The Swimsuit Contest
by Andrew Mason aka Dr. Amazing

This is a work of fiction.  Tombraider and Lara Croft are both trademark and copyright of EIDOS Interactive and Core design.  All other characters are copyright of the author.

            This story contains violent and sexual content and is suggested for mature readers (18 and over).
            Comments, complimentary or critical, can be addressed to: dramazin@alphalink.com.au

            Maia was stunned, but only briefly.  Lara did not have time to rise to her feet, but when Maia leapt onto her again she encountered the Magnum that Lara had drawn from its holster.  Lara thumped it into Maia’s temple and yelled, “Enough!”

            Maia smiled a ghastly, vicious smile that was utterly fearless.  She swatted Lara’s hand with a strength that could break bones and the gun flew from Lara’s numbed grip.  Maia’s hands then closed around Lara’s throat and started to choke her.

            Lara grappled with the hands that were squeezing her windpipe but their grip was like iron.  Her vision started to swim and her fear escalated into terror.  She was going to die.

            “Having fun dear?” asked Maia, but the voice was not hers.  It was eerily familiar.  Suddenly, despite her waning consciousness, Lara understood what was happening.

            She stopped trying to remove Maia’s hands and attacked her face.  One fist crashed into Maia’s nose and another jabbed into her eye.  The grip on her neck weakened for a moment and Lara twisted away with all her desperate strength.  She managed to free herself from Maia again and leaped to her feet, unnerved by how light-headed she felt.

            Maia stood facing her, grinning at her distress.  “Don’t pass out dear,” advised Maia’s cruel voice.  “Or you won’t wake up again.”

            Lara was well-trained in a number of martial arts and she was faster and more athletic than the thin model she fought.  Nevertheless she knew she could not defeat her in unarmed combat.  Maia had the strength of madness, or worse.

            Lara turned her eyes to the doorway and feigned a move in that direction.  Maia mirrored the move, and she was wrong-footed when Lara dived in the opposite direction, toward her gun.  Her good hand closed on it just as she felt Maia’s nails scrape at her shorts.  She twisted on the floor and aimed the gun at Maia’s eyes.

            “Get out of her now you bastard!” yelled Lara.  “Or die with her.”

            The expression on Maia’s face changed, like melting wax.  Ferocity was replaced by fear, madness by confusion.  “Lara?” she asked, her voice like a small child’s.

            Lara kept her gun trained on her, not sure whether she should trust this change of demeanour.

            “Lara?” asked Maia again, her voice cracking, her eyes flooding with tears.

            “Maia?  What happened?”

            Maia seemed to ponder the question but was unable to understand it.  Her eyes were confused and her mouth hung open like a simpleton’s.  With mounting horror Lara realised that Maia’s mind was gone.

            Lara put her arm around her, silently cursing the demon that had done this to her.

            When Maia had been attacking her there had been a wild insanity in Maia’s eyes, eyes which were now filled with terror.  Something had caused Maia to attack her, some intelligent force that had wanted her dead, some demon that had possessed the wan model and forced her to commit its crimes.

            A demon which had moved on, leaving Maia’s sanity shattered.

            Lara guided Maia out of the hut, toward the group that still stood outside Christina’s hut.  She did not holster her gun.  Whatever had possessed Maia probably had a new host.

            “Lara are you all right?” asked Chifley, approaching them.

            She studied that face, looked into those eyes, and wondered if she could trust the concern she saw there.  She wondered if she could trust anything.

            “I’m fine, but Maia has been hurt,” said Lara, her voice tight.

            “She looks a damn sight better than you,” said Chifley.  “No offence intended.”

            Chifley’s consideration was not what Lara wanted.  It made her aware of how much she was hurting.  Her throat still felt tight from the near-throttling and the scratches on her neck stung like fire.  The cut on her arm was bleeding again, soaking the bandage.  The bite marks on her left hand were bleeding also and it hurt to move the hand.  Even her breasts hurt, from when she had fallen on them.  She had no time to attend to her myriad wounds, there was still an enemy to be dealt with; an enemy she had no idea how to defeat.

            And night was falling.  The sun was going down over the western trees.  Lara looked at six frightened faces and struggled not to succumb to her own fear.

            “We have a problem,” she announced.

            They all looked to her, waiting for her to tell them what was happening.

            “Maia attacked me when I entered our hut, but she was not in control of her body.  Some force, some demon, possessed her.  It has now left her and I suspect it now occupies one of you.”

            She watched their reactions, hoping her enemy would reveal itself.  There was a look of numb disbelief on most faces.  Only Chifley appeared to have accepted what she’d said.

            “Have you dealt with this before?” he asked.

            “Nothing quite like this, no.  Whatever we’re up against must have been sealed in the Cadachac temple.  Now it’s free, to play merry hell with us.”

            “Hold on Lara,” protested Crombie scornfully.  “You’re suggesting my excavation released something that had been buried for hundreds of years, but was still alive?”

            Lara could sense a shifting of mood in the group.  They did not believe what she had suggested and did not want to believe it.  They would prefer Crombie’s scorn to her pronouncements of doom.

            “And why have we seen none of this violence in the year since the temple was cleared?” continued Crombie.  “It seems that this violence only began when you arrived, and you seem to be its target.”

            “Tell that to Christina,” snarled Lara.  “And the reason you’ve not seen this thing before is because it was hiding, hiding in you.”

            “What?” Crombie was incredulous.

            “You’re behaving now like the learned archaeologist I met in Paris.  But when I arrived you were acting like a lecher.  You as much as admitted that you’d only allowed the shoot to take place so you could see me in a bikini.”

            Crombie began to protest but she spoke over his bluster.

            “If I’m right about this, and I admit I’m only guessing, then this... demon can move from person to person.  It doesn’t even need physical contact to do so; it moved from Jack to Maia while they were in different huts.  It can be a passenger, not forcing its host to do anything, but influencing it subtly, making the most of the host’s weaknesses, as it did with you Crombie.  You must have known something was wrong, that you’d been behaving out of character.”

            Crombie did not reply.  Instead she saw a dawning horror in his face.

            “Alternatively, it can take control of its host, force him or her to act in ways they never would otherwise.  Jack was a victim of it, and now Maia.”  Her voice cracked with rage.  “And when it leaves, it doesn’t leave much behind.”

            The group all looked at Maia, at the vacant, lost look in her eyes.  Lara could tell from the fear she saw that they were beginning to believe her suggestion.

            “No great loss,” snorted Lorna.  “She was half-mad already.”

            Everyone was appalled by her lack of sympathy, Lara more than most.  Lara’s Magnum was up in an instant, the muzzle between Lorna’s eyes.

            “Bad move, you bastard!” snarled Lara.  “Lorna might have thought such a thing but she’d never have said it!”

            Lorna did not look the least perturbed by the gun.  An evil smile slowly transformed her mouth.  “Lara, my dear, you are so smart!”

            Lorna, or what inhabited her, was completely unafraid.  This fearlessness unnerved Lara.  How could she combat it?

            “You figured it out so quickly,” continued Lorna, speaking for an ancient evil.  “Crombie had me as--a passenger did you call it?-- for a year without realising a thing.  I really am most grateful for his guidance.  After all, it was his sordid longing for you that brought you to me.”

            Lara heard Crombie groan behind her, a pitiful sound, but she dared not take her eyes off Lorna for moment.

            “You see he’s lusted after you ever since he met you and it was easy to make him agree to the shoot.  And now here you are, every bit as magnificent as he remembered you.  It is going to be so good to be inside you!”

            Lara felt a growing nausea.  “What do you mean, inside me?”

            “So you haven’t worked that out yet?  Why, it’s only the greatest compliment I could give, my dear.  I have chosen you to be my host when I leave this island.”

            “Not bloody likely,” she objected.

            “You have no choice in the matter, my dear.  Whereas I have been delivered quite a selection.  It is quite tempting to be a famous model, commanding both money and fame, invited everywhere.  There would be no-one I would not have access to.

            “But you’re just perfect!  You’re also famous and beautiful and can travel the world.  But you’re smart and strong and ferocious.  You’ll last me for many years I suspect.  And what fun we’ll have together!  Before I’m finished I’m sure you’ll have quite a terrible reputation.”

            “I won’t allow it!” protested Lara.

            “Oh, you’ll fight it I expect.  You’re strong-willed and it would be a real challenge to compete for control of your body.  Jack was difficult enough to master--I had to direct my violence at Christina in order to gain any co-operation from him, but when she was dead he surrendered to me completely.  I am getting stronger with each possession, but I want to be sure that when I occupy you I will be able to rule you.  Fortunately I have devised a way to do so.”

            “Tell me more,” said Lara, through gritted teeth.

            “No, you tell me Lara.  I want you to figure it out.  Why do you think I have left all these people alive, when I could have made them all walk off a cliff?”

            A slow, sick realisation came to her.

            “Yes, that’s right.  You’re going to have to fight them all, just as you fought Jack and Maia.  And you’re tired already, aren’t you dear?  Imagine how you’ll feel after six more bouts.  And you’ll have to fight tooth and nail, my dear.  I’ll not be going easy on you.  You’ll have to kill each one of them, or I’ll kill you.  And at the end of it all you’ll be weak as a kitten.  I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble taking control then.”

            Chifley had moved up behind Lorna and his gun was now trained on her head also.  His eyes flickered in Lara’s direction and she saw fear and uncertainty in them.  Some of that fear was not for her, but of her.  “Lara, what can we do?” he asked plaintively.

            Lorna answered instead.  “What you can do is attack her now, all of you together.  Or use the gun she gave you.  Then you might have a chance.  But believe me, she is quite a scrapper.”  Lorna chuckled.  “Scrapper.  These North Americans have such a strange vernacular.”

            “Lara.  Tell us what to do!”  Chifley was struggling with the horror of the situation.

            “You’ll do nothing until I tell you to!” raged Lorna, suddenly furious.  “You will not ruin my game!  If you try to use your gun I will make you use it on yourself!”

            Chifley fell silent, staggered by the fury he saw in the face of a woman he no longer knew.

            The Lorna-demon calmed herself.  “Now Lara, back to our little discussion.  I wish to be--how would Crombie put it?--sporting.  I’ll give you a choice.  Who do you wish to fight next?”

            Lorna turned her gaze on the others, who recoiled away from her eyes as if her gaze was deadly.  “The hairdresser seems a bit easy for you, perhaps best left until you’re a bit more tired.  I wonder how vicious our precious Jason could be?  Or Cassie?  I’m sure she’d love to get her hands on you.  Or perhaps Maia again, since she still lives.  That was quite a tussle wasn’t it?”

            “The altar,” said Crombie, as if in a dream.

            “What?” asked Lara.

            “The altar is the source of its power,” explained Crombie.  “We must destroy it.”

            “Oh, you don’t want to do that,” said Lorna, quite calmly.

            “Why not?” asked Lara, suspicion in her voice.

            “The altar holds the souls of all those sacrificed to my glory,” said Lorna proudly.  “The priest-king Manacha gave a hundred or more to me.  I don’t think you’d want to have them all released.”

            “There is one reason we might want to,” said Lara.

            Lorna smiled, her face a mask of ancient intrigue.  “Which is?”

            “You don’t want us to.”

            The barb had the desired effect.  Rage flared across Lorna’s face and insanity gleamed in her eyes.  “You cannot defy me!  I am a god!”

            “You are a pest, nothing more,” taunted Lara.

            Lorna leaped forward, ignoring the guns trained on her.  Lara was ready for the assault.  She side-stepped then swung her elbow into the side of Lorna’s head.  Lorna crashed to the earth but immediately began to rise.  Chifley and Jason leapt onto her back and succeeded in holding down the writhing, cursing madwoman.

            “Go!” yelled Chifley, who had sheathed his gun into his belt.  “We’ll hold her!”

            Lara wondered how long they could do so, wondered how long until the demon chose to change hosts, wondered who would die if she left this scene.  But wondering would save no-one, and she might have only one chance to succeed.

            She holstered her gun then ran from them toward the temple entrance.  She already had gelignite in her backpack, as part of her standard equipment.  She had almost reached the entrance before she realised that someone was running behind her.

            She halted and turned to see Crombie pursuing her.  She drew her gun and aimed at him, causing him to halt in his tracks.

            “Don’t shoot!” he cried.  “It’s me!  Really me!”

            “Get back to the others Crombie,” she commanded.

            “No.  You’ll get it done sooner with my help and I know the site better than you.”

            She paused and she could hear the ongoing struggle behind Crombie.  A woman screamed and she could not tell if it was Lorna or one of the other women.  The situation was urgent and she acknowledged the truth of what he said but she found it hard to trust him.

            Seeing her hesitation he added.  “I want this thing destroyed as much as you--more!  And I owe you.  Let me help.”

            The look of chagrin on his face was genuine.  The real Crombie was a better man than she had suspected.

            If he remained the real Crombie.

            “Lead the way,” she ordered, handing him a flare.  He needed no instructions on lighting it; it was a standard archaeological tool.  Lara holstered her gun, then lit a flare herself.  Crombie then jogged into the site, moving swiftly for a man of his years.  Lara followed close behind.

            He steered them through the site with the ease of familiarity.  Their flares created darting shadows on the walls, dancing among the hieroglyphs.

            “What are you going to use?” asked Crombie, panting as the exertion began to tell on him.

            “Jelly,” said Lara, “with timed ignitors.  We’ll have five minutes to get back to the surface.”

            He nodded, though she could see his fear even in the darkness.  “That’s cutting it a bit fine.”

            “It may not be fine enough.  We don’t know how much time we have before the creature kills them all above ground.”

            “Can it do that?  Can it really do what it said it could?”

            “I’ve seen it do so.  And you, of all people, know how easily it can enter a host.”

            “I’d like to explain about... my behaviour.  I only met you once, but...”

            “We don’t have time for that now Crombie.”

            “No?  Well, sorry anyway.”

            “Apology accepted.  Hold on, what’s going on here?”

            They had reached the passage leading down to the altar theatre and Lara was puzzled to find light streaming out from their destination.

            “It’s lit!” she exclaimed.

            Crombie looked down into the theatre. “Jack left the lights here, and left them on.  Why would he do that?”

            “Not him.  Why would the demon do it?  Jack was under its influence.  I think it left you at the end of my session and entered Jack.”

            “No time to wonder at it,” said Crombie.  “It’ll only make our task easier.”

            They moved into the theatre.  Lara slipped the backpack from her shoulder as they descended the stairs.

            “God!  Look at it!” breathed Crombie.

            The altar was glowing, almost as bright as the lamps that shone upon it.

            “It’s beautiful!” sighed the archaeologist.

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