Na'vi...A Tsu'tey FF

Log Entry: 3

The rest of the day was peaceful at least until Jake came back. Nyami was reading Grace's book on the Na'vi. If she was gonna be one of them, she had to blend in. She knew a lot of the stuff already. As a teen, she was really interested in the Na'vi. She read everything about them but by then Jake was over them. As a kid, he'd dream about Pandora. Nyami followed in his footsteps. Jake never had plans. He was a go-with-the-flow type of guy. So, when the army, navy, and marines started showing up in his high school cafeteria, he signed up. Nyami wanted to look out for him.

Nyami had parents. They were good to her for the most part. They fed her, clothed her, sent her to school, and didn't assault her in any way. They were an average family. An average family that felt nothing particular about each other. Her parents' marriage was slowly falling apart. The only thing that brought them together was the pride they felt when their daughter went into the marines and became a lieutenant.

Nyami spent a lot of time with Jake and Tom. They went to school together since Nyami had to skip a few years to be challenged in class. Nyami was inhumanly intelligent. She was a quick learner and it stayed in her memory for whenever she needed it. She could read a study guide a week before the test and still remember
the answers. She was smart, motivated, and strong. She was the perfect pick to become a lieutenant in the marines. Her battle strategies were unmatched. It was like she was born to be a warrior.

Nyami was chilling in her foam link unit when she saw Grace on the move towards her, gulping coffee, in a hurry to get their first sortie started. She hands a clipboard to Max. Grace started calibrating the units.
"We're on the flight line in ten minutes." Max nods and jogs ahead toward the link room. Jake and Norm fall in with Grace as they enter the connecting corridor. Nyami saw Grace ask Jake something then Grace looked fed up with him at his reply. They stopped for a second before Grace walked to the entrance of the link room with Jake and Norm following her. Nyami got up and went to Jake.
"Everything good?" She asked, watching Grace get everything ready.
"Just peachy." Jake responded. Nyami held her hand out. Jake slapped it like a sideways high five and they fist bumped. It was their handshake. SImple, easy, and basic.
Grace crosses to the controls of Jake's link unit.
"That son of a bitch has screwed up this program enough. All this exists so we can go out there and build a bridge of trust to these people, who could teach us so much. But thanks to Quaritch and his thugs the Na'vi won't even talk to us anymore." Grace rants.
"Then how's this supposed to work?" Jake boldly asked.
"We have a new face. You're fluent, you've studied the culture. You're non-threatening. The ones we know best, the Omaticaya clan, may give you a chance. Maybe you can get them back to the table before things go tits-up for good." Grace said to Norm.
"This is failing as a pep talk." Norm said, anxiously.
"For once, I agree." Nyami said.

Jake hauls himself across from the wheelchair to link. Nyami smiled as she laid down in her link unit.
"How do we contact them?" Jake asked.
"We don't. They contact us. If they see us taking our samples, treating the forest with respect, not trampling everything in sight, they may reach out to us."
"Or they may skin us and make a drum." Nyami said right before her clamshell closed.
Jake lies back, lowering the sensor array over his body.
"Just keep your mouth shut and Nyami's hands to herself and let Norm do the talking." She closes Jake's clamshell, hard.

Nyami felt the rush of transferring bodies once again. She loved being 8 feet tall and 7 inches. She loved the power she felt. It reminded her of when she was a lieutenant. All her training paid off from the marines. She could work her avatar body like she was born in it. Her amber eyes shot open with excitement. They were still in the longhouse, the base for unconscious avatar bodies. She got up and grabbed the clothes at the end of her bed that Grace laid out for her. It was a cropped tank top and khaki shorts with combat boots. She suited up with a machine gun and trusty knives on her belt. She had a book bag full of survival supplies.

Turdy was waiting on the landstrip for the three avatars. The other human was the same guy from their first day who said something about Jake in a wheelchair. He was speechless now. Most guys were seeing Grace and Nyami walk together. It was two blue goddesses walking down from the heavens. Some guys whistled at them, others catcalled. It was hard to believe they were complimenting avatars after trying to kill thousands of Na'vi.

Flying over a carpet of rainforest, past sheer cliffs and cloud-wreathed mesas. Trudy's Samson Tilt-Rotor chases its shadow across the treetops. Though big as a Blackhawk, it is tiny in the vast primeval landscape. In avatar form Nyami, Jake, Grace and Norm watch the forest unrolling beneath them, the wind blasting their clothes. Jake mans the other door gun, his feet propped on the skids. Trudy flies from a pressurized cockpit. She banks to follow a shallow river.
"Sturmbeest herd, one o'clock." Turdy announces. Norm grins and points, excitedly. Jake looks in time to see a herd of Sturmbeest, a massive six-legged creature reminiscent of buffalo thundering across the river.
"Looks like a bull, six cows and some juveniles." Grace informed.
"The bull has red on the dorsal armor?" Norm observed. Grace nods approvingly. Hundreds of purple winged creatures take flight from a lake, startled by the Samson. They skim the water above their own reflections.
"Teterapterons." Nyami put a name to the creatures. 

As the ground drops away as the Samson flies over a waterfall hundreds of feet high. Trudy banks hard, rolling in on the gorge below like it's a gun-run. Wainfleet whoops while Norm looks like he's about to puke. Nyami grins into the airstream. A small meadow among towering trees. The fern-like "grass" is beaten down in waves by the rotor-wash as the Samson settles to the ground.

Jake pulls the massive door gun off its pintle mount and hefts it like an assault rifle. Nyami shakes her head. She thinks he shouldn't be too quick to pull a gun out. He was a headstrong soldier. Him being out in the field again reminds her of the day he lost his legs. She shook away the image and decided to never let him get hurt again. Her only family isn't allowed to leave her.

They all leap out to secure the LZ, scanning the treeline warily, weapons aimed. Grace jogs forward to the cockpit, motioning Trudy to shut down. Trudy kills the Samson's turbines. Grace, towering over Wainfleet, the man from before, and motions him to hang back.
"Stay with the ship." Grace says to Wainfleet. "One idiot with a gun's enough." She directed towards Jake.
"I've always been better with one anyway." Nyami teased Jake, hinting at the time they went to the shooting range at a fair and she bet him fifty bucks she could hit the whole star and he couldn't. She was right.  
"Whatever you say, Doc. Y'all have fun out there." Wainfleet laughed.