Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar or anything that is part of its franchise.
Summary: A retelling of Avatar with a walking Jake Sully.
Chapter One: Leaving
(Jake's P.O.V)
When I was lying there in the VA hospital, with a big hole blown through the middle of my life, I started having these dreams of flying. I thought that my life as a full person was over but I was wrong; my brother Tom was there to pick me up. I'm a soldier, a marine, in Venezuela I was shoot: bullet tore straight through my spine.
I was sent to a VA hospital were I laid for months in self pity until my brother came back into my life and slapped some sense into me. For a year my brother and I worked our asses off until we made enough to pay for the surgery that would give me the both the usage of my legs my life back. My surgery was a success and with physical rehabilitation I was a new man; my brother was there every step of the way but then we parted ways.
Tom Sully went back to being a scientist while Jake Sully went back to being a marine.
I became a Marine for the hardship. To be hammered on the anvil of life. I told myself I could pass any test a man can pass and I did. With moral support from my brother I was back to doing what I liked; I rose through the ranks and was chosen to be part a part of The Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch AKA the Specters.
I've become the man I am know thanks to my brother the man who gave the second chance few wish for but never get: my brother that was killed two days ago.
Let's get it straight up front. I don't want your pity. I know the world's a cold-ass bitch but I never knew how cruel life was until I got the news that my brother; my one true friend had been murdered.
I'm sitting in a bar trying to drink myself to death and I look at the crowd, there quiet. All I see is some drunk on a barstool slapping the woman he's with. All I hear is the contact of his hand against her face. I see her cowering away but he grabs her arm, shouting, raising his fist. People look away and I can only look at him and them in disgust.
You want a fair deal; you're on the wrong planet. The strong prey on the weak.
I get up I'm tired of watching this drunk hit a girl for no reason at all; for the two days of been drinking myself to sleep I've watched her get beet to a pulp and nobody does a damn thing.
Jake stops, unnoticed, next to the man everyone else notices his presence and back away. He leansdown and grabs one leg of the man's barstool and yanks, the chair flips, the guy goes down HARD andJake gets a grip on the guy, like a pit bull, and begins to punch the crapout of him, right there on the floor.
The bouncer jumps in, trying to drag him off and it goes into: everybody yelling and pulling...
All I ever wanted in my sorry-ass life was a single thing worth fighting for.
-Break
Two days have passed since my scuffle in the bar; the guy I beat is still in the hospital and the bouncer is there to keep him company along with anyone else who got in my way. I'm in the morgue now I'm having Tommy's body cremated; his body shouldn't be buried in a world that only tried to kill his hopes and dreams.
Two men in matching suits walk in. Their features are the same as any FBI agent or US marshal.
"Are you Jake Sully?". I can tell his nervous.
"Step off. You're ruinin' my good mood". I don't know who they are but the sight of them is pissing me off.
"It's about your brother" the second one seems calmer, a lot good that does me.
I turn to the cardboard box next to me an attendant is pulling it open and all it reveals is a dead man's face. He looks EXACTLY like me. He is, or was my identical twin Tommy.
The strong prey on the weak. A guy with a knife took all Tommy would ever be, for the paper in his wallet. Jesus, Tommy why you instead of me. The Suits' concern was touching I could only glare at the two.
"Your brother represented a significant investment. We'd like to talk to you about taking over his contract".
The attendant closes the box and seals it with a tape dispenser, like it's a package for shipping. The cardboard coffin is rolled into the furnace.
The egghead and the jarhead. Tommy was the scientist, not me. He was the one who wanted to get shot light years out into space to find the answers. Me, I'm just another dumb grunt gettin' sent someplace I was gonna regret.
Inside the furnace the burners quickly eat away the cardboard; I watch Tommy's face for a moment it is, wreathed in flame but not touched by it, as we ….
"Alright I'll do it for him; my brothers' dream doesn't need to die here".
"A fine sentiment mister Sully".
-Break
I took my brothers contract and found out I'm being shipped out to Pandora; the most hostile environment in known space. Most men would be afraid but I'm not; I'm a marine, I'm a Specter operative, but most importantly I'm carrying my brothers dream.
Jake squints as the lights flicker on, revealing a man in medical scrubs floating weightlessly over him.
Wherever I'm going now it's not Earth.
I get out of my stasis pod and begin to float around the multi-tiered Cryo Vault. Hundreds of Cryo Capsules are opening like morgue drawers, as med techs pull themselves about in Zero-G, tending to their patients and getting everyone adjusted; after all we've been sleeping for five years.
"Are we there?". My voice is hoarse; haven't said a word in five years.
"We're there, Sunshine". The Med-Tech smiles at me and moves on to the next guy.
People are emerging from their stasis-capsules and trying to adjust to the Zero-G environment. Pale spirits of the dead rising from rows of open coffins. The Med-Techs are floating among them making sure to look at everyone and making sure that no ones dead.
"People, you have been in cryo for five years, nine months and twenty two days. You will be hungry, you will be weak. If you feel nausea, please use the sacks provided for your convenience. The staff thanks you in advance". The Head Med-Tech goes to help out one man who has yet to wake up.
Ipush away from my capsule, gliding to the lockers across the aisle, I stretch my arms and legs; both feeling sore from not being used.
Against the cold infinity of stars glides an interstellar spacecraft, the ISV Venture Star. It moves past worlds like an endless train, I realize this thing is ENORMOUS, must be over half a mile long. I head to an available window and see my destination: A gas-giant called Polyphemus, ringed with dozens of moons. I'm only interested in Pandora; the moon my brother loved yet never saw.
I look towards the largest moon, a blue and surprisingly Earth-like world called Pandora.
-Break
ISV Venture Star drifts above a spectacular vista – I look at the sapphire seas and unfamiliar continents of Pandora. I can see why Tommy wanted to come here it is nothing like earth.
I'm on the shuttle that will land on the surface, as the shuttle moves away, descending toward Pandora, I think I hear the sound of DRUMS, building, louder and louder. Damn cryo does a number on you.
I look out my shuttle window as we fly over the landscape of massive cliffs and towering mesas carpeted in rainforest. Great scarves of cloud swirl around the mesa tops. A primeval landscape, vast and forbidding. The trees are alien, the color too cyan. There are waterfalls, rivers, and distant flocks of winged creatures flying buy.
"That's interesting" is all I can say as I look at this planet.
Suddenly the rainforest gives way to the sight of an open pit-mine, a lifeless crater as if a giant cookie-cutter took a chunk out of the world. Down among the terraces are excavators and trucks the size of three story buildings. Beyond the mine is my new home; a place called Hell's Gate.
Hell's Gate is a cluster of squat concrete and steel structures surrounded by chain-link fences 10 meters high, topped with razor wire. At the corners are towers with automated sentry guns swiveling on servo mounts. I feel the Valkyrie shuttle roars in over the treetops landing on the hard blacktop.
I'm sitting in the cargo hold; I'm leading the soldiers out. The crew chief stomps down the aisle yelling.
"Exopacks on!" Passengers don their EXO-PACK breathing gear with practiced moves. It is time to enter their new home.
"Remember people, you lose your mask you're unconscious in 20 seconds and you're dead in four minutes. Let's nobody be dead today, it looks bad on my report".
"Exopack on, let's go!"
I up in the front of the aisles, with duffels ready. Rows of tense, expectant faces in breathing masks, I guess were all just as nervous.
The cargo doors open with a hydraulic whine.
"Go directly into the base! Do not stop! Go straight inside!" yells the crew chief.
I'm running with the arriving colonists we double time down the ramp. They jog across the exposed blacktop toward a walkway covered in chain-link which leads to the complex.
Inside the chain-link tunnel are a couple of Sec-Ops trooper, Corporal Lyle Wainfleet and Private Fike. Sec-Ops is the colony's private security force. These guys are laid back, hardened, and haggard. Their a bunch of thugs and hired guns who bring only shame to anyone who calls themselves a marine.
"Look at all that new meat" says Wainfleet.
"Check it out, man. Look at the lead man's tags: Specter Commando" says Fike.
I cant help but smile, it's good to know that these idiots realize I'm not like them, I'm ten times better.
A huge tractor, taller than a house, roars past on muddy wheels. I notices something sticking in the tires - arrows. The Neolithic weapons stick out like a weed in all this advanced technology. Beyond the tractor, two VTOL vehicles take off. Armored and heavily armed, they are AT-99 "SCORPION" gunships.
I notice more weapons, two sets of MITSUBISHI MK-6 AMPSUITS, human operated walking machines 4
meters tall. I notice that their patrolling the perimeter. They are heavily armored, and armed with a huge rotary cannon called a GAU-90. Whoever else is in this world must be pretty damn intimidating for all these weapons.
Beyond the outer fence stands a black wall of forest hundreds of feet high. A sentry gun opens fire from a tower. This place isn't safe but then again no place I've ever been is safe.