Lal gets notified of a missing COMSUBIN and she just knows it's Colonnello because Verde has warned her about the others running off as well.

Lal sighs heavily.


Colonnello wakes up at some point when the sky if high up in the sky, feeling definitely not well-rested enough.

Probably because Viper is lying on top of him and has been since night time, when a worm touched them, and they didn't like that. It's so humid and the Viper-blanket isn't helping anything.

Skull has migrated away to wrap himself around Fon in a strangle hold. Fon is awake but he can't do anything without waking Skull and Fon is too nice to do that (currently, but who knows when he'll get bored of being nice).

Reborn has a hammock. Not sure how, considering the only supplies they have is what Colonnello managed to grab during the shootout, and there's definitely no way to buy one in the middle of this humid as fuck jungle.

Colonnello starts lazily slapping Viper's body in general to wake them up. The Mist hisses, floats up still horizontal, and makes their way over to Reborn where they then drop into the hammock.

Colonnello rolls over and up to his knees, wiggles his hands in between Fon and Skull to wrap his arms around Skull, and then just hauls back. Fon gets dragged for a bit and then Skull blearily wakes up, grip slackening, and Fon escapes swiftly to go stretch.

"Okay," Colonnello begins, dumping Skull on the ground and standing, patting himself off. "So I think we should start back early-"

"I'm hungry," Reborn muses, cuddling Viper like a stuffed toy. "I vote we eat Fon first because he has a lot of muscle."

"Or we could eat Colonnello," Viper chimes in. "Because he's the biggest."

"He would spoil quickly in this climate," Fon points out.

Colonnello rolls his eyes. "It's been like half a day. You ate in the car on the way down, and that was lunch time. You've missed one meal so far - and probably breakfast, so two meals. Stop whining."

"What are we naming our tribe?" Skull asks, sitting up cross-legged.

Colonnello pinches the bridge of his nose. "It'll take us like a few days to get back, and that's if I can't make a distress signal. We don't need to make a tribe."

"Okay, but like if we did make a tribe, what would we call it?" Skull insists. "Because I'm thinking something like 'Ninety-Nine Problems and Not One Bitch'."

"Is this a tribe, or the name of your shitty garage band?" Reborn complains.

"I'm just going to leave," Colonnello says, backing away out of the small hollowed out rock. "I don't care what you guys do."


No one is wearing a watch, so Colonnello tracks the sun by measuring how many finger widths can fit underneath it down to the horizon (which he guesses at because forests don't have horizons). His fingers are pretty big, but it's only an estimate anyway so he assumes each finger at 15 minutes.

The problem is that he doesn't know if the sun is still rising or if it's setting. He assumes rising because he normally wakes up early and hopefully it's not already the afternoon. Sunrise at 5am-ish, plus 18 fingers fit between the sun and the horizon, which is about 4.5 hours.

9:30am?

"Wait, how does it go?" Skull asks, trying to copy the finger method.

"How does the time help us?" Viper complains. "Why do I keep following you idiots, I swear, I should know better by now."

Fon says nothing but he clearly agrees.

Colonnello rolls his eyes. It's the southern hemisphere so he spins around until he has the sun's current position at 12 on an imaginary watch. Drawing a line straight through the middle of the fake watch, between the sun's 12 and the guesstimated 9:30, he finds north at about 10:45.

"This way," Colonnello says and starts walking towards an imaginary 10:45pm because he knows the base is vaguely north.

"Um," Reborn begins, holding a compass Leon. "You almost got it."

Colonnello stops. "Leon."

"He says hello," Reborn comments.

Colonnello walks up to the hitman and stares at the lizard in Reborn's hand. "Leon. You can shapeshift."

"Yes, and you have nice hair," Reborn echoes.

Colonnello takes a deep breath. "Leon, you can shapeshift into a radio to call the army."

"But my Reborn was having fun," Reborn echoes again and then stops. "I mean, I didn't...think of it."

Viper summons a demon to eat Reborn but then everyone realises that the demon has also eaten Leon, who is the only one who can save them.


Lal arrives by chopper, one hand holding a handle and leaning out over the edge to see them sitting on a high hill with very little trees.

They can't hear her but she clearly mouths; why do you do this to me?

Reborn shrugs. "Your angry face makes me happy?"

Lal looks even more angry.


When they get back to base, they learn Lal came in with a full squadron of COMSUBIN and wiped out the kidnappers, saved the diplomats, and still had time to find her idiots.

"When I grow up, I want to be like you," Skull says, only half joking.