He pulls out his cablegun and puts something in the butt… is that what I think it is?
“You and I still have unfinished business.” he says, twirling the gun. “But meanwhile, take my gun along with you.”
Ken can’t think of a response to this.
“Don’t go dying on me, all right?” Joe smiles.
Ken grimly accepts the gun.
“All right, man, but it’ll probably just get in my way.” Wow, way to graciously accept the peace offering, Ken! It’s almost as if he knew what Joe slipped inside the butt of the gun…
Ken sticks the gun in his pants. No, not that side…
He calls to Jun and they run off. Joe appears resigned as they go.
Now we see Ken and Jun, in Birdstyle, in the security room of ISO Headquarters.
“Now all the important rooms in this building are kept under surveillance from this here control room.” a man explains. “But I’d like you to take a gander at this.”
“Every time we use our clandestine line, we pick up these peculiar waves coming from outdoors.” the man reveals. “Clearly this is proof that our transmissions are being intercepted upon.”
“And when you attempted a trace, the jamming signal rendered it useless.” Ken adds.
“Yeah, it wouldn’t do for scrap to try to catch these transmissions from anywhere outside the building.” the man agrees. I have no idea what this means, but I guess it was supposed to be ‘colorful, colloquial language’ on ADV’s part. The subs say ‘It should be utterly impossible to catch these transmissions from outside of this building.’ That makes more sense to me.
“Which must mean it’s being tapped from somewhere inside Headquarters!” Ken exclaims. “Jun, let’s take a through look at each surveillance monitor. It might just give us a lead.”
And so, the two conducted a meticulous examination of the rooms from the basement up through all 50 floors of the building.” the narrator says.
And they examine some more.
“Nonetheless, they failed to discover objects that resembled a wiretapping device on any of the floors.” the narrator explains.
“Damn it, it’s no use after all!” Ken curses. “Is there some other place we haven’t searched?”
“There is still one place we haven’t looked yet.” Jun admits. “Maybe… just maybe…”
Now we cut to an elevator going up. Ken and Jun are inside.
“It never even occurred to me to search the rooftop.” Ken admits.
“It’s just a hunch I have.” Jun says.
They get out of the elevator on the 50th floor and walk over to the door to the roof.
“Shuttle helicopter dismantlement in progress.” Ken reads a sign on the door. “No entry here.” Of course, we all know that doesn’t apply to Gatchaman…
Especially since Ken looks through a nearby window and see the helicopter. It appears to be intact. So much for dismantlement.
Ken opens his bracelet and adjusts something.
Sure enough, there’s some kind of flashing device on the bottom of the helicopter.
Ken’s surprised by this, for some reason.
“It is here, after all.” Jun says.
“It seems they’re tapping into the line from the antennas.” Ken says. “Just the sort of trick you’d expect from Galactor! Secret line or not, they could easily intercept it this way!”
Sure enough, on the helicopter, we see two suspicious ‘workers’ fiddling with some equipment.
“All right, Sparkowitz, we managed to get a record of all the data.” says one ‘worker’, pulling out a high tech cassette tape. He has a really big chin.
“Got to report to Lord Katse!” says his companion. He opens a briefcase and initiates a transmission.
“Yeah, shoot?” Katse sounds bored. “What’ve you got for me, Sparkowitz?”
“We have accomplished our mission without any trouble.” Sparkowitz reveals.
“Good job!” Katse sounds more animated now. “Take the data and return to base at once!”
“Sire!” the men agree… but who’s that in the doorway?
“Right… we need to shut them hatches!” Big Chin Man says.
Ken and Jun slip through a doorway, only to find themselves…
Locked in a bathroom.
Yep, they didn’t go out the exit, but into the bathroom. And now they’ve been locked in.
“Damn it, it looks like we’ve been shut in!” Ken says.
“Now we have no choice but to go to their secret base!” Jun says. Like that’s such a bad thing? Clearly they wanted to go to the base, or they would just have grabbed the tape from the men when they were spying on them.
“Launch preparations complete.” Big Chin Man says.
“Okay!” Sparkowitz replies. The helicopter has now become a rocket. Sparkowitz turns on the engines, and the ship shudders. Ken and Jun are taken by surprise and thrown off balance.
The ship takes off.
“Unidentified rocket outbound, bearing north-northeast, Mach 5!” says the man from the security room. “Scramble the UN fighter boys!” I guess he’s calling for UN fighter planes, because now we see them taking off after the rocket.
“Enemy fighter sighted. Commence missile attack!” one UN pilot says.
But of course, the UN missiles have no effect on the Galactor ship.
“What annoying pests they are!” says Big Chin Man.
“I’ll show ‘em ‘what fer’!” Sparkowitz says, pressing on a button with his fist. Colored laser beams one out of the ship’s ‘eyes’ and destroy the UN planes.
The Galactor ship circles around to take out the rest of the UN jets.
Of course, Nambu has been watching all of this on his monitor. Now he’s contacted by the security man.
“Now see here, the UN Forces have exhausted themselves. You’ve got to call in the God Phoenix!” Security Man says.
“I regret to inform you that the God Phoenix is currently being overhauled.” Nambu says, sounding like a phone recording. “So I cannot send it out. Sorry.” He hangs up.
“So why did you fib to Mr. Twain like that, Doc?” Ryu asks. And I am
because the guy does kind of look like Mark Twain! Clearly ADV thought so as well.
“That’s gotta be one of Galactor’s rockets!” Jinepi points out. “You sure we should just let it get away?”
“As we have not yet received word from them, I believe that Ken and Jun are probably now aboard that rocket.” Nambu reveals.
“That could be a problem.” Ryu agrees.
“Well, then, we can’t attack it, can we?” Jinpei asks, dejected. So, it’s okay for the UN fighter pilots to get shot down, but not Ken and Jun, even though they can glide to safety? Way to show your double-standard there, Jinpei!
“Our only option right now is to let it go.” Nambu sighs.
“We don’t even know where it’s headed off to though, do we?” Ryu asks.
“I sure hope they’re okay.” Jinpei says, turning, looking for Joe. “Joe?”
He’s gone.
“Looks like Joe’s flown the coop, there.” Ryu says.
“And just when those two are in trouble.” Jinpei adds. “Not cool, man!”
“G1 and G3, come in!” Nambu calls on his microphone, doing his best David Bowie impersonation. “This is Dr. Nambu calling!”
But there is no response.
“It’s no use. I can’t make contact, because of the jamming signal.” Nambu says.
Now we can see that Ken and Jun are still in the bathroom on the rocket.
It shakes, and they both look up.
“Well, I guess we’ve arrived.” Ken says.