It was another hour into the hike when the rain started. It fell in small bursts, patters of droplets coming down off the tapered edges of the fingertips of a billion branches, and much less of it falling directly on them from the sky. The moisture their clothes had accumulated had probably been dew by proxy of a multitude of leaf and bark. The rain came down in thin mists that drizzled through the air, half tumbling and half drifting, wafting to the ground almost like smoke. The air's humidity was lessened only in temperature. Viridian mingled with blue with black with the transitory rumours of silver downpour. The rainfall had driven out most of the soundtrack that had been largely a product of avians, the odd, distant mammalian cry, and the rustle of trees swaying in the wind.

They had been silent for most of the hike, the heat and its unremitting vampirism like a pall that could not be uncast. Lara had only spoken to Snake once during the long walk, a request for canteen he'd been carrying as given by Vines. They'd become temporary mates of a sort, with tobacco as refuge.

When Snake, behind her by a few feet, reached out and grabbed her by the arm, she stopped abruptly, almost leaping from the surprise. She hadn't heard or felt him close the gap between them.

When Lara turned to face him, she watched his eyes shift. To their periphery. She asked no questions vocally. When Snake answered with furrowed brow, she paused, extending out her sense to what she might not have been observant of.

She could smell his tobacco, his sweat, her own. The life of the jungle in aromas clean and the overgrowth pungent.

Her mouth tasted dry, bitter. The air was sweet like tea.

The ground beneath them was soggy, florid, pliant.

The forest was silent.

From her left, her right, metal clicked.

Snake's voice was the last she heard.

"GET DOWN!"

The jungle exploded from all sides with blooming curses of sulfur, toluene, exertions of gunpowder ripping open the world with sound and supernoval flashes that vomited from guns on all sides. To the left and right of their immediate "path", the reports shouted from rifles and sub machinegun fire. It engulfed her aural senses, and she could hear nothing else, the shouting of Portuguese and Spanish and English as punctuation marks in a sentence that made no sense. Lara's own self awareness was minimised by that dominion of sound, the cacophony a ruin of coherency. She felt her throat tense and vibrate with her yells, but heard it only in the way one hears their inner monologue. Dirt blew out of the ground in tufts of burst soil and grass. Bark snapped from the trees like skin ripped from a body, small roughshod explosions pockmarking their omniscient forms.

Lara scrambled up the ground to the base of one of the trees, making only the barest assessment of where their fire had been concentrated from. Everyone had happened too fast. She understood in abstract there was gunfire but that why or how or what it meant was absurd. It was always the same. They could have been using laser beams, the reality of gunfire so removed. The truth of it was ridiculous; Gas and fire made metal pebbles fly. But she did not detach or remove herself. She knew how they worked, why. Bringing herself out of a reptilian response took no time.

For a moment, she felt the urge to panic. Just for a heartbeat.

Lara pulled the pistol from her hip.

When she began to fire slightly blindly from around the tree, she pushed out the periphery ideas. The sound of the reports, their volume. The screaming of her companions. She felt a calm steal over her, and, little as she cared to ruminate on it, an excitement. Adrenaline overflowed her bloodstream and drove out the imperfections. It supercharged each muscle into fibrous mercury. Her heart pounded pistons of fuel into the rest of her, and a type of exhilarated anger seeped in, not a coherent thought but a feeling, like an emotion, that this unknown opposition could threaten the five of them like that. But it was also rapture, not in action but clarity. There was so few times when life ensconced itself into such simplicity; survival made binary.

In stealing just a second, she wondered if that was how Snake felt.

When she looked directly ahead of her, bandanna tight around his skull, teeth gritted, sweat pouring off the contours of his jawline and into the runnels of stubble that lined his face, she saw a reflection, and knew it was true.

"Snake!" Otacon crawled with rough fervor to Snake, pressing himself against the tree's base along with them. Each report caused a wince, a squinting of eyes. His glasses were askew but still present, and dirt blew out past and on him in bits with other forest debris. Lara was aware of this in passing, between firing off a shot or two behind her own column of bark.

Her ears cleared, or maybe acclimated, enough for her to make out her own voice at least. The fire did not taper but ceased its constancy when it was apparent Lara and Snake were willing and capable of shooting back.

Otacon stared at her, mouth slightly open, teeth gritted and with a wild desperation in his eyes. When she turned away to return fire, she saw Otacon shout something, but it was too late. His pleas were drowned out in the kicking auditory violence that bellowed and snarled from her gun.

Lara took aim, and stared through the brush, the fronds, the miles of green noise. Three assailants on her side, maybe four. She couldn't even estimate how many Snake's side of the corridor had. They had submachine guns pressed against their shoulders, and multicoloured cloths draped around their mouths, but otherwise were clothed only in shorts and in thin strappy shirts. Most were gaunt, wiry with muscle. They spotted her dart from her cover spot, digging her boots into the ground beneath her and setting her shoulders to grip the pistol with both hands, and they took cover of their own. They sidled behind brush and fanned out in the process. When she fired, she felt the vibration run up her arm, jumping like an electrical current from joint to joint, and she had to refocus her eyes after she ducked back behind her tree. They were playing defensively now, and that was an advantage in and of itself.

"Lara! Snake! Stop! What are you doing?!"

"What do you think? We have to take them out!" Snake's voice was immensely easier to hear than Otacon's, and he roared over the competing landslide of sound. "We don't have time for this—" was all he got out before fire bloomed again, and they took what little cover they had, shoulders rising as if to attempt protection for their heads.

Snake hadn't yet fired in any extended fashion, and attempted to follow Lara's lead by taking a bead from behind the tree and firing from a relatively safe position. She watched, in just those few shorts seconds, as the younger of the two men began his play, but her objection was lost to the gunfire, and she couldn't have closed the distance between the three of them long enough to stop him. Otacon threw his body on Snake's arm, yanking him to the ground in the process. It was short work of shoving Otacon off him, bodily, but had to pull the both of them back behind the tree.

Before they could speak again, Snake got to his feet. Otacon attempted again to reason with the older man, and found himself slugged in the mouth before there was even a chance to make a syllable. It was shocking enough that Otacon's legs folded, and he slumped on the ground from the force of the blow. No sooner had the blow landed than Snake met Lara's eyes and outshouted their opposition.

"We've got to shut them down!" Another volley of submachine fire exploded. Snake winced, teeth barely in fury, and met her eyes once more.

"I've got a better idea of how many we've got! I can lead us out!" Lara glanced to her left, and to Snake's right, as she saw the other two members of their fellowship inchworm towards their location. "You two, stay with Hal!"

"How many?" Snake said.

Her reply was swallowed by the submachineguns, but she also held up her four fingers twice. Eight.

"Got it!" He said.

"Snake, can you cover my sides? And hold this?" Lara flipped the safety on and slid the pistol to his feet.

He nodded agreement to both. "I'll follow your lead! On my mark!" Snake holstered the gun and took a combat stance, pistol between both palms and drawn to the ground. His mouth tightened into a cruel line, his eyes became like holes. Lara turned away from him, and looked up the tree.

"Ready!" she said.

The gunfire took its briefest respite.

"NOW!"

Lara leapt up the tree, both hands on either of its broad side, and scampered up it. In just a few heartbeats, she was maybe nine, ten feet from the ground, and began the rapid process of making for one of the branches. The tree was rough on her hands; fingernail ends splintered, the barbs of trees drew blood. The gunfire resumed, and she could feel its draft run beyond her legs, but she also felt the blood in her come to a rich concentration. Her heart's valve became pistons, her muscles made steel. She leapt from the tree's torso to its arm, swinging up and up and over, making a full circle once and stripped the palms of her hands of the outermost layer of skin in the process before she released, flying forward in an arc from her first branch to the next, making a rapid crescent in her inertia and letting go once more, sending herself hurtling to the forest floor.

Below her, she understood in abstract Snake's own advance. He had moved rapidly from his initial spot and opened up the fire, spacing out his shots and driving the gunmen back, providing for her cover to move. He darted from their first tree, let loose a handful of shots, moved to the next, but never pausing.

Lara tumbled to the ground, coming into a roll and within arm's length of the closest assailant. He took aim as she moved to a crouch, and, still bent, she swung one leg out from beneath her, sweeping it across the backs of his legs like a scythe. She followed the momentum with her body's weight, half attack and half Arabesque, coming to a standing position only long enough to be confronted with another man, his eyes wide. They narrowed, and she dove for him, extending her hands out in flat palm. Submachine-gun strapped around his chest, he had no chance to raise it: Lara sent him toppling backwards, using his ribcage as a springboard for a frontwards sommersault, legs cartwheeling over her head to continue the momentum lest they end up collapsed on each other.

In the time it took for her to subdue the two men closest to her, Snake had closed the gap, as the other six men began training themselves on her. Two let their backs to him, and he fired without pause, bullets blowing out the thin cloth with red spray. The first tumbled forward, spitting bullets as he crashed to the ground and the second turned on Snake, still capable. Snake fired again, and the man's hand blew apart. A third shot finished the sortie.

Lara watched the remainder begin a shared scream and spit their fire at her. She dipped into a roll, snagging a submachinegun in the process. She waited out the gunfire, then returned her own fire, advancing on the four men grouped amongst three trees. Her newly acquired firearm tried to muzzlejump from her hands, and emptied its payload in mere seconds. They retreated, and she took her thin window. "Snake! I need that back!"

Snake pulled leather and let fly her gun.

Lara snatched it from the air, flipped the safety, and fired. One man scattered, disappearing into the trees. Lara took no interest, and Snake was behind cover at the time. As Lara closed in, so too did Snake, and they traded periods of fire. When Lara was within just a few feet, one leapt out and was summarily cut down by Snake's pistol fire.

Snake was barely hidden via a massive balsa when the last two men went berserk, leaping out from behind a pair of shrubs and sacrificing the little ammunition they had left. As one exhausted his supply and began to reload, Lara had already positioned herself closest and drew both their attention, but at that point, it was too late. She snatched the unclasped submachinegun free of his hands, snapping it from his grip and yanking it free with a blow to the man's throat and then his breastbone. In the process, they had turned with her back to the last man, and she froze when she heard the thick click of metal being trained on her.

"Congelar! Dar la vuelta!"

Lara stopped, dropping the weapon. She was aware for the first time of a snag in her throat, like a hook, and her lungs became stone. Stomach knotted, she felt like vomiting. Lara put her hands up, and as she turned to face him, his eyes desperate and furious, she watched as Snake crept behind him. Snake's command chilled even her.

"Dispara su pistola y se muere. Dejar caer!"

The jungle was silent. Nothing moved.

"He dicho dejar caer!"

"Demonio," he said, almost seeming to mutter it. He did not let go of his gun, but slowly, he did turn, facing Snake, muzzle of his firearm at the forest floor. Slowly, dreamlike in its pause, he pulled the fabric from his in front of his mouth. The gunman's eyes stared beyond the pistol at his head and into Snake's gaze, seeming emboldened, wild.

Some feet from them, she saw the underbrush move. Otacon staggered out into the open, rubbing his mouth, eyes searching. When he spotted Snake holding the man at gunpoint, he shouted.

"Everybody wait just a bit." Then, almost as an afterthought, Lara said, "Espere un momento."

In the distance, Otacon's eyes widened, arm outstretched, and he shouted "SNAKE!"

The gunman's mouth contorted into a rictus. His grip on the gun became a vice. "DEMONIO!"

Lara reached out to them, knowing it did not matter. "Snake! D—"

The shot was cataclysmic. Blood sprayed her chest, and she recalled its hideous warmth. Of feeling it for the first time on her skin. Before the three of them, the body slumped to the ground, head snapped back, hair a tangle of what once had been. There was a vast space between them. When the man she had just physically disarmed began to collect himself, she watched idly as Snake did not hesitate, snatching him by the hair and snapping his pistol over the last assailant's mouth. She did not try to help. Lara felt like all this had happened to someone before. She knew it would happen again.

She looked at the body. His shoes were sandals with rawhide lacing themselves up his leg.

To her right, she thought she heard Otacon's breath hitch.

When Vines came over and began to move the body, she let her pistol slide back into the holster, her head clearing somewhat. Otacon he disappeared into the jungle nearby, but she could hear his presence. Ellie was helping Vines, and Snake was securing the captive with rope Vines had provided him. After a few minutes, when the smell of toluene left her nostrils, Lara joined Vines and Ellie in the preparation of bodies. Ellie had a machete that she released from its scabbard, and began cutting off schrubs for a cairn. The ground was too knotty with roots for a burial, and when they laid them to rest, Vines spoke prayers in Arabic.

Otacon retreated, without a word.

They did their acts in silence.

After a time, the birds came back, and the forest began again its constant singsong breathing.

When they had finished up the filthy business the fight had left behind, she pulled Snake aside. He was smoking more than he had been earlier. In just a bit over an hour, he'd had almost five cigarettes.

"Do you have a plan in mind?" Lara absentmindedly wiped the sweat from her forehead, her cheek. She tried not to think of the gunman, and the blood against her eyes, in her mouth. She found it possible, and that disturbed her more than the sensation she'd been trying to block out.

"Get to the plane. It's all we can do. We might have eight hours until sundown, which seems like more than it is, especially since we don't know the lay of the land, and we're in the home territory of whoever those guys were. If we want to get headed wherever we're going, we're going to need those supplies first. If that happens again after sundown, we don't have a chance. By the end of that skirmish, I had about half a clip left. I can't imagine you've got much more."

"I don't." A strand of hair fell in front of her face, and Lara blew it back, then shifted it behind her ear with one hand. "How far do you think we have left to go?"

"Not sure." Snake inhaled deeply of the tobacco, and flipped it into a bush. They were standing on a slight incline, which made watching their encampment easier, and she had her back to it. "What are you going to do with that tosser you tied to a tree?"

"Nothing for the time being. If he's still here when we come back, I'd like to find out more about the Boys, but I don't think that's going to happen. The best thing to come out of that is that we know what we're up against, hopefully."

"I'm not sure I like the odds." She looked back to the temporary day camp they'd set up, with Ellie and Vines having let their packs sit against a log. Otacon was watching them while Ellie and Vines went over a map and a compass.

"Do you think Otacon will be alright?"

"I don't know. He's tough, and he's been through this before, but…"

"Don't overestimate him. Being through a, a.. terrorist attack isn't the same as seeing you…" Lara searched herself for the words.

"Murder somebody?"

Lara said nothing.

"I know it's going to affect him. I didn't have a choice. He'll have to deal with it, we're not exactly rich with options."

"I know that." Lara sighed. They both turned, standing aside each other, to watch from their quiet perch

"You did good out there. Thank you."

"I did what I had to do."

"I know." He hesitated. Thought perhaps of his own experiences. If he did, she couldn't tell. "I'm sorry."

"You know the worst part, Snake?"

"Yeah?"

"Every time you do it, it gets a little easier."

The adrenaline that had tapered out of her system like an illness that carried rich aphrodisia that was as nauseating as it was elating. She felt like pressing herself against him, and knew it was for all the wrong reasons, things that had nothing to do with him as a person. It was a warped version of what she had felt at the mansion, and when Vines closed the map and approached them both, she was grateful for that strange refuge.

"Hate to break up the plotting, but Ellie and I'd like to shove off, if it's alright." He looked to Snake. "Nice shooting out there."

Snake said nothing.

"Is your friend going to be alright, Lara? Hal, isn't it?"

"I hope so. Thank you, Mr. Vines."

"'Salright. I know this might not be the best time to tell you either of this, but we've decided it might be best to part ways after we've shown you to your former craft. It's not cowardice, mind, but we're neutral parties in this country."

"Wouldn't want you to get your hands dirty." Snake said, barely under his breath.

"Excuse me? I think I've seen enough of you to know how clean your methods are, so let's keep the comments to yourself." He leaned forward, catching Snake's eyes. "There's rumors of a man like you all over the middle east. The Iraq mountain ranges, Afghanistan, Iran. What'd you say your name was? Plissken?"

Snake glared something venomous into Vines' eyes. "Are you with the ADF?"

"Not anymore. Not for a long time, mate." Vines teeth were gritted, his thin features hawklike. "There's stories of a man just like you over there. I bet Plissken's not the name they refer to you as. Is it, Saladdin?"

From Snake, Lara heard a growl that sounded as diamonds being ground into a powder. It sounded like hate. It was obvious he now had Snake's full attention.

"That's not my name," Snake said.

Lara shoved herself between the two of them, feeling disgust rise up with remarkable rapidity. "I have had enough, from both of you! Save it for some other time, we don't need this!"

Vines clicked his tongue, and turned back to Lara. "I don't care why the three of you are here, but I'm no soldier, and I'm certainly not with Che's Boys. We're taking you only as far as the plane. After that, you're on your own. Like everyone else."