Mardock Scramble полностью

Balot stared at the sky. She thought of an angel descending from the heavens. Just as she had fantasized whenever times were bad at the institute. The angelic visitor who would swoop down out of nowhere and rescue her.

As these memories came flooding back, she felt even more keenly the terrible things that she had done while using Oeufcoque.

Shameful, wretched things.

“Balot…” Oeufcoque called out nervously.

Balot spun around to face the emergency stairs.

The gunfire was getting closer now.

“Do it. Use me to protect yourself.” Oeufcoque’s little body trembled in Balot’s hand.

–I don’t want to hurt you anymore.

“I’ll be fine. I won’t get hurt.”

Balot’s expression tightened.

Right now, all she wanted to do was repent, confess to God, to anything.

All she wanted was to have someone say All is forgiven.

“He’s coming. He’s even faster than I thought.” Oeufcoque’s voice was harsh now.

She could sense the man’s footsteps approaching the door at the top of the stairwell.

Tears fell from her face.

She reached out to Oeufcoque—and snarced him.

He turned with a squelch.

A reassuringly heavy object formed in her hands.

An object with a gun barrel bigger than any she had ever used before.

A gun that would stand up to Boiled’s weapon.

This was Oeufcoque’s will—and a physical response to the danger that was drawing near. And it was customized perfectly for the situation. The grip of the gun turned, squishing into place as a belt that bound the gun to Balot’s left hand. A belt that wrapped her tight. Then it moved on to cover her wrist, with metal contraptions designed to deflect the force of the recoiling gun away from her body.

Bullets slid into place inside the metal frame, and the firing hammer cocked automatically.

And then she knew that her opponent was standing on the other side of the door.

She also knew that he’d be expecting her to be standing there, gun trained on him. She sensed his presence.

The air was pregnant with tension, and an unbearable heart-rending silence flowed all around.

Then the silence was abruptly shattered.

The first gunshots all sounded as one. An overwhelming number of bullets sprang into action. In that one instant, Balot fired off everything that she could.

Gunfire echoed all around, along with the piercing metallic sound of bullets clashing in midair.

A number of Balot’s bullets had managed to pierce the cannonball-like round that emerged from Boiled’s revolver, shooting it down.

The overpowering smell of charred metal spread, and a dense cloud of smoke filled the area.

When her opponent stopped firing, Balot too paused to eject her magazine, and with it the searing heat that had been building up in her gun.

When she started firing again she could feel the shock from the blasts vibrating in her arms. Balot realized what Oeufcoque had been doing—suppressing all his own instincts to reject her, pushing them deep inside himself so that he could fill himself with bullets and be useful to her, protect her.

In turn, Balot carried on snarcing Oeufcoque, helping him to continue. Even as the trigger was pulled and the electronic pulses caused the bullets to fly out the barrel.

She twisted Oeufcoque’s heart and pressed down, hard.

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.