Kapitel 1: Chapter 1

In a luxurious room in Croft Manor, an eleven-year-old girl with brown eyes and hair woke up groggily in a bed made of the finest materials. "What happened?" she asked herself as she looked around. "Wasn't I just trying to get a 100% completion in all the Tomb Raider games?"

At that moment, the door to the room opened, and an old butler entered with a plate of tea and an English breakfast. Seeing that Lara had awakened, he quickly put down the plate and asked, "Are you okay, young lady? How do you feel?"

Lara, who felt like she had a migraine, asked, "Who am I, and who are you?"

Hearing these questions, the old butler felt a painful sting in his heart. His young lady had suffered a great deal: in the past, she lost her mother in an airplane crash. Just yesterday, she witnessed the aftermath of her father's "suicide." The authorities called it suicide, but the old butler was neither foolish nor as young as Lara; he knew it was an assassination. He had no proof, though, and no support. Lara's relatives were like hungry wolves wanting to devour the Croft estate, and that witch Ana was surely involved.

"Young lady, you are Lara Croft," Winston said gently. "You are the daughter of Richard and Amelia Croft, the future Countess of Abbingdon. And I am Winston Jeeves, your butler."

As Lara's head began to clear, she could only exclaim, "What the fuck!" before jumping off the bed. She tried to find the bathroom, relying on Lara's fragmented memories, and upon finding it, she looked in the mirror to see a cute young girl staring back at her.

"WHAT! THE! HELL!" she shouted.

The old butler, Winston, wanted to ask her not to use foul language, but decided against it. After all, seeing one's father's assassination aftermath was traumatic, and she was only eleven.

Turning back to Winston, Lara asked, "Winston, what year is it?"

"It's the summer of 1980, young lady," he answered.

Some time later, Lara was eating her breakfast and sipping her tea, lost in thought. 'Did I get reincarnated as Lara Croft? Or did my soul merge with hers? Or was I always her, and my past life memories just awakened? Also, how did I die?'

After thinking hard, she remembered: she had a glass of water next to her PC, knocked it over, spilled it on the PC, and got electrocuted.

'What are the chances of getting electrocuted by a PC and dying?' she thought, annoyed. 'Anyway, now I'm Lara Croft—the demolition queen, ancient ruins destroyer, island-slaughtering monster, and dual-wielding pickaxe berserker. Though maybe not yet, since I'm only eleven years old.'

As she watched Winston clean the table, Lara mused, 'And this is a universe that seems like a combination. I am born in 1969 like in the original timeline and there is Richard, Amelia and Ana from the Survivor timeline.'

"Winston, I want you to be my legal guardian and manage my assets until I'm old enough," Lara said firmly.

Hearing this, Winston asked, "Are you sure, young lady? Do you not want Ana to be your legal guardian?"

Lara responded, "I'm sure. I trust you more than her. There's something off about that wretch."

Hearing this, Winston sighed in relief, grateful that Lara also sensed something was wrong with Ana and did not fully trust her. "I can try to arrange that, but I'll need to contact some old friends from my earlier days," he said.

Lara's tone was serious. "Please," she insisted.

"Alright, young lady," said Winston, taking the empty plates to the kitchen.

Lara thought of suggesting they hire some maids to help, but she remembered they didn't have any. Her father, Richard, had only trusted Winston and did not want to risk infiltration by enemies posing as staff. Lara also did not want to hire maids now, because her relatives—and Trinity—could try to plant spies. There was a small chance Trinity would bother, given that Ana was already there to keep tabs on her.

Ana was part of the Order of Trinity, commonly known as Trinity, a religious military order of fanatics who sought to control humanity's fate through ancient artifacts. They were also responsible for her father's assassination. Richard had been close to revealing Paititi and Trinity's existence to the world and Dominguez decided to kill him.

After eating, Lara wandered through the manor, looking at the artifacts her father had stored. Entering his office—now spotless, with no sign of the body—she noticed an old newspaper on the desk. The word "captain" caught her eye. Reading it, she found two words that terrified her: "Captain America."

Lara started hyperventilating before running off to find Winston. She found him on the phone and interrupted, "Winston, do you know about Howard Stark?"

"Yes, young lady," Winston replied calmly. "He's one of my old friends, the CEO of Stark Industries. He also has a ten-year-old boy named Tony. Maybe you could become friends."

Hearing this, Lara bolted from the manor into the garden. "NOOOOOOOOO!" she screamed, dropping to her knees and shouting at the sky.

After her outburst, she prayed silently, 'Please be the movie universe, please be the MCU, please, please.'

Seeing Winston approach, she asked, "Winston, do you know about the mutants?"

"Yes, young lady," he replied. "I know of them—humans with superpowers led by Charles Xavier and Magneto."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Lara screamed again for several seconds before collapsing. Winston hurried over to help her up.

'Now there's also a mind reader in the equation,' Lara lamented.