Space Angels

Space Angels
The Space Angels' ZOTT Finals roster (with Deckman 100 and Elf and Zwölf in the background) on the cover of Last Angel Standing.
Origin	Various
Affiliations	Martin Company Mars Kingdom Parliament Scrapyard Tiphares
Type	Tenth Zenith of Things Tournament team
Leader	Alita
Notable members	Elf and Zwölf Ping Wu Sechs Zazie
Debut	Phase 24

The Space Angels (宇宙天使隊, Uchū Tenshi-Tai^?) was a team led by Alita that competed in the Tenth Zenith of Things Tournament (ZOTT). Placed in Block A, they made it all the way to the Finals, where they faced the Space Karate Forces, defeating them to become the first civilian team to win ZOTT. The team was composed of cyborgs and with the exception of Sechs, was all female. Supported by a variety of characters as pit crew, they also gained some unlikely allies.

The team was initially formed to gain entry to Ketheres to recover Lou Collins' brain from the Brain Incubator during the ZOTT. However after obtaining the Fata Morgana, Alita convinced Ping Wu that the team should go all the way and attempt to win the tournament. After the Block A Semifinals in which the Space Angels defeated the Jovian seeded team, Warmen 609, Aga Mbadi was forced by Alita with Venusian support to allow the Scrapyard and Tiphares to be included as part of the commonwealth prize in a bid to save both from destruction following the ZOTT.

Despite the Space Angels' victory in the Finals with the aid of Tunpò, Mbadi refused to recognise the outcome. He tried to use the Sword of Damocles to kill them, but was unmasked by Ping's hacking, finally being stopped by Tunpò. LADDER was thrown into chaos with the deaths of its senior leadership and detachment of the Onion Frame. The Space Angels became separated and effectively disbanded, each member going their own way. Alita managed to prevent the Onion Frame from crashing into Luna, Sechs helped overthrow Deckman 100, who had seized power in Robo-Asyl with the aid of Elf and Zwölf, while Zazie successfully escaped the Onion Frame.

Plot

Competing in the ZOTT was conceived by Ping Wu as a diversion for recovering Lou Collins' brain from the Ketheres Brain Incubator and the team's initial purpose was not to win the tournament. After arriving on Leviathan I, Ping met up up again with his former partner in crime, Martin Tsang. Despite getting into a major fight with Ping, Martin agreed to help him again by sponsoring the team, and the Space Angels used a Martin Company cargo ship as a base during the ZOTT.

Seven weeks before the start of the ZOTT, Alita's experiences with a young orphan named Giraud lead her and Zazie to fight to capture all the flags in the Combat Chamber in order to stop the war games for two weeks. They were challenged at the final flag by three members of the Space Karate Forces, Toji, Gavit, and Hogan, who were themselves in the Combat Chamber as a warmup for the ZOTT. During the fight, which was broadcast by Combat TV, Gavit and Hogan were killed, and Toji conceded despite reviving before Alita during their fight. This set the stage for a possible rematch in the ZOTT if the Space Karate Forces and Space Angels could reach the finals, as they were placed in different tournament blocks. Following this fight the Space Angels' ZOTT entry was accepted, with Alita, Elf, Sechs, and Zwölf as the fighters, and Deckman 100 and Ping as the pit crew.

Tenth Zenith of Things Tournament

For the start of the ZOTT, Sechs debuted a new body, the Fizziroy Body, while Elf and Zwölf dressed in bunny suits to divert some TV air time from Alita. The Space Angels defeated three other teams in the Preliminary Round on Day 1. After a chance meeting at the Metageitnion Restaurant with the team they were to face next, the Guntroll, the teams faced off in the first match of Round 1 on Day 2.

Round 1: The Guntroll

Facing her own doubts and fears as articulated by Colonel Payne, Alita was unable to take the field at first, leaving the others to face the Guntroll's vanguard, Getz and Koen. After Getz's Calamity Thrust attack damaged two of the five arena shields and the arena infrastructure, he gave his opponents the chance to yield. Elf and Zwölf were in favor of doing so, but Sechs refused to give up, and realized that Koen neutralized Getz's electromagnetic barrier. The three launched a combined counterattack that distracted Getz and enabled Sechs to impale Koen with his Titan Blade, using him to evade the barrier and mortally stab Getz. Niz and Qu Tsang then intervened before Sechs could finish Getz off.

As Sechs took on Niz, Elf and Zwölf attempted to tackle Qu Tsang by using a scarf knitted out of mono-molecular wire. Qu Tsang turned the tables on them however and disabled them with two blows to each of their cervical spines. Niz meanwhile was able to wrap up Sechs in mooring cables and deliver a beating. When Sechs began to fight back however, he attempted to launch him into space. Sechs managed to wrap the cables around Niz's neck and blast him with the Solenoid Quench Gun, blowing off the arms of his railsuit, piercing his heart, and knocking him out. Qu Tsang intervened and saved Niz, then defeated Sechs with her most powerful attack. Alita, having overcome her doubts and thoughts about conceding the match, then appeared and quickly dispatched Qu Tsang. This forced Caerula Sanguis to take the field.

Caerula's appearance as a flesh and blood human and abilities stunned Alita at first, and her core was punched through for the first time since her fight with Jashugan more than a decade ago. At this point the Guntroll fled Ketheres for Mars, taking advantage of the immunity granted to ZOTT participants. Caerula then drew Earthlight and Moonlight, which prompted Alita to form two elbow blades from of her forearms, unknowingly getting drawn into the Eight Block Death Gate Array. Caerula then apparently slew her by slicing off half her head, but this turned out to be her intent instead. The attack rekindled Alita's memories of how she had been captured by Caerula during Operation Maulwurf, and Caerula recognized her. As the two launched their final attacks against each other, Caerula had Alita, but her jian bent at the last moment and she allowed herself to take an apparently fatal blow. Revealing that this was because her swords told her that this was a "destiny beyond knowing", she gave Alita the Fata Morgana in the form of her earring before pushing off and appearing to die, giving the Space Angels the victory.

Round 2: The Starship Cult

With Ping and Porta-Nova's help, Alita undertook the infiltration of Melchizedek during the match and thus did not participate. Sechs was delayed while his new Fizziroy Body was about to be imploded by Yani and Derossi, forcing Elf and Zwölf to take the field first. They attempted to divert attention from Alita's absence by dressing up respectively as "White Alita" and "Dark Alita", and faced off against the Indian magician Darbhanga. He placed both them and audience under hypnosis, making it appear that his rope was chasing them. It eventually grabbed Zwölf, taking her up into black clouds that suddenly appeared overhead. Darbhanga then drew a sword from his throat and climbed the rope after her with Elf in pursuit. Hegioa Hopper recognized this as the Indian rope trick. In reality while everyone was hypnotized, Darbhanga attempted to sneak up on Elf and Zwölf and kill them with his sword. However when he jumped at them 20 minutes into the match, he got caught in their mono-molecular wire trap and was sliced into pieces, his resulting scream broke the hypnosis. This was revealed via video replay. Elf and Zwölf then had some fun with Darbhanga's body parts by putting them into a box, pretending to perform magic on it, and then kicking the box.

Springfoot Jack and Lily then appeared on the scene. Jack instantly hypnotized Elf and Zwölf into playing a rigged game of Russian roulette with a .500 Magnum loaded with hollow-point bullets. After Lily and Jack went, Elf was the third player and blew her head off. Kimpi, her TR-55 containing her brain bio-chip survived however, and was recovered by Zwölf who attempted to flee, but was cut off and hypnotized by Jack. Meanwhile the implosion of Sechs' Fizziroy Body failed and the Fizziroy threatened to go out of control. Derossi barely managed to trigger a successful implosion, allowing Sechs to join the match. He quickly realised that Jack had rigged the game by switching out the Magnum, proving this by firing four rounds at his head at point blank range to no effect. Jack revealed that he had wished to fight against the Guntroll to show Qu Tsang how grown up he was, irritating Sechs when the latter attempted to draw a comparison between himself and Alita. Sechs attacked with the Titan Blade, but Jack blocked it with Lily, who had taken the form of a human sword. He then deployed a squirt gun in his mouth to fire a sticky substance into Sechs' eyes and blind him, then had Zwölf become a human boomerang that he threw. Sechs blocked the boomerang Zwölf and drove her into the ground to neutralise he. Jack then leaped into the air with Lily and attempted to cut Sechs in half from above. Sechs however, successfully mimicked Jack's voice and commanded her to take the form of a human flan. Lily obeyed and dissolved when Jack crashed into her. Sechs launched an immediate counterattack, cutting Jack in half with the Titan Blade. Jack's body exploded like firecracker, with a banner reading "Congratulations!" and confetti raining down on the arena.

However the Starship Cult still had a final card to play in the form of their leader Whophon. His appearance was preceded by singing by his female followers from the Cult's platform. As a pyramid rose out of the arena floor, the women used ropes to descend and line the steps of the pyramid, at the top of which an Ancient Egyptian sarcophagus appeared before exploding to reveal Whophon. The ZOTT judges then intervened and threatened him with disqualification if the women did not leave the arena as they brought the Starship Cult over the combatant limit of five. Whophon then asked the women to go ahead of him, prompting them all to draw the ceremonial daggers strapped to their waists and commit suicide. Sechs however stopped one of the women, Misha, from killing herself. When she persisted with Whophon's urging, Sechs in disgust abruptly pulled the dagger away, throwing her into the air and knocking her unconscious. He then tried to attack Whophon, but was hypnotised into running in circles around Misha before the hypnotism switched to his shadow voicing in his inner doubts and fears. Sechs tried to stop his shadow by attacking it, but ended up stabbing himself with the Titan Blade, severing his spinal cord. Whophon then unleashed his Wave Upon Wave Upon Wave technique, triggering spontaneous human combustion among anyone who could hear sound from the arena. As Sechs began to feel the effects of the technique and struggled to come up with a strategy, he noticed Whophon's reflection in one of his gauntlets, leading him to fire his fist into the real Whophon. This broke the illusion and appeared to give the Space Angels the victory. However Misha revived after Sechs defeated Whophon and as the last remaining Cult member, was added to their active roster. Although she told Sechs to do what he wanted to her, Sechs decided to spare her and walked away. The Space Angels took the round 3 to 1.

Quarterfinals: The Wild Guns

Prior to the Quarterfinals match, Alita's Imaginos Body was dissolved by Super Nova's Seca attack and her remains were retrieved by the Robo-Asyl robots. Elf and Zwölf absolutely refused to participate any further, leaving Sechs the sole member of the Space Angels to compete. After killing one of the Wild Guns with the Titan Blade, Sechs turned their own guns against them, killing the rest except for Gilroy, who he ended up in a Mexican standoff with. Gilroy tried to work out an arrangement with Sechs, whose gun may or may not have been empty. Sechs however refused, and instead of firing, dodged Gilroy's shot and rammed his gun into Gilroy's head, killing him and taking the match.

Semifinals: Warmen 609

With Alita still missing, Sechs again took the field alone against the Jovian seeded team, Warmen 609. The first form, the Übernaut, tried to capture Sechs by launching a multitude of cube polymers at him. However after being caught in the same way by Aga Mbadi after arriving on Ketheres, Sechs evaded them all. However he got boxed in by a massive pyramid that was formed by the polymers, setting him up for a missile barrage. Sechs avoided the missiles by punching the ground a split second before they impacted, throwing himself out of the trap and into the air. He then was able to avoid a second barrage by riding one of the missiles and guiding it back into the Übernaut. Although this made an impact, the Übernaut repaired the damage by using dirt from the arena floor, having grown in size into a gigantic sphere that began to spin, making cracks in the arena as it unleashed the Jupiter Mixer. Caught up in the spin, Sechs maneuvered himself into the space above the Übernaut, swelled out his body, and used his Implosion Fist to smash the Übernaut into pieces.

Warmen 609 responded by reassembling itself into its second form, Voyna. Sechs used his Elite Plasma Boost to charge Voyna at a speed fast enough to evade its 100 mm ramjet A.P.F.S. bullets and distract it by generating plasma decoys. This enabled him to strike it with the Titan Blade, but Voyna countered by deploying its EMP Net, paralyzing Sechs and dispersing his plasma clones. Zazie's timely intervention saved Sechs, as she joined the fray after having just arrived from Mars. She used her KZ90 to fire bullets containing Berserker cells into Voyna, causing it to mutate out of control, turning it into a Berserker. Zazie then followed up by firing anti-Berserker rounds into it. Voyna exploded, defeating the third and fourth forms and pushing it to its final form, Tunguska. During the lull, Zazie began to feel the effects of the Dim Mak-like technique that Frau X had hit her with a month before during Operation Hagel, and struggled through the remainder of the match.

The team back on Jupiter controlling Tunguska activated it, releasing the safety and powering up its internal wormhole reactor core, which allowed it to use its Jupiter Beam to blast through the shields and Ketheres' outer wall itself. This caused havoc throughout the arena as the Jupiter Beam tore into the audience. Mbadi had to order the diversion of all reserve power to the shields and activate all of the undeployed shield generators to form as many protective layers as possible. Back on the Space Angels' platform, Deckman 100 received Alita's reconstructed remains, including her brain bio-chip and the Fata Morgana, from a group of Robo-Asyl robots sent by Landa Nam Nam. When Yani and Derossi attempted to turn the platform around and flee, he forced them to turn around. Meanwhile Sechs and Zazie attempted a counterattack, with Zazie using an ECM grenade to confuse Tunguska's sensors while Sechs attempted to take it out by generating a massive Implosion Fist and attacking its midsection. The attack however failed and used up the rest of Sechs' battery power, with Tunguska trapping him with its foot. The Space Angels' platform then came barreling at Tunguska, allowing Deckman 100 to fire Alita's remains at Sechs just as the Jupiter Beam cut the platform in half. Tunguska then caught Alita's remains, then suddenly began to experience a nanomachine attack. It tried to halt this by blasting off its left forearm before cracks began to form in its body and a regenerated Alita burst forth from its torso, destroying it.

Alita used Tunguska's body to form the basis of a new outfit, also absorbing its wormhole reactor core. The ZOTT Administration Committee then abruptly shut off all public viewing of the arena and announced that the ZOTT was cancelled for "serious concerns over public safety," ordering an evacuation of the Onion Frame. This provoked widespread outrage among the surviving audience that quickly turned into a riot. Meanwhile inside the arena, Mbadi, accompanied by Super Nova, arrived with a contingent of New Order troops and placed Alita under arrest for being "a menace to interplanetary public safety." Just as the trio prepared to break through, Mbadi hacked Sechs and Zazie, maneuvering their weapons into threatening Alita. As Mbadi moved to hack Alita by touching her, she suddenly broke his left hand, nullifying his and Super Nova's cybercontrols and hacking into the New Order troops, preventing them from shooting. Alita then moved to punch Mbadi, appearing to stay her blow, but nonetheless triggering a shock wave that caused internal bleeding and blew most of his clothes off.

Zekka then stormed onto the arena on Desecrator, throwing his support behind Alita and defying Mbadi when he tried to order him to stop Alita. The Genome Kingdom's Pissarro Créer de Vivre then appeared on the scene and asked Mbadi to allow the ZOTT to resume. After a brief fight between Homme du Feu and Zekka, Toji was able to intervene and prevent Zekka from retaliating, bringing with him Jack Gerambo, who directly asked Mbadi live on air about the cancellation of the ZOTT. Alita quickly broke in, taking advantage of the situation to get Mbadi to publicly vow to recognize the Scrapyard and Tiphares as an independent country in the event of a Space Angels victory in the Finals. Pissarro modified this proposal by suggesting that the winner of the ZOTT gain control of both Tiphares and the Scrapyard as their own. Against his will, Mbadi agreed to the conditions and allowed the ZOTT to resume.

Finals: The Space Karate Forces

The teams meet at the start of the Finals in Phase 88.

At the start of the Finals both teams met face to face in the middle of the arena. Sechs' ignorance of what a potty was when Zekka asked him if he had grown out of his potty chair had the other fighters rolling on the ground in laughter before they all agreed to fight one on one. In a pair of rematches, Alita faced off against Toji and Sechs took on Zekka, leaving Zazie to deal with Rakan. In response to Zazie's question, Rakan confirmed that he did brutally tear apart Elf and Zwölf the night before as he was too keyed up over the match, giving her added motivation to fight him.

Alita struck first by using plasma generated from her hands to boost her speed and fly at Toji, smashing through his Sonic Fist with a plasma burst. When she realised that time had slowed down for her, she countered Toji's Reverse Punch by rolling up his arm to strike at him. She disappeared briefly to emerge behind Toji and he fell backwards, allowing her to throw him back.

Sechs attempted to take Zekka out by utilising his most powerful attack. Whipping out the latest version of the Titan Blade, the Super Titan Blade, he added plasma to create the Sechster Angriff Boost, a massive fireball of spinning Titan Blade and plasma. Zekka attempted a counter, but then found himself at the centre of the spinning Titan Blade, which prevented him from moving. Sechs, who had escaped the rotation, positioned himself above Zekka and expanded his Fizziroy Body to a massive size to unleash the Implosion Expanded Punch, causing a massive explosion when it hit that Rakan and Zazie and Toji and Alita momentarily stopped their respective battles. However Zekka defeated the punch by counterpunching, throwing Sechs off and spoiling the attack.

Zazie began her fight with Rakan by hitting him with a headshot which appeared to have no effect. After making him do the bullet dance, hit him with a volley of shots at his body, but he somehow fired all of them back. To test a theory, Zazie fired three rifle grenades at Rakan, forcing him to close on her. She then fire her MK21 MSG to detonate the grenades, causing a tremendous explosion. However Rakan emerged from behind her and sliced off her left arm. Zazie however countered by pulling out a pair of semiautomatic pistols and blasting Rakan back, revealing that the arm that was taken was an exo-arm.

Roster

Key:♦ = Competed in the Finals

Name	Role	Status
Alita♦	Original member and team leader. Did not participate in Round 2 or the Quarterfinals but reappeared during the Semifinals.	Alive
Deckman 100	Pit crew.	Alive
Derossi	Pit crew. Joined after Round 1 with Yani.	Alive
Elf	Original member. Refused to participate after Round 2 and withdrew.	Killed by Rakan before the start of the Finals, but Kimpi survived and Elf was later rebuilt.
Ping Wu	Pit crew. Withdrawn after being nearly killed by HIGH ORDER troops during Round 2.	Alive
Sechs♦	Original member and the only one to participate in all ZOTT rounds from the beginning.	Alive
Yani	Pit crew. Joined after Round 1 with Derossi.	Alive
Zazie♦	Later member, joining during the Semifinals.	Alive
Zwölf	Original member. Refused to participate after Round 2 and withdrew.	Killed by Rakan before the start of the Finals, but Kimpo survived and Zwölf was eventually rebuilt.