Lupin The Third: The Beast of Lykanisches

Chapter 11

Author's Note: Apologies for the delay, dear readers. This installment of my Lupin fanfiction is the most ambitious yet, so it's taking me a bit longer. Thank you for your patience, and I hope you continue to enjoy the final book!
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Lupin and Jigen moved swiftly through the halls. Jigen skidded to a halt with his hand atop his hat. He looked one way, then the other.

"Which way, damn it? This castle is like a damn labyrinth!"

Lupin darted into the hallway, past Jigen, looking around before...

"This way!"

And started running again.

Jigen followed. "How can you be so sure!?"

Lupin looked over his shoulder and grinned. "Trust me. When my RuRu-chan is in trouble, I have a sixth sense for just how to find her."

"Keh! Yeah, well, 'your RuRu-chan' has been in nothing but trouble since the moment she stepped foot into this castle. And Goemon is right in the thick of it, too! Damn it, we should have been coming here together! If it wasn't for your fawning over fucking Fujiko..."

Lupin rolled his eyes. "Well, maybe if you weren't on the hit list of every Mafia Don and ex-military hitman..."

The two darted past a set of stairs which led to the north wing, just as one security guard knocked out another. But this went unnoticed by the pair, just as the two of them went unnoticed by the renegade security guard – each narrow-focused in their goal.

With a bit more running, and a silent truce over the fact that they'd both bungled things in recent time, Lupin and Jigen soon came upon a large set of ornate doors.

"This HAS to be it!"

Jigen hunched over, his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. "It'd... friggin' better be! I'm tired of all this damn running."

Lupin, with his Walther in hand, grabbed the door knob. "Should we knock first?"

Jigen, pulling out his Magnum, shook his head. "Nah. Whatever's going on in there, it's better that we cut in."

Lupin threw open the door... only to be greeted by a wall of silver.

"Uh..."

Jigen blinked. "The hell? Are these the nanomachines?"

"With all the running... I almost forgot," Lupin chuckled sheepishly. He slid his Walther away in favor of something else; a gadget that looked as though it might have been a flashlight... amongst other things.

"The hell is that thing?" asked Jigen.

"A little low-level EMP generator to scramble the signal of these nanites," said Lupin with a grin.

Jigen looked at Lupin with a perplexed scowl. "And... you just conveniently happen to have this on you right now?"

Lupin shrugged and chuckled. "You never know what to prepare for, Jigen. I prepare for anything."

"Keh!" came Jigen's usual reply.

Lupin was admittedly being a bit disingenuous. After all, Ruby's research on Aderlass back at Hutchison House hadn't been entirely fruitless. It was then they discovered his proficiency in nanotechnology. So, Lupin had come prepared for such an event.

He turned on the device. The flashlight-looking gadget gave off a sound that was barely audible to human ears and the bulb-end of the device emitted a faint blue light. As Lupin swept his EMP flashlight over the silver wall, bit by bit, it crumbled away into smaller particles, only to ooze across the threshold. It was as though they had melted a door-shaped opening into a block of ice.