Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  Or it could have been something else, something simpler. Perhaps this was the only situation in which Boiled was ever able to speak to anyone in a friendly manner. He could only experience intimacy when earnestly trying to take the life of another, when under attack himself.

  “I’m going to have to contain those abilities.”

  He tossed the object in his hand to the ground. For a moment, Balot thought he had simply discarded a spent magazine.

  Boiled’s tactics were so perfect that he even anticipated Balot’s momentary error. He was a flawless strategist, and the implication of this was that his actions were constantly calculated to put Balot at the maximum disadvantage.

  Reflexively, Balot shot at the object—a black sphere the size of a man’s fist.

  If it were a grenade or something similar then Oeufcoque would have no trouble protecting her from its effects.

  But the object didn’t shatter and didn’t explode. It just landed quietly on the street and rolled toward Balot until it was only a few meters away from her. Then it released something—something invisible to the naked eye.

  Balot suddenly felt the whole of her skin turning itchy. But only for a moment. The sensation quickly changed into something much worse: she was hit by severe pain in her back and stomach and arms and legs and face. It felt like her skin was peeling off of its own accord.

  Balot staggered backward. The pain made her dizzy, and she almost lost consciousness. She lost all sense of precision and could no longer feel her surroundings. She was terrified.

  “An Area Defense Weapon!” Oeufcoque said. The black sphere wasn’t an explosive—it was something far worse than that to Balot. “A nonlethal weapon; it emits electromagnetic waves that cause terrible pain in all exposed areas.”

  Balot couldn’t even respond—it was all she could do to shake her head.

  “He’s coming! He’s right above us!”

  Balot’s arms shot up. She was completely following Oeufcoque’s lead now. Boiled fired a shot, and his bullet scored a direct hit on Balot, slamming into her arms. Balot was enveloped by a wave of pain. It was like she had been slashed with razors all over and had hooks inserted into the thousands of cuts, and then had her whole skin ripped off her in one hideous flash.

  “You need to snarc your bodily senses back into place! Balot—” Oeufcoque cried. Even as he did so, he covered her whole body in a defensive wall.

  Balot wrenched her consciousness into action and snarced her own body. Thinking I might try and experience some pain for a change—who was it that had said that?

  Balot snarced her feelings in order to erase them. To send them into space. Just like she had always done in the past.

  She hadn’t been able to master it at first, all that time ago. With her father. The image of his bearded face flashed up in the back of her mind…the way he undressed her, taking off her school uniform with his hands that had lost half of their fingers. Nauseating.

  Erase it all!—I’m going to make it clean! I’m going to clean you up! I’d be better off dead. The bustle of the pleasure quarter. The noises that drifted in through the car windows. Erase the pain—turn the switch on and the giant shredder would get rid of anyone, close family or complete stranger. To be human is—to hurt. I just wanted to be loved. That’s the goal. That’s the trophy. I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to fuck you up. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

  There was the encroaching despair, and there was her heart that struggled tooth and nail to fight it off. Her stomach cramped. Her throat undulated, her mouth was filled with bile, and vomit dribbled down her chin. She cried. She cried as she puked. She didn’t want to die. Such was the desperate cry of one who had never experienced unconditional love. She didn’t want to die.

  –Ash, cash, trash, crush…

  She didn’t want to die in this sorry state. The acrid taste of smoke was back in her mouth once more.

  –Bash, rush, hash, gosh!…

  She heard the nonsense rhyme spinning around. Balot’s eyes closed and she was ready to sleep.

  –Dish, wash, brush, flush…

  She realized that a powerful electric current was passing through Oeufcoque and stimulating her pain receptors on her skin. She grasped the sensation, not as real pain, but as an artificially induced phenomenon.

  –Flash, flesh…

  The pain grew distant, and she came to her senses. Her fetid past subsided, and only her will to live remained.

  –Wish…

  Balot’s eyes snapped open.

  She realized that she was lying flat. A white defensive wall like an egg protected Balot, taking the bullets meant for her. Less than five seconds had passed since Balot had collapsed.

  The pain had disappeared, but now Balot sensed the terrifying reality of her surroundings more keenly than ever. She felt that she could now sense the movement of even the hairs on Boiled’s head as he fired at her from the wall he was standing on.

  She gripped both her guns tightly. In an instant it all came flooding back to her: which gun to use and at what time. Which chip would draw out the right cards; which chip would gain that decisive victory. The muzzle on her left gun grew larger, and the caliber of the gun increased.

  Balot stood up. That same moment, her protective shell powdered to dust, because Oeufcoque had dissolved the barrier, and because Boiled had fired another shot right into it.

  Boiled stood on the wall, virtually an arm’s length away from Balot.

  His shot brushed past Balot’s right flank and thundered into the distance.

  Pieces of white shock-absorbent material flew in every direction. Balot’s right arm rose up tentatively, shaking like a newly hatched chick who had just pecked its way out of its shell, but when she did manage to raise it her aim was true.

  Boiled’s eyes opened wide in surprise and delight.

  Balot’s right hand unloaded all ten rounds in her gun in three and a half seconds flat.

  At the same time, her left hand had unleashed her snarc’s fangs—she had caught Boiled’s left leg with her snarc and was tearing into it.

  The PGF wall that protected Boiled lost integrity, and a number of the bullets unleashed from Balot’s left gun hit home, piercing his arms and shoulders. Blood and sparks gushed out of his left thigh.

  Boiled’s body seemed to float in midair. Or so it seemed at first to Balot, but then she realized that he had simply lost the strength to stay attached to the wall, and now his giant frame was falling toward her.

  This was her chance. Balot prepared for the exact moment to fire her left-hand gun.

  The left sleeve of her bodysuit turned with a squelch into a metal support frame to help her arm withstand the incredible recoil that would come from firing such a massive weapon.

  But Boiled wasn’t finished yet. Indeed, it was in just such moments that his true ferocity was revealed.

  Even his apparent collapse was a feint. Without warning, he placed both feet on the wall and stood firm. The next instant he hurled the butt of his massive metal gun straight toward Balot’s head with such power the air howled as it parted.

  Balot’s head flipped to one side to dodge. The sledgehammer blow grazed her forehead, ripping her skin open. The searing pain should have been immense.

  But Balot had decided to stop feeling pain. Even if her skull had caved in at this point, she was moving with such sureness that she felt confident she would still finish her action.

  She found the chink in Boiled’s armor and carried out her sequence of attacks.

  She threw her invisible fangs, her snarc, at Boiled’s PGF wall to open up a hole.

  A small opening, but it was enough. It took only one small card to spell the difference between defeat and decisive victory. Balot’s left hand fired the gun into the opening.

  The shock of the recoil caused her metal brace to shudder and fall off. Such was the caliber of the gun. And it was the bullet from this gun that now bored a hole all the way through Boiled.

  The b
ullet pierced his left femur—and with it, the core of one of the four devices implanted in his limbs to generate his PGF.

  Boiled’s left leg swelled up from the inside like a balloon—and ruptured. The leg exploded into a mass of flesh and bone and blood, creating a shower of red and white somewhere above Balot’s head.

  The very next moment, Boiled had his leg—severed from the thigh down—in his hands and was brandishing it as a weapon.

  Then some invisible force kicked Balot in the chest with tremendous power.

  She flew from the sidewalk and her back slammed down onto the road. She jumped back up as quickly as she could.

  Her body felt no pain. Her senses were clear, her heart calm.

  Even so, she was somewhat taken aback at the sight she now faced.

  Boiled walked down from the wall onto the sidewalk. His left leg was missing from just above his thigh. But this hadn’t stopped him one iota; he walked on a phantom leg in its place.

  Boiled had cranked up his remaining four antigravity devices to the fullest and made a leg-shaped PGF field where his real leg had been. He was barely bleeding, either—Balot could see that his PGF acted as an antigravitational tourniquet to stop the flow of blood from the exposed arteries.

  “I won’t be stopped just because I lose a limb or two, you know,” Boiled whispered in a deep voice.

  Then he charged.

  Balot trembled. She fired quickly with her right-hand gun. Had she been able to use her voice, she would have screamed something between a shriek and a war cry as she fired over and over. Boiled’s PGF was still there and it still deflected the flight paths of the bullets, but only just, and it wasn’t perfect. Small gaps were opening up. Several bullets weaved their way through the openings and managed to skim Boiled’s flesh.

  But Boiled wouldn’t stop. He ran straight at her, bringing down his blood-soaked right arm.

  The air seemed to distort, and a physical mass of antigravity bore down on Balot.

  Breathtaking force descended on her from the left, from the right, from the front.

  Boiled’s blow caused Balot’s whole body to hurtle backward. She flew across the road and through the shop window of the building opposite. Oeufcoque covered her body as best he could, but Balot snarced so that he focused his protection on a few vital areas. Boiled had thrown caution to the wind and half-surrendered his shield. If she didn’t respond and do likewise, she wouldn’t be able to truly face him down.

  Balot clambered straight back up. Her surroundings were littered with broken glass from the window, and a number of stereos and other boys’ toys were lying around on the floor.

  Boiled pushed his PGF wall further in order to bring down pressure on Balot’s surroundings.

  Boiled drew near, and the moment he had his gun up again and ready to strike, Balot snarced. She turned all the building’s lights on in a flash, dazzling Boiled as he drew near.

  Again, Balot was virtually invisible against the backdrop of the bright lights, and again Boiled fired at her, not with any semblance of aim or accuracy, merely to keep shooting, to keep the pressure up. A stereo beside her exploded, but even as Boiled fired she was running out of the shop onto the pavement, falling to her side, and she fired at him again and again with her right-hand gun.

  Balot didn’t bother using her eyes either. She just sensed her opponent’s position—his existence. She felt her own existence. She felt the flow of life and death that the two of them created by the mere virtue of existing.

  Her opponent—the other existence—jumped into space and landed on the wall just above the shattered shop window.

  Balot continued firing at him, tracking his movements accurately, and she jumped quickly to her feet.

  A bullet that Boiled fired back grazed the top of her shoulder. Her bodysuit, Made by Oeufcoque, was ripped open, and the shock-resistant material fluttered around in fiery pieces, ignited by the heat of the terrifying bullet.

  Then, without hesitation, Balot did the thing that she needed to do in order to take advantage of her situation.

  She walked straight toward Boiled, firing as she advanced.

  Boiled, too, walked straight along the wall.

  “Curiosity…” he murmured, releasing another howling bullet as he spoke. “I just wanted to do this with you. With you two.” Boiled’s expression at this point could have been described as bold and daring, were it not for the vicious smile that played across his lips.

  Balot’s eyes opened wide. The right sleeve of her suit was squelching and turning into a weapon that she hadn’t used before. A number of threads of light emerged from her right wrist and flew at Boiled. It wasn’t until after the deadly weapon had already been released did Balot remember somewhere at the back of her mind that such a thing had once been used on her by the assassins that attacked her. Wire whips.

  Boiled’s gravity shield managed to repulse the wires amid a mass of violent midair explosions of sparks and fire.

  As this was happening, Balot snarced one of the wires so that it went straight up and wrapped itself around the aluminum sash window frame, the one the old man had previously fired at with his shotgun.

  Sparks flew, and the metal window frame was chopped roughly in half.

  The wires came speeding back in toward her, and Balot was pulled up into the air by the momentum.

  Balot kicked her legs down against the wall of the building as hard as she could. She soared into the air. She was flying.

  Using her bodysuit to glide through the air, Balot felt the flow created by the two of them, the clash of steel in this bloodthirsty and unforgiving world.

  And then her feelings dissipated. It was as if her very existence was dissolving and then disappearing completely. This was how the two of them survived.

  Now Balot’s very feelings were the flow. Balot was the flow of battle.

  One of Boiled’s bullets sped toward Balot, missing her by inches.

  The next moment, Balot was on the wall next to Boiled, looking down at him.

  Boiled twisted his body to look up and sensed that Balot’s next salvo was coming. Balot knew that Boiled was about to squeeze his trigger again too—she felt it in all her cells even before Boiled started to do it.

  Fractions of a second before the trigger hit the base of the bullet, Balot’s legs kicked against the wall again.

  The white-hot bullet grazed Balot’s flank, boring through her bodysuit again. The shock-absorbent material fell as fiery powder, and her exposed flesh was blackened where the bullet had passed by it.

  Balot snarced the wires and cut them all.

  Balot’s body froze in midair. That instant felt like an eternity, and that eternity was all it took for Balot’s right hand to squelch and turn into yet another deadly weapon.

  Boiled had predicted something of the sort from Balot and aimed his gun accordingly.

  Balot sped down, headfirst, practically sliding down the wall on her left shoulder, and just when she slipped below Boiled’s feet the gun in her left hand erupted at Boiled.

  The high-caliber bullet smashed into Boiled’s bullet, creating a festive explosion of sparks as the two met and disintegrated. Amid the light show, Balot could sense the gap in Boiled’s PGF precisely. No, more than that—she had already sensed it. She knew that a gap had to open up where it did.

  As she fell, she swung the weapon in her right hand into that gap.

  Balot knew full well that Boiled would do anything to protect his gun arm, even sacrifice his other arm.

  The next instant, the highly magnetized blade of Balot’s Hutchinson Knife sliced through Boiled’s right arm just above his elbow. There was no resistance—it was like cutting through water.

  Balot’s sleeve turned into a cushion the instant before she landed.

  She bounced once on the sidewalk, and the cushion detached itself. Balot adjusted her cuffs and stood on the sidewalk.

  It thudded to the ground. Boiled’s lower arm, severed cleanly from the rest of him. S
he could see part of Boiled’s gravity-generating device peeping from the stump of the arm, spurting sparks and blood.

  At the very same moment the rest of Boiled came tumbling down toward her too. He had lost his PGF.

  This time it was no feint, but rather Boiled’s final move, a last-gasp hit.

  Boiled had now lost two out of five of his gravity-generating devices. Had he tried to keep himself up in the air, he wouldn’t have been able to focus on his shield, leaving him vulnerable. He voluntarily threw away the high ground to hurtle himself at Balot.

  He was like an over-ripened piece of fruit that a tree branch could no longer bear—he plunged toward the ground in order to splatter the pungent, sickly sweet flesh, to spread his lethal seed.

  Balot snarced her bodysuit so that Oeufcoque covered her to protect her, and as he did, Boiled came plowing down to her, all his PGF shield now converted to the sole purpose of smashing into Balot like a sledgehammer.

  Balot was slammed into the sidewalk by the incredible blow.

  Where she hit, the concrete shattered and a large crack opened up under her back. This was an explosion, not just a blow. Balot’s body was just the ground zero of PGF impact. The crack in the sidewalk traveled as far as the asphalt of the road, and the shock waves from the blow caused all the surrounding buildings to shudder, their windows smashing, and fire and smoke rose up all around.

  When the dust cloud finally settled, it was down to the final hand.

  Boiled, minus his right arm and left leg, was sprawled atop Balot, who was covered in a white shell. He was watching carefully.

  Balot wasn’t moving. Her face and body seemed to be covered in a cocoon, and it wasn’t even possible to tell whether she was still breathing.

  Are…you..hurt?

  Suddenly a clear voice echoed around Boiled’s head.

  Why…does…it…hurt…you?

  And for the first time in a very long time—indeed, what seemed like the first time ever—Boiled felt the warm glow that he’d felt when he first cradled the tiny golden creature in his hands.