The moment the wheels of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III touched the ground of the landing strip in Tokyo’s main military base, all of the occupants cramped inside of the cockpit sighed in deep relief, all of the accumulated tension of the extremely risky trip being swept away from their bodies by doing such.

“Thank you very much for your excellent performance, Tou,” said Murayama, placing a hand on the pilot’s shoulder and giving a firm squeeze. “To you too, En. I don’t think we would be alive right now if they had decided to send any other set of pilot and co-pilot.”

“We were simply doing our job and successfully accomplishing our mission,” scoffed En while shrugging his shoulders. Tou, sitting next to him, nodded his head in agreement, a goofy grin on his lips. He quickly pressed a couple of buttons and turned off the engines of the airplane. “Now let’s hurry up and scold those brats. I will thoroughly teach them not to hurt my precious babies once again!”

“You say once again but...” hesitantly said Umiko, her face slightly pale due to her nerves, slight nausea and unending suspicion that something was about to go wrong, now that they were surrounded by hundreds of soldiers. “We don’t even know what exactly the higher-ups will decide to do with them. For all we know, they may not be here to be scolded tomorrow... or we won’t be here to scold them.”

“You make a quite compelling argument there, my dear Umiko-chan~” teasingly said Mizusaki, putting an arm around Umiko’s shoulders. “However, even if I’m to die tomorrow, I still want to beat some sense into their heads, almost quoting Miue-san here~”

Miue simply snorted at Mizusaki’s words, rolling his eyes around as he moved his body from the corner in the cockpit and in the door’s direction. He cracked his knuckles loudly, moving his neck around as he prepared himself to what was about to come. “Let’s go then. I may not be able to beat some sense into M0, but I have the feeling that I’m allowed to do that for as long as I please to one of them.”

“Please be careful of your actions,” reminded Eki, a neutral soft smile on his face as he followed after Miue.

“I don’t want to burst your bubble, but can we do this quickly?” requested Ikusaki, massaging the back of his neck while walking beside Eki. “I have the feeling that we’ll be greeted by something troublesome the moment we step outside of the cockpit.”

“Is that your animal sixth sense talking or do you have any reason to be acting like a scaredy-cat, Ikusaki?” teased Murayama, giving a quick slap to the back of Ikusaki’s head as he passed in front of all of them and took hold of the leadership position, next to Miue. “But I have to agree with you on one thing. Let’s hurry up and finish this mission once and for all. I can’t wait to put a rest to all of this craziness.”

“Yes, sir!” acknowledged the members of the 10th squad of the 4th platoon in unison, all of them crossing the door that gave access to the insides of the large inner area of the aircraft.

What they saw inside got the group of soldiers completely speechless, as some had predicted.

“So you usually wrap it around like this?” asked M3, taking an uncertain glance to M4 while pulling a bandage tight against M5’s arm.

“I can’t really complain here, but I think you’re squeezing it too much, M3...” said M5, a slight frown on his face as he observed M3’s hands and the bandages around his limb. “I don’t feel anything but you may very well be cutting off my arm’s blood supply.”

“Yes, M5’s right,” acknowledged M4. “For this type of wound, you just need to lessen the blood flow, not fully cut it off. If you did that, the limb would start to die due to lack of blood and oxygen supply and would have to be cut off to prevent the person from dying from some sort of infection on the decaying arm or leg.”

“Oh... I see, I see,” acknowledged M3, nodding his head several times as he pulled the bandage out of M5’s arm and gave it another try.

“You’re also going overboard, M1,” admonished M4, walking over to M1 and M0, who was already half covered in bandages. “To give first aid to someone, you don’t wrap their whole body with ligatures and bandages like that. Obviously, it’s just the wounded area.”

“I know,” shortly answered M1, a mischievous smirk on his lips. He gave a quick tug to the end of the bandage wrapped around M0, making him lose his balance on his standing position and readily caging him in his embrace. “I simply got too caught up with restraining M0 to my heart content. I wonder if there’s a human word for that?”

Yes, and it’s called both ‘bondage’ and ‘sadism’, inwardly cringed the soldiers, Miue’s and Ikusaki’s faces exploding into a myriad of shades of red, Mizusaki bursting into laughter and Murayama releasing a long sigh.

“What exactly are you guys playing at right now?” asked Murayama, walking over in their direction with an eyebrow slightly perked up. As soon as Eki managed to break Ikusaki out of his flustered self over M1’s words and actions towards M0, the soldiers caught up to him.

“We’re not playing, Yamase. We’re learning,” answered M1, gently unwrapping M0 from all the bandages restraining his body. “We thought that it would be a good idea to have a quick crash course on how to give medical help to others. M4 is quite knowledgeable about this subject so he was being our teacher and telling us what to do in different types of wounds and life-threatening situations.”

“Why would you need to learn something like that?” asked Miue, his head slightly tilted as he looked over to the six targets. “Isn’t your function supposedly to kill humans?”

“As mass murder machines, we need to kill as much as we can. Hence, if we have a longer life, we’ll be able to continue to kill for a longer period of time,” explained M4, quickly adjusting his glasses. “We may be superior to you, but it’s not like we’re immortal. We, at the very least, need to know how to take care of ourselves or one of ours in case there’s some wound that won’t be fixed with our enhanced healing speed. Or so are my thoughts on the matter, even if they crash against yours and the scientists’ expectations of a mass murder machine.”

“That actually makes sense, I guess,” acknowledged Murayama, fully understanding what M4 wanted to get at with his arguments.

“Happy to know that we’re beings that can be killed?” asked M1, throwing a quick sideways glare to the group of soldiers as he took the last bandage from around M0.

“I know too little about you six to be able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’,” answered Murayama, a deep frown popping out on his features. “But I guess that’s something that will be fixed very soon, seeing as we’ve reached our military base. Are you able to tell us who the said worker from the lab is now?”

“I’m sure that, when the right time comes, they’ll make their presence announced,” said M1, a mischievous, almost evil, smirk appearing on his features. He wrapped his arms around M0’s waist and gave a quick peck to one of his cheeks, smiling softly at him. “Shall we go obtain a successful end to our third mission?”

“Nn,” acknowledged M0, giving a quick nod with his head as he lovingly stared to M1’s eyes. “Let’s finish it quickly so we can go home.”

“...” Murayama cautiously eyed M0 and closely thought about the words he had just said. He had called some sort of location their ‘home’. If the targets had the same definition of home as normal human beings but had yet to acquire their freedom to arrange such during the long years they stayed as test subjects of the lab... what exactly was this ‘home’ M0 had just mentioned?

There’s no use thinking about that now, sighed Murayama in the back of his mind. He quickly scratched his head and turned around on his heels, walking towards the big hole in the area where the door was supposed to be. “Follow me, Ms, and keep in mind your behaviour. I’ll get you out of the airplane and take you to wherever our superiors want you to be taken to.”

“Eh~ I quite liked the airplane...” complained M5, a pouting expression on his face as he started following after Murayama at the same time as his other friends.

“The airplane doesn’t have food. The outside world does,” pointed out M2, a small trickle of saliva escaping his mouth as he fantasized about the promised food he would get to receive from one of the soldiers.

“Is food the only thing inside of your head?” asked M4, quickly rolling his eyes around. “There’re things far more important than food to be done right now.”

“Food is also important, especially if it comes in delicious shapes like burgers or... burgers!” added M3, quickly stifling a loud yawn with his hand as he stretched his other arm over his head.

“Ice caramel macchiatos are better,” voiced out M0, already desiring to have another opportunity to have the same fresh drink as before.

“No, Rei is better,” softly whispered M1 in M0’s ear, teasingly giving a quick bite to his earlobe.

“Ngh! Y-You win...” acknowledged M0, a soft blush on his features as he covered his ear with his hand, his eyes shyly peering in M1’s direction.

M1 couldn’t help but chuckle at M0’s reaction and words. He delivered one more kiss to his cheek and simply continued to walk beside him, their fingers entwined together.

“I always win. And when I don’t, it’s because you do, my Beatrice.”