Hero's Reward
A Battle Angel Alita/Trigun crossover
By Ryan "Tresh" Norman and Lee "Va'Tal" Loving
Chapter One: A city of broken dreams
She wears a coat of colors
Loved by some, feared by others
She immortilized,
In young men's eyes
-"Beautiful", Creed
The Scrapyards, an enormous city built from broken dreams and rusting metal. A city that should not exist, and does not exist, were it not for the floating city of Tiphares, dropping its waste and useless materials for the hundreds of thousands below to scrounge through and live upon. It is a city of convenience, where every day is a struggle for survival.
The Scrapyards are a strange, warped vision of the future, the embodiment of all the fears every science-fiction author had seen lurking behind their mind's eye when they slumbered. The city of the apocalyptic future time no one ever thought would come to be. The inhabitants of this horrendous city are twisted and reshaped by metal and plastic into vaguely humanoid monstrosities, preferring the lasting existence a cyborg body would give as opposed to the weak, frail fleshling bodies they were born with, prone to disease and breakage.
The city of the waste is not an easy one to live in. Inherent dangers lie behind every smiling face and in every darkened alleyway. The danger is so heavy that there is more bloodspill on average in a week than there is rainfall in a year. Life is cheap here, and no one holds anything precious except perhaps the thrill of the moment, the here and now. People rape and murder each other for the sheer ecstasy of it, the escape it allows them for just a few passing seconds before they themselves are snuffed out.
It is a city of dog-eat-dog, where the weakest are overcome and devoured by the strongest in an ever-flowing river of torment and pain. Peddlers prey on the destitute, who are in turn robbed and slaughtered by the criminals, who are beheaded by the ruthless hunter warriors, whose victims remains are collected and sold by the destitute and peddlers just to survive through another day. The cycle is never ending, and the pain is ever increasing as the world sinks down further into itself.
In this city dwells, for the moment at least, a young girl. No, on second evaluation, despite all appearance, this is no girl. Her body may hold the appearance of a child, but beneath the clothing and ceramic armor lay a body of tremendous physical strength and agility. Cyberized musculature flexed and relaxed with every swift and sure movement she made. Artificial organs pumped pseudo-blood and oxygen far more efficiently than organic systems ever could. This was more than a mere cybernetic body, this was a weapon.
And more than a mere weapon, it was a finely Tuned weapon in the hands of a mind that instinctively knew how to use it. Twice dead and thrice born, the consciousness known as Alita had lost all of the memories of her first life, and was doing her best to forget her second, failed life as she adjusted to the hard and bitter third existence she now knew. The only link to either of these lives were the powerful fighting style known as "Panzer Kunst" which she knew instinctively, and the death's head marks slashed into her cheeks below the eyes, gleaming metal used as a warning to any who saw her.
She walked through the crowded streets of midday Eastern Scrapyards swiftly and without effort. Her innate training allowed her to move as fluid between the small air pockets made in the unorganized hustle and bustle of the citizenry going about their daily lives. Her tattered cloak hid not only her body shape, but the deadly weaponry and armor she carried, although she was not carrying her full arsenal. Were she outwardly carrying all of her weaponry, the people around her would be fleeing in terror from the one-woman powerhouse.
[Did I have to leave my guns behind, Control?] she thought within her mind, and yet it was directed at someone other than her own subconscious.
The response was immediate and registered with a slight crackle within her head, [We've been over this, A-1. We cannot guarantee that the deckmen would not consider you a criminal if you brought illegal firearms into the Scrapyards. We may not be able to intervene in time and we don't want you damaging Tiphares property. Deckmen do not come cheaply you know.] The voice was that of Ground Inspection Bureau Chief Bigott, head of the special Tuned, the man who literally owned Alita's body and freedom.
[I know. It just doesn't feel right. I don't usually need them, but it's comforting to know that they're there.]
[Your comfort does not matter to us, A-1,] Bigott scoffed in her head, [You are not an employee, and I am not your boss. You are the property of Tiphares. You are our instrument. You will do as we say, understand?]
[Understood,] the woman sighed. It had been five long years and she still could not get along with her controller. He just didn't seem to care about her as anything more than a tool, to be thrown away once they were done with her. [Who is it we're after this time? Another Barjack sympathizer? A Factory traitor? An old-fashioned bounty?]
[I hardly think we would employ the million chips a year on you just to find someone any Hunter-Warrior could find for a few thousand. You're job is usually outside of the Scrapyards where our influence is lessened. That is why you rarely come into the city anymore.]
[Than why am I here?] Alita demanded, [I don't like being here, you know. This City brings up unwanted memories.]
[That matters even less than your comfort,] Bigott answered bitterly, [You are here to rendezvous with two of our other agents.]
[Are they Tuned?]
[Don't be absurd. They are merely Factory Farm Loss Prevention Investigators.]
[Investigators?] Alita thought with a sneer, [Why do I need to see two investigators?]
[I want you to escort them out of the city to Farm-14, understood?]
[Why do I have to baby-sit a couple of paper pushers?] Alita complained, [I'd rather be out in the wastelands taking heads.]
[You do what we tell you, nothing more,] Bigott said with utter finality.
[Understood, A-1 out,] Alita thought and cut off her Tuned communications link. She sighed once more, letting out some of the frustration that built up whenever she argued with Bigott. He was such an uncaring bastard, she realized long ago, and his concern for his agents extended only so far as one had concern for a piece of machinery.
Lost in her own mind, Alita stopped next to a run-down old building, contemplating her next move. The Tuned link had given her all the information she needed on her companions, including where to find them. But there was one little problem, the Factory that they worked through was on the other side of town, a good two day's walk from where she now stood.
She sighed in resignation and reached into her cloak. She removed a canteen of water that had seen better days and took a long drink. This left her wide open to anyone who might see an easy mark from her.
One was readily available. He was not exactly a hideous man, but he wasn't handsome either. He wasn't poor, one could tell by his decent suit wardrobe, but he wasn't excessively rich either, as the clothes were a year out of style. He wasn't a full-fledged cyborg, but his right arm gleamed of chrome. All in all he was the kind of guy no one noticed.
He walked right up to Alita, having spotted her through the crowd moments before. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, at least within the past several hours, and there was something dangerous about the marks across her cheeks, it made her seem mysterious and almost frightening. A trickle of water escaped her lips and dripped down her throat into the cloak, that mysterious cloak that hid what she was shaped like underneath. All in all she had an aura of beauty and mystery, one which he couldn't pass up.
"Hey, baby," he said with the kind of smile only a piranha could love, all teeth, "You're some pretty sweet meat you know that? I bet you do," he chuckled to himself at the usage of his own words, which he would have, if he had heard of the man, most likely compared them to Shakespeare.
Alita gave the man a glance and put away her canteen, "I'm not in the mood for games. What do you want?" she asked, crossing her shiny black cloth covered arms against each other.
"Oh, straight to the point. I like that in a girl," he said, smiling with those teeth again. "Now I was thinking that maybe you and I could have ourselves a little fun," he reached into a pocket, extracted a small hexagon shaped chip and placed it firmly into one of her hands. "So baby, whatta ya say?"
Alita uncrossed her arms and examined the chip. It was a fifty-piece chip. Small change compared to how much she had accrued in two weeks time once. She glanced at the man, that idiotic grin on his face and gave a little smile, "A little fun, huh?"
"Yeah, that's all. Just a good way to get to know each other better," he leaned over and whispered into her ear, "A lot better if you get my drift." It was then that he noticed her ear for the first time. It had a screw in it, right where a normal person would place an earring, and there was a line along the side of her head coming downward from out of her raven black hair and into her high-collar jumpsuit. "Oh, a cyber huh? Just how much is meat on you sweet-thing?"
The girl's smile got a little darker, "Why don't I show you?" and she reached up to remove her cloak.
The man stopped her. No matter his desire to see the girl unclothed, he had no desire for the rest of the Scrapyards to. "Now, now, sweet-meat. I'm kinky but I ain't that kinky. Let's find someplace a little more private."
"Where would you suggest?" Alita asked innocently, pursing her lips in the way that made that strangely unreadable half-pucker expression.
"I know a place nearby where we can have all the fun we want and ain't nobody gonna walk in on us."
"Lead the way."
The man grabbed her left hand, noticing that it too was metallic, and pulled her into the crowd. The way the crowd swallowed them would make a normal human disoriented, but as was said before, Alita was not an ordinary human. She grew up her second time near the center of the Scrapyards, and knew how to mix in with the crowds while never being swept up by them.
The man was no amateur crowd-rider, either. Where before Alita had only seen a blocky jerkiness, she now only saw fluidic motions as he weaved in and out, dragging her along with him. If either took a moment to think about it, they might have actually been able to see the beauty in it.
Their trek ended quickly, leaving them standing outside of one of the seedier motels of the district. Although Alita had never entered one of these establishments before, she had waited outside many of their kind for bounties to come shambling out, so she knew exactly what they were for.
"Well?" the man asked, his smile getting wider by the moment. Alita entertained the thought of his smile growing so big it would envelop his head.
"Let's go," she said plainly, still hiding something in her voice.
The man didn't notice. He was too focused on the thought of upcoming pleasure to really think about the way she was acting. He pulled her along inside.
The interior of the building was even more hideous then the exterior. Perhaps it had once been a nice place, but there was no evidence of this any more. The walls had been painted repeatedly, but not anytime recently, and each layer was pealing worse than the last. Everywhere Alita looked, there was another cyber-junkie passed out, most likely from some kind of overdose.
The woman at the front desk had a look of indifference upon her wrinkled and haggard visage, as she tapped a few chips against the decaying desk with long, pierced fingernails. She wore dozens of gold bangles, necklaces, and rings, but all of them hinted at fakes, and she had no desire to tell anyone differently. This was a fall from grace woman if Alita had ever met one. "Wha'da ya want?" she demanded with a hideous accent.
"The young lady and I would like to rent out one of your rooms for a few hours," the man said gleefully.
"That'll be twenty chips," the woman said. It almost sounded like a recording, something she had said dozens of times a day, and countless thousands within a year.
The man paid the woman, remarking, "You're an expensive little thing," as if the twenty chips were a fortune in gold, and received his key, "Room 209," he read on the key, "My lucky number, I guess," he commented. Alita was about to say something, only to be cut off when he dragged her up the stairs.
The second story was in worse condition than the first, which was becoming expected. Urine stains and excrement coated the floor, and spray paint covered the walls in strange almost satanic symbols. A few more passed out cyborgs littered the hallways, a few moaning as they tried to move, then falling back when the pain became too great.
The man stopped at the door marked 209, although the plate was missing. In its place was the number scrawled on with a heavy marker. "I guess this is the place."
"It appears that way," Alita agreed. She was starting to regret her decision. She was going to an awful lot of trouble just to vent her frustrations.
The man unlocked the door and dragged Alita through, then quickly closed and locked the door before the girl could say a word, "Don't want you trying to run off, now do we?"
"I won't run," Alita eyed the man carefully, finally having freed her wrist from his grasp, "Not until I'm done." She glanced around the room. It was dark and dismal, the only light coming from an old hanging bulb, which started swinging wildly when the man accidentally bumped into it, and from the few cracks in the boards that had covered the broken window that allowed a few meager rays of the outside's lights inward. The room was filled with pieces of junk, bottles, broken crates, forgotten clothes, and the occasional stray one-piece chip. The bed was a disgusting compilation of old and oft used sheets, shreds of clothing, and a mixture of stains, a few which reeked of blood. It was the worst place one could bring a nice girl to.
"Now, it's not that I don't trust you, but, I don't want you to run off like the others have, you understand."
"Oh, you've had others here?"
"Oh, there've been many others, although not here. I've had so many kinds of woman all across the city, but none as pretty as you."
The girl gave a half-smile at the man's pretense of her beauty, something she really didn't consider often. "I like an experienced man."
"And you? Are you an experienced woman? Have you done this sort of thing often?"
"Oh, once or twice."
"Good, good," he said, removing his jacket and shirt. Alita could then see things she had not noticed before. His right arm was completely cybernetic, and that stretched to an area over his heart, with excess metal covering the tender flesh-steel mesh. He was covered in light scars, indicating either a dangerous job or a dangerous hobby. Either way, Alita was more suspicious of the man than ever. "Let's get down to it, then."
"Agreed," Alita smiled, and removed her cloak, letting it drift to the ground. She stood before him, legs spread and hands on her hips, "Like what you see?"
The man's mouth gaped open in amazement. "Boy, do I ever!" he exclaimed. He had guessed that the girl had a good figure, but he didn't realize just how good. Though her height gave her the appearance of a child, she had proportions that were anything but. Curves everywhere he looked, accentuated by the armor and bodysuit she wore, and though her breasts were not excessively large, they were perfect in his mind.
The thing that completely eluded his one-track mind was her body armor and weapons. Real combat armor was so out of place in the Scrapyards that it didn't even register to him that it was really there. The weapons were noticed immediately and forgotten. Everyone in the Scrapyards carried a weapon of one kind or another. He did not understand that the girl was a real and true danger. All he saw was that hint of mystery and danger that excited him.
Alita started to remove her armor, but the man interrupted her. He walked up and kissed her deeply, something she wasn't prepared for. When he pulled back, she felt true disgust, and a feeling of sickness permeated her insides. He had tasted as foul as the aura he gave off, possibly even worse. Though her body had very few receptors, and none in regards to casual contact, she still felt as if it was trying to crawl away from the points where he had touched her.
She decided rather quickly that she needed to get this over with now. She reached behind her back and grabbed a small dagger, one he would most likely never see, and hid it within a port on her arm, while her other hand removed the snaps on her armored breastplate. It clattered to the floor with a resounding thud, indicating greater weight than appearances estimated.
"No, no, baby, let me," the man said, and he reached forward to help her remove a boot, drool dripping from his plain smiling face.
She let him get within inches of her boot when she kicked forward, using a mere fraction of the strength she wielded and yet powerful enough to knock him clear across the room. He flew, or more so tumbled, through the air ungracefully and struck hard, cracking the already unstable plaster and wood with his sheer bulk. He was disoriented and hurting, but that wasn't enough for Alita. That wouldn't satisfy her need.
"You bitch!" he shouted through a bloody mouth. His face was already swollen and his nose was clearly broken, all a result of her kick. He stumbled to his feet in a jerking fashion, as if he were a broken marionette, and removed a long rusty dagger from a sheath hidden in his boot. It did not gleam in the dim light the swinging lamp gave off; its rust had dulled the once proud blade from ever doing such a thing again. "Now I'm gonna have to teach you, just like I had to teach the others!" he shouted ferally. The look on his face had shifted; becoming that of a true madman's, losing all that it meant to be human in a fraction of a second.
"I sincerely doubt you could teach me anything," Alita remarked hatefully. She just stood in wait for the man, silently preparing to take him on.
"I'll kill you!" he screamed, rushing towards her, knife waving around while foam and blood spilled from his lips and mouth.
Alita said nothing, she merely stepped aside, letting him pass, while her right arm reached over and wrapped itself around the upper part of his left, the one holding the rusted blade. With an imperceptible motion and a loud crack, the bones in his arm and shoulder shattered, and his arm was removed forcefully.
The man rushed past another few feet when the pain finally registered in his feral mind. He stopped suddenly, nearly tripping over a broken crate in the process, and stared at his bloody stump. A few bones still extended from the wound, showing just how brutally his arm had been torn from him while blood streamed from it at a steady rate, like a waterfall. He tried to scream out in agony, but the sound wouldn't come. His mind could not accept that he had just been wounded in such a manner, and so refused to give in to the "false" feelings of pain.
Alita turned toward the man, letting the severed limb drop from her arm-lock and into her hand. She then tossed the bloody arm over to him, letting it drop limply at his feet. "This is yours, I'm guessing?"
He dropped to his knees, staring at his arm without any hint of recognition in his eyes. His mind once again refused to believe it was his arm sitting there before him. He looked back up at Alita, trying to speak, but only able to mouth the words, "why?"
"Why?" Alita asked incredulously, "You want to know why?"
The man could not answer, only nod his head in mute request.
She walked forward and knelt before him, brushing the useless arm out of her way. The man tried to utter a protest, but she grabbed his face, forcing him to look her in the eye. "You've killed, haven't you? I can see it in your eyes, and I can see the stains on your cyborg arm. You can wash it and clean it all you want, but the blood will never really go away. So I ask you, have you killed any girls?"
He nodded his head as best he could within the confines of the girl's cyborg hands.
"Daughters, mothers, sisters, woman and children? You've raped and killed?"
He nodded again, whispering out, "Yes."
"So you can speak again," Alita noted dryly, "Tell me, how many?"
"I don't..." he gasped.
Alita did not like the answer he gave. She reached out with her free hand and reached down into the man's pants, grasping his most precious limb. He had not yet defecated himself, which surprised her, his kind usually gave in to such basics rather quickly. "You know what I did to your arm, so you can guess what I can do to this. Now, I want an answer. How many?"
"So many... Hard to keep track... Dozens..." he gasped louder, the prospect of losing his manhood spurring him on.
"Dozens," the cyborg girl muttered, "So sad to think of all those lives you've ruined just for your petty lusts. Which did you like the best, the women or the little girls."
"Girls! So innocent..." he blurted.
Alita scowled, "You make me sick!" and with a single motion she ripped his manhood from him, crushing it into paste with her powerful hand.
"AAAHHH!!!" he screamed, the pain finally registering in his fear-driven mind. The pain washed over him in torrents, causing the blood vessels in his eyes to burst, and filling his flickering vision with blood.
"You will never again hurt any more innocents. I've made sure of that," Alita said, her voice filled with disgust. She opened the port in her arm and released the small dagger into her palm, and then threw it to the ground mere inches from the man's face. "If you have any decency in your soul, you'll do the right thing."
The man eyed the dagger through the blood and pain, and weighed his options. He could grab the knife and attack the girl, maybe even manage to kill her before she could finish him off. But that wouldn't work, he knew. She tore him apart effortlessly, she could finish him just as easily.
Alita wasn't really paying attention anymore. She picked up her breastplate and snapped it back into place, covering her torso from his bloody eyes once again. She didn't know why, but she didn't want the man looking at any more of her body, as if his eyes could see through her clothing and armor and glare at the body that lay beneath.
She then reached down and grabbed her rectangular package, strapping it to her back with care, for what lay within was her last true connection with the life she had before. She picked up her cloak and wrapped it around her body again, grateful for its concealing ability.
The man watched her do this with limited curiosity. His mind was regressing, finding little could hold its attention for long. He reached out and grabbed the dagger with his remaining hand, his metallic fingers convulsing with anticipation. He reached up and slashed, striking flesh and drawing blood. The light in his eyes went out, and he collapsed to the ground with a smile on his face no one would ever understand.
Alita regarded the man with distaste. She would have to bathe her hand in raw sewage soon, or else the stench of his manhood would never come off. So she left the room, giving one last look over her shoulder at the man. No more would the bloody mess stare at her figure again.
--------------
As the girl stepped out of the building, she felt the familiar crackle of her Tuned link as it came to life. She knew what was coming on the other end, but she really didn't care.
[What were you doing, A-1?] the voice demanded.
[What does it matter, Control?] Alita answered hatefully, [I'm sure you were watching the entire time. If you don't know what happened from seeing what I did, than I don't think I could explain it any better.]
[We know what you did, A-1. That's not the point. We want to know 'why' you did it. We thought you might be regressing back into a Hunter-Warrior, killing that man for his head and the reward. But you didn't take his head. You didn't even kill him. Why?]
The cyborg Tuned laughed out loud, eliciting a few questioning looks from passerbys.
[What's so funny?!] Control demanded.
[Don't you get it?] Alita asked the master of her leash, [I guess you don't. You watched me from afar for almost two years, gauging my abilities and learning my personality, and yet you still don't understand me. What I did in there, I did for more than my own selfishness, more than just for some reward. I did what I felt was necessary because I knew in my heart that it was right.]
[You have no decision over what is right and wrong. We tell you what you need to know.]
[That's a laugh. You can tell me what you think I need to know, but you can't tell me what's right and what's wrong. I saw a man who I knew was a danger to others, and so I took care of him. I couldn't stand the thought of him hurting any more woman.]
Bigott coughed over the link, then resumed, [Very well then. Resume your mission. I will 'shock' you the next time you break orders like that.]
[Very well, Control,] Alita sighed. She would never be able to get through to the man, not in five years, in ten, nor even a hundred.
[You know, we scanned the man's face through the Factory. He was a bounty. Would you like to know his name?]
[No. His name should die with him. It should never be uttered again.]
A Battle Angel Alita/Trigun crossover
By Ryan "Tresh" Norman and Lee "Va'Tal" Loving
Chapter One: A city of broken dreams
She wears a coat of colors
Loved by some, feared by others
She immortilized,
In young men's eyes
-"Beautiful", Creed
The Scrapyards, an enormous city built from broken dreams and rusting metal. A city that should not exist, and does not exist, were it not for the floating city of Tiphares, dropping its waste and useless materials for the hundreds of thousands below to scrounge through and live upon. It is a city of convenience, where every day is a struggle for survival.
The Scrapyards are a strange, warped vision of the future, the embodiment of all the fears every science-fiction author had seen lurking behind their mind's eye when they slumbered. The city of the apocalyptic future time no one ever thought would come to be. The inhabitants of this horrendous city are twisted and reshaped by metal and plastic into vaguely humanoid monstrosities, preferring the lasting existence a cyborg body would give as opposed to the weak, frail fleshling bodies they were born with, prone to disease and breakage.
The city of the waste is not an easy one to live in. Inherent dangers lie behind every smiling face and in every darkened alleyway. The danger is so heavy that there is more bloodspill on average in a week than there is rainfall in a year. Life is cheap here, and no one holds anything precious except perhaps the thrill of the moment, the here and now. People rape and murder each other for the sheer ecstasy of it, the escape it allows them for just a few passing seconds before they themselves are snuffed out.
It is a city of dog-eat-dog, where the weakest are overcome and devoured by the strongest in an ever-flowing river of torment and pain. Peddlers prey on the destitute, who are in turn robbed and slaughtered by the criminals, who are beheaded by the ruthless hunter warriors, whose victims remains are collected and sold by the destitute and peddlers just to survive through another day. The cycle is never ending, and the pain is ever increasing as the world sinks down further into itself.
In this city dwells, for the moment at least, a young girl. No, on second evaluation, despite all appearance, this is no girl. Her body may hold the appearance of a child, but beneath the clothing and ceramic armor lay a body of tremendous physical strength and agility. Cyberized musculature flexed and relaxed with every swift and sure movement she made. Artificial organs pumped pseudo-blood and oxygen far more efficiently than organic systems ever could. This was more than a mere cybernetic body, this was a weapon.
And more than a mere weapon, it was a finely Tuned weapon in the hands of a mind that instinctively knew how to use it. Twice dead and thrice born, the consciousness known as Alita had lost all of the memories of her first life, and was doing her best to forget her second, failed life as she adjusted to the hard and bitter third existence she now knew. The only link to either of these lives were the powerful fighting style known as "Panzer Kunst" which she knew instinctively, and the death's head marks slashed into her cheeks below the eyes, gleaming metal used as a warning to any who saw her.
She walked through the crowded streets of midday Eastern Scrapyards swiftly and without effort. Her innate training allowed her to move as fluid between the small air pockets made in the unorganized hustle and bustle of the citizenry going about their daily lives. Her tattered cloak hid not only her body shape, but the deadly weaponry and armor she carried, although she was not carrying her full arsenal. Were she outwardly carrying all of her weaponry, the people around her would be fleeing in terror from the one-woman powerhouse.
[Did I have to leave my guns behind, Control?] she thought within her mind, and yet it was directed at someone other than her own subconscious.
The response was immediate and registered with a slight crackle within her head, [We've been over this, A-1. We cannot guarantee that the deckmen would not consider you a criminal if you brought illegal firearms into the Scrapyards. We may not be able to intervene in time and we don't want you damaging Tiphares property. Deckmen do not come cheaply you know.] The voice was that of Ground Inspection Bureau Chief Bigott, head of the special Tuned, the man who literally owned Alita's body and freedom.
[I know. It just doesn't feel right. I don't usually need them, but it's comforting to know that they're there.]
[Your comfort does not matter to us, A-1,] Bigott scoffed in her head, [You are not an employee, and I am not your boss. You are the property of Tiphares. You are our instrument. You will do as we say, understand?]
[Understood,] the woman sighed. It had been five long years and she still could not get along with her controller. He just didn't seem to care about her as anything more than a tool, to be thrown away once they were done with her. [Who is it we're after this time? Another Barjack sympathizer? A Factory traitor? An old-fashioned bounty?]
[I hardly think we would employ the million chips a year on you just to find someone any Hunter-Warrior could find for a few thousand. You're job is usually outside of the Scrapyards where our influence is lessened. That is why you rarely come into the city anymore.]
[Than why am I here?] Alita demanded, [I don't like being here, you know. This City brings up unwanted memories.]
[That matters even less than your comfort,] Bigott answered bitterly, [You are here to rendezvous with two of our other agents.]
[Are they Tuned?]
[Don't be absurd. They are merely Factory Farm Loss Prevention Investigators.]
[Investigators?] Alita thought with a sneer, [Why do I need to see two investigators?]
[I want you to escort them out of the city to Farm-14, understood?]
[Why do I have to baby-sit a couple of paper pushers?] Alita complained, [I'd rather be out in the wastelands taking heads.]
[You do what we tell you, nothing more,] Bigott said with utter finality.
[Understood, A-1 out,] Alita thought and cut off her Tuned communications link. She sighed once more, letting out some of the frustration that built up whenever she argued with Bigott. He was such an uncaring bastard, she realized long ago, and his concern for his agents extended only so far as one had concern for a piece of machinery.
Lost in her own mind, Alita stopped next to a run-down old building, contemplating her next move. The Tuned link had given her all the information she needed on her companions, including where to find them. But there was one little problem, the Factory that they worked through was on the other side of town, a good two day's walk from where she now stood.
She sighed in resignation and reached into her cloak. She removed a canteen of water that had seen better days and took a long drink. This left her wide open to anyone who might see an easy mark from her.
One was readily available. He was not exactly a hideous man, but he wasn't handsome either. He wasn't poor, one could tell by his decent suit wardrobe, but he wasn't excessively rich either, as the clothes were a year out of style. He wasn't a full-fledged cyborg, but his right arm gleamed of chrome. All in all he was the kind of guy no one noticed.
He walked right up to Alita, having spotted her through the crowd moments before. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, at least within the past several hours, and there was something dangerous about the marks across her cheeks, it made her seem mysterious and almost frightening. A trickle of water escaped her lips and dripped down her throat into the cloak, that mysterious cloak that hid what she was shaped like underneath. All in all she had an aura of beauty and mystery, one which he couldn't pass up.
"Hey, baby," he said with the kind of smile only a piranha could love, all teeth, "You're some pretty sweet meat you know that? I bet you do," he chuckled to himself at the usage of his own words, which he would have, if he had heard of the man, most likely compared them to Shakespeare.
Alita gave the man a glance and put away her canteen, "I'm not in the mood for games. What do you want?" she asked, crossing her shiny black cloth covered arms against each other.
"Oh, straight to the point. I like that in a girl," he said, smiling with those teeth again. "Now I was thinking that maybe you and I could have ourselves a little fun," he reached into a pocket, extracted a small hexagon shaped chip and placed it firmly into one of her hands. "So baby, whatta ya say?"
Alita uncrossed her arms and examined the chip. It was a fifty-piece chip. Small change compared to how much she had accrued in two weeks time once. She glanced at the man, that idiotic grin on his face and gave a little smile, "A little fun, huh?"
"Yeah, that's all. Just a good way to get to know each other better," he leaned over and whispered into her ear, "A lot better if you get my drift." It was then that he noticed her ear for the first time. It had a screw in it, right where a normal person would place an earring, and there was a line along the side of her head coming downward from out of her raven black hair and into her high-collar jumpsuit. "Oh, a cyber huh? Just how much is meat on you sweet-thing?"
The girl's smile got a little darker, "Why don't I show you?" and she reached up to remove her cloak.
The man stopped her. No matter his desire to see the girl unclothed, he had no desire for the rest of the Scrapyards to. "Now, now, sweet-meat. I'm kinky but I ain't that kinky. Let's find someplace a little more private."
"Where would you suggest?" Alita asked innocently, pursing her lips in the way that made that strangely unreadable half-pucker expression.
"I know a place nearby where we can have all the fun we want and ain't nobody gonna walk in on us."
"Lead the way."
The man grabbed her left hand, noticing that it too was metallic, and pulled her into the crowd. The way the crowd swallowed them would make a normal human disoriented, but as was said before, Alita was not an ordinary human. She grew up her second time near the center of the Scrapyards, and knew how to mix in with the crowds while never being swept up by them.
The man was no amateur crowd-rider, either. Where before Alita had only seen a blocky jerkiness, she now only saw fluidic motions as he weaved in and out, dragging her along with him. If either took a moment to think about it, they might have actually been able to see the beauty in it.
Their trek ended quickly, leaving them standing outside of one of the seedier motels of the district. Although Alita had never entered one of these establishments before, she had waited outside many of their kind for bounties to come shambling out, so she knew exactly what they were for.
"Well?" the man asked, his smile getting wider by the moment. Alita entertained the thought of his smile growing so big it would envelop his head.
"Let's go," she said plainly, still hiding something in her voice.
The man didn't notice. He was too focused on the thought of upcoming pleasure to really think about the way she was acting. He pulled her along inside.
The interior of the building was even more hideous then the exterior. Perhaps it had once been a nice place, but there was no evidence of this any more. The walls had been painted repeatedly, but not anytime recently, and each layer was pealing worse than the last. Everywhere Alita looked, there was another cyber-junkie passed out, most likely from some kind of overdose.
The woman at the front desk had a look of indifference upon her wrinkled and haggard visage, as she tapped a few chips against the decaying desk with long, pierced fingernails. She wore dozens of gold bangles, necklaces, and rings, but all of them hinted at fakes, and she had no desire to tell anyone differently. This was a fall from grace woman if Alita had ever met one. "Wha'da ya want?" she demanded with a hideous accent.
"The young lady and I would like to rent out one of your rooms for a few hours," the man said gleefully.
"That'll be twenty chips," the woman said. It almost sounded like a recording, something she had said dozens of times a day, and countless thousands within a year.
The man paid the woman, remarking, "You're an expensive little thing," as if the twenty chips were a fortune in gold, and received his key, "Room 209," he read on the key, "My lucky number, I guess," he commented. Alita was about to say something, only to be cut off when he dragged her up the stairs.
The second story was in worse condition than the first, which was becoming expected. Urine stains and excrement coated the floor, and spray paint covered the walls in strange almost satanic symbols. A few more passed out cyborgs littered the hallways, a few moaning as they tried to move, then falling back when the pain became too great.
The man stopped at the door marked 209, although the plate was missing. In its place was the number scrawled on with a heavy marker. "I guess this is the place."
"It appears that way," Alita agreed. She was starting to regret her decision. She was going to an awful lot of trouble just to vent her frustrations.
The man unlocked the door and dragged Alita through, then quickly closed and locked the door before the girl could say a word, "Don't want you trying to run off, now do we?"
"I won't run," Alita eyed the man carefully, finally having freed her wrist from his grasp, "Not until I'm done." She glanced around the room. It was dark and dismal, the only light coming from an old hanging bulb, which started swinging wildly when the man accidentally bumped into it, and from the few cracks in the boards that had covered the broken window that allowed a few meager rays of the outside's lights inward. The room was filled with pieces of junk, bottles, broken crates, forgotten clothes, and the occasional stray one-piece chip. The bed was a disgusting compilation of old and oft used sheets, shreds of clothing, and a mixture of stains, a few which reeked of blood. It was the worst place one could bring a nice girl to.
"Now, it's not that I don't trust you, but, I don't want you to run off like the others have, you understand."
"Oh, you've had others here?"
"Oh, there've been many others, although not here. I've had so many kinds of woman all across the city, but none as pretty as you."
The girl gave a half-smile at the man's pretense of her beauty, something she really didn't consider often. "I like an experienced man."
"And you? Are you an experienced woman? Have you done this sort of thing often?"
"Oh, once or twice."
"Good, good," he said, removing his jacket and shirt. Alita could then see things she had not noticed before. His right arm was completely cybernetic, and that stretched to an area over his heart, with excess metal covering the tender flesh-steel mesh. He was covered in light scars, indicating either a dangerous job or a dangerous hobby. Either way, Alita was more suspicious of the man than ever. "Let's get down to it, then."
"Agreed," Alita smiled, and removed her cloak, letting it drift to the ground. She stood before him, legs spread and hands on her hips, "Like what you see?"
The man's mouth gaped open in amazement. "Boy, do I ever!" he exclaimed. He had guessed that the girl had a good figure, but he didn't realize just how good. Though her height gave her the appearance of a child, she had proportions that were anything but. Curves everywhere he looked, accentuated by the armor and bodysuit she wore, and though her breasts were not excessively large, they were perfect in his mind.
The thing that completely eluded his one-track mind was her body armor and weapons. Real combat armor was so out of place in the Scrapyards that it didn't even register to him that it was really there. The weapons were noticed immediately and forgotten. Everyone in the Scrapyards carried a weapon of one kind or another. He did not understand that the girl was a real and true danger. All he saw was that hint of mystery and danger that excited him.
Alita started to remove her armor, but the man interrupted her. He walked up and kissed her deeply, something she wasn't prepared for. When he pulled back, she felt true disgust, and a feeling of sickness permeated her insides. He had tasted as foul as the aura he gave off, possibly even worse. Though her body had very few receptors, and none in regards to casual contact, she still felt as if it was trying to crawl away from the points where he had touched her.
She decided rather quickly that she needed to get this over with now. She reached behind her back and grabbed a small dagger, one he would most likely never see, and hid it within a port on her arm, while her other hand removed the snaps on her armored breastplate. It clattered to the floor with a resounding thud, indicating greater weight than appearances estimated.
"No, no, baby, let me," the man said, and he reached forward to help her remove a boot, drool dripping from his plain smiling face.
She let him get within inches of her boot when she kicked forward, using a mere fraction of the strength she wielded and yet powerful enough to knock him clear across the room. He flew, or more so tumbled, through the air ungracefully and struck hard, cracking the already unstable plaster and wood with his sheer bulk. He was disoriented and hurting, but that wasn't enough for Alita. That wouldn't satisfy her need.
"You bitch!" he shouted through a bloody mouth. His face was already swollen and his nose was clearly broken, all a result of her kick. He stumbled to his feet in a jerking fashion, as if he were a broken marionette, and removed a long rusty dagger from a sheath hidden in his boot. It did not gleam in the dim light the swinging lamp gave off; its rust had dulled the once proud blade from ever doing such a thing again. "Now I'm gonna have to teach you, just like I had to teach the others!" he shouted ferally. The look on his face had shifted; becoming that of a true madman's, losing all that it meant to be human in a fraction of a second.
"I sincerely doubt you could teach me anything," Alita remarked hatefully. She just stood in wait for the man, silently preparing to take him on.
"I'll kill you!" he screamed, rushing towards her, knife waving around while foam and blood spilled from his lips and mouth.
Alita said nothing, she merely stepped aside, letting him pass, while her right arm reached over and wrapped itself around the upper part of his left, the one holding the rusted blade. With an imperceptible motion and a loud crack, the bones in his arm and shoulder shattered, and his arm was removed forcefully.
The man rushed past another few feet when the pain finally registered in his feral mind. He stopped suddenly, nearly tripping over a broken crate in the process, and stared at his bloody stump. A few bones still extended from the wound, showing just how brutally his arm had been torn from him while blood streamed from it at a steady rate, like a waterfall. He tried to scream out in agony, but the sound wouldn't come. His mind could not accept that he had just been wounded in such a manner, and so refused to give in to the "false" feelings of pain.
Alita turned toward the man, letting the severed limb drop from her arm-lock and into her hand. She then tossed the bloody arm over to him, letting it drop limply at his feet. "This is yours, I'm guessing?"
He dropped to his knees, staring at his arm without any hint of recognition in his eyes. His mind once again refused to believe it was his arm sitting there before him. He looked back up at Alita, trying to speak, but only able to mouth the words, "why?"
"Why?" Alita asked incredulously, "You want to know why?"
The man could not answer, only nod his head in mute request.
She walked forward and knelt before him, brushing the useless arm out of her way. The man tried to utter a protest, but she grabbed his face, forcing him to look her in the eye. "You've killed, haven't you? I can see it in your eyes, and I can see the stains on your cyborg arm. You can wash it and clean it all you want, but the blood will never really go away. So I ask you, have you killed any girls?"
He nodded his head as best he could within the confines of the girl's cyborg hands.
"Daughters, mothers, sisters, woman and children? You've raped and killed?"
He nodded again, whispering out, "Yes."
"So you can speak again," Alita noted dryly, "Tell me, how many?"
"I don't..." he gasped.
Alita did not like the answer he gave. She reached out with her free hand and reached down into the man's pants, grasping his most precious limb. He had not yet defecated himself, which surprised her, his kind usually gave in to such basics rather quickly. "You know what I did to your arm, so you can guess what I can do to this. Now, I want an answer. How many?"
"So many... Hard to keep track... Dozens..." he gasped louder, the prospect of losing his manhood spurring him on.
"Dozens," the cyborg girl muttered, "So sad to think of all those lives you've ruined just for your petty lusts. Which did you like the best, the women or the little girls."
"Girls! So innocent..." he blurted.
Alita scowled, "You make me sick!" and with a single motion she ripped his manhood from him, crushing it into paste with her powerful hand.
"AAAHHH!!!" he screamed, the pain finally registering in his fear-driven mind. The pain washed over him in torrents, causing the blood vessels in his eyes to burst, and filling his flickering vision with blood.
"You will never again hurt any more innocents. I've made sure of that," Alita said, her voice filled with disgust. She opened the port in her arm and released the small dagger into her palm, and then threw it to the ground mere inches from the man's face. "If you have any decency in your soul, you'll do the right thing."
The man eyed the dagger through the blood and pain, and weighed his options. He could grab the knife and attack the girl, maybe even manage to kill her before she could finish him off. But that wouldn't work, he knew. She tore him apart effortlessly, she could finish him just as easily.
Alita wasn't really paying attention anymore. She picked up her breastplate and snapped it back into place, covering her torso from his bloody eyes once again. She didn't know why, but she didn't want the man looking at any more of her body, as if his eyes could see through her clothing and armor and glare at the body that lay beneath.
She then reached down and grabbed her rectangular package, strapping it to her back with care, for what lay within was her last true connection with the life she had before. She picked up her cloak and wrapped it around her body again, grateful for its concealing ability.
The man watched her do this with limited curiosity. His mind was regressing, finding little could hold its attention for long. He reached out and grabbed the dagger with his remaining hand, his metallic fingers convulsing with anticipation. He reached up and slashed, striking flesh and drawing blood. The light in his eyes went out, and he collapsed to the ground with a smile on his face no one would ever understand.
Alita regarded the man with distaste. She would have to bathe her hand in raw sewage soon, or else the stench of his manhood would never come off. So she left the room, giving one last look over her shoulder at the man. No more would the bloody mess stare at her figure again.
--------------
As the girl stepped out of the building, she felt the familiar crackle of her Tuned link as it came to life. She knew what was coming on the other end, but she really didn't care.
[What were you doing, A-1?] the voice demanded.
[What does it matter, Control?] Alita answered hatefully, [I'm sure you were watching the entire time. If you don't know what happened from seeing what I did, than I don't think I could explain it any better.]
[We know what you did, A-1. That's not the point. We want to know 'why' you did it. We thought you might be regressing back into a Hunter-Warrior, killing that man for his head and the reward. But you didn't take his head. You didn't even kill him. Why?]
The cyborg Tuned laughed out loud, eliciting a few questioning looks from passerbys.
[What's so funny?!] Control demanded.
[Don't you get it?] Alita asked the master of her leash, [I guess you don't. You watched me from afar for almost two years, gauging my abilities and learning my personality, and yet you still don't understand me. What I did in there, I did for more than my own selfishness, more than just for some reward. I did what I felt was necessary because I knew in my heart that it was right.]
[You have no decision over what is right and wrong. We tell you what you need to know.]
[That's a laugh. You can tell me what you think I need to know, but you can't tell me what's right and what's wrong. I saw a man who I knew was a danger to others, and so I took care of him. I couldn't stand the thought of him hurting any more woman.]
Bigott coughed over the link, then resumed, [Very well then. Resume your mission. I will 'shock' you the next time you break orders like that.]
[Very well, Control,] Alita sighed. She would never be able to get through to the man, not in five years, in ten, nor even a hundred.
[You know, we scanned the man's face through the Factory. He was a bounty. Would you like to know his name?]
[No. His name should die with him. It should never be uttered again.]