“You’re starting to annoy me, little one,” hissed the dark-skinned super soldier as soon as he pushed the rubble out of on top of him. With a quick and swift movement, he ripped his torn upper clothes, a black inked tattoo now fully on display on his lower back. It read PS5.

M0 took out of his clothes a handful worth of blades, which he had equipped himself with in the preparation room, and threw them at full speed in PS5’s direction. The giant readily stomped on the ground with tremendous strength, forming a crater around him and using some of the resulting boulders as a shield to defend himself from the sharp blades. He then kicked it hard, sending it flying in M0’s direction and making it crash against the opposite building, more walls being demolished in its wake.

“The same tricks won’t keep working on me forever, little one!” roared PS5, lunging one of his large hands sideways and grabbing onto the arm that M0 was also motioning towards his head, a sharp knife clutched tight in his blood-stained hand.

However, the moment PS5 grabbed his arm, M0 wrapped his legs around his long limb and dropped all of the weight of his body downwards, at the same time as he tightly pulled the other super soldier down with him. The ground shook around with the impact of PS5 being thrown against the floor, M0 neatly sitting on top of the arm which was still being held with his legs.

A strong pull on the back of his clothes forced M0 to hastily slacken his hold on PS5’s limb and his body was successfully thrown a few meters away, with his feet smoothly landing on the ground as if he had been the one to jump away. M0 propelled his body straight in PS5’s direction, a knife on each of his hands, blades pointed forward. PS5 positioned himself in a defensive stance, his hands remaining in front of his slightly crouched body so he could get a hold of the small super soldier and crush him once and for all. The moment M0 was at his hands’ reach, however, he lowered his body and let the momentum of his speed do the rest of the work – he neatly slid in between PS5’s tall legs and severed his ligaments with the knives at the same time.

“…!” PS5’s body momentarily wobbled around, his legs now unable to move properly with the damage they sustained. When he managed to balance himself once again, he felt a slight prickling sensation in the same area where he had been slashed. Two blades had been deeply stabbed in those exact cuts, fully putting a stop to his enhanced healing speed in that part of his body.

PS5 was about to click his tongue when a small shadow flashed before his eyes, M0 once again making an attempt with his knives at his head. He once again lunged his hands forward to get a hold of the slippery super soldier but it was yet another fruitless attempt. M0 easily averted his hands and stabbed his knives underneath the two sides of his collarbone as deeply as he could. Then, with a light tap of his feet against PS5’s broad chest, M0 performed a front handspring over the super soldier’s head, his knives cutting at his flesh from the collarbone all the way down to his shoulder blades.

PS5’s arms lifelessly fell to the sides of his body, most of their connecting muscles and ligaments cut in half with M0’s double slash.

“Instead of fighting me…” said M0, his grey eyes strongly glowing crimson red as he appeared in front of PS5 and slowly walked towards him. “Maybe you should have tried to teach the grim reaper something other than killing.”

“Ugh…” groaned Mizusaki, quickly averting his eyes as M0 jumped forward and cleanly cut PS5’s head off of his neck, a spray of blood spurting everywhere. When he was able to look once again, after having forced himself to swallow in dry, he saw the headless corpse of the dark-skinned super soldier toppling forward, a pool of dark red drowning the cracked ground around him.

“Can we declare it over now?” asked Miue, also twisting his nose a little bit at the sight of M0 approaching the fallen super soldier and crouching down next to him. From the far away position where they had been observing the fight, all he could see was how M0 gave a quick slash with one of his knives to the location where the branding tattoo had been drawn.

“Yup~” cheerfully announced Atsumu, all smiles once again now that the fight had ended and the one who had come victorious out of it was the super soldier that belonged to their side. It wasn’t to last, however.

“Shit!” cursed Mitaru, readily taking his Glock from the hem of his pants and pointing it in M0’s direction. Likewise, Atsumu took a hold of his assault rifle and Azuma his sniper rifle, both of them also taking aim at M0. Tsugi took on a defensive stance, his hand hovering above the Heckler & Koch that he had left resting on top of a half-destroyed wall.

As expected of my ‘Beatrice’, inwardly sighed Iru, a knowing smirk on his lips as he slowly slid the katana out of its scabbard and positioned it in front of his body.

Slowly, as if with robotic motions, M0 turned his head around and looked over his shoulder. His grey eyes were still strongly glowing their characteristic crimson red light as he stared over in the group’s direction. The usual expressionless demeanour had now turned into a frightening blank that could send shivers down the spine of the bravest of warriors.

Slowly, as if carefully treading around the next unsuspecting victim, M0 lifted his body to a standing position, his glowing eyes ever remaining stuck on the super soldiers and human soldiers. One step, two steps – at the third step, M0’s body disappeared from everyone’s sight.

The only sound they heard was the clatter of Iru’s sword being dropped to the floor as M0 came crashing against him and sent the two of them flying backwards as if a high-speed bullet. Mitaru only had enough time to quickly tug at Ikusaki’s clothes to move him out of the straight-line trajectory that the two super soldiers had taken.

The loud crumbling sound of yet another building being destroyed was the only sonorous clue they had that M0 hadn’t caused the two of them to fly to infinity and beyond, the characteristic cloud of dirt soon rising in the air.

“W-What the fuck…?” interjected Ikusaki, his heart loudly beating inside of his ribcage due to the closest call of his whole life. If Mitaru hadn’t pulled him out of the way, he would currently be squashed against a wall or underneath the rubble.

“Will we need to worry about that?” immediately asked Murayama, pointing with his thumb in the direction of the destroyed building. He was about to make a couple more remarks but his voice was interrupted by a loud squeal.

“WHY, M0!? WHY IS IT ALWAYS IRU AND NEVER ME!?” yelped Atsumu, a furious pout on his features as he strongly stomped his feet on the ground – just like a little child throwing a tantrum due to not being able to buy the toy they wanted. “YOU’RE SO MEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!”

“Mizusaki, which area did they go to?” questioned Murayama, rolling his eyes around at the noise Atsumu was making.

“That’s area 10, where there are mostly storage buildings to stockpile several resources used by the base,” said Mizusaki, an eyebrow slightly arched as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. “No weapons or military equipment, though. It’s more office supplies and tools and parts used to fix our vehicles.”

“It still doesn’t change the fact that we now have one more area of the base to be put under repairs…” sighed Murayama, softly massaging his temple with the pads of his fingers. “You six may be more expensive than you’re worth…”

“Uwah!!” yelled Ikusaki without any warning. When his squadmates looked over his direction, they saw both him and Mitaru down on the floor, the former wiggling his body around as he tried to free his clothes from the super soldier’s grip and the latter out cold. “Mitaru, what the hell, man!?”

“What happened to him now!?” interjected Miue, both him and Eki immediately rushing towards the two fallen males to ascertain what was going on and if they had been attacked by an enemy that may have hidden somewhere up until now or not.

“You don’t need to worry about him,” casually said Azuma, quickly adjusting his glasses as he sideways peered down at Mitaru. “I believe you forcibly woke Mitaru up while he was in his resting period. He must have not had enough time to recharge so that’s what he’s doing now. You should consider it as something similar to your sleep.”

“He’s not freaking breathing!” pointed out Miue as he checked Mitaru’s vitals. He couldn’t catch any sort of movement from his ribcage and his heartbeat was so sporadic that he was lucky to catch it three times during the long minutes he had remained with his ear over his chest.

“Let me reformulate my explanation then,” sighed Azuma, looking at the soldiers with disdain. “The most noteworthy characteristic of the human’s sleep is that the majority of your body’s systems are in an anabolic state, which is used to restore the immune, nervous, muscular and skeletal systems. A few hours of sleep per day are essential to maintain your body in good condition. However, the entirety of our bodies has been enhanced in a biological and cellular level. Such a light sleep wouldn’t be enough and we would burn ourselves out in a matter of minutes. That’s why our bodies go through a total blackout, including most of our organs and body functions. Our respiratory, digestive and urinary systems completely stop working and our nervous and circulatory systems are kept at the bare minimum functional level. It usually lasts less than one week and happens every three or four months. In between the resting periods, we don’t require any sort of rest and we can survive without consuming large amounts of food or water. If this explanation is still too advanced, then you should resort to the data inside of that box thing that Mitsu has been left in charge of.”

“You guys are quite… unique…” awkwardly said Eki, helping Ikusaki release his clothes from Mitaru’s grip.

“To see you guys chatting in such a relaxed way, I can take it that we really don’t need to worry about Iru and M0 for the time being. At least as far as the two of them trying to kill each other…” acknowledged Murayama, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his body slightly around so he could more easily visualise all of his squad members and the four super soldiers.

“I would say… uhh… to just completely leave them be… sniff… and to not go look for them…” added Atsumu, lightly sobbing and sniffing as he remained crouched down on the floor, his fingers absentmindedly playing with some small pebbles lying around on the ground. “I think Iru would get extremely angry if someone were to interrupt his time with M0… Uhh…”

Those two should just learn to spare us from their PDA once and for all…, silently cringed the 10th squad of the 4th platoon.