Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
Written by Toriumi Jinzō
Illustrated by Ōtori Workshop
Part 1: Joe Asakura, God of Death
Chapter 4
Driving felt brutal to Joe. He was going so fast that he was certain he’d spin out and kill himself, but he didn’t ease off the gas pedal. He passed seven cars at full throttle and kept going just as fast. This was the way a man unafraid of death would drive. In ten minutes, he’d made up the distance he’d lost at the start and was in second place in the race.
The audience stood in the rain, much more silent than before. Watching Joe return to form stunned people. The gap between Joe and the race’s leader was closing. Joe’s recklessness was admired and adulated even as he doubted himself behind the wheel.
Joe reached the last lap without crashing. There were fewer than 40 meters separating him from the leader. The race track was a straight line for most of what remained of the race. Joe revved his engine and pushed his car even faster. The needle on the tachometer reached the red line.
Joe’s engine screeched and stuttered as the Nissan ahead of Joe got closer and closer. Joe ignored the protestations of his car. This race was almost over, and he would have victory… or death.
Joe’s Porsche, engulfed in a gust of wind, overtook the Nissan R-104. The checkered flag came down when Joe crossed the finish line. The rain fell even more heavily as the crowd cheered for Joe’s miraculous last-second victory.
George was stunned. It should have been impossible for Joe to win. Suddenly terrified, he turned to the Porsche.
The Porsche was a car—just a car, he told himself. But it was black and slick in the rain like a malignant ooze. George looked away.
In the broadcasting room, everyone stared in disbelief at Joe’s victory. All at once, the staff regained their composure. At least two of the men were keenly interested in how the beautiful woman in the purple skin suit would react to the race’s outcome, but when they looked for her in the stands, her seat was empty.
As soon as the race was over, it stopped raining. Sun streaked through the clouds.
***
As Joe rounded the third corner in his next race, he felt a strange sense of fulfillment and peace.
Then a Ford passed his Porsche in a gust of hot air, and Joe was afraid enough to let it. The Ford rushed ahead…
…and then exploded into shrapnel and fire.
Somehow, Joe had known that would happen. Not that exact thing, but his strange sense of calm and peace frequently coupled with his danger sense in moments like this.
This time, though, Joe’s instincts weren’t enough to protect him from harm.
Screams erupted from the stands as Joe’s Porsche crashed into the burning Ford.
Death approached the God of Death.
Joe remained calm. I’m not going to die, Joe thought. Not today.
Joe’s car pushed past the burning wreck of the Ford at high speed and bumped into the race track’s shock absorbers. These were a new safety feature that lined the interior of the track to help prevent pile-up collisions.
The Porsche was torn to pieces by the impact. The tires, doors, and roof were all blown off, but the car’s frame remained intact. There was no damage to the cockpit. It was a triumph of superior safety engineering. Joe was left unconscious and stunned by the crash, but very much alive.
Just before Joe lost consciousness, he saw rescuers approaching his car through smoke. They were carrying a stretcher.
The rescue team pulled Joe out of what remained of the car. After a few moments spent choking on smoke and hot air, Joe returned to consciousness. His mind was clear. He looked at his rescuers and recognized the three men who’d attacked him in Italy. All three were wearing white coats, hats pulled down over their eyes, and large masks. Their builds and their way of moving was how Joe recognized them. They carried him like he weighed nothing.
Joe was horrified. What were these men doing here? Would they attack him again, or would the crowd deter them? How were they still alive? The paper that Jun had shown him had reported that they were dead.
The three men laughed as Joe struggled to remain conscious. They were planning to take him somewhere. Joe was placed on the stretcher. He tried to resist, but both of his arms were held down. He was too weak and injured to speak. Joe couldn’t stop them from doing what they wanted, at least at the moment.
Just as Joe was about to be carried away, a loud explosion rumbled from above. There were news crews and cameras all around.
There was a bright flash and a loud bang, both very close by. Joe thought the noise and light came from a news helicopter, but he was mistaken.
A small white Cessna airplane cut between the clouds and swooped down onto the circuit.
The audience looked up at the sky in shock.
The Cessna plane dove, descending fast. It was clear that it was aiming for the Porsche. The rescue team abandoned the stretcher and tried to run. The plane’s wings were painted: there was an eagle with its wings outstretched emblazoned on each side.
The plane released a small object from under its wing.
People instinctively dropped to the ground and covered their heads, expecting a new explosion. The race track went silent.
No explosion came. The object that the Cessna plane had dropped was not a bomb. It was a special flash-bang grenade called an SF-22. The grenade was a weapon designed to subdue rioters and terrorists. It completely blocked vision and hearing for one minute within a certain radius after it detonated.
The area around Joe vanished from view as smoke from the grenade spread out. The smoke also covered the plane’s retreat. By the time people remembered to look for the Cessna, it was gone.
The frame of the Porsche emerged from the smoke. The three men who’d pulled Joe from the wreckage had collapsed, unmoving, around Joe’s stretcher. Everyone focused on Joe. Real paramedics were in an ambulance; they rushed to Joe the moment they could see him again.
The real paramedics were nearly as disturbed as Joe when they saw the three impostors posing as medical workers. “Dead,” one paramedic said after examining one of Joe’s attackers. “He died of shock.”
“This one, too,” another paramedic said.
The real paramedics nodded solemnly. The three impostors were all dead. Only Joe knew that these men had died twice.
George ran over to Joe on the stretcher. “Joe…” There was no way he could be alive. Joe’s eyes were closed; he barely seemed to be breathing. The crowd came to see Joe, the God of Death in part because they anticipated carnage and death… was this the end of Joe’s career, and his life?
The paramedics looked Joe over and prepared him for transport. As they fussed over him, Joe’s eyes opened. He was alive, and he didn’t think he was hurt too badly. He pushed himself up despite the paramedics’ warnings and got to his feet, leaving the stretcher behind.
Joe looked up at the sky where the Cessna had vanished with a little frown. Then he started walking.
Onlookers stared in amazement as Joe walked toward the pit. He was conscious and not badly injured, but he was a bit confused. The crowd cheered in celebration of his miraculous survival, but Joe didn’t hear them. He stopped walking and took in his surroundings.
“What happened?” Joe asked, gesturing to the three unmoving men around his stretcher.
The paramedics told Joe that all three men had died of shock.
Joe didn’t have a scratch on him anywhere.
The beautiful woman in the purple skin suit peeked out the window of her car, which was close to the race track’s gate. She grinned, and then her car drove away.
***
Tokyo’s skyline at night was a spectacular view, surpassing even the sight of Hong Kong. The reconstruction of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area began in 1998 and was completed in neatly planned blocks. The waterfront of Tokyo Bay spread out like a vast blue blanket.
Joe sat looking out the window of his hotel on the 88th floor. There was so much neon on the walls that the room resembled some kind of bio-luminescent organism.
Construction of one nearby skyscraper was half-completed. Joe frowned at it as he downed his whiskey. Ice chips clinked in his glass.
What a strange race, Joe thought. Being slightly drunk helped Joe remain calm. No one had found out why the Ford’s engine had exploded. The current theory was that someone had sabotaged the vehicle. The timing was too precise for a sudden crash.
Joe wasn’t sure sabotage was a good explanation for what had happened. If a saboteur had wanted to destroy Joe’s Porsche, why not make his own car’s engine explode? The chances of the Ford harming Joe’s car in the race had been slim. Joe hadn’t been overly competitive in that race. He hadn’t been behaving recklessly when he’d crashed.
If Joe had not steered into the shock absorbers, it was possible that he would be dead. Joe remembered that moment. He felt like he’d had warning of some danger, and that someone or something had reached out to steer his car to safety. But that was impossible. Joe had been the only one in the car.
The reappearance of the three men from Italy was equally impossible, and yet it had happened. Weren’t they dead? Who or what had Joe seen, then? Zombies?
The paramedics had reassured Joe that the three men were dead. There was no such thing as zombies. Joe’s life wasn’t a horror movie.
There were so many mysteries to solve. Where had the Cessna plane come from? Why had it used an SF-22 grenade to hide Joe? No one knew who owned the Cessna plane, but it was definitely not a military or police plane.
Joe was starting to feel drunk. The whiskey acted quickly on his overstrained nerves. As his eyelids drooped, Joe remembered Jun. She could be in Tokyo somewhere. She was Japanese, after all.
“Jun saved me. And that Cessna plane did, too… Are Jun and the Cessna plane connected somehow?” Joe muttered to himself. He’d been attacked twice and saved twice. He didn’t think that was a coincidence.
If Jun had saved him again, why? What did she want from him? And if someone else had saved him, what reason did they have? Why was he in so much danger lately? What was happening to him?
The shadow of a threat fell over Joe’s mind, and he shuddered.
Jun was his best lead. Joe wasn’t certain that she knew the answers to all his questions, but she had saved him once and she’d known who his attackers were in Italy.
Before he fell into a fitful doze, Joe decided that he had to find Jun as soon as possible.
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