This story is written for entertainment purposes only. All copyrights belong to their respective owners.

Keep in mind that English is not my first language and so I do not claim to have corrected every mistake yet. As the story keeps getting bigger, it is possible that inconsistencies may appear. If they do, let me know and I will correct them.

This chapter got delayed due to lack of available free time. My apologies for keeping you waiting. Once again, my personal thanks go to the reviewers. Your input keeps me writing, even when my own free time is limited.

Chapter 14: The one in black

The next morning, a few kilometers away from the village of the Uvora clan, a Type 700 was creeping through the jungle. Unlike Joseph, this one was still unquestionably loyal to MT-NET. It had never interacted with living beings they way Joseph had. The only experience it had was in the field of killing. It had snapped the necks of several humans on Earth during MT-NET's failed assault. On Pandora, it had killed about a dozen creatures that had ventured to closely to the outer perimeter of MT-NET's main base. Recently, it had been selected, together with several other machines, for a mission to track the escaped Na'vi and eliminate them on sight.

The most distinguishing features of the machine were the black leather jacket and the dark sunglasses that it wore. It carried a machinegun in its right hand and had a shotgun strapped to its back. It also carried a pouch on its hip, which contained additional ammunition. The machine had been following the same trail for a few days now. Yesterday, it had encountered a camp along the way, which had already been deserted by the time it got there. It had then continued to follow the trail to the north.

Now, the machine spotted something that was out of the ordinary. There was some sort of canvas hanging in a tree to the left. The Type 700 made the decision to investigate it. A closer inspection revealed it was a parachute of some sort. The human who had used it was there as well; his skeleton was still sitting against the trunk of the tree, with an arrow between his ribs. The machine checked the body and the surroundings and found the soldier's nail gun. After having looted the weapon, it promptly continued with its primary objective.

Back at the village of the Uvora clan, a lot was going on. Many elders and children had suddenly arrived in the middle of the night. They appeared to be those who had been taken by the invaders, the ones Ranu'ut was planning to search for. Aside from being tired and starving, all of them seemed to be alright. Ranu'ut had ordered his people to accommodate their clan mates as best they could. However, there was something about this event that made him feel uneasy. He had asked one of the elders where they had been and how they had managed to escape. The fact that they were set free by one of the invaders was the primary cause of this uneasiness. He was concerned that it had been some kind of deception and that they might have followed them to this village. Without hesitation, he commanded Selyat and the other hunters to check the surroundings of the village and, most importantly, the direction of which they had come.

Past the outer edge of the village, a machine wearing sunglasses peered down at a waterfall from behind several bushes. A Na'vi mother was playing with her child at the bottom of it. There was no verification needed to confirm if the two were actually part of the group that had escaped. The machine had found Na'vi near the trail, and its primary objective ordered the elimination of every Na'vi encountered under this condition. The Type 700 switched weapons, and loaded its shotgun with slugs for better accuracy at this long range. It then mercilessly fired and hit the mother in the back, causing her to fall down. Her child, no older than three or four years, clutched his mother's body, not understanding what had happened. The loud noise of the shot had alerted Selyat of the fact that something was very wrong. With caution, she signaled the others and promptly moved into the direction of which the sound had come from. Meanwhile, the machine made its way down to the waterfall to finish what it had started. It grabbed the queue the child, and lifted him up. While the young Na'vi desperately struggled to get free of the tight grip, he could see his own reflection in the darkened glasses his attacker was wearing. That would be the last thing he would ever see, for the machine raised its shotgun and fired once more, without remorse or fear. It then dropped the body, and checked both its victims for life signs. There were none detected.

A loud shout, followed by a flying arrow, caught the Type 700 by surprise. The arrow hit its chest and caused it to lose balance. While the machine was undamaged, it was slightly disoriented by the force of the impact. It quickly scanned the surroundings and found several bushes moving. Despite firing its shotgun several times, it hit nothing and was knocked down again by a second arrow coming from a different direction. The Type 700 dropped its shotgun and chose to dual wield its machinegun and the looted nail gun instead. While spraying bullets and nails in all the directions in which it detected movement, it managed to hit one of the Na'vi hunters high in the trees. But that didn't stop them from firing more arrows at the attacker. The machine deduced that it would take to much ammunition to kill them, because of the excellent cover the trees provided. Instead, it would search for the village, as it was likely to be nearby due to the Na'vi presence in this area.

From above, Selyat could witness the invader sprinting away, almost directly towards the village. Again she commanded the other hunters to follow her, while she quickly pursued it. She was determined to prevent any harm being inflicted upon her people and was even willing to give her life to stop the invader from succeeding again. Only seconds later, the machine spotted a campfire in the distance, adjusted its course, and headed straight for it. However, it came to a stop at the fire pit once it realized that there weren't any Na'vi around. It scanned the area once more, while Selyat was closing in. Within seconds, she had caught up with the invader, and made use of the opportunity now that it was facing away from her. She leapt forward and, with all her strength, pushed the machine into the fire pit. Its rubber skin instantly caught fire, while it started shooting in random directions. Selyat backed away, and watched from afar as it was being overwhelmed by the flames. By this time, the machine's ammo pouch reached a critical temperature at which the rounds in it spontaneously fired. The pouch was riddled and the chassis of the machine damaged. A few moments later, Selyat could see the invader fall down and stop moving. She waited patiently for a little longer to make sure it was really over. In her opinion, it had deserved this gruesome final fate.

Once she had deemed it safe, she slowly approached the pit to inspect the remains. Standing at the edge, she gazed into the fire for little while. But before she could turn around and inform the clan leader of what had happened, a metal skeleton launched itself out of the pit, its skeletal hand grabbing her throat. Not only was it choking her; the hot metal was also burning her skin. Desperately, she struggled to get it off her. She succeeded only when the other hunters intervened. They ended the machine's existence with an axe to its head. At last it was destroyed, though at the cost of two innocent lives and two which had been wounded. Selyat knew that she would probably have a scar on her throat to remind her of this event for the rest of her life…

A few hours later, John awoke in his Avatar body to find that the situation at the village had drastically changed compared to last night. Hatuyo told him everything that had happened. First of all, the elders and the children of the other village had returned in the middle of the night. While that was good news, he also had some bad news to tell. This morning, one of the invaders had found its way to this village and had killed two Na'vi and injured a few others. John was shocked to hear this. He feared that it would only be a matter of time before more of them would come, as they now knew of this location. He did not attempt to tell Hatuyo about it though, as he didn't want to create a panic. Also, it would damage his reputation if he told the clan leader what he suspected, as it would make him seem even more suspicious. John presumed that Ranu'ut was wise enough to conclude on his own that the invaders now knew about this village. But still, it didn't feel quite right to him to keep silent about this issue. There was only one being, who would understand this situation without judging him, and who would know what to do about it. John had to visit Joseph. In order to do that however, meant that he had to convince Ranu'ut to let him leave the village for a short while. Either that or he had to go in his human body into the middle of the jungle with not only wild animals hunting him, but possibly machines as well. He decided that he would help gathering food today, just like yesterday, so that he had an entire day to think about this dilemma. His plan to get Ney'ite back on his side had to wait for now.

At the end of the day, he still hadn't made up his mind about what he should do, though he slightly preferred to go in his human body in order to avoid looking suspicious to the Na'vi. This mattered much to him, because if they kicked him out, all what he had accomplished and cared for would be for nothing. Right after John had finished eating, he noticed that the mood was still somewhat gloomy at the village, despite the beauty of all the bioluminescent plants and trees surrounding them. The surroundings made him feel calm and at ease, despite all the things that he could worry about. He wanted to lighten the mood, something that he was sure of he could do. Therefore, he approached Hatuyo to inform him that it was time for that story he had promised to tell. Hatuyo enthusiastically gathered some of his friends and together they sat down in a small circle, with John commencing the story. A few of the others knew a few basic words in English, but for the most part, Hatuyo had to translate. John had promised to tell about the human technology required to leave their own world and come to this one, but he decided to begin with explaining basic astronomy to make the rest of his story easier to understand.

He started with explaining that the small white dots they could see in the sky were actually gigantic spheres of matter, which were hot enough to emit light and which were separated by incredibly large distances. Humans called them stars. Some of these stars had smaller spheres orbiting them, which humans called planets. To clarify the term 'orbit', John drew a circle in the sand, which represented a star and a larger circle surrounding it, which represented the motion a planet would make around its star. A planet, unlike a star, was cool enough not to emit light on its own and was generally much smaller. In the same way a planet could orbit a star, smaller objects could also be orbiting a planet. These objects were called moons. An example of such an object was Pandora, the world on which they currently resided. John concluded by drawing a basic representation of the Alpha Centauri system, with the primary star, the planet Polyphemus and the moon Pandora. He noted that there were many other planets and moons in the system that he didn't draw for the sake of simplicity.

John could see that some of the children had some difficulty comprehending what he had just explained, though Hatuyo, who seemingly did understand, did his best to explain it with his own interpretations, using various hand gestures to illustrate what John had drawn in the sand. Nevertheless, all of them seemed interested and somewhat excited by the concepts John told them about. However, John was tired of working all day, so he announced that that was all he would tell today, but that he would gladly continue tomorrow.

From a distance, Ney'ite had watched John and had listened to his story, without him realizing it. She understood most of it, without having to listen to the translation of Hatuyo. Despite the fact that she found it only mildly interesting, she greatly appreciated the initiative, which he had taken to distract the children from the situation at the village. She could see now that he was still the kind and helpful person she knew, but only with a different body. At first she had been a bit overwhelmed by John's suddenly appearing like this, as she hadn't expected this move in the slightest bit. Over the past few days, she had slowly come to accept it, however. She was willing to allow him a second chance, just as some of her people already had. When Hatuyo and the other kids had gone, she approached John and told him that starting tomorrow, she would take a more active role in teaching and guiding him. Before John could ask why she had suddenly changed her mind, she gently kissed him on the cheek before wishing him a good night and heading off to the main campfire, while leaving John standing with a bewildered look on his face…