his eye and a cocksure grin that just begs them to try and dance with him one more time.
It breaks Lupin’s heart to see the adrenaline fade once Jigen realises that yet again, he is the only one left standing. It breaks him to see that smug smile soften into a scowl, to see the hat pulled back down over that piercing gaze, to see the revolver get shoved unceremoniously into the back of his belt. A cigarette gets lit, not as a celebration, but a consolation – ‘not this time, but this will do for the time being.’
When is a monster not a monster?
So, Lupin starts searching. A new target, a new heist. Something for Fujiko to focus on because it breaks his heart to see her reduced to tears over her own fears. Something for Goemon to train for because it wrecks him when he has to talk him down from a rope and if he has to do it again in the next six months it will be too soon, too soon. Something to put that sparkle back in Jigen’s eye – to put just a little of that arrogant edge back in his smile. Something to make him feel alive, even for a brief moment. He searches because he needs to do something. Anything for those that he cares the most for.
When is a monster not a monster?
Lupin knows the answer to that. He knows it three times over.
A monster isn’t a monster when it’s drunk and exhausted on your sofa because it has nowhere else to go and no-one else to turn to – when it’s eyeliner and mascara are smudged into raccoon eyes that you’re going to make fun of in the morning but not now – never now.
A monster isn’t a monster when it hands over a sword and rope for safekeeping because it’s not safe to have them nearby for the time being. When it doesn’t complain that you spent the whole night ‘meditating’ with it because you weren’t going to go to bed and leave it alone to its own thoughts.
A monster isn’t a monster when it holds up a revolver in a challenge, when it silently begs for someone, anyone to be a better shot, a quicker draw. When it collapses in a shattered heap after a heist and snaps at the others like a wild dog – nips aggressively at their heels as they leave the room. When it growls as you approach, and continues to growl even as you tentatively start to scratch behind its ears. It took so long to get to this point – you’re not going to let it be put down on your watch.
When is a monster not a monster?
Lupin takes in his associates – all passed out in the small bedroom of their current hotel. Fujiko has claimed one bed – Jigen and Goemon are spreadeagled on the other. Goemon is gripping his sword tightly despite being sound asleep and Jigen probably can’t breathe properly with his hat over his nose and mouth like that. Fujiko is curled into a ball, wrapped up in the comforter, makeup still rubbing off onto the pillowcase from earlier in the night. His woman. His men. He would do anything for them.
When is a monster not a monster?
When you love it.