Chapter 6

Shortly after the two ninjas had left, a banging sound startled Joe, Ryu, and Jinpei. They raised their heads to see what was going on, realizing that the noise was coming from outside.

Someone was knocking on the door.

"We're closed!" shouted Joe. The only person he could guess who could legitimately be outside the door was Dr. Nambu, and the Condor knew that even if the Doctor were to return to the Snack J, he had his own key to Jun's restaurant.

But the knocking continued, as if the person outside hadn't heard the Condor's words. If anything, the banging began to take on an impatient tone. Joe grunted in frustration; annoyed that the person at the door was still going at it.

"That racket is giving me a headache!" Jinpei whined.

"I'll make them leave." Joe promised, pushing his way out of the booth and over to the door. He yanked it open, glaring out into the dark night.

"I said we're clo…"

No one was there.

At least, no person was there. A small deer stood outside of the Snack J.

"Well, finally!" the deer said, and for once, Joe could think of nothing at all to say in response to someone else's sarcastic comment.

The deer walked inside, then looked back at the door, whose bottom exterior half was now covered with scratches and dents.

"Sorry." the deer apologized. "Hooves are not really made for knocking." He held up his right front leg and looked at it ruefully.

After a moment, the deer's head pricked up, and he looked around, his gaze finally coming to rest upon Ryu. He trotted over to the Owl, a skeptical expression on his face… if a deer could be said to be capable of a skeptical expression.

"You?" he asked quietly, before placing his nose into one of Ryu's hands.

"It is you!" he exclaimed, then he looked up at the confused ninja.

"Owl, I have come to request your assistance." he said formally.

"Huh?" Ryu's face was a mask of shock. "Me?"

"Yes." replied the deer. "You are the Owl. You helped me once before, and now I am asking for your help again."

"I helped you?" the Owl repeated, clearly not recalling any talking deer in his past.

"On Katse's Jungle Island!" Joe blurted out, the memory surfacing. "The one with the Killer Bananas!"

"Killer Bananas…" Ryu said quietly, then he looked at the deer carefully. "You had a hurt leg. But you weren't talking, then…"

"No." agreed the deer. "That was when I still believed that Berg Katse was going to keep his empty promises. But now I understand that he is only out to deceive me. He wants to take over the planet, and I'm afraid that more of us will be hurt if he is not stopped. I recalled your kindness to me, Owl, and I was hoping that you would assist me once again."

"But, how did you know that Ryu was the Owl?" Jinpei asked curiously.

"His scent." the deer shrugged.

Joe stared. He had never seen a deer shrug before.

"I followed it all the way here." the deer added.

"Followed… from Katse's Island?" Ryu exclaimed. The deer nodded.

"How did you get across the ocean?" Joe asked suspiciously.

"I flew."

"You flew?" Ryu's eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"Wouldn't that attract an awful lot of attention?" Jinpei was curious.

"Not tonight." the deer rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me you've never heard of…"

"Wait a minute!" Jinpei was suddenly jumping up and down with excitement. "Are you saying that you're one of Santa's reindeer?"

"No." the deer replied calmly. "But they do provide sufficient distraction and a good cover story. Me, I'm just a misfit."

"A misfit?" Ryu asked.

"I wasn't built properly." the deer sighed. "I'm too small, and I'm incapable of growing larger. That's why I was on Katse's Jungle Island to begin with. He didn't want to use me to take over anything, so I got sent there instead."

"Wait a minute…" Joe was astonished. "Built? You're a mecha?"

The Owl and the Swallow were just as shocked as the Condor.

"What else?" the deer shrugged again. "Wait… you thought I was real?" He began to laugh.

"But on the Island, when you were hurt… there was blood." Ryu recalled.

"So?" the deer replied in a slightly condescending tone. "I was supposed to seem like a real animal. I have a thick layer of flesh and blood over tritanium reinforced steel. Sheesh, didn't you guys ever see Terminator?"

"A mecha with blood…" Jinpei muttered.

"Nothing on that island was real." the deer pointed out. "It was entirely manufactured by Berg Katse."

"You mean, when I didn't attack Katse's Mammoth mecha, because of those deer…" Joe whispered angrily.

"Yep." the deer nodded. "They were mecha too. Although I'm glad you let them get out of the way. They don't deserve to be destroyed any more than you do."

"But they work for Katse!" Jinpei protested.

"Not exactly." the deer shook his head. "We had an agreement with Katse, that he would let us live peacefully if he 'borrowed' a few of us to use against you."

"Us?" Ryu asked,

"The Science Ninja Team." the deer said, clearly exasperated. "Don't you guys know anything? Whom else would Katse use mecha against?"

"So you're saying that all the mecha we've destroyed have been… sentient?" Joe could hardly believe he was even thinking about this, much less asking the question. But then, he was holding a conversation with a deer.

Perhaps he had been the one to ingest Granny's fruitcake, and he was suffering from strange hallucinations.

"Not sentient." the deer disagreed. "Some of Katse's large mecha, the ones he uses to attack you, he designs himself. Those ones are just hunks of metal. The ones he takes from us… he destroys their minds, before he uses them. He obliterates all conscious thought completely. Sometimes he even replaces their higher functions with a simple artificial intelligence that incorporates a destructive personality. Like about a year ago, there was Gobbler, a mecha Turkey…"

"I remember." Ryu wasn't the only one who groaned.

"So who is this 'we'?" Joe questioned.

"Those of us from..." the deer never got to finish his sentence as his eyes fell on the snowman cookie jar still sitting on the table.

"Frosty!" he cried.

"Huh?" Jinpei appeared confused.

"It's just a cookie jar." Ryu explained. "We won it at the Nutcracker this evening. And the cookies are delicious! I think there's even one left too. Want it?" The Owl stuck his hand into the cookie jar's mouth and began rooting around inside.

"The last…? No!" the deer cried out, just as Ryu's hand emerged, holding the small white cookie.

The snowman jar began to tremble, vibrating so violently that it moved across the table and then fell off of the edge, to land on the floor. But rather than breaking, the ceramic jar simply continued to roll around on the ground, shaking and rattling with a nerve-wracking intensity.

And it was growing.

"Not again!" groaned Joe, recalling the Turkey mecha that had disrupted their dinner on Christmas Eve the previous year.

"Shouldn't you guys be transforming or something?" the deer asked sarcastically.

"Uh, yeah." Jinpei muttered, shamefaced. "Bird… Go!"

Within moments, the Swallow stood in full Birdstyle, the Condor and the Owl close behind. By this time the snowman was so large it was breaking through the ceiling of the Snack J.

And it was still expanding its size.

"What's going on?" shouted Jun as she emerged from the bathroom to the sound of her restaurant being destroyed. The Swan gasped as she beheld the former cookie jar crashing through the roof of the Snack J. Jun called out for the Eagle and then transformed into her own Birdstyle.

Gatchaman, the White Shadow himself (with a greenish cast to his face) stumbled forth into the restaurant a few seconds later. By this time, the snowman was at least twenty meters high, and the Snack J was a disaster zone.

"Damn it! Not the roof again!" the Swan complained angrily. "I just got it fixed last January!"

"What is that thing?" Ken croaked, unable to stand upright long enough to properly look at the mecha.

"It's the snowman cookie jar!" Jinpei shouted. "It got mad when Ryu tried to eat the last cookie!"

"Actually, it's Frosty." the deer interrupted. "His mind was wiped and replaced with a inferior artificial intelligence."

The Eagle stared at the talking deer, shaking his head in disbelief.

"That's the last time I ever even think about eating any of Granny's fruitcake!" he moaned.