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Arsène Lupin III felt the jet shudder beneath his feet and grinned. Behind his back, his hands closed around the convenient grip bolted into the wall he’d been sticking close to in the chaos just in case.
That was Goemon and his one true love just then, reunited at last.
Metal shrieked, then silenced abruptly as the front end of the jet detached cleanly from the cargo hold they’d been scuffling in. The remaining half began a noseless dive.
The bottom fell out of the nearby Inspector Zenigata’s grim, determined expression. With a yelp, he scrambled for something to hold onto. His sigh emptied his barrel chest when he found his own handhold around a ceiling support next to Lupin, who suspected that was as much of a relief as it looked. There had been plenty of kisses from Zantetsuken where ol’ Pops hadn’t been so lucky.
A high-pitched scream cut through the shouts of falling goons and groans of sliding cargo.
Lupin and Zenigata looked at each other, eyes screaming in unison with her.
Mariya!
Despite her preternatural prescience, their civilian tagalong in this escapade hadn’t seen that coming.
Before Lupin could turn to see the pretty purple waves of her hair streaming past the edge where jet met sky, Zenigata had already grabbed the end of a free-flapping fuel line and leapt off after her.
Lupin knew he’d caught her in time when it pulled taut, then ripped out of the side of the cabin.
And before Lupin knew it, he’d lunged forward, caught the end before it snaked off after them, and shot a length of cable out from his belt to secure them all on the hand grip he’d been holding just a moment before.
Lupin squinted into the night. Through the open mouth of the jet’s back half just past the ends of his shoes, Suzuki’s Aquapolis theme park and the rest of Tokyo beyond yawned before him, a galaxy of colors and lights in the black. Zenigata and Mariya swung above it all, Mariya held tight by her waist and Zenigata holding himself with his free hand, dark silhouettes lit from below.
The fuel line was slick and two people—especially including the broad and bulky Zenigata—were heavy. Lupin dug his fingernails into it to keep it from slipping. He needed to pull them up fast. If Pops’s arms didn’t give out first, Lupin might drop them.
Lupin’s brain skipped on the words like a scratched record.
Drop them.
Drop… them.
Time stretched out. Suzuki’s raving monologue from the other side of the cargo hold dulled to a faint ‘blah, blah, blah, blah, blah’ at the very edge of Lupin’s perception.
Inspector Kouichi Zenigata, his single greatest enemy in a world of enemies, dangled at the end of a rope Lupin was holding.
All it would take would be a few tiny muscle movements to send him plummeting a thousand feet to certain death. They were above water—the lake they dug for Aquapolis—but, at this height, that wouldn’t even matter. It was the surface tension. He would fare no better than he would if he hit concrete. He’d end with a splat.
Lupin’s lips twitched into a smile.
Splat.
And he would never have to deal with Pops again.
No more following Lupin wherever he went. No more chasing him away from his next quarry. No more seeing through his disguises, no more wrist bruises from the jerry-rigged handcuff gadgets, no more sniffing him out through his accomplices, no more thinking he knew how Lupin thought. No more complicating his plans even more than Lupin himself and his neurotic posse already complicated them.
Things would be so simple—life would be a dream without him!
It’s not like anyone would blame him. The only witness would be Suzuki and he was going to die in about a minute or so anyway (the only person Lupin could rely on more to save his ass than Goemon was Jigen, and Lupin had no doubt he was on his way). And if Jigen did sweep on by to find that the infiltration team was incidentally missing a detective in over his head, he’d be so happy he’d click his heels and sing ‘Ding-Dong! The Pig Is Dead!’ at the top of his baritone.
Goemon wouldn’t be pleased when he found out Lupin had sent such an honorable soul to the next world, but if he didn’t want the untold spoils they’d be inheriting without Zenigata in their way, he didn’t have to get any.
Lupin, for all his efforts, could barely get Fujiko to show she cared about him, much less his cadre of fans. He knew she loved him deep down. Deep down in that, uh—heart of hers, yeah, sure—and he strongly doubted there was room for anyone else.
In any case, all Lupin would have to do was deny it. You know me and my butterfingers! Suzuki was waving a machine gun around and I was so distracted keeping myself from going flying that before I knew it, he slipped out of my hand and that was it! They might suspect what really happened, but they’d never go as far as to suggest it. Lupin was the boss as much as they liked to pretend otherwise.
Lupin adjusted his grip on the fuel line. Below, he could see Zenigata’s arm starting to shake. He was biting down hard on the jitte he held in his teeth. Sweat beaded and rolled across his weathered brow.
No one could refute that Zenigata would die in the line of duty doing what he loved. With all the times his gang ran him off the road, it was a marvel it hadn’t happened earlier. Interpol would organize a modest funeral attended by few officers and even fewer outsiders. He had few friends in the force with him always on the road, and it only occurred to Lupin in that moment that he had never heard about any family or even friends beyond that.
Except…
Lupin’s gaze focused on Mariya clinging to his side. Stylish, sweet Mariya, blue eyes wide with terror, gold earrings flashing over her shoulders, thin pink cardigan flapping about her lithe torso and short red skirt over her knees. She must be cold, dressed like that, this high up. He could help with that.
On autopilot, Lupin began pulling them up, hand over hand over hand.
He was getting distracted—it was Zenigata with his arm around her then. Though his grip on the line was growing tenuous, his hold around her waist was firm. His attention wasn’t on the city below like Mariya’s was—Lupin didn’t think he’d seen him look down even once—it was on Lupin.
Zenigata’s expression was set: heavy eyebrows knit, big brown eyes locked intently on Lupin’s, strong jaw still tight on his jitte, unflinching against the biting wind. Pops seemed to stare right through his eyes into his brain and see what he was considering.
But he didn’t look away.
Lupin knew deep down that Zenigata knew him better than he thought anyone could. He would be able to rattle off each and every one of his charges, criminal or civil, up to last week in his sleep. They’d slept in a room together once; Lupin knew personally that wasn’t hyperbole. And still, knowing everything he’d done and was prepared to do to get what he wanted, he could still look at him like that. Like there were lines even he wouldn’t cross. Like it mattered to Lupin what some fanatical cop thought of him.
Lupin could have let go right then. Thrown his arms out wide, grinned wildly, and let loose a victorious cackle. Screamed over the wind, ‘I’m Lupin III, the greatest thief in the world! I can do whatever I want for any reason and I’ll do anything to keep getting away with it!’
But what would come next flashed before his mind's eye immediately after that future crossed it: panic paling Zenigata’s face as he realizes just how wrong he was. His hand tightening on the line as if it could still save them. Pops’s eyes locking back onto Lupin’s one last time and welling with the betrayal of decades of precedence. Mariya’s scream, and Zenigata turning from Lupin to shield her from an impact neither of them could possibly survive.
And Lupin took Zenigata’s hand, and helped him and Mariya up.
What do you care? the world’s greatest thief asked petulantly, pouting in a dark corner of his brain. You’ve ruined lives before. You’ve ended lives before! He’s a small, pathetic man! He can’t matter to you as much as you do! Nothing does!
But, over the years and years he’d spent as the greatest thief to ever live, Lupin had gotten really good at faking his own death. The most engaging part of the challenge to him was making it so convincing that even Zenigata would believe it. Each time, it got harder because Zenigata would get more suspicious and there would be less room for error, but each time, Lupin had managed to get it to work.
Lupin’s gang was used to it. No matter how hard he tried, he’d never tricked Fujiko, he’d gotten Jigen once, and Goemon twice—but he could always count on Zenigata. Every time Lupin came back from the dead, the first time Pops saw him again was the happiest he’d ever seen another human being.
But, roughly fifteen seconds later, the chase would start over again.
Lupin would be lying if he said that either of those weren’t part of the appeal.
Without Inspector Kouichi Zenigata, Lupin wouldn’t have any of that. The rest of the world would be simple to fool. He wouldn’t have one of the best cats in the world to play mouse to. Every trap would be a child’s puzzle. Every disguise would be foolproof. No one would have the chance to get to know him as well as Pops did ever again; Lupin wouldn’t make the rookie mistake of letting that happen a second time. No one would know his accomplices quite as well, either.
Lupin’s plans would go off without a hitch.
And with the vice comes the versa. Was it really Lupin’s decision to take away Zenigata’s chance to succeed in the impossible task he’d pledged his life to accomplish? Whether it was by giving him what he wanted and letting him win (in your dreams, Pops) or by letting go of that line?
Who would want to live a life where that’s all there is?
Who would want to make that life for someone else?
A moron, that’s who.
And Lupin may have been an idiot, but he sure as hell wasn’t stupid.
From the beginning, the real treasure Lupin had sought above any other was freedom. And without Zenigata getting his, too, neither of them would ever be able to grasp it, not—
“Lupin?” Pops’s voice came out low and strained.
Lupin blinked, finally focusing back in on the world around him. “Hwuh—huh?”
Standing in front of him, Zenigata gave Lupin a strange, almost-glowing half-smile, as if he recognized in some way what had just happened, but something else was on his mind. With wide eyes, he glanced repeatedly and insistently aside.
Lupin followed his gaze.
Suzuki was holding the barrel of a submachine gun to his temple.
And they were still in a jet that was approaching the ground even more rapidly than when Lupin had last looked down. There was still a frightened girl at his back and a horrible man to save her from—two, actually, in his professional opinion.
“We aren’t done,” Zenigata hissed.
Lupin giggled.
“What gave you that idea, Pops?”