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Raider Rises.
Lara Croft stood in the 'shooting range' of Croft Manor while she mentally prepared herself for the upcoming trials. It wasn't much of a range she had to admit, it wasn't high tech enough, and it was really simple and straightforward with a number of dummies that she had bought secondhand and moved to this room along with a few other bits and pieces to give her some kind of challenge. After moving into the Manor again after leaving the place years ago as soon as she accepted the fact her father was not coming back. Lara let out a breath as she thought about how she had messed up; she had accepted the fact she had run away from her problems, and she had been running ever since. She had acted like a coward, just denying all of her problems and refusing to move on with her life because she was worried about what would come afterwards.
Lara had spent years running away from her problems, now she was going to really to buckle down. She had made numerous mistakes on the island during the mess with Trinity; that poorly advised shoulder throw when she confronted Mathias was one of the worst examples of a poorly thought out plan was bad enough, but now she'd had time to reflect on her mistakes she knew turning her back on some of her enemies during the fights in the tomb, Lara wanted to make sure her mistakes never happened again.
The only problem was she needed to think of a way to get the kind of training she needed to make sure she didn't make the same kind of mistake ever again.
She had already been manipulated and played like a violin by Trinity, she didn't want that to happen again.
Lara grimaced as she thought about the global conspiracy known as Trinity; her father had known of them and what scared her was how close he was to them although she didn't know if he had worked with them in the past before he'd worked for them, and he had begun to fight against them since the details were still vague but even with all of that stuff in that secret room she'd found on the ground which had helped her track down Trinity's operation on that island there was still a lot of open territories for her, but she was a long way from truly understanding how the organisation worked and what they wanted in the long term.
Lara had known dozens of conspiracy theorists in her time. The last thing she wanted besides being dead was to become one of those people who sat in front of a computer all day, checking over her shoulder. She didn't want to live like that. But she was confused about what her father had been doing in the first place on the island when he clearly had ties to the organisation.
Damn it, dad, why didn't you tell me more when you had the chance? If you had told me a lot more about this, I wouldn't have given my signature to that damn contract, Lara thought to herself as she thought of the way her insides had twisted in horror when she realised the mistake she'd made; she had fought Trinity once, she had a degree of knowing what they could do, and she'd handed over her father's business to them on a plate.
As she took another breath, Lara considered her plan.
She had decided to become a Tomb Raider; it had felt…right, breaking into Himiko's tomb on the island, and she'd had fun despite the mistakes and glaring near-death moments she'd come to, but she needed training. Inspired by the Batman stories, Lara was planning on travelling to different countries, learning about their cultures. Pick up skills. She had come up with a list, so she had most of it sorted out.
She wanted to improve her combat skills; her MMA training had given her a great edge, but there were other combat arts she could pick up on, such as conventional kickboxing, Krav Maga, maybe even karate even if it wasn't a martial art that brought much contact. Fencing was a possibility or Savate. At the same time learning about the different cultures was a good idea since she had looked up Himiko as soon as she could and all she had were a few conspiracy theories and guesses rather than the extensive research that her dad had. She wanted to get out there and track down the right kind s of people who could give her much, much more.
Deciding she'd had more than enough time, Lara kickstarted the session; whipping out her guns, Lara leapt into the air, dashed onto the benches she'd set up and rushed towards one of the dummies before she opened fire on it, blasting it to splinters before she swung around and blasted a hanging sack of sand. When she was finished Lara was breathing and panting long and hard, and she looked around. She had four hanging bags of sand blown into pieces of burlap and plastic with piles of sand while a few of the dummies were blasted with holes in them, scattering pieces of plastic onto the ground. One of the wooden dummies was riddled with bullets to the chest and the head, and one of them had been sent hurtling to the ground with the force of the bullets. As she panted and looked around the room, Lara noticed there were holes in one of the walls from a few missed bullets - she hadn't noticed them missing before, but now she did she wasn't surprised. Lara sighed and she thought about the pros and the cons of joining a gun club, anything to know about shooting straight.