“We sternly told them to be careful of the bloodshed but look at this place…” sighed Miue, his hands placed on his hips as he looked around his surroundings. That section of Tokyo military base had seen better days, intense war period or not. “This will take weeks, maybe months, to rebuild. Even the floor needs to be restored!”

“We were already aware of how strong they can be but even I have to agree that this was a bit overkill,” acknowledged Mizusaki, his brows slightly creased as he put his hand inside of his pocket and took his cell phone out. After a quick check to the contents of the message he had received, he put the electronic device back in place. “Ikusaki and Eki just reported that Azuma, Mitaru, Tsugi and Atsumu have been successfully taken to their temporary ‘house’.”

“Good,” acknowledged Murayama with a sharp nod of his head. “We should also finish what we need to do here and go fetch the two escapees so they can join the rest of their group. I’m sure Nakatani-san will be popping up there any minute now and it wouldn’t be very good if two of our new ‘neighbours’ were missing. But before that… Mizusaki.”

“Hm… Yup, this whole area was completely annihilated, to put it nicely,” said Mizusaki, after skirting his eyes through the 'battlefield' once again. “You must be wondering why it was just M0 and PS5 standing here alone, right? They weren’t. There’s a bunch of dead soldiers, presumably Russians, there and there, most of them underneath all of the debris. I take it that PS5 also didn’t pop up here completely unharmed. There are some minced automatic rifles over there and in that far away corner. I guess, in its entirety, it’s just the leftovers of M0’s fighting style.”

“You mean his fighting style as the one with the function of ‘assassination’ in their makeshift squad?” asked Miue, slightly squinting his eyes so he could inspect the locations Mizusaki had pointed at.

“Exactly~” acknowledged Mizusaki, giving a quick thumbs up at Miue. “I don’t know if this is the only method that he uses, though. It probably isn’t but it was without a doubt the correct one to deal with PS5. Most likely, he first got rid of the Russian soldiers accompanying their ‘pet super soldier’, then disarmed him by destroying his weapons. After that, he immobilised him by making PS5’s legs and arms completely useless so he could then finish him off for good.”

“Quick and easy, if we were to forget the ‘leftovers’ and the huge difference between them, in a physical sense,” pointed out Murayama. “PS5 easily had twice his height, if he were to stretch his arms upwards. My experience as a soldier would make me think that M0 was done for with such ill-matched combat. But their fight ended up being so one-sided that it almost made me pity this guy over here.”

“Honestly, it’s sort of scary to think that the other five are capable of doing the same thing,” confessed Miue, a deep frown slowly appearing in his features. “The Russians had a super soldier on their side, which I presume it was sold to them by ‘The Union’. But those six are simply our ‘neighbours’. They don’t belong to the Japanese army and I don’t think they have any interest in joining us either. They’re here more out of convenience for themselves than any other reason. The moment we stop being useful to them, we might end up fucking decapitated like this PS5 guy.”

“I guess it all comes down to that, then…” sighed Murayama, softly scratching the back of his head. “Iru and M0 are in a relationship and all of them seem to be extremely attached to M0. That means that, even if they’re called ‘mass murder machines’, they’re still capable to form emotional bonds with other beings. If they were to connect with other ‘species’, maybe they would learn to become more tolerant in regards to us, their neighbours, and to other human beings in general. Sort of like domesticating wild animals.”

“Oh yeah, you see videos of that all the time,” acknowledged Mizusaki, giving a couple of nods with his head. “Videos of lions and tigers behaving like little kittens around the humans taking care of them and the like. But, Murayama-san, there’s a huge difference between those wild animals and those six.”

“They despise humans… right?” said Miue, receiving a hesitant nod of acknowledgement from Mizusaki once again. “They behave like wild animals but they don’t think like wild animals at all. And after all of the crap they went through in the lab, of course they wouldn’t trust humans that easily. They’re also smart, they won’t be easily fooled into believing in us nor will they let themselves be changed to cater to how we want them to behave.”

“The next few months will be like living surrounded by bombs that can explode at any time, but letting them take their sweet time to get used to the outside world is the only option we have,” said Murayama, giving a quick shrug with his shoulders. “Rushing too much may lead to unnecessary carnage. Besides, they seemed quite interested in learning about new things so that’s a trump card in our deck. We can teach them about a lot of things while getting to know them better too.”

“Murayama-san~ Be careful of knives and swords~” warned Mizusaki with a singsong voice, a knowing smirk present on his lips.

“That’s not what I meant, Mizusaki,” groaned Murayama, rolling his eyes around. “Just drop that once and for all, will you?”

“Nah, it’s far too funny so allow me to continue teasing you about it until it stops being funny, Commander-dono~” sneakered Mizusaki, his smirk reaching its peak at the same time as he winked at Murayama. Miue simply looked at his two squad members, one of his eyebrows arched as he wondered what the heck they were talking about. “Oh, since we’re on the topic, one more thing. I’m not 100% sure about it since the fight was far too short for me to fully analyse it but M0 has quite a lot of tricks up his sleeve.”

“Huh?” interjected both Murayama and Miue at the same time.

“It’s a bit hard to explain and, as I said, the fight was too short for me to get a proper look at his fighting style, but M0 used some tricks to deceive PS5,” explained Mizusaki. “For example, when he threw those blades and PS5 was forced to block them with that big ass piece of flooring, or when he dodged PS5 and easily slipped in between his legs. M0 used some sort of bait to make PS5 focus on other things and prevent him from looking directly at him.”

“…” Murayama and Miue exchanged a quick glance in between them and then looked back to Mizusaki once again. Mizusaki’s eyes truly were a godsend to the Japanese army.

“I don’t know if he only uses that technique on a physical sense only or if he can apply it in other ways, like how he was manipulating our questions throughout our travel to the base. So…” continued Mizusaki, his smirk fully disappearing to be exchanged into a dead serious expression. “Be careful of his words just as much as his body.”