#{ queue queue kachoo }

Can I have five facts about a Top Gun AU where Bradley is hurt on mission and Mav is of course the Dagger dad. You decide if he's actually there or on the radio. ;D

Thank you so much for this ask, @musewrangler!

I’m so sorry this took an eternity, but I only got the inspiration for this now!

*sighs in author*

Anyway, many authors better than me have tackled the idea of Bradley getting injured on the Uranium Mission, so I decided to tweak the prompt a little bit—I hope you like this!

It’s a big deal—this is the first mission of the newly formed VFA-223, the “Black Cloaks”, and it’s air cover for a high value hostage rescue in Eastern Europe; a simple task, ostensibly, for such skilled pilots: Bradley is mission lead, Jake is his wingman, with Omaha and Halo, Payback and Fanboy as their two Foxtrot teams.

Mav is there in the command center, practically ready to jump out of his skin, praying they all make it home, his heart sinking when, though the hostages are successfully rescued, the mission quickly turns bad for the Daggers; there’s much more firepower than the intelligence indicated, including a UN sanctioned missile system—however, Mav’s trained them well; they’re all able to evade its targeting system, barely using their flares and chaff, but when an RPG catches Bradley off guard, Mav practically knocks Cyclone over in his rush to get to the radio as they all hear Jake’s terrified “Roo!”.

Bradley just manages to dive to avoid most of the explosion, but the blast has damaged his right aileron, with shrapnel striking his cockpit, cutting into his leg, and shearing off most of the F-18’s right elevator; he’s about to bail out of his jet into enemy territory for the second time in two years when he feels a warm hand close around his own on the stick, the battered aircraft suddenly stabilizing. “Let me show you the way home, kiddo,” a warm voice echoes in his ear, the ghost of a mustache whispering against his cheek, and as he looks out the corner of his eye, he can see the mirage of an F-14 on his wing, with a silver and blue-helmeted pilot at the stick.

Gently reassuring everyone over comms that he had control over the aircraft, especially Mav, whose fatherly concern is thinly veiled by military protocol, he miraculously makes it home, to the shock of his whole squadron when they see the state of the aircraft, everyone hugging him, Mav the tightest of all, who then promptly drags him to medical, and if the whole squadron along with its commanding officer decides to camp out in a particular room, the corpsmen decide not to mention anything.

Over the squadron’s long and storied history, it becomes a legend reverently whispered by every aviator assigned there, that if you ever find yourself in a mission gone bad, more often than not, you’ll feel a warm hand around yours on the stick, as a mustache ghosts against your cheek, and catch the faint sight of an F-14 at your wing with a silver and blue-helmed pilot at the stick, and eventually, also an F-18E with a black, white, and red-helmed pilot at the stick, VFA-223’s own guardian angels, ready to show their aviators the way home.

an artfight attack I somehow missed posting back from 2023!

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, I HAVE HANDS NOW!

or: 4AM nick decided PAMA Should Have A Humanized Form