3 Chapter 3

Crash!

His avatar's body fell to the soft soil as he leapt off the climbing wall, his feet sinking down from the sheer force.

With shocking force, he flexed his muscles and accelerated down the obstacle course, leaping, diving and climbing over the wooden frames with an ease that humans could only envy.

Two other blue figures chased after him, and soon enough, overtook him. As Harry approached the final hurdle, he could see the arrogant avatars waving at him from the finish line, with easy smiles.

"I'm…staring… to hate… you...guys…" Harry stumbled out over his ragged breathing.

The two avatars, Rai and Willow, laughed, then in a gesture of their blooming friendship, gave him one of the purple fruits that grew nearby. Harry bite into the fruit with relish, the now familiar flavour slipping down his throat and restoring much of the energy lost from the race.

"You've only been here two weeks. It takes humans years to build the muscle mass and coordination you've gotten already. Keep training and in a few more weeks and this obstacle will become too easy for you to seriously tax yourself on." Rai responded and Willow nodded in agreement.

"Well, I suppose that only leaves one option…" Harry paused as he took the final bite of his fruit. He chucked the husk on the nearby soil. "Last one back cooks dinner!" and with those words, he took off back over the course, to beat them back using every advantage he had – even cheating.

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Harry walked through the base, now experienced enough to dodge the constant movement of troops, trucks and materials with ease. He was finally comfortable in his own skin, where he could take advantage of the Navi's superior physical attributes.

He looked at his clothes and could stop his lips from curving up, it was such as small thing but having to prepare avatar-size clothing that was durable enough was a challenge. There was the added and unexpected discomfort that clothes brought, he supposed the Navi bodies has adapted over thousands of years to be without clothing, and now human avatars were trying to change that biology. Let's just say there is a reason why Avatars, and himself, prefer to wear minimal layers and it wasn't to do with the heat.

One disappointment of his trip was Grace Augustine. He had read and researched much about the Navi through her publishments however every time he attempted to ingratiate himself with her, he was rebuffed. After several attempts, one of her assistants had explained it to him, apparently, she was not a fan that her life work had been manipulated to give the uber-wealthy a second chance at life.

Still, Harry had spent much of the time when he wasn't training his new body, with scientists and experts on Pandora. There was some initial friction, as many of the labs had been designed for scientists of human size. But this was solved with one of his custom-made holo-tablets fitted for him and a mask to allow him longer access to labs with Earth's atmosphere.

After his midday meal in the canteen, he walked back to the training yard and picked up some of the weights and started getting his reps in. His training was supervised by several of the avatar's experts, a privilege granted to him by Selfridge, to build up his strength enough to the point where he can start his combat training.

Being a scientist for his human life, and having the luxury of wealth, Harry had never experienced the need to fight for his own safety and therefore lacked the skills that many of the mercenaries of the site took for granted. Knowing the dangers of Pandora, and his dream of finding a quiet area to settle down in where he could be alone with his science was dependent of his survival skills and thus, he trained. He trained every day, multiple times to strain his body to make it stronger. A strategy was devised on Earth for him by a team of experts, who devised a new healing formula to accelerate his progress so that he could rest in at night ready for the next day. The ingredients… well let's just say they were shockingly expensive and leave it at that. Luckily, he had shipped a significant amount with him, enough to last several years.

A shaft of white light flickered in the corner of his eye and he stopped exercising. He looked upwards and could see the glow of a ship entering the solar system like a new star in the night sky. The glow formed as the ships transitioned from near-light speed to rapid deacceleration through thrusters to slot into a stable orbit around Pandora.

Newcomers. Harry thought and smiled. Normally ships would only come once a year to drop off more staff and haul off the refined materials such as Unobtanium funded the whole project.

It would also be good to hear news about Earth. This far away, there was no direct communication, and ships had to take messages back and forth as technology had not cracked the faster-than-light communications of yet. That meant if he wanted to send a message back to Katy, she would have to wait for 5 years before hearing it, and then another 5 if she wanted to reply. The impracticality of it was one of the reasons why they had agreed to minimal contact.

He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding in. Finally! He had been waiting for their arrival for as long as he had been on Pandora. Unfortunately, his arrival had coincided with the arrival of the regular rotation of new crew and material delivery. Even if RDA was being as gracious as they could, that didn't extend to tying up their one landing pad with his supplies.

He had unloaded his shuttle which came with a pre-fab building that was under construction by some helpful hands to build his own lab. He had grown used to a certain quality of equipment and set-up that even on this advanced base, he couldn't find. For the rest, including various drones of his own design that would be essential to automate much of his daily necessities, remained in orbit waiting for clearance. That would only come after several weeks or even months if the weather didn't cooperate to unload and load RDA's cargo hauler ship to capacity and send it off back to Earth.

The next day, Harry was leaning against the building, munching on a blue-looking fruit in his hand, that surprisingly tasted more like roasted carrots, while the shuttle unloaded the first batch of recruits for the mercenaries.

"Look at all this fresh meat" one of the Sergeants called out as the men marched neatly across the ground and into the building.

Harry noticed a late departure roll down the ramp, using his wheelchair to narrowly avoid a collision with a mining truck.

"That's just sad. Meals on Wheels."

Harry ignored the comment and gave the disabled man a nod of his head in greeting. The man's eyes hovered on his for a moment, probably the first blue person he had seen not on a screen.

Whatever was going to happen next, Harry was sure it would at least be interesting.

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It was the week after when he finally met the disabled soldier again, of course, this time, he was 9ft tall, blue and running across his planned basketball match with his bare ass hanging out of his hospital gown.

A strange way to introduce yourself, but all agreed it was at least memorable.

"Jake Sully" later on, the stranger introduced himself, when he finally put some pants on.

"Harry. Harry More. Nice to meet you. I hope you're settling in well."

Jake looked around and Harry could still see the wonder reflected in his eyes that he also felt. "It's just so…" He struggled for the words.

"Majestic?" Harry offered and Jake nodded.

"But it's more than that. It's like I was living a dream and only now I'm finally awake. To be able to walk, run, jump… it's more than a dream come true."

Harry smiled. They talked together for several hours and Harry gave him the tour of the Avatar facilities and training ground.

"And they lock us up at night? What do they think we're going to steal the avatar bodies?" Jake laughed but Harry just smiled.

"You need to remember, when you disconnected from your Avatar body, it will keep its autonomic function such as breathing however you're as feeble as a kitten and just as vulnerable. Anything or anyone could kill you while the body rests and you wouldn't even wake up."

They walked together to the hut where the rest of the Avatars were preparing for bed. Jake took a step in but stopped when his new friend didn't follow.

"I thought you said all the Avatars stay here?" Jake questioned.

"They do. Unfortunately, I'm not an Avatar."

"Wha..What do you mean your not an Avatar?" Jake sutured out looking at the imposing blue figure with the clear signs of an Avatar, the five fingers.

"I'm…" Harry paused and thought about how to explain, he had tried several ways but still hadn't worked out the best ways yet. "I'm a different sort of Avatar." At Jake's puzzled expression he expanded. "This is my one and only body. I was human and now I am this. Call me Navi, Avatar, it doesn't really matter. This is who I am now."

Jake tried to question him further but the managers who were starting to lock up and push him towards the empty bunk.

"See me in the morning, I don't mind beating you on the obstacle course. I've gotten fed up with Willows's mockery." Harry shouted out and then turned and walked away.

The next day, he and Jake Sully had a further talk and soon, they were quick friends. And yes they did race on the obstacle courses, and yes Harry still lost.

At least his lab would be ready soon to take his mind away from his repeated, and very public defeat to the newbie that the rest of the avatars took great pleasure in rubbing in his face – or pasting the video on every holo-tablet…

He really had the worst friends.