Rules of Engagement [locked to Han Solo]

[red_room]

It's just getting on to dark in the Nexus when a familiar whine cuts through the muggy evening air. The noise from the open ramp of the Millenium Falcon grows until the underlying rumble of a motorcycle engine cuts through the thick air as Natasha pulls up just outside the ship.

Nat hops off the bike quickly, but takes her time removing all the gear she'd worn. The suit hadn't been cheap to get and getting it dirty before the onset was unheard of. She carefully removes the helmet, the track suit she'd worn over the nice clothes, and pulls the dress shoes she'd bought out of the bag of gear she'd carried along and carefully slips them on before making her way up the ramp and onto the ship.

Everything about the outfit Nat selected had been carefully considered all the way down to the cuff links. Granted, this getup is designed to impress her target and not so much a space pilot like Han is, but he should still be able to help judge the way she carries herself. Walks. Talks. She'd even taken a leaf out of the good captain's book when it came to styling her hair. Giving it a bit of the windswept wave instead of slicking it back or the like.

"Knock, knock."

It's still so weird hearing a mans voice when she talks. Wrong. But if this stays for a day or so, she'll be one more thread complete on her web.

Comments

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It takes a moment for Han to be ready to change. He'd spent time in barracks and ships with shared living spaces where he's changed in front of other men, but this ... it's weird. And there's no reason he can think of not to make this a little easier when he has the chance.

So he waits till the spy had left the room and then he gets dressed in the clothes she picked for him. He's not as big of a fan of the jeans and tee shirt as he was of the long coat, but it doesn't look too bad. It's relatively comfortable and the other outfit can come along in case they need it. He folds the tactical clothes and removes his gunbelt, settling it all carefully into a duffle bag.

When he emerges the bag is slung on one shoulder and Han waits patiently for Tasha to finish up on the phone. Idly, he wonders where the jet that she was talking about is. He can't imagine it's especially close by.

[red_room]

"Looks like everything is a go."

Natasha pockets her phone and hefts up her own bag laden full of various tech and weaponry. Strides past the pilot toward a side door leading into the garage.

"Also, you ever ride in a car before?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han falls into step with Natasha. It's been a long while since he's been taking orders from anyone, but they're easier to take from the Black Widow. He's seen her in action, for one thing, and for another he's out of his depth to an extent that even he doesn't feel confident trying to fake it.

"Seen one." Han murmurs with half a shrug. It isn't his first time on earth, but it's not like he's spent a lot of time there.

"It's a combustion engine vehicle like your bike, right?"

[red_room]

"Something like that. Made for passengers and carrying shit though."

A silver Honda in this case. Sports cars might be infinitely more fun, but this isn't the sort of job that calls for flash and she is still technically a federal criminal no matter what she looks like at the moment. Nat chucks her duffel bag in the backseat and waits for Han to do the same before they take off and head well out of the city.

Once out of the grid that is NYC (and the traffic that comes with it) the drive is a lot more bearable. Miles of freeway that lead to scenic lakeside byroads the further north they drive. Though Natasha takes one of the smaller exits marked 'NO SERVICES' and drives up an empty stretch of road for nearly half an hour before turning off again onto a gravel road that winds off into the countryside.

It's at the end of this road that Han will see a clearing and small building set up in the middle of nowhere. It looks rather official for such a backwater locale and the road becomes paved again once Natasha gains access through the gate. A black car is waiting next to an open hangar, with the Quinjet already removed and prepped sitting on the tarmac.

Nat gets out of the car and approaches the other vehicle, leaning into the open passenger window and taking the manila folder Isaiah is holding out for her.

"I'll take care of your vehicle. We only have an hour or so before this place is swarmed. You'll have to come back on your own." He knows it's not an issue. That Natasha will more than likely just take the jet to another one of her safe houses in a different part of the country.

"I'll contact you when I"m back in the country." Natasha promises. Retreats from the car and turns to show Han onto the jet. With any luck he'll have drug their stuff to the jet by the time she does so.

"Alright. Let's get this show on the road, cowboy."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

While all this is going on, Han is awfully quiet. The truth is he's not thinking much about his first car ride - which seems painfully slow to someone used to traveling the way a smuggler from outer space does - but at least it's scenic.

Mostly he's quiet because no matter what poignant observations he was going to come up with or analogous comparisons he could draw upon from his own galaxy ... he was never going to be able to tell a bunch of earthlings he knew more about the earth than they did. So he didn't waste his breath.

Besides that, he felt a responsibility to be thoughtful and useful for this event. Natasha wasn't the kind of person to trust others lightly or to bring someone she cared about into this part of her life unless the potential gain outweighed the potential cost - she might not have ever said it in those terms, but he knew ...

Her words snap him out of the contemplative fog. He's not sure that he'll ever get used to a masculinized version of Natasha's voice, but hopefully, it's not something that he'll have to adjust to for that much longer.

"Gladly." He murmurs, studying the lines of the quinjet. It sure looked fast, but then, there was a lot more that went into making a ship fast than how it looked on the outside. Nobody knew that better than Han Solo. "How long is our trip?"

[red_room]

"Long enough for you to learn your way around this thing and hopefully have some fun," she promises the pilot.

Under normal circumstances this thing could damn near fly itself for the most part, but with Natasha technically stealing this thing she really doesn't trust the autopilot programming. Besides, where would the fun in that be for Han? Natasha starts on one end of the console and points out everything and what it does before walking him through how to get the jet going. It's not entirely dissimilar to ships Han's used to dealing with.

"Think you can handle it?" It's not as though Natasha is going to leave him here to struggle alone, but she's pretty confident in his skills and the engineering Stark has lent to the development of these things.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han's eyes are tracking over his surroundings carefully as they move through the jet. Somehow, even though he's never been in an earthbound aircraft, he has the look of someone in his element all the same.

When they get into the cockpit Captain Solo's spreads his left hand over the panel and runs his hands over the controls. Right away he can tell that many of the things that he'd expect to be analog on the Falcon would be managed with touch controls on this craft. In spite of the differences, he thinks he's already figured out the sequence for lift off.

"This thing looks like it could fly itself."

He slinks into the chair and glides his hands over the keyless panel, lights flickering to life as he does so.

"Are we ready to -"

"Hello, gentlemen." The ship's AI interrupts Han question with its overly friendly tones. "You do not appear to have access to the Quinjet at this time. Please give the control override codes now ..."

Han swivels around the cockpit in his chair, glaring daggers at the AI that can't see him. He assumes that Natasha knows how to get them past this point and hopefully disables the disembodied voice.

[red_room]

"Motherfucker."

Natasha is face palming so goddamn hard at this moment. She had (incorrectly) assumed that as long as the autopilot was off there wouldn't be any trouble getting the damn thing off the ground. Stark must have upped his security protocols after the incident that split the team up last year. More worrisome to the spy is that the AI does not recognize her as Natasha. There's a few ways of getting around this. Best try the least troublesome one first.

It's not like they have all day here.

She steps forward and leans over the cockpit to press a few buttons before clearing her throat.

"Clearance code Delta 55N-37E."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

There is a moment of silence in the cockpit.

"Height/weight measurement imbalance detected." The AI says in the same too pleasant voice that instantly got on the would be pilot's nerves. "Authorization pending. Please wait ..."

Han's eyebrow raises for a moment and then it dawns on him what 'height/weight imbalance' probably means.

"Hey, sweetheart. I think your new proportions are throwing it off."

[red_room]

The temperature in the cockpit must have plummeted by some twenty degrees with the chill of the dark expression crossing Natasha's features. Han can feel the ominous pressure from her fury radiating out.

"Please wai--"

The spy has brushed over Han again, furiously tapping a pretty repetitive series of buttons on the console before slamming her palm onto the input button and glaring hard down at the controls.

"Full Manual confirmed. Goodbye."

"Lets get out of here." Midnight on Hoth would be warmer than her voice right now.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han sees the hard set in 'tasha's shoulders and the way she pounds the override code into the touch panel beneath her hands. A nerve clearly was touched by the ships ability to detect the Black Widows usual shape and determine that she didn't fit the expectations.

The whole awkward situation has Captain Solo suddenly feeling a lot less social and a lot more interested in getting them in the air.

He clears his throat and lets his hands dance over the control panel. Between Solo's very gifted intuition and the ships user-friendly operating system, the powering up takes only two minutes or so. He can feel the power humming through the ship even sitting in an enclosure meant to dampen sound and impact from the passengers

Typical of the way Han flys the Falcon, he uses the underside thrusters of the ship to give them enough altitude and then, he releases the steering yoke controls to give himself a more tactile experience of what it's like to fly this thing ...

"Got coordinates for me?"

[red_room]

"41.0082 degrees North, 28.9784 degrees East. Istanbul, Turkey. We have some stealth capability on this thing but we'll still have to land outside the city and catch a ride in. My safe house is right on the water so you'll have a nice view at least while we're there."

Natasha is carefully removing the suit she'd been wearing up until this point so she can change into the same kind of casual wear Han is in. At least until they get to the safe house. Attracting attention only when she wants to is part of the job.

She's not quite done being pissed off about the whole height weight bullshit the AI was talking about, but it calms her nerves to see lean muscle when she strips down. She's taller and more bulky than she had been before, even as a lithe man. There's no getting around it.

"Though you're probably not going to understand a word once we get there. My Istanbul Turkish is decent--I'll do my best to translate for you."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It takes Han a couple of moments of studying the navigation system and easing the steering yoke around before he has them heading in the right direction. Earth's system of latitude and longitude are ultimately a lot simpler to figure out than the ones that map out his entire galaxy ... and there's a state of the art computer giving him real time data.

And best of all, nobody is trying to shoot them out of the sky ... this is practically a piece of cake.

In fact, he's feeling so confident right now that he decides that he can lay on the throttle and turn around to see where Natasha has disappeared to. It turns out, not far. It also turns out that she's getting dressed. Han's eyes hold on the new lines of muscle and the way she studies herself - as if trying to evaluate something.

Solo waves a dismissive hand at her comments about Turkish. For one, he doesn't really need to know every little thing that's being said and for another, he's confident that he'll be able to infer enough of what's going on with body language and tone.

"Try not to think about height/weight imbalances." He says in that conversational murmur of his. "You're in the kind of shape the average guy would love to be in."

[red_room]

Her fingers brush against the scar on her side. A stark reminder that this is her body no matter how different it may be right now. It makes this all the more wrong. Knowing that it's not someone else's body. That something has been done to drastically alter hers.

Green eyes focus on Han. Helping her out, coming with, and how soft his expression is right now. Even though she's doing something he doesn't like and is entirely Wrong physically. She zips up the black jeans she'd pulled on and wanders over behind Han's seat and lightly drags her fingers up his cheek.

Actions speaking for her on just how much Natasha appreciates Han and what he's doing for her. He's not the only one forced to evaluate some emotional baggage because of all of this.

With Han focused on the flying Natasha can finish getting dressed and begin sifting through the up to date intel Isaiah had given her. Pulling up maps and looking over news articles. When Han looks back again Natasha is dozing in her seat, little rotating three dimensional map of Istanbul still on her screen casting a faint blue glow. It's likely to be the only sleep she gets until this is done and over with.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han closes his eyes for a moment while the fingers trail over his cheek. Why? He doesn't know.
They feel nothing like the fingers of the Natasha he knows, but he doesn't withdraw from the contact all the same. He spends a few heartbeats in a feeling that's confusing, but not unwanted.

Anyway, being focused on the flying is something that he's doing, despite the temporary eye closing. The fact that he's getting to flex his piloting muscle ... doesn't make him more at ease with the mission, but it's a lot more comforting than worrying in the back of a car. At least something about this bizarre experience feels kind of normal to him.

She doesn't need to be awake for this. Likely the whole experience has taken more out of her than she lets on and by his calculations, they're more than two hours out from their destination. She ought to sleep some when she can.

[red_room]

Something Han has picked up on with his time spent with the spy is that she's very rarely caught resting. It's a rare occasion indeed when he wakes up and she is still asleep even when they're spending the night together. Yet when the coordinates ping that Han is where they need to be, and the ship's onscreen navigation informs him of their destination and descent, Natasha doesn't wake up to help him.

And if he ended up getting the ship's computer to tell him where the landing gear was, well. No one has to know but he and the ship. The skies are clear on this Turkish night, and an accented voice calling in but using perfect English tells Han they have clearance to be here.

Seems his luck has held out and he didn't need Nat's help in getting them here safely after all.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han calls upon luck to get him through a lot of situations. All things considered ... it works out far more often than is statistically probable. In this case, things were just as likely to go well as they were to go wrong - maybe more so with Natasha doing the planning.

The only thing challenging at all about that landing is the fact that Captain Solo had never helmed the craft before. The weather was clear. The landing was on super smooth pavement. The craft was designed so well the damn thing might be able to fly itself. You didn't need someone as skilled as Han at the controls to get them on the ground easy.

It's hard for Han to figure out how to cycle the power down than it was to land.

When everything has settled, he stands and stretches for a moment, pleased with himself for a job well done. Then he heads over to Nat's still sleeping form and he tries to bring her to a state of awake by gently dragging his fingertips over her arm.

[red_room]

Natasha's eyes open well before she moves from where eh's been slumped over sleeping. They're grounded? It's quiet. Though her gaze snaps up and takes in Han's figure standing over her and she lets out her breath.

"Not too boring, I hope." He can hear the slightest roughness to her voice from sleep though it's already fading as she pulls herself gracefully out of her seat and up so she's standing in front of Han.

"...Thanks." For letting her catch up on some sleep. For coming with. "Ready to go?" It's a short cab ride through the heart of central Istanbul to the waterside neighborhood Natasha is leading them to and the picturesque building she will lead the pilot into. Like her safehouse that leads to the Nexus, this one is only supposed to look ordinary.

She's adjusted her posture as they've walked in, switching 'on' to her persona with no real pause in transition. Natasha should have a few hours to prepare. It's still before sunup here and she won't be meeting with her mark until breakfast.

"We'll take a stroll past the hotel I'll be in. Give you a good idea of the neighborhood, what to expect. You don't have to change clothes, but I'll be doing my best to be invisible. I don't want her or her goons to catch me casing the joint before I'm supposed to be meeting my 'supplier'."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It's funny what doesn't change about Nat even as she's dealing with this curse. The way that she can rise from resting out of the chair with liquid grace is familiar as ever. She has a way about making Han feel clumsy when he watches The Black Widow move.

"Ready as I'm gonna be." He says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He still doesn't love the idea of her taking on such a delicate operation right now, but ... he knows he wasn't going to be able to talk her out of it. Her letting him go along was the next best thing.

He spends much of the cab ride trying to take everything in. Something about Istanbul reminds him of Jedha city as they roll through the area.

"I can do the scouting if you want to lay low." Han offers, though he has to figure it will be delined. This can't get messed up, so she probably has to see a lot of this for herself.

[red_room]

"Oh, you're going to be doing the scouting too."

Nat hands Han one of the earpieces she'd pulled out of her duffel bag after making sure they were in working order. They've got to be careful not to operate on any of the usual frequencies. The last thing Natasha wants is Tony Stark dropping in unannounced and it's still a very real possibility. One of the older ones she and Barton used to use should be fine.

If he's scanning for her, he'll at least know better than to interrupt.

"You know how to work one of these?" It's quick work explaining and helping Han put it in if he's not. "We're going to practice. I'm going to stay twenty paces ahead. I'll give you directions on where I'm going as I go so you know how to follow. You just need to focus on getting to know the area. If you see anything suspicious do not stare just keep walking and tell me."

"Ready?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han spends a moment examining the piece of tech she hands him. It's not entirely unfamiliar to him in that he's seen them before, but he's never actually put one on. It's easy enough to tell how they're supposed to fit on the ear, but he takes his time to put it on anyway.

"I've got the idea."

There were similar devices like this were he came from and he had gotten himself out of a number of jams or passed along important bits of information with a concealed com-link before. It was the same idea. Only the stakes were far higher now, not because he cared all that much about the mission (he was too far removed from earth and it's problems to feel genuinely invested in them), but because he cared about Nat.

With that, Han takes a moment to ease himself into the crowd. His usual careless amble substituted for a much more purposeful walk, although his eyes still held that look of casual disinterest in everything around him. It so happens that he's very good at sneaking around and looking at things without paying too much attention ... he'd had years of practice doing as much before he'd picked up any piloting skills.

"Pickpocket on the southern corner." Han murmurs. "Probably too small time to be affiliated with your marks."

[red_room]

If Natasha wasn't walking ahead of him she'd be proudly smirking at how easily Han takes to this work. Bringing him along was looking more and more like a decent idea and for that she's grateful. Not that she needs backup even in a weird body, but insurance never hurts.

Especially when it wants to be here being useful.

"Definitely too small time. The hotel's coming up on your left. Ignoring all top level windows, I'm calling three potential rooftop sniper positions. What's lobby level look like?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

These powers of observation were honed during his years as a small-time thief, because the better you were at gathering info and planning your actions ... the more likely you were going to be successful at nabbing whatever you were trying to nab. He'd never tried to use these skills to help anyone but himself with them before.

It never dawned on him that they could be helpful in the first place.

"One guy near the door that's almost sure to be hired muscle. He's about as wide as you and me put together." No one else jumps out at Han, except ... "I think they might have hotel security on the payroll. Or they want them to rush in first, maybe."

[red_room]

"Good. When I go back in it'll be at the lobby's restaurant so you can be sure there's going to be muscle there then if there's not now. Might be good to remember their faces if you can so you'll know who doesn't fit in."

Not that she expects Han Solo to have to intervene, but it's a good practice and if she does end up needing backup then all of this will be smart preparation for the task ahead.

"Anything else? We should head back to the safehouse so I can change and hide my weapons."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

“Nothing else.”

Earth was a very different world than any of the ones he was more familiar with. On some level that makes it a little bit harder to sort things out in the crowded hotel lobby - especially without looking, but if there was one thing he felt like he knew ... it was when he was looking at another criminal.

Han makes sure to affix a bored look onto his face when he walks out of the swanky surroundings. Opulence was the kind of thing that transcended specific figures and knowledge. The value of gold and marble might be a mystery to Captain Solo, but he knew that he was looking at what passed for luxury around here.