16. Professional egg stealer

Breathing in and out Liam calmed the bubbling emotions raging in his mind, mostly anger at whoever tried to enter his base, his property while he was away once more anticipation and paranoia proved to be fruitful.

A Na'vi could have entered and stolen, or killed Gladius, or stolen his resource if not destroyed what he rebuilt. It would have been bad in all cases he could think of.

The mere idea was enraging and put together with the last few days, even months. All of this caused him to be on edge, to say the least.

He considered himself someone cool-headed and composed even before having his body switched and his very being changed on a fundamental level.

Yet he had limits, ones he was far from reaching but if how he killed the great austrapede was an indicator nobody wanted to be in his close vicinity when it would happen.

Well, he wasn't a wild animal, even when he snapped he stayed mostly conscious of his actions as he pummeled the alien bird to death. And he was in mortal danger, his body was in fight or flight response, the first was prevalent and he did what he did.

Anger was bad, a problem he was aware of but it was comparatively better being rightfully angry than in plain depression or feeling despair, as long it was directed and focused. 

But valid reasons to keep the ember of his anger kept on falling on his head, he didn't want to tempt Murphy but it could always be worse. It was more of a coping mechanism than anything, one Liam was perfectly aware of but one that worked nonetheless.

'I might be overreacting… I likely am. They arrived in the middle of the day.', Liam thought, calming himself, observing his surrounding he moved to a patch of dirt with grass growing, crawling through a hole he could barely fit through, one tunnel's entrance.  

Tunnels that might need revamp in the way of needing some traps just in case some native gets too curious, some along the same design as narcotic trap wire should do wonders to unwelcome guests either if they have good or bad intentions.

In the first place walking through those tunnels for them when their adults are on average taller than the tallest humans is going to be a bit challenging. But prevention is better than cure.

'Then again, I don't know how Na'vi interact with one another or their cultures for that matter and neither do they know how humans interact with one another… It's a clusterfuck.', he thought walking in the dark and damp tunnel, slightly hunched over, his implant serving as an improvised flashlight.

Honestly, it was empty though and meaningless the only option was to find this mysterious and uninvited Na'vi.

Hearing happy familiar chirps from behind the wall made him smile and come back as he snapped out of his internal brooding.

Moving through the tunnel he noted how a part of it was still flooded and that bioluminescent plant-mushroom hybrids were growing all around, there even were some kind of small pinkish killifish swimming in the still flooded areas.

Likely from eggs laid there before, the movement of soil was probably at fault too.

They weren't unique as he detected via his implant that there was a lot of thing in the soil; seed, spore, and fish egg to various other animals' eggs. 

But those went mostly unnoticed the same for microorganisms as they continued to live on for a more or less long time unless they immediately died as what was stored was put in a sort of protective bubble.

It separated them from the void of the subspace that was his inventory. Also, the reason why more delicate things don't break or plants don't instantly die but keeping them for a long period still kills them, eventually.

The degree of awareness for something to be storable was still unknown but at least it must be less aware than your run-of-the-mill's alien arthropods and more aware than alien microorganisms. 

The rules behind what can and what can't be stored were a bit fuzzy but that's why testing was for. His inventory was his most versatile and arguably most powerful tool. Understanding it was the bare minimum.

At the moment he hypothesized that it mostly depended on how much it was conscious, how potent for lack of a better word was its Engramic Matrix, for whatever it truly represented, and how much it physically could 'move'.

All of it was ultimately only suppositions drawn from his knowledge of the Tekgrams, Engrams for extremely advanced pieces of technology that could nearly pass for magic, mixed with his own intuition so he thought it was bound to evolve.

He was pretty much blind and could only poke around and see what worked and what didn't. A very common occurrence here is how he missed the Internet.

Exiting the tunnel Liam was met with a very excited baby murder chicken waiting for him, Gladius had grown quite a bit. 

Now the chick was reaching up to a bit more than the middle of his abdomen and the claws from its two three-fingered hands were growing, but at the moment on each digit, they were no more than six stubby black dots than anything but it was a start. 

"Oww who's my adorable murder chicken it's you.", the man cooed while scratching gently behind the start of one of the neural queues like one would scratch behind the ear of their dog if the purring and feeling of commencement was an indicator Gladius liked it.

Liam stopped as an idea struck him, grabbing one of the ends of the neural queue the pink tendrils of nervous fibers shot out and weaved in the air before quickly coiling around his implant. 

A familiar prickling sensation later and his pupils dilated covering most of his grey irises. Closed his eyes he focused on the mental connection with the implant and focused on Gladius' mind.

Conveying feelings was easy, teaching Gladius words and their correlation in simple actions as well… However, more conceptual notions not directly in the shape of raw emotions were a bit more complicated.

Liam knew it was mostly born out of his inexperience about this aspect and that Gladius was not human and not even a month old, still a baby, a big murderous one but a baby nonetheless. 

It wasn't like the Na'vi where they became one in mind and body to whoever or whatever they do the Tsaheylu with, the connection between neural queues. Thought this was traded off by this link he had with his tame.

'Open-mind-memories.', he sent, and what he got was a confused four-eyed gaze from Gladius before the hatchling opened its beak and he got gray-purplish images of Gladius' favorite fruit and a sensation of hunger. 

Right after the hatchling closed its beak in confusion as Liam mentally let it be known with amusement and a mental deadpan it wasn't what he asked but if it understand what he wanted it would have more food. 

He tried several other words and emotions probing here and there, but none really worked, which showed on the hatchling as it grew frustrated, nearly looking as if it was going to cry which made Liam feel bad… Frustrated, right… He felt like an idiot having missed the obvious.

'Anger-desire-death-enemy-ran-anger.', and here the result was what he wanted, it was like using a very advanced virtual reality but with some very vague and diluted sensation.

It was of Gladius being awakened from its rightful rest by strange sounds coming from the big moving thing that was the exit/entrance. At first, it thought it was 'Father' coming back but as it happily waddled closer it realized it wasn't.

The voice was different, Liam notified it was the Na'vi language even if distorted and different as the memories were not heard with human ears so if the one was female or male he didn't know.

Its waddling became extremely aggressive as it shrieked something that promised a slow and gruesome death but to Liam it was cute. It was followed by a panicked yelp combined with a neigh-whistle-like sound and the sound of hoof clopping on mud before ultimately silence came back. 

Then a wave of smugness from Gladius and at the exact same time the connection broke and Liam took lungfuls of air as he was unconsciously holding his breath until now.

"Haaa… Okay, so it's possible… But urgg. it's disorienting guess my brain isn't truly wired for this not that it matters." he mumbled, massaging his forehead in vain to get the new but slight headache to go away. 

*Qweepp!*

"Yes you did good buddy.", Liam responded with a chuckle at the chirping Gladius made it known it didn't get its food, the man gladly gave various fruits from his inventory he collected along the way to his base. But each fruit was earned by playing or doing what he asked.

Which was around 50 kilograms (110lb), mostly berries and also nuts all gathered in this short time, proving how fertile the lands were. 

He tested all of them before to see which was good or bad but he knew it wasn't the most useful of action as what can be deadly for one species is what is needed for the continual survival of another, such is the joy of the unknown. Though he still avoided giving the one that made him feel queasy.

Gladius' nutritional need aside from this discovery of the ability to access the memory of his one and only tame, thereby everything he could tame had a lot of potential, the first thing that came to him was scouting. 

Just like a scooting pet or familiar from an RPG… It was an exciting prospect and quite frankly a necessity now that he thinks about it.

'It certainly can't be one of those suicidal little shit…', he thought about the potential choices while walking to the butchering stone slab.

The dead armored fish was plopped on the slab and he started to cut its head off with a utility knife made of one of the smaller great austraped claws.

'Hmmm yeah those featherless flamingo-eagle birds should do, omnivorous and excessively more intelligent than those bats, not that it's particularly hard to beat them in that department…', he thought of the tetrapterons while he started to filet the fish, pleasantly surprised by the lack of fish bone.

And also how the pure white flesh was quite similar to squid at least in taste and texture which brought new ideas about what he was going to cook, squids were one of his favorite ingredients to work with.

Anyway to get his future scouting partner or partners, a simple plan if that even be qualified as that formed in his mind on how he was going to steal, no, permanently borrow without permission some tetrapterons' eggs. 

He studied the newly arrived wildlife enough to be sure of where they nested and that the tetrapterons were nesting at all for that matter. 

Day 71.

Shining under the suns Liam in his full bronze armor was threading around a tree of the exact same species as the one at his base but this one was but a hallowed husk of what it once was, a husk of a tree still taller than the redwood Hyperion by a good 10 meters (33ft).

The fact it was this intact was puzzling with how often thunderstorms occurred or it was why it was in such a state. Either way, it was of no importance.

The gravity of Pandora is 20% weaker than that of Earth pushing the limit of what was thought biologically possible on the old blue planet. And this species of tree tanking dozens of lighting strikes are not even close to the tallest species of tree on the moon and that by quite a significant amount.

A simple small triangular wood and leather shield with hints of bronze was strapped by a piece of leather to his right forearm while on his left forearm was his wrist crossbow.

His armor was nearly hermetic to any potential harm that might arrive at the meat bag inside that was Liam.

Above the sound of cawing could be heard as the three dozen figures of four winged featherless 'birds' in most shades and colors from light purple to royal blue with the occasional orange to almost black.

He wasn't exactly sure if they even were of the exact same species or if it was a particularity of theirs in any case they were quite beautiful creatures if a bit vicious looking. 

His line of sight while limited by his helmet didn't bother him, he already memorized multiple paths to climb and to go down. But he knew it was still limiting and will prove to be an inconvenience.

The option of falling straight to the ground has been taken into consideration and from a certain height judged as acceptable.

While climbing a redwood-sized tree in full armor sounds incredibly silly and stupidly dangerous, still, the case is straight-up impossible if you weren't past beyond what was humanly acceptable in strength, endurance, and speed.

His armor felt like regular clothing; its weight was barely noticeable to him. The only annoying aspect was that it made him less agile.

And Liam didn't have much other option unless he wanted his flesh lacerated, fingers bitten off, eyes eaten out, and other such joyful-sounding potential injuries that no sane man wanted to live through. 

He didn't doubt one second that those usually shy creatures will lose it when he takes their blood and flesh encapsulated in calcium right in front of their four eyed-gazes, or even before that as some were already warily observing him. 

Some animals on this moon would do far more for far less. And if someone were to try stealing what was his he would act this way too.

"Well let's go. No risk taken no reward earned.", Liam said to no one but himself as encouragement and started to climb, his boots with hooks for better gripping strength. 

Not forgetting two pieces of modified claws from great austrapede vestigial wings serving as climbing pikes that could hold his weight and some more but just to be safe he had four more, one set attached to his hip and another in his inventory.

He was a professional after all, he came prepared, though if it was enough he wasn't sure as he needed to take his weight plus his inventory into consideration and potential hazard.

*

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