to become a hunter-warrior herself, in which job Alita occasionally displayed a disturbing bloodlust and love of battle. When fighting the powerful, body-snatching and brain-eating cyborg named Makaku, the original body that Ido had made for Alita was destroyed. Feeling he has no other choice, Ido reconnected Alita to a Berserker Body, which allowed her to kill an upgraded Makaku in a long fight in the sewers beneath the Scrapyard. Shortly after becoming a hunter-warrior, Alita met and fell in love with Hugo, a young boy who dreamed of going to Tiphares. Hugo's obsession with Tiphares wound up ruining any chance of them being together, as he was caught mugging cyborgs for their spinal columns and had a bounty placed on him. Alita protected Hugo from Zapan – resulting in the latter's humiliation – and resuscitated him. However, upon Vector telling Hugo that going to Tiphares alive was impossible, Hugo snapped and tried to scale the massive pipes connecting the Factories to the floating city. Alita tried to persuade Hugo to turn back, but a defense ring threaded him to pieces and Alita was unable to save Hugo from falling to his death. After Hugo's death, the grieving Alita ran away from home. She was found crying in a bar by Esdoc, a former Top League Motorball player, who talked her into signing a 12-race contract. To keep her from quitting, Esdoc secretly sold Alita's Berserker Body to the mad scientist Desty Nova. Alita's final and greatest match was against Jashugan, the Top League champion whose mastery of chi' enabled him to surpass the limits of his body despite having been mortally wounded. Alita was defeated but survived the fight to become the champion. She then retired from Motorball and lived as a civilian for two years, taking up music and often performing as a bar singer. Later on, Desty Nova attached Zapan's brain to the Berserker Body, creating a rampaging monster that killed Ido and destroyed Bar New Kansas. Promising to resurrect Ido, Nova provided Alita with a Smith & Wesson Model 610 revolver and a capsule containing collapser, an agent designed to destroy Berserker cells. After a battle that almost ended in Zapan assimilating her, Alita managed to shoot Zapan with the collapser-loaded hollow-point bullets. She was then apprehended by Factory forces and sentenced to death for the Class A crime of using a firearm. The head of