"Trinity wasn't the first to come looking for Himiko."
Lara said it with certainty, and Bella could see it for herself.
The WWII-era Japanese military base surrounding them told the whole story—the metal structures, the pipe networks, the labyrinthine underground passages. The Japanese had set their sights on Himiko fifty years ago. Whether they'd abandoned the plan due to lack of manpower, or whether the Stormguard had slaughtered every last one of their soldiers, no one could say. But judging by the scale of the base, they'd come remarkably close to Himiko's underground tomb.
"My guess," Bella said, "is that Trinity got hold of some of their research notes after the war ended. The records were incomplete, though—which is why they wasted seven years getting nowhere."
Lara nodded quietly and didn't pursue it further. She suspected her father's leads had come from the same wartime Japanese sources, but that was beside the point. Right now, the only thing that mattered was the rescue mission.
They abandoned the jeep—one with a knife, one with a bow—and moved carefully deeper into the base.
"Lighten your steps. Control your breathing."
"Use your core. A wall three meters high (~10 ft) is nothing if you engage your hips."
"See those two ahead? We each take one."
Bella kept a running commentary on stealth techniques—a blend of S.H.I.E.L.D. tradecraft she'd absorbed from Natasha and ancient knowledge drawn from the Golden Apple. Lara was a frighteningly fast learner. Climbing techniques, stealth approaches—she absorbed them instantly. After putting down two enemies in quick succession, she'd already developed a workable killing method.
What a talent.
Bella neutralized her own target and watched as Lara tossed a pebble to draw a guard's attention, then slipped behind him and drove an arrow through his throat. Fast. Precise. Not a drop of blood on her.
Setting aside Bella herself—who was basically playing with cheat codes—Lara and Natasha were the two most combat-gifted women she'd ever encountered. Barbara the Mockingbird was a hair behind them in every category. That gap might look small on paper, but add it all up and the difference was glaring.
Lara had the edge in raw strength and endurance. Natasha had her beat on agility, coordination, and reflexes. But Lara had one critical weakness: she wasn't ruthless enough yet.
Natasha, on the other hand, lacked Lara's stamina and that stubborn never-retreat instinct. Pure field agent mentality—finish the enemy if you can, run if you can't. Lara was a born adventurer: I'm outmatched? Doesn't matter. Charge.
Two fighters, each with their own strengths and blind spots.
"Move." Bella slit a soldier's throat and waved Lara forward.
The underground Japanese base was vast. Trinity's destructive excavations nearby had caused severe water infiltration, and much of the facility was flooded under standing water. Rotting furniture lay scattered everywhere. Japan being one of the most seismically active places on Earth, fifty years' worth of earthquakes had significantly rearranged the island's interior geography.
What should have been a straight corridor would suddenly end in a solid wall of rock. Even at full strength—which she wasn't—Bella didn't have the power to punch through an entire boulder with her fist.
Rin was guiding them from a distance via a mental link, and they could spot signs of Trinity's fighting throughout the base, yet the two of them still managed to circle the underground complex twice before finding their way.
By the time they reached the deepest section, the battle was already over.
Trinity's soldiers had suffered catastrophic losses but managed to take down more than a dozen Stormguard warriors. They'd then sent a decoy unit to draw the Stormguard General away. The passage to Himiko's burial chamber was now open. Before the stone gate at the chamber entrance hung a curtain of light that rippled like water. Scattered around it lay more than fifty dead Trinity soldiers and Stormguard warriors reduced to pulp.
The Stormguard's immortality was fueled by Himiko's power, but Himiko was locked in a critical struggle against Sadako and had no attention to spare for her warriors.
"We go in too—watch out!"
Bella had sensed the Yata no Kagami's presence from a distance. The divine mirror was known for illusions, confusion, misdirection—she couldn't pin down its full capabilities from the outside. To break through its barriers, she'd have to enter herself.
She was about to step forward when her death-warning instinct fired.
She shoved Lara sideways and threw herself the other direction.
An instant later, a weapon like a spiked flail slammed down exactly where they'd been standing.
The Stormguard General had killed the Trinity decoys and come back.
He knew he'd been tricked.
The thought of vermin crawling through the queen's tomb filled him with murderous fury.
The sharp ring of a blade being drawn cut through the air—Rin emerged from the shadows where she'd been hiding, her rapier striking like a viper's fang into the back of the General's neck.
Bella drew the Kusabimaru in the same instant.
She charged two steps, then launched herself into the air. The General's momentum was spent; his flail was buried in the ground, leaving his front completely exposed.
The Stormguard General stood over eight feet tall. He lurched backward and swung his flail up in a desperate guard.
He didn't make it halfway.
Rin's rapier punched through the back of his neck and out the other side. The guard movement collapsed. And Bella's Kusabimaru was already there—the blade's edge carrying a faint, unsettling darkness—a katana arc from low to high, slicing clean through the General's right hand at the grip of his flail. Bella hung in midair, both hands on the blade, and unleashed a rapid sequence of cuts: the secret technique Floating Passage, leaving three black-edged wounds across the General's neck, chest, and abdomen.
"Go!" She left the critically wounded General to Rin. Both were Japanese; absorbing the General's spiritual essence would make Rin considerably stronger than before.
Bella grabbed Lara and plunged through the curtain of light.
"Wait—who was that woman? How did she even—" Lara hadn't gotten a clear look at where Rin had appeared from. All she'd caught was a brief impression of strange clothing before Bella yanked her into the light.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the Yata no Kagami's spatial distortion activated, and Lara was instantly separated from Bella.
When the disorientation from the space-warp faded, she found herself face to face with Mathias—the current leader of Himiko's cult.
She raised her bow. He rolled and fired. Back and forth they went, trading blows inside the illusion-space.
Mathias had survived years on Yamatai. He might have been an ordinary man once, but he moved with the competence of a trained soldier now.
He fired deliberately, baiting Lara into burning through her arrows. It wasn't an infinite quiver. When she ran dry, he stepped out from cover with a SIG Sauer P226 aimed at her forehead, his expression cold and predatory.
"You're the woman who came ashore last night, aren't you? What a pity. This is where you die."
Lara held his gaze, eyes tracking his trigger finger. "You only have one round left."
Mathias smiled. "Killing you only takes—"
Even as he spoke, he was mentally counting his ammunition. He was sure he had two rounds remaining.
That flicker of uncertainty crossed his face for just a fraction of a second. Lara caught it.
Her hand swept behind her back.
The next moment, she drew the shotgun she'd found along the way and kept hidden this entire time.
Bang.
At under three meters (~10 ft), the blast turned Mathias into a colander. Dead before he hit the ground.
"Idiot." Lara tucked the shotgun back behind her, then collected her scattered arrows. She still had an image to maintain.