For those readers looking to satisfy technical curiosity, more can be learned about the Tuned, the elite agents of Tiphares (or Zalem), in the later graphic novels of Battle Angel Alita. An unconfirmed number of androids possessing Alita's face and skills were introduced in those stories. Alita fought and destroyed one of these by the skin of her teeth. Chronologically, AR-11's story happens at around the same time as the search for Barjack and ultimately, just before that final battle with Den. My choice of AR-11 was completely arbitrary.
If you are enjoying my work, expect more;-) Thanks for reading.
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Part 3: Back to the Fray
"Okay," Alita growled, her reddish brown eyes flashing, "As a Tuned Agent, how do I stop this thing?"
"We need more information on how it operates," Kate told her, "hopefully before any of the other controllers here figure out that something's wrong with you."
"Wrong with me?" Alita asked, "How does that help stop this Juggernaut thing?"
"I'll lose my job if they find out!" the woman groused, as if that was the most important aspect in all reality.
"Whatever," Alita allowed wearily, "How do we get more information?"
"It's pretty simple," Kate said, "Your body is equipped with some sophisticated sensors, but you don't have the power to fully process their input. Your interface isn't set to use them, but if you switch it into the Tuned comlink, I can get their telemetry and use my hardware up here to support you."
"And then you'll know how we can stop the Juggernaut?" Alita prompted.
"Maybe," Kate sighed, "If we can learn something more basic about how the damned thing works."
The Juggernaut blasted through a building across the way, sending a powerful spray of metal and concrete into the still-standing structures on all sides. Weakened by this indirect abuse, two other damaged buildings began ponderously to crumble. Then the glowing mass jumped, invisibly, appearing at intermittent flickers in the air, until it finally materialized as a full fledged inferno within another untouched apartment.
"How do I switch my sensors so you can access them?" Alita asked after taking a deep breath.
"It's part of your core system," Kate exclaimed, "I think you just have to want it to happen."
Stunned to silence, Alita shook her head. She didn't have a clue what to do. She lifted both hands and looked at them. Now what? Want it to happen? What was it that she wanted to happen? How could she know? She couldn't conceivably give the "Tuned comlink" within herself a cogent name, place, form or function -let alone with respect to some "sensors" she could neither remember nor feel. It was like someone telling her for the first time in her life that she had a third eyeball mounted in the middle of her forehead, despite the fact she'd never once seen such a thing looking in the mirror.
"What is it?" Kate demanded, "More problems I should know about? Your Tuned comlink hasn't changed status."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," the petite, dark-haired girl gasped, "I can't do what you're talking about."
Alita heard a bonking sound, as if someone had slammed their head against a table. Kate came back laughing dryly in several seconds, "Of course, of course. As if this couldn't get any worse!"
Back resting against the wall, Alita just stood there. What could she say? She was crazy -every piece of evidence led back to the truth. Looking at the black smoke cloud marking the location of the monster her imagination wanted her to fight, she wondered if It was even real.
A young woman, face wet with grimy tears, staggered past Alita's choice haven. She was carrying an infant wrapped in a blanket. The child did not cry. There was a man standing out in the middle of the damage path, where there used to be buildings. He glanced around in a daze, as if uncertain where he was.
Insanity aside, Alita knew what she had to do. Her only spark of clear understanding, the single constant in her life, remained Dr. Ido.
"I have to stop that thing," Alita said.
"Maybe there's something else..." Kate sighed. "Wait, yes, there might be something I can do."
"If you really can do anything," Alita mumbled. She started to make her way back in the direction of the Juggernaut. Maybe if the monster killed her, it would put her out of this protracted misery.
"Hold still a moment," was all the warning Kate gave.
One second, Alita walked along, her attention focused on the boiling smoke cloud sandwiched between the bottom of Tiphares and the Scrapyard. The next second, she lay on her back in the smoldering refuse, her eyes spinning around in her head and her ears ringing. Her arms and legs twitched uncontrollably.
"What the hell did you do to me?!" she demanded when the seizure subsided enough for her to articulate her voice.
"Did you feel that?" Kate asked eagerly, "you felt that, didn't you? You're lying down now..."
"I'm lying on my back, curse you!" Alita moaned, "If that was you, please stop trying to help me." Very stiffly, she began to drag herself to her feet.
"That was your remote system diagnostic," explained Kate, "If you felt that, it means I can help you find your comlink!"
"You can?" Alita said, wobbling on her feet. "Well, whatever you do, try not to knock me down like that again."
"That was the full system shot," Kate told her, "It's designed to help revive you if your system is knocked down and I have to bring you back. I can hit one system at a time to guide you!"
"I suppose I'll try anything if it'll help," Alita admitted. She stooped down until she sat on her knees, hoping to avoid knocking herself flat in the next seizure. She braced.
"I'll hit your expanded sensor suite," Kate began happily.
Alita jerked. Unlike before, there was a tiny buzzing in her head, back somewhere above her neck.
"Yeah," Alita nodded, "There was something there."
"Okay," Kate continued, "here's your Tuned comlink."
There was another little whine, farther away, but seemingly in her ears.
"You feel that?"
"Kind of," Alita affirmed, not certain why she was sitting still for a series of micro-seizures. It amazed her that her lack of sanity was creative enough to wind an array of physical maladies into a single cohesive hallucination.
Kate went on through a short tour, mapping out a network of shadowy spots that Alita could almost feel as connected.
"What is the point of wasting time this way?" Alita asked in annoyance.
"If you can feel this stuff," Kate noted confidently, "then maybe you can set it so I can access your sensors."
"If you say so."
"All you have to do is think about those spots I pointed out to you," Kate seemed more eager by the second.
With a small shake of her head, Alita acquiesced. "Right. This just gets worse all the time." She focused into those shadows inside, seeking something she couldn't quite touch. It felt not too different from fumbling around in a dark prison -a notion stemming from another uncertain memory. In her head, something ticked.
"Alright! Well done -11!" Kate crowed, "Your Tuned comlink has switched modes."
"Doesn't feel any different to me..." Alita mumbled.
"You switched it, but it's not in the right mode yet," Kate informed her.
Alita made the thing in her head tick again, "Sure, how 'bout this?"
"Not yet," Kate said.
Grumbling, Alita did it again, and yet again, haphazardly flipping nameless mental switches.
"Man, AR-11, your insides really are goofed up... hold on, right there!" Kate stopped her.
"Is that what you wanted?" To herself, Alita scoffed, "Everything to keep the voice in your head happy."
"It's worth both our whiles," Kate assured her, "when you see what I can do like this, you'll finally believe what I keep tell you."
"Not very damn likely," Alita hissed, starting off toward the plume of smoke. And the Juggernaut. "Now tell me what we need to do to stop that thing!"
"You need to get close enough that I can take a good clear scan," Kate informed her.
"Close to that?!" Alita exclaimed, her reddish brown eyes flashing, "Oh, no problem. You mean exactly like when you told me to run away five minutes ago?"
"You weren't listening to me, then," Kate defended herself.
"I'm barely listening to you now."
"It should be possible," Kate proclaimed, "from my earlier information, the Juggernaut is actually a carefully manipulated electromagnetic field, somehow."
"How does that help me?" Alita asked, casting a glance at the burgeoning black cloud with the glow on its underside, a mite bit closer with each step she took. The thing responsible had left an enormous amount of rubble in its wake. Further on its path, Alita could see the shape of one of the massive tubes connecting Tiphares to the ground.
"It's a field," Kate pointed out, "That's part of why our earlier attack on it failed. If you move in closer and get me some good data, maybe we can find a weakness."
Alita picked up to a jog, "Sounds good in theory. How do I tell when I'm close enough?"
"I'll let you know."
Not certain what to believe and keenly jabbed by grief each time her focus strayed, Alita trotted through the graveyard of flattened buildings. Human voices could be heard mourning in every shadow. Fires flickered amid the wreckage -likely fueled by components of biological import other than timber. Warm and cold air gusts, leavings of the monster, washed across the rift. A lonely deckman, half its side missing, bumped repeatedly into a wall, saying each time, "mawther, mawther."
Past a broken foundation forming a slight rise, furnace light blossomed. It was there. While Alita watched, the plasmatic orb scattered yet another platoon of ill-prepared deckmen. They had a large, two legged walker machine with them this time, but the monster slashed it cleanly in half without the faintest pause.
"It _is_ a field effect," Kate suddenly told her, "You're catching the edges right now."
Alita slowed to a stop and crouched, "Am I close enough yet?"
"I'm getting data," Kate said, "but probably not enough to make a clean analysis."
"Fine," Alita expelled a breath, standing up again, "closer it is."
The Juggernaut disappeared through another building and blew it loose into an abstract cloud. Alita shielded her face and ran toward it, an act that defied logic. Of course, sanity was a prerequisite for logic in most circles.
"That thing's incredible," Kate whispered. "I can't tell where in the world it's getting its power."
"Glad you approve," Alita responded coolly. She dodged a falling steel girder with a lithe little jump, then skirted torrents of flying wreckage, as if looking to slip into the core of hurricane. A runaway chunk of tile sliced through her ragged cloak, centimeters from her side.
"There's no question from this that I can predict its movements," Kate cried excitedly, "Computer's beginning to extrapolate now."
Even standing more than a hundred meters away, Alita could barely keep her feet. The energies radiating through the open air sent kinetic jolts along her electrically driven muscles. It proceeded along its path at an almost leisurely pace, taking short detours to ruin buildings and slaughter every inhabitant of the Scrapyard foolish enough to peak out of shelter. It leapt like a flaming draft on a breeze, never quite here or there. If she moved any closer, Alita's instincts told her it would happily complete the job it had almost finished on her twice already.
"Am I close enough?" she anxiously asked. Whatever it was, it inspired horrific awe no matter how deadened her soul. Alita resisted the urge to charge straight on, puncture the core with her body and visit Ido again in the great beyond. It would be so very easy. She took an unconscious step in that direction.
"Yes," Kate spoke up, "I think you're close enough. I'm getting some pretty detailed readings on the field structures."
"How do I stop it?" Alita's eyes were glazed. The orange flames seemed to dance, like a happy blaze caressing a stone hearth. She watched it ruin another building, absently ducking aside the shrapnel. She took another step. The bristling glow looked like a doorway just a hair's breadth removed from reality. A means of escape? Was that the way out?
"What are you doing AR-11?"
"What?" Alita asked dully, feeling no force despite Kate using that name again. It wasn't her name.
"Have you been sleeping on me?" her controller demanded, "if you go closer you'll get destroyed."
Alita stopped. She had not realized she'd been walking, briskly, into the mouth of the furnace. A fleck of concrete gashed her in the forehead, right across the "11," but she hardly noticed.
Did she really want to die now?
She couldn't honestly answer. When she looked inward, she felt nothing but confusion. Was she Alita? Was she sane but with a broken memory? Was she insane but playing into the hands of a schizophrenic delusion? Was she asleep and simply dreaming? Was she dead and languishing in hell?
She laughed aloud. What did it matter if she died?
If she was an android, a duplicate, could she die?
"Alita, please stop this," Kate pleaded, obviously guessing what was in her mind.
Across on the other side of the damage path, near a cluster of collapsed buildings, a humanly form sprinted out of cover toward the demon. All Alita saw was the thin, gangly legs to conclude that it was a child. Running toward the Juggernaut?
Ido's memory flashed.
Something in her snapped. She could have no other purpose but the one which got her listening to Kate in the first place. Alita cried, "No! You'll be killed!" and charged as fast as her artificial legs would carry her toward the running child. Rubble picked up in her wake like a rooster tail. She did not dodge the falling wreckage that got in her way; she simply went through it.
Time seemed to hover in that moment, as if a switch had been thrown and the progression of her life reduced to a stupefied crawl. Everything seemed so clear.
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-to be continued-
If you are enjoying my work, expect more;-) Thanks for reading.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Part 3: Back to the Fray
"Okay," Alita growled, her reddish brown eyes flashing, "As a Tuned Agent, how do I stop this thing?"
"We need more information on how it operates," Kate told her, "hopefully before any of the other controllers here figure out that something's wrong with you."
"Wrong with me?" Alita asked, "How does that help stop this Juggernaut thing?"
"I'll lose my job if they find out!" the woman groused, as if that was the most important aspect in all reality.
"Whatever," Alita allowed wearily, "How do we get more information?"
"It's pretty simple," Kate said, "Your body is equipped with some sophisticated sensors, but you don't have the power to fully process their input. Your interface isn't set to use them, but if you switch it into the Tuned comlink, I can get their telemetry and use my hardware up here to support you."
"And then you'll know how we can stop the Juggernaut?" Alita prompted.
"Maybe," Kate sighed, "If we can learn something more basic about how the damned thing works."
The Juggernaut blasted through a building across the way, sending a powerful spray of metal and concrete into the still-standing structures on all sides. Weakened by this indirect abuse, two other damaged buildings began ponderously to crumble. Then the glowing mass jumped, invisibly, appearing at intermittent flickers in the air, until it finally materialized as a full fledged inferno within another untouched apartment.
"How do I switch my sensors so you can access them?" Alita asked after taking a deep breath.
"It's part of your core system," Kate exclaimed, "I think you just have to want it to happen."
Stunned to silence, Alita shook her head. She didn't have a clue what to do. She lifted both hands and looked at them. Now what? Want it to happen? What was it that she wanted to happen? How could she know? She couldn't conceivably give the "Tuned comlink" within herself a cogent name, place, form or function -let alone with respect to some "sensors" she could neither remember nor feel. It was like someone telling her for the first time in her life that she had a third eyeball mounted in the middle of her forehead, despite the fact she'd never once seen such a thing looking in the mirror.
"What is it?" Kate demanded, "More problems I should know about? Your Tuned comlink hasn't changed status."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," the petite, dark-haired girl gasped, "I can't do what you're talking about."
Alita heard a bonking sound, as if someone had slammed their head against a table. Kate came back laughing dryly in several seconds, "Of course, of course. As if this couldn't get any worse!"
Back resting against the wall, Alita just stood there. What could she say? She was crazy -every piece of evidence led back to the truth. Looking at the black smoke cloud marking the location of the monster her imagination wanted her to fight, she wondered if It was even real.
A young woman, face wet with grimy tears, staggered past Alita's choice haven. She was carrying an infant wrapped in a blanket. The child did not cry. There was a man standing out in the middle of the damage path, where there used to be buildings. He glanced around in a daze, as if uncertain where he was.
Insanity aside, Alita knew what she had to do. Her only spark of clear understanding, the single constant in her life, remained Dr. Ido.
"I have to stop that thing," Alita said.
"Maybe there's something else..." Kate sighed. "Wait, yes, there might be something I can do."
"If you really can do anything," Alita mumbled. She started to make her way back in the direction of the Juggernaut. Maybe if the monster killed her, it would put her out of this protracted misery.
"Hold still a moment," was all the warning Kate gave.
One second, Alita walked along, her attention focused on the boiling smoke cloud sandwiched between the bottom of Tiphares and the Scrapyard. The next second, she lay on her back in the smoldering refuse, her eyes spinning around in her head and her ears ringing. Her arms and legs twitched uncontrollably.
"What the hell did you do to me?!" she demanded when the seizure subsided enough for her to articulate her voice.
"Did you feel that?" Kate asked eagerly, "you felt that, didn't you? You're lying down now..."
"I'm lying on my back, curse you!" Alita moaned, "If that was you, please stop trying to help me." Very stiffly, she began to drag herself to her feet.
"That was your remote system diagnostic," explained Kate, "If you felt that, it means I can help you find your comlink!"
"You can?" Alita said, wobbling on her feet. "Well, whatever you do, try not to knock me down like that again."
"That was the full system shot," Kate told her, "It's designed to help revive you if your system is knocked down and I have to bring you back. I can hit one system at a time to guide you!"
"I suppose I'll try anything if it'll help," Alita admitted. She stooped down until she sat on her knees, hoping to avoid knocking herself flat in the next seizure. She braced.
"I'll hit your expanded sensor suite," Kate began happily.
Alita jerked. Unlike before, there was a tiny buzzing in her head, back somewhere above her neck.
"Yeah," Alita nodded, "There was something there."
"Okay," Kate continued, "here's your Tuned comlink."
There was another little whine, farther away, but seemingly in her ears.
"You feel that?"
"Kind of," Alita affirmed, not certain why she was sitting still for a series of micro-seizures. It amazed her that her lack of sanity was creative enough to wind an array of physical maladies into a single cohesive hallucination.
Kate went on through a short tour, mapping out a network of shadowy spots that Alita could almost feel as connected.
"What is the point of wasting time this way?" Alita asked in annoyance.
"If you can feel this stuff," Kate noted confidently, "then maybe you can set it so I can access your sensors."
"If you say so."
"All you have to do is think about those spots I pointed out to you," Kate seemed more eager by the second.
With a small shake of her head, Alita acquiesced. "Right. This just gets worse all the time." She focused into those shadows inside, seeking something she couldn't quite touch. It felt not too different from fumbling around in a dark prison -a notion stemming from another uncertain memory. In her head, something ticked.
"Alright! Well done -11!" Kate crowed, "Your Tuned comlink has switched modes."
"Doesn't feel any different to me..." Alita mumbled.
"You switched it, but it's not in the right mode yet," Kate informed her.
Alita made the thing in her head tick again, "Sure, how 'bout this?"
"Not yet," Kate said.
Grumbling, Alita did it again, and yet again, haphazardly flipping nameless mental switches.
"Man, AR-11, your insides really are goofed up... hold on, right there!" Kate stopped her.
"Is that what you wanted?" To herself, Alita scoffed, "Everything to keep the voice in your head happy."
"It's worth both our whiles," Kate assured her, "when you see what I can do like this, you'll finally believe what I keep tell you."
"Not very damn likely," Alita hissed, starting off toward the plume of smoke. And the Juggernaut. "Now tell me what we need to do to stop that thing!"
"You need to get close enough that I can take a good clear scan," Kate informed her.
"Close to that?!" Alita exclaimed, her reddish brown eyes flashing, "Oh, no problem. You mean exactly like when you told me to run away five minutes ago?"
"You weren't listening to me, then," Kate defended herself.
"I'm barely listening to you now."
"It should be possible," Kate proclaimed, "from my earlier information, the Juggernaut is actually a carefully manipulated electromagnetic field, somehow."
"How does that help me?" Alita asked, casting a glance at the burgeoning black cloud with the glow on its underside, a mite bit closer with each step she took. The thing responsible had left an enormous amount of rubble in its wake. Further on its path, Alita could see the shape of one of the massive tubes connecting Tiphares to the ground.
"It's a field," Kate pointed out, "That's part of why our earlier attack on it failed. If you move in closer and get me some good data, maybe we can find a weakness."
Alita picked up to a jog, "Sounds good in theory. How do I tell when I'm close enough?"
"I'll let you know."
Not certain what to believe and keenly jabbed by grief each time her focus strayed, Alita trotted through the graveyard of flattened buildings. Human voices could be heard mourning in every shadow. Fires flickered amid the wreckage -likely fueled by components of biological import other than timber. Warm and cold air gusts, leavings of the monster, washed across the rift. A lonely deckman, half its side missing, bumped repeatedly into a wall, saying each time, "mawther, mawther."
Past a broken foundation forming a slight rise, furnace light blossomed. It was there. While Alita watched, the plasmatic orb scattered yet another platoon of ill-prepared deckmen. They had a large, two legged walker machine with them this time, but the monster slashed it cleanly in half without the faintest pause.
"It _is_ a field effect," Kate suddenly told her, "You're catching the edges right now."
Alita slowed to a stop and crouched, "Am I close enough yet?"
"I'm getting data," Kate said, "but probably not enough to make a clean analysis."
"Fine," Alita expelled a breath, standing up again, "closer it is."
The Juggernaut disappeared through another building and blew it loose into an abstract cloud. Alita shielded her face and ran toward it, an act that defied logic. Of course, sanity was a prerequisite for logic in most circles.
"That thing's incredible," Kate whispered. "I can't tell where in the world it's getting its power."
"Glad you approve," Alita responded coolly. She dodged a falling steel girder with a lithe little jump, then skirted torrents of flying wreckage, as if looking to slip into the core of hurricane. A runaway chunk of tile sliced through her ragged cloak, centimeters from her side.
"There's no question from this that I can predict its movements," Kate cried excitedly, "Computer's beginning to extrapolate now."
Even standing more than a hundred meters away, Alita could barely keep her feet. The energies radiating through the open air sent kinetic jolts along her electrically driven muscles. It proceeded along its path at an almost leisurely pace, taking short detours to ruin buildings and slaughter every inhabitant of the Scrapyard foolish enough to peak out of shelter. It leapt like a flaming draft on a breeze, never quite here or there. If she moved any closer, Alita's instincts told her it would happily complete the job it had almost finished on her twice already.
"Am I close enough?" she anxiously asked. Whatever it was, it inspired horrific awe no matter how deadened her soul. Alita resisted the urge to charge straight on, puncture the core with her body and visit Ido again in the great beyond. It would be so very easy. She took an unconscious step in that direction.
"Yes," Kate spoke up, "I think you're close enough. I'm getting some pretty detailed readings on the field structures."
"How do I stop it?" Alita's eyes were glazed. The orange flames seemed to dance, like a happy blaze caressing a stone hearth. She watched it ruin another building, absently ducking aside the shrapnel. She took another step. The bristling glow looked like a doorway just a hair's breadth removed from reality. A means of escape? Was that the way out?
"What are you doing AR-11?"
"What?" Alita asked dully, feeling no force despite Kate using that name again. It wasn't her name.
"Have you been sleeping on me?" her controller demanded, "if you go closer you'll get destroyed."
Alita stopped. She had not realized she'd been walking, briskly, into the mouth of the furnace. A fleck of concrete gashed her in the forehead, right across the "11," but she hardly noticed.
Did she really want to die now?
She couldn't honestly answer. When she looked inward, she felt nothing but confusion. Was she Alita? Was she sane but with a broken memory? Was she insane but playing into the hands of a schizophrenic delusion? Was she asleep and simply dreaming? Was she dead and languishing in hell?
She laughed aloud. What did it matter if she died?
If she was an android, a duplicate, could she die?
"Alita, please stop this," Kate pleaded, obviously guessing what was in her mind.
Across on the other side of the damage path, near a cluster of collapsed buildings, a humanly form sprinted out of cover toward the demon. All Alita saw was the thin, gangly legs to conclude that it was a child. Running toward the Juggernaut?
Ido's memory flashed.
Something in her snapped. She could have no other purpose but the one which got her listening to Kate in the first place. Alita cried, "No! You'll be killed!" and charged as fast as her artificial legs would carry her toward the running child. Rubble picked up in her wake like a rooster tail. She did not dodge the falling wreckage that got in her way; she simply went through it.
Time seemed to hover in that moment, as if a switch had been thrown and the progression of her life reduced to a stupefied crawl. Everything seemed so clear.
-----------------------------------------------------
-to be continued-