"You've got to be fucking-" Nova starts mumbling as she tries to yank the gas pump out of her car. She was called into work on her day off, and told to be on base quite promptly. It wasn't until after she left her house that she noticed the little arrow on her dashboard angling towards the empty symbol. The small girl uses all of her force to try and pull the stuck pump out of her gas tank, but fails, only making her more frustrated.
"Need some help there?" She hears the voice of a man next to her and practically jumps out of her skin.
"Jesus!" She looks up at the tall man, who seemed to have no problem filling his blue Ford Bronco up with gas. Her lungs tighten at the sight of him. His face is one she's seen before.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you."
He looks almost too familiar to her. He looks just like...
"You okay? You look like you just saw a ghost or something." The man asks. Nova finds it ironic that he said that, because she really does feel like she's looking at a dead man. Her eyes shift between his until she notices how confused he looks.
"Sorry! You just looked really familiar." She laughs it off, trying to shake the thought away. "I'm kind of in a hurry. I could really use a wingman right now." She nods towards her gas tank and makes a pilot joke, realizing that this random guy probably won't get it.
"You got your pump stuck?" He reaches for her gas pump, and shakes it before yanking it out of the car. Nova almost feels jealous of the fact that he could so easily do that. Maybe she should stop skipping arm day.
"Thank you so much." She says.
"Of course. I couldn't leave my wingman hanging." He smirks at her.
Nova smiles at the fact that he returned the joke, glad she didn't make herself look stupid. She's usually a confident girl, but something about this guy made her nervous. In a good way, of course.
"What's your name?" She asks the man.
"Rooster." He answers.
"Did your mother not love you or something?" She giggles slightly.
"It's a call sign." He laughs.
"Where'd you get that from?"
"Long story." He shakes his head.
"Alright, you just looked kinda familiar to me for some reason."
"You know, you look kinda familiar too. Have we met before?" He asks the girl.
"I don't think so, no. I just swore you were...shit! I gotta go!" She realizes that she's talking way too long to get to work, and Cyclone isn't fond of tardies.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
"Fightertown." Nova answer shortly.
"Top Gun?" He asks, just to confirm.
"Yeah, you've heard of it?" She gives him a smirk.
"Oh baby, I was top of my class." He tells her, revealing that he's in the Navy.
"I should've known you were a pilot." She gathers, releasing a defeated sigh.
"Is that a bad thing?" He asks the woman.
"Sort of a red flag." She shrugs.
"Ahh. Here's an idea..." He starts to think.
"I'm listening." She nods for him to continue, suddenly more interested in what this man has to say than what Cyclone will say when she arrives late to the base.
"Would you give me a chance to take you out to dinner sometime? It could change your mind. You know, it's good to be optimistic." He offers, but she just smirks at him.
"Im afraid I can't help you."
"And why's that?"
Nova shrugs at the man, leaning against her car and rejecting him with the utmost confidence. On the inside, she's shaking. Maybe she could make an exception just this one time, he'll be leaving after this mission anyway. What does she have to lose?
"I don't date aviators." She tells him the rule she made for herself. Well...and that her father made for her.
"What a shame." He sighs lightheartedly, putting a hand against his chest. "I guess we'll never know if we were meant to be."
Nova searches her brain for a comeback, but can't find one. She's not really sure what to say to this rather attractive man, so she decides on sharing a whole new idea that just formed in her brain.
"Guess not. I'll see you at the Hard Deck tonight, though." The girl says before climbing back in the drivers seat, waving goodbye to the pilot.
As Nova drove away, she thought of how the man she had met looked just like her dad's former RiO and best friend. It was like she was looking right at him. She never got to meet Goose, but she's heard countless stories about him, and her father keeps pictures of him everywhere. Her mind clicked when she realized that Goose had a son, and maybe that was him, but she quickly shook the thought off when she remembered that Carole and the boy had lived in Texas, far away from where it all went down.
Nova quite likes it here at Miramar, where it all goes down.
As she nears the front gate entrance, she passes security and heads straight to the parking lot, not wasting any time to get to the conference room. Admiral Simpson called this morning and gave her no time to ask questions. All she knows is that a very important mission is coming up, and her job at Top Gun as an Avionics Engineer requires her to be a part of the planning.
The girl rushes into the building, half saluting at the picture of a close family friend, Admiral Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, in the hallway before abruptly reaching the tall oak doors. When she enters the meeting room, she's met with something she never expecting to see at Top Gun again. Her father.
Her jaw drops as she locks eyes with him, glancing at the other two men in the room for an explanation.
"Ms. Mitchell. So glad you could finally join us." Admiral Bates nods to her.
"Always a pleasure, Warlock." She curtly nods to the man. "You...not so much." Her eyes then land on her father.
Maverick and Nova's relationship over the past 25 years has been rocky to say the least.
"Oh come on, don't tell me you haven't missed me!" He shortly responds to his daughter's comment with a wide grin.
"Why is he here?" She then turns to Simpson.
"For the mission, allow me to explain. The target is an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant built in violation of a multilateral NATO treaty." The admiral clicks a button that displays an image of the plant on the screen.
"The pentagon has tasked us with assembling a strike team to take it out before it becomes fully operational." Bates announced.
"And this is who you got?" Nova points her thumb back at her father.
"The plant sits at an underground bunker at the end of this valley." Bates continues, ignoring the girl's comment. Nova zones out until she hears the words fifth generation fighters. She then decides to pay full attention to the screen along with the admirals words. He then mentions the enemy having some old F-14's.
"Seems like we're not the only ones holding onto old relics." Cyclone quirks, receiving a fist bump from Nova and an eye roll from Maverick.
"What's your read, Captain?" Warlock stays serious.
"Well sir, normally this would be a cakewalk for the F-35's stealth, but the GPS jamming negates that." He starts, but pauses to think.
"And a surface air to air threat necessities a low level lazer guided strike. F-18 would work, but that incline might take a toll on the airframe." Nova adds. "It'd be rough on the pilot, but it's the best option."
"Two precision bombs." Maverick continues.
"Minimum." Nova interjects, he only nods.
"Make it four aircraft flying in pairs. That is one hell of a steep climb out of there, exposing you to all the surface air to air missiles." He goes on. "You survive that..."
"It's a dogfight all the way home." Nova softly finishes his sentence, finally taking in the level of danger that comes with this mission. The men continue talking, but all Nova can think about is how risky this mission really is. There's no way four aircraft can survive this.
"How soon before the plant becomes operational?" She asks.
"Three weeks. Maybe less." Warlock answers her question, his tone seemingly worried. Her mind races at the thought of possibly losing someone on this mission, and her stomach turns just thinking about it.
The Navy has improved so much over the past few years that losing pilots is a rare occurrence at Top Gun. Nova has tried everything in her power since she got here to ensure the safety of the pilots, but there's not much she can do when it comes to dogfighting.
"We want you to teach it." Warlock dramatically tells Maverick, grabbing Nova's attention.
"Teach, sir?" He asks. Cyclone switches the screen to reveal twelve aviator profiles, and Nova's stomach drops to the floor when she sees the face the man she met only an hour before. She notices her father also looking at the man's picture, but she doesn't think to wonder why. Her eyes are just locked on his face.
"Is there a problem, Captain?" Cyclone asks.
The air grows thicker.
"You know there is, sir." Maverick answers, leaving Nova confused at what's going on. What doesn't she know? The screen then zooms in on the man from the gas station's picture. Nova's mind races again, wondering who this pilot is and how her father knows him.
"Bradley Bradshaw aka Rooster. I understand you used to fly with his old man." At that very moment, Nova realized that she was right, she did know that man. Everything made so much sense now. He looked exactly like his father, and hearing the word Bradshaw flipped a switch in her brain. He really is Goose's son.
The three men heavily discuss the accident with Goose, and the relationship between Maverick and Rooster.
They keep talking, but Nova zones out again, wondering why she hasn't heard a word about Bradley all this time. He was a Top Gun graduate, but she didn't remember ever seeing him here. She's only been on this base for three years, though. She knew that he had to be a little older than her. Nova starts to listen again when she hears the name Kazansky.
"He seems to think you have something left to offer the Navy. What that is I can't imagine." Cyclone remarks. He then finishes his dramatic speech by telling Maverick "You fly for Top Gun or you don't fly for the navy ever again."
After everyone is dismissed, Nova walks with her father to the parking lot.
"Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" The girl asked her dad.
"It was last minute." He shrugs, and she can tell his mood is off, and almost understands why.
"I didn't know Bradley was a pilot." She lightly brings up the topic that is Bradley Bradshaw.
"I didn't think you'd remember him."
The two of them reach her car, conveniently parked right next to his motorcycle.
"I didn't." Nova starts giggling to herself. She covers her mouth to contain her laughter, but fails.
"What's so funny?" The man asks his daughter.
"I saw him today." She reveals. "On my way here, getting gas."
"And you didn't warn me that he was here?" Maverick throws his hands up in defeat.
"I didn't recognize him. I thought he looked familiar, but I didn't get his name." She tells him, shaking her head. "Also, what's your deal with him?"
"He's Goose's kid." Maverick dumbly answers.
"No shit. I mean what happened between you two? It was like one day you decided to never mention his name again."
Maverick scratches the back of his neck, knocking he's about to do his least favorite thing. Admit his mistakes.
"I pulled his papers." He blurts out.
"What?" Nova is thrown off by his statement.
"His application to the academy, I pulled it. I set his career back four years and I don't think he'll ever forgive me for it."
"Why would you do that?" The girl asks him, slightly raising her voice.
"He wasn't ready." Nova's father lies to her face.
"Bullshit." She argues, crossing her arms.
"Excuse me?"
"You're lying. Tell me the real reason." She demands. Maverick lets out a long puff of air.
Nova always knows when people lie. She tends to see right through people, especially her dad.
"You remember Carole?" He starts, getting a nod from Nova. "Before she died, she told me to protect him. She never wanted him to fly, she didn't want him to end up like his father."
"So you were trying to protect him?"
"I just didn't know what else to do. Keeping him out of the Navy seemed like the only way to make sure he stayed alive at the time."
"Does he know that? Or did you lie to him about it like you tried to lie to me?" Nova assumes. She knows her father very well. To most, he seems unpredictable, but to her, he's the most predictable person on earth.
"You can't tell him, Nova. I know you're gonna be around him here, but please just try to stay away from him." He tells her.
"But why?"
"It's better for him to hate me than hate his mother. I don't mind taking the blame for it if it means he's not mad at her." He gives her the real reasoning behind what he did.
Nova nods in understanding as she tries to think of something to change the heavy topic.
"He's nice." She says all she can think of at the moment.
"You talked to him?" Maverick pries for more information.
"Briefly. The gas pump was stuck in my car and he helped me. Real gentleman." She sarcastically jokes.
"Hey, you remember what I told you?" He points a finger at her.
"No aviators." They say in unison.
"Relax Dad, I would never." Nova unlocks her car, planning her getaway. She doesn't open her mouth again until after she opens the car door.
"He is pretty attractive, though."
Maverick gives her a disapproving look and shakes his head no as he gets on his bike.
"I need a drink." He announces before speeding off.