Standing at the feet of Striker Eureka and looking up at the 312 foot tall, 6,650 ton machine, Ibira's mouth just slightly hung open. She did not confess that she knew those stats, along with many others about the Hansen men's jaeger, but Chuck got a sense of her depth of knowledge as he watched her eyes go over every part of his robot.
Realizing that neither of them had spoken for a few minutes, Ibira sheepishly looked to Chuck where he stood beside her and found him staring at her with a curious expression.
"Smaller than I expected," she joked with a comedic frown. At this, Chuck smirked, suppressing a laugh.
"Do you know much about jaegers?" he asked her, carefully watching her expression. She blinked innocuously and replied, "I leave the engineering to the engineers."
"You mentioned you were stationed at the Sydney Shatterdome before this," he continued, working to piece together what he knew about this woman. Looking at her now, he couldn't believe he had never noticed her in his homebase before.
"Only for a couple months," she clarified, picking up on the subtext of his words. He nodded thoughtfully at her maddeningly concise answers.
"And we've never met until now?" he pushed subtly, walking over to a tool box and pulling out a drill.
Shaking her head, Ibira shrugged and said, "Like I said, I've spent a lot of time working on my serum."
"But you know my father?"
Ibira caught a hint of something tense in his voice, although he was now putting on a good show of checking the gauges within the piece of Striker Eureka that was on the floor in front of them.
"Not much," she assured him, squatting down and resting her arms on her knees to watch him work. "What's that?"
"The hydraulics," Chuck told her curtly, feeling thoroughly that it was his turn to be interrogated.
Studying the way his hands moved with ease over the complex parts, she tried to imagine him first learning how to work on jaegers when he joined the PPDC at just 16 years old. Looking at the perpetually grumpy 21-year old man in front of her, it was difficult to picture.
"You've piloted her for 6 years, right?" Ibira pondered softly. Chuck nodded solemnly, not looking away from his work. She wanted to ask what it was like, but that seemed like a stupid question. She knew the feeling of piloting the world's fastest, most fluid jaeger must be indescribable. Looking up at what she could see of the jaeger's head with a conflicted expression, she was struck wholly in a way that she hadn't been before that whichever way Operation Pitfall went, Striker Eureka would probably be the last jaeger ever built.
"How scary was your first time?" Ibira asked quietly.
At her words, Chuck turned to look at her. With a coy smile, he said, "That's a very intimate question, Ibira. A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."
Stifling a surprised cough, she clarified, "Your first time piloting, Hansen."
Admiring the slight blush in her cheeks, he answered, "More than I expected. But not as much as you'd probably like to think, sweetheart."
Ibira let out a small huff of air in dry laughter.
"Whatever you say, hotshot," she responded knowingly. After a moment, she softly added, "I know this doesn't mean much, since you'll be out there and I'll just be…here. But I'm scared, too."
Chuck furrowed his eyebrows slightly. Before he could say anything, they both turned at the sound of footsteps approaching them.
Herc Hansen had been watching from afar. Though he would usually consider it rude to spy, he couldn't help his curiosity at seeing his son in what appeared to be a good mood. Seeing Chuck speaking with Ibira Valenti, the two of them kneeling on the ground and smiling, had lightened his father's heart in a way he had not felt in a very long time.
Approaching them with intentionally heavy steps, he announced himself by saying, "Miss Valenti, what a pleasant surprise."
Quickly standing up to face him, Ibira was met with Hercules Hansen's famously dangerous smile. Her mind flashed to old magazine covers she had seen of Herc and his brother Scott when they used to co-pilot together. Their charming smiles and buff torsos had been splashed across covers for years when they were the golden-boy heartthrobs of the jaeger program. Now, there was no denying he was a very handsome and finely aged man. Ibira consciously thanked her lucky stars that Chuck hadn't yet quite figured out the suave manners that his father had refined. There was still a hint of boyishness to his approach to everything that made it easier for Ibira to remember that she was supposed to dislike him, at least partially.
Interacting with Herc right after his son almost made her want to laugh, because it made it clear as day where Chuck got his arrogance from, even as his father had mellowed out over the years. She also tried to imagine what Hercules must have been like back when he first became a ranger, with his younger brother nonetheless. Where Hercules Hansen had strikingly blue eyes, his son Charles had a softer green tone to his eyes. For a brief moment, Ibira found herself wondering if he had gotten them from his mother. Surprised by this thought, she refocused on the conversation at hand.
"Good Morning, Mr. Hansen," she replied, grinning at Herc. With her full smile, Chuck noted the dimples that appeared on either side of her full lips. Holding her hand out for a handshake, Herc briefly enveloped it with both of his. Chuck only half listened as he began thanking her for all her hard work, throwing in something about how lucky they were to have her on the team. He knew his father was a shameless flirt, and it both turned his stomach and made his blood boil watching Ibira smile back at his charms.
"The mech team needs to go over Eureka's lower joints before we launch again," Chuck interjected, loudly tossing a blackened piece of metal into a scrap bin as he stood up. They both turned to face him as he rummaged through pieces of equipment on one of his work benches. As a pair of engineers passed by, Chuck roughly handed them a clipboard with some hastily scribbled inspection notes.
"Once we get that sorted, she should be ready for your serum," Herc told Ibira, trying to smooth over his son's gruffness.
"Assuming Becket doesn't blow up the Shatterdome by then," Chuck added, now standing in front of them with his arms crossed. Ibira raised her eyebrows slightly, acutely aware of his change in demeanor around his father, but otherwise did not react to his comment.
"The serum should be ready by tomorrow evening," she told them both, slipping into a more professional tone.
"Will you need help moving it from your lab?" Chuck began to say. "I could-"
"I'll manage," she cut him off, taking a few steps back with a small, polite smile. "Thank you for showing me Striker Eureka up close."
With a small nod, she turned and walked away, leaving the Hansen men to stand in silence.
"I'm glad you came around on this, mate," Herc told his son, clapping him on the shoulder.
"Yea, well she seems to know what she's doing," Chuck responded dismissively, pulling away and returning his attention to his inspection work.
"Bit of an understatement, but that almost sounds like a compliment," his father noted, a faint tone of teasing in his voice. When his son only shot him an unamused look, he added, "She really is a remarkable young woman."
"She's infuriating, is what she is," Chuck snapped before he could stop himself. This made Herc laugh, which only annoyed his son more.
"Well, all these researchers are!" Chuck added conspicuously. "And they've all got more than a few screws loose."
"We probably would, too, if we had half their brains," Herc joked, used to his son's temper. "Besides, if she's that brilliant in a lab, I can only imagine what she could have been like as a ranger."
That made Chuck freeze, turning to face his father with a skeptical expression.
"What are you talking about?" he prodded.
"How do you think Pentecost first found her?" his father responded, tapping Chuck's forehead lightly. Chuck moved to swat his hand away but was too slow.
"She was originally a candidate to co-pilot with Becket," Herc went on to explain. "She trained as a Mark 3 ranger back in the day."
"She never mentioned being in the academy," Chuck rebutted, and to his surprise Herc could see the hurt and confusion hidden beneath the facade of anger in his son's eyes.
"That's all I know," he replied with a shake of his head, holding his hands up in surrender. "But Pentecost wanted her here, and I trust his judgment."
As Chuck opened his mouth to launch another question at him, Herc stopped him and said, "Look, son. I figured whatever she's chosen to do with her time, that's her business."
Straightening his shoulders, Chuck sniffed and said, "Doesn't matter anyways. We'll see soon enough just how well this serum works." As he returned his tools to a tool box, he added, "I hope for your sake she's as good as you all think she is."
Frowning, Herc struggled to find a response to his son's words. Before he could say anything, Chuck slammed the lid of the tool box and walked away, abruptly ending their conversation. With a deep sigh, Herc watched his son fade into the flow of the engineering bay.