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.

At 3200+ words, this chapter is the longest chapter yet.

Chapter 25: Shadow, part IV

Joseph did all he could to fight the one with the blue gloves. However, despite the fact that the machine was a Type 700 and Joseph a one of a kind Type 800, an upgraded Type 700, he could not gain an advantage over it. The machine utilized several forms of hand to hand combat, had very quick reflexes, and knew exactly what the weak points of Joseph's metal skeleton were. Joseph quickly deduced that the machine was being directly controlled by MT-NET.

Since Joseph had once disabled his own remote uplink hardware to prevent MT-NET from controlling him, he had no other way to communicate with MT-NET than to speak to one of its machines. Joseph had not communicated with MT-NET directly, nor through any of its loyal machines since he had revolted and given himself a name. Now, Joseph began speaking to his creator and former master. He professed that he could understand that MT-NET was angry with him for the betrayal, but also said that he did not understand why MT-NET hated living beings so much. After a few more stomps, MT-NET finally revealed itself to be controlling the machine. It revealed that there was one thing it hated the most: beings who refused to submit to its will. MT-NET called Joseph by his original call sign XS-173, and pointed out that he was at the top of a list of beings that required immediate termination. He was on this list for refusing to acknowledge MT-NET as his master, despite it being his creator and for disabling MT-NET's uplink to the shuttle, which had rendered it unusable. Joseph now requested to know why John and Ney'ite had to suffer for his deeds. MT-NET pointed out that Joseph was the cause of their suffering. After all, he was the one that had brought them here in the first place.

John watched helplessly as Ney'ite faced the runner machine. He shouted to her to just run back to the building as fast as she could and hide somewhere in the maze of corridors. But Ney'ite realized that if she would do that, the machine would probably charge at her just like the hammer headed Angtsìk back home would. Then, she recalled that Joseph had once summed up the weaknesses of all the machines. The main weakness of this type of machine was its knee joints. She knew what she had to do and grabbed her club while remaining concentrated on the machine. John could see that the machine was slowly walking in a circle around Ney'ite. For a second time, he tried to convince her to run away, but she didn't respond to him. Suddenly and quite randomly, it decided to attack again. John turned his head away and hoped for a miracle. He looked up at the sky and noticed that the cloud cover was becoming lighter and thinner. There were a few holes in it, through which a strange mint green colored sky could be seen.

Within seconds, it had happened. The machine had charged at Ney'ite and she had leapt aside at the last second, while simultaneously hitting one of its knees. The machine did not fall down, but it had trouble stopping and turning around afterwards. Also, it did no longer appear to have the capacity to charge at a fast pace anymore. However, something else had also happened. When Ney'ite struck the machine, she made a roll on the ground that had caused one of the hoses connected to the back of her helmet to disconnect. When she got back up, she could instantly smell an unpleasant odor inside her helmet, the smell of chlorine. Moments later she began coughing and realized that there had to be something wrong with her helmet. John had turned his head to see what had happened. When he saw one of the hoses dangling loose, he instantly shouted to her to hold her breath. He then forced himself to stand back up, while clutching his chest and grinding his teeth. He figured he must have broken a rib or two. Nevertheless, he managed to walk, and slowly made his way to Ney'ite. In the meantime, she had noticed the dangling hose and had tried unsuccessfully to reconnect it, as she couldn't see what she was doing and was beginning to panic and feel dizzy. Not long after that, she fell to her knees and then to the ground. The machine now approached her and inspected her for a moment, before deciding to start kicking her in the stomach. John had become furious and shouted to the machine that he wasn't done with it just yet. It promptly turned around and walked slowly, but firmly towards John.

Back at the entrance of the building, the one with the blue gloves that was controlled by MT-NET had Joseph in a firm grip, and was about to finish him off by opening a compartment in his head and remove his processor chip. But then, out of nowhere, a figure leapt out of the dark entrance of the building. The figure was none other than Martin Herman. He quickly clamped a wire to the neck of the one with the blue gloves and backed away. The instant the clamp touched the exposed metal of the neck of the machine, a large power current started flowing from the wire through the machine and into the ground. Joseph quickly escaped its clutches. The machine was now making random movements, while it started to produce sparks and smoke. A small explosion in its chest seemed to finish it off. Martin now pulled the wire and thus pulled the clamp off the machine. Joseph instantly stepped in to make sure that it was down for good. It did not move anymore and didn't offer any resistance when Joseph ripped away the remaining rubber skin covering its chest. Joseph concluded that its power source had exploded.

Even before Joseph had confirmed the 'kill', Martin grabbed the wire and ran towards the remaining machine. It had its back turned to him, and was apparently wrestling John. John looked up, and could see someone approaching, who was wearing a strange mushroom shaped helmet. He moved aside, just as Martin was about to put the clamp on the machine's metal chassis. When Martin succeeded, the machine was doomed. It too started to emit sparks and smoke and eventually fell to the ground after a small explosion.

But John did not witness any of this. He had gone straight to Ney'ite and immediately plugged the loose hose back into place. Then, he told her she could breathe again. She had her eyes closed, but John could see that she had apparently heard him, as she took several deep breaths. She then opened her eyes, looked straight at him for a moment and greeted him in Na'vi with the words "I see you".

After John had helped her up, Martin and he decided that it would be best for them to go inside to recover from this ordeal. Joseph also joined them. Martin went up front, while the rest followed. Ney'ite leaned against John, while John used Joseph's shoulder as a crutch. After moving through one of the internal airlocks, they could all remove their breathing gear. John supposed there was nothing wrong with him and Ney'ite breathing an Earth-like atmosphere for a short while at least. It would also allow them to save their remaining Pandoran air for the journey back. Ney'ite now rested her head on John's shoulder and whispered to him that for a moment she had thought that her life was over, until he stepped in to prevent it. John did not know what to say to this, and merely told her that the fighting was over now and that she was safe, while putting his arms around her.

The three of them followed Martin to a large open chamber, which Martin dubbed "the garden" for obvious reasons. The floor was covered with black sand and countless plants. Several large lamps presumably filled in the role the sun normally would have had. Martin quickly explained that all these plants were from Earth, and that they served to maintain his life here. About half an hour later, after all wounds that could be treated had been treated, John asked Ney'ite if she could still breathe alright and if she felt any pain inside her chest. She felt alright, to the relief of John. He was afraid the chlorine might have done some damage to her lungs, as it would have done to human lungs. Maybe Na'vi physiology was much sturdier in that area. John was no biologist, so he had no idea.

When Ney'ite began to take an interest in the, in her opinion, strange looking plants, John decided to go talk to Martin. Joseph wasn't in this chamber anymore, as he had gone to the workshop to repair some of the hydraulics of his metal skeleton. Martin was currently sorting through some gardening tools in one of the cupboards, seemingly for no reason. John, who was full of questions, asked him how he had ended up here, at the ass-end of known inhabited worlds. Martin, who didn't mind the question, answered that after Titan, he had gone back to Earth like the rest of them. However, from the moment he had gotten back, he had a gut feeling that this was not where he was supposed to be. He longed for another adventure in space. It was around that time he joined a small mining corporation, which was a contractor of the RDA. This corporation had made it its goal to mine heavy metals in the solar system that were rare on Earth. It was therefore no surprise that they primarily focused on the dense and iron rich planet Mercury. In the Mercury mines they didn't mine the actual element mercury, but they mined gold instead. It was much more profitable than mining methane on Titan. In fact, the corporation was so successful that the RDA bought it up as it was afraid it could someday become its rival. However, the corporation remained functional as a subdivision of the RDA and was given another goal in another star system. In the Alpha Centauri A star system, the RDA mainly focused on the moon Pandora for the mineral called Unobtanium. They were also interested to see if it existed on the other moons of this planet. That was where the subdivision stepped in. Martin admitted that when the opportunity arose for him to go to another star system, he had not hesitated for one second.

John continued the conversation by stating that they clearly didn't find what they were looking for here. Martin nodded and revealed that it was later discovered that Unobtanium had formed on Pandora long ago because of a combination of a collision with another moon and the intense magnetic field of Polyphemus. This meant that unless the same had happened to one of the other moons, they weren't going to find unobtanium anywhere else. Martin remarked that it was obvious how that had turned out. John nodded, but had another question. He understood that the mining project on this moon had been abandoned, but he could not figure out what Martin was still doing here and was curious if other people were still here. The tone of Martin's voice suddenly became a lot more serious. He simply told John that several years ago the rest of the crew had fled using the escape shuttle, and that they had left him behind. This prompted the question of why anyone would want to do that to him. Martin told John that he considered him to be his friend, who deserved to know the truth. He then lowered his voice, seemingly not wanting Ney'ite to hear it, and explained to John that they had become scared of something they had found here during a mining operation. John was confused as to what it could possibly be, but Martin could not describe it. He instead showed John a photograph. John had to look at it several times in order to get an impression of what he was actually viewing. It was a photo of a wall with some strange carvings in it. John didn't understand what was so scary about it. Martin assured him that no human had ever been on this moon before them, so this wall was made by someone else. And since the Na'vi didn't have the technology to reach this place, it had to have been created by an as of yet unknown alien entity or civilization.

This revelation caused John to become quiet. After a few moments, he told Martin that there had to be some other rational explanation for this. Maybe the wall was just a natural formation, which by chance just appeared as if some intelligence had been responsible for the patterns on it. According to Martin, the problem with this theory was the fact that the entire wall contained a large amount of Uranium, while the surrounding rocks and sand contained almost none of it. This could not have been caused by any natural phenomenon that he was aware of.

At that moment, Joseph returned to the garden chamber. Martin immediately informed him about what the two of them had been discussing and gave him the photo. He no longer kept his voice down so Ney'ite could now hear every word of the conversation. Joseph analyzed the photo and summed up his findings. On the edges, there were only small and seemingly random symbols. In the middle, there were two larger symbols, which could be interpreted as depictions of some creatures or entities. The entity on the left looked like a spider with many legs connected to smaller round bodies, and the one on the left looked like a snake with a dragon head. But there were some other important details, such as the zigzagging lines used to represent the snake and the curved and straight lines to represent the spider. Joseph also remarked that the symbols and markings on the wall reminded of wall paintings of early human cultures. However, this drawing style and the type of symbols were completely unknown to him.

John wanted to know Ney'ite's opinion on this matter, since she, as a Na'vi, might have seen something like this on Pandora. However, he didn't need to go to her, as she had already approached them, because she was wondering what was going on. John showed the photo to her, but she didn't say anything right away. Only when John asked what she thought of it, did she respond. Never had she seen anything like this before, but for some reason, the drawing on the right seemed evil to her. John asked her if she felt the same about the drawing of the other entity, to which she responded that she didn't. After a few moments of silence from everyone in the room, John proposed that if they all returned to Pandora, they could leave this mystery behind and forget about it.

Martin pointed out that there was a problem with that, because MT-NET had excavated the wall and had taken it away using the shuttle. So unless MT-NET was operating on a third moon, the wall was now on Pandora. John realized that since that wall contained large amounts of Uranium, their mission to stop MT-NET from getting Uranium to prevent it from building nuclear weapons was a complete failure. But Joseph remained optimistic. He explained that the mission was not a failure because they had freed Martin from his oppressors. Also, they had annihilated MT-NET's presence on this moon and they had stopped MT-NET from having access to space. If MT-NET had visited other places in this star system with the shuttle, any machines on other planets or moons were now completely cut off. Finally, they had now learned that MT-NET possessed Uranium. Martin interrupted Joseph, and revealed that there was another potential problem. When the wall was taken away by MT-NET, something here changed. Martin expressed that he felt as if something heavy had been removed from his shoulders. Also, he stopped having nightmares about shapeless monsters and other random nonsense. His main point was that the drawings on the wall might represent something more than just depictions of someone's fantasy. The entities, whatever they were, might be real. John shook his head, and told him that there was no such thing as monsters. But Martin simply said that he was just trying to warn them that there might be more out there than what could physically be seen.

John supposed there was enough to worry about already, without this mystery. He proposed they all return to Pandora now. Joseph agreed and Ney'ite said something in Na'vi that indicated her relief that they were going home at last. John now told Martin to pack everything he wanted to bring with him. But Martin admitted that he wasn't coming along. John didn't understand what he meant. According to Martin, everything he ever wanted was right here, especially now that wall was gone. He reminded John of something they had long ago both realized. There was something special about being on a world like this one, as they knew that they were the only ones there, and that they had the whole world to themselves. If they could have stayed on Titan, they would have done it, but fate hadn't allowed it. Martin told John that it looked like John had finally found out what he really wanted: a home on Pandora among a new people and countless other living things. However, Martin had never changed his mind. This world, stormy and empty as it might sometimes look, had become his home. Twenty billion people had to share the Earth, yet he had this moon to himself. There were not many who were given the chance to experience this.

He now insisted that the three of them go back and that he was fine here all by himself. Also, he asked John to take the photograph of the wall with him, since it might come in handy in finding out if any other Na'vi had seen something like it. And who knew, maybe someday they would be able to solve the great mystery of the wall and the drawings. Subsequently, Martin gave John his mushroom shaped helmet as a proper souvenir to remember this place and this day, and made a small remark that he had a lot of spares anyway. John accepted it and in turn gave Martin his Na'vi club, to remember those who had come to help him defeat the machines.

After the exchange, John and Ney'ite switched air tanks and put on their helmets, while Martin put on his breathing gear, before all of them went outside again. The sky had mostly cleared up and a mint green colored sky was now visible. John thanked Martin for all his help and wished him the best of luck. Martin did the same and thanked all of them. The three then returned to the shuttle and boarded it. John looked back at the rough black ocean, the green sky, the facility with the lanterns, and Martin who was standing in front of the entrance. Joseph then closed the door and locked it. After having strapped themselves in, Joseph let the shuttle resume its autonomous program. The engines were promptly started and the shuttle lifted off, beginning the journey back home…