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"This is speaking in English"
"This is speaking in Japanese."
Chapter 10:
Stalking through the tombs
As they quietly made their way through the cave, they heard a man speaking like he was making a speech.
"That's Mathias!" Lara whispered to Minato.
"The leader of these Solarii guys?" Minato asked, "He'll know where your friends are. We should take him alive if possible."
Lara nodded her agreement, "Yes, but it sounds like he's not alone and he's preparing for some kind of ritual. Whatever it is, it can't be good."
The two continued to silently move until they came to a large room. Hiding around a corner to peer inside, they saw Mathias addressing a large group of Solarii soldiers.
"What's he saying, Lara-chan?" Minato asked, due to not understanding a word Mathias was saying.
"He's not making any sense. He's talking about freeing someone from the island and that allowing them to be "freed" as well." she explained.
"Who is "she?" Is he talking about Sam?" Minato asked gesturing to the mentioned woman who was tied to a stake behind Mathias.
"No, he's now asking Himiko to speak to him, but I think Sam is somehow key to what they're planning. Can you get her from there?" Lara asked.
"Maybe, but we'll need a distraction. I can get to her without them knowing, but they'll spot me once I do. They'll likely start opening fire as soon as they spot me. Sam could get hurt." Minato said.
Lara nodded and said, "Okay. I guess we'll wait for now and…wait, what are they doing?"
Minato turned his attention back to see Mathias set fire to the pile of wood at Sam's feet.
"No!" Lara said moving to save her, ignoring the just as a powerful wind blew through an opening behind Mathias, blowing out the flames before they could get started.
"I didn't do that," Minato said awestruck.
Mathias ordering for them to take Sam to the throne room brought the two out of their surprise.
"While they're distracted, let's grab her!" Minato said as he called up a handful of his shadow clones and sent them into gathered Solarii. Despite having superior skill, the clones were quickly being dispersed, but Lara and Minato managed to get to Sam, quickly working to untie her.
"Lara? What's going on?" Sam asked, terror lacing her voice, "Who are those guys?"
"It's not important right now!" Lara said as she started to cut the ropes with Minato's help as the ninja's clones were slowly being dispersed.
Suddenly, Minato and his clones stopped and looked around, a serious expression on his face.
"Lara-chan, hurry up. We've got trouble," Minato said.
"I know. The Solarii are getting through your clones. I'm going as fast as I can," Lara replied.
"It's not the Solarii we need to be worried about anymore. Now, move faster," Minato said as the Solarii started shouting about oni attacking.
Minato and the two girls started moving away from the Solarii which were now facing a far more terrifying threat of undead shinobi attacking them.
Minato, with his remaining clones, tried to draw them away from the two girls, but the undead ninjas were seemingly focused on trying to reach the trio, focusing especially on Lara and Minato. One of the oni ninja used a water jutsu to attack Minato and his companions.
Minato, on pure instinct, used a fireball jutsu to block the attack. The two attacks collided with each other, causing a shockwave that knocked Minato back into Lara and sent the two into a passage. The two tumbled off a small ledge down into the darkness while the passage entrance collapsed. Minato wrapped his body around Lara's and moved his person between her and what he thought was going to be a sudden stop. Instead of a hard slam onto hard rock, Minato and Lara found themselves splashing into a liquid that they both easily identified as blood and viscera from the sheer gag-inducing smell and the aged human bones around them.
"Sam!" Lara called when she and Minato came up for air.
"One of my clones saw the Solarii take Sam before he was dispersed. She's safe for now and the ninja have left to try and find another way to get to us I guess," Minato said.
"I would hardly call Sam being in the hands of those lunatics 'safe!' And what about those ninjas that attacked!? They moved like you and were able to do jutsu just like you!" Lara demanded as they moved through the disgusting fluid while trying to keep quiet.
"They're ninja raised from the dead, but they're different from the ones I saw back home. They seem to be independent from the mind and orders of the one that brought them back," Minato said.
"Seriously? Zombie ninjas? I have a hard enough time wrapping my head around the things you can do. Now you're telling me that people can be brought from the dead?" she asked sighing as they continued to swim.
"It's not easy and the cost is usually seen as too high, so the method has been designated forbidden," Minato explained.
"What sort of cost? More of that chakra?" she asked.
"Well, yes, but that's not why. The main cost is that you need to use a body to draw the soul of the dead back to the land of the living. The soul will cause the body to change to the revived person's body. They also regenerate from virtually any injury. Those brought back to this world will be under the control of those that revived them. I don't know how much control they've got, since I never studied it too extensively, but I heard that they'll obey the summoner even if it means killing their friends and family," Minato said.
"You said that they need a body, so they use a corpse?" she asked as the two reached dry land.
"No. The body has to be a living one," he explained.
"Jesus," she muttered.
Minato just nodded his agreement as they came to an opening blocked by fallen beams with some kind of gas.
"It's probably flammable," she said, gesturing to the gas as she pulled her bow off her back and aimed a flaming arrow at the gas. She loosed the arrow, resulting in an explosion, which knocked them back into the foul smelling pool.
"Please don't do that again," Minato muttered as the two got back to dry land.
"Yeah, sorry," she said.
The two moved through the dark tunnel and found an opening in the wall. They watched as two Solarii soldiers drag a third man into a room on the other side of the opening and tossing him to the ground. The two Solarii then walked back through the gate they came through and locked it behind them as the man they threw into the room tried to reach the gat before they closed it. He didn't close half the distance before he was tackled and ripped apart by a group of naked and feral humans. Lara and Minato made their way around to the room.
Minato put a finger to his lips to signal for Lara to be quiet before he pointed to a sealed pipe next to the gate. He then tapped his chest, pointed at his eyes, and pointed around the cavern. Lara, understanding his signals, nodded and pulled her climbing axe out before yanking the wheel off of the pipe. Some more of the feral people tried to attack them as she worked, but they quickly proved no match for Minato, who cut them down with his ninjato as easily as one reaps a field of wheat.
Once she'd pried the gas valve off, Lara lit one of her fire arrows and, after taking a few steps back, fired to ignite the gas. The resulting explosion knocked the gate off of its hinges and the two made their way inside.
"They'll have heard that, but with all the flammable gas around, they probably won't raise the alarm, thinking it was an accident, but we should try to be as quiet as possible to avoid getting more attention than necessary," Minato whispered.
"Got it," Lara agreed, nodding.
The two continued into the dark when they heard more Solarii talking and moving towards them. Moving silently, the pair
"Damn caves. Surprised they haven't gone up yet," one of them said.
"We might need to cap that valve again," the second said.
"If it's loose, then why not leave it for the next shift?" the first asked.
"Last thing we want is for those things to get loose," the second said, as they stopped inches from where Lara and Minato were lurking in the shadows.
"Well, don't take too long down there. I wanna finish this game!" the first said as the two separated.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the second said, waving off his partner's words as he moved past Lara and Minato to go the way the pair of intruders had just come from while his partner went back from where they came. The two intruders moved out of the shadows and, while Minato impaled the lazy soldier on his blade, Lara fired an arrow into the back of the other soldier's head.
The two moved further into the caverns, eliminating more of the Solarii as they went. Lara and Minato eventually came to a large chamber that had been made into a makeshift temple with more of the natural gas vents. In the center of the chamber, a large group of Solarii was kneeling as a man initiated them.
"They're worshiping Himiko, like she's a goddess," Lara whispered, "Could she really be the one keeping people here on this island?"
"Sure seems like it, but we can't worry about that right now. Your friend Sam will be in trouble if we don't get to her before they do whatever else they want to do," Minato whispered.
Lara fired a single fire arrow, which ignited the gas and killed a majority of the Solarii. The two, using the soldiers' disorientation to their advantage, moved through the chamber, taking out the remaining soldiers. The two moved towards a nearly collapsed tunnel when the cave started shaking as the various gas vents erupted in flames.
"Guess we used those explosions too much!" Minato said as they ran through the tunnel with flames shooting out of the vents in the walls, knocking them around as they ran.
"You think!?" she shouted sarcastically.
Just as the flames came close to the pair, they dove out of the tunnel in a new room and the entrance collapsed behind them.
The two immediately took notice of the Solarii guarding the room, but before they could move, Lara slapped his arm before pointing up at a cell made from the remnants of a plane hanging from the ceiling.
Minato noticed some people in the makeshift cave.
"Are they friends of yours?" Minato asked quietly as the two moved to hide behind some cover.
"Yes, it looks like most of my friends, but I don't see Sam. They must be keeping her somewhere else," Lara said.
"Well, first let's get them and then we'll try to find some info about where your friend is," Minato said before the two started to quietly take out the Solarii guards. Four of the guards were slain before the rest took notice and shouted an alarm.
Lara's friends heard the commotion and looked through their makeshift bars and cheered when they saw their friend taking out their captors with the aid of a man they didn't recognize.
Once the last of the Solarii had been slain, the people in the cage cheered.
"Way to go, Lara!" one of the men cheered.
"Now, get us down!" a woman said.
"Okay, we'll find a way to free you," Lara said as she and Minato started making their way up to the same level as where the cage was hanging.
"Hey, who's your friend, Lara?" the larger man with a mohawk asked.
"His name is Minato and he's…a friend," she said, "It's a little complicated to go into right now. I'll introduce you all to him later."
"Well, just get us out of this thing. Grimm already made it out," the woman said.
"I know. He's with Roth now," Lara said.
"Hah, knew that old man would make it out!" the man with glasses said.
As Lara and Minato reached the platform, the entire cave started to shake and the floor began to crumble away to an ocean of flames.
"Seriously!? How is that even happening!?" Minato shouted in shock.
"No time! We have to get them out of there now!" she shouted.
"On it! Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Minato shouted before creating a large number of clones much to the shock of Lara's captive friends and using them to form a bridge to the still hanging cage from the platform.
The real Minato ran along their backs and, using a kunai, wedged the gate open. He then leaned down and, one-by-one, grabbed the arms of Lara's friends before swinging them to the ledge that the exit was on. They tried to wait, but as the cave continued to shake and explode from the ignited gas vents, Lara told them to hurry through the entrance, which they managed to do before the tunnel collapsed, blocking Lara and Minato from following them.
"Lara-chan, up there!" Minato shouted, pointing up at the ceiling as the ground beneath them started to crumble.
He grabbed Lara and jumped towards the opening he'd pointed out. Moving her to his back with her arms around his neck, Minato walked up the side of the cave tunnel before jumping out and finding themselves in an old, stone stairwell. The two raced up the stairs with the flames licking at their heels.
A/N: And there's chapter 10! Please remember to review with any comments, question, concerns, or constructive criticism that you might have.