Danger Zone - Top Gun: Maverick

6. Enjoying The View

The sun was just starting to rise over the San Diego shore, painting the sky with orange and yellow hues. Bradley stepped out of his car, clad in a pair of jorts and an old Hawaiian button up. He looked around for his coworkers and was quickly greeted by a few of the pilots. He saw Maverick walking up to the group, and greeted him with a nod, secretly just looking around for his daughter. This was her idea, after all.

The rest of the team showed up within the next five minutes, and their captain explained the rules of the twisted football game that Nova made up.

Maverick split the group into two teams, and they started a very competitive, yet fun, game of Dogfight football.

Meanwhile on base, Nova was just finishing up checking the jets and topping them off with fuel.

"Where's the team, shouldn't they all be here by now?" Sam asks her as he puts away his supplies and wipes the sweat off his brow.

"We're training off base today. It was my idea, so I'm headed to the beach." She quips.

"They're training at the beach?"

"It's team bonding." She grins at her friend.

Sam heads off to repair another plane, and Nova walks the other direction to get to her car. When Admiral Simpson sees that nobody is in the classroom, he paces outside to the tarmac to find it empty. Nova was usually one to mess around, so when he saw the girl, he knew she had something to do with this.

"Mitchell, where are my pilots?" He angrily asks her.

"Team bonding, sir." She answers knowingly. "I'll be headed their way, if I'm excused."

"Where the hell did Maverick take my team?" He asks, clearly annoyed at the lack of work being done.

"The Hard Deck, sir. More specifically, the beach in front of it. After yesterday, Mav decided they needed to blow off some steam." She blames her dad, not wanting to tell Cyclone that this was her idea.

"You are dismissed." He sighs. "Let me go talk to Bates, and I'll be there shortly.

Nova can tell that the man is under a lot of stress. She thinks maybe he could use a day at the beach too.

As she pulls up to the Hard Deck, she sees the team of aviators running back and forth, seemingly having a blast playing the game. She spots Penny on the porch of the bar, and her dad walking towards her.

"Nova!" She turns her head when she hears Payback's voice shout.

Nova gives the group an excited wave and shouts "Howdy!", receiving a number of cheers and waves back.

The girl kicks her shoes off and runs into the sand, quickly joining one of the teams and catching a ball. As she runs, she sees Omaha coming towards her and she throws the ball to Bob, who's on her team. The man freaks out a bit, not exactly knowing what to do. Nova and Bradley direct him to run, and he ends up scoring the Dogfight version of a touchdown.

Hangman lifts Bob onto Rooster's shoulders, and the whole group cheers in a big huddle. Solomon arrives, not waiting a second to ask Maverick what is going on here.

Nova high fives Bob, and pulls Rooster in for a quick side hug before departing from the group and going to see Penny.

"Good morning, Miss Mitchell." Penny smiles at her, cleaning the outside window while the bar is closed.

"Good morning, Pen." She smiles at her and leans against the porch railing, watching the game go on.

Nova sees Rooster doing a weird celebratory dance, and thinks of how dumb he looks. She wonders how he can manage to dance like that and not look stupid. He looks like he's having fun, they all do. It seems to her like her idea of creating a team is actually working. And Bradley looks super hot, even in jorts.