Dating anyone? There’s a girl in HR that works the phones.
Who: Natasha and Laura K What: Intercepting gun runners and gossip because Nat is forever trying to hook her friends up When: Last week Where: A warehouse Status: complete Rating: PG-13 for gun violence
In espionage and mercenary work, there's no such thing as routine. And Natasha knew she could never prepare for everything, no matter how much time she spend going over and over the plan in her head. Intercept the drop. Eliminate the targets. It sounded easy. It probably would be, but there could always be a hitch.
Her partner in this was a known unknown. She knew her, she knew what she was capable of, but she also knew there was an unpredictability to Laura. She could hone the girl, teach her all the things that could make her into a ghost, but she couldn't predict what that would turn her into.
Nat was by definition cold-hearted. She tried to not carry things that would weigh her down. In that, Laura was a perfect protege. But also in that, Laura was the perfect opportunity to correct the mistakes that had made the Black Widow who she was. Something better. Something better than a simple killer. Because one of the things that Natasha had learned over all three life times, was that sometimes you needed a heart to do the right thing. Find that balance between being cold enough to pull the trigger, and warm enough to know when not to.
Movement caught her eye. It was on. "Lesson number one. Follow the plan. Lesson number two. Nothing ever goes according to plan." She opened the door of the car and got out.
Before the facility had gotten its hands on Laura, she had been a good person. A good, innocent child. She knew that, because she knew what she'd been like before the dreams. Sure, there were a few adolescent mishaps. Sneaking out, that kind of thing. She'd been an adrenaline junky, just like her father. But she hadn't been bad.
Orange County had taken all of that away from her in one way or another. Laura already knew how to be a killer. Being a killer was easy, as easy as being alone. The harder part was learning how to be good again. But she wanted to be. Every part of her inside ached for it. She got out of the car after Natasha, and nodded her head. Her game face was on, "No plan survives contact with the enemy. It is good to have backup plans to follow."
Nat held out a gun. "Shoots some of those widows bites. Should take out anyone under 300 pounds with one shot. Non-lethal, and it'll hurt like a bitch." She winked, then pulled a mask up over her mouth. "Okay Talon, you stashed the gear. Take point."
It was game on time, but Nat wasn’t above a little playful teasing during a mission. She checked her gun. “Dating anyone? There’s a girl in HR that works the phones. She’s really cute.”
Laura took the gun and quickly checked it, then tucked it against her back. She was wearing her old costume, black tops and bottoms, and there weren't any gun holsters. A mask covered her eyes already.
Lenses had been inserted into the eye area of the mask, making it hard to read her expression as she headed around the side of a building. There was a ladder she'd found that lead up to the roof, and she swung up onto it, "I'm not dating anyone right now. Me and my old girlfriend are... we broke up. But I see this man sometimes. Just when I need ... itches scratched."
Talking about casual things while on mission time was different, for her. She wasn't sure how to handle that.
It was a good looking outfit. Functional and kind of sexy. Nat gave her a once over and it wasn’t the first one. She’d gone with her Widow leathers. They hugged her curves, and the zipper was down just past her collar bone. “He good at the itch-scratching, or do you prefer a woman’s fingers?”
She winked, then moved into a position alongside a door. She motioned for Laura to kick it in.
It sounded for a moment like Natasha was flirting with her. Laura wasn't really sure how to handle that, if it was true. At the moment she couldn't exactly smell anything that confirmed her suspicions.
"He's good at the itch scratching, and does not make me feel bad about the claws," She replied, as she kicked the door down. Their gear was stowed in some crates a floor down; Extra widows bites, flashbangs, rifles, real pistols and ammunition. Anything they might need to get this job done that was too bulky to just carry around. She lead Natasha down the stairs, while adding, "It's different with a woman, though, and sometimes I miss that. No bodies on this floor. Three patrolling on the one below it."
Nat’s tone was conversational. “Sounds nice. I don’t think I’ve ever been with a woman when I didn’t have another agenda before. I should try it some time.” She hadn’t had someone who could scratch her itch in awhile. She could ring up Logan, she supposed, but there were some awkward things about that she just didn’t feel like dealing with. He’d never really been a lover of hers, despite what a lot of people might have thought. She snapped her fingers. “There was Isabela.”
Right. Mission. “Flash bang, you take the one on the left.” She dropped the flash bang, and three seconds later she was landing her knee onto the back of one man while shooting the other in the shoulder with a Bite.
The flashbang wasn't a tool Laura had been used to working with before. Natasha had taken time to train her so that it wouldn't assault her enhanced senses. She was ready this time, though, and she took the person on the left down with a quick grapple. Her foot gently connected with the man's temple.
"Isabela. She seems like she'd be fun. But I think I choose my women a little more... carefully. It is the men I get casual with. Our crate is down the hallway. The package should be arriving in a few minutes."
Natasha snorted, rolling her shoulders as she stood. She had her gun out, ready for anything. "She was. Definitely a casual thing. It's good to be careful. It's easy to feel intimate with a man, for me. But I can see how a woman would be a different kind of intimacy." She shot a guard that had the misfortune of walking through a door. He fell to the ground and twitched from the electricity. "With the right person, you can feel attached. Get emotional over. For some people that's a woman. For others a man." She tilted her head. "Or none of the above."
She edged down the hallway, falling silent, and peered towards the crate.
The room with the crate in it seemed empty, but Laura sniffed the air a bit as she headed for the door. Picking out scents and smells was training she'd gotten from another life, but it was no less useful. She shook her head and carefully walked into the room, gun out just in case. Natasha had taught her not to trust her senses. That, also, was a useful thing to learn.
In this case, however, the crate was in a room with several other crates, and no one had suspected anything. She squatted down next to it, and opened it up, "Jubilee was my first. I... knew her from three years old. That might have something to do with it. But I can form attachments to men, too."
There had been a few like that. Really, everyone she'd 'casually' slept with. Like her father, it was hard to simply write them off completely.
There were so many ways to obscure or mess with one's senses. While it had come in handy even for Nat, she'd been fooled more than once, and she'd seen Logan's smell or hearing fucked with on occasion too.
"If Logan hadn't told me what was up with her I'd be worried about that statement." Nat reached in, stringing a belt with grenades and extra non-lethal ammunition. The goal wasn't to kill people today.
It was a goal that made her feel really good, actually.
"Strings, Talon, are a pain in the ass. But having connections..." She glanced at Laura. "It's a double-edged sword. There have been times when I tried to go it alone. No friends, no backup, just me. That never ended well. People can hurt us, or be hurt because of us. But the true friends stick around anyway. Like ticks." She smirked.
"We make friends. Even when we try to cut them out of our lives, Widow, they keep coming back. Like the cat that wouldn't go away," Laura remarked, while hooking the remaining grenades to her own belt. Smoke bombs and flashbangs, mostly, though a few were rigged with explosives in case the weapons needed to be torched.
She tucked a few extra widows bites into her top, then selected a can of mace and a retractable wire in case she needed to choke someone. She didn't even need to grab lethal ammunition; If it came to that, she'd just pop her claws.
"I had strings once. They didn't work out. And it isn't good to keep real strings when I can be so easily turned against someone." There was also the part where she'd outlive anyone who mattered and wasn't either Jubilee or Logan. Laura didn't like to think about that. Instead, she checked her watch, "Sixty seconds. We should get down to the garage."
"The cat came back, the very next day," Nat hummed. She'd understand the outliving thing. She'd lived so long in her dreams, and tests had confirmed that the Red Room had translated into the waking world. She didn't mind hitting like a brick, but it was going to be very lonely before long. She was glad people like Laura and Logan were around, which was a little selfish.
"Anyone can be turned against anyone." Natasha started to move towards the garage. "We keep moving, keep trying." She was counting in her head. Forty-five seconds. Forty. Thirty.
"Not everyone has seven inch razor claws coated with an indestructible metal alloy," Laura countered, with a bit of a sigh. She and Logan were pretty much the last people on earth that anyone wanted to see mind controlled in any way. Sadly, both of them had been manipulated in the dream world, more than once.
But the point wasn't entirely lost on her. She pondered all of that while she headed to the garage. A floor down and a bit to the back. They got into position with ten seconds to spare. Three trucks rolled in through the garage doors, and parked side by side. A group of men had been waiting for them and stepped into view.
Laura was closest to the first one. She glanced over at where Natasha had perched, and nodded once before pulling a grenade off of her belt. A flashbang. As soon as Natasha nodded in return, she primed it and let it loose.
The flash startled the men just as they came out of the truck. Nat lept out of cover, shooting two in the chest with her widow's bites. A third took a foot to the face. She didn't look to Laura, trusting the other woman to do her part. She was pretty sure that Laura disabled an entire truck's worth of the mercs all by herself. Spinning over the top of another man, she elbowed him in the back of the head and took down the last with a well placed knee.
There was just one problem. "Talon, truck 3 is moving, slash the tires!"
With the careful use of widows bites, a smoke bomb, and the training that Natasha had given her, Laura had become something of an unstoppable force. She was taking care of the last man on her side when she heard the widow's order.
"On it." Came her voice through the comms. She tossed one last bite at the man's face and hurtled towards the third truck, tripping one man who tried to get in her way and shooting another one with the gun Natasha had given her. Claws were a last resort option, and Laura hadn't popped them yet that night. That made her feel more amazing than she'd realised, though she was more than happy to use them now.
She jumped towards the truck, claws out, and slashed two big ribbons in its left rear tire, "Truck 3 has been disabled."
Nat was already running for the truck. As it stopped she lept up, and hauled the driver out, shooting him with a bite as an afterthought. She surveyed the warehouse and smiled. “Good work. I’ll call someone in to pick up the weapons, but we can help ourselves a bit. No one will mind.” She winked.
"We should make sure there isn't anything that needs to be destroyed," Laura commented, while putting her claws away. She was overall proud of their job well done, though she wasn't sure that it was time to call it done just yet. Cautiously, she sniffed around the place to make sure they had an accurate body count and no stragglers were lurking around anywhere.
Her sensitive nose didn't pick up anything out of the ordinary in the trucks, either, "It seems to be regular firearms and ammunition. No heavy explosives. Who is going to pick them up?"
“The Agency. Most will end up melted down, but anything quality will get sold off or issued to field agents.” She gestured towards a crate. “I’m sure Neena wouldn’t mind a new toy.”
"She does enjoy guns." Laura agreed, with a nod. She kneeled down by the crate and cracked it open with one of her claws, then pushed the lid off. Her approach was reverent, like the crate contained buried treasure. Of course the contents might as well have been: Inside were a dozen of the best sniper rifles Laura had ever seen.
She pulled one out, and looked it over, "This. I want this. Neena will probably want one, too."
“Oh, that’s a sexy one.” Nat decided she wanted one herself. The range on that model beat out the previous model by nearly 30 meters. She took a look in some of the other crates, and set aside several pistols. Normally they’d cost over a thousand dollars each and were some of the most accurate weapons available. One she handed to Laura. “This one’s weight will suit you. Consider it your new mission side-arm.”
Laura weighed it in her hand, and nodded, "This weapon is superior."
"We should get drinks and celebrate. That's what most people do, Isn't it?" She asked, as she tucked the new pistol into its place at her side. She handed back the one that shot widows bites so that Nat could reload it, "I will buy."