ʙᴀʀʀɪᴄᴀᴅᴇꜱ | Jake Sully X Reader (Book 1)

| Chapter 2 |

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Italics: (Na'vi language or Jake's inner thoughts or narration)
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In the main base of the operations room of the RDA, there was radio chatter filling the air amongst employees who were overseeing aircraft, helicopters, plane launches and departures, authorized machinery starters, and so on.

In the middle of the room, there was a big strategic hologram that displayed and showed in detail all, or most of, Pandora's forest, including the tree that the Omaticaya live in, known to them as 'Hometree', that being the RDA's main objective and focus at the moment for the mission.

Parker Selfridge stood there in a designated mini golf course that his team had set up for him. He spent most of his time on it, trying to practice his putting and gold skills even if he had a whole division to oversee.

Parker was now prepared to make his first shot, so he pushed the ball with his golf club and it rolled perfectly into the ceramic mug that he had placed, instead of there being an actual hole for the ball to fall in.

"Mhm! You see that?" Selfridge laughed in satisfaction at his win, heading over to the mug to pick up his ball. "Yes, sir!" One of his workers replied, but Parker paid no mind to it. "No, you didn't. You were looking at the monitor. I love this putter Ronnie!" Parker laughed, getting back into position to play the same hole once again.

Before he could do that, Grace came into the room and walked up to Selfridge, very displeased at that. "Parker," Grace started, getting the attention of the man, who was way too focused on his game to give her attention. "You know, I used to think that it was benign neglect, but now I see that you're intentionally screwing with me," Grace said, not amused or happy whatsoever about the situation.

"Grace, you know, I enjoy our little talks," Parker said, ignoring her words. He pushed the ball with his golf club, and just as it was about to reach the inside of the hole in the mug, Grace kicked the mug away with her foot and ruined his shot completely.

Parker looked up to face her with an annoyed expression, but she just shrugged. "Oops," Grace said sarcastically. "I need a researcher. Not some jarhead dropout" She said, trying to get her message through her superior.

"Well, actually, I thought we got pretty lucky with him," Parker said, heading over to fix the mug, not taking into account Grace's face of disbelief at his words.

"Lucky?" Grace scoffed, and Selfridge simply nodded. "How is this in any way lucky?" She asked, really wanting to see how Jake would be beneficial to their operation without any lab or Avatar training at all.

"Well, lucky your guy happened to have a twin brother, and lucky that brother wasn't some oral hygienist or something. A Marine that we can use" Parker said, leaving his gold club aside and heading over to the giant hologram table in the center of the room. "I'm assigning him to your team as security escort," He said.

"The last thing I need is another trigger-happy moron out there," Grace said, feeling her patience start to diminish with every second of talking to this man.

"Look, you're supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the natives," Parker said as if it wasn't obvious to Grace already. He started to type and configure the hologram while he kept the conversation with the scientist. "Isn't that the whole point of your little puppet show? If you look like them and talk like them, then they'll start trusting us. We build them a school, and we teach them English, but after what? How many years? Relations with the indigenous are only getting worse" Parker ranted to Grace, who already knew all of that.

"Yeah, that tends to happen when you use machine guns on them," Grace said, in an as-a-matter-of-fact way. When she said those words, it still hurts to remember exactly what happened to one of the three sisters that was murdered brutally along with her students by the RDA, whom she loved so much, on that tragic and devastating day.