“Nope. No fucking way. This is a lie,” mumbled Ikusaki, softly shaking his head in denial at the same time as he grabbed it with both hands. “There’s some mistake here. There’s just no way that Mizusaki got the same score as Iru!!! He’s always losing against him when they’re playing games!”

“Hey, games have nothing to do with tests!” yelped Mizusaki in his defence, pointing his index finger at his squadmate in accusation. “Besides, it’s just a matter of time for me to defeat Iru! I already thought up a strategy to do it, as a matter of fact~ Hehehe~”

“Creepy…” whispered Miue, slightly taken aback by the outright evil demeanour in Mizusaki’s face. “Anyway, how did you do it, Mizusaki?”

“I went Atsumu on the test~,” said Mizusaki with a sing-song voice. “Miue-san, you said that I should use my human knowledge against them, right? So I did what quite a lot of students do and copied. Murayama-san never said that points would be taken if we cheated so no matter what any of you say, I got the same score as Iru, whether the knowledge was mine or somebody else’s.”

“...” Ikusaki, Miue and Eki exchanged quick glances in between themselves and then turned around on their heels. Ikusaki snorted and dismissively waved his hand. “Of course you did. Go figure.”

“You didn’t copy, did you?” asked Murayama once his squad members had gotten further away from his and Mizusaki’s location. An eyebrow was lightly arched in his brows. “Although the questions were the same, the order they were put on was different in every test booklet. The multiple choices’ answers were also put in random ways in each test.”

“It’s better if they think I cheated,” said Mizusaki, giving a quick shrug with his shoulders. “I prefer to be the easygoing idiot who didn’t even go to high school because he preferred to stay home playing games, reading manga and watching anime than to be a friendless genius who got scouted into the army.”

“After years in the same squad, they wouldn’t treat you any different even if they were to find out you’re smarter than you pretend to be,” sighed Murayama. He gave a quick slap to Mizusaki’s back and went after the rest of his squad. “Hurry up and wreck Iru once and for all. If he loses against a human, he might get down from his high horse and stop being such a douche to us.”

“Never once have I lost on purpose against him, okay?” said Mizusaki, giving a short run to catch up with his commander. “He really is good when it comes to chess. No wonder, since chess is a miniature battlefield and he had ‘military strategy’ drilled into his brain in the lab. I bet he would also wreck me if we were to play shogi or go. Card games are the same thing since he’s good at reading his opponent.”

“How do you intend in winning against him then?” snorted Murayama, sideways glancing at his subordinate as they walked side by side. “You already declared to Ikusaki you would win against Iru. If you don’t do it, he won’t stop bugging you until you do such a miracle.”

“In these last two weeks, I probably played against Iru a few hundreds of times,” said Mizusaki, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “I know all of his strategies at this point. I said I never lost on purpose but I never aimed for a victory either. I used all defence and attack strategies known to humankind against him and he still won against them all. That’s his biggest weakness.”

“Iru’s weakness?” repeated Murayama, suddenly halting his walking and fully turning his head to stare completely flabbergasted at Mizusaki.

“The scientists conditioned him into always thinking up a plan before acting~” explained Mizusaki with a leisure voice. “The test made that more than clear. If you hadn’t mentioned that all questions involving math were multiple choice, Iru would have gotten the ‘one with one’ question wrong too. But because he heard all of the ‘rules’ for the test beforehand, he included that possibility in his plans towards victory. He probably has a well-defined plan for everything he does, even if it’s menial tasks like going for a walk on the base or reading books in the living room with M0. He always acts according to the plans and schemes spiralling in his head. Those plans are based on the knowledge he has accumulated in the lab and by reading our books. So if a situation that involves an unknown factor is presented to Mister Invincible, he will not know how to act.”

“So Iru’s unable to properly react against the unknown,” mumbled Murayama, thinking more closely about what Mizusaki just told him. “Do the others also have weaknesses like Iru?”

“Well, this is a bit of conjecture from my side but yeah, all of them have one very prominent weakness,” acknowledged Mizusaki with a small nod of his head. “Mitaru has a slow reaction against surprise attacks, like it happened when he was defending the base with Ikusaki and they got suddenly surrounded by the Russians. Atsumu relies too much on his ability to copy anything he sees. It’s similar to Iru, he won’t be able to react against an unknown factor. Azuma’s weakness is the same function he has. I don’t think he would have a good mashup against another sniper or long-distance weapons. The problem with Tsugi is that he needs a reason to do something. If he finds himself somewhere alone, he wouldn’t do anything because he doesn’t have anyone around telling him what to do. He occasional acts on impulse though, but that also means he can be easily influenced into doing something even if he doesn’t agree with it. M0’s weakness… Ahh… It’s not a weakness at this point. I would say his weakness is his lack of knowledge but he’s also able to think out of the box to solve problems he isn’t familiar with. To be honest, I think the moment he fully understands the world around him, he’ll be unstoppable. Then again, the more he knows, the higher the probability of him self-destructing becomes. Too much knowledge in too little time can be fatal because we start overthinking too much. That’s the number one reason why students fail to get good grades during tests and exams~ Too much studying, too much information in their heads, too little time to put their knowledge forward.”

“Even if they’re just conjectures, good job gathering all of that information,” said Murayama, giving a sharp nod with his head. “They’ll come in handy for the second part of their testing. And, speaking of which, the base will be on holidays for two days starting tomorrow. The bad news is that we’ll be on duty rather than vacation time. Nakatani-san found it safer to momentarily halt all work in the base as the Ms go through the ‘physical examinations’.”

Nah, the old man just wants to put another show for his soldiers…, inwardly grumbled Mizusaki, a small frown creasing his brows as he heard that news. He truly never changes...