Mardock Scramble

Balot’s eyes brimmed with tears, and her vision blurred; she fired by sensation alone.

In her sorrow she felt herself go weak in the legs, and her knees suddenly buckled. She crumpled into a heap, her rump now on the rooftop.

A pathetic sight.

Still sitting, she carried on shooting, pushing the gun out in front of her.

From beyond the door, now torn to shreds, Boiled’s bullets came at her, relentless, oppressive, crushing.

Balot squeezed Oeufcoque tight and raised the level on her snarc up another notch, firing again and again with a face streaked with tears.

She knew that if she didn’t, she’d be dead.

How pitiful and pathetic she was, doing all this just to try and save her own life.

Suddenly there was an explosion right beside her, and part of the roof opened up. Balot realized that her aim was starting to falter. And there was nothing she could do about it.

The melee was disrupting her breathing, and her internal rhythm was going haywire.

Unable to withstand the pressure, her emotions were in disarray. Her breast was choked with sorrow, and she saw just how much stronger Boiled was.

Her aim was all over the place now.

The figure of her opponent grew blurrier still.

No longer able to sense where her opponent was aiming, she was gripped by terror, and—without thinking— scrambled for cover, awkwardly trying to get to her feet.

A life-threatening mistake.

Balot realized that she had been shot at.

The bullet flew straight for her face.

Then it happened, in an instant. The gun in her hand jumped up of its own accord.

The gun covered her face, turning with a squelch into a thick slab of shock- absorbent material.

Such was Oeufcoque’s will.

The bullet hit Oeufcoque. The belt fixed to her hand was blown away, and the gun flew from her fingers and smashed into Balot’s face. Her skin tore, and blood poured out from her wound.

Overcome by dizziness in her head, she collapsed, as if she’d just been flung backward.

The gun had—only just—saved Balot’s life, but in doing so it was blown to pieces itself.

One of the fragments squelched its way back into the form of Oeufcoque, who gave another cry of anguish.

At the corner of her field of vision Balot saw the golden-haired mouse.

Desperately pulling herself up, she extended her hand toward him.

In turn Oeufcoque suppressed his suffering with all his might and tried to jump back into Balot’s hand.

A deadly bullet flew straight at them. Packed with cold, vicious intent.

Paralyzed by fear, Balot couldn’t even move—she was petrified on the spot.

But the bullet wasn’t aimed at her.

The bullet exploded right in front of her eyes.

The concrete rooftop flew up along with the target. The concrete fragmented and scattered, and a soft bundle of something came flying toward her, bouncing off against her chest.

Oeufcoque’s flesh and red blood splattered across Balot’s white clothes.

“Balot…” Oeufcoque’s voice.

Mind blank, Balot tried to find the source of the voice. “Make me transform into something, quickly.” The voice was frail, but full of urgency.

Finally Balot found Oeufcoque. He was the bundle that had just smashed into her chest and bounced off.

The sight of him felt like a hammer blow to the side of her head.

Oeufcoque’s lower body was shredded to pieces, and he was crawling along, arm outstretched toward her.

Balot screamed.

But, of course, all that leaked out of her mouth was a dry whistling sound.

Crying, she hastily scooped Oeufcoque up.

That same instant a bullet came flying at her.

She felt a thud in her upper right arm. For a moment she thought her whole arm had been torn off, so powerful was the impact.

Another blow followed to her flank. Her body flew through space. The air stuck in her throat and she lost all sense of up and down.

Her consciousness receded into the distance, but her Made- by-Oeufcoque shell protected her to the end.

She slammed into the iron perimeter fence, shoulder first. Thrown down onto the roof, she banged her temple against the concrete, jolting her back into consciousness.

Blood poured from the wound on her forehead, seeping into her right eye so that everything she saw appeared coated by a bright red film.

She was now a sitting duck. But no more bullets came at her.

Instead, the giant man emerged from behind the bullet-riddled door.

Smoothly, as if he had all the time in the world, Boiled walked toward her.

“This gun is you.” Boiled stopped a little way away from her. “This gun is what you were, back then. You were made to annihilate, to bring nothingness to this world. Just like me. That’s the ultimate answer to all those debates about what we are.”

He was standing a good distance away. A good distance to fire words off from, and a good distance to fire bullets off from.

Boiled opened the cylinder of his revolver. Smoking cartridges scattered across the roof. His trigger fingers, and the fingers that he was using to load more cartridges into his revolver, were all covered with burns and blisters.

The cylinder of his revolver clicked back into place.

Gripping his red-hot gun, he turned the muzzle toward Balot.

Balot’s left hand touched something soft. Without even looking at it, she knew exactly what it was. Without even looking at it, she knew exactly what it was trying to do. She felt his blood, slippery in her fingers. She closed her eyes, wanting to get a better feel of its warmth.

She heard the firing hammer of Boiled’s gun clicking back.

That very same moment, Balot brandished the gun in her hand—the turned Oeufcoque.

Two gunshots fired simultaneously, echoing in the night, sparks flying through the darkness.

The two bullets collided in midair, in the space between Balot and Boiled, smashing each other into pieces.

Balot felt a warm sensation in her hands.

Blood flowed from the gun, covering her hands and dripping to the floor.

Crying, Balot squeezed the bleeding gun tight, pulling the trigger over and over.

In order not to die—in order to survive.

Book II: