Dawn breaks in the sacred glade, shafts of orange morning light flow in. Neytiri, Tsu'tey, Jake and Nova sleep peacefully in eachothers arms. But then the roar of an engine startles Neytiri and Tsu'tey awake.
The splintering, crackling of the forest being crushed under enormous treads, getting louder. They watch in growing horror as the blades of a bulldozer become a dark wall behind the sheltering ring of willows.
They both shake Nova and Jake, telling them in na'vi to wake up. "Nova. Wake up! Where ever you are now come back to me. Nova"
In the shack at dawn human Jake and Nova are in a hurry, excited to return back to their avatar bodies. Grace, still groggy chases after us with coffee and microwaved eggs.
"Here, Eat this. I'd hate to force feed two crippled." "Grace!" She slams the link lid shut leaving no other choice but to eat. Jake and Nova look at eachother, sighing before scarfing down the food.
The the willow glade Tsu'tey and Neytiri scream as willows begin to fall before the blade, to be grounded under the treads. Avatar Nova and Jake are directly in its path. Neytiri and Tsu'tey try to lift both Jake and Nova but their attemps are futile as a heavy peice of bark landed ontop of their legs, trapping them. They are screaming at them, frantically trying to wake them up as-
In the shack Jake and I adjust ourselves in the link chair, handing Grace our empty plate. Although Jake is a little head of me, somehow, as he finished before me as we pull down the lid.
In the willows glade avatar Jake wakes up a few seconds before Nova to see Neytiri and Tsu'tey dragging him and Nova. He leaps up as Nova starts to come through to her avatar body.
Nova's pov
As I start to wake up in my avatar body I see Jake leap up in alarm as well as Neytiri and Tsu'tey carrying me. Looking around I see a dozer pushing inexorably into the glade, splintering the trees and plowing the earth before it.
'Quaritch' I think in anger. The only person who is able to organise. Pushing myself off the two natives who try to stop me I run after Jake as we run into the path of the bulldozer, waving out hands. "Hey! Heeeey! Stop! Stop!" We shout but it is useless.
Positioning ourselves where the camera eye of the robotic juggernaut so that it will see us. Hoping it will stop but it does not, causing us to stumble back, tripping, disappearing below the blade for a second before running to the side with Jake.
Using alot, but not all, of my leg power I run faster than Jake and grabs a rock before leaping onto the dozeras I climb quickly to the camera mast. Rasing my fist the rock crashes against the lens of the camera.
I beat the rock furiously against it, pounding until into the junk letting out all of my anger that caused by the destruction of the forest.
The juggernaut grinds to a stop but the roar of engines continue. Looking to locate the sorce I see more dozers and tractors nearby, crushing the forest before them. Trees are slashed by plasma cutters as terrified animals flee before the onslaught.
The brutal scene causes my ears to flop down into a fold like a dog from horror. Powersuits and tractors advance nearby, crushing the forest, blasting anything that moves. A trooper sees me on the tractor and swings at me, surprised by the attack I was unable to dodge it.
But luckily Jake grabbed me put of their just in time as Tsu'tey grabs my hand whilst Jake has the other on as Neytiri leads us into concealing foliage.
From behind the screen of leaves we watch as the dozers advance, obliterating sacred sites, leaving only mud and wood splinters in their path. Stunned by the nightmarish, unfathomable wrongness of it, I can't help but let the tears flow down my face. I can feel it. The willows, I can feel them dieing.
Seeing my tears Jake trying to comfort me as he turn my head away from the brutal sight, though it does not help as I can still feel their deaths.
Commen tree- day
A raiding party of hunters, their bodies painted, raised weapons overhead. Avatar Grace watches with alarm. "Tsu'tey will lead the war party." Tsu'tey steps forward, face full of hatred, raising a war cry amongst other hunter.
Grace trys to stop them but hear pleas fall silent. All the eyes of the hunters turn to me and Jake. "You do not deserve to be hear." Tsu'tey says with a hard face, turning soft seeing the hurt in my face before turning hard again.
Tsu'tey suddenly lunges at Jake and put his hands on his Jake and forces him to the floor as Jake was stunned that he even attacked. "I challenge you." "Jake don't-" "I accept." 'Please, don't fight... please, I beg of you.'
Tsu'tey and Jake square off, each holds a long staff as the entire clan crowds around in a circle. "What the hell are you doing" Grace said in worry and a tinie bit of anger. "It's the only way to make him godamn listen."
Tsu'tey leaps at Jake with a sharp cry as Jake parries with his staff. The staff clacks of eachother as the two combatants leap, duck and strike furiously.
Tsu'tey sweeps Jake off his feet with a roundhouse kick to the ankles but Jake rolled put of it and catches Tsu'tey in the belly with the blunt end of the staff.
Tsu'tey wades in a series of short, sharp blows. Jake swings with equal fury. Both fighting from he heart. Jake lands a solid hit, dropping him to his knees, just as-
-I see avatar Grace's rolles back as she kneels over with me and Neytiri barely able to catch her. Jake goes to swing but the same thing that happened to Grace happend to him, colliding on the floor and Tsu'tey takes advantage and calls it a win.
"Jake!" Neytiri trys to stop me but I break out of his hold and races to Jake, holding him in a protective way as Tsu'tey draws his knife before stoping. Seeing his mate so fiercely protect someone else angered him beyond measures but he knew for a fact that he would not be able to harm Nova.
"I know your angry bu-" I stop mid sentence when I am pulled back to my real body.
I slam the link open furiously before seeing Grace, Norm and Jake tied up. "What the hell are you doing!" I say in anger "you crossed the line." Quaritch says before punching me, hard. "Nova" yells from the three captives resonated throughput the lab. I flop back, dazed, as the troopers yank me out and zip tie my wrist.
Commens- 3rd pov
Tsu'tey stops moving, unable to kill his mate before another hunter steps forward and grabs Nova by the hair and raising the knife to her throat, prepared to slit it. "This is a demon in a false body. It should not live."
Neytiri blind sides him at full tilt. The hunter sprawls, rolls, comming up to see Neytiri crouched like a lioness over Nova, her knife and teeth barred. She snarls with primal fury. Though the same could be said for Tsu'tey, seeing his mate near to death, but he was able to contain it... barely. Tsu'tey stands panting as he roughly pulls the hunter away and rallies all the hunters while walking away.
Ops center- Nova's pov
The monitor shows my avatar face on the dozer camera, beating a rock into its lens. The shot freezes on my animal snarl.
I sit, bruised and bleeding, watching myself on the monitor. Grace, Norm and Jake stand angered looking at my bloody form nearby, rubbing their rist, where the zip ties bit in. Quaritch and selfridge watch with distain.
Whilst Quadrich is ranting about how Jake and I, mainly me, let him down I turn to him with a hard and defiant glare. "Parker listen, there may still be time to-" Grace trys to reason with him but was cut off by the conolen. "Shut your fuckin hole." Grace is momentarily stunned by his fury. But she meets it with her own intensity, not backing down.
"Or what ranger Rick. Your gonna shoot me. You need to muzzel your dog." Grace said the last part to selfridge, but it made me chuckle but I had to stiffen it as I didn't think it was a suitable time to laugh.
"Can we just take this down a couple of notches please." Selfish- sorry sorry- selfridge says but I cut in by talking to Quaritch. "You say you want to keep your people alive. Start by listening to her." I say using my head to motion Grace to continue. "As I was saying, this is bad parker. Those trees were sacred to the Omaticaya in a way you can't imagine."
"You know what? You throw a stick in the air around here and it falls on soke sacred fern" selfridge says, completely ignoring what Grace was saying. 'Asshole.' Huuuuhhhh, Nova finnaly swears, or at least in her mind.
"I'm not talking about pagan voodoo here- I'm talking about something real and measurable in the biology of the forest." "Which is what exactly" selfridge frustratedly questions.
I can see Grace's nerves fail. A rush of conflicted emotions- the need to act, to do something, colliding with scientific rigor as she turns to me. "How am I suppose to do this. Reduce years of work to a sound bite for the illiterate." She really does take pride in her work... to much. "Just tell him what you know in your heart."
She turns to parker, steeling herself. "Alright look- I don't jave the answers yet, I'm just now starting to even frame the questions. What we think we know- is that there is some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the tree. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to twelfth trees on pandora-" selfridge interrupts"That's alot I'm guessing"
"That's more connection than a human brain. You get it? It's a network- a global network. And the na'vi can access it- they can upload and download data- memories- at sites like the one you destroyed." "What the hell have you people been smoking put there? There just. Godamn. Trees." Selfridge says, not believing what Grace was trying to warn them about.
"You need to wake up parker. The wealth of this world isn't in the ground- its a around us. The na'vi know that and their fighting to defend it. If you want to share this world with them, you need to understand them." That's when Quaritch decides to speak up. "We understand them just fine. Thanks to Jake."
He then starts to play the video log that Jake has made. Talking about how we humans are a horror to them. They will never accept us and they will never leave the hometree, 'is that what he thinks, of us?'. That's when Quaritch freezes the video. "Since a deal can't be made- it's real simple. So thanks, I'm getting all emotional."
"Parker, we have to talk, like rational people." "Well, I'd cherish that, but unfortunately you are all put on the next shuttle. All of you, I'm shutting shutting down the avatar program. Effective immediately." He said leaving Grace, Norm, Jake and I speechless in shock.