LLF: Return to Yamati Ch. 02

I do not own Tomb Raider or any of its characters. This work is for entertainment only.

A/N: This part of the story goes against Tomb Raider 2013 canon. The next arc of "Lara's Little Fan" focuses on the premise of what if the Solarii weren't wiped out by Trinity and had to reform their society after the loss of Mathias? How could a factor such as Lara influence the changes, and how could she ever miss the chance to document them as a largely undiscovered people? Of course this is going to stay horny, because it's me, but this arc is going to have more substance than the first chapters of the original Lara's Little Fan. LLF: Return to Yamati can be a stand-alone, but I would recommend reading the original first as it establishes the relationship and Sam's behavior sending them back to the island.

--

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as the small plane I chartered for Mr. Phelps, Sam, and myself started to hit turbulence as we entered the Devil's Triangle. We left the morning after my nightmare of Sam overpowering me and her apparent possession, so it didn't give me as much study time as I would have liked before heading into a potentially hot area.

I had only the time we left the mansion to the moment we prepared to jump to see what weather patterns and stories about the Triangle had been doing since we left the first time. Storms still occurred as they would with any island in that locale, but it felt like hold hat to us when we flew right into the same kind of storm that brought us down the first time.

"Lady Croft, I've lost control of the plane!" my daring pilot shouted to me as I strapped into my parachute. "We're still closing in on the island but my controls are unresponsive.

I opened my eyes and exhaled slowly through my nose. "The plane will get us over the drop, but don't expect to fly it on your own until the three of us are gone."

"W-what are you talking about?" the pilot asked, rightly confused and worried.

I just laughed and patted his shoulder. "You're going to be fine, Captain. You're not who the island wants." I turned my attention from the captain and went back to Sam and Mr. Phelps, who by this time had their packs and jump helmets on.

I went to the door and hit the button on the side of the wall to open the hydraulic lock. I looked over and saw that the red and green jump lights weren't even functioning. The island wanted us to do it ourselves.

Wind rushed past my ears and almost pushed me back into the plane as I peaked my head out. We had just made it to the coast of the island and we had a bit of beach head that wasn't swallowed up by wrecks, and had gradual jungle growth moving inland. I waited just a moment and then decided to rip the bandaid off, and I launched myself out of the plane. Hopefully Sam and Seymour would know to follow me down.

As I quickly plummeted, I did my counting and then pulled my parachute release. I had just enough time as I looked up to see friends falling above me before my chute opened.

The island had become somewhat predictable to me by this point. As I had expected, once the island knew we weren't getting away, the storm blew off and allowed us a pretty easy descent. This also told me that the island didn't want at least one of us to die. Who that one was had yet to be revealed.

I tucked in and hit the sand, and I stood up without injury, and I was able to detach myself from my pack. I had no idea what to expect in the way of friends or enemies, so I set about the laborious task of gathering my shoot and trying to pack it back in enough that I could easily stash it. Our arrival would have drawn plenty of eyes, and I didn't want to leave chutes around to confirm where they should start looking.

Sam groaned, seeing what she had to do, but Mr. Phelps was a good lad and did his end without so much as a whimper. He was taking every note he could from me, and if he kept that up, he might actually get out of here alive.

Once we had packed our chutes, we worked together to bury them with collapsible camp shovels, and then we headed inland. We moved in slow, following a small stream that fed out into the surf we had just come from.

"It's so loud in here," Mr. Phelps said, a tinge of reverence to his voice. "The birds, the waves on the beach behind us, the wind in the trees, the little bugs around us. And there's... there's something else. Like a tuning fork, or-or a kind of resonance?"

I smiled and looked back over my shoulder at the young man as he drank in the deepening woods around him. "That sound *is* Yamati, Mr. Phelps. Through all of my journeys, all the dark and wonderful places I've been in this world, that sound that seems like it's in your skull, a frequency you will never feel outside of this place... is Yamati."

"Do you know what it is?" Sam asked, her voice small. I shifted my focus from Mr. Phelps to my longest friend, and she looked moused, reserved and scared. If anyone had a reason to be more afraid of this island than me, it was my Sam. She had such hopes and grandeur dreams of this island once, but it left her scarred, tried to kill her, and here she was again, trying to figure out why it wouldn't let us go for good, even now.

"I don't," I said sadly. "I think Yamati has been so scarred over a millennium that while we stopped Himeko's curse, the island won't recover overnight, and maybe not in our lifetimes. Ancient Japan, the Mongol invasions of Japan that we've seen evidence of here, WWII, and so much death from the modern age of travel and exploration. How many died here just while we were here? And the Solarii? We don't know nearly enough about them to know what kind of imprint they've left on this island."

"Wow, Lara, not only did you fail to answer my question of what the fuck that sound is, but that might also be the most depressing thing I've ever heard. So thanks, I guess," Sam said dismissively.

I just shrugged my pack up my shoulders and kept going. I didn't know just yet where we were going, but the island had a way of telling you where to go, and when it was ready for you to be there.

--

We had been walking up river for about an hour and we were in the thick of it now. The trees were thick;y packed and the sun was struggling to pierce through the canopy and the interwoven layers of branches below. The air was thick and muggy with no breeze.

"This is quite the terrain," Mr. Phelps commented, wiping copious amounts of sweat from his forehead. "Jungle expeditions are nothing to be taken lightly," he said as he took a sparing sip from his belt canteen.

"Indeed," I agreed with a soft pant to my voice as I continued our climb up, a slight rise in elevation had become noticeable, and we were soon headed to the foothills. I had been hoping that we'd be able to avoid going into the Yamati Highlands. It was beyond treacherous, not to mention extremely cold and windy even with the curse lifted. Mountains were still mountains. "We'll want to have camp set up before it gets much darker, and we'll want to have our citronella pods set and bug nets up. If you think it's bad now, wait until after dark," I warned Mr. Phelps.

"I'm not going to lie, Lara, I'm also feeling kinda drained," Sam said and I could hear the grogginess that she alluded to. Sam was a runner and had a fine physique. I understood being sweaty and wanting a break, but she sounded like she was coming to the day's end of energy.

"Sam, are you okay?" I asked, stopping and turning to check on my dear friend. She was a bit behind Mr. Phelps, but certainly not left for dead or forgotten.

"Yeah, " she said, leaning over like she had just run a 5k, which I knew she had done before. "Just... fuck. Does the air have to be so wet and fucking thick?" Anger was quickly seeping into her and I wondered if being back on the island was compounding her problems. I started to question if having Sam with us was a good idea.

"Let's set up camp, yeah? I don't want to be on this island longer than necessary, but we don't exactly have an itinerary to stick to," I said with a giggle I hoped would ease tension. Sam sent me a brief smile, clearly for my benefit.

As I sat down next to Sam and rubbed her shoulders, the fantastic Mr. Phelps went about setting up the citronella pods at the corners of our camp and began setting up the tent. Given that there were only three of us and knowing what we knew about each other, we didn't mind cutting our load down and sharing one tent.

"I'm okay, really. It's probably just this fucking island." Sam ran her hands over her face and sighed exasperatedly. "Alright, let's not make Seymour do everything," she said and got up, patting my thigh and standing up.

With three of us working, the camp went up quickly, not that there was much to it. I started a small, contained fire not so much for warmth but as added bug protection, and to keep away creatures we weren't interested in sharing our bedrolls with.

"We're right by the river, and we still have light left," I said as I stood up. From the padded bedroll I had been lounging on. "I'm going to enjoy the river," I announced as I shed my sweat-soaked tank top. "It'll also let my clothes dry a bit without molting to my skin."

I had a small audience of two watching me as I peeled myself out of my canvas cargo pants. I reached into the deep side pockets of my traveling pants and produced a couple proximity pucks that would beep if they sensed weight pressure too close to them. "Seymour, be a dear and place these roughly 30 yards apart from each other in a square. It'll let us know if we have any visitors."

With Mr. Phelps on task, I headed to the river that was within our grid. With my sports bra and panties still on, I dipped my toes in the refreshingly cool water and sighed.

"It's just us, Lara. Why don't you bear it all," Sam teased, and I was happy to see her usual self returning a little. "You have Seymour working hard, surely he deserves a little thank you."

I just laughed ruefully and rolled my eyes. I waited until Mr. Phelps had placed the pucks and was back by his sleeping pad before I turned my back to him and Sam. Without making it too much of a show but being purposefully teasing, I peeled my bra up over my head and bent down, sticking my panty-clad ass right at them as I ran the bra through the water, getting it nice and wet with the cool water.

Straightening back up, I rung out my top over my head, enjoying how good the water felt running down my hair, face and body. I did it a few more times, for my relaxation as much as for Sam and Mr. Phelps'.

I believed Sam was about to join me, because when I turned around to see their reactions to my show, Sam was on her feet, hands on the hem of her shirt, but she froze.

"Sam?" I asked and quickly put my top back on, again hiding my large breasts. "Sam, what is it?" The hair on the back of my neck and on my forearms stood on end as Sam stood there, her eyes not moving, but like she was listening, maybe afraid to move.

I couldn't hear a thing, and the proximity pucks weren't even beeping. The closer something was, the louder and more incessantly they'd beep, and they were arranged in such a pattern that there were no gaps in their ranges between each other. I moved to get out of the river, but I froze completely still, just like Sam had, as I heard the sharp and fast whistle of an arrow, and then it hit the riverbed directly in front of me. Fuck.

Every puck started going off at once and then they were all screaming. Knowing better than to act fast, I stayed where I was, arms raised, and Seymour slowly rose with hands up.

Sam was fully panicking, started to hyperventilate and looked all kinds of fidgety as multiple Solarii surrounded our little camp. Their leader was dead. We broke the curse. Besides trespassing, they had no reason to harm us.

"Sam, don't move. Don't try to run. Just stand still!" I urged my friend that had every reason to be horrified of this tribe. I held out my arms placatingly and to show I clearly had no weapons.

We were clearly outnumbered, and none of my guns were within reach. For how prepared I felt just moments ago, I realized we weren't dealing with the same loud and overconfident Solarii from our first visit. While equipped similarly, they moved in far better cohesive movement, and they had mastered ambush and guerilla techniques.

One of the men stepped forward, wearing a cracked face shield that looked like it was made of bamboo and had intricate carvings all along the curving sides that hid his jaw. It was actually ornate and beautiful. Were they developing an artful hunter and warrior culture?

He approached Mr. Phelps and spoke in Russian, but Mr. Phelps just slowly shook his head, not even speaking English but making it clear they weren't going to connect with that language. He tried Japanese next, and he shook his head, but Sam answered, causing me to sigh and close my eyes. This might not be good.

"Japanese?" the leader asked Sam, and she nodded, offering him an awkward, clearly worried smile, but she tried to appear calm. It was a miserable failure, but I gave her points.

"You must be lost," he said, and I slowly started to move out of the water, but a raider behind me made me stop cold by pumping his shotgun. My curiosity made me want to turn around to study the model, to see what kind of thrown together effort we were dealing with, but my intelligence and self-preservation told me not to be so foolish. All I could do was wonder how Sam would handle this.

"Not lost. Not tourists. Scholar," Sam said in the broken Japanese she had been working on. She wasn't fluent, but she had been learning since I knew her. It wasn't a rigorous study, but one she enjoyed when her moods made her feel proud of her ancestry and familial culture. Sam pointed at me when she said "scholar," and now all eyes were on the girl in the river that wore just her underwear.

Sam was the Japanese speaker among us, of what she could anyway, but I was more comfortable with Russian. It was more for dirty business and market reasons than it was for academic purposes.

"Archaeologist," I said, pointing to myself. He waved me forward, and I looked back over my shoulder to see a large man lowering a Mossberg. It had wear on it, but it sure looked like it would end my life easily enough if I caused trouble.

"What are you looking for?" he asked. This was curious to me. He didn't recognize me or know who I was. Surely the Solarii didn't already forget about the unkillable woman who killed Mathias and ended the curse of Himiko.

Luckily for me, his Russian was better than his Japanese was. This also highlighted to me the cultural shift that the arrival of Mathias and his Russians had, switching the dominant Solarii language to Russian from the Japanese I had assumed was the starting language of these people. What kind of Seino purge did the Russians commit to cause this?

"I'm a British archaeologist hoping to study the island now that weather patterns seem to have leveled enough to allow exploration," I explained, hoping to hide our identity. "This is Sam, my documentarian, and this is Seymour, a college student studying under me," I said.

I couldn't read a damn expression because of that damned mask, as much as I liked it. It also made him quite the intimidating figure. The Japanese WWII era sword on his hip didn't ease me, either. He just crossed his big meaty arms over his chest.

"Lots of tourists over the last year," he gruffed. "Killed most of them. What makes you special?"

I took a moment to regard his answer. "Nothing material," I answered. "I didn't want him to know that Jonah would hopefully be arriving soon with whatever presents we could get this new Zip character to help us out with. "What makes us different is that we want to study the Solarii."

He remained quiet for a moment, just studying me, putting the shoe on my foot. "You know who we are?"

I nodded, and I noticed that some of the hunting party were closer to us, observing Mr. Phelps and Sam, one even playing with Sam's hair.

"Lara..." Sam breathed, a clear fearful reaction to her personage being touched so primitively.

"Lara?" the man parrotted back. "Croft? Mathias slayer." So they did remember. I closed my eyes, expecting to be instantly shot by a thousand arrows and bullets, but after a long pause, I was still very much alive.

"Yes," I confirmed for better or worse. "With the curse of Himiko lifted, I wanted to return and see what became of the island and the Solarii, now that the dust has had time to settle."

"Time to settle?" the large man grunted, and roughly grabbed my chin. "Time to settle? Nothing has settled. Mathias was a cancer that cared about a damned legend more than the prosperity of the Solarii. I'm glad he's dead. However, the Solarii have fractured without a leader and have become five small tribes constantly fighting for the savages and resources of this island."

I swallowed thickly and tried to nod my understanding, but his iron grip stopped me from moving, and this power imbalance reminded me that I was still in just my sports bra and panties from my ill-fated river bath.

"We can't let you wander our territory alone. You'll come to the village with us," he said, and we were in no position to argue.

I nodded. "We'll break camp right away and follow."

"No," he said abruptly. "Not enough time. There are more dangerous things in these jungles than wolves, Lara Croft. You will think us cruel, but we are much better than what comes out at night. We will send for your things in the light."

"Am I allowed to dress?" I ventured, not looking forward to making this trek in just my unders.

He spared me another glance over his shoulder. "No." I sighed, and was relieved when he let me put my socks and boots on. My feet would not have survived, especially with the failing light that would have obscured obstacles and things that would have eviscerated my poor feet.

With no option left to us, and knowing that there was something(s) out there that even these Solarii were afraid of, we fell into a single file line with the hunting party and followed them through the woods. They knew their territory far better than we could have ever hoped to, and made far better time than we would have on our own.

We had just made it to a massive wooden stockade lined with torches as the very last of light dimmed into stars and nova lit dark skies. There was no light pollution out here, and I assumed it was the most natural and impressive nightscape Mr. Phelps had ever witnessed.

As we walked through the village, we had plenty of people gathering to watch, and there were murmurs and a shout or two about us, but no one dared to approach as we were so heavily guarded.

Our masked leader led us to a large central hall at the end of the village, ensuring that we had done our captured tour through the entire main stretch, and I assumed this was on purpose. The hall was the end and beginning of the village, depending on how you looked at it, and all prisoners would have to suffer this procession. My procession was a little different than Sam's and Mr. Phelps, given the lack of clothing I had. Luckily my constitution when it came to physical body displaces was stronger than most, as Mr. Phelps had already learned. Sam's wasn't quite like mine, as she preferred to find ways to expose me and not herself. In honesty, it was her proclivity for such games that allowed me to stay so unbothered and level headed.

Our group leader approached the massive wooden double doors of the hall and said something to the guard. It was brash and choppy, and I couldn't quite piece it together. It was some hodge-podge of a Seino-Russo dialect, like they were taking what they liked from each language and molding them together into their own designer language. It was absolutely fascinating.