Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  Balot knew all too well how quickly the smiles of these sorts of men changed.

  “The crimes that the man committed are terrible, of course. There’s no denying that. But to refuse him any possibility of rehabilitation is to refute the significance of the law. OctoberCorp’s position is that we would like to give him the opportunity to reflect on his crimes and thereby gradually redeem himself. We will of course, Ms. Rune-Balot, foot the bill for any portion of the compensation that you are awarded and that he is unable to pay you out of his own assets.”

  Skyscraper smiled at Balot in anticipation of her answer. This is how much I’ll pay, now will you give me what I want? Balot had seen that inane grin too many times.

  It was the Doctor who spoke next, though. “And so it came to pass that Shell lived out his days peacefully under the thumb of his corporate masters… That’s how the story goes, is it? Presumably we get our brown envelope under the table if—and only if—we don’t touch on any, uh, inconvenient truths during the next trial?”

  “Dear, dear, Dr. Easter! I do hope you don’t speak quite so bluntly when you’re in court!”

  “Maybe not out loud, but I certainly think it. As for your answer, well, I’ll make sure that a reply is sent to you by email through the official Broilerhouse channels. It’ll be a short reply, though. Shorter than the password you’ll need to get into it.”

  “And what sort of reply might that be?”

  “‘Dear Balloon-face. Eat shit.’ ”

  Skyscraper’s smile seemed to stretch even farther.

  His face turned crimson, his eyes bloodshot. Yet he was still smiling. A grotesque sight.

  “You see, we’re PIs, and our job is to solve this case,” said the Doctor, smiling back, a very different sort of smile. “The courtroom antics are only a small part of that. The best thing you can do now is run along and try and deceive the judge into believing that there are any number of holes in our case, maybe appeal for a retrial. Won’t do you any good in the long run, though.”

  With that, the Doctor toppled face-first onto the table in front of him.

  Balot was visibly concerned. She was worried that the Doctor might have hurt himself.

  Skyscraper thought she was worried about her own safety. “Poor little princess. Aren’t you enjoying your milk anymore?” he said, his voice now steeped with sarcasm. “Don’t blame me, blame this idiot here who you trusted to keep you safe.”

  His dark red cheeks puffed out as he rose out of his seat toward her. He wore a whole new expression now, one in which rage and joy intermingled in equal measure. He was practically drooling as his thick arms reached out toward Balot to grab her, but Balot slipped to one side.

  “We know you’re unarmed, we scanned you on the X-ray as you came in,” Skyscraper smirked. “The man has a handgun in his pocket, but that’s all you have, right?”

  So that explained the uneasy sensation Balot had experienced when she entered the bar.

  Balot realized that the people at the other tables were now drawing in.

  –Oeufcoque, these people are enemies, right?

  Balot wanted to make sure she was doing the right thing before she did anything she couldn’t take back.

  “That’s right. They’re planning on holding you for ransom, and in exchange for your release they’ll try and force us to relinquish the chips as evidence,” Oeufcoque said out loud, unconcerned as to who could hear him.

  A puzzled expression crossed Skyscraper’s face. “Who’s that speaking—”

  –Am I allowed to shoot them?

  “Sure, but no more than absolutely necessary. No need to stoop to their level.”

  Balot’s left arm was under the table, and she felt it grow heavy with the weight of cold steel.

  There was an explosion, and Skyscraper screamed and staggered backward. He’d had a lucky escape—Balot had actually aimed for his crotch, but Oeufcoque had stayed her hand and made the bullet fly through the top of his foot instead.

  Balot lifted the table up quickly with Oeufcoque’s help—the bodysuit that was him melded with her body, allowing her to lift the table up as if it were made of cardboard.

  She threw the Doctor’s sleeping body onto the sofa to keep him out of harm’s way, scattering their glasses across the floor as she turned the table on its side. Fragments of glass and ice shattered and flew every which way. Balot wondered where she had seen such a scene before, and then she remembered. The Western, of course.

  “We keep the death toll to a minimum. Got it?”

  –Fine.

  Balot emerged from behind the plush red curtains and fired at three men in order as they attempted to fire bullets or electronic charges at her. She hit their shoulders with pinpoint accuracy, and they fell to the floor and rolled around in agony.

  The other men were flustered now, and they fired a storm of bullets at her. The upturned table shook from the impact. Balot stuck her arm out from behind it and fired swiftly. Not a single bullet of hers was wasted. The first two men found their fingers blown off; Balot had targeted their guns, piercing the cartridges and causing them to explode. The men never knew what hit them. Balot then fired a couple more shots for good measure. The bullets thudded into their thighs, bringing them down.

  Balot jumped out of the booth, table leg under her arm.

  The men looked on in disbelief as Balot advanced with the table—a lump of wood that weighed at least as much as she did—as a shield. They gave her everything they had, firing blindly. In return Balot fired a salvo of bullets straight into their collarbones. Not a single one of her shots missed.

  Just then the bartender emerged from behind the counter with a shotgun in his hands.

  Balot didn’t even need to look at him to thrust an arm out sideways and put bullets straight through both his shoulders. Unbelievable, his face seemed to say, as he turned a backflip into the array of bottles that lined the bar.

  The last man standing in the bar had his gun held out with a stupefied expression. Balot stuck her head out from behind the table, and the man hastily fired off a series of shots. He was at point-blank range and still failed to hit her, and indeed one of the flying bullets grazed his own arm as it ricocheted back, making him yelp. The bullet smashed into a large mirror at the end of the counter, and Balot expected it to shatter, but other than the new hole adorning it, the mirror seemed fine—as it turned out, it was a fairly sturdy specimen.

  Balot brandished the table over her head and threw it at the man.

  The man screamed, loud and shrill, and was thrown back into the booth along with the table.

  The bar was evidently fitted with quality air conditioning, as the white smoke in the air was already being sucked away. No one was dead, but all Balot’s assailants were thoroughly incapacitated. Balot ejected her cartridge, reloaded it with a new one generated from within the gun, and went to sit back down in the same booth she had been sitting at.

  There, the Doctor was snuggled up against Skyscraper, the former happily snoring away while the latter whimpered in pain and fear. Balot tapped Skyscraper on his shoulder, causing him to scream and push his chunky frame back against the wall. He squirmed so hard, it appeared as if he hoped he might be able to melt into the wall.

  “I…I’m just a hired hand! Please…” For someone who had succeeded so far in one of the most sought-after professions in Mardock City, the lawyer cut a pretty pathetic figure.

  –What do we do now? Just go home?

  “Let’s establish just who this ‘hired hand’ was hired by.” With that, Oeufcoque turned with a squelch, and Balot’s glove became a cell phone.

  Balot tossed the cell at Skyscraper’s knees.

  “Call your employer. We want to speak to him directly.” Oeufcoque’s voice emerged from the cell phone. Skyscraper, a quivering wreck, needed no additional encouragement.

  He had to try the number a few times before he eventually got through. “Hello…this is Sky…Skyscraper here. The other party in the negoti
ations…um…that is…they’d like to speak to you directly. Er…yes, surely…”

  He passed the phone back to Balot with a trembling hand. Balot didn’t even bother putting the earpiece to her ear. All she needed to do was connect to the part of Oeufcoque that was inside her suit.

  “Mr. Cleanwill John October? Director at OctoberCorp? This is Oeufcoque-Penteano here, PI and Trustee for this case.” Oeufcoque spoke out loud so that Skyscraper could hear too. Balot was starting to get fed up with Skyscraper’s miserable face, so she got up and wandered over to the bar in search of the carton of milk.

  Then they heard the sneering laughter of Cleanwill John October on the phone.

  –That was quite a show you put on for us back at the casino. How did you use your last ten thousand dollars? A fancy meal at some restaurant you couldn’t normally afford? A holiday to take your mind off your woes, perhaps?

  “The game’s up. We’re arresting you for attempted kidnapping and blackmail.”

  –Where’s your proof that I’m behind this? You have no witnesses. No one will arrest me.

  Balot shrugged. Thinking how she was grateful that she didn’t have to talk directly to such a person, she placed her gun on the counter, took a carton of milk from the refrigerator below the counter, picked up one of the few glasses that remained intact, and poured herself a glass. She was effectively committing robbery, she realized, but there wasn’t any other way she was going to get her drink.

  She added a couple of ice cubes to her drink and took a seat at the bar. She stared into the mirror at the end of the bar, repelled by the nearby phone conversation.

  –More importantly, why don’t you think about settling? The trial’s going to be a washout.

  “Washout? It’s too late for you to try and bring our case down by establishing a counter-case, if that’s what you mean.”

  –Not if we’ve already applied for our own case. Looks like we’ll be taking the same defendant to court.

  “The same defendant?”

  –Shell-Septinos has brought about considerable damage to OctoberCorp. The man has tarnished our good name and standing, took on fraudulent loans for his own personal advantage, and even had the audacity to demand a share of our assets.

  “How convenient for you. By assets I assume you’re referring to the dowry he would presumably have received as a matter of course in marrying your daughter?”

  –Marrying her? Ah, yes, there was such talk at one stage, wasn’t there?

  John paused to laugh, a most peculiar sound.

  –Ours is a family business—family is our rock and the foundation of our success. I was actually pleased to think that I had managed to find someone suitable to take that woman off my hands.

  Balot squeezed her glass tightly. Suddenly she had a feeling that she was missing something. Something to do with the building they were in…

  –Shell—I didn’t actually dislike him, truth be told. He had a good head on his shoulders and a certain tenacity of spirit. I admire that in a man. It’s no lie to say that he had excellent prospects, and we’re telling the truth when we say his current prospects are most lamentable.

  Balot’s feeling of unease started to solidify inside her. John’s words were triggering alarm bells somewhere deep inside her unconscious. Balot tried to put her finger on the reason.

  –But our company—we’re just as much victims of Shell as you are. We could just sit here and squabble amongst ourselves, of course, but wouldn’t it be better if we collaborated in prosecuting Shell together? There’s plenty of scope for negotiation here, don’t you think?

  “What exactly are you planning to do? Have him imprisoned and transported to a state where they have capital punishment, so that you can have the law do away with him for good?”

  John laughed. Balot heard the laugh as if it were echoing in the room right beside her. His future prospects are most lamentable. Someone had said something like this before. Skyscraper.

  –We need not trouble ourselves right now about what may or may not happen after Shell goes to prison. The important thing is that there is a certain someone who has been hurt deeply by Shell’s actions—a certain someone who was hoping to marry him and has been damaged as a result of what Shell has done. She’ll be inheriting the mantle of this case—or rather, OctoberCorp will on her behalf.

  “Inheriting it…”

  –Shell’s case will be closed shortly, and with it he’ll lose the right to have a PI investigate on his behalf. We’ll simply rehire the excellent PI that he currently has in his employ and have him work for us. The contractual negotiations are already in place.

  “You’re going to have Boiled kill Shell, is that the idea? You…”

  –Well, it looks like the children of Scramble 09 are going to have the opportunity to fight this one out amongst themselves. In the meanwhile, it’ll be our own OctoberCorp that’s wholeheartedly received by the people of Mardock City, just as the Three Magi wanted.

  “You dare to invoke the Three Magi? Can you put your founding director on the line to support your cock-and-bull story?”

  –She’s a sleeping beauty who won’t be waking up anytime soon. You know as well as I do that she’s brain-dead.

  “What I do know is that OctoberCorp is taking advantage of her comatose state to abuse the technology she gave you and make dirty money, under the pretext of ‘what the Three Magi would have wanted.’ You know full well that none of the Three Magi really want such a thing.”

  –Is that so? I can tell you that plenty of people in this city would disagree with you—they like being “abused” by our technology, as you put it. We’re just doing our duty as a clan to develop our inheritance—our duty to ensure the progress of OctoberCorp.

  “That’s a foul deceit—trying to justify the suffering of innocent victims, hiding behind weasel words.”

  –Do you know the origin of what we call the Stairway to Heaven, Mardock?

  “What—”

  –Mardock was the name of the son of the goddess. He killed his own mother and usurped her role as creator, ruling in her place far more effectively than she ever did. In much the same way, we at OctoberCorp are here to use the technology brought into the world by the Three Magi. The old moral values are obsolete in the face of social progress.

  “That’s just a fantasy that you guys conjured up to suit your own ends. There’s no such thing as old or new morals, just morality.”

  –I wouldn’t expect you to think anything else—a creature who narrowly escaped destruction only by hiding behind the shield of Mardock Scramble. Your so-called Scramble 09 is nothing more than a smokescreen whipped up by freaks such as you so that you can desperately try to justify your existence to a society who never asked for you in the first place and doesn’t want you now. But has society ever felt that way about OctoberCorp, the OctoberCorp that fulfills so many of its needs? I don’t think so, somehow…

  John’s voice was more sonorous than ever, and Balot honed in on the direction from which it came.

  “No one who refuses to acknowledge that they themselves are potentially dangerous has any right to lecture others about morality,” Oeufcoque stated boldly. As he did so, Balot jumped into action.

  With all her might she threw the glass in her hand toward the mirror at the end of the bar.

  The mirror that one of the men’s stray bullets had cracked but not destroyed only a minute ago.

  The glass smashed against the mirror, splashing the milk across the surface.

  There was an audible gasp on the cell phone. This confirmed Balot’s suspicions, and she moved quickly. She picked up her gun from the counter and unloaded it into the mirror in one swift movement.

  It really was a sturdy mirror. It took over ten shots before it gave up the ghost and started to collapse. Finally, though, it started peeling from the wall.

  It was a one-way mirror. And the scene behind it was now revealed to all in the bar.

  Balot threw her gun down and snarc
ed the left hand of her bodysuit so that she held a brand-new one in her grip.

  Gun outthrust, she stood in front of the warped mirror.

  A wave of disgust ran over her, one that made every hair on her body stand on end. Before she even had the chance to think about what she was doing, she pulled the trigger, hard. Oeufcoque was there for her, suppressing the bullet, stopping the action inside himself.

  “Ah…you seem to have us at a disadvantage, sir. I never imagined for a moment that you would be in such a place. Although I daresay the disadvantage is now all yours…” Unusually for Oeufcoque, his voice dripped with sarcasm. But Oeufcoque was Oeufcoque, after all, and he could only take so much—the whole scene was evidently getting to him. “I can’t say I think much of your hobbies, sir. By the look of it, I can see all sorts of laws being broken…”

  Beyond the mirror were five or six boys and girls in varying degrees of undress, all young. Preteen young. In the midst of them was a giant lump of flesh—far bigger than Skyscraper—sprawled on a sofa in a nightgown, holding a phone in his hand and looking at Balot in mute terror.

  “This is private property…” the corpulent figure finally managed to spit out. It was the same man they had seen back at the casino—none other than Cleanwill John October.

  “Indeed, so we’ll refrain from actually entering unless we’re forced to. We’ll just wait here, keeping you under guard until the police arrive. Cleanwill John October, as a PI and Trustee for this case, I invoke my jurisdiction to arrest you on charges of attempted kidnapping, extortion, and—well, lots of other things.”

  Oeufcoque managed to stay levelheaded. The proof of this was that he kept the safety catch on the gun firmly engaged. “Balot, call for police backup.”

  Balot shook her head. She wanted to kill them—kill them all, even the young boys and girls with John. She remembered the lecherous smirk on Skyscraper’s face, thought again about what it meant he wanted to do to her, and felt her blood rushing around her body so quickly she thought it might start flowing backward.

  “Balot.” Oeufcoque spoke even more deliberately.