[ Their target is coming into range now, the hangar and its resting aircraft more than a dot on the horizon, though the Germans don't seem to have visual on them yet. It sits there completely undisturbed like a snow-dusted hornets' nest, and they're approaching it with one hell of a bat.
Nikolay's own pulse picks up as they close in, his body falling into the familiar rhythms even after more than a year spent grounded. He pulls down the goggles resting atop his head, then grasps the oil shutter lever to his right, fingers guided by spatial memory alone as they wrap around the cold metal without visual guidance and pull it back, closing off one of the only points vulnerable to attack on the aircraft they call the flying tank.
The other is the rear gunner's side of the cockpit. He can't do anything about that other than fly evasively and push the throttle forward as he does now, making them—and the newly assigned American machine gunner—a faster target, harder to hit. ]
Get ready, Bucky. It’s going to get hot.
[ Very much so, given that half of the birds on that runway are going to be on his ass in a few minutes; one hell of a third mission for Barnes, although it's not his place to question it. He leans back into his seat and pushes the control stick forward, bringing her nose down and dropping altitude—and god, it feels good, cutting through the cold air like this in a sharp drop toward their target, the force of the descent holding him down to such an extent that the webbed harness crisscrossing his upper body feels redundant.
He’s not particularly focused on anything other than the approaching hangar, but he does dimly recognize that it’s probably still an unfamiliar sensation for the rear gunner—they’ve been on a few flights now, but from personal observation, it tends to take people a while to get used to dropping backwards while unable to see the direction in which they’re flying. To his credit, though, his newly assigned American friend hasn’t puked yet. ]
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@sidecars;
Nikolay's own pulse picks up as they close in, his body falling into the familiar rhythms even after more than a year spent grounded. He pulls down the goggles resting atop his head, then grasps the oil shutter lever to his right, fingers guided by spatial memory alone as they wrap around the cold metal without visual guidance and pull it back, closing off one of the only points vulnerable to attack on the aircraft they call the flying tank.
The other is the rear gunner's side of the cockpit. He can't do anything about that other than fly evasively and push the throttle forward as he does now, making them—and the newly assigned American machine gunner—a faster target, harder to hit. ]
Get ready, Bucky. It’s going to get hot.
[ Very much so, given that half of the birds on that runway are going to be on his ass in a few minutes; one hell of a third mission for Barnes, although it's not his place to question it. He leans back into his seat and pushes the control stick forward, bringing her nose down and dropping altitude—and god, it feels good, cutting through the cold air like this in a sharp drop toward their target, the force of the descent holding him down to such an extent that the webbed harness crisscrossing his upper body feels redundant.
He’s not particularly focused on anything other than the approaching hangar, but he does dimly recognize that it’s probably still an unfamiliar sensation for the rear gunner—they’ve been on a few flights now, but from personal observation, it tends to take people a while to get used to dropping backwards while unable to see the direction in which they’re flying. To his credit, though, his newly assigned American friend hasn’t puked yet. ]