Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
Written by Toriumi Jinzō
Illustrated by Ōtori Workshop
Part 1: Joe Asakura, God of Death
Chapter 2
“You’re awake,” a bright female voice said in Japanese.
It had been three days since Joe had lost consciousness. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times. He was in a large hospital, though he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. He assumed the woman had transported him here on her motorcycle.
The woman sat near his hospital bed wearing a flower-patterned dress. He recognized her, though she seemed younger than he remembered now that he was seeing her clearly under the bright hospital lights.
There were flowers in a vase by the windowsill. The young woman must have brought those for him as well; he had no friends or family in the area who would do that.
She was kind. He should have expected that, since she’d saved him… but he was embarrassed by her kindness. He didn’t want anyone to see him in such a state.
Joe reflected on the positives: he was alive, being taken care of in a hospital, and he remembered what had happened to him. Thinking about it all now, the night of the attack had been exceedingly strange. He had been attacked by unknown men and rescued by an unknown woman. Looking at her now as she sat next to him, that sequence of events seemed impossible.
Joe stared at the young woman.
“All three of those men are dead, so you don’t need to worry.” The woman spoke as if she could see into Joe’s mind.
“You killed them?”
The woman smiled. “Do I look like a person who would do that? There were no visible injuries when I left them.” The girl took out a local newspaper from her bag and showed Joe an article with a picture.
The picture definitely showed the three men. They had been chased off by the woman on her bike. They’d been found later—all three of them—in the same place where Joe had discovered the strange sea creature earlier in the night. The police were investigating the matter, but the identity and background of the deceased remained unclear, and their cause of death was completely unknown.
Murders were not uncommon in the city. Mafia wars were common. The fact that the three men had died of heart attacks—if that was what they’d died of—at the same time piqued the journalist’s curiosity. While murders were common, men who dropped dead from sheer terror were not.
“What happened to your bike?” Joe asked.
Before he could get the question out, the young woman put up her hand and interrupted him, still smiling. “You’re Joe the Condor. Your Porsche takes 1020A air filters.”
Joe blinked, startled.
“Don’t worry about my bike. I asked a rental garage to store it for me, but I didn’t give them my name. I put down George Asakura. I could hardly put down ‘Joe, God of Death, could I?” she asked, laughing mischievously.
Joe felt as if his every move was being watched. Before crossing into Sicily, he’d hidden a trailer carrying his race car at the outskirts of the city. No one should know about it except for him.
This woman knew his real name and his job. She knew his nicknames. On the racing circuit, he was commonly known as “Joe Asakura, God of Death,” but his less common nickname was “Joe the Condor.” There was a condor logo painted on the side of his car.
“Did you know those guys?” the woman asked, looking at his face with searching eyes. “You do understand what happened to you, right?”
“I… think they were trying to kill me,” Joe said. That was a bit ambiguous, but honest.
“No they weren’t,” the woman said.
“What?”
“If they’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. They took the time to beat you up without killing you. Probably so they could take you to a secondary location.”
She was right: one clean shot from a pistol to a vital area would have been enough to kill Joe easily.
“Who the hell are you?” Joe asked. She had never told him her name. “Who asked you to help me?”
The woman didn’t even try to answer. She simply smiled at him.
Her strange kindness struck Joe again. Most bystanders wouldn’t stop to save a stranger in violent peril. She must have had a reason. Joe was terrified of what was happening to him. He felt like he had no choices anymore—like all of this had happened for reasons beyond his comprehension or control.
“You should eat. I’ll order some food.” And with that, the woman left the hospital room.
Joe didn’t trust the woman, who was too clever by half and maddeningly inscrutable, but he couldn’t hate her. She had saved him, whatever her reasons. There was no one else he could rely on here. Having her here to help him was a blessing even if he didn’t understand it.
***
Shifting on his hospital bed, Joe expected there to be a lot of pain from his injuries and was gratified when nothing hurt. He stared up at the white ceiling and pondered getting up.
What had happened three days ago felt like it had only happened a few hours ago to him. I probably should have died, Joe thought. Just when he’d thought he was going to be killed, he remembered the powerfully strong urge he’d felt to fight. That urge was buried deep, divorced from his conscious will, but it was there. He couldn’t believe that he’d been attacked in the same place his parents had been murdered—and he’d survived.
Maybe he hadn’t survived and all of this was just some terrible illusion before he crossed over and died for good. But that line of thinking would do him no good at the moment. He could only act and plan and figure things out from here if he was alive.
Was there a connection between the attack on Joe and the death of his parents? Why had the attackers waited so long, then? It had been ten years. And why Sicily? Why attack him here?
The woman had said that the men hadn’t intended to kill Joe. Joe believed she was right, but that didn’t explain why he’d been attacked and what those men had planned to do with him.
Joe fell asleep between thoughts, completely confused.
***
The woman came to visit Joe almost every day. Every time she visited, she asked him questions: always different ones. It was like she was trying to solve a mystery, and the mystery was him. She paid special attention to his physical recovery and what he thought about his experiences.
Joe resented this needling on her part, but he answered her questions as best he could.
Joe’s wounds healed miraculously quickly. The doctor shook his head whenever he looked down at Joe’s chart.
“You can’t just be an athlete. These results are superhuman,” the doctor said.
“Are you saying I have an abnormal constitution or something?” Joe asked. “That sounds a little crazy.” Joe chuckled.
But the doctor’s concern—and interest—were sincere. He talked about using Joe as a research subject for a medical paper, though Joe wasn’t always sure if he was being serious.
One day, the woman sat down in her chair next to Joe and said, “So, I found out how those men died.” She seemed immensely pleased with herself. “The official cause of death is fatigue.”
Joe blinked. The men hadn’t seemed tired at all while fighting him or dodging the woman’s motorcycle. They had all been very strong and in shape.
“That sounds dumb,” Joe spat.
“It is dumb,” the woman agreed, “but it’s true. That’s how they died. You could say it was their fate.” She sounded sure.
“Their fate? What do you mean?”
“You’ll see,” the woman said. Her enigmatic smile returned.
Joe looked away. He was angry at her. He always answered her questions, but she refused to answer the most important questions he asked.
“Don’t be angry with me,” the woman said. “That’s all I can say right now.” She sounded tired and aggrieved. “Well… there is one other thing I can say. You’re the reason they died, Joe.”
“What?”
“Think about it. Your physical recovery is remarkable. You could even say it’s miraculous. Look how surprised all the doctors are!”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
The woman went silent.
“I’ll find out soon, right?” He gave her a sardonic grin underlain with bitterness. “Why do I even bother asking?”
“You’ll be discharged next week. I can’t come see you anymore,” the woman said. Her expression was gravely serious.
“Tell me who you are and what your name is,” Joe said.
“You want my name? Well, I’m Japanese, just as you’d expect. Call me Jun. We’ll meet again.” She smiled and waved as she left.
Joe muttered obscenities to himself. Jun was weird no matter how he looked at it. Incomprehensibly weird.
Joe was released from the hospital the following Monday. All his hospital and medical expenses had been paid by an anonymous donor.
Joe knew that Jun had paid his medical bills. He already suspected that Jun was not her real name.
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