The comfortable often fear the desperate—but a desperate person with a gun is what they fear most.
That was the main reason Lord Croft, despite having the resources to mobilize his family's considerable connections and arrange a private escort back to England, was boarding a rescue boat as an ordinary civilian, surrounded by ordinary civilians.
"Understood. I'll be careful." Bella hadn't been planning to reveal herself anyway.
Trinity was a genuine headache, and she knew it.
At least the Knights Templar operated by some kind of code. Their members were educated, ideologically driven, pursuing a coherent—if ruthless—vision of a new modern order. There was a logic to them, a framework you could engage with.
These Trinity fanatics? Pure zealots. No logic. No framework. Nothing to reason with.
"Goodbye, Lara."
"Goodbye, Bella!"
Lara and her father departed on the first rescue boat.
The Flying Dutchman called Rin and the rich heir back aboard.
Rin had absorbed some of the Stormguard General's essence. She could feel it—a current of storm-force now ran beneath her movements, shaving precious fractions off her reaction time. Her previously unremarkable rapier now bore several engraved sigils shaped like rain and wind.
Practically speaking, Rin's new ability let her saturate a small area with mud and standing water—exactly the kind of terrain she fought best in, like the flooded fields of Ashina. She was clearly delighted.
The rich heir had performed below Bella's expectations, so his reward was cut accordingly: a six-month leave. If he showed improvement next time, she'd consider bumping that to a full year.
"Any interest in studying something off the standard curriculum?" Dr. Graham asked, just before they parted.
Dr. Vivienne Graham's injuries were severe. She'd taken a hit through her abdomen and then been dragged at a sprint for nearly a mile (~1.6 km). An ordinary person would have been dead long ago. She was still pale, still clearly in pain, but she was standing, and she was talking.
Her unusual bloodline had kicked in. Every organ looked anatomically human—but her regenerative capacity ran well ahead of the baseline.
Bella had never been able to pin down which organization Dr. Graham worked for. One phone call and a squad of U.S. military personnel appeared, which suggested serious institutional weight. But that strange bloodline made it hard to imagine she was simply a government employee.
"What kind of studying did you have in mind, Doctor?"
Dr. Graham lowered her voice. "Those things that were chasing me earlier—they came from deep in the ocean. Don't you want to know more?"
Oh, I absolutely want to know more. I want to find Calypso and put her in the ground.
Bella still didn't know whether those fish-men had been coming for her or for the doctor—or both. That sea goddess had been making her life miserable for long enough. If she could just find the exact coordinates, she'd drop something nuclear on the spot without a second thought. But the woman was somewhere in the abyss, and the ocean was not a small place.
"I… yes, I do want to know. But your organization—"
Dr. Graham's smile was warm and unhurried. "We're an international body with oversight from multiple governments. We're not the bad guys. We won't interfere with your studies. We won't touch your assets. We won't ask you to perform strange rituals. We're a scientific research institution."
Bella thought it over and shook her head. "My studies have to come first right now."
Dr. Graham took the answer in stride. "That's perfectly reasonable. We'll see each other at Stanford anyway—there's plenty of time. My door is open whenever you change your mind."
"Noted."
Dr. Graham boarded a helicopter and lifted off from Yamatai.
Bella and Sadako left on the second rescue boat that evening, making their way back to Tokyo.
The Izu Oshima expedition had been relentless from start to finish. But it was over.
Bella's mental reserves had taken a serious hit. On the upside, she'd learned several new offensive spells, and she'd walked out with the Yata no Kagami and the Shikon Jewel from Himiko's collection. By any honest accounting, it had been a productive trip.
"Sakura, I'm home!"
Bella led Sadako into the apartment and found the little dragon exactly where she'd left her—eyes glued to the television, watching cartoons.
She felt a twinge of exasperation. This kid is addicted. I went out, killed a bunch of people, dismantled a tomb, crossed hundreds of miles of hostile terrain through multiple combat zones, and you're still watching the same cartoon?
Sakura ignored her. Then she sensed Sadako—and spun around fast.
"Sn— snake! SNAKE—"
Sadako yelped and ducked behind Bella.
Bella had been watching Sakura's reaction carefully. She didn't fully trust her own read on things anymore. To confirm whether Sadako's dark side was truly gone, she'd deliberately said nothing in advance—she wanted an unfiltered second opinion from the dragon's perspective.
A divine serpent's perception ought to outstrip a half-trained amateur's by a wide margin.
Sakura shifted to her true form, coiling out to over ten feet (~3 m) long, and circled Sadako with scrutinizing passes. She sniffed. She poked. At one point she licked her.
Five minutes later, the two of them were sitting side by side watching cartoons together.
Sadako was a living person. She couldn't spend every day parked in front of the television—that wasn't a life.
Her dream was simple: to be recognized. Appreciated. The kind of wish that would fit perfectly on the back cover of any coming-of-age manga.
Getting there, however, was another matter. She'd never finished middle school, and she'd been cut off from the world for nearly forty years. Building a life people could admire was going to take serious work.
Sadako had no practical skills to speak of. The one thing she could point to was a stint with a dance troupe before everything went wrong—she'd had some training in performance, even landed a lead role once. There was talent there, buried under everything else.
Two long conversations with Bella later, Yamabuki Sadako had settled on a goal: she was going to be an idol.
Bella's entertainment connections were thin at best. Her Hollywood-adjacent network was slightly better—she lived in Los Angeles, so she'd accumulated a few useful contacts over time. Japan's entertainment industry was a different world entirely.
The entertainment industry is cutthroat everywhere, and Japan was no exception. Without connections and backing, breaking through was nearly impossible.
To make sure Sadako didn't slide back into darkness, Bella needed to hold her hand through the early stages—at minimum, until the path was clear.
The plan she drew up was this: start in Hollywood and put in two years. A Japanese actress trying to make it in Hollywood was essentially impossible—it didn't matter how much money or influence was behind her, even daughters of major Japanese conglomerates had crashed out over there. But the credential was what mattered. Land a few supporting roles, build an honest Hollywood résumé, then return to Japan with that gold leaf backing her name. At that point, managing her domestic career would be a different conversation entirely.
Bella drafted a study plan for Sadako that ran over ten pages. The gaps were substantial.
Going to Hollywood required, as a minimum starting point: speaking English.
Hollywood professionals were widely criticized—entitled behavior, on-set bullying—but their work ethic on the actual job was something else. The craft itself they took seriously.
Across the industry, language coaches were everywhere. An actor relying on post-production dubbing was looked down upon by their peers. Texas drawl? Unacceptable. Canadian vowels? Fix it. A Japanese accent? Don't even ask.
The real reason for that contempt, Bella suspected, had less to do with artistic purity and more to do with the coaching studios' owners. Keep actors in dialect training, or how does the business model work?
Whatever the motivation—Sadako had a lot of studying ahead of her.