Mardock Scramble

She tried forcing her father back with both arms. Her father was crying. He gripped her arms tightly with his hand with three fingers. His tears dripped down onto her arms and breasts. As if he were vomiting up blood. Eventually, the waves of pain subsided into silence, and a lukewarm liquid—different from tears—trickled down her thighs.

This was the “lucky guy” that the Hunter spoke of. This was why she had no answer when the defense counsel asked her why she didn’t resist.

She could recall her father’s face from then—full of sorrow—anytime. She could barely remember him looking any other way.

She’d wanted to do something about this sadness. Balot didn’t really understand that her father had just made love to his own twelve-year-old daughter as he would a woman, and in any case she wasn’t really in a position to refuse.

After the last time they had relations, Balot was taking a shower, mind blank, when she heard shouting and screaming. And then—a burst of gunfire.

Balot wrapped a bath towel around her body and came out of the shower to look on the scene. Her older brother, screaming like a mad dog. At his feet was her father, writhing in agony from a gunshot wound.

When her brother saw his little sister, steam rising from her half-naked body, he cried out maniacally.

Her brother was a volunteer at ADSOM. The reason he worked there could be traced back to childhood, when his mother shouted at him for not properly holding the end of the tube she was using to bind her arm as she was shooting up.

Balot’s brother was as neurotic as their mother. He was trying to save her from herself, but despite his good intentions, his irritation and hatred grew violently. And her brother was pretty much the only one in the family who could do a proper day’s work to earn a living wage.

So her brother was always on the lookout for opportunities to earn money more efficiently.

Before long he got mixed up in bad company and became a gunrunner. This all came out in the investigation into his father’s shooting, and her brother was consigned to the penitentiary.

“It was all for nothing,” her brother said to her at their last meeting.

Balot wasn’t able to say a word and just watched her brother’s back as he was led away. Then she herself was put into the institute, which was just as bad as prison. For a long time she thought of the institute as her punishment. That she was the one who broke her family up, so she was the one who deserved to be punished. Words that were said to her at the institute—bad girl, you’re a bad girl—still resounded in her ears.

The counsel for the defense unceasingly pressed his line of argument: the explosion was a complete accident and Shell had absolutely no murderous intentions. Indeed, Shell had been trying to rescue her, but she wouldn’t trust him and started violently clawing at the door handle—and that had made the whole situation worse. He pointed to several scratch marks on the inside of the AirCar door as proof. As if the whole thing was Balot’s fault.

The defense counsel spared no effort in his exertions trying to persuade the jury of this.

Balot seduced her father without hesitation, wrecked her own family, plunged wildly into the uninhibited lifestyle of the dropout, and did whatever took her fancy—a Teen Harlot such as we’ve never seen.

So the counsel continued. Should we really abandon Shell-Septinos to his unfortunate circumstances, this man who had gone through trouble upon trouble to reach his position, working hard, motivated by his healthy ambition? Rather, shouldn’t we be supporting such a man, who showed such kindness toward a girl such as Balot?

Right now, Shell-Septinos is worried—frightened that he might have committed murder. Because he can’t remember the details of the day in question, due to his memory disorder. Of course, the girl knows all about his condition, and she’s trying to take advantage of it.

This was how the defense counsel argued.

The DA hit back with all he had. He summoned to the witness stand the Hunters who were investigating the case and the Doctor as an independent PI. He explained exactly how the girl had become an innocent victim, a sacrifice to one man’s vaulting ambition.

After it had all finished, the DA said to Balot’s team, “That counsel overplayed his hand, I think. However you look at it, our girl here was calm and composed, and she was obviously hurt. That’s all going to make an excellent impression on the jury. Not a single one of these jurors is a university graduate. That’s in our favor too. Because Shell has manipulated his own status records, passing himself off as a member of the elite, a university graduate. I have to admit I was a little worried at first, though—our girl is beautiful and elegantly done up, after all. There are some jurors who refuse to believe that a defendant can be guilty unless they see a victim at death’s door, shredded to pieces.”