“Can I have seconds?” mumbled M2, lips filled with crumbs of the several snacks he had been wolfing down since the moment they were brought to the containment building. They were being guarded by Kinjou’s squad while Murayama’s was undergoing the requested ‘interrogation’.

“I-I don’t think we have more right now,” sighed James, feeling like facepalming himself over the immeasurable size of M2’s stomach – it perfectly matched his gigantic body, that’s for sure. James deeply feared that the possible short amount of time where the targets would get to stay inside of the military base would end up wiping out their food supplies before the Ms had a reason – or even the will – to kill them all off. “I’ll leave a message with the other squad to ask them to bring more with them.”

“Tell them to bring burgers too!” readily requested – more like, ordered – M3, an excited and hungry glint in his eyes. “I have to have more of those things! Do they also come in different flavours, like these things we were eating?”

“Not necessarily in other flavours, but there are loads of them that use different combinations of ingredients to create different dishes... in a way,” explained Kinjou, his demeanour remaining completely unchanged as he tried to calculate how much money was only being spent in order to feed the small group – yes, he was pretty sure by now that they had definitely gone over the original budget for that mission, even including the maintenance on the missing door of the airplane. “The shape remains the same, but some have extra ingredients like different types of cheese, bacon, other vegetables and a whole set of sauces and dips.”

“Why is it that humans waste their time and brain cells in creating such trivialities, I wonder?” asked M4, talking more to himself than to those around him. He still had a sour look on his face, leisurely looking outside the window behind him while completely ignoring the food that had previously been brought to the room. “Wouldn’t one flavour be more than enough? Why not use your limited intelligence for things more productive to the world?”

“I far prefer when they burn out their brain cells in food, M4,” pointed out M5, wiggling his feet above the floor as he continuously looked over to the room’s locked door. “The moment humans try to bring something new to the world that may be minimally productive to it as a whole, they end up creating things like us. Let them waste their limited intelligence, for everything is better when they’re nothing but a bunch of useless, dead weight to the planet.”

M3 whistled at those words. “Geez, M5. You’re on fire today with your anger towards the human population~ Or better yet, hatred? I think that’s the correct word to use in cases like ours, isn’t it?”

“Ah... Yes, I believe that would be the correct word,” hesitantly acknowledged Hisaka, scrunching his nose slightly at having to admit something like that. M1 was most likely the most dangerous of the bunch, but M5 was most certainly the one that had been displaying more animosity towards human beings so far.

“...” Eyes switching around as the interaction between the soldiers and the targets continued, Umiko ended up unconsciously seeking out the two members of the captured scientific experiments that weren’t being included in the conversation in the least. When she took a peek towards the corner of the room where the couple had settled themselves in when they first arrived, she found M1 with an extremely furious glare on his eyes as he also continuously stared at the closed door.

Hurriedly whipping her head around and her gaze taking in the entirety of the room, Umiko readily noticed that a certain something couldn’t be found anywhere.

“James, Kinjou-san...” called Umiko, all colour getting drained from her face and blood getting as cold as ice. When she heard the two soldiers giving a soft hum in acknowledgement, she couldn’t help but gulp down hard the lump in her throat. “M0’s missing...”

“Huh...?” interjected Kinjou, an eyebrow slightly arched at his subordinate’s sudden words. “Stop joking around. He’s right there with M1 in the cor— Fuck...!”

When Kinjou noticed that M0 was, indeed, missing from his usual position right next to M1, he couldn’t help but immediately bolt in a furious run towards the locked door, his hand reaching for the key inside of his pocket – a key that seemingly had been taken out of there since it was nowhere to be found.

“Ahh~ We were caught~” taunted M5, a mischievous smirk on his face. “Even though we were doing such a great job in keeping you distracted from the lack of M0’s presence in the room.”

“But now that the elephant in the room is out in the open, we would like to request your cooperation,” warned M1, popping out all of a sudden right in front of Kinjou. He took a hold of his arm and pulled it behind his back, which he used as a leverage to throw Kinjou against the wall and keep him completely motionless there. “Right now, I’m in the mood for another bloodbath. We wouldn’t want something like that to happen once again... would we?”

The soldiers gulped down hard, their bodies stiffening at the sight of the dead furious glint in M1’s glowing eyes. They grudgingly forced themselves to nod their heads in concession and obedience towards the domineering target.