101 101. Entering the Lions' Den

"And as good as new.", Liam said the Tek Phase Pistol flashing green in his left hand folded back into its more compact form once the damaged back of the Na'vi it had been aimed was healed.

Her glasses were gone, and she blinked in confusion as the pain was gone, clarity and sharpness coming back in her gaze at this. She abruptly stood up by using her tail, thicker than and more prehensible than that of Jake or Grace, and with her hands and legs like a mix of cat and monkey she leaped the equivalent of her high and with a wide open clawed hand grabbed the first branch.

She was going to disappear, flee, and never come back, a smile forming on her face at the thought. They never should have healed her with their technological magic.

Alas for her it was not to be, she wouldn't escape, the post-human had predicted this obvious scenario from the get-go, she was going to try and immediately flee the moment she realized her lower half worked again.

Frankly, it was more of a test and she failed magnificently in everything. At least she didn't attack him because then he wouldn't have been this nice, people who wanted to kill him had tendencies to have an early end, this was an exception he didn't kill anyone directly. The fall was a 'tragedy' that was not his fault, same for the arrow, he didn't make them jump or shoot.

It was up to her that this exception stayed this way. There just was so much second chance he could give before he terminated her.

Still, he had waited for her to be quite a few meters above for the sweet hope she was feeling to have grown to the right size for maximum effect. And so he crushed it for the second time in five minutes. Sadistic, maybe but Liam didn't care because she needed to be taught that her life was not hers anymore.

And what he did to crush this nascent hope was to shoot her with his Tek Phase Pistol for a second time, however, the beam was not green but orange this time and hit her square in the middle of her back.

Her body froze, all strength she had vanished as the kinetic energy her muscles baring the vital ones were making dissipated into thin air, literally. And so she fell screaming.

Luckily Na'vi's carbon-reinforced bones and their general anatomy let them resist a normally fatal fall for creatures their size and weight with barely any damage, if at all but unfortunately this time she couldn't move so she slammed into the mossy. The air was knocked out of her lungs by the impact and an audible fleshy crunch echoed as her nose broke on less mossy stone.

<This you will deal with it, Laìo Zuät'ä'itan. You don't need to have an intact nose talk and walk properly. Try this again, however… again one of your arms might fly off as it's also not necessary for speech capabilities. I been excessively kind you, far more than deserve, death be the last worry. Trust me, do lie.>, he threatened calmly, his words in her language one similar to the common Na'vi but very distinct in intonation and formulation.

It could be somewhat equated to the Latin languages such as French, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, and Spanish, with similarities everywhere but overall very distinct. The differences between the two Na'vi languages were far fewer, however.

The threat terrified her core Laìo but she was shocked as well, he knew her name and spoke the language of her people to perfection, it was a similar reaction to Grace and Jake who couldn't wrap their heads around this information, the two only understanding two words in three.

Admittedly good but easy for misunderstanding to happen and making them learn a variant of Na'vi to his proficiency would take time he didn't possess. They still understood that their hostage had her life held by a thread.

It was hard sometimes to put it back into perspective after all these years of seeing Liam with Miles for example and his actions in general that he was the farthest from a Saint or an angel and someone not afraid to be painted in blood and guts if he deemed it necessary.

"You know their tongue huh? I wonder why I am even surprised at this point. And her name too if I heard correctly. <Thanks the All-Mother for her blessing>", Jake interjected with curiosity his gaze equal to Liam in emotion as it passed briefly to the female Na'vi whose ragged breathing was slowly coming back to normal.

She had tried to kill them, if she was being gutted alive he wouldn't have cared so much but he wasn't the one doing it. He was still a marine at heart and killing threat was in his vein and this Na'vi with her clan were into that category. He has done worse and will do so again if he must.

They didn't have reason to shoot on sight like the Omatikaya with the RDA. It was pure hate and malice here, nothing more, nothing less but it wasn't so much as a surprise. The noble savage image of the Na'vi on Earth was just that: an image, an insulting and diminishing illusion for at heart humans and Na'vi were more alike than anything else.

He had experienced it within not even the first years of his reign as Olo'eyktan with the almost successful assassination attempt and even if he didn't tell it his mate for he didn't have anything truly against but he wasn't so blinded by love to see her faults, just like she saw his.

Neytiri's hate for humans, while understandable, was beyond rational and very hypocritical with its inconsistency. It was very human-like qualities of Na'vi to act this way, and that was here before the RDA.

It was quite different for Grace whose conflicting emotions had led her to approach Laìo. Crouching down the xenobotanist looked worriedly as the Na'vi took her bearing back, wanting to help she proposed a handkerchief and a helping hand.

But what she got wasn't exactly what she had expected, what she got for trying to be the voice of goodness was an overly aggressive hiss, a spit mix of saliva, blood, and dirt far too harmless to be stopped by the shield and so it hit her square on the face then a proud mocking sneer from the one she tried to be kind to.

She slowly walked two steps away, blinking in a haze at what was done, her brain processing the information as she mindlessly cleaned the spit away with the same handkerchief she was going to give. Her reassuring smile had since long vanished.

The xenobotanist had enough, this had tipped her over the edge. Rare were the instances in her almost seven decades of life where she was this displeased.

"You know what, I tried, If you don't want help then so be it you will have what you want. Go fuck yourself. Truly go fuck yourself.", she said with palpable fury in her voice then to Liam and Jake's astonishment she quite literally punched Laìo right in her nose with enough force for her to reeled backward with the blow, blood spurting behind almost like a fountain with the movement.

It was an amateurish, slow, and telegraphed punch but the strength behind was still beyond what any human could do and so the one who couldn't dodge cried out in pain as the fist connected to the already broken and very sensitive nose leading to another meaty crunch echo.

"Anti-spit shield for later, duly noted.", the post-human said, earning an unamused glare from Grace that turned to an exasperated sigh clearly showing the distress she believed was well hidden behind a mask of neutrality.

"I know it's unpleasant but if I didn't make you come you would have been fully against what I wanted to do. You would have tried to convince me to change the location, I don't like it either trust me. I don't want to interact with what amounts to a tribe of cannibals but I need to.", Liam said with a frown, then he forced Laìo on her feet as they began walking back to where they were ambushed for it was in that direction their destination was.

Then Liam explained what Laìo must do before a long moment of silence came to be only broken by the sounds of their footstep as they advanced deeper and deeper in the caves, Na'vi skeletons of both sexes and all ages adorning stones, walls, and plants like morbid decorations born from twisted minds. All telling a story more disturbing than the last.

Grace having enough of the heavy atmosphere borne by the silence decided to ask, "Are they really all like this? This is the result of exiled morals would not be their forte but… Those… They must be an exception, right? Right? This aggressive behavior must be out of the norm."

She dearly hoped those actions weren't normal by any kind but there was only so much hope one can have to deny reality after what she experienced and was seeing.

They were insane or lacked any kind of morality or both and that scared her, it reminded her of Quaritch but in a way worse, at least the monster in human skin held value for his kind and had the tiniest amount of value.

Nobody, no matter the species as long as capable of complex thoughts and emotions, would use children of their kind as decoration and be called anything but monstrous, psychotic, and mad.

Their culture be damned, if parading infant skeletons was what they did and found amusing then they can burn in hell. For once she found herself growing hate and as much as she despised the thought she wished the RDA had exploited this area, if only the obsidian sand wasn't there to make the exploitation far more expensive.

"There is a nuance that much is true but the ones that attacked us are sadly the norm, if, on the tamer side, the anomalies are the ones not void of empathy but they are few and empathy doesn't equate kindness. Their community is built on individual power, be it influence, physical, and more, it's survival of the fittest.", Liam answered with the bleak reality.

Another minute passed and within that time the cave surrounding them shifted immensely, the number of plants grew in number and variety, and the cave became exponentially larger in all dimensions from height to width.

It was a gargantuan chamber, the heart of the dead volcano, the Ash Mountain of the Heartbroken, and growing from the very was a Hometree. One that was alive even if it didn't look like it at first glance since it was dormant, its massive trunk appearing small in the cave while its crown was void of any leaf but full of glowing multi-colored vines reaching almost to the ceiling.

It would have been a magnificent sight if not for the same decoration seen earlier, here it was even more pronounced. Adding to it were damaged stone buildings and what looked like the ruins of an ancient civilization.

<Wh-Intruders! Intruders! They have arrived! Laìo is with them!>, a voice full of panic rang out from a lanky teenage Na'vi boy from one of the many entrances leading to the inside of the Hometree. His body disappeared as soon as it appeared.

"Predictable.", Jake said, slightly amused, they knew they were coming, but it also explained the fact no one was outside and that they hadn't met any other group. They must have gathered in the Hometree.

<Go and do as I told you.>, Liam calm as ever ordered his Na'vi hostage who with no hesitation did as he said, running as if her life depended on it to one of the entrances.

Once this was done the middle of his Tek Chestplate lit up, the forcefulness ready to pop back into existence with a thought. That done he motioned his companions to follow to the largest entrance where they stopped fifteen meters and waited.

And they didn't have to wait for long, after ten minutes Laìo came back and said with a dangerous smile on her face only Liam noticed, <Come in, Matriarch Varang, Mother of the Ash People has given you right entry.>

'Failed again huh… You don't ever fucking learn do you?', he thought, the visor of his helmet while not appearing didn't stop him from seeing the little ambush held behind, the hundreds of Na'vi hidden everywhere.

<However… No weapon or any of your technology shall be allowed within our sacred ground. This holds as well for flying creatures who stay behind. To avoid unwanted surprise objects placed into this box and furthering the Matriarch's safety she has required you to change garbs.>, she said this time her smile started to show but she caught herself.

From the entrance three, terrified Na'vi covered in whip marks and deep scarring around their necks due to constant skin irritation walked out, the first was missing an ear, an eye, and half of his tail while the second was a few missing fingers on both hands and feet while and burns scars were around his head and queue, the two were carrying an empty box. The third was a sickly young Na'vi girl slightly younger than Kiri, her eyes were empty and her belly bulging, she was carrying loincloths in her thin fingers.

The sight was not without effects, the mother and father of the group had both a daughter not needing much imagination to know what happened to the three, the girl in particulars

However this came second to what was said and Liam had translated it for them, the first to react was Grace but before she could insult anyone the post-human stopped her and said with a voice full of confidence and certainty, <Then so be it. We will comply with your Matriarch's demand, we want peace.>

"Take off your clothes and put them in the box and change to the ones given. Trust me, if it fails our safety is secured and none shall draw our blood and there would flow.", Liam said and promptly did as he said.

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