Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  A click, and Welldone saw an image of three blue flashing lights converging on him.

  –Flesh?

  No answer.

  Welldone grabbed a gun in each hand and bent down, pressing his back to the wall.

  The flashing dot representing Rare was coming down the stairs behind him. The flashing dot representing Medium was in an elevator heading down to the lot. And the flashing dot representing Mincemeat came toward him from the emergency stairs on the other side of the parking lot, swaying from side to side as it descended.

  “Specters, all of you…” Welldone muttered, a seething mass of indignation. “This is a disgrace! Rare! Medi! Answer me if you’re there!”

  Yelling now, he jumped up and ran toward the phantom figure coming down the stairs.

  He lifted his guns and fired.

  The bullets sped into the darkness, embedding themselves into the walls and dislodging some plaster.

  At the bottom of the staircase he spun around, firing simultaneously at the elevator and emergency stairs.

  The echo of the gunshots reverberated all around, and then the crisp sound of empty cartridges clinking to the ground.

  His bullets were soon spent. He slammed his back to the wall, creeping along bit by bit, expelling the guns’ magazines. He opened up his coat and, in a well-rehearsed move, shoved the bases of his guns toward the spare magazines that were clipped to his sides, pressing them into his body.

  He pulled, and the magazines clicked off, making a noise like the pin on a hand grenade.

  Each hand pressed a switch on the grip, the breechblock slid into place automatically, and the bullets were all ready to go.

  “These babies have got your names on them! Show your asses!” he screamed, eyes scouring the darkness.

  He was answered by an earsplitting noise.

  The sound of a radio.

  The car stereo from one of the vehicles in the corner of the parking lot blared loudly, headlights flashing. Its engine revved violently.

  The blare from the radio turned into the furious drumbeat of electroclash.

  The tires scorched the concrete, and the car charged toward Welldone.

  Welldone jumped away from the wall.

  The car plunged at him. The steering wheel spun around, cutting a tight turn, and the car bounded up and down, chasing him, suspension grating, headlights flashing ominously.

  “Fuck you!” Welldone fired shot after shot. He jumped onto the oncoming car, an abnormally powerful jump, first onto the windshield and then onto the roof, shooting it to pieces before tumbling off.

  The car smashed into the wall, its front half now totaled.

  Welldone picked himself up and trained his guns on the driver’s seat.

  But no one was inside.

  Now a different car stereo came to life, headlights lighting up across the parking lot. Heavy metal this time.

  The engine rumbled, and the gas-powered car started closing in.

  At ridiculous speed.

  Welldone spun around and fired at the driver’s seat, but this car too had no driver.

  He hid himself behind a pillar just in time. The car’s right headlight smashed straight into the pillar, shattering—as if the car were trying to shave off a piece of the pillar as it pursued its prey.

  Welldone took a running leap toward the next pillar, using it as a springboard to kick against and change direction.

  The car plowed on into the pillar.

  Concrete flew everywhere. The steel rebar reinforcing the pillar were now wrapped around the front of the car, merged into one mass.

  The heavy metal stopped.

  The drum and bass started.

  Welldone landed on the ground and another car sped toward him.

  Welldone screamed a wordless scream.

  He jumped, firing at the driver’s seat again, but even as he did so the car caught his right leg, smacking into him as it passed.

  Welldone’s body pirouetted through the air and slammed into the ground.

  The advancing car continued on its course, slamming into the back of the car embedded in the concrete pillar.

  Welldone pulled himself up and, with a dark expression, spat—saliva, blood, and smashed teeth.

  He ejected his guns’ magazines and reequipped them with a fluid movement and stared out into the darkness.

  The second he clocked a white silhouette in the corner of his eye, he pointed the barrels of his guns straight at it.

  He pulled the triggers, and returning fire came straight back at him.

  An impact in his right knee. The same leg that had been hit by the car. Welldone’s whole body jerked to the right and collapsed.

  He rolled with the blow, firing off as many shots as he could as he fell.

  None reached their target.

  Another bullet came at him, hitting the same knee again.

  His bulletproof padding shattered, and a hole opened up in his reinforced body.

  A pitiful moan crept out of Welldone’s mouth.

  He reloaded his guns, bullets hurtling toward him as he did so, but none of the bullets hit him.

  A suspicious expression appeared on Welldone’s face.

  He wasn’t the target.

  Welldone immediately realized what was going on. He gritted his teeth and sprang for cover on the other side of the pillar.

  That instant the bullets pierced the gas tank and the car went up in flames, causing a chain explosion that brought the other car along for the ride.

  A blast of flames engulfed Welldone, and his bulletproof coat was ripped to shreds as his body was flung against the wall—like a doll that a spoiled child had long since tired of.

  Even then, Welldone wouldn’t let go of the guns in his hands. He clambered to his feet, his whole body pierced with fragments of unidentified shrapnel.

  Breathing hard, he glared at the blazing fire and readied his guns again.

  Without warning another volley roared forth from the flames. They were aimed for the gaps in his now-ragged bulletproof coat.

  His arms were hit, his shoulders were hit.

  Desperately moving to change his position, he fired back, but the bullets just kept on coming.

  A different type of bullet now, with an explosion of sparks on the surface of his bulletproof coat as it slammed into his body. Charged particles flowed across his skin, frying all his exposed flesh.

  Next it was a rifle shot. It sliced through his left shoulder blade and made a hole in the wall behind him.

  One by one, in quick succession, bullets of different calibers flew through his body.

  Yelling what sounded like a war cry, Welldone peeled himself off the wall and charged at the whirlpool of fire.

  On the other side of the dark red smoke Balot’s face was a picture of delight as she fired her gun over and over.

  “That’s enough, Balot!”

  An apparently inexhaustible supply of bullets emerged from a magical glove and disappeared again, like a sigh in a thunderstorm.

  She wore a satisfied expression, reacting to every roar and explosion as if to say That was me.

  She was in control—overwhelmingly so.

  The power to manipulate objects—and sentient beings—as she liked, bending them to her will.

  This is it, she thought. This is the feeling that the men in my life have always been savoring.

  Where previously she had been brutally oppressed, now she was experiencing the ultimate high.

  Overwhelmed by a gust of pleasure so intense that it almost felt like pain, Balot grasped this all too clearly.

  “Stop it, Balot! That’s enough!” Her ears registered Oeufcoque’s shouts for the first time, even though he’d been yelling at her all the while.

  She hadn’t noticed because every time she had fired a shot, the shock wave of pleasure had numbed her senses.

  Now her aim faltered. What’s the matter? she wondered.

  Oeufcoque was trembling. He was shot through with an emotio
n that Balot, in her current state, simply couldn’t comprehend.

  “Balot, I’m begging you, you can’t misappropriate me so. It’s…abuse. Keep to our original tactics, self-defense…”

  –Don’t you worry.

  Balot stopped firing one of her guns for a second to give it a fleeting kiss.

  –I’ll be gentle with you. Leave it all to me.

  Then she snarced her whole body with a sense of domination enough to make the blood turn sour.

  “Stop i—”

  This time she actually did block out Oeufcoque’s voice, forcefully silencing him.

  She snarced both guns, turning them into weapons she could use most easily.

  Just then Welldone emerged from the smoke, both arms crossed in front of him to ward off the worst of the flames as he leapt through them.

  He rolled over the rubble, clocked Balot’s location, and stood up, his teeth bared. An expression somewhere between fury and a smile.

  For a moment they stared at each other in absolute silence.

  Then they pointed their guns at each other.

  Balot started laughing.

  04

  “It’s no good, I can’t get through!” Flesh wailed in despair. He was inside the shipping container on the trailer.

  “Well’s response—it’s as if he’s brain dead! And there are sound prints of over ten different weapons recorded in his audio circuits…”

  Boiled continued to stare at the monitor.

  Flesh shouted. “How can there only be one of them? This is unbelievable? This PI Oeufcoque is a freak! A sadist! He’s put Welldone in a coma and he’s shooting up the carcass with a pile of weapons!”

  Boiled suddenly interrupted Flesh’s stream of words: “Fetishism is essentially compensation for a sense of helplessness.”

  Flesh stopped his wailing and stared at Boiled suspiciously.

  Boiled spoke. “Those who fight in a way that’s subconsciously designed to compensate for their feelings of inadequacy—Oeufcoque’s skillful enough to trap them into his way of fighting. It’s as I thought—Oeufcoque is providing tactical guidance, and the client doesn’t really understand. This is a deviation from the designated Life Preservation Program—it’s abuse.”

  “What are you talking about? I thought there was only one enemy?”

  “The enemy is abusing Oeufcoque. Before long Oeufcoque will be forced to retreat from the battlefield in self-defense. The enemy will lose her ultimate weapon…”

  Flesh’s wobbly figure recoiled at Boiled’s voice, sensing a dangerous undercurrent in his flat monotone.

  “It seems that the target has been somehow reinforced with the Doctor’s technological trickery. It seems that Paradise technology—Scramble 09—has brought another monster into this world.”

  “Paradise…what do you mean…”

  But Boiled just took out a long gun from his breast pocket, and Flesh swallowed the rest of his words.

  It was a giant silver revolver, and it looked strong enough to pierce the armor on a tank.

  The sort of gun that only a being with extraordinary physical strength could wield properly.

  Boiled opened the cylinder to confirm that it was fully loaded before snapping it shut again.

  “A…are you going to go yourself, sir…?”

  Boiled turned to look at Flesh and nodded.

  “Then please be as quick as you can—I think Well’s in serious trouble.”

  Boiled stood up and took the spare key to the trailer from off the wall where it was hanging.

  Flesh watched him, wary.

  “What are you going to do with this trailer?”

  “Your gang has expended its usefulness. I wanted to gauge how Oeufcoque’s new user would react when faced with danger. Now, before long, Oeufcoque and his user will be separated forever. I got what I came for.”

  He cocked the trigger of the gun, and it thudded into place with a heavy click.

  He pointed the muzzle of the gun at Flesh, casually, almost off-hand.

  Flesh trembled.

  Boiled pulled the trigger.

  The gun roared, and a hollow space appeared between Flesh’s shoulders.

  Behind him a gaping hole opened up in the wall of the container, exposing it to the elements. The whole trailer rocked from side to side, and the eye-watering smell of gunpowder filled the room.

  Flesh’s body slumped to the ground. He had been destroyed utterly from his chest upward, taking the machinery behind him along for the ride. His cloak had come open, and his fat wrists could just be seen peeping through from underneath the mass of exposed breasts.

  Boiled reloaded the single empty chamber with another bullet and exited the container.

  He walked around the front of the container, climbed up into the driver’s seat, and inserted the key into the ignition.

  “I’m coming. I’m going to acquire you, Oeufcoque. You’re a tool, after all.”

  He twisted the key and the engine rumbled into action.

  Boiled pressed down on the accelerator.

  “Prepare to be fucked up, you bitch!” Welldone shouted. It sounded almost like an order.

  Both of his hands pulled down on his triggers. Balot did the same, simultaneously. Shots flew in unceasing rapid succession. The bullets smashed into each other in midair, sometimes vaporizing each other, other times ricocheting all across the parking lot.

  Teeth bared, Welldone moved in toward Balot as he fired. Balot stepped to her right. Welldone moved with her, mirroring her movements. The hail of bullets continued incessantly until one side stopped. Welldone’s guns were both empty.

  They both jumped behind pillars, but Welldone was the only one to reload.

  As for Balot, as soon as she was in the shadows she snarced the guns in both her hands and fused them together.

  The two guns melded together and turned into a single giant gun. Her gloves integrated perfectly into the grip, which formed the ideal shape for her hands: right hand to support and left hand to fire.

  She burst from the shadows of the pillar, flanking Welldone and pointing the gun right at him.

  Welldone screamed an inhuman cry. He had been trying to lift his right arm to fire, and now it was hit.

  A shot to the back of his hand, a shot to the barrel, a shot to the firing hammer, and a shot to his elbow. A stream of bullets.

  The ammunition—the magazine that he had just used to reload the gun—exploded in his grip. The gun was blown away, and with it all the fingers on his right hand.

  Flying fragments splattered into the side of Welldone’s face, painting it in shades of black and red.

  Still Welldone thrust his left gun out, unloading half the bullets in the gun in an instant.

  Balot didn’t even try to dodge. She shot down only the bullets flying toward her face, trusting her perfectly white garment to deflect the rest.

  Two blows to her chest, one to her hips. But the impact was almost completely absorbed, and the bullets didn’t even reach her flesh.

  This is all you are. This is the best you can do. She felt like shouting at him at the top of her lungs. She wanted to break him completely, thoroughly abuse and disparage him. It was what she needed to do—and indeed she couldn’t think of anything else she should be doing.

  Balot walked straight up to Welldone and fired at him with all the rising passions in her body.

  Not a single bullet missed.

  She hit Welldone’s legs, his shoulders, his stomach.

  –No, you prepare to be fucked up!

  Balot screamed in a non-voice.

  –I’m gonna fuck you up!

  Her thoughts flowed through Oeufcoque and were spat out the other end as bullets.

  –Fuck you!

  Welldone lay there, back to the pillar, arms and legs splayed open passively.

  And when, in a last-ditch effort, he tried one final time to lift the gun that was still gripped in his left hand, Balot unloaded into his crotch, tearing it to shreds w
ith another hail of bullets.

  Frothing at the mouth, Welldone fired off a single shot in the wrong direction.

  Gun smoke enshrouded the scene like tobacco smoke in a poolside bar that had no ventilator fan.

  Empty cartridges from Balot’s gun bounced out onto the floor rhythmically, as if they were playing a cheerful song.

  Welldone slithered down the pillar, staining it red.

  Balot continued to pump bullets into him even as he collapsed. With deadly accuracy she manipulated the bullets, manipulated Welldone, and manipulated Oeufcoque.

  Drenched in sweat, she stayed her hand for a moment. The muscles in her wrists were throbbing, numb. The impact from firing the gun was now being absorbed by her, not her dress.

  She realized that she could no longer hear Oeufcoque’s voice, and that it was she herself who was suppressing it by force, as if she hadn’t known what she had been doing.

  Balot let go and released all the power that had been building up in her body.

  Her eyes prickled with smoke and she couldn’t see well.

  She tried to snarc the lights and the air conditioning in the parking lot but realized that most of the circuits had stopped working.

  Fires blazed all around.

  Balot took a step back to survey a vista of rubble. The parking lot had been reduced to ruins; the ceiling had caved in where the pillars had been destroyed, and the contents of rooms on the first floor were strewn around the place.

  The Doctor’s research lab, too, thrown into the mix. All of a sudden Balot’s eyes fell on an aquarium that she had seen before. At the back of her mind, Balot remembered the Doctor’s words—that he was trying to find a way to regenerate her voice box.

  The aquarium was obliterated, its burnt-out fragments intermingled with jagged shards of concrete.

  The smoke cleared abruptly.

  For almost the first time, Balot properly registered the appearance of her assailant.

  His bullet-riddled body stirred.

  The body that she had thought of only as a target—she had completely forgotten that he was a living, breathing thing.

  The multitude of dark red wounds that punctured his body reminded her of this fact.

  All of a sudden, an incredible, unbearable nothingness pressed in on her from behind.

  Dreadful footsteps.

  Sensing the air, snarcing—no use.