The music thumped low in the background of the hideout, static synth beats weaving between bursts of laughter and the hiss of opened cans. Maine and his crew were riding high after a quick hit on a corpo transport—clean, fast, and profitable.
"See that haul?" Pilar said, legs kicked up on a shattered crate, "smoothest run all month."
"I did most of the work," Rebecca said, flipping a small knife between her fingers while grinning wickedly. "And I looked good doing it."
"You always look good," Pilar shot back with a wink.
Lucy leaned against a concrete pillar, silent as ever, plugged into her cyberdeck and sifting through stolen corp chatter. Kiwi stood nearby, eyes scanning lightstreams from her goggles, mapping out their next move.
Maine reclined in a chair that creaked under his weight, arms crossed over his massive chrome chest. "We'll give it a day, then offload the gear. Until then—everyone chill."
But chill didn't last long.
A sudden roaring boom shook the air like a thundercrack, loud enough to make bottles rattle and lights flicker.
Rebecca jumped to her feet, eyes wide. "What the—?!"
She sprinted to the roof hatch and threw it open.
"Yo! There's some kinda fireball heading down hard—northwest! Looks like it's gonna hit outside Santo Domingo!"
"Corpo experiment?" Pilar asked, already standing.
"Maybe," Maine said, his grin sharp. "But we're gonna be the first to find out."
Crash Site – Outskirts of Santo Domingo
They arrived fast, weaving through the badlands in Maine's armored ride, the ground still glowing from the impact. The fireball had left a shallow crater—not scorched, but melted into smooth glass. At its center stood a sleek, black ship that looked like nothing from Earth. No insignias. No seams.
Not Arasaka. Not Militech. Something... else.
"This thing ain't from around here," Rebecca said, eyes gleaming.
"No heat damage," Lucy observed. "It landed clean."
Maine stepped forward, hand on his cannon. "Then it's ripe for the pickin'. Let's see what kind of goodies it's hiding before some corpo vulture shows up."
Inside the Ship
The ship was cold, silent, and impossibly advanced. The walls weren't metal—they breathed, softly glowing with power that felt almost organic.
Eventually, they reached a chamber deep in its heart. There, suspended in a shimmering stasis field, floated a girl.
Alita.
Her body was unlike anything they'd ever seen. Slim, compact, and terrifyingly elegant. Her limbs and torso were covered in plates that shimmered with microscopic detail—like shifting skin made of mercury and obsidian. Energy pulsed through the cracks between armor and flesh, alive with nanotech precision.
In her hand was a curved blade, patterned like flowing rivers—Damascus steel infused with energy, humming softly.
"She's chromed to the max…" Pilar whispered.
"No," Kiwi corrected, approaching a console. "She's not chromed. This isn't cyberware. This is something else."
Kiwi began interfacing with the alien terminal beside the stasis field. Her brows furrowed behind her goggles.
"It's protected by some kind of living ICE," she muttered. "I can't crack it, not fully. But I got fragments."
She glanced back at the group.
"Her name's Alita. And that body? It's a Berserker-class nanomachine core. Military-grade—maybe interstellar. It adapts, heals, resists hacking. She doesn't have cyberware—she is the tech."
"And the sword?" Rebecca asked, staring at the weapon with hungry eyes.
"Charges from her internal power core. At full output?" Kiwi shrugged. "It could cut through an AV, a tank, hell—maybe even a city block."
Maine stepped forward, chuckling low.
"Well then, I call dibs." His hand hovered over the sword. "Let's see how my new blade swings."
Before anyone could stop him, he reached toward the hilt.
That's when her eyes snapped open.
Twin golden irises ignited with furious clarity.
The stasis field vanished with a sharp pulse of light, and Alita dropped gracefully to the floor, landing without a sound.
Everyone froze.
She turned her gaze to Maine—piercing and calm.
Then—
She moved.
In a blur of motion, Alita surged upward and slammed both feet into Maine's chest. He was thrown across the chamber, metal crunching beneath his bulk as he crashed into a pillar.
"WHOA WHOA WHOA!" Rebecca shouted, raising her shotgun but not firing. "Calm down, Battle Angel!"
Alita landed without a sound, her blade drawn in one fluid motion. She paused, eyes flicking to Rebecca—tilting her head, curious.
Then she sheathed the sword at her side in one smooth motion.
She pointed straight at Maine, now groaning on the floor.
"If he tries to touch my gear again…" she said coldly, voice smooth and mechanical, "…I will kill him faster than he can twitch."
The silence was absolute.
Pilar looked between her and Maine, hands raised. "Okay. Noted."
Lucy stepped forward slightly, trying to scan her—nothing. No signal. No net trace. No way in.
"She's completely untraceable," she whispered. "No architecture. Not even a neural port."
Rebecca lowered her shotgun. "So… what now?"
Alita's gaze swept across the room. "Where am I?"
"Night City," Kiwi replied cautiously. "Earth."
Alita was silent for a moment. Then she turned toward the exit.
"Survival systems online," she murmured. "Mission: undefined."
Without another word, she walked out of the ship, the door hissing open as if it knew she was coming.
The crew stared after her, stunned.
Maine coughed, wincing. "Remind me not to call dibs next time."
The night air hit them hard as they exited the ship. Stars flickered above, but they were drowned out by the blinding lights of descending AVs. Massive engines roared overhead as four Arasaka assault vehicles dropped into formation around the crater, kicking up dust and wind in violent gales.
From every door, heavily armored troops spilled out in unison—clad in advanced tactical gear, all black, all chrome, all deadly. Combat drones hovered in the air. Spotlights flared.
Rebecca muttered, "Oh… this just got fun."
Lucy said nothing, eyes locked on the lead figure approaching through the chaos.
An Arasaka Commander, dressed in sleek exo-armor lined with red light, strode forward, helmet retracting to reveal a weathered, scarred face with a cold sneer. He raised his palm, signaling the entire battalion to halt.
He spoke with perfect confidence.
"By order of Arasaka Corporate Security Division, you will surrender all foreign technology—including your ship, your blade, and your body, girl."
Alita stood at the bottom of the ramp, calm as glass. Her hair fluttered slightly in the breeze, eyes glowing faintly with internal light.
The Commander took another step forward. "You are outnumbered, outgunned, and—" he scanned her with a wrist-mounted device "—just a fancy doll with some alien chrome. We will strip you for parts and data, make no mistake."
Alita smiled softly… and tilted her head.
It wasn't defiance.
It was an invitation.
The Commander snarled. "Take her."
Three squads surged forward.
And then—
It happened.
A blur.
A flash.
Screams.
Steel sang as Alita vanished from where she stood—appearing mid-air in front of the first AV before anyone could blink. Her Damascus blade, now glowing with energy drawn from her core, tore through the gunship's hull like silk.
The AV exploded behind her as she darted through the battlefield, a shadow of death, moving faster than any cybernetic reflexes could track. Her blade passed through Arasaka armor like it was paper. Drones sliced in half. Heads separated from bodies before they could register movement.
Rebecca could barely track her. "Holy shit—"
Lucy didn't speak. She just stared, wide-eyed.
Maine turned to Kiwi. "Are you recording this?!"
Kiwi whispered, "My optics can't keep up…"
Another AV tried to lift off.
Alita leapt.
One clean arc of her sword—and the aircraft split in two. The pieces slammed into the dirt with a shockwave, sending troops flying.
The Commander screamed, pulling a high-frequency katana and charging her himself.
"You worthless little GIRL—!"
He never finished.
She sidestepped with inhuman precision, drove her foot through his chestplate, crushing it inward—then flicked her sword in a single upward motion.
His body fell in two.
Silence.
Blood pooled in the dust. Fires burned in wreckage.
Alita stood alone, her face emotionless, glowing sword humming at her side.
Behind her, the massive alien ship began to shift.
Maine's crew turned just in time to see the impossible.
The ship's surface shimmered and began to shrink—compacting, folding in on itself, dimension by dimension, collapsing inward like origami being pulled into a single point of space. It didn't vanish—it was being absorbed.
Alita held out her hand.
The last fragment of the ship, no bigger than a coin, floated toward her palm.
It touched her skin—and simply sank into her.
Rebecca's mouth fell open. "You've gotta be kidding me…"
Her body rippled for a second—then smoothed, returning to normal. As if nothing had happened.
She turned, looking back at the stunned crew.
Her gaze landed on Maine.
"You still want to touch my gear?"
Maine just held his hands up slowly. "Nah. We're good."
Alita nodded once, then began walking toward the city.
Lucy finally found her voice. "Where are you going?"
Alita paused.
"To find out what kind of world this is."
And with that, the Battle Angel disappeared into the neon horizon of Night City.