"So, do you have any lingering doubts, Alita?"
She shook her head, "No. You've helped me realise what I want, and now that I have it, I will do whatever I have to to keep it. If that makes me a bad person, then so be it. It's not like this world has been particularly kind to me anyway."
Ivar grinned, "Oh? What about your sister?"
Suddenly remembering there was one person who had always taken care of her, Alita looked a little scared. Had he changed his mind? Would he harm her? Would she help him? "Y- You haven't changed your mind, right? She will join me in serving you and not be harmed?"
Ivar smiled, "Of course, I can't wait to have two sister Valkyries serving me. By the way, what is your sister's name?"
Relieved, Alita smiled brightly, "Yes! I can't wait either! I wonder if she'll call you daddy, too! Probably not, though; she's too stuck up for that." She giggled, "Although I'm sure you'll replace that stick up her ass with a meatier version soon enough, Daddy."
Ivar rolled his eyes but wasn't too surprised as he had noticed her cheekyness already and smacked her on the back of the head, "Focus, Alita. I asked about your sister's name?"
Alita pouted and rubbed the back of her head, "It's Nova, Daddy."
After answering him, they resumed walking towards Sanctuary.
Alita suddenly seemed to think of something, "Uhm, speaking of my sister. What's the plan regarding her? What do you need me to do? How do you even turn humans into therians?"
Since Alita was barely conscious at that time, she had no recollection of drinking Ivar's blood.
Ivar answered, "To convert someone, I need to feed them my blood with the intention of converting them; the intention is essential; otherwise, my blood is just regular blood.
Besides that, the subject also can't offer any resistance to the change, either by being unconscious or by willingly accepting it. This means I'll need you to enter Sanctuary, knock out your sister somehow, and then let me in. Can you do that?"
Alita looked thoughtful, "I should be able to knock her out, and there is also a backdoor I can open for you, but there is a camera there, and I can't guarantee we won't run into anyone going from the backdoor to my sister's room."
Ivar dismissed her concerns, "I can deal with both those things; there's no need to worry."
Alita nodded with a smile on her face, a smile that wavered only a little as she asked, "Of course you can, Daddy! Will you kill anyone if we come across them?"
Ivar smiled, "Would that be a problem, little Alita?"
She shook her head, "Of course not; I have made my choice. But I won't deny that I still consider some of those women my friends, and I would be grateful if you spared them. Not to mention that they will inevitably serve you, and the more that are alive, the more servants you will have."
Ivar grabbed her chin and made her look into his fierce amber eyes, "Do you stand by those words?"
Alita trembled as she looked into Ivar's eyes, seeing both endless fear and endless pleasure within them, but she steeled her heart and nodded.
They stayed like that for a moment longer before Ivar smiled, "I am both happy and impressed you still manage to voice your own opinions. Something that is not always easy for someone in your position.
Keep showing both loyalty and strength of will, and I will keep you by my side for a long time. As for your friends, you don't need to worry; I plan to sneak in without being noticed."
Finally feeling the pressure on her psyche relieved, Alita smiled widely, "Yes, Daddy! Thank you!"
******
Sanctuary was never an intentional plan by Nova. Instead, it grew around her as women flocked to her for protection.
From the age of sixteen, she had been on the streets together with her ten-year-old sister, and the only thing on her mind had been protecting Alita.
She was not defenceless, however. Her parents had taught her how to fight and survive on her own from a young age, and when their parents died, she had managed to flee into the slums with her sister, a sword and a gun.
Two young girls on their own in the slums was naturally a recipe for disaster, but whoever tried to harass these girls would soon learn that the disaster was not for the girls but for them.
It wasn't long before Nova gained a reputation as 'The Red-Eyed Devil' among the other low-lives who were barely subsisting in the slums, and they started avoiding her and her sister like the plague.
Luckily, Nova was still far beneath the notice of any gangs, as she would never be able to survive an assault from a larger group, especially not while protecting her sister.
After all, the immense size of NLA, with its population of over 50 million people, ensured that the slums were sizable enough that two girls could easily get lost and forgotten there.
If a particular area were getting too hot for her, she would simply move on.
Eventually, as she got older and even stronger, women who heard about her exploits would start flocking to her in the hope of gaining protection or even learning how to fight like she did.
At first, she turned them all away, believing the way she had been doing things so far was fine, but it was the attention of these women that eventually brought down the gangs on the two sisters' heads.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, and after several close shaves with these gangs, Nova decided that perhaps there was strength in numbers.
From that moment, she started accepting the presence of other women around her, and she even started teaching them to fight so that everyone could protect each other.
Most of these women were former whores who had managed to escape from their captors and employers; others were girls much like Nova and her sister who had lost their home and their parents to the city's violence.
Naturally, she pretended Alita was just another girl who had flocked to her banner.
Something that only worked because the 'legend of the red-eyed devil' never mentioned a sister since Nova had always tried to keep Alita away from others, quickly killing most people who saw her.
As their group grew and the gangs started paying serious attention to them, Nova decided they needed a base of operations and a source of income; they needed to become a gang in their own right.
The obvious answer was to start a gang focused on prostitution. Still, even though some of the women would have been fine with that since they would at least be treated well under Nova, the big boss had no desire to put either herself or Alita into such an environment.
Eventually, the answer came in a nearly abandoned, almost two-hundred-year-old electronics store with several apartments above it and an extensive electronics workshop in the basement.
They cleared out whatever bums were living there and quickly settled in for the long haul.
Afterwards, one of the women in her newly formed gang came forward and offered her help in fortifying the building, as she was a former structural engineer who had fallen on hard times after making a big mistake while working for a powerful corporation.
But more importantly than that, she told Nova of the many highly educated women in the wealthier parts of the city who were stuck in miserable marriages to abusive assholes.
Nova quickly decided to act on this information by taking a few others and going on a hunt for well-educated women who might be willing to join them if they took care of their husbands or, occasionally, their parents.
This proved a successful strategy as it didn't take long for her to find some candidates, and since she mainly focussed on women working in electronics, she quickly created income for her gang by having them work in the workshop they now occupied, creating illegal devices and mods to be sold on the black market.
Meanwhile, the other members of Sanctuary provided security, transport and component acquisition.
From that moment, women kept flocking towards Nova's gang in search of protection and a better life, quickly giving the gang its name, Sanctuary.
They remained relatively small, however, as Nova preferred to focus on having a small number of talented fighters rather than the overwhelming numbers most gangs used, which meant that any woman unwilling to fight or work hard was turned away.
It also helped that their business was lucrative, and a lot of money was re-invested into weapons, armour and defences for their base.
Now, ten years after Nova had started wandering the streets, Sanctuary was one of the more powerful gangs in their neighbourhood despite having only a few hundred people working for them.