Jake was late to the link room the morning that Alva was finally going to leave her gilded cage, and she wasn't too happy with him for it. For a while it looked like they might not leave at all (as Alva's brother wouldn't let her leave without an armed escort) when a mousy little assistant of a man scuttered up to them announcing that Jake was having a meeting with Quaritch before his first mission. 'Routine check-up' he had called it.

They waited another ten minutes before Grace decided enough was enough and they left for the link room. She had already gulped down three cups of coffee and was well on her way to a fourth when she handed over a clipboard to Max with her scribbled instructions on it.

"Start calibrating. We're on flight line in ten minutes." She said to him. Max jogs away to the linking room ahead of them and shortly after Norm and Jake join Grace and Alva.

Alva looked at the two from under her unruly curls, having foregone her usual routine so she would be ready in time, but was slightly bitter to realize that she could've rushed through the process and still be done before Jake stopped his dilly dallying with the colonel. Jake wilted under her eyes, dropping behind a bit to escape it.

"What did Atilla want?" Grace asked Jake.

"Just Marines comparing tattoos."

Grace turned to stare him down. "Yeah, listen to me, Marine. You're driving an Avatar now. That means you're in my world, got it?"

He swallowed and averted his eyes, forcing out a "Got it." with the ease of a soldier.

They enter the lit control room, Grace leaving them to prepare Jake's unit, and Norm heads off to his.

"Getting involved with Quaritch will bring you nothing but heartache," Alva peered down at him and placed a soft hand against the exposed skin where his shoulders met his neck, squeezing once. "No matter what he promised the price will be too steep."

"I'll be fine." He rolled past her, leaving her hand to fall off him as he left.

Alva shrugged, though she couldn't quite help the grin growing on her lips at his sharp dismissal of her advice. He'd see soon enough what the rewards of working for Quaritch is, and it wouldn't be his legs back. She rejoined the others by Jake's pod.

"That son of a bitch has screwed up this program enough. All this," Grace made a sweeping motion to the link room, "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."

"Then how's this supposed to work?" Jake asked.

"Glad you asked, Jake. We have a new face." Grace put both of her hands on Norm's shoulders, who blushed red at the sudden contact with his idol. "You're fluent, you've studied the culture. You're non-threatening. The ones we know best -- the Omatikaya clan -- may give you a chance. Maybe you can get them back to the table before things go tits-up for good."

"This is failing as a pep talk." Norm squeaked, shaking like a little leaf in the wind. "This is too much pressure too soon. Isn't Alva also a new face? She's as non-threatening as you can get."

Grace crossed her arms over her chest. "No. You can do this, Norm. You've trained for this, you've dreamed of this. This is your shot to be the hero, take it."

Jake interrupted the very convincing display by pulling himself into the link unit. When his legs laid straight before him he asked Grace, "how do we contact them?"

"We don't. They contact us. If they see us taking our samples, treating the forest with respect -- not trampling everything in sight--" she directed at Jake, "they may reach out to us."

A wry grin tugged at Jake's face. "Or they may skin us and make a drum." He laid back.

"Just keep your mouth shut and let Norm do the talking. " Grace hissed at him before slamming the upper lid of the unit shut after making sure the sensory netting was in place. "Idiot."

Trudy's most prized possession; her SAMSON rotorcraft flew over the sea of green rainforest and over cliffs with pretty little waterfalls with crystal-clear blue water flowing down and crashing down on the rocks below -- turning into off-white waves of foam. Though huge in size it was a mere dot compared to all things Pandoran, the smallest of ikrans enough to grab hold of it and force it down.

Wainfleet, an unattractive man in black body armor and exo-pack manned the door gun with the intention of shooting anything that moved but had long since relaxed and was now leaning on the machine gun.

"Freedom at last," she mumbled with a toothy grin. None of the pretty sights she had pictured during her long days atop the buildings could compare to what she had already seen. She just barely restrained herself from jumping out of the helicopter and escape under the surface of the waters. The rough shells of the seeds clenched tightly in her hand brought her back from wistful fantasies. Alva opened her hand and tilted it so that the handful spread over the green riverbanks. She hoped that they would take root and thrive, just as she will. "Goodbye cage and hello freedom."

She plopped down onto the floor of the aircraft, letting her legs dangle over the edge. A tingle spread through them when Alva managed to shift herself close enough to look down on the primeval landscape.

Animals of different shapes and sizes passed them by like blurs of color. Some of them were covered in feathers, some in leathery skin, some flew, some swam and some grazed on the luscious grass. Even the largest of them seemed so small from up there even at the low height they were daring to fly at. A flock of angtsìk -- hammerheads (named after the hammer-like bone structure on the front part of their heads) drank from the river with a lone yerik waiting behind them for its turn.

The small river turned into a great lake surrounded by green trees and a wide, tall waterfall to the left which provided a much needed break from the roaring of Trudy's engines. The purple creatures named fkio by the natives screeched at them when Trudy flew a bit too close to the flock of them. While the top was a stunning purple and the four wings an eye-catching pattern of purple, blue and soft pink, the stomach and stick-like arms were a dull yellow.

Alva stopped swinging her legs over the edge and instead stretched out a hand towards the leader of the flock. It crooned to the rest of the fkio but flew over to her anyway, gliding the last meter before sliding under the palm of her hand. Warm, clammy skin rubbed up against her and she gasped loudly before beaming at it.

"Alva be careful!" Grace called out to her, her voice was just barely louder than the sound of the helicopter but Alva could hear her clearly through the communication devices they had.

"They won't hurt me" Alva called back while pressing the button she had on her neck, her eyes still fixated on the nature surrounding her. It was as if she had zoned out all of them and instead only saw Pandora. "See" She whispered and stroked a hand down the fkio's neck before it flew off to rejoin its family after hearing their call.

"Just because one of them is friendly doesn't mean all of them are." Grace warned, though the warning fell on deaf ears. "Are you going to do this with everything you see? What if you see a pack of hungry nantangs? Are you going to pet them too?"

"Silly Grace" Alva giggled. She tucked her hands back to her sides but her legs kept kicking in tune to a song only she could hear. "I'm not stupid, of course I won't try to pet the hungry nantangs. I've been to the briefings, you know. I'll feed them instead!" She declared proud, her chest puffing up.

She could hear the round of palms meeting foreheads and the unison of exasperated sighs. Alva tuned them out as she was wont to do when confronted by people not understanding her way of being. It was a skill taught to her by her grandmother after she came home one too many times crying because of the relentless bullying she had been forced to endure as a child.

The pack of fkio left them as they neared the edge of the big pool of water.

Their pilot banked sharply to follow a more shallow river. There, crossing the river was a pack of six-legged creatures called talioangs. Alva spotted them even before Trudy did and slapped Norm on the arm to get his attention. His jaw dropped at the sight and Alva reached over to tuck it back into place, grinning at the man.

"Amazing, isn't it?" She asked him, a thin sheen of glossiness clouding the vivid yellow.

Trudy lowered them some at Alva's prompt before informing the rest of the drivers of the sturmbeest's presence through their comms.

"Got it, thanks" Grace responded and pointed at said herd of sturmbeest. "Looks like the bull, a dozen cows and some juveniles"

"The bull has the red on the dorsal armor?" Norm asked Grace after gushing about how rare it was to see a pack as big as that one. Grace nods with a smile herself. "

The bull bellowed when the first of the talioang thundering across reached the other side of the river. Though Trudy had gone down to a slightly lower altitude there wasn't much time for marveling over them before they had blurred past them.

The river widened before turning into a waterfall. Trudy whoops before maneuvering them to nose-dive down into the gorge below. Alva laughed loudly along with Wainfleet and the pilot herself but Norm looked sick.

"Yo, Chacon! Get some!" Wainfleet cheered loudly.

A couple of yerik hopped away from the spot Trudy was descending on, their behinds the greeting they had in the small meadow. Like ripples on water the fern-like plants and grass flattened under the waves of air from the rotors. The landing was too slow for Alva and she jumped out of the aircraft before it touched Pandoran soil, ducking away from the blades before they chopped her head off.

Though cautious and eager, Jake waited until the aircraft settled on the ground before tearing the doorgun off its pintle mount. Both he and Norm had yet to adjust to the denser atmosphere and kept slipping when trying to push forward, which was one of the reasons Alva had taken to going barefoot everywhere so as to get a better grip when their man-made shoes kept gliding on the surface. Norm had spent more time in the simulation and had the beginnings of a muscle memory of digging his toes into the ground more than Jake.

Alva leaned as far back as she could to relieve the tension that had built in her lower back after all that sitting down. "Ooh, that was a good one," she groaned when a series of loud pops gave way for relaxation.

Grace, Norm and Wainfleet spilled out of the helicopter, with Norm keeping a firm hand on his hat to keep it from blowing off, and Grace moving up the length of the aircraft.

She motioned for Trudy to shut down the blades of the helicopter but thought better of continuing the gesture when she realized Trudy didn't understand what she meant. Instead she pressed a hand to her communicator. "Shut it down. We're gonna stay a while."

Trudy nodded and flicked a series of switches to shut it down. Gradually the blades slowed down their swings, which Alva thanked her for as the wind had caused her hair to fly around in the wind, accidentally slapping herself once or twice. As if punishing her for her thoughts a thick mess of curls found their way into her mouth and she gagged before managing to sweep them out.

"Norm! Your pack!" Grace shouted over the ruckus, pointing at the beige lump on the aircraft floor. She, along with Norm and Jake had changed into more fitting clothing for the expedition. The new clothing was more neutral in color and less revealing and Grace had a torn strip of fabric tied around her head to act as a bandana.

When Wainfleet made to join them Grace shook her head. "Stay with the ship. One idiot with a gun is enough."

"You the man, doc" The human muttered and walked back to stay with Trudy and the helicopter. "Y'all have fun out there."

Alva pushed past Jake who had walked ahead to secure the area with his gigantic mess of a gun. Already Norm was sounding out of breath and they had yet to properly breach the forestline. Though as she joined Jake at the front she entertained the idea of falling back as Jake appeared skittish and tense, pivoting around to point his gun at every new sound. 'There's no such thing as an ex-marine, Alva', he told her during dinner once with a glum look, and watching him scout the forest now made her realize what he had meant by it. Gone was the easy-going 'jarhead' from a big city who defended women in bars and mocked his brother for being a nerd, and in his place was the man who went to war in Venezuela.

Despite the vacant hardness in his eyes, Alva was tempted to press her fingers into the soft flesh of his waist, but when he turned to point his gun at a cluster of bugs she thought it best not to. It wouldn't do to get shot first time out of her cage. Her brother would never let her live it down and Jake just might find himself stripped naked and thrown into Omatikaya territory.

All around them was foreign flora and each step uncovered a new discovery. She turned a corner and two red stalks with bumps curled into themselves emerged from behind a couple of green bushes. Kind of looks like a mix of a lobster tail and a spider leg, she mused as she petted the surprisingly smooth surface of it. The forest was more alive than the people back on Earth with animals and plants alike reaching out to you as you walked by, but Jake was so hyper-aware of everything that Alva wondered if perhaps he was stuck in some post-war, PTSD haze where every shadow was a new enemy moving to strike him dead.

The cooing of a syaksyuk made Jake flinch and direct his gun towards in one fast, practiced movement. He followed the movement of the blue and green animal with cautious eyes. The prolemuris squealed and stared at the armed avatar while hanging onto a branch with its four arms, staring right into his soul with those big orange eyes.

"Prolemuris. They're not aggressive" Grace told Jake and they both watched as the animals swung away from the scene. "Relax, marine. You're making me nervous" She snapped at him and pushed down his gun before pushing her way past him and took up the lead.

"Why do you need guns anyways?" Alva asked after breaking away from the staring contest she had with one of the older syaksyuk whose curiosity for the avatar had made him stop midchew and stare right at her.

"For protection," Grace quoted, "orders from big brother himself."

"Protection against what? Why would anything attack us?"

"Don't ask me, ask him, he's determined to make enemies out of everything he can."

They neared the ruins of Grace's school. It had once been a humble little thing, with wood cut from the local trees and the beginnings of a playground rising from the meadow. There would have been a swing where Alva was standing. Four holes were dug into the ground and a large wheel was rolled up to the side of the building. The thatch roof was barely holding up the weight of the vines curled around it, several big holes visible from where they were standing.

After a while of silence, one that that group seemed to fall into a lot, Norm decided to ask a question that had been burning in his mind. "So, how will they know we're here"

Alva, who was battling to crawl under a low fallen branch stopped momentarily in her pursuit to get to the other side but after hearing the question she wiggled on.

"I'm sure they're watching us right now." Grace replied. She was pushing away branches from her face but never once did her eyes stop wandering around them, searching for Na'vi or other animals that might prove interesting.

As they walked into the charred remains of the building Alva reached down to pick up some of the torn books. They were covered in mold but after she wiped away some of them she could clearly make out the bright swirling 'ABC' and the grinning human children. The floorboards creaked under their shared weight but Grace didn't seem too concerned, the absent look in her eyes suggesting she was reliving old memories.

"The kids were so bright." She said, stopping by a pile of stuffing and a bear doll. "So eager to learn. They picked up English faster than I could teach it to them."

Alva curled into herself as the dark walls seemed to close in on her. "Something bad happened here. Something really bad." She echoed the first statement when she spotted the bullet holes on the front door.

A mournful sigh was all the responde she needed and a brush from Eywa in the depths of her mind provided a soothing comfort.

Grace and Norm walked over to the large case pushed up against the raggedy table. She opened it up to reveal a wide array of scientific instruments. Stingbats stared down at the group from their place up in the rafters, having made them into their home sometime after the tragedy.

"Bring the soil probe -- yellow case." Grace told Norm before bending down to pick up a copy of Dr. Seuss' 'The Lorax '. She places it back on the shelf it had fallen from. "The stingbats knock them down," she explained. "But I guess I will always hope somebody will come back and read them."

"Why don't they come back?" Norm asked.

Her wistful smile thinned. "The Na'vi learned as much about us humans as they needed to. Are you going to help with this gear, Jake? We've got a lot to do." She snapped at him before he too could ask about the bullet holes covering every door and every wall of the old building. Grace pushed gear into his backpack.

They left the school after that, a heavy cloud of misery and regret accompanying them now, only made worse by Grace's bad mood. Eventually Grace found some roots she wanted to study and called Norm over to help her with it. Alva left them alone to dance around the area with reckless abandon, not at all caring about the watchful eyes of their Na'vi followers. When the dancing grew boring she began exploring. She lifted every rock, climbed upon branches and smaller trees she thought had a good view. She followed critters in their pursuit for food and leapt after prolemuris all the way to their homes, offering any fruit or nuts she had stumbled upon.

Suddenly Jake walked by.

"Where are you going, Jake?" She asked him suddenly, hanging down from a branch above him.

"Jesus christ!" He whisper-yelled at her when she dropped down in front of him. "I'm just going to check over here for any threats"

She was dangling from the branch by her tail now, having released her arms so that she could swing back and forth like that old Earth mammal she had heard so much about. A monkey perhaps? They went extinct long before she was born and had only seen them in old photos the schools had managed to procure from the devices they used back then. "Can I join you? They're talking science and I don't know that language"

He grinned. "Us air-heads have to stay together, huh? But you gotta stay close to me, got it?"

"Got it. So what are we doing?" Alva asked Jake once she dropped down to the ground, a light thud all that gave her away.

Jake lifted his gun, inclining his head to it. "Still making sure the perimeter is free of threats."

"Are we exploring?" Her eyes became impossibly wider and glittering at the prospect of exploring Pandora.

"No." He grunted and turned around. "We're not exploring. We're securing the perimeter so that Grace and Norm can get their sample."