“And then there are technical fouls, which is when the players break the rules without involving physical contact,” continued explaining Ikusaki, his eyes sparkling as if a little child as he kept talking non-stop about basketball to Mitaru. “Unlike the personal fouls, these not only can be applied to the players on the court but also the players on the bench, the entire team and even to the crowd! It’s sort of used to keep everything in order, but also for—“

“Is there any foul about talking too much…?” grumbled Mitaru, crouched down on the floor as he resupplied his weapons after the small prior encounter with Russian soldiers – a group small enough to be wiped down in a matter of seconds without needing to waste even one-fifth of his ammunition.

“No, I don’t thin— Oh, fuck you!” started Ikusaki but when he realised what Mitaru had meant with the first question he had ever made about basketball, a grudging frown twisted his excited features and he quickly crossed his arms over his chest in a pouting motion.

“You were all complaining about how we were talking about trivial things as if we weren’t about to go to the battlefield, but aren’t you doing the exact same shit right now?” pointed out Mitaru, straightening his body once again and lightly stretching his arms in the air. The Glock 17M remained tightly held in one of his hands as he did so.

“Yeah but if I don’t talk about it now, you won’t hear any of it later, right?” said Ikusaki, giving a quick shrug with his shoulders. “Besides, the way you wiped the floor with those guys just now left me slightly more at ease about being suddenly hit by an enemy bullet.”

“I’ll make sure to hit you with a ‘friendly bullet’ the next time you open your mouth to rumble on and on about ‘basketball’,” groaned Mitaru, rolling his eyes around as both him and Ikusaki resumed with clearing that entire area. He could hear several vehicles getting closer to their location and the language being used inside of them readily let him know that those were to be the next shooting targets.

“You sure are in a pissy mood all of sudden,” snorted Ikusaki, sideways glancing at Mitaru as they walked side by side. “Don’t tell me that hearing me talk about basketball makes you remember yesterday’s disastrous attempts at playing the game?”

“Huh!? As far as I know, I scored every shot that I made!” roared Mitaru, furiously glaring at the soldier.

“Bullshit! There was no hoop in the wall of the building that you demolished with the ball!” also roared Ikusaki, pointing his index finger at Mitaru in accusation. “That counts as a missed shot!”

“The fuck it does! You’re the one in a pissy mood because of all the paperwork you had to fill to report those damages!” yelled Mitaru, also pointing the index finger of his free hand at Ikusaki.

“You fucking asshole! You knew I was filling up all of that crap because of you and you still didn’t even say as much as an ‘I’m sorry’!!” admonished Ikusaki, a vein almost popping out of his forehead. “You know how to read and write! You go fill all of those papers with the reason why you freaking broke the wall with my basketball because I sure as hell don’t get what is going around inside of your heads and can’t give any sort of excuse or explanation for—“

The sudden rhythmic sound of bullets hitting the floor came as a warning to silence Ikusaki, the screeching of tires rubbing against the asphalt due to a hasty stop soon following.

When both Ikusaki and Mitaru looked further down the road, they found a group of six vehicles, some simply occupied with unknown soldiers, others featuring M2 machine guns mounted on their rears.

“Fuck…” cursed Ikusaki, immediately positioning his body in a defensive stance, his hand hovering the holster of his handgun. When he looked sideways to Mitaru, he found himself staring at the opposite behaviour that he had thought that the super soldier would automatically take.

“Okay, okay, you caught us~,” said Mitaru, dropping the Glock on the floor at the same time as he raised his hands above his head in surrender. A knowing smirk, however, was present in his face and his body lacked any sort of display of fear. Super soldier or not, he looked anything but a cornered man with countless machine guns pointed straight at his now defenceless body. “But… bye-bye~”

Splat! The windshield of the military vehicle in the middle was suddenly dyed in a gooey crimson. A second spray of blood soon followed in the rear of the same vehicle, coming from the sliced throat of the soldier assigned with manning the machine gun. The soldiers inside of the vehicles next to the one that had been wiped out in the blink of an eye readily pointed their weapons at the seemingly unoccupied vehicle, ready to open fire at the smallest of movements. Before they could even put their fingers on the triggers, the soldiers in the rear of the vehicles dropped on the asphalt, blood dripping from the knives stabbed into their foreheads, and all the remaining windshields were splashed with more bloody crimson.

“You’re late,” yelled Mitaru, leisurely leaning forward to catch the dropped Glock. “Still angry at what Iru told you earlier?”

“Iru-kun said I could do whatever I wanted so that’s what I will do,” answered M0, who popped out of nowhere on top of the hood of one of the vehicles, his legs dangling slightly as he remained sitting down there. His body was covered in as much blood as the one that had been sprayed everywhere in that area. Nevertheless, his expression remained as devoid of emotions as usual. “He must not have noticed that his later words destroyed the former ones.”

“As expected of you, M0, the only one who can find loopholes in Iru’s plans,” laughed Mitaru, an amused smile on his lips as he lightly shook his head around. “Can you give me one of those?”

M0 lightly nodded his head and disappeared from the hood of the vehicle, popping up near one of the machine guns mounted on the rear side. With a quick and clean movement, he ripped the machine gun from the metal harness keeping it stuck to the vehicle and threw it over in Mitaru’s direction as if throwing nothing more than a small tennis ball at the other super soldier. It went without saying that Mitaru caught the heavy machine gun just as easily.

“Thanks! Ohh~ This is good stuff! As expected of the weapon-addicted Russian military,” acknowledged Mitaru as he quickly inspected the machine gun, easily moving it around in one of his hands to find the most appropriate way of getting it to work without any support. “Hey, M—“

“…”

“Never mind, just get going,” sighed Mitaru, waving his hand around in a dismissive way. As soon as he lowered his hand back to the machine gun, there were no signs whatsoever of M0 once again – except the small sea of blood he left behind.

“W-What the fuck just happened…?” asked Ikusaki, still having a hard time comprehending everything that happened in the last few minutes. All he could process so far was that he and Mitaru had gotten ‘trapped’ by the enemy soldiers, who were then mysteriously slaughtered without either of them moving as much as a finger, later on, M0 appearing as if nothing had happened.

“Didn’t Iru say so earlier?” said Mitaru, lifting the machine gun and leisurely putting it resting over his shoulder. “It’s useless to assign any ‘babysitter’ to M0 since they wouldn’t be able to keep up with him. I just happened to notice he was here when he jumped from that building over there. Though I knew he would eventually pop up on us since Iru’s around this area too.”

“Ah…” hesitantly acknowledged Ikusaki, his eyes cautiously surveying the whole area. “And? Where is he now?”

“Beats me,” answered Mitaru, giving a quick shrug with his shoulders. “But by the look on his face… he might have gone to say hello to the big prey that is apparently coming to pay a visit to our new home.”

“What? Big pre—“

“Ahhhh! What’s with this military base?” suddenly yelled Mitaru, his eyes strongly glowing crimson red as a smirk fully stretched his lips. “A surprise attack by the Russians and unknown super soldiers keep coming left and right. This is better than I thought it would be! I wonder who’ll be coming next… China? Korea? America? France? Germany? I can’t wait!”

Having said that, Mitaru threw the machine gun in the enemy vehicles’ direction, causing them to fly a good couple of meters backwards at the impact and fully barricade the incoming set of Russian vehicles.

“Damn, I was supposed to use that as a weapon so I could brag at Atsumu how I didn’t even need to use half of my ammunition…” grumbled Mitaru, hastily scratching the back of his head. “Nah, fuck that! We’ll get to enjoy a good show in a bit so I might as well finish cleaning this whole area before then.”

5 minutes and 49 seconds - the amount of time that was spent before Mitaru, the super soldier branded M3, and Ikusaki, a human soldier from the Japanese army, departed from the northernmost area of Tokyo military base, now completely void of human life and filled with corpses.