8297/Teaching Kids is an Adventure!

Teaching Kids is an Adventure!
Date of Scene:	18 October 2021
Location:	Teacher's Lounge - Happy Harbor High School
Synopsis:	A normal, average day in the teacher's lounge. Colette approaches Lara to ask to join her Adventurers club, and the football coach is intensely jealous!
Cast of Characters:	Colette O'Connail, Lara Croft

---

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Though Happy Harbor looks like a fairly regular school at first glance, it doesn't take long to spot how unusual it really is. Of course there is the obvious; the fact that so many of the students and even a few of the faculty are not exactly normal people. Something less obvious at least until you've spent some time in the Teacher's Lounge is just how young the teaching staff are. Normally the progression to teaching takes a few years, but Happy Harbor seeks out exceptional individuals and courts lecturers who have come to their expertise via less conventional paths.

    At 23, Lara is rather young to be a teacher, and it can hardly be said she has dedicated her time to doing her vocational training. She has tombs to raid and WANDs to wave, after all. On the other hand, she certainly makes the history courses she does very popular. Doctor Macintyre has pulled a lot of strings to keep her staff interesting.

    Sitting at a desk in the Staff Lounge grading papers is a far less famous member of staff, Colette O'Connail, teacher in English. She has taken a far more conventional path into teaching, being actually /properly and officially qualified/. There's nothing too unusual about that per se, even at Happy Harbor, except perhaps for the fact that she's actually even younger than Lara. She's a pretty determined sort, it seems.

    She also tends to keep to herself a lot. Like now, sitting there sipping her coffee and grading papers while ignoring the rest of the staff in the room. It's not that she's anti-social -- she's pleasant enough company around the other members of staff, if a bit prone to swearing when there are no students around, but she doesn't seem to seek out company, and only attends the minimum of staff social events. She keeps to herself. Perhaps she's got something to hide?

    This is a question that Lara might have some part of an answer to, because Lara has seen Colette before, in a very different context. A year ago, Stephen Strange had put out a call to as many of the mystics, sorcerers and experts in weirdness he could assemble to deal with the birth of a new God of New York City. Colette and Lara had been among those summoned. There had been a lot of people there though, and the two had not so much as exchanged pleasantries during that weirdness. How odd.

Lara Croft has posed:
Since leaving University two years ago, Lara's life has been a whirlwind of 'weird'.

It started with a expedition that would excite any new young explorer, the kind that you only read about in old magazines and journals. The search to find a lost mythical island... the reality of that expedition had been anything but romantic though, even if the island had been in the end. It was found, but at the cost of so many lives, and so many terrors that still ripple in the waters of life to this day.

One such ripple is Lara's trouble sleeping. Some nights she's okay, other nights it hits her like a wave. Night terrors. Last night was one of those nights...

Here and now she's entering the Teacher's lounge, dressed in her usual style of an outdoorsy type with hiking pants of a dark green, a black button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a light grey tanktop visible beneath it. She has a smart watch on her wrist that she is looking at as she strides in the room, but her brown eyes rise up to look everyone over. She smiles to those who regard her, even waving lightly while she makes her way to the coffee machine, for caffeine...

She notes Colette's presence, affording the young English teacher a smile as well. Does she recognize her? It's hard to say! Because the young Briton just makes her way to the counter in the lounge where she begins to make a cup of coffee from the nice machine provided by the school.

Once she has the coffee in her cup she turns and walks over to one of the tables to sit down, pulling her phone out to set before her to swipe through whatever it is she brings up on the display... whilst her cup is raised to her lips for a sip. She glances around again, once more to Colette, but she doesn't want to bother the teacher while she's working...

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette flips over the sheet she's been reading and glances for just a few moments at the next sheet on the stack of print-outs before pinching her nose and squinting with a pained expression. Clearly this is one of THOSE. She slumps back with a sigh, takes a sip from her coffee and then leans forwards with a determined expression.

    Her red pen flies across the page, marking a flurry of crossings out and corrections. She gets to the end rapdily despite all this -- it's a short paper -- and takes a few moments scribbling extensive marginal notes. Just the sound the nib makes against the paper seems to be enough to give away the jist of the contents. It sounds critical, disappointed, with a note of could-do-better. It sounds distinctly like an 'F'.

    She flips the sheet over with a sigh, leaning back in her seat again to sip her coffee, but discovers the cup empty. That's okay -- she needs a break after a paper like that. The sheer illiteracy of it all is so depressing. She pours herself a fresh cup and leans against the counter to survey the rest of the staff for a few moments before coming to a decision.

    She pushes away from the counter with a bump and walks over to the table Lara's seated at, and sits down across from the English woman. "Hey," she says by way of greeting. "Read about that Adventurer's club thing you're setting up." Straight to business. "Sounds interesting."

Lara Croft has posed:
The expressive grading doesn't go unnoticed by the Briton either. She looks up before Colette had stood up, it made her smile softly. But gain she didn't want to interrupt. Her eyes went back down to her phone as soemthing on it drew her gaze.

When Colette stands, Lara looks up again before once more lowering her stare. She's looking at her phone then up to the point where the other just approaches and settles in across from her... This, finally gets Lara to look up and speak up too!

With a soft smile, the British noble nods once. "You read about that?" She asks. It had been passed around online, and made a couple mentions on teleivision like the Discovery Channel and Travel Channel. Lara continues then. "Have an interest in exploration and archaeology?" She asks as her phone is pushed aside on the table and her coffee is gathered up again within her hands.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    Colette grins a little. "Well... it sounds like something to do, right?" That's perhaps not an indication of the greatest dedication to the cause of furthering archeological knowledge. She shrugs it off as a little joke.

    "I like traveling," she says. "But the normal tourist stuff isn't exactly the most exciting way to spend your time. After a while it's just another beach, just another bar, and the museums seem kind of second-hand. I think it would be more interesting to see that kind of thing in the wild, if you know what I mean. Better a safari than a zoo."

    She puts her cup down on the table and pulls a leg up onto the chair, folding it beneath herself comfortably. "I've heard a bit about your... exploits. A bit less tame than grading papers. Don't get me wrong, I love the teaching thing most of the time. Just there are times when you want something else going on in your life, you know? I've considered a number of options for that. Most of them would be bad ideas for one reason or another. Visiting exotic places and uncovering forgotten secrets though? Got to admit that has an appeal. I mean come to think of it I've visited a few exotic places in my time, but mostly for no particularly good reason. Guess I've done a lot of drifting and there's a point you say to yourself maybe there should be some reason for doing things rather than just following the tide, you know?"

    She tilts her head thoughtfully, then shrugs. "So yeah. I guess I'm asking what the qualifications are. I've got money and I know that's a thing adventurers are going to need if they're expecting something more exciting than digging up a mid twentieth century cola bottle on the local beach. Don't be fooled by the whole junior teacher's salary thing, I can pay my own way."

Lara Croft has posed:
While Colette speaks, Lara goes on about sipping her thermos and then showing small smiles here and there at what the young woman says to her in regard to the Club, her qualifications there-in and so forth. It seems to amuse the Weird History teacher here at the Happiest of Harbors.

Lara even laughs softly there at the end. She shakes her head a little and her left hand swipes at some of her loose brown hair to send it back over her ear there. "Money isn't the requirement. REally, in fact, all I ask is those who are already brought in, choose whom they feel would be a good fit. So... it is not so much what you know, as who you know, I suppose. Though... what you know probably helps too with those who you know." She flashes a quick grin before her drink is set down. "You happen to know, well, me. So that's a good start, yeah?" The Briton seems to be in a happy mood this afternoon.

"When I took this job, I told the Headmistress here that I wanted to teach something, unusual. Something that I thought would keep the students interested in what I was saying, and hopefully less interested in their phoens... Challenging unlike most things I've faced, that." She smirks then. "But, also because of my main career, my class here would have to be only a couple days a week, and I might have to teach remotely some days too. Which has actually been very fun for the students. They've responded well to seeing where I was, possibly even more so than being here in class with them." She grins quickly again.

Finally though, Lara just shakes her head and exhales. "If this is something... you are interested in, you could come with me some time to one of our meetings. We hope to start them soon. I've had a few interested parties thus far, some who may surprise. But... you know Doctor Strange, yes? Something tells me you're not so easily surprised then..."

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "I know quite a lot of people," Colette says, giving another of those shrugs. She seems to shrug a lot. "And as for easily surprised... a year and a half ago I rescued a drowning alien from the sea off Metropolis. Now I'm his xenolinguistics teacher, and I've had to invent whole new educational precepts for dealing with the problem of finding commonalities with an alien mind. It has been a fun challenge. He lives at Titans Tower now, and I visit him there regularly. So no... I don't surprise easily. Half my friends dress in spandex for a living, after a while nothing's terribly surprising." No mention of Doctor Strange though, she seems to be leaving that one alone for the moment, for some reason.

    She gives a nod of her head before recovering her coffee, curling her fingers around it to feel the warmth for a while before drinking. "I've only just got the role here full-time so I don't really want to switch to part time myself. Happy with teaching, but it would be nice to have something else going on in my life. I'd probably mostly have to limit myself to adventuring during the weekends and school vacations, but yeah I'm interested."

    "I'm reasonably fit, I'm not bothered by hardships, I don't scare or intimidate easily, I once spent a long tedious summer being taught how to look after myself by an ex special forces combat trainer due to a paranoid father worried about kidnapping attempts. I even know a fair bit of history though I couldn't honestly differentiate between Jomon and Ubaid ceramics with any degree of certainty. Does that sound like reasonable qualifications?"

    She smiles a little, lifting her cup to take a sip and then puts it down again to look at Lara with one raised eyebrow. "If so, then yeah I'm interested and please count me in for that meeting when it happens."

Lara Croft has posed:
Colette is maybe half way through her rundown when Lara smiles and reaches in to her back pocket to pull out a small leather bound journal that she opens up and sets on the table before she pulls out a slight slip of paper. "It sounds like you've had an interesting upbringing. That is something I can relate to as well." She affirms. "Colette, right? O'Connail?" She has her Teacher directory memorized....

"I can't say for sure if this kind of thing will be right for you. I can't say that if you do join with us that you're going to be ..." She slowly shakes her head. "Swept away on fantastical journeys with harrowing situations of near death and great riches at the end.... I've found that in reality, its generally much much more about simply surviving long trips, sometimes dangerous ones, with harsh terrain and even harsher people to rely upon to get through them. But... I can say that it would be unlike anything you might expect it to be. Aliens, withstanding, this could be a uniquely interesting experience, should you so desire. It could also be very very unenjoyable and you hate it, and never wish to participate again."

Lara smirks softly as she slips the paper across the table to Colette. "Here, this is the address to a restaruant that my friend and I operate. Our meeting place is just nearby to it.... I'll make sure to let you know when our meeting is coming up. You'll be welcomed to participate." Lara says with a quick smile.

Across the room, there's the Football Coach who looks over at the two women. "Hey, Croft. Can I join too?" He asks with a grin. Lara smiles and shakes her head as she looks over at him. "Not a chance, Jim." She flashes him a grin and he puts a hand over his heart. "I'm hurt. I'll bring hot wings. It'll be great. Whatever gets me away from the wife and kids, right?"

Lara just smirks and shakes her head as she sips from her drink again.

Colette O'Connail has posed:
    "Don't worry, I'm not expecting great riches at the end of it," Colette offers with a laugh. "Yes, It's O'Connail... as in O'Connail Construction. My father's firm." Lara will have at least a passing familiarity with the name -- it's one of the larger construction firms in the Mid-Atlantic region and their trucks aren't a rare sight in the area. She probably wasn't kidding about being able to pay her way. "In it for the experience, really. "

    "I'm pretty confident I'll enjoy myself," she says. "Yeah, I have no illusions that a lot of it is going to be about just trying to get to the interesting place rather than uncovering lost temples every day. I don't have a problem with that. I don't get bored easily, I'm not worried by harsh terrain and I'm pretty good at getting harsh people to see things my way if I have to. Sounds fine."

    She takes the piece of paper with a nod of thanks, glancing down at it to read the address. "And if we stumble across any new gods that need naming, I can come up with better things than 'Hudson'," she adds, looking up to give Lara a wink. Yep, that's confirmation, it was indeed Colette Lara saw there.

    She folds the piece of paper up and slips it into a back pocket. "Jim," she says, smirking widely at him. "It's not for you. There will be snakes everywhere. And spiders. Rough terrain that needs climbing, lots of rocks you might break a nail on. Spooky dark caves filled with bats. Stick to the nice, safe, clean football fields."

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara is smiling at Colette's response, to her and to Jim. She has her cup up sipping from it next as Jim stands up. "Yeah. Okay. Screw that Indiana Jones shit." The Coach says as he walks through the lounge to dump his coffee in to the sink, then set the glass down beside it. "You two have fun though, try not to get smooshed by giant rolling rocks." He jokes with the two as he starts toward the exit of the lounge. Once outside, he blows on his whistle around his neck at two students running through the hallway, and then can be heard shouting something at them...

Lara just lowers her cup and smiles. "Such a pleasant man." She says sarcastically. "But yes, we're still forming together. I'm still trying to draw in more attention, so if you have any suggestions on how to help with that... well, all help is welcomed. If nothing else, this should be an experience to remember, one way or another..."