19. Hatching

Several days later.

"Hmm this should do it…", Liam mumbled as he put the final touch on a fist-sized ceramic ball closed up by a wood cork, and a fuze, it was a grenade, a very primitive one. 

He had managed to make around 40 kilograms (88lb) of gunpowder in this short time frame since he got his sulfur, the only thing stopping him from making more was his current lack of potassium nitric aka saltpeter. 

It wasn't a problem just that he would need to get more from the small cave near the area where he got chalk. He didn't collect that 'much' of it at the time because he didn't know when this would come into use, and he lost half of it in the big thunderstorm anyway so he would have required more either way.

Speaking of loss he put every resource sensitive to the wee of Pandora's random weather into their own receptacles with the right condition to be stored, the recipients were then put into big clay boxes plated with wood planks and reinforced with even more clay and stone then put right underground into a safe area.

Far from the root system's electrifying effect when the tree was struck by lightning or the powerful wind or water rain down like the flood or the three combined. Now that he had explosive and flammable stuff this was even more of a necessity.

Quite a time-consuming side project that was still ongoing and that in concept will likely never truly end. You never have enough resources and as such never have enough storage.

The only way to access them was via a trapdoor situated right below his cabin still in the process of building, more precisely next to his 'bed', if a pile of animal hides and makeshift pillow of Gladius counted as can be called that. Still more comfortable than branches or the hard sapwood of a tree though.

Back to the present, he wasn't at his base, preferring to not test explosives in his own house, because that's what he was going to do.

A small rectangular piece of metal attached by a cord through a hole to a neatly carved flint appeared in his left hand, a flint and steel. 

One piece each between two fingers he flicked them together close to the fuse, a spark was created and the short piece of rope was lit.

Liam mentally counted as he threw the grenade in the sky with the right amount of force for the lighted fuse to not fizzle out. 

As his internal countdown reached zero, a quite loud bang resonated, and a small ball of fire vanished as sound as it appeared. Small creatures scurried or flew away at the explosion.

It was weak, he noted but still extremely dangerous to whoever was in its radius as it was still a grenade, and quite loud, maybe not enough to effectively pop eardrums but enough to stun someone or cause chaos.

A far cry from other grenades he had the inner workings of such as one that when detonated formed a small gravitational singularity that could either depending on the mode chosen 'attract' or 'repel' omnidirectionally everything in a set area with a very dangerous amount of force.

Yet he couldn't do much in terms of pure power but increasing the quantity of gunpowder inside as such the size of the container at the moment, most complex explosive compounds were needed for that and for them he needed more equipment he didn't have for the moment. 

However, the problem at the moment was the method of lighting the fuse. They aren't really of much use in direct confrontation if they stayed like this but it was normal. 

He only did this to test how powerful they were and the quantity needed for a given explosion to not waste gunpowder. And to make shit blew up too, but that was just a bonus.

Bullets and guns were still in progress as he wanted something functional that wouldn't blow in his hand or not work at a crucial time. Explosions are good controlled and focused explosions are better.

All of his inner thoughts were interrupted by a shift in the mental link Liam suddenly felt Gladius become agitated, one that quite confused him for the briefest of moments. 

His mood flipped in a second and without much more thought he ran straight back to his base in less than half a minute. 

Seeing nothing around the base that indicated the passing of people Liam relaxed slightly but the crescendo of agitation from his tame told him something was happening and he had an inkling of what.

Running straight at his gateway he jumped, hand latching on the side of the big structure he lifted his entire body weight with one hand and flipped himself in the air. 

His little climbing experience in and out of the dead tree was a real eye-opener on what he could do and so he did train and explore a bit on this aspect. 

Though he was far from remotely being skilled enough in parkour and acrobatics considering he never did this kind of thing before, his body's natural instinctive movement, general awareness, sense of balance, and speed let it be fairly easy to do what he just did after a few trial and error, however.

And it was awesome to be able to do this and to feel so free. The lack of fear is the true factor here, it's insane how much it changed things.

Landing softly within his base he ran straight at Gladius who was glaring at the door leading to the incubation room, its long bio-metallic claws scraping loudly against one another.

The juvenile great austrapede now almost reached his shoulder and had started to show some change in color around its crest taking on a deeper brighter orange with deeper dark blue color and a bit of light blue along the double-ended tails. 

But it wasn't the moment to admire his tame, Gladius looked behind while the man hastily passed right next to the bird, a reassuring scratch below the neck instantly calming the murder bird down and he entered the incubator room.

Walking over he saw the four slightly transparent eggs, more particularly the chicks inside trying to break free from their 'prison', his presence and the low whistle he was doing serving as an encouragement to the four. 

Liam patiently waited, implant lighting dimly the room, one room where an incubator lay and another where he put various things he didn't know what to do with such as the carved bones he found and a halfway done bone structure found in the belly of those armored fish.

His wait was not long as one 'chick' finally broke free from its egg, it made a low-winded chirp as its proportionally big fully developed eyes opened and stared at everything before locking onto him with roughly the same gaze Gladius had when it hatched.

Then another broke free and did just as the first, then a third and a fourth all hatchlings in a short period as if they were waiting for him to hatch, which might just be the case.

He brought a basket filled with soft material from inventory and crouched down in front of the four observant hatchlings. 

They all tried to move in his direction but each failed spectacularly in their own way, it was adorable even if just from the egg he could see the serrated teeth in their beak. 

There were new details he couldn't have noticed while they were in their eggs, first was that two had the nub that looked like the start of a horn, and another was their colors, each sporting a small but distinct difference in color. 

One had a deep red on its back and tails, another was of various hue hues purple and blue, and the two others had this small horn the great difference being that one had a small paler yellow on all of its four wings and the last had a deep forest green around its four pairs of eyes slowly fading at the breathing holes at the base of its neck.

Deciding to not waste more time and officially tame them he picked them delicately in the middle of the basket before putting his left hand in the middle of it, the four chirped and huddled toward the wide open palm looking for heat. 

Each moved toward one finger, except yellow and green who pushed one another for the ownership of his thumb. Baby animals were nearly always adorable.

Liam studied their body and found the start of the neural queues, the pair grew out of their chest and nearly as long as their own body, bodies that were no bigger than your average newborn goslings. 

With the utmost care, he grasped one of the green hatchling's neural queues, it squeaked-chirped attracting the attention of the others. Liam swore he saw a kind of envy in their gaze.

The small tendril touched his implant, his eyes dilated and he got a glimpse of the newborn pure mind who just as Gladius did instability submitted to him, and a new link was made until death set them apart. The shift from the juvenile great austrapede told that it felt it as well.

'Your name shalt be Orien.', he named the green one through the connection, then said hatchling barely holding onto awakeness fell asleep wings grabbing his index finger.

This process was repeated three more times, the red one was named Meri, the blue and purple one Septen, and the yellow one Occiden. 

The four cardinal points, Orien (Green) for East, Meri (Red) for South, Septen (Purple and Blue) for North, and Occiden (Yellow) for West, all from their Latin counterpart or more precisely the first few letters of the dead language words.

And the batch was half male half female, the one with a horn being the female, a piece excellent of new. He knew this aspect instinctually which put the question on what Gladius is in that aspect but that was one for another time.

Biology is complex with more exceptions than rules, like a certain language; why would this differ from the biology of another world? 

Liam was now realizing he couldn't move all that much without waking up any of the hatchlings for two good reasons: they were cute and letting them rest was of utmost importance as they were just born.

Three of his fingers being held hostage by the newborn tetrapteron, his thumb grabbed by both using them as some sort of pillow or heat source, likely both but with an inclination toward the latter.

"Fuck."

Day 93.

Jogging in the vibrant green Liam was on his way to his base, buckets filled with a fluid of plant's origin in his inventory. 

If a comparison could be drawn then it would be the equivalent of the latex produced by rubber trees to protect themselves from pests and bacteria and also help heal potential wounds.

This latex-like substance of a bloody red was bloodletted from a small purplish thorny tree with human-sized tear-shaped leaves, quite the distinct difference from the milky white latex milked from rubber trees. 

The method to collect it even if he named it bloodletting from the very dubious and counterproductive method used to 'cure' various illnesses in ancient times was essentially the same as the one used to get latex from rubber trees.

This bloody latex has the potential to be used as a replacement for Earth's natural rubber, further testing will be needed to see how to process it effectively but the potential was there and something he needed as well. He needed a lot of things.

It's a material used nearly everywhere for its various unique combination of properties ranging from flexibility, good heat resistance, high tensile strength, water resistance and so much more. It was understandable why he would like and needed to have such material at hand. 

He suddenly stopped moving as the chopping but the muffled sound of rotors entered his ears, his heart beat faster into his chest, his mind working into various possibilities as he snapped his head into the direction of the origin of the sound.

Then he saw it, roughly 200 meters (256ft) above and away from him, an engine with two tiltrotors, an elongated airframe, a cockpit on each of its sides was a missile pod, rear cargo doors open with machine guns poking out. 

Attached to the middle of the landing slides was a long cable at the end of it was a great austrapede, a small one but definitely bigger than Gladius. Likely unconscious instead of dead from the careful strap and position it was in.

It was an aircraft, one his first thought, if bizarre, was that it was 'primitive' on multiple points and could be improved with enough time and resources but this thought was dashed as soon as it came.

"People…", Liam mumbled, eyes focused on the Aerospatiale SA-2 Samson, he didn't know what he should do at that moment, not that any of his actions would have resulted in anything worthwhile the aircraft has it passed by him and was already shrinking in the horizon.

At the same time in the aircraft, the humans inside were joyfully talking about their successful hunt and capture of this living specimen the Samson was carrying.

"Look at the size of these things! Imagine the damage it could cause if it reaches you. Luckily nothing good ol' .60 cal in the noggin can't fix even if it needed freaking two.", Ethan Scoreby a man in his late thirties exclaimed as he put himself next to a two-meter (~6ft6) long metallic claw.

It was answered by eye rolls or cheer except for one.

"I really think I need more sleep... It was just my imagination.", Miguel spoke under his breath shaking his head in amusement at the sheer impossibility of what he just saw. Taking off his helmet and putting it aside he scratched his bald head in annoyance.

A forceful tap on his shoulder and he glared at the blond-haired woman behind him. Her eyebrow was raised and he sighed before saying what he believed he just saw to his fellow SecOps.

"Of course a man wearing some sort of medieval armor in the middle of fuck all nowhere on Pandora, while you're at it why not had he come from an alternate universe? It totally makes sense, but please don't stone yourself outside of the base 'kay?", the blond woman answered with unhidden sarcasm but in the end, it was a mix between worried and deadly serious.

*

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