Not Quite Your Savior
Our friendless intrepid explorer then met her first box swinging from a rope endlessly as if pushed by a malevolent invisible entity, but truth is it was safe to assume that miserable object have had enough of its shitty job thus committed suicide. It would remain there, forever moving about in no wind whatsoever, solely accompanied by the noise of the rope supporting its weight. Sad indeed.
Lara made her way to the roofs realizing a rectangular pit of doom was standing between her and the next area. She was forced to run over the planks there held on mere thin air as they fell one after another right after her passage, when she reached safer grounds she looked back, «…Who the fuck designed this!?» After ramming her face at another depressed box balancing over another ledge, as if showing its suicide for everyone to see; she then ended in an unsuspected area like some kind of derelict theater. Knowing what it took to get here its location was puzzling in itself but it didn't beat the fact that the whole place was rigged with elaborated traps. Croft escaped some conveniently-placed boulders that triggered somehow whenever she got close enough, and apparently the rocks weren't favoring anyone as for she found some of BarfFolly's men crushed under as well. Then there were these heavy bags hanging from the ceiling that would fall down exactly when you passed by or under them, and she also found broken shards of glass scattered in some places.
Either the proprietor had no money to have some suitable security mechanisms installed or they simply enjoyed to surprise people and make them suffer. Either way somewhere in between something went out of proportion….
Croft would have asked for their purpose, to kill the rats perhaps; but whenever she found a guy he'd start shooting at her before she could inquire anything. Maybe they were getting ready for some kind of party seeing the masks some were wearing, so perhaps that's why they were pissed she intervened. Getting back to rats, they were now of normal built contrary to those dog-sized rodents she fought in Greece in her first adventures. Maybe they had gotten that big because of some crap floating in the water back then, hell a lot of things made no sense at that time, so. Not that it particularly does now…
Well a group of rats were stuck behind a metal door now, and a few mean guys were coming towards her direction. She let the famished fur balls loose and they quickly made their way upon their pray thus allowing Lara to watch her enemies get eaten alive. Following her bad habit of getting everywhere she should not, it then seemed as though she was forced to engage into some ventilation system. You know, just being eager to slide down slopes that lead directly to most-certain death by fan-decapitation, plus suicide-jump near and above them just to reach a key that some dumb ass employee had placed there for the laughs. She stared down the vent, «Yeees that looks like a good idea, let's go there.», slid down and jumped in time so as not to get beheaded, then picked up aforementioned key, «Aha! Who was dumb enough to put a key here?» This exploration meant she had a totally different view of theaters now, here backstage VIP preordained your ultimate death followed by your forgotten corpse to be gnawed at by rats.
After flirting with death a couple of other times, which is always part of her idea of sport, she then avoided some broken glass suspiciously placed on the floor and ended into a room full of crates bearing the BarfFolly logo. And it was also a location where were displayed the bigger lot of boxes hanged, swinging through macabre silent deaths. Well not one to be affected by any of this, Croft would have picked up her invisible lovely crowbar to crack some open if not for the labored breathing she started hearing.
They were quite obscene and nasty so she was glad to shoot whoever produced them. A tall and big muscled man showed up, holding big magnums in each of his arm full of veins. He'd also advance one step at a time before stopping, repeating that process for each new step as if he thought being a robot; that or he was constipated. Seeing that illogical behavior Lara couldn't help it, «What's with that retarded march and why are you breathing so disgustingly loud?» Apparently the man was too occupied with his precise stride to answer, couldn't walk like that and hold his Magnums plus talk, it was asking too much of him.
Now was not the time to throw up so Croft started shooting the beast and since she was atop crates it was the perfect spot for an ambush. She started firing at him while all he could do was try to lift his oversized arms and guns towards the woman; the score was quickly settled with no shots fired at her. When he fell down the whole place shook, he also dropped a bundle of steroids.
She blinked in wondering before puking over him, «….why…..do men insist on….using steroids…..», she regained composure quick enough and stood over him while chanting, «I'm pissing on your corpse, pissing on your corpse!»
Lara then boarded the nearby airplane right away because it was obviously safe to do so despite not knowing where it was going and who was in there. So she found herself on board incognito, as it was taking off she started checking what the boxes contained. She found nothing but moldy peanut-snacks and Gatorade, you'd think the people bearing the logo of the golden dragon and being so damn fanatic about it would be carrying something of greater importance. «Plus what's with these people and Gatorade….» While she was doing this, voices came from the cockpit above. The one she heard first seemed to be the boss.
«Damn, where did you get your pilot's license!? We just barely escaped that flock of Pterodactyls, idiot! And what's up with dinosaurs suddenly coming back to life!?» BarfFolly hit his subordinate in the face.
«Maybe if you stopped sending your knuckles in my eyes I could keep them open on the sky!»
« When I was a lad I had worse things done to me than this; they forced me to eat healthy food!» His boss hit him again before seating his ass back down, «What kind of degenerate does that to their kids!? The mental scarring of it all….so don't you complain about minor brain injuries and loss of cognitive abilities!»
«It's just that, that maybe, you are wrong to constantly rip my skin open.»
The employee was hit again and blood spilled forth, his superior stood up once more, «Is your skin so fragile!?»
The pilot was sent against the controls hence the airplane started to go down; Lara who was snaking on some food back there received the pointy end of a box in the eye. BarfFolly pulled on the pilot's shoulders as the bruised man regained focus before quickly taking hold of the controls again. «Relax FapBio, breathe deep; it's nothing more than a simple punch back and forth to your face.»
«...I know damn it, I'm the one being hit…!»
BarfFolly opened the cockpit door and called for another crewman below, also noticing a woman holding her aim at him, a piece of bread sticking out of her mouth. Croft was pondering where she preferred to shoot the man that she was too late into hearing the other closing in on her from behind. So he knocked her unconscious with his wrench, later throwing her in a smelly locked room with a bunch of boxes. Poor boxes, though, their fate is so utterly cruel.
When Lara came to she remembered what had happened thus vowed vengeance. She would ruthlessly hunt BarfFolly down then bash her pistols on the man's head as payback, before shooting him in the balls. She would also pour vinegar in his eyes and salt in his wounds, because why not. For now she looked around, half of her surrounding was made of window panels making an entire wall, so she just ran and knee-broke the glass and rolled on the floor then up on her feet, «Fucking amateurs.» Broken glass having cut through her skin allowed for blood spurts here and there but it was of no consequence as usual.
An alarm went off and soon a group of stereotyped-muscled-alpha males armed with crowbars and baseball bats ran her way. She carelessly tossed a bunch of playboy magazine on the floor thus immediately realigning their focus elsewhere; Croft was then free to reclaim her pistols before shooting them all in the head. The loud alarm was making her extremely homicidal so when the infuriated woman finally located the switch she simply shot it to hell silencing it, subsequently making the pulsating veins in her temple and neck recede. Croft met more guards and some of them just casually walked her way as she harshly riddled their bodies with her M16, they clearly enjoyed that and felt no pain in the least.
She then could have skipped half of the level by going through a door she was facing but it shut in her face, now probably imperceptibly smirking at her; how heartless and unfortunate. So instead Lara just tried to unseal the next door but it was badly rusted, during that time another dude walked by and surprisingly offered his help, «Tsk, that one's always a pain in the ass but I got this awfully clever trick…», Croft moved away as the man got nearer and started to savagely ram his head at the red handle. After a couple of hits, and a forehead now heavily bleeding, the door still refused to comply. How surprising. The goon looked confused, and not just because his stupid idea didn't work but also since repeatedly bashing your frail cranium on a more solid surface was bound to make anyone dizzy, «Well damn…it usually works…I think.»
Croft leveled her M16 with one arm saying, «Thanks. » immediately firing at him. As he was laying there face down with his butt upward, she eyed his head then the handle, picked him up and swung his body towards the door; instead of the door or his head bursting open however, the man's neck snapped with a horrible sound. Unconcerned, Lara tossed his cadaver aside then aimed at the door shooting endlessly. Ricochets returned her generosity in many bursts but she did not care, the main problem was solved now. Blood tainted the floor as she walked in then she sent two harpoons in the next guard's eyes, noticing the unfinished coffee on the table near his corpse. Suspicious coffee probably played a role in this man's death, like him not drinking enough of it therefore not being adequately alert which could have prevented his death just now.
Most likely not.
The unconcerned woman just walked by, «That's what bad coffee does to you….»
Lara then entered crew's quarters containing beds as solid as metal, pressed some more unknown buttons because it's entirely safe, and as she was climbing through the trap door it had opened she almost got chopped in half as it was closing shut. That would have been challenging, to try and continue on with her exploits with nothing from her waist down. But just a tiny bit. Since she's the Tomb Problem-Rider she would have figured a way around that little dilemma.
Past that trap door was a room with four burners located on the floor, Croft stared at it wondering of its intricate purpose until she got an idea, «Perfect to roast a chicken!», she removed a dead bird from her backpack, which she had picked up who knows where, and started cooking it. It would taste like gasoline and chemical fumes but still it was better than nothing. Probably.
Now having refueled her stamina she then jumped over the deadly flames almost missing the ladder, still her boots caught on fire but the scorching heat and pain was nothing to her so she ascended anyway. Eventually the fire extinguished by itself from how cold-badass the woman is. New corridor led to another portion of the place where she was again welcomed by this gentle and nice-to-hear fucking alarm which made her lose her cool once more, shooting bad guys all over their bodies and even continuing after their violent deaths. She then had to slowly move a box close to an opening above, pulling and pushing plus making her way around it three times to position it accordingly, just so she could reach the next control room where that damn switch was.
But first she needed to get rid of the sentry there, another dude with a shotgun thus an extra-shotgun-duel occurred; of course the well-rehearsed murderer was the victor as the man's decapitated head flew towards a wall and bounced, leaving blood splatter all over it. Teeth showing, Lara then proceeded to unload an entire M16 magazine into the control panel effectively stopping the alarm, then wondered how in the fuck the employees were supposed to get here in the first place. Playing with the level of dirty waters granted her passage somehow into a much bigger area where scuba divers bathing in a green liquid below aimed above at her, opportunely placing harpoons in her legs as she ran which did hinder some maneuvers but nothing too inconvenient for her.
Our slightly-handicapped adventurer jumped over big gaps like usual, seeing another exaggeratedly-muscled man hiding behind a structure; a bug in the computer-rendered object allowed her to locate him through the texture. He was also just standing there breathing heavily for some reason so she shot him right away while saying «Stop breathing so loud!» Although now close to the spot where that red card key was being held, she couldn't jump over both railings thus was inconveniently forced to take a detour making her way all around the place just to reach that same spot.
Doing that she easily located any men patrolling around before seeing them thanks to their awkward loud breathings, «Why are you all breathing so fucking loud!? What's wrong with you!?», and more shotgun shells went in their testicles. It's not like Lara is a men-hater but anyone being so goddamn illogically annoying deserves to be blasted into multiple pieces; besides this is Croft we're talking about, dangerous by nature, period. Men, women, animals, boats and windows: anything goes. Natla knows it too well; or rather knew it. So when she did arrive at destination she was so annoyed that she fisted the next man's hair by his nape and violently shoved his head against the protective glass, creating an opening for her to grab the card key but unfortunately also triggering another alarm. Her eyes got injected with blood as she ran out of there, cursing loud at no one in particular and even shooting at the walls. There, add walls to that previous list.
Later she ran into more dudes whom she spotted even before they could see her because they were apparently busy running around in circles after each other's asses, so she picked up the Grenade Launcher from her hair and blew them all up from afar. Lara then came across a poisonous pool of radioactive bright-yellow liquid of some kind which bubbled defiantly, or perhaps it was just were the guards took a piss. Well it was apparently the only way out of this room somehow, so if those imbeciles could do it without dying so could she. She slid down that slope and jumped over the toxic puddle, spotting a few skeletons in there along the way; looks like the hazardous urine had claimed some of the kills for itself.
Following more dangerous suspicious designs, she slid down another awkwardly located slope leading to another empty tank-like area. The man patrolling there walked in circle on the catwalk as he heard the sound of something sliding down coming to meet him, he almost certainly silently pissed his pants too, until Croft executed more suicidal moves grabbing unto that walkway and leveling herself on top of it. The man started shooting her in the face with his Hydra, but not one to be put down so easily the woman just blew him up to bits thus allowing him respite from this tedious patrol of his. Seriously though, he had just been there staring at the rust on that empty tank, going back and forth on the same unexciting footbridge for hours on end plus without having a break or being paid, so in fact she did him a favor. The blue card key was located in an even weirder spot too; Lara almost broke her legs trying to reach it. Damn, these guys have it rough; she's like a savior to them in these circumstances.
Making her way through the complex, hordes of men and dogs attacked her again; including canines with red eyes as though drugs had been forcefully administered to them. After disposing of that threat a timely additional twenty seven other Dobermans showed up and she blew them all up simultaneously, «How many goddamn dogs do they have?» Later on, the party intensified as pyromaniacs tried to barbecue her alive. Croft then felt like returning the attention and robbed one of them of his flamethrower thus causing quite a commotion, all while smiling. Men and Doberman alike were roasted all over the place. Payback had never been sweeter. «Still, I had expected the flames coming out of these to be black, they should make up their goddamn minds about what kind of symbol they want to instigate. »
Croft was all sweaty from all the awesome sport so she decided to dip her ass into another portion containing water; she then screwed around with the trap doors in the flooded corridors which eventually set one of the divers free. He had been stuck there for an hour after having locked himself up by mistake, had been four minutes away from running out of oxygen when that welcomed intruder had pulled the right lever. Now he was so relieved that he swam her way smiling, ready to share beers with the woman; thing is his smile went unseen because of his breathing equipment so his rescuer shot him. Tough luck.
She was returning to the surface but kept hearing the men from above breathing like fucking asthmatics so it nearly made her choke on water. She exited the liquid and ran towards them, «What's with the goddamn constant heavy breathings!? Fuck!», shooting them through the windows thus ending the nightmare. Perhaps there was some pizza nearby which could explain their persistent need to act like insane ravenous twit as if they haven't eaten in months and now were faced with delicious pizza; but still, damn!
Our homicidal explorer then had to turn a saw off in order to grab another circuit parts, the circuit board had been placed under that machine as the saw blade kept spinning maniacally, daring anyone to approach. Suffice to say that the man who did this have issues; possibly including a tremendously traumatizing event in his childhood like having to clean his room once a year.
Croft gained access to a flock of stairs leading to an interior heliport, as she ran towards the chopper while blowing more guards up, the engine took off. Probably was piloted by Brad Vickers, boy is BarfFolly in for an excruciating trip then. I hope he brought diapers, not for himself though but the pilot. If Chris Redfield would have been there he would have screamed not to go, reaching with a hand towards the sky in a shitty-cheesy manner; also Lara would have shot him in the face for that. Too bad he wasn't present.
Entertainment continued as she had to manipulate lots of circuit cards to restore function to the entire base doing their job for them. This lead her through some isolated passage flooded with water for some reason, she shot more unfortunate bastards before she was able to talk to some hostage. He was obviously a monk, and his accent was so horrible it was hard to comprehend what he was saying; fortunately being the fucking Tomb Translator, Lara easily deciphered his dialect.
«You have come for me!», he eyed the one-woman army for a second, «…at least I hope so. You are not one of them? You're not going to start breathing awfully loud while standing behind me, are you? That was extremely uncomfortable and traumatizing….»
«No I'm not since I don't have brain damage. Other than that what did you see or learn?»
«I saw bright light surround me, it literally burned my retinas. It was almost like a festivity though much better than the ones we have in the monastery where all we do is sit and drink nauseating unspecified beverages!»
«Well the light was gunfire», she lovingly pated her handguns, «Never go anywhere without backup, that's a rule.»
«But you are my guide! My new path towards my next incarnation, or so I've been told; they tell you lots of things in monastery, lots: but never explain who told them all that in the first place.»
Croft was then in the process of bending to look at his wounds but the preacher screamed in horror; she immediately stood up and stared. The monk's eyes had shifted from two tiny slots to half-opened eyelids, which were the equivalent for him of a very-surprised look.
«Alright, not doing that again….», she inspected the surroundings, «What are you doing here anyway? In case you didn't notice, you're far away from any refuge.»
The bald man then tried to change position with all the impressive beauty and agility of a robot lacking a proper maneuver-based program. «I must have drunk too much of that sinful liquor at the social gathering, because when I woke up I was here, or was I? I also must have stolen the Seraph since it was taken from me when they searched my clothes. That's when I learned I am ticklish, then they started hitting me….then it wasn't so great.»
Lara's interest was refocused, «The Seraph?»
The monk made a face, and with his already natural-distorted plus now bruised-and-bloody visage; it was a comic sight indeed. «You don't know my life's work well, you sure you're not here for them?»
With his pixel fingers stuck together looking like a plank of flesh, he pointed at the dead men. Blood and saliva were still flowing out of their bodies; one was even racked with spasms. The woman shot him in the forehead, «Their fucking around are well over; especially now.»
The cleric slowly moved his face back towards her, «This is all very problematic, here I thought I'd have a better fate than my colleague when I forced him to return the dagger in the temple.…..»
Croft motioned to him, «So much for lousy booze. I don't suppose you'll be of help, but we need to get you out of here.»
«Oh no, not again; that last escapade in their submarine made me wish I was dead. »
« …Unless you think you've got a better future if I abandon you here...», Lara said under her breath.
«Ah, a break, I could use one.» Saying this, he got shot in the chest; for some reason they didn't react until the second shot was fired. The monk then screamed before the force of the blow sent him flying backward, blood splattering on the wall then his neck breaking on the floor.
The sudden violence from such a silenced swift shot made Lara's eyes bulge, then she promptly turned around returning fire. She realized the bullets might have been for her, meaning the shooter was poorly endowed moreover since she had mostly been shielding the monk, and judging by the attacker's skills on unmoving targets it was no surprise that his aim was even poorer now. Jump-dodging while still returning fire, Croft quickly ran and dove into water, seeking a submersible.
That poor bloke though, well the Tibetan did ask for a break….always be careful what you wish for.