Mardock Scramble

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 emotion 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.