A New Mission: Ash to Fire

Training

Miles was awake in his hut. It was early mid-morning the day after yesterday's incredibly trying and unexpected debrief day. Unexpected in terms of three surprise Kestrels, a new radio tower, and a total mission restructure. And trying of course in his issues and tension with Zu and the invasive, prying psychologist. Miles was also slightly hungover today, the first time he'd felt such in his strong Na'vi body.

Last night, when they got back to their huts, Lyle rummaged through his stuff for the whiskey that his Colonel asked for. He handed it to Miles who more or less snatched it from him, immediately opened the screw cap, and started chugging. Lyle's and Mansk's jaws were slack as they made side-eyed glances at each other.

Their Colonel was not in a right state of mind yesterday. Or the day before.

But so this morning Miles felt like shit. He was sitting shirtless against the wall of his hut, his right hand on his head, thinking through his headache. The Marines' mission has been shifted. Accelerated. The alliance they were supposed to attempt to achieve over three months has been assumed completed in two weeks, and now they would be training Ash Na'vi warriors on how to use RDA-issued weapons—in the RDA's hopes that should they be called upon to fight against Jake Sully with the RDA's forces... they would.

This had seemed like a total longshot two weeks ago but now seemed more plausible given Zu and Ta'zem's strong negative reactions to the idea of Forest and Ocean Na'vi having human weapons. Still though, what was in it for the Ash People to fight against Jake Sully? Sure, the RDA gave them some guns, but would they risk life and limb to fight? They seemed at great peace here on their archipelago. Miles did not have an answer to any of this of course, but he did have a task. Teach them how to use the weapons and stay in contact with Bridgehead via the radio tower. Alright.

Miles' thoughts then shifted to Jake Sully and Spider. Truthfully, Miles was unsurprised at Jake Sully's quick turnaround to being hostile again. And he internally beat himself up once more for his mission failure in allowing this turn of events. Sully's children were threatened at his and his recoms' own hands, and his eldest son was killed, no doubt leading Sully to his current place of rage. However, Miles felt nothing over what happened to Sully's family. Holding his daughter at knifepoint was a means to an end. He didn't want to kill her. Spider was begging him not to... But he likely would have...maybe. However, it seemed Jake wasn't going to let it get to that point which Miles properly assumed he wouldn't—before his batshit crazy wife ruined his plans by threatening Spider.

And Miles didn't kill his eldest son. Not exactly. In fact, he wasn't even sure if it was one of his recoms or a guard who shot him, but he didn't care either way. Jake brought that on himself. All he had to do was turn himself in. Be a man, be selfless, and save his family. Jake had to answer for his crimes against humanity, and Miles was still determined to kill him and his woman for ending his past life, as well as get justice for his slain recoms. And paramount to it all was getting his son back. If training these people could help Miles achieve that, then this mission suddenly became much more important and serious to him. His other feelings and emotions about his affairs in this village be damned. It was time to focus.

Miles was already thinking about how he would go about this training. Thinking about which of the warriors would be best suited to which weapons. About how he would set up the training area at Tìwusem'ram, or Fighting Mountain. How it would be arranged and what objects were needed. He was also thinking about training assignments—which of them would be teaching what.

He wanted to start with just two types of weapons, the M69-ARs and some of the artillery, mainly the TOXON-81 missile launchers. Two weapons with well-rounded tactical usage. Miles knew that Mansk was the most skilled with artillery, so he was thinking of putting him on missile launcher instruction, and eventually on the Hydra machine guns, which he knew was Mansk's favorite weapon.