the Tipharean Ground Investigation Bureau, Bigott Eizenburg, intervened and managed to postpone Alita's execution. Bigott offered to give Alita a purpose in life working as an agent of Tiphares, but she refused until he mentioned that her primary mission would be to hunt down Desty Nova. Given a new body and weapons, Alita spent ten years working in the Badlands as the TUNED agent A-1, hunting down rogue Deckmen and other criminals. She quickly came to resent Bigott's callous attitude towards "surface dwellers" like her, and came to revel in combat and bloodlust as a means of drowning out her despair. In ES 590 she was tasked with eliminating the rebel organization Barjack. Cultivating a friendship with her new operator, Lou Collins, Alita also fell in love with a mercenary named Figure Four, who helped break her out of her fatalistic mindset while she accompanied him to his hometown of Alhambra. Promising to return once her business with TUNED was concluded, Alita learned that Desty Nova was behind Barjack and that if she wanted to find him she would have to defeat Barjack's leader, Den. After falling into a river and being rescued by a sickly radio host named Kaos, Alita persuaded him to stand up against Barjack and faced off with Den; discovering that not only was Kaos the son of Desty Nova but that Den was Kaos' split personality projected into a remote body. Locating the supposedly revived Ido with help from Kaos, Alita travelled to Farm 21 only to learn from nurse Kayna that Ido had erased his memories after learning the "truth about Tiphares". Learning that Nova's hideout was in the Granite Inn, Alita set out to apprehend him but was attacked by AR-2, one of the TUNED AR Series 2 androids that Bigott ordered to be built in order to replace Alita. With Lou's help Alita managed to kill AR-2, and persuaded Bigott to let her finish the original mission and win her freedom. Alita infiltrated Granite Inn and confronted Nova, who revealed the secret of Tiphares – that all adults had their brains extracted and replaced with brain bio-chips. With Bigott and several of the other adults going insane and committing suicide from this revelation, Nova trapped Alita inside a virtual reality called the Ouroboros Program and attempted to break her fighting spirit. Breaking free with Kaos' help, Alita decapitated Nova and set out