Koros45 doesn't own GUNNM/Battle Angel Alita, or Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's.
Also this is post GUNNM's original ending of the manga (Before the events of The Last Order), so spoilers for the manga are rampant. If you haven't read the original manga yet it is recommended before reading further. It also starts out pre-5D's anime but will have some spoilers as the plot gets rolling. Both are fantastic works in their own right so consider this a warning to stop right now and check them both out before you continue.
Ride 1: Junk Collector
Gally remembered the euphoria of victory, Nova's body falling to the ground from the work of her Damascus blade. The feeble old man who had caused her so much pain was finally dead. The feeling that she'd be able to see Figure again, and maybe after that, Lou and Doc as well. Finally her battle against him was all over.
Then came the bomb outside of the inn, the mechanical bomb doll's grip too sudden and unexpected to react to. Gally struggled as much as she could with her one remaining arm, but she simply didn't have enough time to stop the impending explosion. Things around her flashed in a purple haze as the bomb's timer ran out.
Then things went black. In the ether she dreamed of space and the name Yoko.
/
Gally opened her functioning eye saw birds flying overhead, in a red haze that gradually leveled out to a grey sky. Her head was pounding and it took a moment for her to regain her senses. She blinked to make sure the eyelid still working. And then she raised her right hand.
Still there. The TUNED body's synthetic skin reflecting in the light of the morning. Wherever this was. Gally expected that to be all she had left, but she was still graced with the presence of legs. That didn't make any sense given that she'd just been set to explode by Nova's bomb, but she knew better than to question a good thing.
Then there was the whine of engines in the distance. Gally stood and immediately slipped, only after falling back down did she remember one of her feet had been cleaved by the fight with her false copy. Now the stump was fashioned like a peg leg. Gally grunted and helped herself up a second time, shaking her head so that her shoulder-length mess of hair was free of her one good eye's line of sight.
Was this Nova's plan as well? Did the scientist somehow plan for life after death? Those questions both were unsettling, but at the moment Gally couldn't afford to think of what-ifs. At the moment she had to think of survival.
She took a good look around herself. It was far different from the wastes beyond Nova's Granite Inn. The place was in poverty, a lot like Scrap-Iron City. Yet this was not the same. No one was out and Gally had a bad feeling that if she stayed out, she'd know exactly why. She was in an alleyway of sorts, with a dead end straight ahead of her. The other direction was far more promising, showing a walled in town with derelict skyscrapers and abandoned warehouses. And beyond that was mountains and mountains of scrap, piled up by the upper-class most likely.
Alita smelled the air. If anything, all of it was nostalgic.
She began moving forwards using the sheathed Damascus Blade as a crutch, walking towards the heaps of trash.
/
"No, Nerve. It needs to be faster than the last model. We have to make this thing with at least a five-year lifespan." Yusei said in the earpiece.
He was out in the trash dunes, looking for parts. The crimson D-Wheel he saw in his dreams was coming along, but it wasn't quite done yet. He just needed a suitable motor and beyond that an acceleration control chip for the CPU and then he could get to work. Usually Taka or Rally would be with him, searching for parts but today they were both resting. Yusei felt bad for deferring the work to his friends while he theory crafted what the machine in question would be able to do, following his dreams to catch fleeting Stardust.
"Well that just means the part you need will be hard to come by, unless a Security officer threw out his model this morning, and nobody jacked it for parts yet." Nerve's voice said.
"Right." Yusei said, wishing he'd been more awake and sociable. Yet at the moment it was the most he could do to just respond. He hadn't gotten a good sleep, dreams of the past haunting him.
Yusei looked down and took a breath. There was ribbed D-Wheel engine at his feet, but the main part he'd need was gone. Still, he was in the right spot. The man smelled a strong scent of gas and pulled a pair of goggles over his eyes, and threw a white scarf around his face. He didn't mind getting dirty from the scavenger hunt, but only if he yielded suitable results.
Yusei moved to another trash pile, stopping as he found a pair of skates that Rally might like. He gave the faded pink wheels a spin and threw them in his collecting bag.
"Found something Rally might like." Yusei chuckled.
Then he stopped. Below the skates was a beaten and worn Duel Monsters card. Yusei smiled and he bent to pick up the discarded treasure.
"Hey, if you can hold cards, you can duel!" Yusei heard. He turned to find another man out, looking for the same kind of treasure among the garbage.
The man was one that Yusei recognized, a member of a rival duel gang from two years ago. He wore a faded karate uniform and removed a football helmet, his own protection against the current environment. The man let his long, lavender mess of hair from the helmet and raised the duel disk with a grin, his thin eyes wide with a challenge.
"Hang on, Nerve. Someone wants a duel." Yusei said, raising his own duel disk.
"Well then, show them who the strongest in Satellite is, Yusei!" The man cheered him on from the other end of the comm.
Yusei pulled off the goggles, blue eyes narrowing as he loosened the scarf so the man could see his face.
"I won't turn down a duel. Let's begin." Yusei said as the two got ready.
"DUEL!"
/
Gally heard the sounds of battle ahead, tensing as her Panzer Kunst was ready to go – even with just one arm. She cleared a mound of the garbage, looking down to see two parties battling it out. One was a man in a blue jacket with red shoulder and elbow pads attached to it, wearing a white scarf, and the other was a man who dressed like a tacky movie samurai. Curiously, they were just staring each other down. Gally saw numbers projected by holograms next to each man, but didn't know what they signified.
The man in samurai garb spoke and Gally saw the other man was calmly listening. What kind of fight was this?
"You like that? Torrential Tribute destroyed your Turret Warrior and your other monsters before you could do anything with them! Even the vaulted Synchro Summon is helpless before it! Will that be all?" The man asked. He was grinning (LP: 800).
"What a powerful trap." The other man said stoically. Gally saw that he was focused, staring ahead with blue eyes that didn't reveal his inner emotions (LP: 500).
"I end my turn." The man with the blue jacket said.
The samurai man smiled. "Then I draw! And play Samurai of the Ice Barrier!"
He played a card of some sort on the gauntlet attached to his arm, and in a burst of light a masked and helmeted man appeared, wearing a suit of ice armor, and wielding a sharp blade (4/1800/0). Gally was taken aback as the man that just appeared had no aura of his own to speak of.
"Now I attack with my Samurai and finish this duel!" The man commanded as the manifestation leaped forwards.
"Trap, activate! Guard Block!" The other man countered as the blade struck his gauntlet. The other man took no damage from the attack as the blade was repelled, the Samurai falling back to his summoner's field.
"Guard Block reduced the damage I'd take to zero and then I can draw a card!" The other man said, pulling a card from a slot on his own gauntlet.
"Ergh! Well in any case, you're on the ropes now!" The samurai man jeered. "Turn end."
"Draw!" The man in blue said, pulling another card from the gauntlet and smiling. "Here it is." He said softly. "I Summon Speed Warrior!" The man said.
Gally felt a sense of shock as a lanky warrior appeared – clad a thick ski visor, grey armor, a padded leather under-suit, and a pair of skates. The warrior looked almost exactly like a Motorball combatant (2/900/400).
"Hmph. That's only got nine-hundred attack points!" The samurai man said with a huff.
"True, but the turn it's normal summoned, its attack points double when it attacks!" The man in blue said. "Furthermore, the equip spell, Junk Attack!"
The raven haired man played another card and his lanky grey warrior glowed in a golden aura.
"Now go, Speed Warrior! Attack Samurai of the Ice Barrier! Sonic Edge!" The man stated, pointing straight at the samurai as Speed Warrior nodded and lept into the air, slamming into the Samurai as his target thrust its sword forwards in a counter.
Then the blade shattered as the Samurai broke apart into fragments of light with a distinct shattering sound.
"But how did your monster survive? It should've been a double KO!" The other man asked.
"Because when Shield Warrior is in my Graveyard, I can remove it from play to protect another monster from being destroyed in battle." The man in blue said.
"Wait! Speed Warrior!? I know that card! Could you be Yusei Fudo of Team Satisfaction?!" The samurai man said in shock, taking a step back.
The 'Yusei' in question nodded, stretching his outstretched palm towards his opponent. "And now you'll take Junk Attack's effect: half of your Samurai's attack points will be subtracted from your life-points."
The samurai duelist grunted as his 'life-points' fell.
"Gah! I didn't know better! If my team fought your team before and lost, what was I thinking?" The man said with a groan (800 → 0).
"Hey, don't worry about it. It was a fun duel. You almost had me." The man named Yusei said.
"Man! I cut you off with my trap before you could Synchro Summon! I thought I'd won after that!" The man admitted. "Well keep that card then. And good luck finding more stuff in these wastes." The man said with a wave before he left to investigate his own junk pile.
/
Gally watched from the top of the scrap pile, seeing the man called Yusei looking at the card as he slid it into a case on his belt containing more cards.
"That was a serious match between them. I don't know what it is, but they've both got gear to play it and it looks like it's seen a lot of use." Gally thought, looking to the device on the man's arm – blue and white with an orange casing around the center of it. The thing looked like a wing of sorts.
As for herself, she grabbed onto part of a refrigerator to stay balanced, but the phantom memory of her foot caught her off-guard again. Gally slipped and heard herself falling as she'd closed her one good eye on the way down. There was a crunching sound as she felt the impact with her face, managing to pull herself up and take an assertive stance, brandishing the Damascus blade.
She looked to her peg leg. Maybe someone here could help with that. She didn't see any cybernetic doctors like Ido around but the right mechanic might at least be able to get her a functioning left foot again.
"Hello?" A voice called.
Gally found the man called Yusei was looking directly at her.