Lupin The Third: The Beast of Lykanisches

Chapter 19

"You've been hit by...
You've been stuck by...
A Smooth Criminal!"

Ruby watched Lupin with a bashful chewed-lip smile as he sang out those last, most pertinent lyrics. He was pretty good! And the whole tilted hat and shadowy smile really added to the vibe. Ruby couldn't quite place the reason, but it was perhaps in that very moment that she loved him the hardest.

The vault door opened.

Lupin frisbee tossed Jigen's hat back to him. The gunslinger caught it and returned it to his own head. With a cry of excitement, Ruby hopped down from the stage and hurried to the cracked-open door, only to hesitate on the threshold.

"Um, you guys don't think there's like a trigger mechanism or anything, do you? Like, if we step on the wrong flagstone a giant boulder will come rolling after us?"

Jigen grinned, adjusting his hat. "I think I've seen that one."

Lupin looped an arm around Ruby. "If you're the only one who can open this vault, I doubt your Pops would treat you like a bowling pin."

"Heh. You're making fun of me, aren't you?" Ruby feigned a pout. "But you're probably right. I'm just nervous is all... even after coming so far."

Standing by Ruby's side, Lupin took hold of the vault's door-handle. Then he took Ruby's hand in his other and placed it to join his. "Let's see what we've won on this little talent show," he suggested.

Together, Lupin and Ruby turned the handle and pulled open the large vault door. Once it was open, Lupin stood in the doorway, his eyes wide and bright with curiosity. Though an eager grin spread across his face, he waited to enter; first, offering his arm to Ruby.

"Shall we?"

Ruby swallowed nervously. Nevertheless, she gave a resolute nod and took his arm. They stepped inside. The tower was much like the other, all flagstone floors and cold stone walls. No windows. But unlike the former tower, this one had no stage, no computer, no technology to make it look like it existed in the 21st century. Except for the bridge, the vault door, and the Stardust-reinforced outer casing which made it otherwise impenetrable, this tower was purely medieval in appearance – right down to the pedestal in the center with a pair of yellow-parchment scrolls with gold handles.

"Well, well," Lupin remarked. "This is really something."

For the first time ever, Ruby got to see the expression on Lupin's face when he found a treasure that was truly one of a kind. He wore a certain sort of grin that she'd never quite seen before. It was both frightening and exhilarating at the same time. It was the face of a man who was bedazzled by treasure, but woe to whoever got in his way.

"Wow," said Ruby, inspecting the scrolls more closely. "I guess I wasn't expecting it to actually look like something out of a real Dungeons & Dragons medieval fantasy. These must be really ancient. Where did they even come from?"

Lupin peered through the glass case which housed the scrolls. "If I were to venture a guess, it might be from around the same time as the Book of Ballymote; 1300's CE. But perhaps, even older. Celtic and Druidic astronomers, through some means, devised a method of predicting when an unusual 'god-stone' with mysterious properties would fall to the Earth – from Ancient times all the way to our distant future." He turned his gaze to Ruby. "Now how they came into ACCSA hands... that is the real mystery."

"I guess that'll probably remain a mystery, too," sighed Ruby. "But either way... this is it! We did it!" She threw her arms around Lupin and bounced up and down excitedly on her feet.

Lupin hugged her back, deigning, even, to bounce along with her. "Hehehe! It's finally in our hands, RuRu-chan!"

"The structure of this vault," remarked Jigen, taking a look around. "It looks almost identical to the one inside Del Monte's pharmaceutical headquarters."