Rain gave its threat as the evening began to approach, clouds drifting in like steel wool taking on purple rust. Sunset did its best to sift through their dense bodies in flourishes of colour, vague bruises that ebbed away as soon as they'd settled. There was hardly more than the transitory vista before the clouds enveloped everything, and night was coming in like a wave of blued black. It was not yet dark enough for stars, the tangerine colour seeping through everything coming in and out of visual consciousness, but the sky would be only an illusion by the time night had eaten everything else.

Mist collected on leaves, holding illumination as much as moisture on beads perched upon the foldes and veins of their skin, tracing out thin trails of dew before diving off the pointed tapers of each leaf's tip. Tree branches were wiry, slender, thick and ropey. They were great tangles, and long, tendril-like caresses at the sun retreating over the mountains. They were nothing but violent stabbings. The trees breathed in sighs of wind, exhaled out with the tumble of dewdrops. The whole of the forest filled its lungs then emptied them in vast, uneven breaths.

The silence that came in was hardly quiet at all, the sound of a jungle filling in jagged moist spaces, sounds soft as moss between roots, the jungle venerating the evening's onset with choral bird calls, chirping notes flattening out, rising in pitch, falling down the scales. Vibrato and warble added finesse and body to their heady resonance. It added to the forest's chest of sound.

Amongst the rest and most prominent to her, there was the sound of the running stream, water traipsing over rounded stones. Like laughter from two rooms away.

Lara had already begun preparing herself to leave in an attempt to hunt down Snake, in a strictly intellectual sense seeing as all supplies had vacated themselves. There had to be signs of his passage, she knew that much. She had once tracked a tiger to its nest in a ruin over three miles away, taking up most of the day in the process. She refused to believe, no matter how talented, that Snake had not left some hint of his passing, unintentional or not.

Otacon had taken from the recovered backpack the means of a miniscule tent, which could serve sojourn until they could make short pilgrimage to the remains of the plane, and track down the remnants of their carried goods in the process.

"Do you think it's a good idea to try and hunt him down?" Otacon said.

"I don't know him very well-"

"Really, neither do I," Otacon said.

"-But he left for a reason, Hal, and he left in a hurry. We can't stay out here like this."Lara was double checking a knife she'd strapped to one boot before they had left New York. It was the closest thing she had to a method of self defense. "Little as I like leaving you here, if I can't find him in a few hours, I won't be able to find the trail at all. Nightfall's not going to help me in that regard.

"Alright. Are you going to be alright with just a blade? I mean, no offense."

"None taken, and yes, I imagine I'll do just fine. I've traveled with less. Why in God's name were we being shot at?"

Otacon kicked a stone into the stream just beyond their palaver. "Frankly, I don't have any idea. The closest guess I could hazard is maybe they thought we were private security contractors? That'd explain why they were so intent on shooting us down, but that was an aggression I'd never anticipated we'd see. If I had known we were going to be in the middle of something like that…"

"Hal, don't beat yourself up. It doesn't fit a man of your character. And, with due respect, we've got quite our work cut out for us, so I need you to hold it together for all of us, okay? I'll come back to camp here with you tonight, and we'll do what we set out to starting tomorrow morning." She looked skyward. "I've got a limited window. Try to stay safe out here. If I had something to give you…" She looked about, on herself, and sighed. There was nothing to offer. She turned to go.

"Lara?"

She turned back to look at him.

"Do you think we got in over our heads, here?"

Yes. "No. We came to do something that couldn't have been done if we'd waited. There wasn't anything to be done of it, I'm afraid." She gave him a reassuring smile. As the light cast a momentary shade of red off the tent's flap and onto his wet cheek, she thought he looked older today than the day prior, but dismissed it as five-o-clock shadow. "We'll make it. Snake's quite the lad, I'm sure he's off harassing the wildlife. Back in a pinch, I promise."

And she left, no surer of her place in the country than he was.

The earliest parts of the hike were the hardest, only that her bloodstream was ebbing out the adrenaline, and she'd felt the sickening lethargy that came with it. Once it had been surmounted and she felt her body return to its normal state, where she was more readily of control of her biochemistry and not the other way around, she understood a bit more clearly how the crash had occurred. There was such a violent opposition to their entry into the country, Otacon's explanation made more and more sense, but that make her only more cautious, if not exactly fearful. She'd encountered militaristic types before. Gritted-teeth idealists weren't far removed from hired thugs with a few principles. She hoped.

The jungle, once she'd left the sandy, rocky open space that Otacon had set up their negligible camp near, was all-encroaching, and it was almost comforting if not for the coolness it presented. With night's onset would enliven chill that was held at bay only by the thickness of the airy, soupy with heat and insects. It clung to every inch of her body, making sticky work of her clothes, and although she was used to it, there would be some time before she could comfort herself with the relief of a hidden pond or sacrosanct bath. For the time being, on every side there were only miles of tree trunks, rows of steepled roots thrust like speedbumps out of the soil, and the clawing of branches that offered no empathy.

The trail for following Snake was among the lightest she'd ever seen, but once Lara realized how he had disappeared after a bit of examination of his landing zone, following the rest of his leavings proved efficient, if sparse. He had used his harness as a sort of stepping stone to the trees above, and remained perched there for at least a few minutes. He must had been following someone else, because she saw the grindings of bark that had been left by his boots and his weight on the branches extend from tree after tree. If she hadn't been looking for the markings, she would have assumed they were simply caused by like flora and fauna; so little existed in disturbance. There were no broken branches, and he had been careful to pick ones that would sustain his weight. Likewise, no detritus from the trees themselves ever hit the forest floor, with leaves fallen underfoot barely out of the ordinary, and had she not the proof above would never have made any discernible pattern. Snake was still, however, a foreigner as much as she was, and after quite a few meters, he had leapt to the floor, making his trail much easier to track.

It was in the fervency of tracing the evidence he'd diffused that she almost missed the empty cartridges, stamped into mud and wet, gleaming up from the trail.

Lara had been following his trail for over an hour, and she saw them first as a minor glimmer from her periphery, then upon a closer glance saw them for what they were. She dug one out of the mud, looked it over, then back to the spot it'd been stamped into. A boot had pointedly made the attempt at hiding it, in a hurry she presumed, and then moved on. Even a cursory look about the area showed there had been no scuffle, nor had there been any fire at the environs nearby, so she presumed it was the rebels who had opened up at their plane, perhaps in a haphazard attempt to shoot them out of the sky. Likewise, did Lara spot Snake's own boot treads, presumably doing what she had done moments ago, which was to investigate the scene. But unlike her, he had left the evidence almost completely untouched. She had no such interest or reservations about preserving its value, and moved on.

Once his footing became more clear, she began chasing after his bootprints, thankful she no longer had to manoeuvre from branch to branch in her tracking. When she did catch up, she almost ran into him.

What she noticed at first was, again, the bandanna wrapped tight around his forehead and hair, material thin enough she could make out his scowling eyebrows beneath it. In Africa, she had once had the displeasure of observing a band of marauders with guns rolling into a small town with makeshift warpaint smeared across their eyes. They looked like oni with rifles. It was the first thing she thought of when she saw him, and it took her a moment to be certain he had no designs against her. All of that contrasted with the almost casual way he leaned against a tree, beginning the production of a cigarette as a ritual she'd learn too well.

"Funny running into you here. How's things? Did you make it down okay?" Lara said, thinking she felt elated from the bit of sprinting she'd done through the jungle.

Snake nodded, looking ragged and out of breath. His hair was wet from the humidity. "Yes on both counts. You guys okay? I was worried about leaving both of you there but I didn't really have time to write you a note."

"Worried about us? Why Snake, I'm touched." She brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face, thought about re-binding her ponytail, thought better of it. She frowned at his bad habit. "Good lord, is all you do smoke and drink? And no wonder Americans have a bad reputation. Probably why you're so out of breath."

"Tch. Best things on earth, you know."

"Tea and a warm bath are the best things on earth, not saleable poison. Where'd you go? I found the nest of automatic shells about a hundred meters back."

Snake jerked a thumb against his back, what she judged to be north east. "I was coming down and I saw the bunch of those guys with the launchers running off into the brush."

"Running off? Why not rush in, finish the job?" Lara had to admit, watching Snake light a cigarette and inhale deeply as though it was air from Olympus itself, that he made it look bloody appealing, at least.

"If they were trying to down the plane because they thought we were with those mercenaries, then they probably got a look at our gear and realised they'd made a mistake. We could be American VIPs for all they know."

"With our kit? I can't imagine that's likely. But you're right in as much Hal was thinking they believed us with Araignée's troops. It's the only thing that seems to make sense so far," Lara said.

"I got as far as here before I lost them, but I did catch one good look at their leader."

"Their leader? I hope he's not another one of those going-to-save-the-world-one-bullet-at-a-time types. I've had my share of those, thank you."

"I don't think so. She seems a little more focused than that."

"She?"

"Come on, I'll tell you on the way back. Let's get out of here."