Mardock Scramble

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. She 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.