16841/Parking Patrol

Parking Patrol
Date of Scene:	09 January 2024
Location:	New York City
Synopsis:	Casey has misplaced a time machine. Lara fixes a traffic jam.
Cast of Characters:	Casey Brinke, Lara Croft

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Casey Brinke has posed:
There's a minor traffic jam forming. There's a lot of car honking going on. The cause of it all is a woman wearing a jumpsuit. A boldly blue jumpsuit with yellow and red speed stripes down the sides. Her shoulder length red hair is catching snow on this cold winters day.

"Hey lady are you goin' to move or am I goin' to have to shove my fist up yer --" Another car starts honking loudly and Casey stares at the man in his car nearest her wide eyed.

"I will be out of your way as quickly as I can I promise. This is highly important official saving the world stuff." She then waves her hands through the air again at an empty half car parking spot on the curb. Nope, still nothing there.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara held a residence in Manhattan for her work with SHIELD. She'd just returned to it after being in London for the holidays. As such, she's one of the people on the street when this latest New York 'super' incident began to unfold. In fact, she was leaving a small bookstore along the side of the same street when she heard the raised voices. Dressed in a dark leather jacket, a pale sandy hued scarf around her neck, and dark trousers with matching boots on her feet, she looks up toward the source of the shouting.

She sees the super-attired woman in the middle of the street, and with a quirked eyebrow, she tucked the books she'd just purchased in to a bag on her shoulder, and started to make her way down the side street, her Jeep parked a half a block down, but it gave her a chance to wander a bit closer to see what exactly might be happening in this wild city now...

Lara steps around a couple who have stopped walking on the sidewalk, quietly speaking a soft word to them as she moves past them, her eyes dipping down to glance at the time on her phone in her black gloved hand...

Casey Brinke has posed:
The man revved up his car and judged it forward threatening. Casey glares at him. "Sir. I'm not one to get angry often but if you try to hit me withy our car I might lose my temper just a touch."

"Oh yeah? Big whoop. What are you the next hulk? I don't think so." He revs his car again.

The street is unremarkable. There are several cars parked and given its winter it's hard to determine just where a carpark spot starts and ends. The signage is also pretty clear - no parking after 5pm. Towing in effect.

Casey paces back and forth in contemplation at the strangeness of her lack of time machine. A finger taps thoughtfully on her chin when the car with the angry man in it revs again and lurches forward.

There's a crunch sound when her cybernetic foot plants itself on his bonnet. Her regular foot slides on the icy road as teh car pushes her - but the car grinds its nose in to the road itself making sparks fly.

"That's it! Lawsuit! Destruction of property! I'll have your heroing license for this."

Casey looks bewildered at the man, "You just tried to run me over. Why aren't people just a little bit patient in this city." There's a thump from the car behind that one as it tries to move forward and around him but instead rear ends him.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara's pace slows considerably when she observes the mayhem beginning to unfold. With sparks flying, and tensions rising, she glances north down the street, before south back the way she'd come from. No Police. Great.

Lara's left hand dips in to the side pocket of her leather jacket, and she draws out a black notebook. Holding it up, she pops it open, as she calls out to the driver, and to Casey alike.

"SHIELD Agent. I'm going to have to ask you to step over here, and join me out of the way of traffic, if you could." Lara states, her British accented voice carrying loud enough to easily be heard. She is completely unsure if the super hero attired woman will listen though, but she does not look overly intimidating if nothing else.

"I merely would like to have a chat, if possible." She states, directly to Casey, ignoring the drivers for the time being, let alone everyone else around who might be watching or recording with various electronic devices.

Casey Brinke has posed:
Casey contemplates shutting off the man's car. Her hand goes to the utility belt about her waist but she pauses as she hears a British voice calling out to her. She looks over to Lara, unaware of what SHIELD is besides what a shield is. That certainly sounds like something useful.

Casey holds up a finger of warning to the driver who gives her the finger in return. She withdraws her foot from his car bonnet and walks off the road. The man yells out, "Fuck you lady!" as he speeds off down the road. The road is icy and he drifts, scraping in to several parked cars before he disappears around a corner.

Casey watches his exodus with shock. Several more drivers start to move as the traffic unblocks. After a few cars they don't even know that Casey was the cause of it all.

She looks Lara up and down and her hands go to her hips in a very stereotypically heroic posture. "Hi." A cheery smile despite all the hostility only moments before.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara was not law enforcement, but the SHIELD badge had some serious power behind it in certain circumstances. When the woman stepped out of the flow of traffic, and made her heroic posture stance, it earned a light hearted smile from the English woman. Lara offers a light nod as she closes her black notebook, and holds it in front of her stomach between both of her gloved hands. She steps one step closer to Casey, but motions to the sidewalk beside her. "It's best to just stand here on the side paths rather than out in traffic. That will only get you in to endless confrontations, which would become a rather large bother, over time... I am sure." She explains to the woman who seems to be going through a bit of a fish out of water situation.

Lara offers her right hand to Casey then, the cold January wind blowing some dark brown strands of loose hair about her forehead. "I'm Lara. Croft. I work for an agency called SHIELD, and if you're having some trouble, I'm willing to offer some variety of help. The agency has quite a lot of resources at its fingertips, afterall."

Casey Brinke has posed:
Lara takes that there hand and gives it a very enthusiastic shake. "Space Case. Or just Casey, either is fine." She looks around at the foot traffic versus car traffic as if it's only just dawning on her now. "It's a pleasure to meet you Agent Croft of SHIELD."

She looks her up and down a moment and then nods as if deciding she is trustworthy. Whatever criteria that could be it isn't the kind taught in SHIELD. "Perhaps you can help me. You see, I left my time machine parked right here."

She motions with both hands in a vague sized shape at a half filled carpark on the curb side. "And now it's gone. I'm trying to find it so I can go back. Back to the future." Her hands return to her hips and she nods her head. "The past is terrible and I don't want to be here anymore."

Lara Croft has posed:
As Casey starts her response, Lara slips that notebook back in to her jacket pocket on the left side of her stomach. She raises a hand up to brush aside some of her wind swept bangs, and as the info of a time machine comes out, Lara's eyebrows raise up ever so much. She gives a look toward the indicated location of where the supposed time machine had been parked, but at the sight of nothing, she merely looks back to the woman in the fancy costume. "Is that so...?" She says, no small amount of suspicion laced upon her calm voice. "I see. Well. that would be a rather unsettling situation to find one's self in, wouldn't it..." She mutters softly as she gives a look to the south then, toward traffic, but she doesn't see any signs of a time machine, Delorean or otherwise...

"What did it look like?" The Briton then inquires. "Did you... leave the keys in the ignition, by chance?" Her voice now laced with a little hint of that British dry wit.

Casey Brinke has posed:
Hand gestures, "Well it looks like a.. kind of.. hm.. space ship?" She nods her head thoughtfully and looks back to Lara, "Yes. It looks like a space ship. About yay big." Her eyes unfocus, "I don't think I left the keys in the ignition." She pats her utility belt.

Fishing in to one of its pockets she pulls out some keys, "Nope. Keys right here." Then she catches on, "Oh. You're making fun of me. Because you don't think I have a time machine, or that I'm from the future. Well..."

She twists her lips a touch, "Jokes on you. You might be right." She sighs softly and leans against the parking rules street sign. "I have recently been told that I'm a fictional character from a comic book and not actually from the future at all. But I'm having trouble accepting that so I thought I'd just - you know - leave. Go home. Back where all my friends are. The Doom Patrol clearly don't need me if I'm not even real."

Lara Croft has posed:
The reaction that her words get from Casey, cause Lara to tilt her head to the right just a little. She shows the woman a sympathetic expression before she lightly shakes her head. "I'll admit, I'm not the best suited for super heroic situations, or the troubles that they face. I'm just a person, like any other.." She replies, smiling lightly again. "But, I did see you stop a vehicle with merely the touch of your leg. So I can tell that you do have some measure of powers beyond the normal. This lends credence to what you're saying, in some ways at least..."

Lara digs that black notebook out of her pocket again, as she glances down at it. "Look. Let me give you a card with an address on it. It's to the SHIELD Triskelion. Which is just a small distance north of here in Westchester county..." The Briton says, as she digs out a business card. "If you really did lose a functional time machine... that is a pretty big deal. I think some of my associates within the agency would be keen to hear the details on it. A loose time machine... that can cause an untold amount of problems, for... everyone, really..."

With her black gloved right hand, Lara offers a dark blue business card for the SHIELD HQ, it denoted with address and many ways of contacting a number of different departments within the agency.

"I'd really recommend you reach out. We might be able to help..." She pauses a beat, before asking. "What is 'Doom Patrol'?"

Casey Brinke has posed:
"I thought I was. Suited for super heroic situations. But if I'm just a work of fiction may be I'm not." Existential crisis fuels the emotions on her face. At the mention of her stopping the car she nods, "Oh that." She taptaps her leg. "Cybernetic leg I took from a kill bot to replace the one my father took from me in a battle on Titan."

Again she pauses, "At least.. I suppose that's what was written in my comic." She frowns more deeply and stares at the ground. Her face looks back up again as she's offered the card which she takes. "Embossed. Fancy." A finger runs over it and then she puts it in to her utility belt somewhere.

"Oh! Well, the Doom Patrol are one of the most essentialist heroic groups of the 20th and 21st centuries. There's a lot of historical records about them but they were most active around this time period. They dealt with existential threats to reality. The ... weird stuff ... that other hero groups didn't bother with or understand. My mission was to meet up with the Doom Patrol and help them stop my father from entering this reality and unleashing the Torminox virus."

She sighs, "But he's just a fictional character too. I'm not even sure how I'll explain all of t his to him. Though I think at some level he knows because that's the way he was written in the newer issues. But the Doom Patrol. There's this guy who looks like a mummy. A guy who is a robot, Rita who is in to theatre and movies. Oh and Jane.. Jane is confusing. There's more members too but - I suppose it doesn't matter too much."

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara picks up on a sense of despair in the woman's eyes at the thought of being pulled out of a fictional world. She purses her lips for a moment before she shakes her head at the other. "You're right here in front of me, real as can be. That's what is important in the moment." She states, sparing a glance to a loud truck as it rolls by on the street that Casey had been on mere moments earlier. Lara regards the woman again then, and slowly nods her head at what she says, glancing at the mechanical leg before back to Casey's eyes.

"Well. We're currently in the East Village. If you head north to first street, you'll be able to find the Avengers mansion. I would imagine that someone there can help you find members of this Doom Patrol, as it sounds like they're perhaps even more close to what you need than SHIELD may even be..."

Casey Brinke has posed:
Casey smiles at the caring help Lara is trying to give her. "I found them. A few days ago. That's when we started our investigation in to Torminox and his attempts to invade this world. That lead us to a comic book writer. It was he who wrote the Space Case comics. About me. Me and my family. He's the reason I have no leg. The reason my father is infected with the Torminox virus. The reason my mother sacrificed herself to save the universe."

"I don't know what to say to the Doom Patrol now. They think it's fine that I'm not real.. or that I am real but wasn't real. Well, not all of them think it's fine. Some of them think it's fine. But I'm not sure that I think it's fine."

"So I didn't say goodbye. I just - left. I walked back from New Jersey to get my time machine and - now I'm not sure what to do. If I'm really stuck here, or if the time machine isn't even a real time machine. Well.. I dsimply don't know. I didn't want any uncomfortable fairwells. I've had too many of them in my -- not real life."

Lara Croft has posed:
The clarification has Lara gently raising her chin up before she 'ahs' and nods a single time to what Casey says. "That is rather outstanding." She quietly replies. "Which is to say, a man being able to somehow bring his creation from page to reality. I am... not sure how I would react to that either, myself... It sounds as though you have a lot to figure out. I wish I could offer more help..." She states, showing a momentary soft smile. She slips her notebook back in to her jacket pocket, and exhales a breath of puffy white steam in the cold air.

"Have you a place to stay then?" She asks. "A residence to get you off of the street, if nothing else?"

Casey Brinke has posed:
Casey rolls her eyes. "He didn't even know how he was doing it. Just that it had happened. Then he deliberately did it with me because in the comics only I knew how to stop my father." She folds her arms. "But that's the thing. He never wrote in the comics how to stop him, just that I knew. So he doesn't know - and as far as I know, I don't know."

She looks left and right and then back to Lara. "I have a place I can go. I'll be... fine I suppose. If I really can't find my time machine then I'll walk back to New Jersey and explain it all to the Doom Patrol."

Lara Croft has posed:
"That is a rather dire circumstance. Especially if this person means to harm others..." Lara quietly replies, her head bobbing in a pair of light nods toward Casey. "But if this Doom Patrol, is as you say it is, I would hope that they're tending to the situation. If not them, then the Avengers... or even the Justice League." She says, before exhaling softly again. "I'll admit, super hero affairs have never really been on my radar, until I moved here to the States for work purposes. I've been on a crash course learning process ever since. Almost ... four years now?"

She smiles lightly again as she shifts her weight from one booted foot to the next. "I'm an archaeologist by trade, a world traveller, you could say. My involvement with SHIELD is aimed specifically at the acquisition of rare artifacts and relics lost to time... Sadly this doesn't include time machines, exactly. Though I have had quite a fair amount of effort involved in ways of dialing back time, or at least reversing the effects of it. There are many wild things in this world... and many who would wish to use them for nefarious purposes. I hope your machine shows up, and shows up safely... If I hear anything about space ships being lost and found, I'll look up this Doom Patrol." She says in a sincere, and kind hearted tone.

Casey Brinke has posed:
Casey looks down at her hands. A smile spread over her lips and she nods at the ground in response to Lara's statement. "Well. I appreciate that. Hopefully no one uses it to go back in time and kill JFK or something crazy like that!" she laughs a little. "Can you imagine how messed up the world would be then."

She dusts her hands and looks about the street. "Well. The best I can do is keep on keeping on. After all, this is progress. I know where the time machine isn't. It isn't here, which means it's somewhere else. I just have to keep on looking."

A hand is offered to Lara again, "It was a pleasure meeting you Agent Lara Croft. Thank you for listening to my sob story."

Lara Croft has posed:
The JFK comment gets another light laugh from the Briton before she tilts her head, curiously wondering if whatever reality this woman has inside her mind didn't involve the death of that American President. She lets it slide then, and when the hand comes out, Lara reaches out to offer her own, and shake the other's in return. She smiles once more, her free hand going up to stroke some more of her loose strands of hair out of her forehead. "I'm happy to have gotten to meet you, and remember... You're here now, you're not in peril, and you've got nothing but the world at your fingertips. Don't let the woes get you down, because you will always be able to push past them, if you put in the effort..." She states, before releasing the other's hand.

"Good luck, and remember... stay out of the street. the New Yorkers get very grumpy when you stand in their streets." She grins lightly before she turns, headed toward her black Jeep down at the far end of the block.