#junkthrillz

Honestly? I've given more thought to their Fightmaster days than their actual co-piloting. So much of the draw for drift compatibility is the criticality of trust, so jumping to the point where they already trust each other is less interesting than seeing how they get there. Which is to say, it takes a while for them to Get In That Robot.

They don't get along during their trainee/ranger days. At all. It's, like, bad. It's so bad.

When they start working together, that relationship worsens before it gets better. They're both hotheaded, they still miss the cockpit and neural drift and adrenaline, and all of that pent up aggression and emotion comes out during their instruction demonstrations.

One benefit of not liking each other for years is they don't try to make a good impression, which lets them develop their relationship as honest versions of themselves, knowing the good with the bad as part of each other rather than a disappointment. Isabel already thinks Johnny is a bitch. Johnny already thinks Isabel is a delusional shrimp who thinks she's tougher than him. They have nowhere to go but forward.

Training in the Kwoon is supposed to forge an ideal partnership between recruits. Enough to establish or develop drift compatibility. MY hypothesis is that if two people - with prior pilot experience and more similarities than they think - INSTRUCT that training, a natural consequence would develop that partnership on steroids. The ability to open up and trust your partner is what determines compatibility. So as Isabel and Johnny begin to work together, they unknowingly begin building that trust. They spend time together. They adapt to each others' teaching styles and mentalities. They learn each others' fighting techniques. Humor styles. Bitching sessions. All of this is learning how to read each other.

Isabel begins learning Johnny until she knows how he's going to move before he does, and vice versa. When they show how a move is done, Johnny throws her a kendo stick and Isabel catches it without looking. Where they would previously interrupt each other to argue during martial arts demonstrations, they start playing into each others' strengths and letting the other take over when their own knowledge is lacking. Isabel ducks before Johnny even swings. Johnny places a foot where he knows Isabel will trip. They can sympathize with each other. They both loved piloting, they miss their old copilots to death. Isabel and Ed and Johnny and the gang still see each other around, but it's not the same. It's not taking on the world together. It's not sharing a head with their best friend. They eat lunch in silence together in the hangar repair bay, watching mechanics fix Jaegars for rangers who still have someone to be a conversation with.

So that develops over a couple years. Max notices but says nothing. Not his business. He just thinks it's. Y'know. Interesting.

When the program starts getting desperate and co-pilots are needed, they're who Max recommends.

They each bring something old into the drift. Drifting with each other isn't like drifting with Ed, or with Ollie Stephen and RJ.

Drifting with Ed is like playing superheroes with a sibling at age 7. simple. intuitive. it feels like an improv game where the two of you are so in sync that whatever weird thing happens, happens, and now you get to find out whats next.

Drifting with Ed eventually failed because a lapse in trust weakened their connection. As intuitive as implicit trust with your sibling can be, it if's been that way forever and hasn't been exercised, it's like a vulnerable immune system. Their weakened connection caused a bad fight, and now Ed can't co-pilot again. Isabel still feels bad.

Drifting with the Jang is friendship fusion on steroids. It feels like going to sleep with your three best friends nearly your whole life. Like late night sleepovers way past curfew to watch banned horror marathons, passing out in a bed surrounded by three people who love you most. When Scourge goes down, it's like the stack tower destabilized. Johnny wakes up and the bed is empty.

Drifting with each other is... shy. Their first few times.

It's hard to use each others' headspace at first. They don't drift in the same way they would have been used to. They're bringing in everything of their past partners, and everything of the people they both used to be and have become since then. It's not just scary to do this with a new person; it's scary to see who you've become without the old ones. How choices you would have made before aren't your go-to anymore. How that feels right, now. How you change.

Past people and yourself aside, there's the matter of someone new. It's raw and confusing and awkward. There's no way to edit, you're both very vulnerable, your thoughts are all out there, a lot of barriers are lowered. Your minds are two channels that feed into each other.

It's shy. But they're compatible. Dropping their guard and trusting the person next to them is key.

Isabel gets hit with the experience of being Johnny scraping his knee at age 7, then Johnny feels the real-time fury of arguing with Francisco every night at the dinner table for 6 years straight. That thought bounces briefly to their first actions when meeting each other, which bounces back to the comfort of drifting with their previous co-pilots, which bounces to both feeling the hit Ed took when Blitz went down, which bounces to the panic Stephen felt when Scourge met the first Kaiju it couldn't tackle, which bounces to the panic of losing the drift forever. Which jumps to their deep-seated desire to go back to piloting, the need for something they want, which leads into the memory of Johnny's first time kissing a boy, Isabel's first time pinning an opponent bigger than her until they tapped out, the first time one of their spars together felt fun.

They see meeting themselves from the other persons' perspective. Catching each others eye from across the trainee room and boredly assessing if that shrimp is going to end up in the big leagues like they are. If they're a threat.

Then meeting again properly, their first impressions of each other. Isabel's hair is shinier than it should be, she definitely wasn't that short, and she DEFINITELY wasn't that shrimpy. She was that firey though. Johnny probably was that cocky and trigger happy, but how loud and annoying he was in the cafeteria is way exaggerated.

Then they're one person. And a giant fucking robot.

Drifting with each other feels like summer. The good one. From way back before you actually remember. Long tall grass filled with humming bugs, dirt on your legs, a world to run around and poke and sweat in and take on. It's hot and itchy and you feel alert and alive and giddy and powerful. Night summer adrenaline and peak afternoon summer adventure all at the same time.