Mardock Scramble

04

“It’s no good, I can’t get through!” Flesh wailed in despair. He was inside the shipping container on the trailer.

“Well’s response—it’s as if he’s brain dead! And there are sound prints of over ten different weapons recorded in his audio circuits…”

Boiled continued to stare at the monitor.

Flesh shouted. “How can there only be one of them? This is unbelievable? This PI Oeufcoque is a freak! A sadist! He’s put Welldone in a coma and he’s shooting up the carcass with a pile of weapons!”

Boiled suddenly interrupted Flesh’s stream of words: “Fetishism is essentially compensation for a sense of helplessness.”

Flesh stopped his wailing and stared at Boiled suspiciously.

Boiled spoke. “Those who fight in a way that’s subconsciously designed to compensate for their feelings of inadequacy—Oeufcoque’s skillful enough to trap them into his way of fighting. It’s as I thought—Oeufcoque is providing tactical guidance, and the client doesn’t really understand. This is a deviation from the designated Life Preservation Program—it’s abuse.”

“What are you talking about? I thought there was only one enemy?”

“The enemy is abusing Oeufcoque. Before long Oeufcoque will be forced to retreat from the battlefield in self-defense. The enemy will lose her ultimate weapon…”

Flesh’s wobbly figure recoiled at Boiled’s voice, sensing a dangerous undercurrent in his flat monotone.

“It seems that the target has been somehow reinforced with the Doctor’s technological trickery. It seems that Paradise technology—Scramble 09—has brought another monster into this world.”

“Paradise…what do you mean…”

But Boiled just took out a long gun from his breast pocket, and Flesh swallowed the rest of his words.

It was a giant silver revolver, and it looked strong enough to pierce the armor on a tank.

The sort of gun that only a being with extraordinary physical strength could wield properly.

Boiled opened the cylinder to confirm that it was fully loaded before snapping it shut again.

“A…are you going to go yourself, sir…?”

Boiled turned to look at Flesh and nodded.

“Then please be as quick as you can—I think Well’s in serious trouble.”

Boiled stood up and took the spare key to the trailer from off the wall where it was hanging.

Flesh watched him, wary.

“What are you going to do with this trailer?”

“Your gang has expended its usefulness. I wanted to gauge how Oeufcoque’s new user would react when faced with danger. Now, before long, Oeufcoque and his user will be separated forever. I got what I came for.”

He cocked the trigger of the gun, and it thudded into place with a heavy click.

He pointed the muzzle of the gun at Flesh, casually, almost off-hand.

Flesh trembled.

Boiled pulled the trigger.

The gun roared, and a hollow space appeared between Flesh’s shoulders.

Behind him a gaping hole opened up in the wall of the container, exposing it to the elements. The whole trailer rocked from side to side, and the eye-watering smell of gunpowder filled the room.

Flesh’s body slumped to the ground. He had been destroyed utterly from his chest upward, taking the machinery behind him along for the ride. His cloak had come open, and his fat wrists could just be seen peeping through from underneath the mass of exposed breasts.

Boiled reloaded the single empty chamber with another bullet and exited the container.

He walked around the front of the container, climbed up into the driver’s seat, and inserted the key into the ignition.

“I’m coming. I’m going to acquire you, Oeufcoque. You’re a tool, after all.”

He twisted the key and the engine rumbled into action.

Boiled pressed down on the accelerator.

“Prepare to be fucked up, you bitch!” Welldone shouted. It sounded almost like an order.

Both of his hands pulled down on his triggers. Balot did the same, simultaneously. Shots flew in unceasing rapid succession. The bullets smashed into each other in midair, sometimes vaporizing each other, other times ricocheting all across the parking lot.

Teeth bared, Welldone moved in toward Balot as he fired. Balot stepped to her right. Welldone moved with her, mirroring her movements. The hail of bullets continued incessantly until one side stopped. Welldone’s guns were both empty.

They both jumped behind pillars, but Welldone was the only one to reload.

As for Balot, as soon as she was in the shadows she snarced the guns in both her hands and fused them together.

The two guns melded together and turned into a single giant gun. Her gloves integrated perfectly into the grip, which formed the ideal shape for her hands: right hand to support and left hand to fire.

She burst from the shadows of the pillar, flanking Welldone and pointing the gun right at him.

Welldone screamed an inhuman cry. He had been trying to lift his right arm to fire, and now it was hit.

A shot to the back of his hand, a shot to the barrel, a shot to the firing hammer, and a shot to his elbow. A stream of bullets.

The ammunition—the magazine that he had just used to reload the gun—exploded in his grip. The gun was blown away, and with it all the fingers on his right hand.

Flying fragments splattered into the side of Welldone’s face, painting it in shades of black and red.

Still Welldone thrust his left gun out, unloading half the bullets in the gun in an instant.

Balot didn’t even try to dodge. She shot down only the bullets flying toward her face, trusting her perfectly white garment to deflect the rest.

Two blows to her chest, one to her hips. But the impact was almost completely absorbed, and the bullets didn’t even reach her flesh.

This is all you are. This is the best you can do. She felt like shouting at him at the top of her lungs. She wanted to break him completely, thoroughly abuse and disparage him. It was what she needed to do—and indeed she couldn’t think of anything else she should be doing.

Balot walked straight up to Welldone and fired at him with all the rising passions in her body.

Not a single bullet missed.

She hit Welldone’s legs, his shoulders, his stomach.

–No, you prepare to be fucked up!

Balot screamed in a non-voice.

–I’m gonna fuck you up!

Her thoughts flowed through Oeufcoque and were spat out the other end as bullets.

–Fuck you!

Welldone lay there, back to the pillar, arms and legs splayed open passively.

And when, in a last-ditch effort, he tried one final time to lift the gun that was still gripped in his left hand, Balot unloaded into his crotch, tearing it to shreds with another hail of bullets.

Frothing at the mouth, Welldone fired off a single shot in the wrong direction.

Gun smoke enshrouded the scene like tobacco smoke in a poolside bar that had no ventilator fan.

Empty cartridges from Balot’s gun bounced out onto the floor rhythmically, as if they were playing a cheerful song.

Welldone slithered down the pillar, staining it red.

Balot continued to pump bullets into him even as he collapsed. With deadly accuracy she manipulated the