Lazarus came pounding down the stairs into New Kansas as if his 
boots were on fire. His usual woven cap was torn along one side, 
misshappened by some unknown force. At his side, dangling uselessly, was 
the remaining half of his left cybernetic arm. The arm was cut cleanly, just 
above the elbow. Breathing heavily, Lazarus didn't quite seem to care that the 
limb was damaged. Though, given Lazarus, the damage could've been weeks 
old.
	"Everybody!" he weezed loudly, stumbling slightly to keep balance, 
"We found the Hunter Killer. Zapan and McBride had him cornered outside 
Factory 17 at the entrance to the Ghetto, but he got away. Killed McBride in 
the process, damn him. Zapan's still chasing him."
	"Probably Zapan killed McBride. Get the bounty for himself that way." 
Somebody scoffed.
	"Hell no!" Lazarus bellowed, "I was there, Damn you! Bastard Killer 
took my arm off....woulda got me too, if Zapan hadn't been a second behind 
me! We gotta get this Bastard tonight!"
	A murmur swept through the bar, Hunter-warriors conversing 
nervously. While nobody had wanted to take care of Makaku, the Hunter 
Killer was a different story. It had started several weeks earlier, an 
anonymous individual, said to wear a black cloak, was seeking out Hunter-
warriors during the night and brutally killing them. Not an easy task, as any 
skilled fighter knew; many hunter-warriors were so cybered up that only a 
direct blow to the brain would effect an immediate fatality. Unlike other 
murderers, the Hunter Killer had managed his kills with such heinous 
efficiency that only one of his victims had ever escaped. Only one hunter that 
had faced him had ever survived. It was not often that a Hunter-warrior 
became the hunted, but the predatory Hunter Killer had proven himself 
thirty times. Fearing for their own heads, nobody in the New Kansas was 
unclear on why the Hunter Killer needed to be stopped.
	Ido nudged Alita with his elbow to snap her out of her reverie. She'd 
been acting not quite herself in the past few weeks. Gonzu had made the 
comment that she had a Spring glow about her, with which Ido heartily 
agreed. He and Gonzu both suspected that she had recently acquired an eye 
for a certain young handiman who went from building to building fixing 
wind generators. Inspite her minor distraction, Alita was displaying an almost 
exponentially increased zeal for the morbid hunting job. In the few months 
she had been hunting, she had managed to sculpt a name of notoriety among 
the elite of the Hunter-warriors.
	Alita startled alert, "Huh?" she said, shaking her raven haired head.
	"Lazarus," Ido told her, bending close to her ear, "he had a run in with 
the Hunter killer. He's trying the rally everbody into chasing the killer down."
	"It would be a good idea; the Killer’s a menace. Somebody shoulda 
taken his head weeks ago."
	“If anybody could get close,” Ido reminded her.
	"...was even yellin' and moanin' about how incompetent we hunters 
are. Says he'll take us all out. So we have to take 'im now! He's trashin our 
pride!" Lazarus shouted in conclusion, "Who's gonna go?!"
	Her brow furrowed, Alita was the first on her feet, thrusting her fist 
into the air, "I'm with you! Even if nobody else here has the guts, I'll go!"
	Normally, there would have been a few groans and odd looks 
would’ve accompanied Alita’s last comment. Hunters were an egocentric 
bunch.
	To Ido’s surprise, no one made the slightest comment. In quick 
succession, several warriors came to their feet, mounting an outburst of vocal 
willingness. The division between individual and mob quickly hazed as 
dozens of angry men came to their feet.
	“Let’s get the bastard!”
	“Let’s go!”
	“...Yeah!”  “Thata way!”
	"Hey, hey!" The barkeep cried as hunters thundered toward the door, 
dropping glasses and upending chairs. He grabbed Koyomi from her high 
chair, hugging her protectively, "I just got this place fixed. Nobody go 
breaking my tables."
	Pulling himself off the stool in the excitement, Ido glanced through the 
pushing and shoving ruckus in an attempt to find Alita. Thrusting feverish 
bodies were about to force him along with the mob toward the door when a 
powerful grip seized his arm. Glancing down, he saw Alita holding his wrist, 
staring back up at him with a somber look in her eyes.
	Moments later, the bar was nearly empty. With a strickened squeak, 
an ill balanced table thumped to its side. Spilled liquor wet the floor along 
front of the bar, tainting the air with tart apple jack. The fluid held back boot 
prints from stomping feet. Ido thought he scented the tang of alcohol laced 
vomit mingling with human sweat. An odor of anxiety, not quite shadowed 
by fear. Baby Koyomi made a burbling sound in contentment.
	Alita and Ido stood near the middle of the nearly empty room. A select 
nine or ten others, all of significant note in the Hunter-warrior trade, were the 
only patrons remaining in the bar. Standing at the counter or sipping quietly 
at a drink, all seemed at ease. Ready to go to work.
	Crazy Marrel, the one hunter who had survived fighting with the 
Hunter Killer, was leaning back in his chair, with his feet kicked up on a table, 
arms folded behind his head and his fedora pulled over his face.[describe 
wounds here?] Sitting at the bar, his elbows firmly on the counter, Kharid 
Salim poured the contents of a frothy mug into his trapjaw mouth. Several of 
the others regarded Ido and Alita in mild interest. Ido had dealt with all of 
them on various occations, knowing them to be generally narcissistic as 
people, though not entirely disshonorable as hunters.
	"Clever Flower!" Marrel laughed, pushing his hat back so that he could 
look at Alita with boxy eye sensors. Having been the lone surviving hunter 
killer victim since the beginning of the spree -right up until Lazarus had 
stumbled in moments before- Marrel enjoyed special notoriety. He dropped 
his feet to the floor, leaning forward in the chair, "Leave it to Lazarus to go off 
half cocked. Probably ran away from the killer flailing his arms an' screaming 
like a woman in labor. Comes in here moanin' about gettin' somethin' done, 
gettin' every honest hunter so riled their spoogin' on the counter. But you, 
you see all them barflies ready to follow him across the city without a second 
thought. Fix me if I'm wrong; you gave them a push in that direction knowin' 
they'd bite. Now they'll run like a pack of rabid dogs into the corners of hell, 
chasin' our little fox the whole way. Leaves salary men like us to deal with the 
real problem. Too bad Clive Lee's off on other matters right now; he woulda 
enjoyed this. So Alita," he continued, rubbing his hands together, "what'd you 
have in mind."
	"I agree with Lazarus," Alita declared, her voice all business. She 
walked toward Marrel, "The Hunter Killer's gotta be stopped as soon as 
possible. If he gets away tonight, a hundred more Hunters will die trying to 
take him out. I've gotta believe that the Hunter Killer is a smart guy, with 
thirty hunters dead at his hand. If he's that good, he's sure to be a difficult to 
bounty. I think that the only way anybody's going to catch him is to stop and 
play a thinking game. If he ditches the bunch with Lazarus, we might have a 
chance to catch him unaware. If we can find him." Several of the remaining 
hunters nodded at the statement, but said nothing, "Marrel, you were with 
Hiro Pedoric when the Hunter Killer murdered him, maybe you could tell us 
something more about the Killer. Give us some idea of what we're really 
facing."
	Marrel coughed, his eyesensors glazing over with recollection, "Not 
that much to tell, aside from what everybody already knows. Clever bastard; 
rather scope you out an' know wha'cha think before takin' ya out. Brutal too; 
take any self respectin' hunter apart like a pirahna. No one wanted to touch 
Makaku 'cause he was too much a pain in the ass. Everybody'd rather not 
touch the Hunter Killer, but are too afraid of what'll happen later. Hunter 
Killer kills hunters, not respectable folk. Of course, everybody’s been hearin’ 
the stories people tell about the Killer following a hunter into an alley, then 
only the killer walks back out, black coat a’ flowin’.” He paused to take a 
drink, basking in the glow of attention.
	"Me an' Hiro were out looking for the Hunter Killer at the time, given 
his MO, we weren't even expectin' to run into him. The guy came out of 
nowhere in a black cloak, his face hidden. He blew Hiro's head off an' put a 
fist size hole through my right lung armature....even b‘fore I knew what was 
happenin'. Used some weapon I ain't seen before -crossbow maybe. By then 
it was over an' I was running like hell, spilling fluid all over the place. Spent 
250 thousand credits an' all last week outta action getting the damage fixed. 
Damned well hope I got a good blow in. All I can say beyond that is that the 
Hunter killer is a bounty you have to earn. Strange though...Lazarus said the 
Killer taunted him. Killer hit me an' Hiro nice an quiet. Didn't utter hardly a 
word."
	"You have a better description of him than what everybody hears?" 
Khalid asked.
	"Nah....Just the cloak. Big black billowy thing. Make you think of 
orchids."
	"Orchids?" One of the other hunters said chidingly.
	"Yeah, what of it? Saw one in an antique shop once. Soot black one, 
hung in glass where you couldn't touch it. Musta sold to a factory manager 
for ten million credits. Ya'know, think I heard somewhere some orchids got 
poison in 'em...."
	Ido knew well that Orchids were among the many flowers which were 
no longer around on this dying world. He listened slightly, gazing at Alita in 
contemplation, wondering how many other rare flowers were left, even 
trapped in glass.
	"We should go then," Alita concluded, "teams of two didn't work, so 
we should stay in groups of three or four."
	"Nailling him at factory 17 ain't going to be easy," someone said, "If he 
don't want to be found, we don't find him. No matter how experienced we 
are. I think the Killer has something in mind."
	"What other choice do we have. Finish it together, or fall seperately. I'd 
just as soon do it myself...."

***

	They left new Kansas in a rush, catching a ride with taxi-shuttles. Ido 
rode with Alita and a Hunter who went by the nickname "the Vassal," and 
claimed to know some tremendous fighting art. Ido didn't much like the man, 
but couldn't deny his record. Alita had once made the comment that she'd 
never seen the man perform in any way that hinted at a powerful art. The 
driver was a malformed youth with a tendancy toward the right...his taxi 
leaned to the right on worn out shock absorbers, his turns veered right even 
when he went left and his body sloped to the right like that of Quasi Modo. 
Ido was also quite sure that the driver's right rolling eye stayed on Alita the 
length of the trip. Three other hunters, who sat in the tiny bed behind the cab 
of the taxi, bellowed complaints at every jostling.
	Following Marrel's cab, of which Marrel was the full time driver,[awk] 
they bounced up a set of worn stairs, dodging a group of pedestrians that 
seemed convinced right of way was still enforced and then hung a skreaching 
left at the landing. The taxi’s hydrogen powered engine gave a sickly whine 
as they bumped up the second flight, shooting of the stairs onto the adjoining 
road like a scalded cat. Party goers and pedestrians dove to the sides along 
the crowded street, shouting out vile oaths and curses at their passing.
	Ido sometimes wondered why there were so many varieties of swear 
word in the Scrapyard. After long observation, he had found that shuttle-
taxis, hunter-warriors and many other factory associated figures tended to be 
connected with the foulest cussing. Perhaps this was because Scrapyard 
dwellers had the most to swear about of anyone in the entire world. In his on 
and off collection, Ido had found a number of interesting entries pretaining to 
the term "Deckman."
	Organlegging establishments, taverns, open markets and twisted 
buildings of all manner flicked past the open window of the cab. Reflected 
from the bottom of the giant floating city, the night of the scrapyard was lit 
into a contorted version of day. There were so many lights in the monsterous 
factory town that stars couldn't be seen most evenings. So huge was the city, 
Ido knew, that it took weeks to cross by foot or days by battery or hydrogen 
powered auto. The trackless cement roads were constantly pitted and 
mangled by all manner of affliction, ranging from mud to overuse to septic 
debris. Long ago, the factory had ceased to maintain these roads, knowing 
that they would only tend toward the same dissordered state. Pipes, scaffolds, 
conduits and ganteries, sections of endless factory defined the very nature of 
the angular town. Plugged storm drains reaching up from below with dreary 
promises of Tipharean paradise floating down from above. On one side of the 
cab, there slipped past a burned out hulk of a warehouse whose rusted walls 
were as worn as tattered cloth. Inside hundreds of huddles of people could be 
seen crouched over cooking fires and piles proprietary refuse.
	Barrelling in, over, around and through stairs, alleys, open markets 
and hordes of people, often the only sign of Marrel's cab was the plume of 
fresh dust lifting by the recent passage of the other taxi-shuttle. Ido's living 
nose tickled at the sensation of the airborne grit, forcing him to stifle two 
separate sneezes. The little vehicle rocked about on its mushy springs, 
bouncing slightly over bumps with its bubble tires, but never once 
floundering. Sometimes on turns, the entire crowded cab forced its weight at 
Ido. Alita's metal body felt like a stack of iron shod parts when forced against 
his hip and shoulder. Cramping matters further, the door handle pressed 
uncomfortably into his other side.
	Rising darkly ahead was the ruination of factory seventeen. As all folk 
knew, the scrapyard was a study of old and new. Some old buildings had 
their innards ripped out, gutted and painted and refurbished until they 
looked new. Fresh, clean, new buildings were usually built straight onto the 
tops of other older buildings, leaving an archetectural patchwork that looked 
both sturdy and tumble-down. More often, older buildings grew obsolete 
and were simply abandoned, forcing the Scrapyard swell like some oversized 
fungus. Factory seventeen represented one such relic of old.
	Dirty and polluted beyond all possible use to derelects, the factory 
complex nesseled in an ellipse around a half moon shaped mound of junk that 
reached a hundred stories into the sky. Standing in pools of murky water, the 
buildings resembled shadows of a time long lost from active memory. 
Perhaps even from when Tipharies was young. The buildings of Factory 
seventeen, marred to the point of disentengration by persistant elemental 
abuse, could be heard muttering little night time noises. Wind that tickling 
through the decrepid ribs of a long dead corpse, doted a melanchoy 
timpani.[use this image later, when they can hear it.] In the silent distance, 
settled comfortably behind the foul ambience rising from the dirty section of 
factory, the gigantic pile of refuse sparkled with tiny lights from hundreds of 
cooking fires and gas lamps. The ghostly factory formed an almost 
impenetrable moat before the mound of garbage, which had taken on use as 
a ghetto. Not just a ghetto, The Ghetto.
	"Want I should drop you off here?" asked the trollish cab driver, 
pulling slowly to a stop before the gates to the ruined factory. It was agreed 
that somebody should watch the gates of the factory. The three hunters in the 
bed of the shuttle jumped to the ground.
	"The rest of us are supposed to join the others in the Factory. Why 
don't you follow them?" Ido asked the driver, pointing after Marrel's cab, 
which was leaving a trail of dust along the deserted boulevard that led 
through the middle of the factory complex.
	"Sorry, this ain't my turf," the cabbie explained in a wheezing voice 
through the right side of his crooked mouth, gesturing toward the door of 
the cab.
	Ido suffered an invisible moment of anger, which he quickly 
swallowed under an instant of rationalization. He couldn't blame the driver 
for not wanting to go into Ghetto country; he couldn't find any good reasons 
why he wanted to be there either.
	Slightly disheartened at the prospect of walking, the three remaining 
hunters dissembarked the little shuttle cab, which jumped lightly at the 
passing of each.
	"Four hundred," the driver grunted, sticking out his chubby hand. The 
other hunters, including Alita, looked at Ido. Hissing his breath in minor 
annoyance, Ido paid off the driver. Why did everyone always expect him to 
have the money?
	Clasping the chips, the driver stomped on the gas. He pulled a 
maniacal right hand U-turn at the factory gate, throwing up a thick rooster-
tail of dust that made Ido release that long surpressed cough. With a tinny 
buzz, the taxi shuttle took off down the ramshackle roadway in the direction 
from which they'd come, popping the clutch just as he bounded over the hill.
	"Thought you were going to go into the factory." One of the other 
Hunters said to Ido, Alita and the Vassel.
	"The driver refused to take us." Ido intoned, with a slight shrug, "We're 
on our feet for the rest of the way."
	"Probably better that way," Alita commented with a smirk, "Merrel 
wasn't kidding when he said that this was the only way out of the Factory 
seventeen complex, was he?"
	"Nope," replied one of the hunters, "Nobody but Homeless live back 
there. The Poor of the poor. When they were having problems with gang 
bikers in this area, the residents got together and blocked up all the other 
entrances with junk. You want an unreachable island in the middle of the 
scrapyard, this is it. Almost nobody's got the time to wade their way through 
a quagmire of industrial waste just to get nothing from a buncha has-beens. 
Not even your average junkies go back in there..."
	"Good a place as any for a serial killer to hang out," Alita said.
	"Yeah," Ido returned with a smile, "But only if the killer preyed on 
people with nothing. The Hunter Killer kills Hunters, which makes this a poor 
place to hide; most hunters really don't have the time or interest to hunt the 
Ghetto. Without a doubt, there are plenty of killers residing back there at any 
given time, though no one really cares to find out."
	Alita shook her head, "But if there are a lot of killers back there, why 
aren't there more hunters looking for them? Gotta be a profit hunting where 
anybody might be hiding."
	"Without wheels, it's going to take us half the night hiking to reach the 
Ghetto," the Vassal told her in leery voice. "People back there don't talk to 
outsiders, so how would you know who killed who? 'Sides, who really cares 
if a nobody washes up in a cesspool that everybody else stays away from. 
Factory only puts out prices on heads that make themselves easy to find."
	By inlarge, the Vassal was right, Ido knew, crimes that were forgotten 
stayed forgotten. Especially in this particular backward community. In his 
earlier days as a Hunter Warrior, Ido too had wandered into Factory 
Seventeen looking for easy marks, but found there was little or no means of 
seperating innocent from guilty in the midst of the shivering huddle that lived 
on the distant mountain of garbage. "We ought to get moving; at this point, 
we ARE going to be walking for half the night. If we're lucky, Lazarus and 
the main group -or, more likely, the six with Merrel- will take down the 
Hunter Killer. Maybe, walking down the road, we'll keep anybody from 
slipping out of the complex unnoticed."
	“If we’re lucky,” the Vassal commented, “the road won’t be washed 
out. Industrial marches are not for wading, even with a high quality 
cyberbody.
	"The Hunter Killer does seem to have a gift for the unexpected," Alita 
sighed in a whisper intended only for Ido. It was obvious that she wanted to 
be involved in this kill, but Ido couldn't understand why. [conjectures?]
	Leaving the other three behind, Ido, Alita and the Vassal began the 
walk along the gloomy roadway.

***

	Nothing lived here. That was the only thought that could be provoked 
by the strip of desolation that ran a weary path through the factory ruin. The 
cool air was ripe with the pungent odors of sulfer and methane, mixed 
teasingly by the dying organic note of filthy amines. There were numerous 
other chemical presences which permeated the weak breeze, but there were 
so many that it was hard to distinguish anything aside from the strongest 
few. Despite the multiplicity of odors, none smelled truly alive. Pools of water 
and brackish sludge ate at the ill-kept road, which was poor even by 
Scrapyard standards. Dead noise, meaninglessly white, was all that could be 
heard, contributing to an effect that made the landscape appear as barren as 
that of the moon.
	Even of the periodic clear puddles that appeared along the way, not 
one contained any signs of more than the most basic bacterial life. Alita had 
heard once that breeds of such organisms had grown apt at feeding on even 
the most indelible materials. Samples of many could probably be extracted 
from any one of the shallow ponds that lined the roadway. The few varieties 
of hearty microbial inhabitants were likely the most prolific contributors to 
the caustic air, since human influence over the area had long since ebbed. In 
spite of being a vivacous example of life, these tiny, invisible, invincible 
creatures were no consolation that the ruined factory land was anything 
more than an ancient waste. -And we came here willingly,- Alita mussed to 
herself.
	In one way, it almost seemed like a wonderland of impossible 
spectacles. Eddies of chemical vapor rose in plumes from pools and solid 
waste. Transluscent gasses rising from the ailing ground warped the very 
sky, bending the cold light from distant Tiphares into hideous apparitions. In 
some areas, massive orange willow wisps danced and glowed in their own 
shadows. Ghostly fairy fire danced above sludgy pools with temperatures 
barely warmer than the ambient air. Alita swiped her hand through welling 
of silent flame that persisted near the side of the road, causing it to fragment 
and dissappear. Lost for a moment in the draft, the bulb reappeared again 
noiselessly, as though untouched. There was an odd, almost cynical beauty in 
the absence of humanity, even in places horribly scarred by the passage of 
human hands. She almost caught herself smiling in bewildered wonder. In 
her mind, she was dazzled by a whimsical image of frosty methane 
snowflakes falling here in the dead of winter.
	With nature having time to work over the architecture, many of the 
large warehouses and machines shops that once composed Factory 
Seventeen had been transformed into pieces of an ornate landscaping, 
accented by the littered waterways ripe with decompository elements. 
[awk]The lonely path, scored by marks from the recent passage of Marrel's 
taxi, meandered in and out. In places, fallen wreckage had obstructed the 
original road, forcing short detours that had been made permenant by the 
passage of time. This resulted in numerous blind corners that gave the feel of 
a ancient angular canyon. Rising brokenly around them, many of the ruins 
were high enough that they prevented direct line of sight to the garbage 
tower that marked the Ghetto -now only a mile distant. Night time quietly 
gave a sigh against the watchful glow of Tiphares glistening balefully above. 
Light floated down to mingle with dull shadows cast by the spent hulks 
littering every tumbledown corner.
	Trudging endlessly, with one foot placed lathargically in front of the 
other amid the dust and continual ichor, the trio plodded on. Neither Ido nor 
the usually silent Vassal could be coaxed to talk. Alita supposed that the waste 
had sapped their desire for discussion, but didn't really understand. 
Truthfully, she had never seen such a forelorn place before. Each new 
example of weird nothingness brought questions from the bottom of her 
soul[, q]uestions which Ido had refrained from answering except in listless 
nods. Bewildered, Alita began to wonder if there was something else about 
this dusky place, just barely on the verge between life and death, that had in 
some way dampenedd a critical element of human curiousity in those who 
had been here before. Or maybe it could all be explained in pretense of 
nervousness; the Hunter Killer might be close at hand. Whatever the reason, 
up to this point, Alita had never seen true revulsion adorn any face. At the 
moment, she now found a healthy example of abhorrence displayed 
prominantly by Ido, a man who possessed the greatest integrity of anyone 
she had ever met. She had never before seen her mentor so rigidly ill at ease.
	Ahead, a left hand curve in the path rounded a stout pillar of unknown 
constitution, going out of sight. Either side of the path, consumed in dismal 
shadow, was barred by towering remains of refinery machines to form a sort 
of box canyon in Cubist representation. A hint of an age old lesson gnawed at 
the back of Alita's mind. She could not say why, but suddenly she found 
herself becoming tense. There was an indescribable menace surrounding this 
particular blind corner, despite the fact they gone around a couple dozen 
others exactly like it in the past hour. She tugged at the hem of Ido's coat, 
drawing his attention.
	Ido might not have said anything, except that he saw the look on her 
face, "What?" he whispered shortly. The Vassal stopped and looked at her as 
well.
	"Something's wrong. Go slowly." she replied stiffly, looking at the 
corner. Easing forward, she led them on, searching desperately for the source 
of her instinctive apprehension. The broken walls looked untouched as 
though for centuries with the exception of elemental wear. The ground was a 
mix of dust and concrete, like most of the rest of the scrapyard.
	Fresh tracks from Marrel's cab cut into the free dust, stirring rubbish, 
missing -she noticed- several dusty bulges set at even incriments along the 
ground. At first glance they’d evaded her notice with their remarkably subtle 
spacing. Alita crouched by one, brushing the dust with a tentative finger. It 
moved easily at her touch, betraying the fact that it had been recently 
churned and then carefully repositioned to make it appear natural. She 
gestured for the other two to stay back. Brushing ever so softly at the loose 
sand, Alita cleared away the mound a little at a time to reveal a metallic object 
shaped like a disk nestled neatly into the buckled concrete underlay. A mine.
	"How did you know?" Ido asked. From the look on his face, he 
hadn't.anticipated the eventuality; Firearms, such as guns and impliments of 
war, like mines, did not usually appear on the streets of the Scrapyard given 
the lack of supplies and the inherent illegality in either keeping or building 
them. Perhaps Ido had seen guns; he'd probably chased a few bounties under 
suspicious for possessing such weapons. He probably punished a few people 
with death over such offenses. Alita felt certain that he'd certainly never dealt 
with Mines.
	Still he'd stumbled across a Berzerker purely by chance, and Mines 
were infinitely more simple. Not that a Berzerker was any different than a 
Mine in essential nature. Could a Berzerker be considered a firearm, Alita 
wondered to herself. What really did Ido know?
	"I don't know." She shrugged, hesitating slightly, "Instinct I guess." 
Then she pointed toward the other mounds, "Don't step on any of these; you 
might not live to regret it. It would seem that we've stumbled onto the trail of 
a well equipted enemy, probably the Hunter Killer."
	Winding their way past the small field of mines, they rounded the 
corner.
	"Alita!" Ido cried. Alita, didn't need to be told; her eyes had seen it a 
second ahead of Ido's. Before them was a spectacular wreck. The vehical had 
passed through the principle segment of the small field of mines on a surge of 
pure luck only to run cleanly over a final mine placed just after the corner. 
Ringed by a berm of splattered dirt, the mine had left a crater not even a half 
meter wide when it had dicharged straight up. Caught in the front left axle, 
the vehical had stumbled and sommersaulted from excessive speed, leaving a 
trail of oil stained parts as it careened another twenty-five meters until it 
smeared itself against a broken segment of five meter wide refinery piping.
	Even more to their surprise, the passengers of this brutal wreck had 
been dragged clear and dumped in an almost tidy pile in the middle of the 
forgotten roadway. At that point, each passenger had been cleanly 
eviscerated of cybernetic parts, leaving behind a blood washed collection of 
naked humanly remains that were so contorted as to be unrecognizable. 
Placed deliberately, the pile was stacked as though it were a hedonistic 
sculpture depicting the worst possible sin. The cybernetics themselves were 
plucked clean of valuable materials and dumped uselessly next to their 
owners. Of the entire mess, the only truly recognizable element of humanity 
was the presence of six convoluted gray-red lumps of organic matter 
suspended by a whitish cord from a piece of rusty conduit that projected 
from the garbage wall. Laying on the ground, not far from the heap 
dissembodied cybernetics, was Marrel's occular implant seperated from the 
familiar face.
	"My god," Ido exclaimed softly, realization dawning after the instant of 
shock.
	The Vassal said nothing, but shook his head.
	They had all three seen messes in the past, except none of them had 
seen anything quite so thorough. -Or, quite so hateful,- Alita thought, 
glancing at the extracted brains hanging from the rope of braided spinal 
tissue. Bile thickened in the back of her throat, hate seering in her heart. "This 
has to end tonight," she said, finishing the thought for them all.
	Then, before anything else could be said, there came a cry from above. 
It floated down like the ferral shriek of a hawk hungered to the brink of 
panic, "HUNTERS!! Tonight HUNTERS!" The words were rough to the point 
just before unintelligibility, as they echoed off the walls of the technological 
canyon. Despite all, a tone of anger raged through each howling syllable with 
a flame of zealous spite that went beyond what was possible for the most 
maligned soul.
	Alita's eyes glanced up into the unblinking gaze of Tiphares. High 
above, perched almost invisibly against the theater of night was a flowing 
figure. It stood hunched in a swalding of dull black folds that stirred like tinsel 
on a christmas tree at a passing breath. The cloak wrapped high around the 
form, moving, yet not, in a bizarre twist of shadow that bore uncanny 
resemblance to the unopened pettles of a large, dark flower bud.
	For a long time, there was no movement. Alita sensed that the instant 
had become frozen. Hunter regarded prey and vice versa, either side 
thinking that it was somehow the predator. At her side Ido stirred 
breathlessly. This opponent was abruptly becoming fiercely tangible, and not 
just the perpetrator of a long list of brutal, though faceless, crimes. That 
second remained infinitely fixed with both dread and anticipation, while the 
dying echoes of those last few screaming words still faded.
	Both sides moved at once, as though releasing a breath momentarily 
held. High on the top of the broken mechical ledge, the night colored cloak 
twisted in a peculiar fashion, lobbing something into the sky. "Join your bed 
mates, Hunters!" The invocation floated down with the falling object.
	"Get back!" Alita shouted to Ido and the Vassal, "I'll handle this!" Her 
knife danced out of its pocket in a flicker of motion. Above their heads, the 
falling thing split into a hundred shimmering fragments. Her eyes locked on 
the cloud, Alita jump backward in a mule-kick, one foot planted against Ido 
and other against the Vassal. Both of her companions pushed out of the way, 
Alita's hands flaired out to catch the ground. Paused in a momentary single 
handed handstand, she blasted herself into the air with her feet spinning 
outstretched around her. A mist of pressure condensation coming into being 
around her, she came to rest on a piece of rubble three meters off the ground 
and out of the line of fire the instant the shards hit, each one exploding with 
shuddering power. Her knife held in reverse grip, with the flat against her 
forearm, Alita pushed off from her perch in a way that only the berzerker 
body could possibly have managed. At that point, likely faster than human 
eyes could follow, the dance truly began.
	Steel coil strength driving her upward, Alita bounced from one side of 
the gorge to the other, using the sheer walls as another might use a stairway, 
gaining four stories of height with each spring. As Alita sailed upward, the 
Killer ducked back from the ledge in a shimmer of stirring cloak against 
shadow. Arriving at the peak, Alita landed in a crouch, one hand out to block, 
the other holding the knife carefully at ready. The Killer had already flown 
from this perch to another pinnacle a stone's throw away, just tantilizingly 
beyond easy reach. The spectacle of the ruined factory presented itself now as 
it would to an airborne creature, precipices and pinnacles, worn and withered, 
stretched in every direction where there had once been a dense collection of 
buildings. Down in the chasmic expanse below, Ido and the Vassal had both 
just begun to consider following.
	Intent on her enemy, Alita started forward, then stopped at noticing a 
trip wire that had appeared in a glint of reflected Tipharean light. She skipped 
easily over the wire when mounds that had been set innocuously to either 
side erupted with a shower of pencil thin cables. Lost in the confusion of 
flying objects, the form of the Killer was momentarily obscurred. Alita would 
have been ensnared were it not for the strength and speed of the berzerker. 
With shrug, she shed the trappings and sailed into the air with an effortless 
bound toward where she'd last spotted her enemy. The cloaked killer 
regarded her from another pinnacle in lew of the one where Alita had aimed 
herself.
	Landing at her initial destination, Alita immediately reoriented herself 
on the killer and took again to the air. Luck was with her accelerated reaction 
time now, since the ledge where she had momentarily lighted exploded into a 
gut-jarring fireball at her passing.
	The Killer, who had obviously anticipated Alita escaping the first trap, 
also seemed to have anticipated her escaping the second, since he too was in 
the process of vacating the spot where Alita would soon land. That volumous, 
dimensionless black cloak whirled and stretched through the air toward 
another ledge fifteen meters away as though carried by a powerful wind. For 
an instant, it seemed that the killer was in two places at once. Extended an 
incredible distance across the sky between the two pinnicles, the leading end 
of the cloak locked into a cyclonic spin that coalesced as if by magic into a 
dark figure. Alita's target ledge was suddenly empty as the trailing edge of 
the cloak swept across the gulf into orbit around the Killer. As if completing a 
neat pirouette, the killer was again facing Alita with perfect nonchalance.
	Having never previously seen anything like this display, Alita was 
suddenly canny to the fact that the Killer had probably managed to 
boobytrap the ledge on which she was about to land[awk]. Making a last 
second adjustment in her center of rotation, Alita pulled her feet up, just 
barily missing a landing in the middle of target ledge. Instead, she nicked the 
edge of the pinnicle with the balls of her feet and thrust herself into an 
unstable arch toward a nearby perch. Performing a midair flip, she touched 
down with tactful smoothness.
	"Slow, hunter," came the gristled taunt, "took you longer than I 
expected to figure out that tactic." The shadowy form seemed not to move.
	"Why all the tricks?!" Alita demanded, carefully keeping the knife 
where it could quickly come the bear. She scrutinized the figure closely, but 
could not see anything more than an immaterial silhoette. "Why kill so many 
hunters? Somebody will get you eventually."
	"Perhaps," came the low reply, "but before then, all hunters will regret 
every folly they've ever commited."[folly?]
	"But Why?" Alita persisted.
	"Who punishes the Punisher? Huh, Hunter? Answer me that."
	"The factory of course."
	"If you believe that," he answered with a metallic scoff, "then you're 
more foolish than I thought. Remind yourself where we are."
	Alita was transfixed with the words when she heard the whooshing 
thud of a burst of compressed gas. It took her a half heart beat to realize that 
the Killer had raised a nondescript arm to point at her. Instinct drove her 
berzerker enhanced hands up before her face. Hissing like a serpent, the first 
bolt flashed in sparks as it deflected off the flat of her raised knife, its shell 
exploding well away from her, nearly disturbing her balance. The killer 
continued to fire twice more. Arms weaving in a circle, Alita's left hand 
snatched across with a will of its own, snagging the second bolt between 
thumb and forefinger. The third bolt was then magically between her ring 
and middle finger, still quivering from its halted flight.
	"Should be fun taking apart that wonderful cybernetic body you 
obviously have!" the killer laughed upon seeing that Alita was still standing. 
Flinging the magnificent cloak, the Killer once again displaced from one ledge 
to flow seamlessly to another. Alita didn't need to see any more to 
understand that, by using the shapeless shadow he wore, the killer could 
keep well ahead of her no matter how fast her body was. -Dammit- she 
thought to herself, -I haven't fought anything like this before.-
	Carrying the two bolts in her left hand and the knife in her right, Alita 
took off after the killer, her feet carrying her almost as fast as the berzerker 
could move. Driven more by instinct than inspiration, she angled her 
approach across the killer's retreating right flank. The killer saw her make the 
move, dodging immediately to the left in a flurry of motion. Crossing paths 
back and forth, soaring from ledge to ledge at nearly the speed of sound, 
Alita and the killer jockeyed for position. Leaping from peak to peak, 
decaying ledges crumbled to pieces as they passed, fleks of rust sprayed 
through the air.
	Vault and counter retreat carried them directly on, rapidly closing 
range on the towering mass of the Ghetto with each pulse onward through 
the heights of rugged scrapiron landscape. Every movement she made, Alita 
could hear echoing taunts reflected off of precipices and sheer walls, drawing 
her on like a beacon. She sensed that she was being tempted forward, most 
likely to a trap of which she was unaware. Yet she didn't dare break pursuit. 
Not a chance. She couldn’t risk letting the Killer have the element of surprise 
again. She did not like it. Not a bit.
	Restoring her knife to its pocket as she landed in order to free up a[a 
what?], Alita dug her fingers in and ripped loose a large, almost boulder sized 
chunk of concrete run through with rebar shafts. Swinging with her entire 
body, she launched the fragment high into the air in the direction of the 
Killer. In avoidance, the killer moved to another pinnacle.
	"Do YOU really believe you're hunting ME?" Came the jeering laugh.
	Intent on her target, Alita ignored the comment; she had lunged into 
the air the instant the killer had settled to taunt. Travelling fast enough that 
she had a shallow arch, Alita's chosen path carried her into line with the 
decending scrap of limestone and metal debris. High in the air, with no 
intended landing zone in sight, Alita came into conjunction with the fragment, 
which was easily half the size of her own body. Words, unremembered in 
origin bubbled into her mouth, their form twisting into sounds that echoed a 
technique she hadn’t realized she remembered[;] "HERTZA HAEON!!" she 
screamed, her outstretched arms catching the air like wings. A pulse of 
blinding energy surged from her abdomen, up through the 
electromagnetically driven muscles in her side, then out through the 
reinforced endoskeleton of her right arm. Each actuator in her body 
contributed a little to the coalescing pulse, channeling the wave into a point at 
her palm. Leaving a vacuum of sensation in her hand, the shockwave of 
psychological red crossed into the steel boulder, dispersing almost without a 
sign. Instantly, the side of fragment opposite her exploded outward in a hail 
of rusty shards and knife-like fragments of stone.
	Caught by surprise, the killer wrapped the cloak more tightly around 
his form in an effort to ward off the rain of steel. Alita knew she'd been 
waiting for that very instant; she could now see exactly where the killer's 
body was. Her airborne arch beginning to die, Alita sighted on the center of 
the body with one of the explosive tipped bolts the killer had fired at her. A 
flick of the wrist sent it on its way. The bolt whipped through the air with the 
weighted accuracy of a throwing needle, leaving only a glimmer to betray its 
passage. With a wet thump, it imbedded into the center of a target that was 
still laughing. Falling beyond sight, the last Alita saw was a brilliant, 
thunderous flash. She would later swear that she’d seen a limb spiralling one 
way while a body went the other, until an instant later. She slammed into 
something solid, clear memory stolen away.

***

	“Wait a minute!” hung in the air that one moment.
	Alita had taken off, leaving Ido and the Vassal stunned. They both 
sprawled backward away from the bomblet attack when Alita rescued them. 
The Vassal, mostly cybernetic and decidedly not possessing human flexibility 
was left writhing on the ground in a futile attempt to get up. “Damn you girl!” 
he cried impotently in rage.
	Ido, with greater presence of mind, stayed where Alita had thrust him. 
Laying in a fetal position with his hands covering his ears, he protected his 
head against the staccato of explosives that ended only a few fractions of a 
second after it had begun. Glancing upward, Ido saw his surrogate daughter 
sailing through the air in blatant defiance of gravity. She surrmounted the 
crevase between the buildings more quickly than Ido could draw a breath, 
dissappearing over the crest in an instant.
	Scrambling to his feet, Ido immediately began to look for a way to 
give Alita a hand, knowing that the Killer wasn't as easy a prey as 
appearances would contend. “Alita!” he cried after her. The Vassal too was on 
his feet, a look of absolute fury fixed on his ugly features.
	"Foolish little girl!" he cried, turning to the cliff. In the Vassals hand's 
there appeared a nasty looking, chainsaw augmented klave fixed to a 
telescoping shaft, "I'll show you how this is done!"
	"Wait," Ido shouted, waving an arm, his rocket hammer held at ready. 
Heart thundering in his ears, the pulse tickling in his neck, Ido gasped from 
breath. Adreniline roaring into his veins only now, some tart sense of danger 
told him that something was desperately wrong.
	“To hell with you Doc, that damned little girl thinks she can out do 
ME!”
	From the moment of pause, a well tempered breath was exhaled, 
"Spare me. You might do as Doctor Ido suggests," an androgynous voice 
suggested, "it would cause you far less injury..."
	They both jumped in surprise, turning to look at the source of the 
comment. Standing behind them, just at the edge of the cliff-corner where the 
ill-maintained road became a small mine field, a nondescript black shadow 
seemed to have seperated from the wall. It moved toward them in a flowing 
motion.
	“Damn you, Killer!” the Vassal raised his Klave in both hands and 
charged.
	The shadow itself suddenly shot through the air, lengthening into a 
long, sharp edge. If Ido was singly shocked when the Vassal's head 
disconnected from his body, he was doubly so when the man's legs and arms 
fell free as well. "Not that I have any use for you in particular," the shadowy 
figure concluded in a weary sigh.
	"The Hunter Killer!" Ido said aloud, realization dawning.
	"Perhaps," the figure acknowledged noncommitally as it stooped at the 
Vassal's remains. Ido saw a tentative hand poke out from the protective cape, 
rapidly disconnecting valuable parts from the body. He considered making 
his attack, but could not decide what part of the fluid form would be most 
vulnerable.
	Realizing that the figure was unconcerned with him for the moment, 
Ido began to pick his path away. His left foot poised to take the first step, he 
didn't quite set it back down again when the dim figure spoke again, "Do not 
test me Dr. Ido; I may have no need for the foolish one, but I have no 
reservations about killing you if I must."
	"Then why me?" Ido asked.
	"A Tipharean's cybernetics are really quite useless to anyone but a 
Tipharean. Usually only the owner. A wonder you were even registrable as a 
Hunter Warrior."
	"Huh?"
	"Not that you realize this," the shadow hastily [good...an important 
word]continued, "I have need of you to combat the Berzerker. This extra 
hunter was a free variable, his death is as favorable now as later. Better I have 
his parts should the [the what?]arise later."
	"What was Alita chasing?" Ido began to notice that the Killer spoke in a 
moderate voice, totally contrary to what Lazarus had described. More, in fact, 
like Marrel had mentioned in his story. Cool and quietly collected.
	"Not your concern." was the nearly whispered response.
	"It is my concern. It matters to me who gets killed!"
	"A Will O' the Wisp," it answered thoughtfully.
	"A decoy?" Ido supplied, fingering the button on his rocket hammer.
	"Not if it kills her," was the opaque reply, "If she dies, my task becomes 
one of recovery rather than of direct conflict."
	"Your task?"
	"I will kill every hunter before I am done," the words were spoken 
coldly, auspiciously. A factual prediction rather than a heart felt desire [does 
this contrast with what we talked about?]. In the content of the nondescript 
voice, there was a gravitation of sincerity colored with a righteous confidence 
as dark as the shadowy cloak. The thing he originally assumed to be the Killer 
was not as chilling as what stood before him now.
	“Not if I have anything to say about it!” Biting the inside of his cheek, 
Ido thumbed the switch on his rocket hammer. With a blast of noise, it came 
alive in his hands, peeling through the air followed by a trail of fire. Muscling 
the thing around with all of his strength, Ido angled toward where the 
shadow had been, intent on ending this grisly matter before it went any 
further.
	“tut, tut,” came the unconcerned response.
	But the shadow was not there. Alone on the ground before him was 
the corpse of the Vassel and nothing else. It was gone, utterly and completely 
gone. Rotating the handle of the hammer between his hands, Ido shifted the 
path of the weapon so that it would propel him around backward. When he 
and rotating half way, a wedge of black whipped toward him from nowhere, 
nipping the shaft of the rocket just above his hands. The handle split cleanly in 
two, cut by a weapon far sharper than the sharpest razor. Free from all 
constraints, the rocket motor spun in a crazy spiral path until it finally met the 
cliff wall with a shuddering crash.
	Ido, unarmed but for the useless handle of the broken hammer, stood 
facing the dusky menace again.
	"I have no time for such nonsense," The shadow told him in a 
deceptively quiet tone. Ido could contemplate no further resistance when a 
void colored wave of limbo shot toward him. It enveloped him in its subdued 
blackness, swirling around him with the strength of an ocean current. For an 
instant, just before the nothingness swept him away, he thought he heard a 
pleasant voice saying, "we have so much else to do."
	-Is this my death?- Ido asked as he fell away from reality.

***

	-The sky is so bright here- was the first thought that returned to her. In 
the stillness that had settled around her, she stared at the timeless matte of 
blue black that was tainted with a light source from beneath. There were no 
stars.
	She squinted, trying to pin-point the momentary feeling of weirdness. 
Was it that the sky was bluish black? She could not tell, or even see the stars 
her heart told her had to be there. Where was the charge of deepening red 
that had always accompanied the sunset, making her think of a large pool of 
blood against the salamander orange of day? Straining her eyes, she could 
see a white crescent that marked a huge moon which seemed nearly close 
enough to touch. Her heart told her the moon was wrong. It was supposed to 
be two....Fear and Terror, Phobos and Deimos. The two sons of....
	Mars?
	Then her eyes crossed along the edge of that gigantic disk that was 
editing out so much of the empty night sky. Tiphares. She was on Earth.
	More specifically, she was laying on Earth. Laying with one leg twisted 
beneath her and one arm hanging downward over an edge whose crest 
pressed against her shoulder. Then memories of the chase over deserted 
lands, the killer continually beyond her reach, rushed into her mind. She 
remembered falling and striking her head, an experience that was becoming 
quite a habit lately. Too bad there was no youthful face gazing down at her 
this time, patronizing her in a playful manner. Not that she never patronized 
herself for such carelessness.
	Alita sat up, gradually untangling her limbs. For the time being, she 
was thankful that the berzerker body was less than prone to breakage. Now 
if she could just get rid of the slight wave of nausea that warned her of a 
possible concussion.
	At the end of her graceful flight, she had crashlanded on a jutting ledge 
about half the distance between the ground and the apex of the ruins. Feeling 
a moment of anxiety, she ran a weapon check. Brushing the front of her 
pocket, she discovered the comforting form of her knife. On the other hand, 
the second dart she was carrying had been lost, probably from when she hit 
the ledge. Glancing toward the ground, she could see no sign of the explosive 
barb.
	Standing up and dusting off, she looked upward toward where the 
killer had perched. Had he survived?
	Alita jumped from the ledge with a shot of electromagnetic power 
surging downward through her legs. One skip off the canyon wall enabled 
her light on the pinnacle last occupied by the Hunter Killer. Darkened by a 
blast of heat that had since died, the precipice cracked under her berserker 
body’s weight. Of the killer himself, there was no direct sign. Crouching to 
one knee, Alita gazed over the edge of the precipice in the direction she 
thought she'd seen the Killer fall. Far below, the distance of a mid-sized 
building, a tiny human figure sprawled on across the sludge laden ground.
	Stepping off into nothing, the floor of the former factory raced toward 
her. To slow down, she kicked a foot out behind her, propelling herself away 
from one side of the canyon and across toward the other. When the other 
side came within arm's reach, she flicked a hand out, driving her nearly 
indestructible fingers into the wall. Continuing to fall, she pulled herself in, 
then deployed her feet against the vertical surface. Her feet and hands 
sputtered and sparked against the rusty wall as she used them like skid 
brakes to slow her rapid descent. Fragments of metal broke free at her 
passing, rattling against the wall as they fell below her. At about five meters 
up, she let go of the wall, dropping easily to the ground. She landed in a deep 
crouch to absorb the impact without giving her already unstable head 
anything else to complain about.
 	Pulling her knife, Alita moved toward the broken form laying half in, 
half out of a brackish chemical pool between buildings. Creeping forward, 
she regarded the shape for any signs of life.
	Impaled on a fragment of broken I-beam, the figure was perfectly still. 
One arm missing and the other gone suspiciously at the elbow, the torso was 
nearly intact, except that it appeared shredded, as though it had been 
wrapped in a twining of razor wire. There was no sign of the huge black 
cloak, only that the human form was covered in a patchy garb of black that 
appeared frayed and illfitting.
	Moving closer, Alita saw that only the side with the missing arm had 
received burns from the explosion. Bisected by the protruding I-beam, the 
rest of the torso with its nearly connected legs actually appeared to have been 
evicerated by the contraction of the black fibers that she'd first mistaken for 
clothing. As if the cloak had shrunk down until it had cut into the wearer.
	Then she realized that she knew the man's face. What little of it there 
was left for recognition.
	"Lazarus!"
	With one dull eye rolled back into his skull, the other obscurred by 
blood and all the recognizable features wrapped in the tight black material, 
his lax face did not respond. Not that she'd expected him to.
	"Lazarus was the Hunter Killer?!" It hardly made sense. She crouched 
at the body, not certain what she should’ve expected from the old man. 
Checking for a pulse, she already knew that he was dead.
	Then the face jerked, the one intact eye lolled around until it pointed at 
her and focused behind a sheen of pink.
	"He was not!" the jaw moved, splitting open gashes in the chin against 
the cutting black fibers.
	Alita jumped back in surprise, "What the... You're already dead, Killer!"
	"You are more effective than I first anticipated," the voice, definitely 
not Lazarus's, dulled to a soft, almost amicable level.
	"Then you're still hiding behind tricks!"
	"Considerably more than tricks, I assure you. I would take a moment 
to commend you for completing a portion of my work for me, but I must 
request that you meet me at the highest point of the Ghetto before the larynx 
of this corpse well and truly expires."
	"Why you...!"
	"As additional invocation, know that I have, in my grasp, one for 
whom you care. He would greatly benefit from your arrival and subsequent 
rescue attempt. Regardless of how futile such an effort will prove to be."
	"...Ido." Alita's face twitched as she realized that she had fallen into a 
trap the instant she'd chased after the decoy that now lay dead at her feet.
	"Until then." The lips on the corpse tried to smile, pulling the face taut. 
Then the fibers of the ruined cloak contracted powerfully, forcing flesh 
through with a slurp to form pulpy red mash, like whey pressed through 
cheese cloth. A soft cracking arose as the fibers contracted around the full 
body, cutting clear to the bone, then pulverizing even that.
	Alita turned away, not wanting to see the gruesome spectacle. The 
veiled threat was much clearer than the quietly spoken words.
	“I have to follow,” she told herself under her breath.
[visions of Alien, ne?]
***

	Dystopia. A place so pathetic, so meager, where existence is so poor 
that death would be preferrable. A place where dreams are meant to die, 
where substance is forbidden. Where happiness is devoid.
	If such a place existed, it lay in the middle of Factory 17, on top a pile of 
rubbish, among a huddling mass of skin and bone. Poverty’s thready heart 
beat alive, threatening every moment. A ghetto so vast that it cared not of 
ethnicity, only of pain and suffering.[!!!!Great writing!]
	She hurried as quickly as she could, among the winding pathways of a 
secret realm separate from the rest of reality. Alita chose her footing hastily, 
avoiding the barren eyes at every corner, the empty gazes that followed her 
lifelessly. The thickness of the maze was measured not by its size, but by the 
absolute poverty of its destitute inhabitants. They gathered around pits of 
smoldering refuse, ill dressed, ill fed, ill conceived, moving so slowly that they 
might keel over at any second.
	Their voices carried in slurs, lips taut over teeth that were falling out. 
Their words were hollow, meaningless, quiet agony fashioned to fill the last 
few hours of a life that never seemed to end. Their eyes, sunken back into 
sockets of bone, shadowed emotionlessly by jagged brows, watched the 
stranger go past. They knew nothing, they said nothing even when she 
stopped and asked. They didn’t care whether a man would die depending on 
if they helped or not. Who had ever helped them?
	Alita struggled on, climbing a mountain that seemed to unfold into a 
larger and larger entity. It was as if the further she got, the more the hideous 
the place grew, swelling upward like some wierd fungus. The trail itself was 
difficult to follow, obscurred by skeletons, both living and not. So powerful 
was the stench of urine that it made her eyes water, stepping over and 
around barely moving bodies in varying stages of decay. A child cried weakly 
on the side of the path, its skinny asexual form palsied and afflicted with a 
harsh rash. The mother lay back against a wall of garbage, sallow face 
unmoving, eyes following Alita accusingly.
	It was then that Alita reached the Killer’s first sign post. A hunter, with 
a pike pinned through his forehead was suspended three meters off the 
ground from a shelf of wreckage. One eye turned back into his skull, blood 
ran from the post hole in his head clear to his feet. His arm stuck straight out 
from his side, finger pointing the way.
	“Delcamer,” Alita murmurred to herself in recognition, knowing one 
of the many hunters that had followed Lazarus.
	A whisper touched her left ear, “Have you enjoyed the tour, Hunter?”
	Jumping half a meter in the air, Alita spun around leading with the heel 
of her left foot. The hook kick snapped through nothingness. Dim shadows, a 
blanket of ephemeral movment, had already retreated beyond her reach. 
Now accutely aware that she was being observed not only by those too weak 
to be threatening, she glanced nervously around, searching for a threat 
among the filth. If only her enemy were not so masterful at disappearing.
	“Why do you hide?!” she bellowed to the night.
	“Your path has been made clear to you,” was the only response, 
fluttering down on the grace of the wind.
	Litter, rubble, shelter where there was none. Each and every shadow 
armed with a blade. Alita hurried along, biting her lip in an effort not to look, 
hear or smell. Standing on an outcropping, an older child stood watching her, 
matchstick legs barely supporting the bulbulous head. The girl -labeled so by 
her parts- held something to her mouth, which she chewed dully. With Alita’s 
approach, the girl crouched down and covered her prize, warding away 
prying eyes. Not that Alita didn’t notice the clawing fingers that protruded 
from the hard won morsel hidden by the girl’s little pathetic body.
	Soft laughter nipped at her from the shadows, again reminding Alita to 
continue on. Despite herself, she ran.
	Another sign post was placed using the body of another dead hunter, 
pointing the way deeper into hell. Another hunter she knew, this time 
dissembowled. Alita struggled further along the path, staggering deeper into 
a nightmare come true..
	Uncaring of the world, a skinny middle aged man defecated in the 
middle of the trail. Alita cut wide around him, trying not to step on the bodies 
that rested along the sides. Going about his business with a soft, constipated 
grunt, the man paid her no heed if he even knew she was there.
	Repelled, she tried to leave the grostequely transfixing sight, her 
dinner at the brink of her throat in contemplation of a return flight. 
Stumbling up along the trail, she almost tripped the instant something 
suddenly grabbed her. When she caught sight of the skinny hand locked 
around her ankle, pure will was all that prevented her from taking off at a 
dead run, “Something to eat,” croaked a female voice at her feet, “please 
help...” A skeletal face stared up at her, blue eyes blood shot and sunken, the 
pleading mouth containing no teeth at all behind non-existant lips. Wispy hair 
was worn off by a hideous mange that ate the paper thin scalp. The voice 
croaked an agonized sob, as if already resigned to the answer.
	Alita pulled her foot free, worried she would take the woman’s arm 
out of its knobby socket in the process, “I... I’m sorry. I have nothing.” 
[maybe here she encounters a person who's doing well?]
	“Of course you have nothing for them, Hunter,” hissed the shadows 
softly, “this world was your gift.”
	Turning her back, Alita didn’t reply to her tormentor. “Must save 
Daisuke,” she reminded herself in a quivering voice. She repeated the 
statement several times, then breathed deeply, ignoring the gagging odors. 
Steeled and focused, she at last unreined her feet, seeking where the path 
would take her. Determined, even in revulsion, to reach the center of this 
horrific gauntlet.[this'd be a good place for some expose?]
	The Ghetto swept past in a numbing blur, each new spectacle 
something worse than the last. Pawing hands, insensiate but suffering. 
Broken voices that pled only in whispers. Death and disease, unspeakable 
misery, heaped upon a mound that stretched ever upward, the path marked 
by obedient corpses. For every junk pile ridge that Alita managed to clear in 
her hike to the top of the Ghetto, two more lay along the trail, each one 
successively further away. It was as if she’d entered some terrifying mobius 
constructed out of bodies and illness, scrap thrown in just for good measure. 
In the shadows, minute by minute stretching out into unfathomed hours, a 
quiet voice patiently explained each new horror.
	When the trail began switchback turns, taking her ever higher into the 
sky, the Scrapyard -in all its nighttime brilliance- opened out below. Each 
narrow street crossed the plain as a thread of light, converging in places to 
form plazas. A spider web of light straddled by the predatory bane of 
Tiphares. The huge pipes sailing skyward from the factory complexes could 
be clearly heard, their moon-wrought moaning a perfect complement to the 
quiet complaints of the Ghetto’s inhabitants. Despite the unending climb, 
Tiphares’ golden underside never seemed any closer. Perhaps it was a 
reminder that this one locale, a single place separate from all others, was also 
the furthest existance from that promising world hovering just above the 
clouds.
	Reduced to an empty minded trudge, her focus inward away from the 
freakshow to which she bore witness, Alita didn’t notice when she finally 
arrived at the summit. She walked clear across the simple flat plateau before 
she understood that the edges only lead onto descending paths. Looking 
down the far side, Alita’s feet stopped walking, refusing to go any further. 
Hiking could take her no higher.
	To her left, from a particularly large wash of shadow, somehow 
blacker than the rest of the night, there arose the sound of hands clapping, 
“Bravo, Hunter, you impress me with the magnitude of your perseverance,” 
the voice was cool and quiet, modulated as neither man nor woman, “Even 
after the path I picked for your ascent, you manage to navigate your way 
here. Your heart is not so fragile as calculations would intimate. One might 
question how a Hunter Warrior of your calibur gained such a conscience.”
	Turning slowly to face the dusky form, Alita squared her shoulders, 
trying to ease her mind over the dreadful world through which she’d so 
recently passed, “Please, let Ido go. Let’s just finish this, you and I.”
	There was a quiet chuckle, “Release a prize such as this.” The shadow 
expanded, bleeding out into a puddle in the middle of the plateau. Visibly 
rooting into loose rubble, the sheen of darkness contorted like a plant 
rendered in time lapse photography. Its surface rippled, pushing a shoot 
upward into the night sky which narrowed and lengthened into a tall stalk. 
Pooling at the end, an enormous drop of dew mistaken in the direction of 
gravity, welled into a giant bud. Huge petals pulled back, unveiling a black 
flower that contained a person as the stamin. Ido, blinking confusedly, lulled 
out as the centerpiece.
	“Alita!” he cried, trying to say more until a tendril of obsidian wound 
itself across his face, holding him silent.
	“What have you done to him!” Alita demanded, her tiredness abruptly 
forgotten.
	“I’m uncertain why this beast of a man means so much to you,” the 
night cloaked figure walked around the huge black flower it had spawned, 
“Ironic the arrangement don’t you think? A Hunter Warrior fighting the 
whim of the Scrapyard for an impotent Tipharean suspended in the sky.”
	“Nice that somebody finds this entertaining,” Alita spouted angrily, 
moving toward her shady enemy, “’Cause I sure as hell don’t! I’m going to 
pay you back for all the good hunters you’ve killed!”
	“Ah, but you killed one yourself,” the figure said, tut-tuting, “and this 
night is still very young. I will have my justice yet.”
	“If the only justice you know is murder,” Alita spat, recalling her hand 
in Lazarus’s demise, “then you will pay dearly at the hands of Alita!” With 
that, she lunged at the shadow.
	“Hmm,” the cape of black swirled out of Alita’s way, lingering like an 
intelligent fog. Alita’s flashing knife swiped at thin air, catching nothing on 
the way through.
	“So rash,” the shadow commented sadly, “an attack that failed to 
envision consequence. Shall we see just how well our magnificent fighting 
skills will favor you?” Spinning into a cyclonic motion, the shadowy form 
gave way into twin tornadoes, “Shall we see how sharp your eyes are?”
	“Damn You!” Alita screamed, lunging again, the intensity of the 
berzerker’s full strength driving her forward almost faster than eyes could 
follow. Her shining dagger split clean through one of the forms, which 
yielded with the consistency of cotton. Again the shadows had divided, 
leaving not two, but four midnight figures dancing around the width of the 
plateau.[how did the HWK set this up?]
	“Deceiver!” Alita was furious, seeing her enemy weaving yet another 
trick around her, “fight me yourself if you have the guts.”
	“Would I ever?” the voice came from nowhere and everywhere. The 
four had seperated into eight distinct forms. Wherever Alita looked, cyclonic 
black flowed across the darkness, the attacker disappearing in plain sight.
	“If I can’t take you directly,” Alita promised the torrent, “I’ll take you 
one piece at a time.” With that she delved into the flood, the motions of 
Panzer Kunst taking shape instinctively. In response, bladelike edges 
materialized out of the swarm, biting at her body as she waded through. Each 
notion of movement summoned from her actions that went unlabeled. Her 
arm swepted up in front of her face at an unseen threat. She didn’t flinch 
when sparks sputtered off her forearm from a glancing blow. An unexpected 
shot to her hip sent her reeling sideways, her balance reforming as she 
managed to catch her feet beneath her. Each blow slammed through her 
body, slashing grooves in her clothing and leaving furrows in the berzerker’s 
armor. She felt the first attackable opening before she ever saw it. Ducking 
aside a ridge of black that materialized almost out of nowhere, her leg 
extended itself out of the spiralling rotation of her body, clearing up and 
through a gulf of open space that had not existed a moment prior. The 
movement extended fully into a swooping roundhouse kick that reached its 
snap directly into the face of an attacker. When the head fell free, Alita was 
already on the far side, evading further flickering edges of sharpened cloth. 
Spinning off out of her way, the form bounced heavily to the ground where it 
lay finally unmoving.
	“When I get my hands on you!” she shouted.
	“If you get your hands on me,” was the opaque reply.
	Her blade darted in and out of the shadows, a hungry snake seeking 
flesh to bite. A lucky blow dipped her through the folds of the resilient black 
fabric, finding something soft underneath. Warmth of bloody spray wetted 
her weaving arm, putting a taint of satisfaction in her heart as another body 
fell under her assault. The berserker’s strength propelled her foot into an 
abdomen that happened to close at the wrong time. Bursting like a balloon 
under her raw strength, yet another body dropped, its pieces scattered an 
unnatural distance appart. Body fluids splattered, soaking what little clothing 
she still wore as she crashed head long through the biting sheets. Time 
blurred jarringly, only snapping into pure focus when she realized that the 
ground was littered with fragments of her opponents.
	Visceral joy swept through her in a suffuse wave.
	One dark form still stood, applauding softly from a safe distance, “My, 
that marvelous body of yours is unequivocally impressive. Imagine that it is 
capable of such a job given so little time to act.”
	“Coward,” Alita growled, “face me!”
	“My concern is only my task, what care I for personal disputes when I 
have such an incredible tool in hand?”
	“What do you mean?” Alita asked warily.
	“Look around you Hunter. Your hands are almost as stained as mine. 
Nine to your name thus far!”
	Black fabric had already begun to contract around the fallen forms, 
shredding the bodies further. One lay on its back, the cloak cowling pulled 
away from its bloody face.
	Alita gasped, “Fagan,” she whispered, knowing a name for a face seen 
so often in New Kansas bar. In her heart, she knew immediately that all the 
others were Hunter Warriors as well, each one dead at her hand. She had 
been tricked once again.
	Her armored body almost naked from the slashing cloaks, [this is 
good, you describe her nudity utterly unerotically. Well done]Alita sank to 
her knees. No feeling but shock came to mind as she gazed upon her metallic 
hands; her arms soaked clear to the shoulder in friendly blood. Weapons of 
mass destruction, tools masterfully manipulated by the most skillful surgeon. 
She let her knife fall to the ground, bewildered beyond all action.
	Ido struggled to make himself heard, “Alita, NO...*murph*.” He was 
silenced again immediately by his vegitative bindings.
	“Why?” Alita asked, sinking to her haunches. Desperately, she 
searched for a way to beat this strange opponent, who seemed happy to 
stand eternally outside her reach. -How do you fight someone who stands 
back and pushes buttons?- she wondered in panic, -if I attack again, what if 
I’m tricked into killing Daisuke in the process?-
	“My mission is none but justice,” the serene voice repeated.
	“But this is murder,” Alita surveyed the plateau for any tool she could 
use, looking for anything at all that could be perverted into a weapon.
	“Easy to commit, don’t you think?” the shadowy cloak circled 
patiently around her.[opportunity for more expose?]
	“I wouldn’t know.”
	“Oh, but you would,” the monster told her softly, “You just committed 
it nine times in a row. Not that I could say how many lives you’ve taken 
before tonight, especially innocent. Foolish Hunter, paid to harvest innocent 
souls. Paid to create hells.”
	“You tricked me.”
	“You cannot deceive one who is not willing to take part in a deception. 
Had you not raised your fists, not a body would have died.” the dark form 
came within several steps.
	“Right up until one manages to kill me,” Alita replied, gathering her 
feet smoothly beneath her, -one step closer, come on,- “I have every right to 
defend myself.”
	“If you only were protecting yourself; you came here to rescue this,” 
the figure gestured accusingly toward Ido, who struggled against his bonds.
	“He’s innocent in this,” Alita said, waiting and wishing for the next step 
her enemy would take.
	“Is he?” the form looked closely at her, “Have you ever once asked 
him why he hunts?” there was a sarcastic snort, “never was a Tipharean so 
noble. He’s more deserving of my treatment than even you!”
	“LAIR!” sizzling plasma scorched through the conduit of her body, 
sqeezed and concentrated by electromagnetic fields until it burst in a hyper 
velocity stream from the tip of her finger. Alita’s hand jumped off the ground 
propelled by a brilliant blue jet. The stream cut a narrow ditch across the 
plateau, until it sprayed up into the sky with all the force of an uncontrolled 
fire hose. Caught in momentary surprise by Alita’s sudden outburst, the 
killer was still in the process of dodginf when a pencil thin knife of blue fire 
raked over one side of the billowing cloak. A tatter of black substance 
fluttered free, its edge still steaming in the cool night atmosphere.
	“Clever,” was the patient response. Whipping laterally away from the 
path of Alita’s attack, the darkened form coursing through the sky like 
tangible wind.
	Driven by the powerful blast, Alita maneuvered for her next cut. 
Momentum generated by the thrust of superheated plasma spun her body 
like a dervish. She rotated around the pivot of one leg, the other coming off 
the ground to balance her. Driven by the rocket in her finger, her leg swept 
high into a counterweight position, hooking just over her opponent’s 
ducking head in a wide capoeira style kick. While the pendular kick fell, the 
orbit of her arm raised, the next pass bring the plasma torch straight into line 
with the killer’s midrift.
	Suddenly much sharper than the shadows Alita had so recently 
defeated, the killer arrived in position just before she did. One singing edge 
angled out, a flicking nip that seemed to touch her for a fraction of a moment. 
The curving cut left in its wake a slash clean through the bicept of the 
berzerker’s propulsive arm. Alita looked on in dissociated shock as her limb 
hinged in a location where it normally didn’t. Unbottled plasma erupted 
concussively through the gap, blinding Alita with its electric blue corona. 
What was left of the arm went one way, while she went the other.
	Her head spinning from the dizzying shock, Alita tumbled head over 
heel. Gravity proved in no way to be her friend as it dashed her several times 
against a ground she was still too dazzled to see. When she finally came to a 
stop, she spat out the choking fluid that filled her mouth and tried to roll onto 
her knees. For a moment, her brain failed to gauge the adsence the arm she’d 
just lost.
	“Spectacular demonstration of the berzerker body’s tenacity, but I’m 
afraid my schedule begins to run short. Shall we see if it will do what I think it 
will?”
	“Huh?” she asked in a daze, staggering as she pulled her feet beneath 
her.
	Punctuated by a popping hiss, another brilliant explosion threw Alita 
onto her chest.
	-ouch,- she wanted to say, suddenly unable to speak or breath. 
Clasping at her throat she tried to cough up the terrible tasting phelgm that 
collected in the back of her mouth. Her head continued to tell her she was 
tumbling before she realized exactly what position her body was occupying. 
Deploying her legs and remaining arm, Alita managed to roll herself onto her 
back. Blinking away the tears that were in her eyes, she tried abortively to sit 
up.
	“Maybe it isn’t what I thought it was,” speculated an annoyingly calm 
voice.
	Finally straining to lift her head slightly off the ground, Alita managed 
to assign dimension to her surroundings. Brimstone odor burned her nose. 
Through the flickering spots that were beginning to pile up over her vision, 
she realized that her chest was missing. Tendrils of smoke wound upward 
away from the new born body cavity. Searing panic clenched her.
	-I’m dying!-
	Kneeling close over her, casting a shadow with Tiphares’ golden light, 
was the shape of a robe. “It would seem that I’ll now need to change my 
plans,” came the quiet voice.
	A spark of adrenaline shocked through Alita, changing the world a 
pallor of red. Screaming a silent scream, the scream of one who had nothing 
left to lose, one of her legs flashed up. Her teeth tightly clenched, she planted 
her most powerful kick right into the dead center of the crouching shadow. 
Then she could see Tiphares again, the grunt of her enemy echoing through 
her ears.
	Instead of trying to sit up, Alita kipped straight to her feet with the 
emmense strength of her legs. Her enemy was sprawled some distance away, 
the form of a body plainly visible under the rippled black cloth. Alita tried to 
barrel forward, but couldn’t maintain her balance. She fell into a heap on her 
hands and knees.
	A booming echo reverberated through her skull, -SELF REPAIR 
MODE ACTIVATED, RESTORING LIFE SUPPORT FUNCTION.- Suddenly, 
Alita could breathe again. Dropping to her knees and resting her forehead 
momentarily against the ground, she gulped down breath after delicious 
breath. Once she’d recovered sufficiently to stabilize her vision, a downward 
glance revealed the that chest of the berzerker body as alive with activity. 
Probing pseudopods formed of some combination of biological and 
mechanical components ripped into the ground beneath her. They spread and 
engulfed fragments of metal, extracting rebar from chunks of broken 
concrete, spontaneously looping and reforming, transforming into solid 
cybernetic mechanisms that reinserted themselves into her chest cavity. Even 
as she watched, in stunned silence, the organs withdrew, metamorphosing to 
the familiar armoring of her chest.
	Alita sat back in surprised wonderment.
	“So,” came the voice of her cloaked enemy, observing from some 
distance away, “it is what I thought afterall. Perfect.”
	-RESTORING CHASIS,- the berzerker’s voice boomed through Alita’s 
mind. The flat cleavage where her arm had been amputated suddenly boiled 
to life. Runners of silvery substance pulsed out, lacing together to form 
mechanical substructures. The arachnid infrastructure rapidly wove itself into 
muscles and bone, quickly restoring the arm’s armored covering to its 
original condition. Alita found herself flexing new fingers less than half a 
minute later. -RETURNING TO STANDBY MODE,- the berzerker announced 
before going silent.
	“It would seem,” Alita stood, flicking her black hair out of her eyes. 
Satisfaction beginning to settle over her, she turned to face the ebony figure 
that was just now climbing to its feet, “that I’m not so easy to kill afterall.”
	“If I were trying to kill you,” came the response, “rest assured that you 
would be as dead as the rest of your comrades.”
	“So you say,” Alita hissed, trying to gain a feel for her current 
surroundings. Where she stood now was on a slope of the massive junk pile. 
Apparently she had fallen from the summit during the last attack.
	“Why would I destroy a wonderous piece of equipment that would 
enable me to complete my mission that much faster?” asked the shadow, 
stretching out an ephemeral arm. A harsh pop-hiss telegraphed the flight of 
another bolt.
	Her hand springing up from her side, Alita snatched the bolt out of the 
air before it ever came close, “You’ve tried this before, killer. You’re running 
out of clever tricks.”
	“So you seem to believe,” the killer answered.
	Writhing suddenly in her grip, the projectile bit her, “What!?” between 
her clenched fingers, the shaft contorted, melting like so much metallic ice. 
Minute threads projected from the glob, enabling it to permeate the tough 
berzerker armor. In a matter of moments, it melded straight through into 
Alita’s hand. The back side, behind her knuckles, rippled under internal 
forces, suddenly festering open into a mass of biomechanical tendrils that 
started to make their way back down her arm. It was a horde of cybernetic 
maggots threatening to eat her alive!
	-WARNING,- echoed through her mind, -BERZERKER MODE SEAL 
UNSTABLE. AUTOMATIC RELEASE IMMINENT.-
	“Now, shall we see what that body can do?” the killer was saying.
	Alita didn’t think to answer. Instead, she summoned up the balance of 
her electromagnetic might in an angry energetic sparkle that surrounded her 
in a halo of lightning arcs. Blowing air through her body, she generated 
stream of plasma from the finger tip of her other hand. Rather than waste it 
attacking the Killer, she turned the blue fire on herself. Like a warm knife 
through butter, she severed her own arm at the elbow.
	-SEAL INTEGRITY RESTORED.-[maybe shortly after this would be a 
good place to wrap it up?]
	Weight on her arm suddenly slackened, her shoulder recoiling from 
the sudden shift in mass. It was freed from its attachment, dropping to the 
ground at her feet with a releaving thump. Boiling with the fury of an over 
heated blob of mercury, the object that hit the ground bore no resemblance 
to what she’d just cut from her arm.
	The thing, a machine that had somewhere purloined itself a facsimile 
life, raged in desperate, undirected activity. Tenticle structures burst out of the 
organoform blob, sculpting circuitry conduits that clawed their way into the 
junkyard ground. Growing from the size of a human forearm, the thing 
quickly swelled until it was bigger than a huge melon. And yet, it didn’t stop 
growing. Gathering itself, it shot upward, expanding until it was larger than 
an oak tree. Squirming appendages fanned out in all directions.
	Alita sprang away, trying to find a safe distance from this new threat. 
Its tendrils probing the ground in all directions, the thing spread desperately 
outward, ripping up huge chunks of refuse that it pulverized into bite sized 
components. Reaching an astonishing mass, like that of a small home, all of 
the searching appendages suddenly dropped what they were doing and 
reached straight up into the night sky. It gave a ground trembling shutter 
then fell flat with an enormous crash. At last, it moved no more, simulating to 
perfection the appearance of death.
	“As I thought,” the shadowy menace said from behind Alita, “without 
energy, it dies quickly. Quite benefitial that I have the entire body to work 
with.”
	“What?..” Alita recovered herself, remembering exactly who her 
enemy was. Without even thinking, she dove to the side, avoiding narrowly 
the tip of an incoming dart. Her hair flipping across before her vision as she 
snapped head about, she searched for her opponent. The ebony section of 
belligerent night was nowhere and everywhere, the haunting voice arising 
from no direction in particular.
	“How long can you hold out before I accomplish my mission?”
	Further flichettes whistled through the air, their passage shimmering 
in the golden Tipharean light. Alita danced out of the way, once again using 
the berzerker’s terrific power. Where she had stood an instant before, gouts 
of dust dislodged from the ground with the impacting projectiles. Hissing 
furiously, further shots were on the way in, fired by an unseen weapon.
	Not a second to lose, Alita broke into a full out run, a lioness chased by 
invisible hunters. Wind whipped past her face, the berzerker’s legs carrying 
her ten meters a bound. Each fall of her feet broke loose a plume of dust, 
belying the strength of her body. She ran a zig-zagging course, projectiles 
smacking into the ground around her despite her incredible speed. -There has 
to be a way. If I could just disable that damned cloak.-
	It was then that a half conceived course of action blossomed in her 
mind, -...if I had that. Where’d did it fall to?- Alita rushed head long back up 
the slope, searching the for summit. With a single bound, she cleared a jutting 
frame of steel girders. A piling of concrete slabs passed below her like an ant 
hill. How far had she tumbled down the hill after the killer had taken her 
arm? Where was the summit?
	Tingling at her side, the berzerker reawakened long enough to repair 
her most recent, self-inflicted injury. Alita’s jumping balance was fully 
restored as the body reoriented its internal mass to craft for her a new 
forearm. In her mad dash up the hill, she hardly noticed when her running 
became more balanced by the reacqusition of an arm.
	Then she saw Ido, trapped in blossom of a huge flower composed of 
shadows. It was the summit. She leaped over the crest onto the plateau, -now, 
where was I?- Dashing over the roughly flat ground, she oriented herself, -
Oh yes, I was over there when that bastard took my arm the first time. So it 
must’ve fallen.... that way.- she glanced off down the opposing slope, 
stopping then to take a short glance at Ido. Ido’s face displayed shock at 
seeing her again in one piece. Had Ido known the nature of the berzerker 
when he’d given it to her? She couldn’t tell at a glance.
	More darts whizzed past Alita’s head, reminding her of the phantom 
killer that was hot on her heels. She dove in one leap over the far side of the 
summit, her eyes scouring the grounds below, -Where did it fall to? Where?-
	“You are certainly working hard to protract this engagement,” the 
killer called from behind her, “Does the great Alita so fear what exists on the 
other side?”
	“I’ve been there already,” Alita answered vaguely, she landed in the 
middle of a particular pile, scrabbling momentarily through the volumes of 
miscellaneous junk until projectiles from the killer forced her into the air 
again, -Where is it? Just one second of luck, please!- “I really don’t remember 
what it was like.”
	“It won’t be so bad,” came the androgynous voice again, “At least 
you’ll incomparably famous before you go. For a hunter, you must admit 
that such a prospect is really very good.”
	“I don’t want to know,” Alita called, scraping as quickly as she could 
through the junk of another pile. -Please God,- she plead silently, beginning 
to run through her other options, -where is it?-
	For one timeless moment, she considered amputating herself again in 
order to get what she needed. A second of coherent pain to buy a lifetime 
back, wasn’t that a fair trade? What if the killer guessed what she was 
attempting and devised a strategy around it? If she followed the path of 
amputating herself, her enemy would certainly know what she had in mind.
	Then her eyes fell on it.
	Half hidden from vantage points up the hill, caught in a nook between 
two massive slabs of concrete wreckage, clenched as if ready to deliver a 
killing blow, was a hand. It was Alita’s hand, a remainder of the arm the killer 
had severed during her plasma jet attack. The weapon she’d been searching 
for.
	Weaving with her body to avoid incoming darts, she sprang across the 
gulf seperating her from her objective. She bashed a mansized piece of rusty 
piping out of her way, folding into a forward roll at the last second. Deftly she 
snatched up the disconnected limb on the way past, pulling it in close to her 
body so that her opponent wouldn’t see what she’d just picked up. A one 
armed handspring drove her high into the air, enabling her to spiral her body 
around into a covering position as she landed.
	Alita dashed further down the slope, searching for a steep grade that 
would put her opponent high above her. One glance over her shoulder 
confirmed that the lighting conditions were still wrong to afford her visibility. 
In the process, she almost earned a bolt in the forehead for her effort. -Must 
find a steeper slope.- she told herself, careening through a rusted frame of I-
beams. The clattering crash sent her head over heels before she skillfully 
managed to put her feet back beneath her. Not that the berzerker body felt 
any damage.
	Jumping a particularly sheer dropoff, Alita spun herself around in the 
air. Landing so that she faced the lip above her, she skidded backward down 
the slope. The crest of the ridge towering over her cut a sharp line of contrast 
across Tiphares’ brilliant face. Alita strained her eyes, waiting for the moment 
of truth.
	Wavering in a state of almost half-being, a darkened shadow welled up 
along the ledge above her. The figure cast an almost perfect silhouette against 
the sky city’s golden light. As punctually as Alita had hoped, the killer fired 
bolt in her direction. Infused with the scorching berzerker speed and exquisite 
Panzer Kunst reflexes, Alita willfully transposed the disconnect appendage 
between the oncoming dart and her body. With a sparking clank, the 
projectile slammed home in the dead center of the piece of makeshift armor. 
Like clockwork, the unattached fragment of shed berzerker came alive in her 
hand.
	Gathering herself like a professional baseball pitcher, Alita coiled back 
and sighted. With all of her force, every iota of the berzerker’s strength, she 
threw her body forward. Motion leapt from leg to hips then up through her 
shoulder, flinging her arm forward at terrific velocity, making it appear as if 
in four places at once. Her hand went supersonic as it passed her ear, 
releasing the writhing fragment of pseudo-berzerker at the apex of the 
forward thrust. Turned suddenly into a projectile, the asymmetrical chuck of 
renegade technology left a vapor plume behind it, kicking up a trail of dust in 
its faster-than-sound wake.
	Caught unexpectedly where Alita could easily aim by Tiphares’ 
damning light, the killer barely saw the retaliation in enough time to react. 
Even then, the shady nemisis nearly managed to make it out of the path of 
the thrown projectile in time. The berzerk berzerker’s hand, transformed 
into a flying mesh of squirming tentacles, sunk its starving teeth into the tail 
of the magnificent, black, billowing cloak on the way through. It took hold 
and began to feed.
	A fast flying mass suddenly catching in the swirling cloak acted, bola-
like, to spin the killer’s body in a full circle. Serpentine circuits branched out 
along the billowing garb, burrowing violently through as the weapon 
frantically devoured what material it could in the desperate search for energy. 
Just barely managing stay afoot, the killer gave an infuriated scream before 
casting the dissolving cloak aside. Alita saw the silhouette of a human form 
retreating back over the hill crest, running frantically in the opposite 
direction.
	Cutting a wide path around the spasming mass of cybernetics that had 
consumed the killer’s awesome cloak, Alita gave chase. Clearing the 
junkyard hillock, she immediately caught sight of a slender person making 
hasty headway up the slope of the uneven hill. The figure carried a 
monsterous weapon that looked like a cross between a Tommy gun and a 
crossbow in one arm, and a bulging pack that seemed almost ready to burst 
in the other. So burdened, he wasn’t making fast headway.
	In a single leap, Alita landed square on the Killer’s back, sending the 
huge weapon skittering out of reach. With a crash, they landed in a dusty pile. 
Instinct taking hold, Alita quickly wrestled the killer into an unbreakable 
choke. With her free arm, she pinned one of the killer’s arms across the 
surprisingly narrow back.
	“Let me go, you Beast!” demanded a shrill young female voice.
	“What..?” Alita asked in silent shock. For the first time, she dared to 
look at the killer’s face.
	Furious blue eyes stared back up at her from beneath a flood of mussy 
blond hair. No older than fifteen, the girl struggled against her immovable 
grip, the youthful face twisted in a look of absolute fury. Tears of hate 
dribbled down the dusty cheeks.
	“Is this another trick?” Alita demanded in the child’s ear, “Where’s the 
real killer?” 	Ceasing her struggle, the girl began to laugh softly, “I’m sorry 
the truth fails to meet your distinguished standard, Hunter.” When the girl’s 
free hand came up holding one of the deadly bolts, all doubt left Alita’s mind. 
One knee slammed into the skinny side forced the girl to drop the bolt.
	Alita twisted the girl onto her back and pinned her bodily, “Why, why 
have you done this? Why are you killing people?”
	“You’ve stopped me, and you’ll get the money for my head,” the 
spiteful little voice growled, “what does it matter to you why a normal person 
would want to kill?”
	“It matters,” Alita told her, “I want to know why!”
	“Then you’ll carrying that question to your grave, Hunter,” the girl’s 
hateful face twisted into a morbid smile, “I sincerely hope you think it worth 
dying for.”
	Alita’s brow furrowed, her eyes glancing down the length of the 
skinny body. There were pockets everywhere, filled with all manner of odd 
end. A bandolier lay across the middle of the thin chest, accentuating the 
girl’s practically non-existant figure. The thick belt at the girl’s waist caught 
Alita’s attention. A small digital display in the buckle was counting backward.
	“Hm, you like my style?” the girl asked, “there’s enough fissile 
Uranium [55kg?]there to obliterate an entire block of scrapyard. Laying here, 
I’ll be a shadow. And you, there won’t be any evidence as to whether you 
ever existed. Only your brainless Tipharean friend will be the wiser. To keep 
you from getting bold, it’s connected to a deadman’s switch,” Watching the 
twitch in Alita’s face, she continued, “And, it’s designed to detonate the 
instant someone tampers with it, so don’t begin to imagine how fast and 
strong your cyberrobotic hands are. Stick around if you don’t believe me.”
	“Why?” Alita asked in quiet disbelief.
	“If I’m going to go,” the younger killer replied, “I’m taking a Hunter 
with me!”
	So Alita let the girl go and ran.
	“The distance of one block, Hunter!” the girl’s high pitched voice called 
after her, “shall we see if you’re fast enough to make it?”
	Defeated again, Alita didn’t answer. Instead, she concentrated on the 
rhythmic rise and fall of her feet.

***

	Flash blinded, Ido hung limply in his prison. Blinking his eyes to get rid 
of grime and tears, all he could see was a heavy layer of mist wafting around 
him. He was certain he could make his escape if only the clamorous ringing in 
his head would go away. Mumbling beneath his breath, he wished 
desperately he could have placed his hands over his ears when the massive 
explosion had gone off.
	Redoubling his efforts in another escape attempt, hoping against hope 
that he would be able to break free this time. Then strong, gentle arms 
enshrouded him.
	“Hold on,” said a familiar voice over the buzzing in his ears, “I’ll have 
you out of there in just a second.”
	Squinting through his flash blindness, he could make out Alita’s face 
amid the fog.
	Alita’s powerful arms rapidly freed him from the restaining material, 
tearing away sections of plastic cloth. She ripped the gag from his mouth and 
gradually lowered him to the ground.
	“What was that explosion,” He asked quietly, letting her assist him.
	“It was nuclear, I think.”
	“I guessed that,” Ido replied, “but where did it come from.”
	“It was the Killer,” Alita said.
	“Did you get him then?” he wondered.
	Alita shook her head in frustration, “Him? It was a her.”
	“A her?” Ido asked in surprise. It was rare that a woman commit [the 
kind of] violence that landed her on the factory bounty list, “Ah... did you get 
her then?”
	“I don’t know. She could have escaped.”
	In a low tone, Alita told the whole story about her encounter with the 
Hunter Warrior killer. She described each ploy the killer had used, each 
reversal of strategy. She told of killing Lazarus and of the fight with the 
hunters that Ido had witnessed. Ido took on a surprised look when she 
outlined the newly revealed power of the berzerker body and how she’d 
used it too foil the Killer’s last tactic.
	“...On the hill, when she told me about the nuclear weapon, I didn’t 
know what to say. She had me again, plain and simple. I should’ve stayed 
and killed her. Just to make sure, I should’ve rammed my fist right through 
her face.” Alita ended her account with a quiet sigh of regret, “But I couldn’t. 
The reason I chased the Killer up here was to save you. I had to make certain 
you were alright.”
	Ido nodded, “I gathered that when she abducted me. She tricked you 
into killing nine hunters tonight, but you’re lucky she didn’t manage to trick 
you again with that last strategy.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“I’ve long suspected the nature of the berzerker body. There were one 
or two gadgets in there the purpose of which I still didn’t understand. And 
the shape of the body didn’t seem to agree with the exaggerated stories of 
berzerker soldiers committing acts that were considered mass destruction. 
This seal you mentioned? The Berzerker seal... it could be that breaking the 
seal would activate this mass destruction mode. This healing mode you 
described, it sounds like nanotechnology.”
	“Nanotechnology?” Alita asked softly, “I haven’t heard of it before.”
	“Robots of microscopic size,” Ido exclaimed, “smart metals if you will. 
Scavenging and multiplying on a level that you can’t easily observe. It’s 
considered to be the most powerful evolution of human technology. From 
the stories, if your berzerker body HAD gone active, it would’ve forced you 
to destroy the entire Scrapyard against your will. If the Killer had activated 
the berzerker mode, you would have killed not only every hunter in the 
scrapyard, every innocent, and probably even most of the tiphareans as well 
before the body degraded. She wasn’t kidding when she said it would make 
you incomparably famous. You would unwittingly have become a horseman 
of the Apocolypse. The Hunter Killer must have been after your body from 
the very beginning. Come to think of it...” Ido stopped.
	“What, what is it?”
	“When the Killer took me,” Ido said thoughtfully, trying to clear soot 
from his eyes, “He... I mean she... mentioned that she need me to ‘handle the 
Berzerker.’ She had to have been after you from the start. She even 
mentioned that, in killing you, her job would become one of collection rather 
than of violence.”
	Alita shivered, “And it almost worked.”
	Ido shook his head, “Not worth thinking about. Come on, help me 
stand. We have to get out of here before this fallout gets any worse. As it is, 
we’ll be on radiation sickness treatments for the next month.”
	Putting her shoulder under his, Alita helped Ido to his feet, “What 
about the people living here in the Ghetto?”
	“Just hope they have the sense to not eat the snow. At least it was only 
a small nuke.”
	“But they’re so poor...”
	“Don’t let the Killer’s tricks fool you,” Ido told her with a humorless 
smile, “on the far side of the Ghetto, there are several enclaves of people that 
have built themselves some enviably comfortable lives here, if a bit simple. 
Who else do you think barred up the entrances into Factory 17 when the 
biker problems were going on?”
	Alita said nothing, helping Ido walk.
	“To think,” he mused, “one of the most fearsome killers in scrapyard 
memory and it was a fifteen year old girl! My God, to think that anyone in 
the scrapyard could have produced technology of that level. Could someone 
else have been helping her?”
	Giving a shrug, Alita did not speak for a long time, “Who could have 
hurt her so...?”
	“...” it was Ido’s turn to be quiet.
	“Diasuke,” Alita began, looking closely at him, “Are you a Tipharean?”
	Ido fingered the mark on his forehead absently, but replied, “I think 
that will have to remain for another time.”
	“If she doesn’t reappear first,” Alita intoned hauntingly.
	Together, they made their way out of Factory 17.

*fin*