“I’m back, everyone~” loudly announced M5 with a cheerful voice, his arms outstretched above his head as he walked towards the table.

“You did a good job, M5,” congratulated M1, adjusting M0’s body, who was sitting in between his legs, and giving a quick smile at M5. “Now we have a little bit more of leverage on what we can do. Or how we can do certain things.”

“Yes, yes. I may be the youngest but I’m as useful and capable as any of you,” praised himself M5, nodding his head in agreement with his own words. “Since even M1 is acknowledging my actions, I also want to hear M0 congratulating my righteous and selfless decision to put myself in harm’s way just so I can keep my best frien—“

“I already told you that you’re not my best friend, M5,” interrupted M0, a completely deadpan expression on his face as he looked at M5 with an intense gaze. He got up from M1’s lap and walked with the normal speed of a human towards the group of soldiers, mainly towards the two soldiers that had accompanied M5 while he was proving his and all super soldier’s potential. “Miue Satoshi, thank you.”

The whole room was filled in utter silence as M0 bowed his head down at Miue, who was also as speechless as the other soldiers.

“Thanks to you, the contract has now become void,” announced M0, once again straightening his body so he could look at all the soldiers in front of him. “We can now kill you, or anyone else, as we please.”

“...!” All the air was caught up in the throat of every soldier, their eyes fearfully shifting between the targets and Miue, who had apparently done some sort of thing that broke the clauses established in the contract.

“The fact that you are all alive and breathing right this moment should prove to you that we really have no such intentions,” continued M0, releasing a soundless chuckle when he saw the soldiers releasing the air that had been automatically stored inside of their lungs. “I hope that you can finally grow accustomed to the idea that, even if we are mass murder machines and are keeping a lot of things away from your knowledge, we don’t necessarily hold ill intentions towards any of you. Or towards your military base, for that matter. We simply need to go there and that’s why we are using you as... transportation?”

“What sort of reason makes you want to go to our base in the first place?” asked Ikusaki, a suspicious glint in his eyes as he closely observed M0. “There’s nothing but soldiers, weapons and vehicles there. And there’s no way we would give any of those things to you.”

“The reason is not for you to know,” said M1, also getting up from his seat and walking towards them. “The completion of our third mission requires our visit to your military base, the only place where we can get what we want. Of course, you won’t come empty-handed out of it. I understand that you humans have the concept of ‘money’ very well impregnated in your society and lives. We may not possess anything of the sort with us but we have something in our power that weights as much.”

“Which is?” asked further Murayama, arms crossed over his chest as he looked at M1 with an eyebrow slightly perked up. “What is it that could hold the same value and power as money to us?”

“Knowledge,” shortly answered M1, an evil smirk on his face as he outstretched his open hand towards the soldiers as if presenting them with something. “The only surviving ‘worker’ of the lab is currently awaiting our arrival at your military base. I believe that you are even an acquaintance of theirs. Last time I saw them, I delivered to them an external hard drive that contains the compilation of all the data that was being stored inside of the lab at that time, including, of course, all the tests and experiments done to all of the test subjects that were kept there. Our own individual profiles are one of the things that you will easily spot in there, as well as those that came from other previous failed super soldiers. When connected to a central server, the hard drive would automatically be updated with any new files put inside of the lab’s server through the means of what they called a ‘back door’. So even if I haven’t personally met the ‘worker’ for a while, you can rest assured that all the information inside of the external hard drive is fully up to date with what was inside of the lab down to its very last seconds of existence.”

“You’re going to give us all that in exchange to accomplish your own secret third mission?” inquired Murayama once again, now definitely looking at M1 with a gaze moulded in suspicion.

“Our mission will require a quite big future effort and strain to your military base so I think that what we have here is a completely fair trade,” pointed out M1, giving a quick shrug with his shoulders. His evil smirk widened even more as he wrapped his arms around M0’s waist and tightly hugged him. “We will take from you what we want to take and you should entertain yourself with the answers to your questions as the repayment from your services. Right, M0?”

“You could have put that in a nicer way, M1,” softly admonished M0, looking over his shoulder so he could peek at M1. “They're going to continue to misunderstand your words as manipulation if you talk like that. Even though you've been answering every little question they have made with true facts only.”

“At least allow me to have some fun with them, my ‘Beatrice’,” said M1, nestling his chin on M0’s shoulder. “I may not be manipulating them in the least, but it’s extremely amusing to make them think I am. They still don’t seem to be aware that things are simply unfolding according to a plan that took us 18 years to fully put into motion.”

“Humans are quite easy to play around with, after all,” added M5, sitting down on the table’s surface as he wiggled around the post-it in between his fingers. He fully took a hold of it and cruelly ripped it in several pieces, sending them flying in the air afterwards. “You’re full of openings when it comes to manipulation. And when you’re aware that manipulation is one of the options that can be put forward, you start to get hypersensitive to every single thing around you and all the words thrown your way.”

“It’s that hypersensitiveness of yours when under this type of circumstances that makes you fall even more easily prey to misconceptions and forces you to make hasty decisions,” continued M4, quickly adjusting the glasses on the bridge of his nose. “You start panicking, even if not aware of it yourselves, and then mistakes are made. Like with what happened between M5 and Miue Satoshi, who broke the contract by punching him.”

“...” Miue twisted his nose just the slightest at hearing those words, biting at the inside of his cheek as he averted his gaze.

“And the cherry on top of the cake is the lack of answers,” also added M3, his arms folded behind his head as he balanced his body on his chair. “You start thinking up ways and methods to get some answers to satisfy your curiosity and completely forget about what should be your main priority. Did it never occur to you that some of the answers we gave you were thought ahead of time to make your attention shift to another place and prevent you from looking at the main question?”

“Huh?” interjected the soldiers in unison, their mouths gaping wide open at M3’s words.

“You’ve been asking yourselves about what we are, our abilities as super soldiers and how we were created,” continued M0, his head slightly tilted to the right as he intently observed the soldiers in front of him. “We are super soldiers, who, when gathered together, form a squad. Why haven’t you asked yourselves about the purpose of why we were created in the first place to fulfil those requirements? Why did you never question why super soldiers exist in the first place and why was ‘The Union’ the organization responsible for their creation and not any other organization, secret or governmental?”

“You are such a bunch of idiots...” mumbled M2 in between munches of cookies, disinterestedly observing as the soldiers finally came to understand how pathetically they missed the main question throughout the entire mission.

“I actually owe you an apology for that,” continued M0, giving a quick bow with his head since he couldn’t move his body much more than that, the way M1’s arms were circling his torso. “I intentionally misdirected the focus of your attention to other meaningless questions in order to quickly test you. But I have now gathered some of the information that we need to fulfil our own duties. I won’t do it again. I’m sorry.”

So... the one doing the manipulation wasn’t M1... but M0?, inwardly processed Murayama, completely flabbergasted at that realization. If this was a game of chess, M1 was obviously the king, the central piece of the battle unfolding in the board that dictated who would be the winner or the loser. The queen, the piece that could move completely at their own will and could cause the most damage to the opponent, was clearly M0. He could shift the direction of the game whenever he wanted and bring an absolute victory to his king.

“Why are you doing all of this?” asked Ikusaki, getting up from the chair where he had settled himself in and walking towards the targets. “Why are you doing mental games with us, twisting us around your little finger? I can take it that the reason why the soldiers for this mission were handpicked and then forced to attend this rescue mission out of the blue was also a part of this... machination of yours, right? Why did you choose us and not any other squads that were available in our base?”

“I cannot say anything about that myself,” confessed M0, releasing a soft sigh. “You simply strike me as weird. I guess it’s the same type of curiosity that you feel towards us, one that makes me forget about the main question and focus on the other meaningless ones. I wonder who is responsible for misdirecting my own questions, in this ca—“

M0’s speech came to a sudden and unexpected halt and his gaze shifted from Ikusaki to a faraway spot in the large area, two unknown males walking towards the group.

“Huff... That sure was a painfully slow trip, taking into consideration that we were riding a military aircraft used to perform medical evacuations,” complained En Shirose, leisurely rotating his shoulders to release some of the torpidity in them after piloting the aircraft for hours.

“Well, we’ve arrived at the collection point so we can take a small break now,” pointed out Tou Kurose, a smile stretching his lips as he glanced over to the other pilot. He took one more gummy from a plastic bag and softly mumbled on it. “Just relax for a bit and enjoy travelling around Japan with— Oh my...”

“What the...?” interjected En, a deep frown on his face as the whole large area in the airport was suddenly illuminated by an intense crimson red light.

“Found it,” softly mumbled M0, his eyes brightly shining a strong crimson hue as he intently analyzed the two newcomers to the airport. “I’ve found out the answer to the main and meaningless questions.”