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And that’s where Nadia met her family for the first time.
Well, it’s possible that “met” isn’t exactly the right word. Maybe…“assembled”?
Nadia had absolutely been a proactive part of putting her current family unit together. When she’d heard about the great injustice of the S.H.I.E.L.D. list (twenty-seventh?! Are you serious?!), Nadia set out almost immediately to scour the boroughs for the smartest G.I.R.L. squad she could find.
The trick, it turned out, was recruiting them without immediately scaring them off. Look, Nadia was enthusiastic. She’d made a little explanatory holo-video and everything. She thought it was very convincing and also very charming and even a little bit funny, too? But Nadia was raised in an espionage facility, so she had to admit her sense of humor was maybe a little warped.
And don’t even start on her pop culture knowledge (or lack thereof). Ms. Marvel has always been appalled at how little Nadia knew about life outside of a brainwashing facility. But who has time to catch up on a bazillion TV shows when they all seem to be about the same white man who hasn’t shaved in several weeks? If you’ve seen one…
First, Nadia had tracked down Taina in Washington Heights. Nadia found her tinkering with a robotic goalie she was using to help her older sister play street hockey. Tai and her older sister Alexis lived with their abuelita, which Nadia now knew was what Puerto Rican girls called their babulyas.*
Tai was the best engineer Nadia had ever met, and she’d grown up with a lot of world-class engineers. Nadia suspected Tai’s love for robotics came in part from being born with cerebral palsy; she always had a mechanical aid around and considered herself quite cyberpunk as a result. Nadia and Tai were different in a lot of ways. Nadia tried to like everything; Tai liked almost nothing at first brush, but was known to come around. Still, neither of them had ever let perceived limitations stymie their potential. Nadia felt so lucky to have Tai as a lab partner, but even luckier to call her a friend.
Then there was Priya. She lived in Queens, but Nadia found her in Times Square, working at her family’s gift shop. Priya’s parents were Indian immigrants and wanted to give Priya every opportunity to find success. Which sometimes came into direct conflict with Priya’s desire to, you know…be Cool. Even so, Priya had an incredible drive of her own—it just often manifested a little differently than the other G.I.R.L.s’.
Nadia understood a little bit of what it was like to be under so much pressure you felt you might buckle, but knew that Priya’s situation was entirely unique. She was nervous about her parents finding out that she had a remarkable gift for biology—truly, she was extraordinary. But she didn’t want the anxiety that would inevitably come from her parents on the discovery of such an aptitude. But when Nadia saved their shop from an attack, and Priya saw the incredible power of science in action, she joined the lab, hoping to do good for the world.
Also, one time Priya inhaled a bunch of gas working on one of her experiments in plant genetics, and then she could communicate with and control plants.
So, that was certainly A Thing now.
Next, Nadia headed to Brooklyn and found Shay literally exploding out of her fourth-story bedroom window after an experiment with a prototype teleporter went awry. Happens to the best of us, really.
Shay had been going through some hard times: Her mom left for Los Angeles to become an actress, and her dad, though amazing (truly worthy of the #1 DAD! mug in Priya’s family’s shop), worked long, stressful hours to support them both. Shay had been getting bullied at school and, like Nadia, needed a place where she could be herself. Somewhere she could work on her teleporter in peace. Somewhere like G.I.R.L.
Finally, there was Ying, who wasn’t so much recruited as she was rescued. When they’d reunited for the first time since Nadia had escaped the Red Room, it was actually because their handlers had done the thing that Nadia had feared most: used their friendship against them. They’d sent Ying to track Nadia down, and threatened to explode her with a bomb in her brain if Ying didn’t bring Nadia back.
Fortunately, Ying found Nadia with a squad of girl scientists who were able to remove the bomb from her head, severing Ying’s connection to the Red Room forever. Now Ying also had a spot in the lab—and in Shay’s heart. Nadia had always found public displays of affection entirely unnecessary, but with Shay and Ying she found it almost cute. Sometimes.
And here they all were, in G.I.R.L. HQ at Pym Labs, pretending to surprise Nadia, who’d brought them all together. And frankly, Nadia was touched. This was the kind of public display of
affection Nadia understood. Supported, even.
Especially because it involved funfetti.
“Okay, yes, I knew about the surprise,” Nadia admitted with a wry smile. “But that doesn’t mean I appreciate it any less! Did you fix whatever’s been wrong with Shay’s teleporter?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it—” started Shay.
“Except sometimes socks go into it and never come out again,” finished Ying.
Priya nodded. “Like my favorite thigh-high ones with the cat ears.”
“I don’t care literally at all about fashion, but I did love those cat socks,” Tai added.
Nadia laughed. “You probably just calibrated the quantum oscillators wrong. Remember when Priya tested it that one time and rematerialized with her ponytail on the other side of her head?”
“Okay, are we going to get into science mistakes?” Shay pointed her fork at Nadia. “Because we can get into it—”
“Remember the time you accidentally stained Priya’s whole left arm with that weird chemical?” Tai jabbed Ying.
“It was an accident! It washed off!” Ying protested. “Remember that time you went off to fight Mother* all by yourself?”
Nadia threw her hands up in front of her in defense. “I was trying to be, you know, tough! And I made a pretty good ‘fearless leader’ speech before I left!” She pointed to a note still taped to the wall next to the G.I.R.L. squad sign: Never stop doing science and being amazing.
“Sweet,” Priya agreed. “But bafflingly stupid.”
They all laughed. They’d all messed up, a few times, but it didn’t change how they felt about each other.
