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“Not today, Lupin! The ruby is mine!” she sings out, swinging her leg in a perfect arc over her motorcycle. The battle over this ruby the size of an ostrich egg had been a thrillingly narrow one – the stupid elastic bastard bounced back up from too many hits that should have kept him down for good. But at the end of three flawless disguises, five contingency plans played out to perfection, and – if she does say so herself – a very clever little trick with a perfume bottle of knock-out gas, and the ruby is hers. And Lupin’s cute little slack-jawed look of shock as he lies sprawled in the dirt is an even sweeter prize. The swell of pride bubbling up to the top of her chest expands so giddily that it almost hurts. She has to take a second to wrangle her vocal chords down under control so her laugh doesn’t come out as an insane shriek as she sings out “I win!! Ciao, Lupin!” and revs the ignition. This is one of the good days - soon she’ll be sailing easy down the highway and adding this neat little gem to her treasured catalog of times where she’s proved that she can hold her own against the untouchable Lupin the Third.
Thwip.
And then suddenly, the ruby is slipping out from her grasp. Wha- oh fuck. She barely has time to register the invisible thread of fishing line brushing past her fingers, and she’s grasping for it, when suddenly, her motorcycle is spinning out of control, and she’s knocked tits over ass as the wheel careens sideways. Goddamn it! When did he - She lands hard on her back, a sad little cloud of dust sputtering up at the impact and settling down on her clothes. She hears footsteps on the ground next to her, and then Lupin’s all too familiar self-satisfied denouement voice: “Ah, not so fast, Fujicakes…” She seethes as her rival enters her vision, upside down, reeling in the last bit of line on a fishing pole, and plucks the ruby from the end of the line. Bastard. Bastard. Smug fucking asshole. Fuck, she berates herself. She shouldn’t have let herself get so carried away with the thrill of victory, should have checked the ruby and the bike’s tire pins and that he wasn’t wearing some sort of nose plug filter...Goddamn it! A fucking fishing lie? Who even does that??
She grudgingly admits, she’s got to hand this one to him – it was a slick trick he pulled. But still, goddamn it! Fucking bastard. For a second, she just wants to deck him, clobber him in the face and take the ruby back. Before she remembers, she has to hold herself to higher standards than that. She’s a lady, and a thief, and she has a reputation to uphold. It wouldn’t be the kind of behavior befitting of a worthy rival – he wouldn’t resort to that sort of thing. And besides, he’d be watching for it, he’d be ready to dodge a punch, and she’d embarrass herself more. No, she has to come up with a real plan. So she’s spinning wheels as she struggles her way up on to her knees, next to the wreckage of a very nice motorcycle.
For the moment though, no plans are coming to her – the sting of failure is still too raw, blotting out all other thoughs. God, I hate this, she thinks. I must look like a mess. Dresses like the one she’s wearing are a delicate and dangerous weapon that leave no room for failure. They make you feel like a goddess when you’re in complete control of the situation, wielding the helmline like a knife. But the second you take a fall in one, they always leave her feeling silly and exposed. And she hates this pitiful image of herself, defeated and disheveled and kneeling in front of Lupin, and if he makes some kind of crude joke about it she really is going to deck him.
Thankfully, this time he doesn’t say anything, except for to brush off the ruby on his jacket, and remark “it really does have a nice sparkle to it,” playing it infuriatingly smooth. She bites her tongue to stop herself from yelling “What do you even want it for?!?” Nevermind that she had been planning this heist for months. Nevermind that she had to let herself get groped by a sweaty mafia guy with big ugly fingers in order to get her hands on it. She can’t afford to get bitter about that now. Can’t start feeling sorry for herself. This is her profession, and these are the methods she chooses, of her own volition.
Lupin is holding the ruby just a little too close to her as he polishes it – a little challenge, baiting her to lunge for it. His eyes are twinkling playfully, just daring her to make a move so that he can make the even more solid proof of his total victory. Some days, she’d enjoy coyly playing into this little game, but today she’s just angry. She makes an ungainly lunge for the jewel – she doesn’t have a better plan yet, but she can’t just stand there doing nothing. Predictably, Lupin sweeps it just out of reach, with his stupid long lanky arms, laughing it off with a smooth “whoops!” Fujiko’s flailing grasping puts their faces right up close together, and, glaring three inches from his eyes, she hates everything ugly and monkeylike about him, and she hates everything suave and handsome about him even more.
Lupin smiles, self-satisfied, inviting her in on the joke of her own failure, and she wants to spit on him. God, it’s enough for him to be so untouchably cool all the time, it’s enough for him to beat her at her own game nine times out of ten, but does he need to be so fucking smug about it? She could put up with it if it was just the failures, but whenever it gets to her like this, it’s the way he rubs it in. When he switches her treasure out with a fake, or gives her a patronizing little kiss on the head as he sneaks around his arm to slip a concealed item from her hair, or calibrates shooting down her plane so he knows her parachute will get stuck in a tree and she’ll look like an idiot – that’s what she can’t fucking stand. Taking a bullet to the shoulder or losing an honest fistfight is one thing, but the deliberate humiliation of being beaten by someone who uses a fishing rod or a rubber ducky or acts like it’s all just one big fucking game – that’s the thing that boils her blood.
But no, she can’t get rightfully mad at him for that, when she isn’t this pissed off at him, she does find it charming. And sexy. When it’s the two of them together, waving out the back window to the cops as they drive away, she loves this playful, breezy air that he has to him – he’s one of the only people she’s met who truly understands the joy of stealing just for fun. And hell, even on some of the days when he wins, when she’s in the mood for the flirtation, it can be fun, can be thrilling, when she feels like she’s in on the game...
And besides, she can’t really blame him, because she’d do it to him too, and she just expects him to take it. She tries to remind herself, how fun it feels to be on the other side of this, how much she’d been enjoying herself seconds ago, revving the motorcycle and gloating. She loves it when she’s genuinely beat him and Lupin just leans back and whistles, impressed, and letting her have the moment. He just does this thing, where he makes her feel like every time she beats him it just makes him love her more – and damn, if she can deal it out, why can’t she take it? She wishes that she could be like that, just bounce back from the sting and humiliation like she’s made of rubber just relax easy into the game, but – but today she’s just too mad.
And Lupin – bastard, bastard, self-satisfied bastard – is still bouncing the ruby around, evading her every desperate grasp for it. Like the smug fucker is playing hackeysack, not fighting a dangerous armed killer for a ten million dollar gemstone. “Whoops, you almost got it that time, Fujicakes,” he’s singing out, and Fujiko wishes that she could come up with a coherent insult but she just sort of screams at him, and then all of a sudden, he pauses, holding the gemstone just two inches beyond her fingertips, but with a look of genuine concern on his face -
“Fujiko, are you crying?”
And she is, she realizes, hot little tears of frustration beading up at the corner of her eyes. She tries to deny it, but her throat is all knots, and all she wants to do is scream, scream until she pukes. She hates Lupin seeing her like this. She doesn’t need his pity. It’s just. It’s. It’s just not fair. It’s not fair how much harder it all is for her. That he grew up with this famous thief grandfather. That his arms are two inches longer than hers. That he doesn’t have to do all this in heels. That she takes on all these extra little dangers when she does this work, and that every time he walks into a mafia den, he doesn’t have to always be thinking about who wants to back him into a corner and strip his clothes off, or worse. That she thinks about that every time. That it just hits different when she mocks him, the established greatest thief in the world, and when he mocks her. It’s not fucking fair –
But she doesn’t want to make any of those excuses. He never makes excuses, and if she was as good as him, she wouldn’t be simpering around trying to blame her failures on forces outside of her control. Pathetic. She sinks down to her knees, biting back angry tears.
Lupin kneels down next to her. “Fujiko, are you okay?” She wants to scream at him to go away, but her voice fails her. Stop pitying me! She wants to yell. Don’t treat me like I’m delicate. Don’t hold back. Demolish me, like you would do to any worthy opponent. Push me off a cliff, like you’d do to Zenigata. Show me you think I can take it. I don’t need to be coddled.
“I’m sorry, Fujicakes. Did I go too far?” Lupin looks obviously distraught now. It’s annoying, his hands patting down her hair, gently, soothingly, but she takes a small spark of pride in the revelation that he is still so easy to emotionally manipulate, even unintentionally. “I didn’t realize the gem meant so much to you. I can just give it to you, if you want…” he tests. Stupid boy. Of course the gem means nothing to her. It’s the principle of the thing – and of course he has no idea. It would be so easy to just take the gemstone...some days, if she’d planned crocodile tears from the start, she might consider that a worthy conquest. But tonight, it just wouldn’t feel like a clean victory. She shakes her head, sniffling to clear her nostrils, and just coughs out “it’s not that.”
“Then what? Is there anything I can do?” Lupin sits down fully next to her, worrying over her face. She must look monstrous now, mascara streaked all down her cheeks, strands of wild hair falling all around her face, lipstick smudged off her chewed lips like smudges of blood. She grits her teeth, curling her lip into a feral smile, and grates out “just don’t go easy on me.”
And Lupin looks absolutely flabbergasted at this. Here, she’s caught him genuinely off guard. And that’s all the opening Fujiko needs. Her right foot shoots out, catching him in the side of the jaw, and she springs onto her feet, standing all in one fluid motion. In a second, his car keys are in one of her hands, and her ruby is in the other, and she’s vaulting through his car's sun roof. Not her finest work, but from the cross-legged sitting position he’s taken, and the solid knock she’s given him, she’ll at least have time to get a little head start.
In the rear-view mirror, as she cranks the car into second gear, she sees Lupin struggle to his feet. No blank look of incomprehension now – he’s grinning. And as she speeds off, and he levels his gun – aiming directly for her, not even for the wheels – things are the way she wants them to be between the two of them. The air rushing through bullet holes in the windshield as she ducks left and right is cool on her face, drying tears. And as the front tire pops, and the car goes careening for the guardrail - as she stands up on the drivers seat to make her leap, not sure where she’ll land, but sure she can figure it out in midair and have another plan before she hits the ground - she smiles to herself, content in their mutual knowledge that she can take it.