“I’m not going to lose a second time today, M0!!” declared Tsugi, readying his body for contact as M0’s small body zoomed in his direction as fast as lightning. A frown creased his brows as he put his hands in front of his body so he could grab M0 as soon as he was in his vicinity and throw him right away against the floor. The key to dealing with him would be acting faster than M0 himself could, Tsugi had concluded after observing Mitaru’s loss.

However, even though Tsugi was sure that he had secured a hold on M0’s body, the slippery super soldier slid between his hands and arms and took refuge behind his back. It was okay, the first attempt might have failed but he wouldn’t let the next ones pass by. Tsugi lowered his body slightly and lunged one of his elbows backwards, matching M0’s height so the elbow strike could meet its intended target. It was a close call. M0 leaned backwards and Tsugi’s massive limb slid pass his face for half an inch.

Rather than straighten his body once again right away, M0 allowed his upper body to continue falling backwards until his hands touched the ground. He kicked the floor with his heels and wrapped his legs around Tsugi’s outstretched arm, which he used as a means to rotate his body in midair. Rather than on a muscled, thick limb, M0 almost seemed as if he had neatly sat down on the branch of a tall tree.

“I can’t afford to lose a single time, Tsugi-kun,” replied M0, sideways peering at the other super soldier. “But I can assure you that even if you lose a second time, you won’t be lacking any food in the future. I promise you that.”

“This is no longer a matter of food,” said Tsugi, lunging his other hand towards M0 at a frightening speed that should not be possible with such a large body. “I was put on a higher rank than Atsumu. I don’t want to lose twice and be put in the same category as him.”

Tsugi’s fingers lightly scrapped by M0 but he threw his body backwards, his feet smoothly landing on the floor after giving a backflip.

“I don’t have a rank or a number,” pointed out M0, his head tilted to the right as he observed the taller super soldier straighten his body. “Losing to me shouldn’t matter much. I’m just M0, after all.”

You know very well that you’re not just M0, inwardly scoffed Tsugi, giving chase to M0 when he suddenly disappeared from in front of him and started running towards another location of the training grounds. But if I were to say that out loud, M0 would probably get all cranky and annoyed so I better not. I’m not stupid like Atsumu…

Tsugi and M0 continued trading brief blows with one another as they moved further and further away from their initial battling grounds, making a slow ascend to an area of the training ground occupied by empty buildings and leftover materials of their previous uses.

Out of the blue, M0 disappeared from everybody’s sight.

“You’re not going to trick me like you did with Mitaru…” mumbled Tsugi, more to himself than to the missing super soldier. Slowly, with very careful and measured steps, he walked away from near the buildings and from any object that M0 could use to hide inside or under. Once he was at a safe distance of everything, he once again started looking around his surroundings in search for M0’s location.

“I already did.”

The thick iron chains underneath Tsugi’s body rattled against the floor without any warning, tightly getting wrapped around his ankles. A small shadow flashed before his eyes and the chain’s hold on him climbed up to his lower and upper legs, connecting with two wall pieces in between windows of the vacant buildings nearby. Half a second later, Tsugi’s torso and arms had also been caught with the tight squeeze of the cold chains.

“Ugh!” gasped Tsugi when the iron chain was closely wrapped around his neck and then pulled even tighter with a small yank of M0’s wrist.

“Another down,” declared M0, releasing the ends of the chains and zooming closer to the restrained super soldier. With a well-placed roundhouse kick to Tsugi’s torso, he broke all of the chains with several loud metallic snaps and sent the super soldier flying several meters, lifting a thick cloud of dust as his body tumbled and bumped against the ground until he came crashing on the wall of one of the buildings.

M0 turned around on his heels and departed from that location, not sparing another glance at his defeated companion. His last two targets were waiting for him and he could feel that both were equality burning to have a go against him.

“So it ended up being just like Iru said it would,” grumbled Azuma under his breath, an annoyed expression on his features as he leaned his upper body forward and took hold of a couple of pebbles lying around the ground. He threw them up in the air and readily caught them with the same hand once again. “It’s so aggravating when Iru’s right!”

Azuma motioned his hand back and then lunged it forward, throwing one of the pebbles in M0’s direction. Rather than a small piece of rock falling on the ground, the impact had been as strong and loud as if a hand grenade had been thrown against an enemy, lifting chunks of the floor and dirt into the air.

Despite the never-ending barrage of missile-pebbles, M0 continued averting being hit by any of the shots, jumping around through the training grounds non-stop in response.

“Just stay put and face me head-on too, M0!” yelled Azuma, popping out in another location and throwing yet another pebble from a new angle at the speed of light.

“Okay,” acknowledged M0, coming to a halt and facing Azuma’s direction directly. The light-speed pebble crossed the entirety of the training grounds in a matter of seconds, closing the distance with M0 to a near null.

M0 moved equally as fast. He grabbed the zooming pebble with one of his hands and used its momentum to rotate his body once, throwing the pebble back to Azuma with triple its initial speed.

Much like he had previously done with a hand grenade back in the fallen illegal lab.

The crashing sound was deafening. The ground shook with the impact as a large crater was formed on the broken floor. One would have more easily believed that a meteor had fallen on the base rather than a pebble being thrown back and forth in a tag game.

“Damn it…” cursed Azuma, slowly lifting his back from the dusty ground after having been thrown off a few meters backwards at the impact of the pebble on the floor. The worst part wasn’t having lost because of a backfired strategy - it was that M0 hadn’t even aimed at him, unlike what he had been doing.

If he had, Azuma would probably have lost 60% of his body with that single attack.