Grey.
It was as much the gloomy sky cast over the once shining Iberian Empire as much as it was her inhabitants' daily life. Giorno sighed, then left the bleak sceneries outside the scratched window and turned back to the dimly lit apartment - a mere 40 meters square floor with four walls surrounding it that he had been calling his 'home' for the last 11 years. He grabbed the large cast iron pot he left to dry on a small wooden rack near the makeshift kitchen and sauntered over to the makeshift kitchen station next to the bathroom sink. His mind mulled over what sort of heretical pasta recipe he should pick for today's lunch.
But it was not like he and many other of his comrades asked to be ripped out of their dying home planet of Earth and transported here, either. They tried to weather out the storm, but without access to the support of either the Foehn Revolution Front or the Luna Soviet Republic, it was a futile battle. Even guns will be rendered useless without ammunition to fire them.
Crack.
Giorno dropped another egg into the wooden bowl. The next thing to do was to grate a block of the yellow brick which the locals - the Iberian, they called themselves - claimed to be cheese of some sort into the bowl and finally whisked everything together into a pseudo-liquid egg sauce for his pasta. It tasted nothing like the Pecorino mamma used to make her dishes, but it was at least better than what Giorno used to get from Foehn's rations. With the water boiling, the cream prepared, and the bacon from the last late night's snack reheated, all that was left was to put the dried pasta into the pot and wait.
In the meantime, Giorno walked to the messy study desk next to his cot and wiped off various maps and cartography tools aside, leaving only one small rusty orange metal box in front of him. His fingers gently unlatched the lock, then slowly snaked their way into the contents. A soft rustling metal sound echoed back, and before long he had already fished out a small steel tag from the box.
'So it's you this month, huh?' Giorno murmured as he read the name of his fellow Scarlet Team operative on the etched metal surface. To disguise themselves as post-war survivors or Lunarian agents so they would not alert their Epsilon enemy, Foehn's infiltrators could not carry dog tags to identify themselves. He stared at the name for a while, then put the tag back into the box before pulling out a sheet of brown-stained paper from the drawer and beginning to jot down the first few words.
'Hey kiddo,
I hope you are doing super these days...'
Giorno soon got lost in the scribbling, his mind morphing and reconstructing itself to become one of the comrades he was impersonating. It was an ironic twist of fate that the skills and mental conditionings he learned from OSIS to blend in with the enemies were utilized on his own friends. By the time the alarm rang, Giorno had already finished with the letter. He slid the folded piece of paper into a brown envelope and put it into the lower drawer where countless other identical envelopes had been piling up for the last eleven years.
One day, we will go home.
He had been waiting for that day for more than a decade, and only God would know how many more years to come before that day. Perhaps, those letters would remain unsent and forever locked away in that dark corner. Giorno frowned and shook off the negativity filling his mind - no, he had made it this far, he had to go until the end of the journey. Leaving the desk behind, he once more went over to the stove and started to mix the now al dente pasta with the meat and cream. Alas, a nice meal would help to alleviate his mind.
Then there were three dry knocks on the apartment door.
"J'oerni", a muffled voice sounded from the other side of the flimsy oak door. It was Ulpianus's voice, the Italian could recognize, "Are you in there, old man?"
With a sigh, Giorno put down his forks and walked toward the door. Still, even if it was someone he knew, his hands quietly went for the hidden homemade shotgun by the umbrella stand; one could never be too careful in his line of work, after all.
"Check hallway", Giorno spoke just loud enough for Ulpianus to hear.
"Hallway clear", the former captain of the Abyssal Hunter whispered back, "The Inquisition has gone after my other 'tail' already."
Only once the other side made sure that the outside was clear did Giorno quickly open the door, pull his guest inside and slam the door shut. Sometimes he wondered what kind of mess his old Scarlet Team landed themselves in: all these religious fanaticism bullshits of the suspiciously familiar Iberian Inquisition, and the whole Abyssal Hunter fiasco involving some sort of repulsive genetic engineering. At least this new land had the upside of not being under constant threat of mass mind-control by the Epsilon psychic fuckery back home.
The downside was that there were lots and lots of those heinous creatures which both the Abyssal Hunters and the Iberian government called Sea Terrors. It was an apt name, considering that the creatures' appearances were the grievest affront to Mother Nature's sense of beauty. Those abominations were not too dangerous if kept at a distance, but his team had anything but an unlimited amount of ammunition and the unusually strict regulations on firearms in Iberia did not help them one bit. When the rifles were gone, it was down to the cold steel, and the risk involved skyrocketed. It was thanks to various errant contractors of the Abyssal Hunter that he and some others managed to escape quite a few hairy encounters with the Sea Terrors.
But eventually, their luck would run out. Only Giorno did not know when it would be his turn when all of his team had already rested beneath the waves.
"Disgusting", Ulpianus's face crunched up from the cheese 'aroma' the moment he pulled down his mask tube. And Giorno could not blame the hunter since even he took three years to get used to the egregious flavor of the questionable Iberian cheese he was forced to use in the carbonara, "If you have it, then use it. If you don't, then don't. I do not see any point in torturing my nose and yours like this - and it has been years now, J'oerni."
"Something is better than nothing", the Italian man mused as he sat down at the dining table and spun some golden strands of pasta around his forks, "But insulting my country cooking aside, you are back quite sooner than I've expected, Ulpianus. I thought after that little stunt you pulled right in front of ten Inquisitors, you're gonna go low for a while."
"I am going low. And it is frankly insulting for you to insist that those pompous, self-righteous 'Inquisitors' can catch up to my skills", Ulpianus grumbled as he plopped down on the well-dusted leather couch - perhaps the most valuable thing out of Giorno's furniture, "As for your question, I have a new finding that might be advantageous to our cause."
Giorno sighed, for he knew there was no refusing Ulpianus's words when it came to eradicating the ever-encroaching Sea Terrors. He and his old squadmates had seen firsthand how a single act of negligence could doom an entire town of hundreds to oblivion overnight. Besides, the Aegir was the only one who could, in return, help him with his little project, given that their communication technology was more similar to the radio communication he needed than the strange Originium-powered transmission of the land-dwellers.
"Very well, color me interested", Giorno took another spoonful of pasta, "What do you have?"
"An unexplored section of the Canaria Islands west of here", Ulpianus continued, conveniently fishing out a couple of treats from Giorno's cookie jar on the nearby coffee table as well, "I saw a cave entrance during low tide while prowling along the coastline. One which I do not recall exists in the area."
"Surprising", The Italian raised his eyebrows, "But not all that stellar."
"I'm not done yet", Ulpian corrected, "While exploring the cave, I came upon an electronically locked vault door. The door is somewhat rusty, typical of unprotected metal in these salty regions, but the electric is still on."
"So, some sort of relic site of advanced ancient civilization?" Giorno was done with his lunch and proceeded to drop the utensils into the bathroom sink, "Do you have any photos?"
Ulpianus placed his left hand into his jacket's inner pocket, took out a small four-by-three-inch film, and flung it toward Giorno. The Italian quickly reacted and snatched the spinning plastic foil mid-air, then raised it underneath the dimly lit ceiling light for a better view. It was then Giorno could feel his mind almost come to a screeching halt, his pupils slightly dilated at the photo: it was a familiar, far too familiar symbol incised on the weathered metal surface. A triangle, with a stylized bird of prey spreading its wings wide, a symbol of ambition for freedom and soared to the sky of liberty.
Animus in consulendo liber. The Latin phrase long disused once more resurfaced in his mind. Giorno, and had his comrades been alive still, would easily recognize the bird of prey emblem no matter where they went. He could feel his throat running dry and a pang of bitterness swelled inside his heart; the fall of Rome, the chaos of Lombardy's siege, and the last stand on the British Isles. The symbol reminded him of home, one he bled for, but still lost.
"You seem to know of this place", his Aegir friend spoke again, "Or at least you know something related to its origin. Is it something from your home beyond the seas?"
"Something like that", Giorno flicked the photo back to Ulpianus, "When are we going?"
"In about another week or two, once the Iberian coastal patrol has lowered their alert. I also want to set up another safehouse there. Our 'other friend' had caused quite a ruckus, as you surely remembered, so the current safehouse won't be safe for long."
"The Tulek smugglers will not take on any more commission for a while after your adventure, Ulpianus", the older Italian sighed. He could not fathom how he ended up in cahoot with a seaborn-assimilated, totally insane former knight from this world version of Poland - but life made for strange bedfellows. What stranger was the fact that said knight had completely lost it, but for some reason still managed to retain his single-minded obsession with wiping all Sea Terrors from existence.
"But that is not a concern for me", Giorno continued as he walked toward his wardrobe, "That vault might just have all the machinery necessary to sustain a long campaign, all we need is food supplies in case we need to hunker down sometimes."
"What sort of treasures laid in there that can help us, you remember?" Ulpianus inquired. Giorno's expertise was engineering and demolition, and that fact was not lost on the seahunter during their long cooperation.
"I recognized the origin of the vault, not necessarily its contents", the other man grunted as he pulled out a heavy combat suit stored inside the unusually large wardrobe for his small apartment, "But I suggest you plan carefully and extensively for this expedition. I expect there will be heavy 'resistance' the moment that vault opens up."
Ulpianus's face contracted into a slight grimace as he heard Giorno's caution, his eyes wandering after the combat suit the Italian had just dragged out from his closet. To untrained eyes, it might as well be a typical land-dweller armored suit of a different aesthetic choice. But the hunter digressed, for he had witnessed how one of Giorno's former squadmates could casually stand her ground against one of Ulpianus's formerly fellow Aegir consuls in a similar armor; that went to say how much the former consul appreciated the technological ingenuity of Giorno's people to overcome their biological disadvantages, though not that the band of wandering warriors 'beyond the seas' was too far behind the genetically enhanced AByssal Hunters with their si-boer-ne-tik augmentations, whatever those might be.
Though, if Giorno were intending to use his so-called muscle-suit once more after all those years, then it would be no doubt a dangerous rabbit hole they were about to descend into. But given the risk and reward of the plan, there was little choice but to gamble everything he had to ensure the highest chance of success. Especially so if there were any probability of stumbling across the weapon fabricators Giorno sorely need
"Well", Giorno eyed his old M-3 Special Combat Suit up and down, his fingers running through its barely dusty surface for any spot of defection, "It's time I put you to good use again, right darling?"