Owner	Pose
Ekaterina Vespucci	It is midday and an exhibit in the Museum of natural history has attracted Ekaterina. Usually she was not terribly curious having witnessed so much of history herself. But this was a number of artefacts all inscribed with old Frankish or Old Franconian text. One of her native tongues some twelve hundred years ago. She is seemingly fascinated with the exhibit her large cornflower blue eyes wide as she mouths the words under her breath reading the text on a tabbard. There are some swrods with Latin inscriptions but knowledge of Latin even today was much more common than the language Kat speaks to herself. Kat is small and dressed in cheap cold weather clothing despite being quite wealthy. She always dresses down. Her age is ostensibly that of a freshman. Nineteen maybe twenty years of age. Not the sort of person you'd expect to be so infatuated with antiquity. In her hand is her preferred beverage - a long black coffee.
Lara Croft	Lara is at the Museum today, as it happens, having delivered something via the loading docks in the warehouse building down below--something from a recent trip to Italy in fact. Now though, she's up in the main area where the public wanders and explores. She's moving toward one of the displays that Ekaterina is at and she's pulling out a keycard to open the door beside it. As she slides the keycard through it clicks open and Lara looks over to Ekaterina and offers a light smile. "Quite a collection, yes?" She says then before she opens the door and then just leans inside to pick an item off of one of the display shelves. Its nothing remarkable, just a small statue of a pair of men sitting on either sides of a monolith that they're praying toward. Lara is dressed in dark tan trousers and a light jacket of navy blue color, she has a light grey henley shirt on beneath that that is tucked into her pants and cinched around her trim waist by a brown leather belt.
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Yes - makes me feel quite nostalgic," Ekaterina lets slip she has yet to take her peepers off've the artifacts. They are not quite ancient only about a millenia old but to her they are a mirror to another time and place. "Are you a curator here?" Ekaterina asks - a conclusion she might have drawn due to Lara's opening a display.
Lara Croft	That same display is locked up again and she holds the item she'd pulled from inside between her hands. Her eyes go over to Kat and she shows the other a soft smile. "I'm an archaeologist." She softly says. "I've... gained a fair amount of trust here due to my experiences with the Museum and its staff. I guess I'm just not considered a threat to security, when I'm bringing them boxes of goodies to put out here for others to hopefully enjoy." Lara's eyes go over the display that Kat was looking at her and her right hand coems up to brush back some of her dark hair behind her right ear there.
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Ah delightful. You must have some stories I suppose. About where all this came from. I am a collector myself. Though I can't boast a collection such as this," in fact some of Kat's stuff was better. She even had her crown from her Holy Roman Empire days floating around somewhere. "I'm Ekaterina... or Kat as most call me."
Lara Croft	"Oh, I'm not the sole donator of this. I'm not _that_ good." The British woman grins softly before she draws in a breath then and offers a light nod of her head toward the young woman before her. "I'm Lara." She tells the woman. "Croft." Her right hand leaves the statue she'd pilfered from the display and she offers it to Kat. "Pleasure to meet you. What brings you to the museum today?" She asks next then. "I'd be happy to point you toward some great stuff to view."
Ekaterina Vespucci	Kat shakes Lara's hand. For an artist who works alot with her hands they are awfully soft - alot of easy living apparently. "Oh I just like this partucular era. I identify with it alot for some reason. The Dark Ages just fascinate me. Maybe it comes from being a Game of Thrones fan I do not know." Kat then translates a line of text on the Scabbard she is looking at, "Levis est gladio - Sword of Light. Perhaps a proto Star Wars fan before there was even a Star Wars?"
Lara Croft	Lara wasn't the most up to date on pop culture references, she'd been raised without even having a television in her family's home back near London. "Perhaps." She says with a soft smile and a lightly amused tone about her response. "I've heard quite a lot about, well, both of those things." She tells Kat before she looks to the sword in question and then back at the young woman before her. Lara's hand certainly gave a bit of impression that she's seen a fair amount of manual labor, even the back of it has a few scars across her knuckles and tops of her fingers. "Well, I don't want to disturb you while you're here to browse and observe." The archaeologist then says to the woman she presumes doesn't want to be pestered, its only polite after all.
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Oh you're not interrupting - I can get very distracted sometimes sorry. Unless you have to be somewhere and are politely withdrawing which is fine also," Kat is a little socially awkward. A huge nerd in fact. "Did you retireve anything that is a part of this Dark Ages Medieval display?" Kat asks. "If you are interested I might have a few things I could show you in my collection from the same era."
Lara Croft	"Ah... no." Lara replies then with a faint smile and a shake of her head. "I haven't done any expeditions in search of medieval artifacts. Nothing that I've been able to donate to the Museum at least. Some items can be quite difficult to get across country borders and end up having to be relinquished to their specific governments. But..." Lara walks around Kat then and moves to a few cases down, before she points at an item. "This is dated at just after the end of the Middle Ages, but its still a remarkable piece." She's pointing at the very odd looking Henry the VIII's Horned Helmet. "I love it. The inner child within me could stare at this strange... thing for a very long time." She glances over to Kat and shows a small smile. "You have your own collection then?"
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Oh yes one collected over as lifetime. Several in fact. Some things I inherited." It was impossible to tell but Kat was being quite literal here. As for the helmet, "Is it on loan? I can't see the English reliquishing it." She looks at the helmet, "Boy the aristocracy did get quite profligate in the late Niddle Ages. I can think of an earlier time when it was common for them to make pilgrimage and serve the poor for long spells." Kat of course had personal experince with this.
Lara Croft	Lara looks back to the full masked helmet and she nods her head. "Most of the items are on loan." She says then in response before her arms cross over her stomach and she holds that small statue against the side of her torso. She looks back to Kat and watches her as she says those little bits about herself, it comes off as Kat being quite old... which is possible, Lara knows that the average human life spans don't apply to EVERYone in this world, but she doesn't question it... that would be improper in this instance. "You seem to know your stuff." Lara tells the other showing a light smile. "You'll probably be lost for hours in this place, like I sometimes am."
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Hours if not days," Kat says smiling - her huge blue eyes scanning the museum once more. "But it looks like my darn coffe has gotten cold - if that isn't the biggest downer. Always there is something to wake you up. You know the last time I was here there was this douche the Reverse Flash fighting a couple of guys? How can one be a Reverse Flash? It seems to imply walking backwards very slowly."
Lara Croft	Lara shows a soft smile at the coffee bit. "That is an unfortunate side effect of distracting your mind so fully that everything else falls to the wayside of our attentions." She grins just a bit then before the rest of what Kat says causes her to laugh, lightly, but laugh all the same. "Reverse, Flash... Flash is, one of the Avengers, right?" She asks, getting that wrong, but she's not that great with the celebrity super heroes of the world. "He's the one that can run here to Kilimanjaro in a matter of heart beats?" A light exhale then and she shakes her head. "I would think the reverse of that would be... yes, would be as you described it. I hope nothing was damaged when that happened! Or... people hurt, that too..." She's a bit socially awkward too, but there's many reasons for that.
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Oh I have run across just about all of the supers in a matter of three weeks even some of the villains. I've been here in New York for some tiem without meeting a single celebrity now I think I've met them all. Superman, Wonder woman, Batman, Red Robin, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, The Punisher and Rorschach. There must be a few that I left out. When did the world become a Luche Libre show? Maybe I should get a suit." Kat throws her coffee in the bin and puts her hands on her hips. "I'm pretty sure Reverse Flash was after some sort of artifact. Not sure if he found it or damaged anything. I simply snuck out when the opportunity arose."
Lara Croft	While Kat is throwing her coffee out, Lara is moving to pick a book up off of the floor that someone must've dropped. She lifts it up and flips it open to look inside the cover for any contact info. After a second she closes it and looks back to the young woman. "Well, this part of the world has become synonymous with Super Heroic activities. They've flocked here, the good ones, and the bad... Its becoming a boiling point, if you ask me." She shows a faint grin then. "Not many do, however." She adds with a quiet tone to her voice. "I don't believe I've heard of anyone stealing anything recently, so perhaps he was stopped. Let us hope he was... but then, there shouldn't be anything powerful kept within this Museum, unless we've overlooked something."
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Maybe not powerful on it's own but occasionally you'll find a key or a clue to something bigger and better. It's the way of things. A pity he had to run away... slowly... backwards. We might have been able to ask him what he wanted." Kat peers over at the book, "Ah careless students. I teach Art History and have a batch of my own over at the community college in Queens."
Lara Croft	Lara places the book beneath her left arm against the side of her chest and she smiles softly at the other's words. "I suppose so. I've done much of that myself over the years, following one clue to the next." She glances toward the exit from this particular part of the Museum. "Surely a very slow super villain didn't make it far..." She frowns at that then and draws her eyes back over to Kat. "Oh really?" She asks about the teaching. "I did a semester at Xavier's School. Its a boarding school north of here in Westchster. Nice place... very, fascinating enviroment they're cultivating there."
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Oh Charles? His school. I played chess with him once in Central Park." Kat gets around apparently. "Cultivating? Interesting analogy. I was never a fan of formal schooling until I got roped in to teach. So you taught at Xaveir's - Ancient History? Launguages?"
Lara Croft	Lara leans back against a large wooden support beam while she listens to the other. She smiles lightly and nods once. "Charles Xavier, yes. He's a very kind man. He actually tracked me down here when he offered me the job... Oh... a little over a year ago, I guess. The time, really flies..." She flashes another quick smile then. "But yes, World History. I only did a semester, but I've been meaning to go back and do a lecture or two. Especially now that they're offering university level courses, so I'm told. I... was injured quite severely on a trip, so I had to take time off from my world galavanting, and I chose to teach. It was quite fun, I hope to do it again later in life." She's still just in her mid twenties after all, quite a bit different from Ekaterina in that regard.
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Yes he's very avuncular," Kat slips in, "He was rather eager to meet me. Not sure why. I guess I own a few commercial art galleries so its a good outlet for his students who are thus inclined." Kat raises an eyebrow, "Injured? Is archaeology that dangerous of a profession now? I suppose the world is more dangerous now. All this business in Africa."
Lara Croft	"Well." Lara says softly then. "My archaeology skills are under the employ of SHIELD, as it stands today." She admits. "I'm an Agent for them, an... acquisitions agent, in fact. So, this means the projects that they have me assigned to of tne come with a tacked-on level of danger that otherwise might not exist on the average 'dig'." She shows a light smirk then. "I'm sure it'll leave me wheelchair bound by the time I'm in my fourties, but hopefully... before that... I can accomplish a lot of good to help keep this world better secured from the bad people who wish to garner items of great power, from lost and forgotten corners of our planet."
Ekaterina Vespucci	"Hmm SHIELD the newer friendlier face of the Deep State. Suprised that they dig into antiquity but I suppose there is the potential of danger there. Or the possibility of someone other than approved persons obtaining a modicum of power." Kat is plainly skeptical of SHIELD. Later this might vindicated. "They have alot of tricks over there - maybe they'll have one that keeps their agents out of wheelchairs at some stage. It only seems decent."
Lara Croft	"It does seem only decent." Lara says then to Kat with a soft smile as she pushes off of the lean she was in and then starts to walk past the other back in the direction she'd come from. "Either way, I best get back to work." A larger smile is shown then. "Good luck with your own work, and I hope that you enjoy the rest of your visit here today. Try the coffee in the cafe downstairs, its quite wonderful."