Bap, bap, bap.

The sound of a basketball being dribbled against hard floor resounded through the completely desert street inside of Tokyo’s military base. Now and then, the sound of the hoop being hit and the ball successfully penetrating the rim also joined the fast-paced rhythm against the floor.

“Haa, haa… Ahhh…” Releasing a long and half tired sigh in between his elaborated breathing rhythm, Ikusaki grabbed the basketball after dribbling it a couple more times and then, with a powerful jump, slammed the ball in the rim, the metal plaque to which it was attached to teetering around at the strong impact. “This is not helping much, is it…?”

Loudly clicking his tongue, Ikusaki exasperatedly wiped the sweat on his features with the sleeves of his military jacket. He lowered his upper body forward and motioned his hands towards the ball that had rolled around after the monstrous dunk. However, the ball was snatched out of his grasp before his fingertips could even touch its prickly surface.

“Huh?” When Ikusaki looked up once again, he saw two glowing red eyes leisurely peering down at him. “Y-You…! What are you doing outside of the building, M3!?”

“I was getting bored of being closed down in that house so I decided to take a stroll outside,” casually said M3, one of his hands holding the ball while the other was being used to pick at one of his ears. “And I could ask you the same question. What the heck were you doing?”

“Playing basketball, obviously,” scoffed Ikusaki, rolling his eyes around at how leisurely M3 was admitting that he had secretly sneaked out of the building. When he saw the questioning expression in M3’s face due to his answer, he sighed. “Right, you probably don’t know what basketball is… It’s a sport played between two teams with five players each, where the objective is to make that ball that you’re holding go inside of that rim over there on the wall. Depending on the place of the court from where you shoot the ball from, it can be scored as 2 or 3 points, sometimes 1 if it’s a penalty of some sort. But there’s a lot of rules and I feel that it would be a pain in the ass to explain them so that’s that.”

“Hmm…” Exchanging quick glances between Ikusaki, the ball in his hand and the mentioned ‘rim’ on the wall, M3 rolled the ball on his hand and lifted it up in the air, giving a quick jerk to his wrist that awkwardly threw the ball in the air. “Like this?”

“It’s not going to go in like—“ snorted Ikusaki at the way M3 threw the ball up in the air, but his taunting words got stuck in his throat mid-sentence when the ball didn’t even make a sound against the rim as it successfully scored a 3-pointer. “EHHHHHHHHHHHH!? You’re kidding me, right!?”

“What? Isn’t this the objective of the game?” asked M3, tilting his head to the left in incomprehension at the overreaction that the soldier was having at him having done exactly what he had been told to do.

“I-It is but… Eh…?” hesitantly acknowledged Ikusaki, still trying to process what he had seen in his brain and rationalizing it – not that it would help him much since he already was well familiarized that rationality was something just as inexistent in the super soldier group as sanity was. “Was this some sort of newbie’s good luck? A fluke?”

“Huh?” interjected M3, a deep frown twisting his features as he glared at Ikusaki. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you saying that I can’t put the ball in the rim!?”

As quickly as lightning, M3 moved from his position near the soldier and motioned over to where the ball had stopped rolling, quickly taking a hold of it and readily throwing it up in the air once again. As soon as it began its descent towards the floor, it swiftly passed inside of the rim a second time.

“Wanna call this a fluke once again, you asshole!?” roared M3, pointing with his finger at the ball that had rolled over to near him after jumping around on the floor a couple of times. He was glaring daggers at Ikusaki, who looked over in his direction with a completely flabbergasted expression.

“That’s… amazing…”

“Huh!?” interjected M3 once again, feeling that the human soldier was about to get on his case once again over what he had done for the second time.

“That’s amazing, M3!!” congratulated Ikusaki, a large grin of satisfaction stretching his lips to their limits as he did a short sprint to reach the other male’s location. “I have no freaking idea how you managed to score like that, but if you learn the official rules of the game and how to play properly, you would probably become one of the best basketball players of the whole world! That’s so freaking cool! Do it again!”

“…” Keeping his eyes on Ikusaki at all times, M3 slowly lowered his body and took a new hold of the ball. He raised his hand over his head and, with his eyes still unmoving from the soldier, he sideways threw the ball in the basket’s direction, scoring a third time almost effortlessly.

“This is bad… I really wanna play against you…” mumbled Ikusaki, an excited smirk slowly tugging the corner of his lips upwards as he observed M3 score the 3-pointer. He quickly turned around so he could directly face the other male. “Hey, M3, let’s have a ma—“

“I don’t wanna,” readily cut off M3, not even letting Ikusaki finish his sentence. He sluggishly stretched his arms over his head, his mouth opening to let out a long and loud yawn. “What’s the use if tomorrow everything will come to an end?”

“…So you guys know what an audit means,” sighed Ikusaki, his shoulders slumping down just the slightest at the same time as he dropped his gaze down to the floor.

“We may not be the same type of soldiers that you are but we’re still directly related to the military world. It goes without saying that we know what an audit is,” scoffed M3, rolling his eyes around at Ikusaki’s almost innocent reaction. “Not that I care about it, anyway. We all knew there was a high probability of that shit happening so it isn’t even a surprise.”

“But just because an audit will happen, it doesn’t mean that the higher-ups will decide on execution for you six,” said Ikusaki, his hands closing down into tight fists as he looked straight into M3’s eyes. “You guys never took any aggressive actions against any of us while we were collecting you. Well, forgetting my first meeting with M1, I mean… Anyway, you never did anything wrong to us or the Japanese army in a whole! You may be mass murder machines or whatever your name is but that doesn’t mean that you—“

“Hah! Haven’t you just said the reason why they would want to execute us?” interrupted M3 with a laugh so loud and rough that almost sounded as if the bark of a ferocious beast. “We’re mass murder machines. Our very existence is a threat to the whole world. Humans would be dumb pieces of shit if they would allow us to live and fall under the risk of having us turn against them and completely wipe them out at some point. Right now… I could even get you killed with your ball over there in a matter of seconds. We’re that kind of thing, you know?”

“Why haven’t you, then?” asked back Ikusaki, fearlessly taking a step forward and shortening the distance between him and M3. “We’re all alone in a secluded area of the base right now. It’s the middle of the night and the majority of the soldiers are fast asleep. If you killed me right this moment, no one would notice until they needed me for some shit. All six of you could have already ‘wiped us out’ by now. We humans need to sleep, we’re not like you in that regard either. Why are we alive? Why haven’t you killed us when you six are aware that you may be sentenced to die tomorrow?”

“…”

“You six are nothing more than a bunch of awkward antisocial teens that like to go around pissing other people off,” scoffed Ikusaki, a knowing smirk on his lips as he gave a quick flick on M3’s forehead. “I’ll be copying Miue-san’s words here but you’re brats all the way down to your core. I bet you guys are planning on behaving like good boys until the moment the audit starts, aren’t you? What are you going to do then? Cause a big fucking commotion to prevent the audit from happening tomorrow and get rearranged to a later date? Kill us all the moment the final decision regarding your fate is announced? Escape from here by your own means, when you don’t even know how to open doors?”

“Aha… Ahahahahahahaha!” started laughing M3 out of nowhere, grabbing into his stomach as he doubled his upper body just a fraction due to the motions of shaking around with the unexpected laugh attack. Still laughing, he turned around and started walking towards the basketball, which he grabbed onto with one of his hands. “Ikusaki, you… You guys are seriously underestimating us, aren’t you?”

“Huh?” interjected Ikusaki, one of his eyebrows arching at hearing that rebuke.

“To you, in your eyes, what are we?” asked M3, leisurely throwing the ball up in the air just a couple of centimetres and then catching it once again in the palm of his hand. “A group of ‘brats’ that were used since kids as experimental lab rats? Poor little ‘brats’ that don’t know anything about the human world? A bunch of lunatics that don’t have a home or any other place to go back to? Don’t fuck with me!!”

With a quick jerk of his arm, M3 threw the basketball in the rim’s direction. The wall of the building where it had been installed broke into smithereens as the round object perforated both metal and stone.

“You are humans or whatever the fuck you truly are, we are super soldiers!” roared M3, furiously glaring at the surprised soldier. “You do things your way, we do it our way! I could care less if I don’t understand your society or your freaking things! Do you guys understand how a cow’s or a rabbit’s society works before you kill them to eat them? You sure as hell don’t! Why would we want to learn about your things? I’m not like M5 or M1, who hate your kind from the bottom of their hearts. I’m not like M2 or M4, who view you as a means to get what they want. And I sure as hell am not like M0! For all I care, you could go extinct from the surface of Earth and I wouldn’t give a single rat’s ass about it! To me, you’re nothing more than cattle used to give my existence a meaning! Once you’re all gone, I will have accomplished my purpose and can finally say goodbye to this fucking boring life! Hurry up and die already!”

“Wai—!” called Ikusaki, but he was far too late – M3 was already far away from his voice’s reach before he even opened his mouth to speak. Releasing an exasperated sigh, he ruffled his hair with his two hands. “Argh, shit! You fucking asshole!! Saying all that will only make things hard for us, you know, M3!? Because humans are dumb pieces of shit that have this fucking annoying thing inside of them called ‘empathy’!!!”