Disclaimer: Lupin III © Monkey Punch, etc. This is a fanwork, not for profit.


One and Only
by Fushigi Kismet


In his old age he called all his girls the same name. They let him, the old man with the failing eyesight, because he had money, could occasionally be classy, and knew how to show a girl a good time. He also really did know how to fire a gun, that Lupin III.

Women, Lupin knew, were a dime a dozen. Sometimes a few grand for the classy ones. There was a price and you paid it, got what you wanted, and that was that. There was no use for lingering attachments or any of that nonsense.

Women were fickle. As fickle as men. Sometimes even more so.

The trick was to leave them before they left you, betray them before you were betrayed. That was his policy in business; it was his golden rule in love.

Don't ever look back and you won't get hurt.

There was only one woman for whom he had ever broken that rule. He left her as often as she left him; betrayed her as often as she betrayed him, and yet, they continued to return to each other, time after time.

She was rapacious and greedy, willing to sell her own mother for a dollar or jilt him for some rich snob with a castle, steal his well-laid or stolen plans, swindle him for everything he was worth right under his, errr, nose, and then take his very last cent, double-triple-quadruple cross him, spend all his money, blackmail him, sell him out to his enemies, sell his secrets, steal his heists, seduce his men, kill his men, tip off Zenigata as to his whereabouts, send him bills when they weren't together (but even when they weren't together they were together) and hadn't seen each other in three months, bomb him, shoot him, boobytrap his bed, tease him to distraction before disappearing, and chase away his other girlfriends.

Perhaps he only loved the way her mind worked, as devious and dirty as his own and more clever. But that would be giving the man too much credit.

She had a body to die for and was a better time in bed than any other woman in the world (And he had been with her - it was inevitable leading lives like theirs. He had never failed to get a woman he wanted; she happened to love how easy it was to coax secrets from him in bed.). Women were a pastime with him. She was an addiction.

But even so, it seemed he could do just fine without her. Women were a dime a dozen and he had enjoyed a dozen bank heists' worth of dimes' worth in his life. This latest, for instance.

She had managed to wander in past his secretary to see him and had promised him a night of mind-blowing sex in exchange for settling up some old debts. What old debts she was speaking of he didn't concern himself with. He had long since passed the age where he worried about traps or assassins or living until the next day (if he had ever in his life been worried about such things). He lived in the moment and took things as they came; this was how he lived through each day.

Or, in this case, an extremely enjoyable night.

"Hmmm," she said, bemused, pillowing her head on his chest, "you remembered my name."



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