Mardock Scramble

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 negotiations…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.