“Seeing all of these makes me feel as if I returned to school…” grumbled Mizusaki, a bored expression on his face as he remained sat down on a table, a pencil on his hand that he was using to poke at the covers of a couple of textbooks. “Do I really need to do this?”

“We need some bases to compare their knowledge with,” pointed out Miue, quickly running his eyes throw a math textbook as he flipped its pages. “You’re one of the soldiers closer in age with them so you’re a perfect base for the first test.”

“Just use Ikusaki, then…” continued grumbling Mizusaki, giving a stronger poke to the textbook and making it fall from the small pile.

“He’s an idiot,” said Murayama with a shrug of his shoulders, not mincing his words in the least. “Do you think Ikusaki could ever be used as a knowledge base? He didn’t even go to middle and high school in Japan.”

“I didn’t go to high school in Japan or any other country…” mumbled Mizusaki under his breath, a sour pout starting to crease his features.

“Yes, but you’re an exception to that,” acknowledged Murayama, rolling his eyes around just the slightest. Just how much did Mizusaki hate the schooling system? He sighed. “Just think of this as if a quiz game or something. Or you can just think of it as another way of finally winning against Iru?”

“They have eidetic memory,” pointed out Mizusaki, dropping the pencil on the table in half exasperation and crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s the same thing as competing against the textbook itself.”

“But you have the advantage of already knowing how both tests and textbooks work,” said Miue, dropping the textbook back on the table and walking towards the closed door of the make-shift classroom they created to hold the testing session. “You had the same amount of time to study for these ‘tests’ than they did. Just outsmart them with your human knowledge.”

“Easier said than done…” groaned Mizusaki, slumping down his head. With a small jump, he got up from the table’s surface and sat down on the chair, sideways observing as the Ms stepped inside of the room.

“Even after everything you guys said, I don’t get what’s the purpose of this boring ass test,” complained Mitaru, sluggishly dropping his body on the closest seat to the door. “That kind of knowledge is completely useless to Mass Murder Machines…”

“Watching TV is much more interesting than reading books…” groaned Atsumu, slumping down his upper body on the table as soon as he sat down on the chair. “The only thing I can copy from books is the text written in them…”

“I like them,” shortly said M0, sitting on the table next to the one Iru had chosen for himself.

“If you have the same type of knowledge that humans have, it’s easier to manipulate them into your side,” pointed out Iru, a mischievous smirk on his lips as he purred those words. “That’s what several countries have been doing throughout history by the means of their teaching curriculums.”

“History is told by the victorious side, yes, but math and science have nothing to do with manipulative ploys,” added Azuma, lightly adjusting his glasses. “They’re all about logic.”

“Says the one who knows more about religion than a scholar…” mumbled Tsugi, a pout on his face due to having been denied of food until he concluded the test. “There’s not a single drop of logic in it…”

“Okay, okay, quiet down now,” intervened Murayama, trying to calm them and their bickering down so the test could start. “Miue will give you the test now. If you talk, I’ll be reducing points from your score so you better be as silent as a corpse.”

“...”

Their winning mentality and competitive personalities really come in handy at times like these, snorted Murayama in the back of his head. Once he saw Miue put a thick test booklet in front of Iru, he continued with his explanation. “We crammed everything in the same test rather than create several small tests for each subject. There are different types of questions too, from multiple choice where you need to pick the correct answer to small compositions about a topic. All questions that involve math are multiple choice. There’s no time limit. You can spend as much time completing the test as you want and if there’s anything you don’t know, you can leave the answer blank. Once you finish just call for me or Miue, and we’ll take it to the room next door, where Kinjou’s squad will correct them. That’s about it. You can start as soon as Miue puts the test in front of you.”

From that point onward, the room remained completely silent, with only the sound of pencils scribbling on paper and Mitaru’s occasional mumbled whines about what a waste of time all of that was. Despite all of the previous banter about not wanting to do it, Mizusaki was quietly going through his test.

Without much to do while the ‘students’ were completing their tasks, the two ‘teachers’ were left to silently occupy their time with some menial tasks. Miue went through the textbooks Mizusaki had used to study, a tinge of nostalgia in his chest as he now and then found some pages that he could still clearly remember from his student years. Murayama was reading a newspaper, an attempt to reconnect himself with the current events of humankind rather than review what was the obvious to humanity with one of the newcomers to the base.

None of the two brought more with them because they knew the Ms wouldn’t take long filling the 20-pages test booklet. Murayama also knew that Mizusaki wouldn’t get too behind in terms of completion time.

Their expectations were not betrayed. Twenty minutes after the beginning of the test, Iru delivered his booklet. Soon after, Azuma delivered his, followed by Tsugi. A few minutes later, both M0 and Mizusaki called for the ‘teachers’ to deliver theirs, followed by Mitaru and Atsumu finishing at the exact same time to not be the last ones completing their tasks. A tied last place seemed better than a total last place, in their minds.

As they received the test booklets, both Miue and Murayama went out of the room and delivered them to the squad occupying the next division, who already had the answer sheets ready. Rather than the usual waiting period for the final evaluation, the results would be released as soon as everyone had finished.

“Man, I never thought I’d be in this type of situation ever again…” sighed Mizusaki, leaning his back on the backrest of his chair and arms hanging on the sides of his torso. “Not nice… Not good at all… I definitely need a break from all of this now…”

“Afraid the brats know more than you?” scoffed Miue, sideways glancing at the moaning soldier with a small smirk on his lips. “They can memorise anything they see or read. Don’t take it to heart if they score more than you.”

“...” Mizusaki remained silent for a couple of seconds, his eyes stuck to the ceiling. His body then suddenly jolted into a straight sitting position, followed by a quick standing up motion. “I’m taking a bathroom break.”

“Be sure to be back before the results arrive,” said Miue, following Mizusaki with his eyes. He only obtained a small wave of his hand as a reply. He clicked his tongue and switched his gaze back to Murayama. “Why is Mizusaki so against studying and tests and all this crap? I know he got into the army through a backdoor but he really should give it a rest already and stop using the fact he didn’t go to high school as an excuse to refuse to do shit!”

“Well, I wasn’t the studying type of student myself so I can understand the ‘studying is a bore’ side of things,” confessed Murayama, giving a quick shrug with his shoulders as he said so. “Mizusaki’s conflict with it lies somewhere else, though. He’s not a lazyass like those three over there but neither did he went out of his way to study because he felt obligated to as a soldier with a task to accomplish. He’s a carefree, overly social weirdo now but the first time I met him, he was a completely different person.”

“You’ve met him before our squad was created?” inquired Miue, an eyebrow slightly arched in his brows. That was something he had never heard about before.

“Yes, I did,” acknowledged Murayama, letting out a dry short laugh afterwards. “I saw him for the first time a couple of weeks after I joined the army, as a new recruit to this base.”

“So…” mumbled Miue, quickly making the maths in his head. “He was an elementary school student at that time? Wait, what the hell was a 10-years old brat doing in the base in the first place?”

“The results are out!” announced Kinjou as soon as he opened the door. The conversations going around the room momentarily quieted down and then excited voices bombarded all over the place. “The results are so easy to relay that I didn’t even need to write them down.”

“Ohhh! That totally means I did perfect!!” squealed Atsumu in excitement, following after Kinjou as if a puppy waiting for a few pets in the head and a treat for the hard work.

“Sure you did,” scoffed Azuma, rolling his eyes around while he adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and patiently waited for the results to be announced.

“With a perfect score,” started Kinjou, making a pause to the announcement to make the suspense even harder to bear. “Iru! M0!”

“Tsk…” Azuma immediately clicked his tongue. Yet another defeat, it seemed.

“It was the expected, Azuma,” said Iru, hugging M0 from behind and nestling him against his chest in an obvious display to show who the top ones were.

“And… Mizusaki!” added Kinjou, a large satisfied grin on his face. He looked around the room, searching for his fellow soldier but he was nowhere to be found. “Where’s Mizusaki?”

“Eh? Wait, what!?” gasped Miue, a flabbergasted expression on his face as he heard his subordinate’s name being placed side by side with first place, with a perfect score at that. “Mizusaki… scored the same as Iru and M0?”

“He sure did,” acknowledged Kinjou with an affirmative nod of his head. “Not a single wrong answer or grammatical mistake. The rest didn’t get a perfect score because all four of them fell for the same trap. You all answered wrong to the same question.”

“Eh!? Which one!?” yelped Atsumu, his eyes wide open in clear panic and surprise. Although Mitaru and Tsugi were clearly annoyed by it, only Azuma also showed signs of not understanding how exactly such a coincidence had happened.

“Murayama told you that all questions that required math would be multiple choice, right?” asked Kinjou, a mischievous smirk slowly tugging at the corner of his lips. When he saw all of them nodding their heads in acknowledgement, he couldn’t help but inwardly laugh. “So what is one with one?”

“Two,” answered Azuma, Tsugi, Atsumu and Mitaru in unison. However…

“Eleven,” said Iru, M0 and Mizusaki, who was stepping inside of the room once again after his short bathroom break.

“Huh?” interjected the first group answer’s speakers. Scratching the back of his head in utter confusion, Atsumu stepped forward and pointed out. “How is one with one eleven? That’s impossible!”

“It’s possible if it’s not a math problem in the first place~” said Mizusaki, softly chuckling to himself. “That question wasn’t multiple choice so they weren’t asking us to do any math there. They were asking us what number it is when you place a one next to another one. Which is eleven, obviously~ You were deceived, muwahahaha!!”

Okay, right. But that doesn’t explain how the fuck did you score the same as a Mass Murder Machine with eidetic memory!!!!, inwardly added Miue, still too taken aback and surprised to put his questions and wonders into proper words.