When the idiots in charge of canon material aren't doing things right, guess you gotta do it yourself! By the way, remember Sam NISHImura?! We do. And we never forget. #SaveOurSam #NotMyLara #NISHImuraNotNakamura
All feedback appreciated!
Who is Lara Croft?
This was the only question reverberating through Sam's mind as Molly let them both
into her apartment. Was Lara really that Richard Croft person's daughter, and if so why did that make her special? Sam kept deliberating over whether or not she should ask Molly about it, but always ultimately decided against it. Lara was visibly annoyed the last time Sam had attempted to pry into her personal business, even if it was only done out of genuine concern.
"Make yourself at home," Molly said, setting her keys down on the counter, "the living room's through there; the others should be here shortly," she pointed at a doorway to their left before disappearing down a hallway in the opposite direction. Uncertain of what else to do, Sam followed Molly's suggestion and sauntered over to the living room couch, plopping down onto it and making herself at home as she grabbed the TV remote and started mindlessly flipping through the channels, not that there was anything good to watch.
"So," Molly boomed as she re-emerged from the hallway a few moments later, "Samantha. What. Is. Up?"
"Oh, you know, boring school stuff," Sam responded with a fake yawn.
"Gross," Molly grinned, taking a seat right beside her, "how are you liking the campus so far?"
"It's a bit overwhelming, honestly," Sam admitted, and Molly nodded in understanding.
"I felt the same way when I started last year. Do you like it other than that, though?" She asked.
"Of course!" Sam exclaimed, "It's a beautiful school, and I love my film class! Professor Bruzzi is awesome! The only thing is that I have this really stupid lab partner-I think her name's Catherine? Anyways, I think I might drop that class before the dumb bitch makes me fail."
"That bad, huh?" Molly asked, raising a brow.
"She set a trash can on fire," Sam said with a scowl, crossing her arms over her chest. Molly burst out into laughter.
"Bloody hell," she chortled, "how daft can you be?"
"That's what my roommate said," Sam sniggered before stopping abruptly at the thought of Lara. Thankfully, Molly seemed to be too distracted by the sudden knocking at her front door to notice Sam's behavior.
"One second," Molly said as she got to her feet and walked down the hall to answer it. Sam suppressed the urge to let out a sigh of relief and let herself sink deeply into the couch. A few moments passed in silence, and she felt herself begin to grow concerned.
"Everything okay?" She called out to Molly down the hall.
"Yeah!" Molly bellowed back before reentering the room shortly thereafter with two new people in tow, "Sam, you've met Steph, right?" she asked, gesturing to a blonde female in a yellow polo beside her.
"I believe so," Sam replied, donning her best smile, "but I think I was very drunk at the time."
"We all were," Steph laughed.
"By the way," Sam added, "I think I have your sunglasses, you want them back?"
"You do?" Steph blinked, "I kinda just figured I lost them, do you have them with you?"
"They're back in my dorm," Sam said somewhat apologetically, "but I could run back and grab them?"
"Worry about it later," Steph replied, waving a hand in front of her dismissively, "they were a shitty pair anyways, so I'm not too worried about it. Let's just get them afterwards, what hall are you in?"
"Get to that in a moment," Molly cut in, "I still haven't even introduced Alex yet."
"Hi," interjected a somewhat dorky, dark-haired guy with glasses at that point, awkwardly raising a hand in greeting, "I'm Alex."
"I'm Sam-"
"A total sweetheart I had the pleasure of discovering at a party during the first week of classes," Molly said, and Sam felt her face go hot.
"Shush," she said, "nice to meet you," she added, shaking Alex's hand.
"Alex is an absolute tech genius," Molly continued, "and my hook-up. Speaking of which, do you…?" Her voice trailed off as she looked at Alex and made some sort of weird gesture with her hand.
"Huh?" Alex blinked. "Oh! Yeah!" He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a ziploc bag that contained what Sam estimated to be about an eighth of weed.
"Excellent!" Molly beamed, "I'll go get Crash Bongdicoot."
"Crash Bongdicoot?" Sam asked confusedly the moment Molly disappeared behind her bedroom door.
"It's what she named her bong," Alex responded.
"Ah…"
"I also have two bowls named David Bowlie and Pot Benatar!" Molly's voice echoed from her room. Sam snorted.
"She's creative, I'll give her that," she remarked at length before clearing her throat, "so I know that Steph studies here...what about you, Alex?"
"Me? Yeah of course, I'm Molly's year."
"Alex and I are classmates," said Molly as she re-entered the room holding a blue and orange glass bong that had a rippling design down its length. "He saved my ass a couple of times by knocking the online homework assignments offline so nobody could log in. The professor was forced to give everybody extensions."
"Not that you need to go telling everybody that," Alex warned her.
"Ptuh," Molly scoffed, her eyes fixated on the purple grinder she had taken out as she began to pack some of her newly acquired product into it, "it's not like Sam and Steph are going to tell anyone."
"Still," Alex insisted.
"Oh loosen up, would you?" Molly sighed exasperatedly, "you're seriously killing my vibe."
"Yeah!" Sam agreed in a jokingly aggressive tone, "What's up, dude? You don't trust me or somethin'?!"
"I...that's not...what?!" Alex stammered, looking back and forth between Sam and Molly in apparent alarm.
"They're just yanking your dick, Alex…" Steph shook her head, "Molly, give him the first hit before he has a panic attack."
"I was already planning on it," Molly held Riptide out to Alex, who accepted it while he looked between Molly, Steph, and Sam with his mouth held slightly open and his brows knitted together.
"I...oh, whatever," his features relaxed, and he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and took a long pull from the bong while everyone around him went to take a seat, sniggering all the while.
"Seriously Alex, you make it too easy to pick on you," Steph said, accepting the bong from Alex as he dissolved into a fit of coughing, "jeez, can't even handle your own product?"
"You…" Alex let out a particularly forceful cough, "you take a hit of that, then, and let's see how you handle it."
"Easy," Steph laughed, taking the lighter from Alex and taking a pull out of the bong for herself. She hadn't even cleared half of the smoke from it before she started coughing profusely.
"Oh come on, you're letting the smoke out!" Molly exclaimed, "Sam, quick! Clear it!"
"Huh?" Sam had hardly registered what was going on when the bong was shoved into her hands. She quickly put her mouth to the mouthpiece and inhaled the smoke still swirling around inside the chamber. The bud tasted unusually sweet, at least for weed, and had a slightly pungent aftertaste.
"You took it better than those two," Molly chortled as Sam exhaled all the smoke she had filled her lungs with without coughing more than one or two times, "take another hit if you want since you got Steph's seconds." She very pointedly shifted her gaze into Alex and Steph's direction and playfully raised her voice, "since some of us can't hang, you bloody lightweights!" Sam snickered and took another hit for herself.
"It's not the bud," Steph protested, "it's your piece! That thing rips like hell!"
"Isn't it great?" Molly laughed as Sam passed Riptide over to her, "this thing'll get you fried in five minutes, tops."
That turned out to not be too far from the truth, either. Three hits later, Sam found herself glued to the couch with a pleasant cerebral buzzing sensation emanating throughout her head. The food she had gotten to go from Gordon's turned out to be a godsend as she wolfed it down within minutes. The others, meanwhile, mindlessly flipped through the TV, watching nothing in particular. Relaxed as she was, Sam's thoughts drifted dimly back to Lara, and her previously forgotten curiosity over her roommate's identity was piqued once more.
"Hey," she began, breaking the silence that existed between the four of them, "do you guys know who Richard Croft is?"
"Richard Croft?" Molly muttered vaguely before sitting up and regarding Sam with red, glassy eyes, "kind of hard to not know who the Crofts are when you're from Surrey. What do you want to know?"
"What's the big deal with them? I heard some people talking about Richard Croft in the cafe," Sam began innocently, "something about his daughter studying at UCL? I dunno, they made it seem like a big deal. I was just curious."
"Eh, the Crofts are just a bunch of stuffy nobles," Molly replied, "and Richard in particular was a historian, I believe."
"Isn't he the one who solved the mystery of the Lost Roanoke colony?" Steph piped up out of the blue.
"Hell if I know," Molly retorted, "if he is, that was before he went all barmy."
"Barmy?" Sam cocked her head to the side and raised a brow in confusion.
"Sorry, I keep forgetting you Yanks use a bastardized version of our language," Molly laughed good-naturedly, "he was crazy. Absolutely off his rocker."
"How so?" Sam prodded further.
"Who cares?" Alex groaned, "I'm trying to watch TV…"
"Sod off, Alex, Sam's new to England," Molly snapped, "and to answer your question...towards the end he started spurting some nonsense about immortality, it was all over the press. I think all the universities in England removed his books from their libraries during that entire mess."
"Wow…" Sam mumbled absentmindedly before shaking her head to clear it, "but wait, 'towards the end'? What did you mean by that?"
"He killed himself after the release of an article publicly discrediting him," Molly stated simply, "some people say it was because he couldn't handle the shame. I say it's because the guy had serious mental issues."
"Holy shit," Sam breathed out, thinking back to the last time her and Lara had hung out. Could it be that the controversial figure she had been referencing was her own father? There was only one way to be certain. "So then back to his daughter...I think she might be in one of my classes but I'm not sure."
"What's her name?" Molly asked. Sam paused to feign deep thought.
"I'm not entirely sure. Like I said, I think she might be in one of my classes."
"Could it be Lara?" Alex cut in, "I work at the library and there's this one chick named Lara Croft who comes in a lot to check out books."
"Is that how you pick up girls?" Steph remarked jokingly, "You memorize their student IDs and track them down by hacking into the student database?" Alex's face went red.
"Shut up, Steph," he spat with a scowl. Sam and Molly giggled to themselves.
"To go off of what Alex said," Molly began once more, "that could be her. You know what she looked like?" Alex had begun to pack another bowl for the bong and appeared to be deep in thought.
"Long, brown hair. Average height. Really nice tits-"
"Alex!" Steph exclaimed.
"Did she look like this?" Molly held her phone up for Alex to look at. Sam craned her neck to see an article displayed on Molly's screen. Sure enough, right beneath the headline was unmistakably an image of a younger Lara in what appeared to be a track and field uniform. Underneath the image, the caption read: Croft, the Countess of Abbingdon, swept the high jump, long jump, 400m, and 800m for Marymount IS London this past weekend.
You find me on the following sites:
Tumblr: whattheschmuck
Twitter: whatthe_schmuck
**Love S.S. Endurance? You should join this discord server that I admin using the following invite: dG4PZf4