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Story:

RUSTY ANGEL:
Battle one:Reclamation Daisuke Ido, a brilliant cyborg doctor,is scavenging the scrap yard for spare droid parts. Above him looms the giant floating city of Tiphares.As he scavenges he happens upon the remins of a female cyborg's head and shoulders. Pulling her out of the scrap, he takes her home and activates her, finding that though her brain is still in working condition,her memory is gone, and she cannot remember her own name. From that point on, Ido decides to name Alita, after his dead cat. We then cut to see Ido walking around the scrap yard with Alita strapped to his back. He points out Tiphares to her and asks more about Alita's past which the girl cannot, of course, recall. The scene changes to another part of the scrapyard,at night. Amidst the lively night scenes we see a woman with beautiful cyborg arms enjoying a smoke by herself in a small alleyway. She notices someone approaching, but it is too late for her, for the unknown assailant rather messily decapitates her. The next day we see Ido attaching arms that do not look unlike the arms that belonged to the cyborg woman the previous night. When asked if they were expensive, Ido claims he got them from a used parts shop. He then promises to get Alita a pair of legs, for at the moment she is moving about on wheels. That night, Alita can hear Ido leaving with a large case on squeaky wheels, but she returns to sleep. The next day we see Alita with a new set of legs. She rushes over to meet Gonzu, Ido's friend, who is running a stall. Gonzu warns Alita to be careful, for there have been attacks on young women like her.Alita goes back home and sees Ido working on a patient.She notices that Ido has a bandage on one arm, but when asked what had happened to it, Ido shrugs it off, saying it was merely an accident. Alita thinks to herself that it must have happened when he went out the other night. That night, Ido goes out again, but this time Alita follows him from a distance. She sees him open his case and pull out a rocket hammer, readying himself for a woman that is coming around the corner. Horrified, Alita stops Ido before he can swing the hammer at the woman. She accuses Ido of killing women to get her the arms and legs.Ido wrestles his rocket hammer away from Alita but when he turns around, the woman is gone. He turns back to Alita, and swings his rocket hammer.Confused and afraid,Alita is unsure of what to do. Then it dawns on her that Ido was actually aiming for the claw that was about to harm Alita. The claw belongs to the woman, who Ido says is the actual killer. The woman jumps off a wall and attacks Ido, but Alita cannons into her, as we are shown the woman's monstrous face. The monster jumps out of Alita's grasp, but Alita springs upwards with her hands and turns in the air, kicking the woman's head into a wall, killing her. Landing back on the ground, Alita seems bewildered at what she ahs just done. Ido identifies the technique she used as Panzer Kunst, a cyborg fighting technique. Ido goes to the factory to claim the reward on the woman's head, then takes Alita home. He explains that there used to be a police force to maintain law & order in the Scrapyard, but that didn't work out, so the Factory (the Scrapyard's link to Tiphares) pays people to hunt criminals (Hunter Warriors).Ido thanks Alita for saving his life, calling her an angel, to which Alita thinks, "You gave me my life, Daisuke...If I'm an angel, what does that make you...?" FIGHTING BLOOD: Battle Two:Awakening The scene changes and we see Alita about to enter the factory on her own.She hasa flashback of Ido forbidding her to become a hunter-warrior, for he wants her to remain unsullied, but she retorts by saying she wants to find her own way in life.She then runs out of Ido's workshop. We cut back to see Alita enter the factory and get registered as a hunter-warrior via brain stamp.We then cut to a scene where a man is talking to his dog. Suddenly two strangers approach and one of them asks the man to sell them the dog's brains.The man refuses and the larger of the two strangers pulls off his cloak to reveal his gigantic frame.The monster grabs a member of the crowd and pulls the top of his head off, eating his brains.Everybody starts to panic and runs. Next we cut to Ido throwing away girls' dresses into a river (obviously bought for Alita)he starts laughing to himself for being so foolish in beleiving he could control Alita's destiny.We are also given an insight as to the other reason Ido kills people...he swipes one of the stranger's (from the brain-eating scene) heads...for Ido kills for the rush..the "one moment of ecstasy". We then see the brain addict alone, finishing off the brains of a dead girl.Alita steps in and gets ready to fight him. The monster throws the girl's body at Alita, but the cyborg dodges,and kicks upwards, dismembering the monster's arm.But this is not enough to stop the creature,for he destroys Alita's body with his other arm...

TORN ASUNDER:
Battle Thrww:Values With only her head and one arm remaining, Alita stops herself from crashing onto the floor by putting her hand out. Immediately she uses her hand to propel herself up towards the monster's face, spins in mid-air, and uses her arm as a drill, shoving it into the monster's eye.By this time Ido has shown up at the scene and watches, dumbfounded. Unfortunately Alita's arms snaps in mid-attack,and she falls into the monster's hand.It tries to pierce her skull with it's sharp claws, but Ido steps in and destroys its body with his rocket hammer.Ido approaches Alita's body to asses the damage,unaware that the monster's head was still present.Suddenly it manifests itself, and launches a spike into Ido's stomach.The creature (now a head with a mechanical maggot body)memorizes their faces and vows to return and avange himself. Saying that, he jumps off the edge into the sewers below. Ido, though injured, identifies the monster as Makaku.Ido struggles to get up, pulling the spie from his body and retrieving Alita.He crawls through town to a telephone booth, and calls Gonzu. BERSERKERS REBORN:Battle Four:Resurgence Alita dreams..in her dreams she is a little girl, running amongst the garbage of the scrapyard...a giant mechanical claw picks up the pile she is on, and drops her, sending ehr tumbling to the ground.She sees, Ido's face above her, assuring er it is all right... In reality Alita has been hooked up to a life support system, and Ido, with Gonzu's help,goes down into his basement to retriev the Berserker body, a cyborg body Ido found several years before in a spaceship crash, but hid it away after finding out the body was meant for war.But attaching Alita to the Berserker body is the only way she can really survive in the scrapyard. Thus with Gonzu's help (Ido is confined to a wheelchair), they perform the surgery.In her dreams, Alita sees that she has the power, and saves Ido from the monster-woman.She flies towards a bright light, for there lies the "other" Alita..but before she can reach it, her body is destroyed, and Makaku's face looms in the background. Alita awakes with a start, and finds that she has a new body.While Ido and Gonzu sleep, tired from the operation, Alita vows to kill Makaku.We cut to see the cyborg gladitorial champion Kinuba finish off yet another challenger with his grind-cutter technique (the grind cutters are super actuation vibrators, worm-like blades in place of fingers that can stretch out at three to four times the speed of sound. While he sits alone enjoying his victory drink,a stranger enters, asking about his grind-cutters.It turns out that the stranger is really Makaku in disguise, and he proceeds to kill Kinuba and take his body. We cut away to see alita with Ido, walking the streets of the scrapyard.Alita has new clothes on,a black skin-tight outfit over which she wears a light-coloured coat, making her look mature.Ido even mentions that she looks more grown up.Ido takes ALita down to Kansas, a bar where fellow hunter-warriors hang out.Ido asks the others to help him and Alita fight Makaku, but nobody volunteers.Ido turns to Zapan, one of the hunter warriors, but he too declines.Enraged, Alita jumps on the table, kicks Zapan's drnk away and calls them all cowards. This starts a fight which results in Alita kicking out all the other hunter-warriors from the bar. Suddenly, Makaku arrives with Kinuba's body... HELL TRAP:Battle Five:Responsibility Makaku threatens Alita with his grind-cutters, and cuts a hole in the floor.He grabs the barman's baby and jumps down the hole, wanting Alita to follow him.Duke Fang, the barman's dog, jumps down the hole, and Alita follows. Alita eventually reaches the place where Makaku has hidden the baby,Koyomi. Makaku tries to attack Alita,but she avoids him and grabs the baby.Knowing that Alita could not move as fast to avoid the g-cutters while holding the baby, Makaku prepares to finish her off, but Duke Fang falls onto his head from an overhead duct, rips out Alita's arm which is still in Makaku's eye, and drops to the floor.Makaku screams out in pain,and starts eating some brains.This buys Alita enough time to hand Koyomi to Duke Fang.Alita's fingers ignite, creating a plasma blast, and she severs one of Makaku's arms.

CONQUERING ANGEL:
Battle Six:Struggle Alita explains (more to us than anything else) how she blew Makaku's arm apart..with her fingers;the computer on Makaku's body analyses it and names it a 'Plasma Jet'.Makaku attempts an all-out attack with all five fingers of his hand, but, as Alita points out while Makaku crashes to the ground, the lack of an arm has caused Makaku's weight to be distributed unevenly, so the recoil from using the g-cutters causes him to fall back. She then spins up along his arm, and in the chaos that ensues (Makaku smashes his arm on a wall) she lands on his helmeted head. She's about to finish him off when suddenly the garbage is dumped on schedule, drowning both the combatants. Once underwater, Makaku readies his remaining arm for a g-cutter attack, rationalising that if he fires them underwater, the current would compensate for the recoil, plus Alita cannot create plasma underwater. So he tries to attack, but looks on in disbelief when his arm explodes... Makaku is thrown out of the water onto the shore, and Alita walks out after him.She explains that while she moved up along his arm earlier on, her fingers were actually carving incisions into his arm's actuators, so the next time he powered up his g-cutters, his arm would explode.

THE TEARS OF AN ANGEL:
Battle Seven:Compassion Makaku claims that people plunder from the weak all the time, citing Alita as an example, for the reward has brought her to him. Alita says he's wrong, for she fights to look for a purpose, to find herself through battle, for she has no memories of her past life, and as such life remains undefined to her. Makaku bails out of his body as Alita finishes it off. After it explodes, Makaku uses his maggot-body to grab Alita. He tells her not to attempt any more plasma jets, as a tank of hydride alloy was activated in the fight, and any more sparks would cause the whole thing to blow.Alita therefore shreds his body using her own strength, and is about to finish him off when she notices he is already mortally wounded. Makaku then attempts to commit double suicide by creating a spark with his tail, and the whole place goes up in flames.Meanwhile we see Koyomi back in the hands of the barkeep, with Ido and Duke Fang.They witness the explosion happen not too far from where they are. We cut back and see Alita and Makaku, safe in a barrier Alita created (the blaze was a kind of plasma,so she uses an elctromagnetic field to hold it off).She uses this moment to ask Makaku about his past, and why his body is the way it is. He explains it's because that's what he wanted. He tells Alita that he was flushed into the toilet by his mother, and ended up spending his childhood underground in the sewers. He lives off rats and sewer water, yearning for life above-ground.One day he sees some people through a grate, but they flame him instead.Hurt, he stumbles in the sewage and starts to rot. His next memory is of waking up in a tank of fluid, and the face of a man peering in. He has the same mark as Ido on his forehead, and he asks Makaku what he desires, so that the body he gives him would fit that desire.Makaku says he never saw the man again, but went on to live in the world above. But yet, nothing had changed..he was in a parallel position to when he was in the sewer, until Alita arrived. When she started hating him, his wish had come true, and saying that, Makaku dies. Finally we see Alita climb out of a pile of scrap, and she ends the novel with these words:"I don't know if it's a sin or something to be proud of...if it is hatred or sadness...but I am moved to tears--by something I can't exactly explain..."