Chapter 1: The Will of The World

Diana considered herself a patient person. In fact, if Dr Grace Augustine was the one to write the book on the Pandoran botany she discovered, Diana Quinn was going to claim she wrote the book on patience.

At least- that's what she tried to convince herself at six in the morning when a new recruit for the avatar programme was causing a ruckus throughout the sector and knocking over things left and right. She tried to control her rapidly rising anger as she attempted to withhold herself from screaming at the newbie for knocking over her linguistics books and almost making her spill her coffee on them.

"Hey Dick-For-Brains!" She could not, however, control her anger, "Watch where you swing that tiny blue ass of yours!" The former university English professor had become quite adapt at adopting a marine's mouth. Being stationed on a moon years away from your own dying planet on a solar system that was not even your own would do that to a woman.

A prime example of bad habits adopted in the Alpha Centauri System bristled passed her in a flurry of red waves; the one and only Dr Grace Augustine. The bad habit in question was nestled between her two fingers as she took one last drag of her cigarette before hopping into her pod to link with her avatar, no doubt to chase after the newbie causing havoc outside.

It had been nearly five years since Diana had joined the RDA at the request of Grace and there was not a moment where something went smoothly in those (give or take) one-thousand-eight-hundred-and-twenty-five days.

The woman rolled her eyes as she stared at the panicking scientists at the sudden exposure to the air outside and watched from behind a glass pane as they quickly attempted to close the breach in the unit. She was shocked to hear of Tom's sudden death earlier in the month, and even more shocked to learn not weeks later that they were going to be replacing Tom's scientific mind with a marine's one in the form of his twin brother.

She remembers snorting rather loudly in Grace's face when she was informed of the switch.

"You've got to be joking," Diana laughed loudly in Grace's face, but quickly sobered up at the look of dismay on the red headed woman's face, "You're serious." 

"As a heart attack. These airheads are giving me another gun when what I need is people actually capable of using what's in their heads! It's like they're pissing on this whole entire operation after creating the damn fire to begin with!" 

"Okay, Grace, again with the analogies- you are going to have to speak slower for the rest of us to catch up." Diana laughed as she raised her hands in the air, submitting to the scornful gaze the Dr sent her way. 

"Be honest with me Diana," Grace took a stressed drag from the cigarette between her fingers, "Do you think we're just wasting our time here? I mean honestly I feel like there's nothing we could ever do to make up for what happened at the school-"

Diana cut the woman off before she could continue speaking, "What happened at the school was a horrific thing, Grace. But you can't keep blaming yourself for it. You helped as many kids as you could, alright?" She stared and waited at the woman until she gave a nod in understanding, "You did everything you could."

"I just wish I could have done more."

Diana's brows furrowed as the memory was pushed to the forefront of her mind. Cold, smoke infused fingers pressed against her forehead to release the tension was what brought her back to the present.

"We're going out to run some errands; I'm taking Norm and the newbie with me, you up to stretch your legs?" Grace was unlinked from her avatar and drinking coffee again while simultaneously smoking another cigarette.

"You're going to give yourself a problem with that," Diana said as she eyed the cigarette ruefully.

"Yeah well, better the devil you know. Speaking of which…" Diana followed Grace's line of sight until she reached the towering figure of Colonel Quaritch, or in Diana's terms; the ugliest piece of man you would ever lay your eyes upon.

Colonel Miles Quaritch was one of the RDA Security Operations commanders and served as the chief of security on Pandora, he had arrived on Pandora in the early 2150s and had been in a pain in Grace's backside ever since, and Diana a while after that.

"They do say if you speak the devil's name, you can summon him." Diana whispered to Grace as he walked by her station.

"Do you think he wakes up extra early to style his hair and pray to Satan or do you suppose it comes naturally to him?" Grace questioned as they both continued to stair obviously.

"No on the hair thing- because what hair? As for the Satan prayers… those are definitely ingrained in his DNA, no effort needed- whoops!" The two of them quickly turned around and pretended to busy themselves with the various papers and books that lay strewn across the table as he turned around to face them.

They snickered quietly to themselves as they kept their eyes down and backs turned to the Colonel.

"But seriously, we're going out to gather some things, you in? I could really use some help with the newbie."

Diana snorted at the obvious plead for help, but shook her head in disagreement, "No, you don't need me there. Besides, my expertise remains in the teaching of the English language- not with machineguns and helicopters."

"Oh, bullshit," Grace groaned as she pulled on her friend's arm, "Come on you're the best pa'li rider this side of the linking."

"Yes and you and I both know very well we haven't even seen so much as one pa'li since-"

"Yeah, yeah," Grace waved her off as she rolled her eyes and relented, "Just so you know, if anything happens out here it's on you." The red headed woman taunted as she turned her back on Diana's rolling eyes.

After Grace left her alone with her papers and books once again to try and analyse more of Na'vi linguistics, another recruit came up to her and directed her to the armour bay- Colonel Quaritch's orders.

Diana groaned aloud as she made her way down to the metal hell.

"I want you to gain their trust," Diana heard Colonel Quaritch's voice above the loud machine murmurs as she approached them; "I need to know how to force their cooperation or hammer them hard if they won't." 

"Am I still with Augustine?" She heard Jake, the newbie, question.

"On paper." Came Quaritch's reply, "Yeah, you walk like one of her science pukes," Diana flinched at the lack of decorum with his word usage, and rolled her eyes as she figured he probably didn't even catch his mistake, "-you quack like one, but you report to me. Can you do that for me son?"

Diana narrowed her eyes at Jake's smirking face, his head bent low as he tried not to smile at what Quaritch said, and responded with an enthusiastic, "Hell yeah, sir."

"Well alright then," Quaritch smiled as he looked down at Jake, as though he were looking down at a younger version of himself, then moved to punch the air with the connected arms of the meta-machine, "Son, I take care of my own. You get me what I need, I'll see to it you get your legs back when you rotate home. Your real legs."

"That sounds real good, sir." Jake nodded to the high standing machine that held Quaritch in and Diana jumped from behind one of the other still standing ones as she made her presence known to the Colonel.

"Someone said you wanted to see me, Colonel Quaritch?" Diana heard herself yell at the older man in an attempt to make her voice heard over the loud whirring of machines and rustling of heavy artillery.

"Yeah, sweetheart," Diana gritted her teeth together at the name, "Some of my men were attacked at the base near Highcrags."

"And that's my problem because?" Diana folded her arms together, not liking where the conversation was heading, knowing exactly who and what was situated closest to the mining dump at Highcrags.

"Well as you know the operations at the Floating Cave aren't exactly being fully accepted by some of your little smurf friends-"

"Considering you used explosives to clear the entire place to rubble and ruin I wouldn't exactly expect a gift basket, Colonel."

Jake snorted from behind Quaritch at Diana's statement, but tried to cover it up as a cough when the older man's gaze turned to him.

"Look, I don't particularly care what you or your savage sweethearts seem to think you have control over," And he adjusted a large mechanical firearm in the hands of his AMP suit, "Look over the pictures, translate what it is your precious Tawkami clan is trying to tell us and then report back to me; because I have a message of my own."

"And if I don't?" Diana retorted to the retreating back of the AMP suit.

Quaritch turned his back to face her again as he yelled out, "Then seeing as though your plans for cooperation with the other clan of savaged blue lizards failed- I fail to see your use here anymore, Professor." He sneered her title like an insult as he smirked and turned away.

"You two sure do seem to get on well," From beside her Jake snorted his amusement, but Diana paid him no mind as she rolled her eyes and began briskly walking away from him.

His face fell at her cold behaviour and called after her, "Hey," But she ignored him, "Hey!" He pushed the wheels of his wheelchair faster and turned to position him in front of her, blocking her from going further, "Have we met before?"

She did nothing but stared down at him, and then turned away as he raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"Did I do something to upset you or…?" He pushed, and she let out a frustrated groan.

"You know you aren't the only one who lost something in that war." She told him hotly.

"What are you talking about?" Jake stuttered at her statement.

She rolled her eyes at the marine again, "Earth's intercontinental conflict in the twenty-second century? It kind of created a global energy crisis and left the earth in the great demand for natural resources? Ring any bells, marine?"

This time it was Jake who rolled his eyes at her sarcasm, "I know what you're talking about, what has that got anything to do with-"

"You lost your legs in the war serving your country, others lost their lives," That shut him up quickly, "And those who had to live with that loss, don't you think they'd do everything they could to bring them back?" Her face fell for a brief moment, and Jake saw it- as well as the hard fury that came after, "Everything that is, except genocide." And she pushed passed him.

This time Jake didn't go after, but only yelled at her, "So it's my fault for wanting to get my legs back? I'm the selfish one?" She turned around sharply at the accusation.

"You're trading your legs for the extinction of an entire people for some rocks and dirt!" She argued back, but lowered her voice and walked closer to him when she noticed the attention of onlookers.

"I'm not killing anyone," Jake seethed, quickly becoming irritated at the accusations she was throwing at him.

"No, you aren't. But I suppose supplying Quaritch with information about the Omaticaya and the ways best to hammer them down is all in innocent fun?" This time it was her seething to him, "What exactly do you think he meant by that? Look around you Jake," Diana waved her hands around them, to the vast amount of AMP suits, guns and artillery as well as helicarriers filled with bombs, "The entire avatar program is a sham, and everything Grace and I are trying to do means nothing to them."

"Then why do it?" Jake challenged, "If it's so pointless, why try to communicate with the indigenous at all?"

Diana sighed as she ran her hand down her face, "Because not trying makes me just as bad as Quaritch, and it makes me just as bad as you."

"You did what?" Diana shrieked in horror many hours later once Grace and Norm had returned with Trudy, their pilot- without the newbie. Of course, while the body of Jake Sully was alive and well resting in his linking pod, the tall three metre long, blue avatar body however was left to the wilds of Pandora, alone and defenceless with no real training or preparation of what the moon held.

"We lost the kid." Grace said as she stared off into the distance, as though she herself were coming to terms with what they did as she was explaining the experience to Diana.

"We were just inspecting some samples when all of a sudden we hear Jake standing off with this huge hammerhead titanothere! And then all of a sudden this huge thanator shows up and scares the hammerheads away! And then all-"

"Okay, okay Norm I get it, slow down," Diana laughed as the tall man tried to catch his breath, "So you lost Tom's avatar. Great." Diana mumbled a series of incoherent profanities as she sighed heavily. Diana gathered her hair in a bundle at the back of her head and attempted to tie it with the small hair tie resting on her wrist, but once she tried to make the second hoop around the elastic snapped and broke.

She groaned in frustration, letting her hair fall back to its original position. Not only was she frustrated about the entire avatar loss situation, but the air inside the containers they had built Hell's Gate around was humid and still.

"Maybe it's a good thing," Diana offered, trying to find the silver lining in the loss of an avatar body, "The last thing you need out there is another trigger happy marine anyway, never mind a three metre tall one."

"We just keep taking blow after blow, don't we?" Grace's question was rhetorical as they all stood around Jake's linking pod, waiting for him to wake up as the hours passed by. And when he finally did, he told them something none of them would have expected.

They were all in Hell's Kitchen when Grace recounted the story again, "The last thing we see is this Marine's ass disappearing into the bush with this angry thanator coming after him!" She turned her hand upside down and made grabbing motions into the air, as if mimicking the thanator's fangs and Diana found herself laughing loudly along with the rest of the group.

"Well, it's not something you can teach." Jake boasted smugly around a mouth full of food.

"You know, for reasons I cannot fathom, the Omaticaya have chosen you. God help us all."

Jake found Diana hours later in the linking room where her small office was set up. She was situated, as she normally was, on top of a large desk with various papers and books about her, each of them held written pieces of a language he was unfamiliar with.

"What are these?" He asked as he approached her on his wheelchair, taking a book from beside her as he inspected one of the books with what seemed to be words and vocabulary.

When she didn't respond to him, he only continued to pester her, "How do you even read these?" He tilted his head from side to side, and she rolled her eyes as she grabbed the book from his hand and flipped it upside down before handing it back to him.

"Oh, right, right… it makes so much more sense to me now." He joked, and she shook her head at his foolishness. "What does this one mean?"

She looked at the word he pointed to and laughed, "Skxawng, it means dumbass." She raised her brow at him, "Fitting that that's the one you'd be drawn to."

"Sk'awn," Jake tried.

"Skxawng," Diana corrected him, but shook her head when he repeated it wrong again, "Sk-xaw-ng." She said it slowly a third time and nodded her head once he finally caught on.

"I think one of the Na'vi called me this last night," Jake wondered aloud which caused Diana to laugh softly, "Real nasty looking bastard."

She nodded her head as he described the Na'vi, "Wooden neck protector? A braid dangling in front of his face that he thinks makes him look cool?"

Jake gasped as he clicked his fingers in front of Diana's face and pointed, "Exactly! God what an asshole."

"Tsu'tey," Diana supplied, "He was one of the students at the school too, albeit very reluctant to join at first, loves his analogies in Na'vi but could never get passed the longer sounding words in English."

Jake snorted at the new information about the warrior who seemed so frightening on top of his direhorse with his bow and arrow.

"Wait, you were at the school too?" Diana raised her eyebrows at the sudden question and Jake clarified for her, "We went there today on the recon mission for Grace's samples… were you there when…?" Jake couldn't ask the question, but his mind flashed with the memory of the bullet holes through the wooden panelling of the small house.

When Diana said nothing, Jake continued, "That's why you were so up my ass a day ago." He realised.

She shook her head as she responded in a whisper, making eye contact with his eyes, "I can't betray them again Jake." And it was a rare moment of vulnerability he hadn't seen otherwise in the weeks he had known her.

Diana watched tightly as Grace walked into the room and began to prepare Jake for another day in the Omaticaya village, going through the list of known Na'vi and their respective roles in the clan.

"T'su'tey." Jake stated as he lifted himself up into the pod.

"Tsu'tey," Grace corrected, "He'll be the next clan leader."

Diana smiled fondly at the name, and sniffled her nose before she added on, "He's not going to be fond of you," She nodded her head to the picture of Tsu'tey on the screen.

"He's their best warrior," Norm added on, "So expect some passive-aggressive tendencies from him."

Diana shrugged, "-or aggressive-aggressive." She offered, and he nodded his head in mock thanks.

Diana's attention reverted back to her notes, looking at the writing from the images Quaritch had forwarded her and the limited amount of translations she had left from the Omaticaya clan after the purge of the school. She couldn't make sense of some of the characters labelled there, but being the only clan with any form of writing system she was at a loss for what the words meant or where she could find a translation.

Her ears perked up when Grace mentioned Sylwanin.

"I got a date with Sylwanin too," She stared hard at Jake as he winked at Norm, bragging about something he didn't know anything about.

"She's dead." Grace told him, and the room enveloped in a tense air. Grace and Diana shared a long, sorrowful look before she pushed Jake into the pod and started linking him up back to his avatar at the Omaticaya Hometree.

Diana shook her head at the now linked up male before turning her attention back to her notes at hand, "Grace," She called over the scientist, "Do any of these letters look familiar to you?"

Grace came over and inspected the papers in the younger Professor's hands, "No, not really. Are these the markings from the Tawkami attack?" Diana nodded her head as she held her hair back from her face with one hand, eyes drooping slowly as she attempted to focus her eyesight.

"Have you slept at all since Quaritch gave you these?" Diana shook her head to Grace's question.

"He's so hell-bent on reclaiming the Highcrags and the damn mining site near the Floating Caves he won't just take no for an answer, and if I don't come up with an answer he likes who knows what he'll do to that poor clan." She groaned in frustration.

"Look, I know how important this is to you but tiring yourself out and passing out from exhaustion isn't going to help anyone, you need to sleep."

Diana only grumbled but made no move to go towards the sleeping bunks.

Grace sighed and pulled up a chair, "I don't know what the runes say, but look at this; they drew something near the end of the first sentence."

"What is that?" Diana heard herself ask in a low mumble, "A flower?"

"Pseudocenia Rosea, also known as the chalice plant." Grace told Diana as she identified one of the many floras that decorated the ecosystem of Pandora.

"Why would the Tawkami draw something like this for the RDA to see?" Diana asked Grace as she looked from the screen showcasing the image to her partner.

"Maybe it wasn't meant for the RDA," Grace offered as she handed the tablet back to Diana whose mind only filled with more questions than clarity.