The thing is, Jake might be an idiot, but he knows when someone needs a kick in the face. That Tsu'Tey kid needs a kick in the nuts. There's nothing like that kind of pain to make you understand when it's better to keep your trap shut. Only, the blue monkeys don't have their danglies outside of their bodies. Which gives Jake the option of socking him in the face. He won't because that might count at challenging the next in line for Feather Shaman, but he'd like to. Very much.
So instead, he laughs in the kid's face when he suggests a fight between the two of them. Because seriously. Jake knows this body inside-out now, can employ his favourite moves with his full strength and hand-to hand always was his speciality. That and a real nice gun.
In his anger, probably driven by teenage-hormones and feeling threatened in his position as Neytiri's fiancé, the kid attacks. And Jake takes pleasure in disabling his every attempt at knifing him to death. Once the knife's gone, the kid has his face pressed into the ground, arms twisted behind his back and Jake's knee digging into his spine. He feels the kind of satisfaction he's been craving since he's been forced to learn how the monkeys live. Only, it gets drowned when he realises that he's holding down an eighteen-year-old.
So he gets up, dusts himself off, and is glad only Neytiri and Tsu'Tey will know what happened here.
Neytiri is both more irritated with him the next day, and less. Which is when he begins to suggest that maybe Augustine could come visit. She's been asking him to get her an in. Which he does, because he's nice. And because he needs a map. Why the monkeys don't have one already, Jake doesn't know. But then again, they don't have paper to write on or even written script. And it isn't like they're too stupid for it, either. So he can reasonably expect them to understand what a map is, why the need one and what to do with it.
Augustine gets allowed inside a couple weeks later and her smile is so, so grateful that Jake has to escape as soon as he has the map. Fuck feelings. He's been repressing his, can't she do the same? (Besides, with the move to the floating rocks they've been sitting on top of each other, Norm and Trudie proving just enough buffer for him and her not to devolve to children's squabbling.)
His teacher is incapable of being anything less than a moody teenager. Which is why Jake employs this virtue called patience and waits her out while she is actively trying to ignore him. It's not like this could impact her entire people. Nothing of that magnitude. At all.
Soon enough, she begins to fidget. He waits a bit longer.
Finally, her eyes dart towards the data-pad.
Jake taps it twice and Pandora comes into view. He zooms in on the Home Tree. She gasps. Good, so she recognises what this is. He slides the map over the screen until he reaches base of bootcamp inc. She looks curious. "That's where the sky-people have their base."
He moves to the mining site. "That's what they intend to do to the entire planet."
Disbelief. Jake shifts the map to show the Unobtanium reserves. "This is what they're here for." He moves back to the hometree. "This is where most of it is."
"What…"
"You've seen it yourself. Tried putting a few arrows through the hulls of those bulldozers. They're going to come, Neytiri, and soon."
She's beginning to get angry. Always anger with her. Well, it's not like Jake wouldn't be the same if he hadn't found his fight here. "Now tell me I can't bring this before your parents again."
She doesn't.
Tsu'Tey, for once, keeps quiet as Jake lines out every strategic counter-measure he knows. The plan he thinks plays to the Na'vi's strengths the most is based on hit'n'run tactics and playing for time until Jake can convince both Selfridge and Quartritch that Pandora shouldn't be touched with a ten-foot-pole. Because he knows his own people. And even if they defeat Selfridge and Quartritch themselves, there will be others sent to get that Unobtanium. So, Jake has to make it clear that the Na'vi are violent in their retaliation, resourceful and resilient. It has to become known that coming to Pandora means coming to hell. And it's not going to be a lucrative hell.
The first step is sabotage. Set-backs in time-tables will give Selfridge worry-lines. The one after that is to somehow make sure the corporations on Earth hear of them and pressure him into grey hairs. Then, Jake needs to make both him and Quartritch who are convinced of their own superiority over the Na'vi that they are, in fact, mortal and this close to being introduced to Eywa.
What Jake needs most is time. Time, to train some of the warriors in infiltration and the kind of stealth you need in buildings to take out cameras. Time to teach both the current and future Feather Shamans what it means to wage war. Teach them how dirty their hands might need to become in order to survive.
So he outlines what needs to be done to sabotage the mining process. Thankfully, Augustine has a disgustingly competent hacker on her team of scientists who has given Jake access to patrol patterns, the weaknesses in the machines and the placement of the security equipment. He swears, without her, he'd be fucking all of this up big time.
With this information drilled into Tsu'Tey and his hand-picked team of warriors, it's an easy trip in and out, sabotaging mining machines in between.
The only difficulty is one patrol coming through a little late. Which means Jake yanks whoever thought it was okay to just walk out into the open down just in time. The angry snarl and jerk on his grip in enough to tell Jake that it's Tsu'Tey. It's a good thing then, that Jake isn't hoping to befriend the kid anytime soon.
Or Feather Shaman, for that matter, because when Neytiri begins to show uncharacteristic signs of fretting over Jake, he gets the disapproving father-glare at maximum capacity. Fuck that. First of all, Neytiri can be fun, yeah? But she's also not very… stimulating company in the way Augustine is. With Augustine, he plots and laughs and plans, talks and drinks and smokes. She's like his buddy now and that's good. Jake's missed that sort of camaraderie, but he's not into romance and all that. It's a can of worms he left for Tommy to dissect.
Also, he really has no desire to be the leader of the Na'vi. At all. Ever. He'd rather go back to Venezuela. Okay, so that's taking it a little far. He could always foist the title off on someone else. Point is, him and Neytiri? Nope.
He'll be their guide and their general, if they'll let him. But he won't care about their domestic disputes or the reason why this guy can't stand the other one, why this guy, with all his poetic tendencies is worth less than that punk kid warrior. (That last bit actually makes him really fucking angry because isn't the whole point of knowing that the planet has feelings too that everyone knows she loves all of her creatures equally, or some shit? He'll have to ask Augustine later.)
Dragon Lady, though, he can get along with. Sort of. Professionally. Because he can't forgive that initial prick with the not disinfected bone (yeah Tommy, Jake heard you the first fucking time). She's the kind of wise grandmother type that gives sound advice and takes charge and is generally badass, but he's never really liked that type. Jake's got his own way of doing things and he grew up with the sky-people, is a sky-person, no matter what he looks like with glowing freckles and a tail, so she can shut her trap right the fuck now.
He doesn't say that. He's not about to make himself into the first executee of the Na'vi ever, but his glare gets the point across anyway when she asks about the wisdom of not communicating their wishes directly. How stupid would that be? Very. Abysmally. Stupid.
Beyond a two-handed-facepalm-level stupid.
"It's not a relationship. It's war. Deceit is part of that," he tells her quietly, though everyone else can hear. They just have too good hearing. Which he should warn them about. There are ways to disorientate through flashes of light, or too loud sounds too close, even pungent smells.
Smells. Why hasn't he thought of that before now? There must be things he can smuggle into the ventilation systems that will knock everyone out with the snap of his fingers. More homework for Augustine. There are going to be so many wonderful brainchildren of theirs in HQ, just waiting to create chaos.
"It isn't honourable!" Tsu'Tey exclaims with some nods amongst the audience.
Jake sighs and looks him straight in the eye. "Honour won't save your planet, won't save Eywa. I don't care how vile you find it – me – but I have fought plenty wars against my own kind, for reasons that don't matter here or I don't care about any more. So trust me when I say this: sky-people fight dirty. We use every trick, every advantage we can think of, and create more if necessary.
"The first step towards your victory, your triumph of making them leave the planet, is to KNOW them. And I am telling you: we know no honour, we know nothing of compassion and we certainly don't care for Eywa."
He knows after saying that, it's highly unlikely he'll ever be part of the clan, but he continues anyway, recalling his sessions with Norm for the vocabulary he needs. "We are proud, ignorant, xenophobic, arrogant and intelligent. To make us leave, you are going to have to either be better at all of those things than we are," he casts a sardonic glance at the pulley-system they finally employ (that he explained to them more or less to make this point in the first place), then at Neytiri and Tsu'Tey where they stand beside each other, "Or you let me and Augustine take care of that. I can't force you to do anything, I can only tell you what I know and help as best I can. But you are your own responsibility."
There is silence after that.
Then, Feather Shaman makes a noise like an aborted cough. "Do you consider us children?" the question is asked with honest curiosity, though a little disapproving twist is to the man's mouth. Heh, that never worked on Jake. Probably because whenever someone was disappointed in him, he had no regrets and would do it again in a heartbeat.
Jake laughs. "In some ways. In others, I am the infant stumbling over my own feet in my haste to reach the goal."
Then, he sighs and casts Neytiri a wry smile. He'll be punished for that later, with more hours practising with the bow. Well, it gives him reason to remember his own fallibility. Reason to remind himself that for all he's trying to improve, he might also be an unwanted influence. He might be… corruption.
Dragon Lady speaks next, "You have spoken true this night, JakeSully. We will think on this."
Jake almost salutes her, then stops himself, then thinks of how Augustine would laugh if he did do it, and gives her a two-fingered salute. Surprisingly, Feather Shaman returns the gesture with the one they use when they say 'I see you'.
Later, sitting at the table with Augustine, Trudie and Norm, telling them and the log about what happened, Jake thinks he could have delivered that speech better. Norm thinks so too, but is too polite to voice that thought. Jake punches his shoulder anyway. Trudie just laughs and tells him he needs a shave.
When the other two have gone to bed, and Jake and Augustine hash out the next plan of attack, she suddenly glances up at him sharply. "Make sure you don't patronise them, Sully."
Jake flinches a little. Yeah, that's what he's been doing. It's so fucking easy, though. "Are we any closer to the hot showers yet?" he asks. She knows he's acknowledged her words.
She smirks, "The Home Tree is actually perfect for that. They only need to gather rainwater, heat that in one of the upper levels, then channel the hot water down and stand under wooden showerheads or something."
Jake laughs. "We need to get some kind of paper and pen to my Avatar, Augustine."
She nods. "Mmh, I was thinking the same thing. They don't actually have a written language, so if we tried to detail any plans or reports that way, they would all have to learn how to write and read first. I don't understand them sometimes. They have such a deep connection to the planet and it's bio-system, how can they not find ways to make more time to explore and listen?"
"Not everyone creams their pants at the thought of watching everything interact on a cellular level," Jake teases.
She whacks him over the head with a conveniently close clipboard.