After having a quick discussion with the other squad’s leader over whether taking the Ms to their military base was the correct thing to do or not, both Murayama and Kinjou ended up agreeing that leaving them on the run could prove to be more fatal to Japan on a whole than to all of the highly trained personnel occupying the base. So the boarding to the humvees resumed one more time.

“M1, M0, follow us,” said Murayama, accompanied by Umiko on his side. When he saw the almost immediate frown that appeared in M1’s face at his words, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes at it. “Would you be as kind as to follow us so we can take you to the humvee you two will be riding on?”

“Yes, we can,” acknowledged M1, taking his arms from around M0’s waist and taking a hold of his hand right away, leading both of them to their corresponding humvee.

“Geez, why is M1 so obstinate with orders?” asked Kinjou to no one in particular as he led M3 together with Ikusaki and Hisaka to their respective vehicle. “Aren’t you supposed to be soldiers? Soldiers must comply with the orders sent to them.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” snorted M3, his arms behind his head as he stretched his body and leisurely followed behind the soldier. Every so often he looked around his surroundings, searching for something that not even he was sure of how it would be like. “So where are these so-called humvees?”

“Huh?” interjected Ikusaki, completely lost on the question being made. He lifted one of his hands and pointed with his thumb to the vehicle they would be boarding and sitting on for another tedious six hours. “There?”

“There?” repeated M3, a frown on his face as he observed the big, black vehicle. “That’s a car.”

“Yeah, a humvee,” acknowledged Ikusaki with a short nod of his head. At least this target seemed to know enough of the outside world to identify a car at first sight. However…

“But if it’s a car, why the hell do you call it ‘humvee’?” asked M3 further, his dark blue eyes scanning and taking in all that he could see from the outside of the vehicle. He looked over to his other comrades and saw them being lead to exactly identical vehicles as well.

“Ah… Well, a humvee is a car, and humvee is the correct term for this type of car,” tried to explain Ikusaki, not understanding why he was having this type of conversation with an 18 years old male and not a 5 years old child.

“Ikusaki, in your next life, aim to become a teacher because that explanation was priceless,” teased Kinjou, snickering softly as he stopped in front of the humvee.

“Shut up!” yelped Ikusaki in a quite flustered tone.

“Damn, I don’t get it,” continued M3, scratching his head as he continued observing the large vehicles. He then switched his gaze to Ikusaki, seeing as he was the one that was actually answering his questions. “Why is it that you humans like to complicate things so much? A car is a car. Why put more names on it if, in the end, they are all the same?”

“Says the person who has more than one name…” scoffed Ikusaki under his breath, which, apparently, gained him a sideways glare from their in-charge target.

“That only comes to prove my point,” almost hissed M3, a half disgusted look on his face as he gave a quick glance in the completely destroyed lab’s direction. “If it were for me, I would only use my name. And it wasn’t given to me by any of you freakish humans.”

“Hm… Is that so?” acknowledged Hisaka, feeling somewhat irked over the blatant way M3 discriminated those that he considered ‘humans’. “Feel free to use it then. In my opinion, it would be less ‘freakish’ than having to call you with a letter and a number.”

“Try another time, old man,” shortly answered M3, picking at his ear with his little finger as he gave a big yawn.

“I’ll fucking kill you! I swear I will!” grumbled Hisaka, this time fully irked at M3’s words. He furiously walked over to the passenger seat next to the driver and opened the door, entering inside of the vehicle and closing the door with a large bang as he continued to angrily mumble to himself, his arms crossed over his chest when he came to a full sitting position.

“I’d like to see you trying that,” taunted M3 with a sly smirk on his features. He walked closer to the humvee and stopped in front of the door behind the one that the soldier had used, on the backside.

“Wait, do you know how to open doors or are you like M0 in that department?” cautiously asked Ikusaki, an eyebrow slightly arched as he observed M3 lunging his hand forward in the door’s direction.

“’ Course I know how to open doors,” answered M3, grabbing the handle of the car door. He swiftly pulled it and the whole door came out of its hinges. He held it high above his head and then dropped it to the floor, a loud metallic clattering accompanying it. “There. It’s open.”

“That’s not open, that’s broken,” cringed Kinjou, his fingertips massaging his forehead softly to calm down what seemed to be an incoming huge headache for all of them. Knowledge could be a dangerous thing… but apparently being isolated from what was considered fundamental knowledge to function in society was equally dangerous and 100 times more damaging.

“Oh~! I want to try that too!” excitedly exclaimed M5, pointing in M3’s direction. He quickly motioned over to the backseat’s door and was already motioning his hand over in its direction when one of the soldiers put himself in front of him.

“Don’t. Touch. It,” commanded Miue in a clear and precise way so that the words would fully sink inside of M5’s brain. He turned around and opened the door himself, not causing any damage whatsoever to the humvee while doing so. “We don’t have enough humvees for you to play around with. Now, you two, hurry up and hop in.”

“That’s so unfair~” whined M5, motioning his body forward to enter inside of the vehicle. When he settled his body on the opposite side of the backseat, so that M4 would also have enough space to come inside, he turned his head back to the two soldiers. “Why can M3 have fun and I can’t? That’s favouritism!”

“Do you even know what that word means?” asked M4 as he also motioned his body inside of the vehicle and carefully settled himself on the seat next to the blonde.

“No, not really. But it seemed fitting for this conversation,” honestly answered M5, a bright and toothy smile on his face.

“You should try to be more like M1 and actually read books now and then,” sighed M4, the door closing next to him. A few seconds later, the two doors on the front side of the vehicle were open and the two soldiers stepped inside too. “Though they were very selective in what they let him read, he taught us quite a lot of useful things thanks to it. Not like you, who spent his free time in the cell doing absolutely nothing.”

“Wait, M1 read books inside of his cell?” suddenly asked Mizusaki, turning his upper body around so he could look to the backseat. “How the heck did he do that? Isn’t he always tied in that weird way while inside of the cell?”

“Yes, all of us are,” answered M4 while quickly adjusting his glasses. “However, all of us possess what you refer to both eidetic and photographic memory. We only need to see something once to remember it for the rest of our lives. M1 could recite you the entire ‘Divine Comedy’ in several different languages, using several versions, and draw from memory all the illustrations there from the earlier editions. So he occupied himself with reading the books he has stored in his brain while he was inside of his cell. But well, some of us give more useful uses to that characteristic of ours than others.”

“I don’t really know what to say about that, except…” started Mizusaki, an eyebrow slightly arched as he first threw a sideways glance to Miue and then returned it to M4. “Why does M1 have such an obsession with the ‘Divine Comedy’?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” asked back M4, quickly switching his gaze to outside of the window.

“I prefer not to,” awkwardly confessed Mizusaki, turning his body around once again so he could sit straight. He observed for a few seconds the car parked in front of theirs and then switched his gaze to Miue. “When are we leaving?”

“As soon as we get the okay from all the humvees,” answered Miue, looking over to the radio device on the control panel of the vehicle. “I already sent the signal that Murayama instructed us to send when all of us were inside of the humvee and ready to depart.”

“I feel sorry for Ikusaki… He’ll have to ride in the backseat without a door next to hi—“ sighed Mizusaki, on his face an apologetic expression at the unfortunate circumstances of his squadmate. Suddenly there was a tap on his window. He readily looked over to it and slid the window open.

“Do you have any energy bars on this humvee?” asked James, an extremely tired look on his face as he leaned over the open window.

“Ah, for M2, right?” asked Miue, turning his body around to search in the small compartments on his door and near the steering wheel. Mizusaki was doing exactly the same thing on his side of the humvee.

After a few seconds of rumbling through the compartments of the vehicle, they delivered three energy bars that they somewhat managed to dig out.

“Thanks,” acknowledged James as he grabbed the energy bars and straightened his back once again. “I hope the bars we collected will be enough to maintain M2 quiet during the trip… I’m starting to doubt it already but it can’t be helped, I guess…”

“Good luck on your side,” added Mizusaki as James started to leave.

“Yeah, to you too,” acknowledged James. He quickly walked back to his vehicle and stopped besides Eki, delivering to him the food he had managed to gather from all the remaining humvees. “Will these be enough?”

“Eh… They’re so few…” complained M2 with a sluggish voice, his back bent forward as he remained sat down on the backseat of the humvee.

“We don’t have more, M2,” sighed Eki, putting the set of energy bars they had somehow managed to gather on top of the target’s lap. “Once we reach the airport, we can give you a lot more food. To you, to the other Ms and to ourselves. Does that work for you?”

“How long does it take to reach the airport?” asked M2, clumsily opening one of the bars and immediately stuffing it in his mouth, delightfully munching on it.

“Umm…” Eki gave a sideways glance to James as he tried to come up with a way of telling their target that it would take quite a while to reach there… or a way to not tell him that at all and put him entertained with something for the next six hours. “Ah… M2, have you ever seen a cooking show?”

“A cooking show? What’s that?” asked M2 with a mouth filled with chunks of the bar.

“It’s something that goes on the TV, where people cook different types of dishes,” explained Eki, walking over to the front seat of the vehicle and fiddling with the compartment on the passenger seat. Luckily, that humvee was the one that he had driven there so he had his cell phone well tucked inside. He took the device and quickly started to fiddle with the apps there while continuing his explanation. “You won’t be able to taste the food they show there but I guess you can create a list of requests for a later time. Watch as many culinary shows and contests as you want using this… ah, little device and then tell me which are the dishes you want to have made. I’ll try to find a solution in regards to those requests once we reach the base.”

“Okay,” shortly acknowledged M2, pushing his back fully inside of the backseat. Since he was far too tall to fit in the humvee while in a sitting position, he remained laid down on the backseat, his back leaned on the closed door and the energy bars resting on top of his stomach.

“Eki, won’t you have a huge bill to pay for using your data to stream videos for six hours straight?” asked James as he closed the open door and started to move to the driver’s seat.

“Yes,” sighed Eki as he finally managed to establish an Internet connection and began browsing for online videos of any type of cooking show available. “I can only hope that the higher-ups reward me through the means of paying this month’s cellphone bill.”

“Hey! Where’s the cooking show?” sounded M2’s voice from inside of the vehicle, which was shaking a little bit with the movements of his body.

“Yes, yes, coming!” answered Eki, hurriedly opening the front passenger seat’s door and stepping inside of the vehicle. “James, warn the other humvees that we are ready for departure. We can finally leave this destroyed graveyard for good now.”