“Ohhh! Give them hell, lil’ one!!”

“One more to go!”

“You can do it!! Just one more!”

“It seems you’ve gathered a small group of fans, M0,” chuckled Iru, sideways glancing at the excited small crowd on the border of the training grounds. He then returned his gaze to the approaching super soldier, a wicked smirk on his lips. “Having fun taming the humans, are we?”

“Tsugi-kun is not the only one who enjoys their food,” declared M0, his expressionless demeanour contrasting with Iru’s unusually excited expression. “I quite like it myself, when compared to the food we were given at the lab. Putting on a little show is a small price to pay for it. Also, I did reassure Tsugi-kun that his portion of food was guaranteed even if he were to lose, so I put on some extra effort to turn the 99% into 100%.”

“So our bet had nothing to do with it?” inquired Iru, tilting his head slightly to the left as he continued observing M0 walk closer to him. He sighed. “That’s a bit of a disappointment, I’ve got to confess. Here I was holding back so you could ruin Azuma’s strategy and patiently waiting for you to finally come for me. If I had known you weren’t prioritising your so very important name, I would have settled everything right from the beginning.”

“No, getting my name back was always my main priority, even before the testing period was announced,” corrected M0, lightly shaking his head around as he came to a stop a couple of metres away from Iru. “But I know you well, Iru-kun. Too well. If I were to let something slip by, you’d find an excuse to go back on your word or, at the very least, attribute me some penalty. That’s why I went a bit over the top against them. To make sure I would win my bet as perfectly as you would, if you were in my situation.”

“That makes me feel a bit flattered,” chuckled Iru, his smirk softening a fraction. “But it’s still too early for you to be talking about winning, my Beatrice. You have one more to go, as your fans are so eagerly cheering about. I’m not the same as the other Ms. I will not hold back while fighting against you, M0, even if killing or weapons aren't allowed. No matter what, I will win our bet.”

“Why is it that you dislike me being called by my name so mu-” started M0 but he had to interrupt himself when Iru made his first move. He skillfully jumped a few metres back, jumping a second time as soon as his feet touched the floor to avoid being caught up in Iru’s heel kick and the damages it caused on the ground.

M0 quickly turned his body sideways and motioned his hands forward, grabbing Iru’s upper arm with one and locking his elbow with another when he threw a speedy punch at him. He slid his foot against the floor and put his leg in between Iru’s legs, readily pulling at his limb to lift his body in the air and then throw him to the floor. Although he easily managed to pull that counter-attack out, Iru was also quick at retaliating against it. Rather than falling on the floor on his back like he was supposed to, he twisted his locked arm and easily landed on the ground with his two feet, quickly pulling his arm away from M0’s grasp and taking a few steps back to further their distance.

He obviously didn’t leave it at that. M0 lunged forward, his body moving so fast it barely became a blur on the training grounds. He threw a punch at Iru, who deflected it with a tap with his hand. Another soon followed, coming from below this time around. Iru placed his hands together and used his palms to stop the momentum of the punch, pushing M0’s fist down with them. Before his hand stopped moving, M0 spun his body counter-clockwise while lifting his left leg, giving a roundhouse kick to the side of Iru’s body.

“Too weak,” snorted Iru, easily grabbing M0’s leg and keeping it in place between his arm and his ribcage. He gave a strong tug to his limb and lifted his other foot from the floor, catapulting M0 to the other side of the training grounds with tremendous speed.

“I can’t use my full strength in a practice match,” rebuked M0, giving a backflip mid-throw and landing on the ground with only one of his feet. He used the other one to turn his body around by sliding it on the floor, propelling his body to face Iru directly once again, despite their distance from one another. He straightened his body momentarily and then switched to an attacking stance. “And neither can you.”

With a small thump, M0 pushed his body forward as if a bullet released from the trigger, quickly appearing beside Iru and restarting the back and forth attack and defence dance. Neither let the other attack more than once at a time, accurately intervening with an offensive movement at the right moment to force the other one into a defensive stance.

Rather than being the same as the other previous one-sided matches, Iru and M0 were on even grounds in terms of hand-to-hand combat.

Until the moment Iru suddenly withdrew from his incoming attack to M0 all on his own.

“What is it that you’re scared of, Iru-kun?” asked M0, his grey eyes slowly becoming tainted with a slight red glow. His expressionless demeanour gradually lost more and more of its human semblance and became that of a hollow entity. He tilted his head. “Me? Yourself? The humans? Going back to the lab? Running away?”

“We do not feel fear,” declared Iru, his grey eyes equally gaining a reddish glow to them. He lowered his body all of a sudden, M0 jumping over him at the same time as he threw a side kick towards his exposed back. Iru sidestepped, even with his lowered stance, and avoided being crushed underneath M0’s foot by half an inch. The floor took the totality of the impact, blowing up into smithereens even before the super soldier’s limb touched it. That was when he counter-attacked, giving a powerful punch to M0’s ribcage, which sent him flying backwards yet again. “We do not feel pain. Being what we are, of what exactly could we be scared of?”

“I don’t know. You tell me, Iru-kun,” said M0, already next to Iru once again. He grabbed his shoulders from behind and gave a sideways kick to one of his legs, attempting to break his balance and use his hold on his shoulders to force him down to the ground.

Iru quickly defended himself by allowing one of his knees to go down on the floor, lunging his hands back, above his shoulders, and grabbing onto M0’s clothes. He pulled M0 over his head, trying to use their current stances to his advantage and force M0’s back against the ground with that throw. M0 responded just as quickly. He spun his body around, ripping the part of his upper clothes where Iru was holding onto, so he could land with both hands and feet. He pushed his body forward and his shoulder and head came crashing against Iru’s chest, forcing his feet to claw against the floor and break into even smaller pieces.

“Since I don’t know anything, I need you, who knows of things I could never imagine,” added M0, continuing to push Iru’s body back. Iru tried to remove his shoulder from against his chest, but he readily got hold of both of his wrists and kept on pushing him. “However, you’re using that dependence I have on you in the wrong way!”

Without any warning, M0 pulled away from Iru and then stepped forward once again, this time successfully connecting a kick with the side of Iru’s torso that threw him away through the training grounds. He zoomed back to near him, grabbing Iru by one of his arms and once again threw him in the direction where the two had come from. To finish off, M0 grabbed Iru by the front of his clothes while kicking the back of his feet and pushed him down against the floor, his back quickly growing closer and closer to its end.

Iru’s body came to a sudden halt when his back was a breath away from touching the ground.

“You’re not going to end this, my Beatrice?” asked Iru, his upper body suspended in the air by M0’s grip to the front of his clothes. “You’ll lose your opportunity to win.”

“It’s more than obvious who’s going to win, Iru-kun,” sighed M0, staring straight into Iru’s grey eyes. “You do like to spoil me, after all. But you see, Iru-kun… Doing things this way is not fair. It’s not fair at all. To me and you. You’re putting unnecessary burdens on you, creating problems in your mind that have such a low probability of happening that we might as well call them impossible. Being prepared for all eventualities is a given, yes, but maybe it’s your preparations and safety measures that will put us in danger in the future. Too much of something is bad, as the humans usually say. If you keep making an exception, an outcast out of me, it will eventually arouse more suspicions that it’s needed. That’s the moment when problems will begin.”

“For them, though,” scoffed Iru, dismissingly rolling his eyes around.

“That’s not the point,” said M0, pulling Iru’s upper body a little bit more away from the floor. “Did we get out to cause trouble? No, we didn’t. We escaped the lab for various reasons but that wasn’t one of them. Iru-kun, please give up on the what-if scenarios and focus on the important matters only. I’ll throw my name away if that’s what you want. Between being called M0 and the name you gave me, there’s little difference to me. But you have to equally throw away that need you have to overprotect me. It’s clearly of no difference to me whether you do it or not too.”

“...” Iru silently stared right back at the decisive glint in M0’s eyes, who had once again lowered his body closer to the ground to prove his point. He sighed. “Okay, I understand.”

“Really!?” excitedly exclaimed M0, a smile slowly starting to shape the corner of his lips upwards. However, before the magical setting could become a reality, his body was suddenly pulled sideways and then pushed down to the floor, his back getting caged against the crumbly and dusty ground.

“I win,” declared Iru, a mischievous smirk on his lips as he sat down on top of M0’s waist and kept him down on the floor.

“Cheater…” grumbled M0, a small frown creasing his brows. “You are such an obnoxious cheater…”

“I love you too, Rei,” chuckled Iru, leaning his upper body forward to gently kiss the super soldier’s pouting lips.