“’Morning, guys,” greeted Murayama, coming inside of the living room while adjusting the strap of his handgun on his waist. “Good to see you all here alre—“

“This is the worst… The absolute worst…” grumbled Miue, sat down on one of the sofas with his face hidden in his hands, his elbows being leaned on his knees as an aura of pure distress and doom emanated out of him. “How could something like that have happened…!?”

“Miue-senpai, what’s the matter?” innocently asked M5, sat down on the floor by the soldier’s feet as he tried to find an opening and take a peek at his face. “Do you still need to rest? I don’t mind using your lap as a pillow once again until you fall aslee—“

“Don’t you mention that ever again…!” hissed Miue, motioning one of his hands forward and taking a hold of M5’s upper clothes.

“Sure~ I’m good at keeping secrets~” acknowledged M5, happily grinning at Miue.

“Mizusaki, there are still hundreds of discrepancies in your thinking,” declared M4, leisurely standing beside another sofa, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at Mizusaki.

“’Don’t care anymore…” groaned Mizusaki, his body doubled over the armrest and head buried in between his arms as he tried to shield himself from the sunlight sipping into the room through the window. “Just drop it… and let me sleep…!”

“Eki-sama, Eki-sama, what’s next?” impatiently inquired M2, hovering around the also dead exhausted Eki, who was sitting by a low table, his elbows leaned over its hard surface as he supported his forehead in the back of his closed fists. “What’s the next dish you’re going to teach me?”

“We’re out of ingredients…” tiredly sighed Eki, feeling slightly nauseous after having spent the entire night seeing M2 wolfing down plate after plate filled with the most diverse of dishes and sweets. “No more new dishes for the rest of the week…”

“Hmm… I guess this goes here…?” mumbled Ikusaki to himself as he remained standing in front of a table, his torso slightly bent forward in its direction as he occupied himself with filling in a military report. “’Explain the occurrence’…? How the fuck will anyone believe this is legit if I write that the building was half destroyed by my basketball!? ARGH!!! I don’t care anymore! M3, go apologize to the higher-ups and to the soldiers that usually use that building for their duties!!”

“…” M3 silently remained in the corner of the room, leisurely piquing at his ear as if no one was talking to him.

I had my squad completely wiped out in a single night without any fighting involved in it…, inwardly cringed Murayama, feeling an extreme urge to facepalm himself while loudly groaning. I can now see that they are mass murder machines in more than one sense…

After loudly clearing his throat, Murayama clapped his hands to arouse the attention of every single human and non-human soldier all cramped up inside of that division of the building.

“As you’re all aware, today there’ll be an audit in regards to the six targets we have taken from the fallen illegal lab,” started Murayama, a serious demeanour on his features as he gave another sweep to the room with his eyes. “I have received orders from the higher-ups that the audit will begin in two hours. Before it begins officially, Nakatani-san wants to have an individual conversation with you four, Miue, Eki, Mizusaki, Ikusaki. Only then will the audit begin in the main auditorium of the base. While these individual interviews are occurring, the six Ms are to be kept in isolation in the underground area of the audi—“

“Um, Murayama-san,” hesitantly interrupted Ikusaki, raising his hand in the air as he looked over to his commander. “Both M1 and M0… aren’t here…”

“I was trying to ignore that fact but since you’re bringing it up,” said Murayama, a smile on his lips even though his eyes were a bottomless pit of fury. “Ikusaki, go find them and drag them out of wherever it is they’re hiding! I’ll save you the trouble of going to the rooftop because they’re no longer there! You have 10 minutes!”

“Eh!? Why me!?” yelped Ikusaki, a completely scandalized expression on his features as he fully turned his body around to face Murayama.

“Time’s ticking and you don’t want to piss off the higher-ups even more by being late, right?” reminded Murayama, lifting one of his hands and pointing with his thumb to the door behind his back. He smiled. “Hurry up.”

-.-

“Jesus fucking Christ, why am I the one who has to continuously put my neck on the line by interfering with the murderous lunatic and his sweetheart…?” grumbled Ikusaki to himself as he went around the building, opening door after door to survey the insides of the countless rooms and divisions of the structure. He hoped he wouldn’t be greeted with an early death by coming inside of one of the said rooms. “I have the feeling all he had to do was call their codenames really loudly and they would pop up right behind us, scaring us half to death! But noooo…! I have to fucking go look for them and potentially end up in the hospital without an arm or a leg or my fucking head in my shoulders!”

“…-kun… Ngh…”

“Eh?” interjected Ikusaki, stopping on his track all of a sudden when he heard a small pained voice coming from the room next to the one he had just opened the door. Slowly, he released the doorknob and cautiously approached the following room.

“Haa… This feels… weird… It’s uncomfortable for my body…”

“Don’t worry. It’s like that to everyone at first. But once your body gets used to it, it’ll be much easier. You just need to warm up to it little by little.”

“But…! Ngh… It feels too stuffy inside… Haa… Too much is coming in all at once…”

I’m not going in there… I’m not going in there…, inwardly screamed Ikusaki, furiously running out of that corridor and back into the ground floor where his squad and the other Ms were all gathered at. Once he showed up by the door, he screamed his lungs out, his face completely beet red. “I am not gonna go in there while they're freaking getting it on!!”

“Four. Minutes!” yelled back Murayama, reaching the peak of his foul mood with that single sentence. “If they’re not here within four minutes, I’ll find a way to put you doing grunt missions for the next decade!”

“That’s an abuse of power and you know it!” yelped Ikusaki, once again turning around on his heels and tracing back the same path as before for the third time. He loudly clicked his tongue as he climbed the stairs for the upper floor. “I knew I shouldn’t have joined the Japanese military… And I fucking knew that this mission was gonna be trouble…!”

Once he reached the floor in question, Ikusaki immediately hushed his grumbling and cursing, his footsteps as light as that of a tiger trying to evade a possible bigger danger than the large carnivore that it already was. He cautiously halted his movements in front of the closed door and hesitantly motioned his hand forward, lightly knocking on its wooden surface.

“U-Um… M1? M0?” gently called Ikusaki, gulping down hard when he heard absolutely no reply coming from inside of the room. “I-It’s time for all of you six to gather together and get ready for the audit… …Hello? …Did I get the wrong room?”

An eyebrow slightly arched due to the lack of any form of reply from either M0 or M1, who he already knew well enough to have it in him to be deadly explosive when his time with M0 was disturbed or interrupted in any way, Ikusaki dropped his hand and took a hold of the doorknob. He opened the door at once before he had time to regret this whole thing even more and get himself peeling potatoes in the military kitchen for the next few months.

“…You’re actually here…” softly breathed Ikusaki when he stepped inside of the messy room, both M1 and M0 curled up in the corner of the room in between the wall and a large dressing table. M0 was sitting in the middle of M1’s legs while tightly covering his ears. “W-What’s the matter, M0?”

“It’s nothing of your concern,” hissed M1, his hands protectively pulling M0 more closely against his chest. “Leave us alone.”

“It is of my concern when my job is literally on the line here,” sighed Ikusaki, carefully walking closer to the two males. Once he was at close proximity to both of them, though with a well-defined safety distance between, he crouched down right in front of the two super soldiers. “Just tell me what’s wrong with M0 and I’ll try to see if I can do something to help him. Okay?”

After exchanging a quick glance between themselves, M0 dropped his head back against M1’s chest, his hands pressing against his ears even more tightly, and M1 released a soft sigh.

“As you know, M0 never went outside of the lab,” started M1, one of his hands gently rubbing M0’s arm to calm him down. “He’s not used to the outside world and this much noise isn’t helping him getting used to it any faster.”

“Noise?” repeated Ikusaki, arching an eyebrow on his frowning brows. Had they been that loud while arguing downstairs?

“People talking, the noise of the engines of cars and other vehicles, every single sound in a few miles of radium from here, down to the accidental dropping of a bullet… we can hear all of it, at all times,” explained M1, delivering a soft peck to M0’s head, whose body squirmed around just the slightest. “If you had known nothing more than deep silence for 18 years, what do you think would be your brain’s reaction if you were to suddenly be put in the middle of a highly-populated area? In the middle of a military base, even.”

“Ah…” interjected Ikusaki, his mouth remaining open for brief seconds as he processed what M1 was trying to explain to him. “Yesterday was a Sunday so the base was relatively calm. But today it’s Monday and there are preparations to be done, more so with the audit… I bet every single soldier and worker of the base has been assigned with shit to get done the fastest possible.”

“Ngh…” softly groaned M0, strongly closing his eyes as he buried his face against M1’s chest even further, who in returned held onto his body more tightly, trying to physically reassure him that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him, no matter what.

And seeing all this, Ikusaki couldn’t help but feel a tinge of guilt powerfully stabbing his chest – he surely wasn’t being a lot of help there, the way he had been continuously grumbling since the incident with M3 and arguing with his superior just a floor of distance away from M0’s location.

“Ah… I think I have something that may help you, M0!” announced Ikusaki out of the blue, propelling his body up from his crouched down position and immediately starting to run out of the room. “Just hold on a little bit!”

Both M0 and M1 heard, each one with their own reasons as to why they hated the sound itself, as Ikusaki quickly darted out of the room and motioned downstairs once again, creating another wave of notorious noise, be it as he once again argued with Murayama, be it with the rushed clattering that he was causing. M1 couldn’t help but softly click his tongue when another rhythmic resounding of feet strongly stumping up the stairs reached his augmented ears.

“I don’t know how helpful this will be but try it on,” said Ikusaki as soon as his large frame appeared on the door and stepped inside of the half-lit room, once again approaching the two super soldiers with caution – this time around with a set of headphones and music player held on his hand. He crouched down his body a second time, seemingly in the same place as before, and motioned his hand forward, showing the two objects to the super soldiers. “These things can muffle the sounds around you. If you put the music going on, then you won’t be able to hear anything else but the songs. Well, that’s what happens to normal human’s ears, at least. Maybe in your case, you will still hear what goes around outside but still, you’ll have something concrete to focus on. The music.”

“…” With apparent suspicion still showing on his features, M1 cautiously and slowly motioned one of his hands in Ikusaki’s direction, carefully taking hold of this object that supposedly would ease M0’s discomfort.

M1 then switched his gaze back to M0, who quietly observed the exchange, and after a silent conversation between the two that no one seemed to be able to understand (or so it looked like to Ikusaki – who knew if one of the characteristics of the Ms wasn’t telepathy?), M1 gently put the headphones on M0’s head, neatly nesting the round pieces over his ears.

With his head tilted as he observed if there was any change in M0’s pained features, M1 patiently waited for any sort of acknowledgement or denial from his behalf.

“It still feels stuffy inside…” said M0, slowly returning his head to its position against M1’s chest, even with the awkwardness of the headphones now added to it. The shadow of a soft smile lingered on his lips. “But it does help a little bit.”

“That’s good to know,” acknowledged M1, softly kissing the top of M0’s head as he once again snuggled both of their bodies against one another, his arms gently circling his waist.

“Um… I don’t want to interrupt your lovey-dovey moment but…” hesitantly started Ikusaki, nervously rubbing the back of his neck as he avoided looking directly at the two males. “We have a schedule to follow so we gotta go?”

M1 and M0 exchanged a glance between themselves and then looked over to Ikusaki.

“It’s not the right time yet,” ominously said both M0 and M1 at the same time, their eyes briefly flickering their bright red lights amid the phantasmagorical ambience.