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Pete is sixteen when he buys his Kawasaki. Between college and work, it was a hassle, but he's been saving up for one since he was a kid. Since he graduated high school a couple years early, he'll be in flight school in no time at all, and then he'll need transportation. His dad owned a bike, too, he thinks.
Two weeks after buying her, when she starts mysteriously malfunctioning a little, he discovers he has a very strange ability.
"Pete."
Pete jumps a foot in the air when he hears a strange female voice coming from nearby, whirling in a circle and swallowing hard when he realizes no one is there. Hearing voices is a no-no. "H-Hello?"
"Down here."
He stares down at his bike. There's no way for anyone to be hiding behind it, but that's certainly where it sounds like it came from. He checks, just in case. "Excuse me?"
"I hate to tell you this, darlin', but I've got a small compression leak already."
Pete's mouth falls open. "What do you mean, 'I?'"
The voice— his bike???— sighs in exasperation. "I meant what I said. Care to lend a girl a hand? I'd do it myself, but I'm a little lacking in the hands department, hotshot."
"A... girl? You have a name?"
"Well, not yet, but you can keep calling me sweetheart."
At first, Pete is convinced he's crazy, but then he pulls her apart to check for a compression leak and she's right. It's just a bad seal, nothing he can't fix in a jiffy, but she was right. He talks to her the whole time, and when he puts her back together, he watches in fascination as the engine turns over all on its own.
"That's so much better, Pete. You're a doll, darlin'."
Pete is almost bouncing up and down in excitement. This is so fucking cool! "If I bring Nick over sometime to show you to him, you're not gonna go mute and make me look like I'm crazy, are you?"
"I'd never."
So, a month later, Pete catches a newly christened Nick "Goose" Bradshaw on a free weekend away from the academy to show his bike to him. Again.
"Pete, I already saw it, remember? You wouldn't stop talking about it for three hours straight."
"Her."
"Fine, her. Give her a name, yet?"
Pete nods proudly, his hand still on Goose's wrist as he drags his best friend toward the garage. "I named her Shera."
Goose follows him with a laugh, mirth glowing in his eyes as he takes in Pete's rampant excitement. Yeah, he's seen Pete's motorcycle before, but it makes him happy and that means Goose is happy. He'd do anything to see more smiles on Pete's face.
"Okay, Goose. This is gonna be a little weird."
This oughta be good.
When Goose stands alongside the bike, Pete fidgets. He chews his lips, then fidgets some more. Goose waits patiently. Pete's all excited, and this is part of the process.
"Shera, I brought Nick."
Goose only just opens his mouth to ask, very jokingly, if Pete lost his marbles when a female voice fills the garage. "Well, it's about damn time, Pete. You go on and on about 'Nick this' and 'Nick that,' but you make me wait a month to talk to him."
"I told you he was at the academy. Several times."
"I'm just teasing. It's a pleasure, Nick."
'A little weird' feels like an understatement. "Petey, tell me you have a small, strangely adult-sounding child stuffed in the compartment and that the bike didn't just whole-ass talk to me."
Pete frowns. "You'd rather I kidnapped a child than have a talking bike?"
Well.
He has a point.
"So..., Shera? How exactly did this whole... talking thing start? And, uh... where does your voice come from?"
"About a month ago, Pete noticed I was lugging between gearshifts, and I heard him ask me what was wrong, so I told him. Before he bought me, I don't think I existed, but after he brought me home, I had a certain awareness of him right up until he spoke directly to me." Shera laughs. "As for my voice, I'm not really sure. Pete says I just kind of exude."
Goose hums curiously.
Little did he know, when Pete rides with him to lunch in the Bronco, he wakes another consciousness within his best friend's truck. He isn't aware of it until he's back at the academy, changing cassette tapes.
"If you put another ballad in my damn radio, I'll pop out of the glovebox and kill you."
"MOTHERFUCKER!" Goose yelps, diving out of his truck and spilling a soft drink all over the pavement.
The truck laughs, a low and masculine sound with a little rust in it.
Goose calls Pete that evening after a long drive where his vehicle spent the entire time critiquing his taste in music. Although, it didn't judge him for Great Balls of Fire. That was acceptable. So was Carole, and Goose isn't sure whether to be insulted or not that his truck is better at flirting than he is.
"You're a charmer, Monte, but I'm a taken woman."
He loves her to death for taking this whole thing in stride. In the end, Carole will never tell him that Shera taught her how to ride a bike, not Pete.
While Mav works through ROTC and Goose goes through the academy, they do a little experimenting. Mav's weird power does not work on public transportation. Yet. Maybe. He's not for sure, because he doesn't really actively use it there, but he checks back up on the one bus he took a couple months down the line and it doesn't have a presence. It also doesn't work on bicycles, scooters, or lawn mowers. For reasons unknown, it doesn't work on Carole's car, either.
It works on Goose's camera. They name him Earl, and he's the most faithful and durable Polaroid Maverick has ever seen.
"That there's a beaut, my boys!"
When Pete makes it to flight school, none of the planes he trains in come to life. His first F-14, however, does. Goose isn't even out of the academy yet, and Pete is the only solo F-14 pilot without the need for a RIO in the backseat. It's yet another reason the Navy gives him the name Maverick; he plays by his own rules. He pairs up with Goose regardless, because Goose evens out his erratic flying and curtails his dangerous behavior. Somewhat. The two of them name the plane Molly, a gruff but maternal lady, and Goose and Molly get on like a house on fire.
Then, when the F-14A line gets a modification, the Navy has to figure out what to do with Molly. It takes over a year for them to come to a final decision, and Molly graciously donates several of her own parts to the new model, and when it comes to light that she followed those parts and freaked the fuck out of a tech team on a test flight, they give her right back to Maverick.
"I was scared you were going to have to waste away in some old hangar somewhere," Mav breathes, his voice nearly lost to the drone of his and Goose's maiden voyage in the new frame.
"Eh," Molly tuts. "Thought I'd stick around and bug you a little longer, kiddo."
Mav snorts. "Who're you calling kiddo? I'm older than you."
"Maybe in years, but I age three times as fast with you at the stick, don't I?"
Goose hoots with laughter at that one, and then he and Molly get started on a conversation about Bradley. It isn't until their new wingman, Cougar, joins their formation that they're forced to stop chattering. Just like everyone else, Cougar has questions. Of course, he has questions. Who wouldn't when a two-seater plane has three voices in it?
One night, when the sky is clear and they've all snuck down to the hangar, Cougar and Merlin ask Maverick if he can do it to any old plane.
"Honestly, I've never figured out how it works. Most times, I don't notice I did it until they speak up a ways down the line, and by then, I have no idea what triggered it."
"But you've experimented, right?"
Above them, Molly gives a warm chuckle. "If by experimented, you mean touched anything with a motor on the off chance it wakes up, then yes."
Cougar jumps. "Fuck, uh- Hi. Hello. Um.... I didn't know you could talk without Mav in the cockpit."
"Name's Molly, kid."
"It's a pleasure..., Miss? Ma'am? What title do they give you?"
Goose pats Molly's landing gear. "Don't call her 'ma'am.' It'll go straight to her cockpit. Seriously, just call her Molly."
"Got it. Okay."
Merlin looks positively starry-eyed despite the fact that Molly is just sitting there doing nothing. "This is awesome. So awesome."
Mav won't know it until they go to Top Gun a few years down the line, but the voice in the cockpit, the one who refused to leave until there was no other option, belonged to his ma. Viper tells him after the accident, when the plane, Molly, is gone. Molly saved Goose. She warned of a low-pressure anomaly over the cockpit and jettisoned the canopy while Goose was struggling to reach the ejection handles and gave them a clear path out. When the Navy found the wreckage and brought it back, there was no presence in the remains. Mav could feel it. Or, rather, it was that he couldn't feel Molly that stuck out to him.
Now, he sits on the tarmac, staring up at the jet he's supposed to borrow for his hops tomorrow. He's afraid to touch it. For the first time in his life, he doesn't want anything to come of his presence.
Goose sits with him, gently rubbing his arm and letting Maverick lean his head on his shoulder. "Even if it wakes up, we won't be replacing her."
Mav opens his hand and stares down at the circular dial he pocketed from the wreckage. "But she's still gone, and it's my fault."
The evening progresses, and soon enough, two sets of footsteps approach and join them. Ice and Slider settle down, Ice beside Mav and Slider beside Goose.
"I spent a few hours in the hangar talking to her once," Ice murmurs.
"Only once?" Slider huffs.
"Okay, fine. A few times. I think we all did, to be honest. Wolf and Wood were down there every so often, too. We were just so... mystified. She was this impossible thing, and the brass refused to explain where she came from. It wasn't until I actually went to talk to her that I found out it was you."
Mav shuffles, but he doesn't interrupt.
"That her... consciousness, I suppose, came from you. And I'm.... I'm sorry. For taking that from you."
It's then that Maverick realizes; maybe it's better to have something and lose it than to have never had it in the first place. He shifts Goose's arm away, standing and walking up to the nose of the plane. The best way to honor Molly is to keep going and allow someone else just as unique to step into her shoes. Hell, maybe he'll do it to all of them just for shits and giggles—make the Navy figure out what to do with an entire squadron of sentient airplanes.
"It wasn't your fault, Ice," he says, the wind carrying his words back to the others.
He places his hand on the F-14's nose, eager to meet whoever comes next. Nobody is home, not yet, but maybe one day.