Yeaaah. I added some more to it :P And changed Fauna to Flora (Thank you, HpandTwilightrox :D) Hope you like it!
My eyes flutter open- I'm washed in a strange, blue light. I try to lift my hands to my face to clear my eyes of sleep, but they're strapped down. Confusion is the dominant feeling- along with an odd numbness that that holds my feet and elbows. My focus is slipping, vision dancing from foreground to background. A few spheres of liquid float lazily through the air, a sight that would have been strange, had it not just jogged my memory.
Six years ago, I signed up for life on Pandora. Five years ago, I stepped onto this ship and went under Cryosleep. Cryosleep is dreamless, not like a refreshing, good night's sleep. More like a slap in the face and a hangover.
I begin slowly moving backwards, a soft hiss grows louder and louder. Bright, white light floods into my cryo-chamber. I wince and squint in the bright light that is intensified by the silver and white that surrounds me.
"Hello, Sleeping Beauty." a man in a white outfit greets me, unclipping the bonds that hold me by my elbows and shins. I smile at him, giving it a sarcastic edge.
"Why thank you," I say, my voice sounding strange and alien from lack of use. "I am rather gorgeous, aren't I?"
The attendant laughs and shakes his head. I scowl at him. "When are we going to get there?" My patience slips the moment he shakes his head to the fact that I am, indeed, stunning to behold.
"It'll still be a few months yet," he says matter-of-factly before turning his back to me and helping the passenger to the right.
"You have been in Cryo for five years, four months and sixty-seven hours," another attendant shouts to all of the passengers that are already outside of their Cryo-chambers.
"You will be tired and hungry," he shouts again, calling everyone's attention to his words. "If you feel nauseous, please move to the receptacles below!"
I close my eyes for a moment- he was right. Tired and hungry. Very hungry. Someone floats up beside me, tapping my shoulder to get my attention.
"You're Rosalie Lillian Hale, aren't you?" it is a male. I turn to around to face my accomplice.
"Edward… Mason, is it not?" I ask politely. He looks like a nice man, not the kind that would kill- as many on this ship may end up doing.
Edward chuckles. "Yes, it is. Might you be a new scientist?"
My eyes narrow. "What makes you think that?" perhaps I'm a little too vehement.
"I- well, um, you don't really look the type to be running around and killing anything that attacks a group…" he trails off, leaving us in a rather awkward silence.
"Well, you'd be correct," I say, smiling brilliantly. I'm worried that I may have given him a bit of a scare with my 'out of the blue' mood change.
Edward chuckles nervously, clearly put on edge by my mood swing. He keeps his silence, rather than saying something stupid.
Clever boy.
"I take it you are doing the 'running around and killing anything that attacks the group'?" I smile sweetly.
Edward chuckles. "Yeah, I'm lucky to have an Avatar body- very few are fortunate enough to have gotten one. I heard that something went wrong with the last batch of bodies and they have to cut off most of them. I guess some of the bodies were remade on this flight, but I think it'll still take a long time for them to mature…" he trails off, noticing my slightly dazed expression.
"Wait, what? Oh, sorry. I don't actually know how the Avatar thing works, seeing as I was never offered a pilot-body-thing and I was too consumed with other... things to attend to." I say apologetically.
He nods. "I honestly don't care, I tend to bore people quite a lot," this, I laugh at. "But I would have thought that you'd know more about the Avatar program, as you're a scientist,"
"Ah, I specialize with flora. So I'll be spending more time poking and prodding plants from Pandora than tearing them from the ground." I frown in distaste- that will be the hardest part, watching the other humans tear up the plants and trees so that they can mine for their stinking Unobtanium.
"I see." Edward says, glancing up as an attendant floats in our direction.
"You two may want to head to the improvised gym," the attendant says sternly. "We wouldn't want any weaklings floundering about on Pandora and screwing over our whole project." he floats off in another direction to badger a different group of passengers.
"Rude," I mutter, turning back to face the bronze-haired man that I had been speaking to previously. "Well, we'd better head down to lift some weights before we get scolded even harder. Maybe they'll throw toilet paper at us!" I scoff indignantly and half swim, half flail down to the metal grates that separate the different levels of The Equinox.
I shimmy towards the opening in the grate, just about ready to kill someone if it meant an easier way to move around the ISV.
"Coming, Edward?" I call behind me, hoping that the male was following behind me. I still needed someone to talk to.
Besides, he hasn't complimented me yet.
It's been three months since we woke from Cryosleep. On the dot. We're being herded into a Valkyrie shuttle platform so that we can actually get to the surface of Pandora. A fat lot of good just sitting here like bumps on a log would do us.
As we file into the platform, we're all told to check our things, as if anything's left in our lockers, it's left behind. I run my finger along the edge of my exopack, praying that when I need it, nothing will go wrong. Like a leak.
I sit on a bench and strap myself in. Edward sits beside me and sets his bag on the dirt-covered floor of the shuttle. A red light goes off and a small warning siren sounds, putting me on edge.
"That alarm means we're taking off, right?" I ask, setting the exopack down beside me. "We're not going to die before we even get to Pandora?" I'm being paranoid, but my pride doesn't allow me to take back the worry now that I've said it.
Edward gives me a strange look. "If the shuttle was going to explode, we'd be very well informed," he says. "Informed meaning that people would be rushing back onto the ISV."
I nod slowly at first, before looking at him with determination set in my jaw. "I totally knew that," I say, my chin becoming slightly elevated into the air. "I was just… testing you. Because if you're going to survive on Pandora, you need to know something like that. It's important, you know, being able to tell a warning siren from a we're-about-to-launch siren." I glare at him as a smile begins to tug at the corners of his lips.
I quite literally jump out of my seat as the shuttle port is detached from the rest of the ISV. My fingers dig into the thin cushion that lines the top of the bench as a wave of nausea hits me. They did tell us that nausea was a symptom that you might experience during the flight, right?
Edward chuckles at my discomfort, shaking his head. "Did you go through any training?" he asks.
I glare at him venomously, daring him to say anything else. He seems to get the message and looks at the other passengers, though his brazen smile is still quite visible. I roll my eyes at his immaturity and make a point of shuffling a little ways away from him. The cushion that lined the bench was a dark, sick looking green. It's hardly comfortable to sit on, and I know that I'm going to have to for the next few hours as we head in towards the new base. I remember hearing stories about the first base- Hell's Gate. At first the name had come across as strange, but I soon figured out that it probably fit. Pandora being hot, somewhat wet, and incredibly dangerous, it seemed to exceed the description of hell.
I recall stories from when I was younger –about six years old- about Pandora. By then, anyone who went to Pandora and survived the first time had come back with their chilling tales of being kicked off the planet. From what I heard, there was a huge, unprovoked attack by the natives that killed many, including an old family friend whom I only knew as Miles.
When everyone returned, they made quite the effort to get word out about the savages known as the Na'vi. It was on the news, in the newspapers –if anyone still read them at that point- and the hot topic of many websites. Older siblings were constantly scaring their younger brothers and sisters with stories of the towering 10-foot beasts, telling them that if they didn't behave, one of the Na'vi would come and eat them. I know this from experience, as I used to take great pleasure in scaring my brothers witless at the tender age of ten.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. This is it. This is what I've given up my social and financial life for. Studying strange plants on a strange world with hostile natives. Fun, fun. I've heard wonderful things about the plants on Pandora; the way that the trees and plants seemed to communicate with more connections than the human brain, messages speeding along connections between roots faster than the eye can blink.
I struggle to keep myself from wriggling with excitement, instead allowing that little thrill shoot through me. Keeping a smile off my face, however, was all but impossible. If I were younger, I probably would have been swinging my legs and bouncing up and down with uncontainable joy. Thankfully, I'm more mature than that.
It's taken me a while to realize that I'm wearing cargo pants. Cargo pants. Unflattering, baggy, disgustingly coloured cargo pants. The zippers and buttons that hold together the many unbecoming pockets seem to stick out and rub their horrible unattractiveness in my face.
And then there's the shirt. The dirt smudged tank top with a thin vest-like piece of cloth draped over my shoulders. It was also covered in dust and smelled like it had been dragged along the floor of the shuttle several times. Everything here seemed to have some hint of dark green on it, obviously for camouflage. Regardless, the color that could save my life still annoys me to no end.
My hair's also rather bedraggled, tied back in a lopsided and sloppy ponytail. Stray locks of golden hair flies out in many directions, some hanging beside my ears and others –at least last time I checked- curved up and down, starting from the elastic and tugging at my scalp. I pull a couple of strands further out of the binding that the elastic provides as they were slowly, and painfully, being yanked from my scalp by the elastic and movement of my head.
Hours meld together as we approach the strange moon. I stare at a spot on the ceiling as I think about home; a place I won't see for another four years, at the very least. The first thing I think about is a dear friend that I've left behind, Vera. She's happily married (at least she was when I was still on earth) and has a gorgeous child. My thoughts sweep towards my family. My two younger brothers, my father (who detested me going to a distant planet where I will most likely die or get seriously injured) and my mother- or nanny. As the nanny that used to be for my brothers slipped into the position of 'mother' several years before I left.
My heart sinks as the reality of what I'm doing seeps past the hype. I might die. Me. The most-likely-most-gorgeous-person-on-earth might die.
A crackling voice over the intercom tears me from my self-absorbed thoughts. My thoughts are bitter-sweet as the static clears and the voice can be properly heard.
"We are approaching the stratosphere of Pandora."