The marshal gave Maria Hill a long appraising look with his one good eye. She held steady under his study, cataloging the things he was a seeing. A pretty woman, taller than average with sharp eyes and thin lips. Her Air Force uniform was perfectly pressed, her fine brownish black hair pulled back in a functional low bun, and her light makeup a small concession to societal norms. Maria couldn’t change her looks, her father’s clear skin and her mother’s subtle curves, but she had taught herself to stand with the confidence of the soldier she was.
Marshal Fury finally spoke, though his words weren’t reassuring, “The drift is not destiny, Lieutenant.”
Maria nodded. Doctor Erskine’s summation of his technology was as well known as the tech he developed--The drift is compatibility, not destiny.
“I appreciate that sir.” Maria answered sincerely, though she didn’t offer any proof of her understanding.
She knew as well as Fury did that she was not a good drift candidate. Her actual tolerance for the heightened mental state had been through the roof when she was initially tested on the Pons system. It was the reason that she was in the first class of pilots to train on the neural controlled fighter planes. But none of that mattered when it came to drifting with another person. Maria was aware of what her psych eval said: she didn’t trust easily, she retreated from intimacy, her empathy was too measured and controlled, and she had never maintained close bonds. All of that wouldn’t matter if she was already part of a pair. Nat had all the same characteristics, but her friendship with Barton made those other factors superfluous.
Fury sighed slightly, “I shouldn’t approve your request. Waste of time, and resources, but you’re too good of a pilot Hill.”
She had been hoping that her unmatched skills in the Air Force would open this door, and even if her ability wasn’t enough, she would have kicked the damn door down. After San Francisco she wanted the opportunity to kill one of those damn monsters without firing a nuclear missile and killing millions.
“And, I like your grit. God knows we need more of that right now.” Fury signed the paper on his desk. “Welcome to Pacific Rim Defense Corps.”
“So this is a lot like--well substantially better than the Pons system at the Air Force Academy.” Tony Stark did not wait for a response from Maria. He continued to hook her up to the machine to run the basic tests on Maria’s brain patterns. They had the data from her tests at the academy, and numerous logs from the missions she flew using neural controls, but Stark wasn’t willing to rely on information he didn’t collect himself.
Maria was familiar with Stark’s work. Aside from the fact that he basically developed everything successful that had come out of Darpa in the last twenty years, including the jet she use to fly, his father had been the original engineer to work with Erskine. Stark was the person who thought to use the drift to combine two brains to handle the neural load of piloting a jaeger. Maria conceded he was brilliant, she maintained that he was also a self-centered, impulsive, braggart with daddy issues based on every public appearance of his she had ever seen.
In person he was not doing much to change her mind. Stark hadn’t bothered to greet her, and he had very clearly pointed out that fighting in a jaegar was substantially different than riding a joystick and pulling a trigger. Maria had gritted her teeth and held her tongue. She didn’t need to prove to this man that she knew how to fight.
As Stark talked, his assistant, a leggy blonde, moved through a checklist with brisk efficiency. For an instant Maria had thought Stark’s assistant had gotten the job because of her elegant hair and piercing blue eyes, but she moved with too much confidence and both ignored Stark’s comments while following his instructions, a feat that impressed Maria.
Stark’s assistant stopped only once to firmly correct a calculation. Unintentionally, Maria held her breath assuming Stark would respond to the rebuke with anger and misplaced antagonism. He didn’t strike her as the rare man who was comfortable being corrected by an assistant and a woman at that. Instead, Stark paused his ceaseless babbling, looked at computer screen the blonde had pointed to, and nodded before quickly fixing the mistake. He moved back to his own tasks, and then paused to say, “Good catch, Pepper.”
Pepper smiled faintly and with an edge of fondness too subtle for Stark to notice. Maria found her opinion of the inventor changing ever so slightly. Maria’s short observation of the two made her think that Pepper didn’t suffer fools, and it was well known that Stark could not abide stupidity that he didn’t create. The whole interaction had taken less than a minute, but Pepper had acted with intelligence and strength and Stark had responded with respect and appreciation.
Maria was sure that Pepper’s position was because, like Maria, she had earned her place. It made Maria like the other woman even though they hadn’t exchanged any words, and Stark’s treatment of his assistant made Maria relax and trust his genius.
Stark ran Maria through a battery of tests all designed to map her unique neurological responses. As much as the tech had changed since Erskine’s day, the actual tests were almost identical to the ones that Steve Rogers had undergone. Some people said it was a reflection of the military types inability to embrace change, but Maria’s thesis had been about the tactical loss of Erskine’s work. When he was shot, most of the real knowledge about the Pons system he developed, and just as importantly the super soldier serum to help withstand overloading the neural system, had died with him. No matter how much research was done, no one else had come close to creating a better set of tests.
“Okey dokey,” Stark said as he finished the preliminary tests. Maria took a deep breath instead of rolling her eyes at Stark’s tone. “I need to get some baselines of you attempting to establish a neural handshake. My lovely assistant Pepper will help out as your partner for the tests.”
Maria’s muscles tensed and her jaw clenched reflexively. This was the part that she was going to fail.
“Don’t worry about this succeeding,” Stark continued as Pepper took a seat in the empty Pons chair next to Maria’s. “It’s not suppose to work. I just need to get the data. And before you get all nervous about Ms. Potts learning that you think I am the most handsome man alive, the test is only going to be the initial drift stage.”
Maria couldn’t stifle the small laugh that escaped her lips at that comment. Stark ignored her, though Pepper added her own quiet laugh.
“What about Ms. Potts’ privacy?” Maria asked. Stark startled at the question since Maria had only spoken to answer direct questions during the last two hours of testing. “What if I decided to chase a R.A.B.I.T.?”
Personally, Maria thought it unlikely she would lose herself in one of Pepper’s private memories. Maria had never before cared about a person’s secrets, at least not enough to pry or participate in gossip. Just because the tech gave her access to someone else's hidden depths didn’t mean Maria wanted to explore their psyche.
“Don’t worry,” Pepper answered before Stark could speak. “We won’t be going deep enough for that.” Pepper continued as Stark set up the computers that would run the test, “Plus, it’s almost impossible to pick up anything in the Drift unless you are willing to also be open. You aren’t going to learn my secrets unless you are willing to share yours.”
Maria nodded and chewed on Pepper’s observation. Maria had never heard the Drift described that way though it made sense. Most people focused on the loss of privacy in the Drift. That fear and discomfort would make it impossible to establish a strong neural handshake. Being closed off was different than being open and welcoming the connection.
Maria hadn’t thought much about the type of person who she would want to drift with, but if she was going to make it into a jaeger’s con-pod she needed to consider who she could learn to let in behind her walls and practiced emotional distance. Attraction--love--sexual intimacy would not breach Maria’s defenses, they never had before. However, respect, intelligence, determination, commitment, and integrity were things that Maria imagined she could use to build a bridge with another person.
“Count of three ladies.” Stark announced. “One...Two...Three.”
Maria anticipated the small electric shock that meant the Pons was on and she controlled her breathing as the machine initiate the first drift stage. She had done this countless times with her jet. The seconds that it took for the machine to sync with Maria’s own neural signals were always disconcerting. Maria willed herself to ignore the incoming data that was senseless at this point. Someone once described the sensations as looking at the sky, registering it was blue and thinking it was neon pink at the same time. She knew it would normalize in a moment and her brain would control both her body and her machine naturally and effortlessly.
What she didn’t expect was the way that Pepper’s breath was out of sync with her own. It was supremely annoying, and Maria adjusted her heart rate to match the other woman’s. At the same time Maria could tell that Pepper was relaxing her own thoughts to match Maria’s intentional indifference to the mixed signals.
As soon as their breathing fell in line, Pepper cleared her own thoughts and stopped trying to understand the indecipherable information. Pepper trusted Maria’s patience and assurance that the discomfort would pass. Maria appreciated the other woman’s trust and respect for her experience.
Maria didn’t know what this first stage of the Drift with another person was suppose to feel like, but so far it wasn’t any more uncomfortable or difficult than her individual drifts.
Something about that thought triggered a memory.
Maria was sitting in the third row of her introduction to neural computing course. She had chosen Stanford for this program--for this professor--and she consciously ignored the looks she was getting from the other, mostly male, students.
She had debated wearing an outfit that downplayed her looks, but it would have been a disingenuous decision. She never asked for long legs and straight blonde hair and she refused to apologize for her genetics. She wore dark wash skinny jeans, a favorite light pink button up, and a gray cardigan. Her flats were sensible, and her ponytail functional as well as cute. She might look like an art history major to the other students, but that was their assumptions showing.
She would make sure to prove to them that such assumptions made them asses.
She stopped focusing on the tactics of her wardrobe and hurried to write the comments of her professor. Peggy Carter was a legend and there was no way Maria was going to MIT as long as Stanford could offer her the opportunity to study with the only one of Erskine’s students who was still alive.
“The first stage of the Drift is immeasurably minute if the candidates are drift compatible." Professor Carter explained. "The candidates’ neural patterns will match effortlessly, regardless of whether the intention was to establish a full neural handshake or rather to pause at the first step to collect data. As a result, if there is the possibility of compatibility, you as the programmer must be ready to lose them to a R.A.B.I.T., and thus prepare the candidates accordingly.
Marie jotted the notes down in her notebook, and added in a margin “Compatibility/Destiny will take over the test.” One of their assigned readings had been an article on this exact phenomenon. Compatible partners rarely provided usable data on the initial step. The best way to collect information on a candidate’s reaction to the first stage was to initiate the Drift with a stranger as the other drift partner.
Professor Carter continued, “Of course if the candidates are not drift compatible, you will be provided with a plethora of data. As an example…” Professor Carter pulled up a slide showing two brain patterns completely out of line with each other. The bottom one was a blue that would in four short years come to mean death and destruction.
The thought of Kaiju Blue jolted Maria out of Pepper’s memory into her own horrible nightmare of that first battle in San Francisco. But this time she wasn’t reliving it with her own feelings. Instead Pepper’s anger was a thousand times stronger than Maria’s outrage. That monster had destroyed the only place Pepper had felt safe, the first home she chose for herself.
Pepper’s jet was racing through the wreckage of Palo Alto, ducking and dodging the monster’s swings and powerful jaws. Pepper flew with patience, waiting to get the money shot. This was the last resort, and giving that the Kaiju had batted away other missiles like they were flies, the brass had made the decision to send in fighter pilots to get as close as possible to take the shots.
Pepper had volunteered for this mission, for this likely death. If the monster didn’t get her, the radiation almost certainly would. She stopped thinking about that and focused all her attention of the most brilliant flying of her career. She was going to get the shot. She was going to end this.
Finally, Pepper knew she was going to get the shot, a half second of perfection. Pepper pulled the trigger, releasing the first missile armed with a nuke. She knew then it spelled death for anyone who had survived the days long rampage, but it was the only way to stop that destruction from spreading. She would mourn the dead and honor their sacrifice if she survived.
Maria hadn’t cried when she made the decision, but in her memory she could feel Pepper’s tears as she pulled the trigger.
Maria reached up and touched her cheek to find she was actually crying. She looked to woman next to her, mirroring her exact movement. Pepper smiled with Maria’s astonishment in her eyes.
“Well hell.” Stark collapsed with surprise on the computer monitor behind him. “One in a million...one in 1.57 million.”
Maria started to laugh with Pepper’s giddy high. “We’ve always beaten the odds.”
“We will beat the odds.” Pepper answered aloud, but Maria could feel her certainty--beating the kaiju was their destiny.
Maria’s first car was a 1973 Dodge Charger with a four speed manual transmission. The paint job had been crap by the time she bought it, but the engine’s power was still all there. It had been the closest Maria could get to flying at sixteen, and the way it purred under her fingers had been better than her attempts at making out with Pete Mitchell.
Maria had worked every job she could find for three years, including babysitting the Humphrey twins for the whole summer before sophomore year, to buy it. At first it had been about proving to her father that she could handle a muscle car, and then it became about realizing a goal no one else thought her capable of achieving. Getting the keys to the car had been the happiest day of her life.
Until now.
Tony was never one to waste any chance for drama, and Maria knew he was playing up this moment, but she didn’t care. Maybe it was Pepper’s patience, though the other woman was vibrating with barely contained excitement. Maria’s own heartbeat raced liked Pepper’s, waiting for Tony to flip the light switch and reveal their jaeger.
Rationally, Maria shouldn’t have felt so much adrenaline and anticipation since the machine wasn’t a surprise. The jaeger had already been under construction before Maria even appealed to be tested for the program. The engineers and designers had made a few minor modifications as they learned Maria and Pepper’s style, and both Maria and Pepper had long since memorized her schematics. Maria’s sixth sense for an engine’s capabilities and meant they both knew exactly how fast the jaeger would go. Pepper’s own background in neural engineering ensured they knew their jaeger’s strengths and her few weak spots.
Maria couldn’t miss the sense of certainty in this moment. They had been destined for this long before they drifted together. Pepper’s emotionally harrowing childhood, Maria’s understanding of how to take a punch, their determination to excel in the world on more than their looks. The last nine months of gut wrenching training, their private tears, and public smiles--all of it was to get to meet this lady.
Before the drift Maria had never cared for physical touch as a part of intimacy, and after drifting with Pepper it was such a weak expression of emotion that Maria rarely touched her partner, but it did not stop her from taking Pep’s hand. Pepper wove their fingers together and they took a breath together.
The lights rose up as they both exhaled in a rush as Tony spoke with all the pride of a father, “Ladies, meet Verity Extremis.”