Reviews:

frankflash:

Glad you like it. Hope that continues.

Rexy:

I will try to work on that. Thanks for the suggestion. As for your question, there will be an interaction between the Juubi and Lara, but not in the way you're thinking.

The Question:

For your first question, I can't answer that because that would spoil the surprise. For your second, you'll have a better idea after this chapter. For your third, he knows about Minato, but not about his abilities or what he is.

Lemon Lover:

I'm still on the fence on that, since they don't exactly have a lot of time where they can just relax. There is one part, but I haven't really decided.

Story Artist:

Or something. Heh, heh.

Redripper666:

I don't understand what you're saying.

Facebreaker17:

Glad you like it. Most people think I was too fast in the development in their relationship, but do you not think so?

buterflypuss:

Glad you like it.

tera12:

Glad to hear it.

Reasonable man:

I don't really abandon my stories. At worst, I put them on hiatus and that was only in one occasion so far. As for your suggestions, Lara does a pretty good job of just overpowering everyone on her own in the game and Minato will have his own challenges. Trust me.

Mickol93:

Glad you like it. Guess you'll have to read and find out.

Guest (May 31):

Glad to hear it.

Guest (May 31)/Mdhunter:

Glad you like it.

rongladiator:

I can guarantee there will be a sequel, but it won't be until I get and beat the Rise of the Tomb Raider game, since I only have a PS4.

Aidois:

Glad you like it.

Geez, there were a lot of reviews to go through. I didn't think there were that many people that liked this story, glad I was wrong. Anyway, please remember to review with any comments, question, concerns, or constructive criticism that you might have.

"This is speaking in English"

"This is speaking in Japanese."

Chapter 7:

Questions Answered.

"Shiiiiiittttttt!" Minato cried out as he was blown away by the powerful wind.

He pulled out a pair of kunai and jammed them in the side of the cliff, using them to stop his being blown away.

"I'm getting too old for this crap," Minato groaned as he used the kunai like he saw Lara use her climbing axe in order to climb up the cliff, since using his chakra to walk would likely result in him being blown away. He managed to reach a hole in the cliff face and climbed in to find he was inside the palace. He looked around to see the room was heavily decorated with images on the walls and there were shelves filled with scrolls filling the room. "Huh, some kind of library. Man, Lara-chan would have a field day in here," he said, looking around moving to the images on the wall. "Let's see, huh, these seem to tell a story." The first image showed a bunch of people, each having a flame in the center of their bodies, seemingly celebrating with a large snake hiding beneath the surface. The second image showed the snake rising from the earth, wrapped around a massive creature and decimating the people. The third image showed two people standing against the massive creature and it being sucked into one of them with the snake returning to the Earth. The fourth image showed the snake waiting as several generations passed, each one had the flame in the people shrinking until there were no flames left, save for occasional people who had small flames left in their bodies. In the fifth image, it showed the snake rising up from beneath the earth once more and devouring a figure with the largest flame. In the final image, the snake rose to the sky and became the sun before scorching the earth and causing natural disasters. "That's what I was forgetting!" Minato shouted, "It was Orochimaru that freed the Juubi!"

"Took you long enough, human," the Juubi said in Minato's mind.

"Well, you could have told me, you freaking demonic asshole!" Minato shouted in his head.

"Do you expect me to hold your hand for everything? Man up!" the Juubi retorted.

"Whatever." Minato grunted in his head before turning his attention back to the images, " But I don't get the rest of these images. How could Orochimaru become the sun? Maybe Lara-chan can help me figure it out. When I find her again." Shrugging, Minato moved to look at the scrolls, taking one off the shelves. It appeared to be a military report referencing Himiko, but the author wasn't a member of the Stormguard, which Minato expected from what Lara had told him. It was signed Homada Daiki, captain of the Shadowguard. "What is the Shadowguard?" Before he could do anything, a flurry of kunai hit the shelf right next to his head. He turned behind him to where the attack came from to see five men dressed in pitch black jonin armor, "Shadowguard, I presume?"

Rather than answer, they started going through a series of handsigns and fired a volley of fireballs at Minato. He dodged the attack before firing a burst of water back at them, which burst through the attacks and blew the attacking ninja away, but more took their place.

"Weird," Minato thought to himself as he dodge more attacks, "They look like they were brought back by the resurrection jutsu, but they aren't regenerating like they should be. Some kind of new jutsu? Puppets, maybe? No, they're acting independently and I don't detect anything connecting them to a puppeteer."

Any further thoughts were stopped when snakes appeared out of nowhere and wrapped around Minato.

"Well, well, I must admit when I heard you were finally walking around, I thought the good captain had gone senile after all of these long years, but here you are Minato-kun. This is a treat," said a man that walked to the front of the Shadowguard. It took a few seconds before Minato recognized the man.

"Yakushi Kabuto! What the hell are you doing here!? How are you even alive after all these years!?" Minato demanded.

Kabuto laughed, "You're assuming I'm alive, though I suppose I am in a way, but at the same I'm not."

"So I was right! You were brought back by the resurrection jutsu!" Minato growled.

"I was brought back by a resurrection jutsu. That is true, but I'm sure you've noticed that we are different than those brought back by the reanimation jutsu, but should you really be worrying about me? Shouldn't you be more concerned with that lady friend of yours?" he asked with a smile.

"What are you talking about? What have you done to her!?" Minato demanded, suddenly worried about Lara, which made Kabuto laugh.

"Worried about her, are you? Well, you should be. Our Stormguard friends have already captured her. They are quite good at handling the rats that infest our castle while those of us ninja handle the real threats, but it turns out, they got careless and she escaped. They're hunting her as we speak. If you don't hurry, they'll catch her again and I can't guarantee they'll be as gentle this time," Kabuto said, still smiling.

"Guess I can't screw around with you anymore then!" Minato said, making a familiar cross-shaped handsign and shouting, "Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

With a large puff of smoke, Minato created and army of clones before they charged at the Shadowguard and the smiling Kabuto with Minato breaking out of his bindings.

"Guess a love of that jutsu runs in your family," Kabuto said as he and the shadowguard attacked Minato and his clones. The clones were quickly destroyed by the dozen, but when the last one was dispersed, Minato was nowhere to be seen. "Just like his father. They follow the same strategy," Kabuto sighed before he noticed a number of scrolls were missing, "Damn, he took some of the scrolls and escaped. After him! He must be captured no matter what it costs! Catch the girl too and annihilate any more rats that are still in here!"

Meanwhile, With Lara

Lara was afraid. Afraid of not knowing what to do beyond moving forward. Afraid of those creatures that seemed to be hunting for her and the Solarii. But most of all, she was afraid for Minato. She still found it strange that she was so worried about a man she'd just met and even more so when the man has superhuman abilities.

She wanted, no, she needed Minato to be okay. When she awoke hanging in a room packed full of mutilated human corpses, her first instinct was to use the kunai he gave her to try and summon him, but she decided against it. Even though she was afraid, she refused to wait for him like some damsel in distress, she refused to be a burden to him. She needed to do this herself. She needed to be strong, so she escaped the room she awoke in before making her way into the tunnels past old corpses that appeared to be even older than World War 2. To her luck, she found an old shotgun with one of the corpses and used it to blow apart the barriers that blocked her path. Reaching a tomb, she was shocked to see the statues that decorated the tomb.

"A sun queen and her Stormguard!" she gasped in awe before moving to the coffin in the center of the room to examine it, "Himiko! The original sun Queen! You're still here!" She pushed the lid off of the coffin, coughing as the air and smell of the long-since decomposed and sealed corpse hit her like a punch to the face. "And really, really dead," she said, disgusted by the smell. Then, she noticed images on the wall. One image showed a woman Lara recognized as a sun queen pouring water into another woman's water jug. "Pouring water?" she muttered before looking at the next image, which showed a woman being surrounded by fire. "It's…an ascension ritual?" She then looked back at the first image, "Of course! It's not pouring water, it's transferring power!" The, she felt a chill as she looked back to the second image, "Why were these women burned like this?"

"There she is!" shouted a Solarii soldier from a hole high on the wall where more soldiers dropped down to attack her, interrupting her continued investigation.

'I won't lose here!' she thought, 'I will save Sam and the others! I'll save everyone and I will see Minato again! I will be strong!'

She took aim with her shotgun to blast the first one before pulling out her pistol and shooting another that jumped down. Another tried to attack with a pair of swords, but she used her shotgun to blow him away. Pulling out a rope arrow, Lara shot at a bell hanging from the ceiling and pulled it to make it swing and smash into a barricaded door. She followed the path, even going outside to walk around the outside of the temple on rickety, wooden walkways, while trying to avoid being blown away by the powerful wind or falling through the moldy, ancient wood beams.

Climbing through a hole in the wall, she found more Solarii trying to open a set of heavy grates. Not giving them a chance to attack, Lara opened fire on them, easily overwhelming them with the element of surprise.

"Great, now how the hell do I open that?" she muttered looking around the building that looked like it was barely holding together until she looked up to see a large bell hanging over the grate. "That bell seems to be the only way out of here." Using a combination of the shutters blocking off the wind and a large, heavy clapper, Lara knocked out the beams holding the bell up, each lost beam taking a majority of the building with it. Once the last beam was destroyed, the large bell fell down through the grate and Lara was knocked off her feet by the powerful wind that was no longer held back by the weak walls before being sent tumbling down the grate and landing hard on the wooden surface. Woozy and ears ringing from the hard hit, Lara stumbled to her feet.

Behind her, Solarii soldiers ran out of a doorway, yelling, "It's the oni! Run for it!"

Just then, a massive man in large samurai armor and carrying a tree trunk-like club came out the same door and started attacking the fleeing Solarii. Other samurai armored men followed the massive brute to join in the attack. Lara knew she was outmatched and ran through the only remaining door, which lead to a long covered bridge. Lara and the remaining Solarii were rushing across the bridge, not as worried about attacking each other as they were about escaping the attacking "oni" and making it across the bridge, which was collapsing under the sudden weight. Lara managed to make it across the first gap, while the Solarii weren't as lucky and fell to their deaths. Lara knew better than to stop or slow down, which proved to be the right decision as suddenly kunai, shuriken, and senbon needles were flying past her, missing by mere centimeters. She looked over her shoulder to see ninja were now chasing her.

"Shit!" she cursed as she pushed herself to move even faster.

"It's the girl!" one of the ninja shouted, "Get her! Do not let her escape!"

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Lara cursed over and over, as the ninja were quickly closing the gap between them, ignoring the fact that the bridge was collapsing and taking handfuls of their number with it. She leapt off the end of the bridge to reach another, but more rickety bridge, but it couldn't hold up and it broke under her weight, sending her crashing through it and three others before hitting the ground hard, sliding down the hill and splashing in a river. Breaking the surface, she gasped for air and crawled onto a small rock, trying to catch her breath.

"God, where's Minato and those healing abilities of his?" she groaned sarcastically.

Just then, the radio went off and Sam's voice came through it, "Hello? Hello?"

"Sam?" Lara groaned as she pulled the radio out, "Sam, it's Lara."

"Oh god, Lara. It's good to hear your voice," Sam said, clearly relieved that her friend answered her cries.

"Yours too, Sam," Lara sighed, "Is the rest of the crew with you?"

"No, I just managed to steal a radio off of a guard," she said, whispering into the radio.

"A guard?" Lara asked, feeling a chill crawl up her spine.

"I've been kidnapped," Sam said.

"What? Where are you?" Lara said, her worries now multiplying.

"I-I don't know…some old Japanese palace," Sam said, worried, "They keep talking about a 'fire ritual.' Lara, I'm fucking terrified," Sam began to whisper, "Shit, someone's coming. I've got to hide this thing."

"Sam…Sam!" Lara tried to get her friend back onto the radio, but received no answer. She groaned with annoyance and stood up before muttering to herself, "A fire ritual…like the mural in Himiko's tomb." She sighed, "Oh, Minato, I hope you're having better luck than I am."

Back with Minato

Minato pulled a kunai from the corpse of one of many dead Shadowguard around him on the peak of the mountain he stood on.

"I have to find Lara-chan," Minato thought to himself, "If she runs into those undead ninja, she and the others will be in serious trouble!"

With that, Minato leapt off the mountain, heading down towards where he smelled Lara was heading.

A/N: And there's chapter 7! Please remember to review with any comments, question, concerns, or constructive criticism that you might have.