Colonnello wakes up that morning in quite a good mood.

It's a new deployment, an interesting guerrilla warfare mission in a tropical jungle to retrieve some political prisoners. A joint effort between Italy, France and America considering the diplomats that got snatched.

Like all COMSUBIN, he tends to be swapped around between permanent teams of the Italian military because COMSUBIN is special ops and only gets called in for the most complicated situations. If he had to pick, Colonnello prefers wide, opens spaces of sandy hills because of his sharpshooter specialty, but it's nice to see new places.

Colonnello's happy mood lasts until the airplane lands and he opens the back of the jeep to put his gear in only to find Skull stuffed into the small space behind the seats, half stripped down and sweating in the humidity.

Colonnello sighs.

"So," Skull begins, head propped up on one elbow, cheek in hand. "Up for an adventure?"

Colonnello is about to answer no when he hears heavy boots walking closer. He tosses in his bag and slams the boot shut quickly before someone catches sight of Skull.

The captain swaggers up in a shiny uniform, hands clasped behind his back and sneer on his face. "At ease, soldier."

"That's not how that works," Colonnello informs Reborn.

Reborn frowns and smooths down his nice uniform. "I saw it in a movie once."

"I hate you."

Reborn winks. "Get in. We're meeting Fon and Viper at the outpost."

"Verde didn't want to come on an adventure?" Colonnello scoffs. "Shit, you're lucky Lal isn't on this mission."

Reborn just saunters over to the front passenger's side.

"Did you give Skull water?" Colonnello continues even if he does join Reborn in the car, hauling himself into the back seats. "He's going to get heat stroke and I'm going to be blamed for not stopping you."

"Why are you looking at me? Skull's the idiot who crawled into the back in the first place."

"It's more sneaky," Skull says as he extracts himself from under Colonnello's gear and then crawls over the backseats, elbowing Colonnello a few times before finally reaching the driver's seat.

Colonnello sighs. "I'm going to hate this."


After being bounced around down a narrow dirt track for a while, Skull stops the car when Fon and Viper blend out of the tree branches. This is a 'road less travelled' kind of track so they have a short picnic with the food Reborn swiped from the military base's canteen.

Considering Reborn's involvement, Colonnello is actually two days ahead of the rest of his squad and only got permission because he name-dropped Lal as his direct supervisor.

So there's no backup, they don't know the terrain, and Skull is wearing bright purple while Fon is a stark crimson – neither of which blend in well.

Of course they end up ambushed, bullets flying at them from out of the trees as Colonnello is packing up the empty boxes.

Thankfully, Reborn's Chaos Shot works just as well bending around trees, that it does edging around cityscape telephone poles and bus stops.

They dive into the foliage, Colonnello only holding his smaller pack, and take up camping behind a cluster of thick trees locked together by vines.

"Hey, how do I put this back in?" Skull asks.

Colonnello turns to look and Skull is looking sheepish as he hovers over Colonnello's open pack, holding a grenade in one hand and the pin in the other.

Colonnello grabs the grenade and hurls it as far and as hard as physically possible.

Viper flinches when something goes whooshing over their head. "Fon, did you just throw a-" Viper sees Colonnello instead. "Okay, I'm impressed. I guess those big boy biceps are useful for something."

"What the fucking fuck!?" Colonnello screams at Skull.

"I wanted to see what would happen," Skull admits.

"It's a grenade! There's only one thing that happens when you pull the pin out!"


It actually doesn't take much for them to kill everyone, considering what they do on a daily basis and Colonnello does briefly think about maybe sorting out a 'consultant' contract for Reborn and Fon, if it ever becomes necessary. He'll talk to Lal about it later.

The jeep is totalled, so they start walking the rest of the way and Viper insists they know a shortcut (because they know everything) and it's so humid and shitty that everyone agrees.

They end up quickly lost because honestly every tree looks the same. Viper floats up above the treetops to check their positioning but obviously the outposts are all camouflaged so that doesn't help.

"Just admit you're lost," Reborn demands.

"Fuck you, I know where I'm going," Viper snaps.

They come across a narrow but fast running river and Skull goes in for a dip but gets swept away and as it turns out, Fon can't swim, so it was absolutely useless for him to jump in after their stuntman.

"I got it," Reborn says and kicks off his shoes and jacket before diving in. He still keeps his fedora on, because he's Reborn, and he does shit like that.

Colonnello and Viper track their idiots on the bank of the river, carrying Reborn's discarded clothes because they're feeling oddly nice, and find the three looking particularly waterlogged.

Reborn looks up when they approach, a mix between annoyance and grudging respect. "Fon threw Skull onto the bank, and then picked up a boulder from the bottom of the river because he decided he could use the weight to just walk out of the rapids."

"Damn," Viper admits.

"Thank you," Fon says, a little bit shy.

"You don't know how to swim?" Colonnello asks. "We were at the beach."

"I know how, I'm just not a strong swimmer," Fon admits. "And I always stay near the shallows."

Thankfully, none of them die from like brain eating amoeba or whatever from the water, but that's probably because of Sun and Storm flames (and Skull's thing) rather than luck.

They end up huddled in the concave of a cluster of trees to spend the night.

"This sucks," Reborn bitches.

"This was your idea," Colonnello points out. "Or at least I assume so because everything is generally your fault."

"Yeah, well, happy birthday, asshole," Reborn grumbles.

Colonnello stares out into the darkness of the forest for a long moment before he leans over and hugs Reborn.