Happy New Year!

Sorry for the very long delay on this chapter. 3 years, yeesh. I'm going to try to focus on this story this year, to hopefully finish it completely. We're not far away from the end.

How did you all like Avatar: Way of Water? I thought it was pretty good, although I wish the story had been more about the conflict between species than setting up future movies about Jake's kids. But hey, maybe those future movies will allow more depth of storytelling as a result. And until then...

Pandora

Jake scrubbed his hands over his face before awkwardly manoeuvring his long-limbed self into the fixed (and comically under-sized) cafeteria table at Hell's Gate.

He'd just flown in from a meeting of the five clans, this time held at the Tayrangi clan's more neutral grounds. Not all the clans had agreed with the Omaticaya's decision, after the battle, to spare some of the invaders. To let them leave.

Jake had tried to explain the massive scale of the Sky People's clan and why slaughtering the survivors/non-combatants wouldn't send a warning but would instead provoke full-scale invasion.

That the horror of what they'd already faced had been nothing compared to what the Sky People could bring to bear.

(That despite this fact… it had still been important, been worth it, to fight them here and now.)

Even though most of the clan leaders had agreed that a good-faith return of the Sky People's survivors was the best decision, he knew none of them had really understood the threat looming in their future. Some (too many) had assumed this new, tiny batch of humans was a scouting party sent ahead of their enemies. Not understanding - or caring to understand - that it would take literally years for their defeated enemies to return home and that these were just travellers already on their way. They were fools to come down, sure - but they weren't an advance force for an army.

He hoped.

Damn it. He'd thought he'd have more time.

Also, he missed telcom tech. Flying or riding for hours or days just to repeat himself - to soothe fear and aggression without smothering it (he might need it soon, after all), to explain again and again that this was still part of brokering peace. That despite the Sky People's terrible actions, many of those in their homeland did not want war and though it was unfair they needed to never take the first blow or their enemies would use it to justify their own attacks amongst their people.

Na'vi didn't really have a concept of propaganda. Of 'controlling the narrative'. He was pretty sure his attempts to explain the importance of it had just cemented their views of how... stupid Sky People were, to be swayed so easily by stories.

And for all his effort… honestly? He personally wouldn't lose (much) sleep over just killing anyone who tried to land. They were the enemy now. You don't make five years in the marines without getting real used to shooting first. Hell, pulling the trigger after they refused to power down weapons had been reflex, plain and simple. He didn't feel bad about doing it. But…

He wasn't stupid. He knew his reflex in the moment had been wrong. This wasn't an Earth-side war, with a fleet of PR people ready to dress up pretty much any action he took as heroic, noble or necessary.

This time, he was the oppressed native, fighting not only to survive - but to be seen.

The optics mattered for humans. And he wasn't used to being the guy who had to remember that.

Hopefully they could salvage it. Spin it as a scared civvie human over-reacting to the flouting of their one condition of landing - or maybe misunderstanding the severity of the retaliating firepower they had at hand. He'd need to talk to Norm or Max about it. If they ever got here. They were the ones who knew that there were people on Earth disseminating information about Pandora outside the RDA's control. Hippies Jake wouldn't have paid a lick of attention to, before he came here.

He glanced around the empty room, impatient. It had been a long day. Week. Weeks.

He was so tired he was of half a mind to just crash in the Avatar quarters. He wanted to get this - whatever they'd called him for - over, and get gone. He couldn't even get himself some coffee. His new body couldn't stand the taste but that didn't stop his transferred sensory memory from insisting he needed some.

…Life was hard.

Finally, the doors at the far end of the hall slid open and his two favourite nerds hurried in.

Both were holding mugs of coffee.

Bastards.

"Morning Jake!" Norm called as soon as he got close, holding out his hand. Carefully, he shook the man's tiny hand (arm) and traded a nod with Max.

"Mornin'" He tried to ignore the caffeinated aroma that still smelled fantastic, the source of which the human part of his brain was insisting he put inside him right now. Stupid brain.

"Sup?"

Norm slid into the seat across from him, shuffling a little to the side when Jake's legs left him no room for his own. He held out a datapad while Max wandered over to the kitchen area and rummaged for a snack. Jake sighed and took the pad in hand, squinting at it. Being bigger made everything human seem smaller, writing and pictures included.

The pad was displaying a cross-section scan of what seemed to be a human skull. Except… not? There were two… somethings sticking out of it. Was it…?

He rotated the view and squinted harder. Yeah, it looked like it went right through the skull. Two somethings growing into or out of someone's actual brain.

Gross.

He tapped at the controls, activating a pre-prepared timelapse of different scans. Swollen nubs, spidery roots like nerves, bone cracking and softening and being cleared away to make room for…

Brain worms? Was that a thing on Pandora? If he'd known that was a thing he wouldn't have stepped foot here.

Whatever it was, it unfurled a bit like a plant - or a caterpillar - to stand tall, but slightly cocked. Roundish bulbs at the end - had to be alive, look at that neural activity! - looked kind of like plump organic skipping stones, smooth and oval.

Norm leaned over and flicked the display to one side, tapping at the pad upside-down to pull up a comparison scan. There were plenty in storage from the various link pods. It only took a few seconds to pull one, seemingly at random, up to contrast against the creepy brain-worm scan.

By this time, Max had wandered back, mouth chewing on something that dusted his lips with sugar and spice. Both men stared at him expectantly.

…

…

"…I don't get it." He admitted frankly. Norm rolled his eyes and both scientists started to explain - Max through a mouthful of something. Jake held up a hand longer than their heads and stared them down.

"Gimmie the high school version guys. C'mon, you know me."

"The high schooler didn't need the high school version." Norm muttered. "Okay, look, we're not 100% sure right now because we're missing certain parts of- No, wait, uh first thing - you know there's a kid at base, right?"

"Yeah." Jake said heavily. Word of that had spread fast. One of the Tipani clan had run into him and by the time Jake heard about it, a dozen different rumours were circulating. One of them was crazy, saying he was of a 'Stone People' clan, since not only had said Tipani clan member seen a human kid and thought 'better stick a knife into that', they then hadn't been able to because said kid's skin had been somehow impervious. "Why is that, again?"

"Karmic retribution."

"Rich tourist."

Max & Norm replied at the same time, glancing at each other and making subtle scientist faces that somehow conveyed that the other had flunked out of nerd school.

"There's something going on there." Max warned, though not looking too anxious about it. "Apparently there was some magic kid dug up from Stonehenge? That none of you lot thought was worth sharing when you arrived. Ring any bells?"

Wha…?

He racked his brain. His life post-injury had been pretty… lackluster before Pandora, meaning he'd spent a lot of time with only his TV for company. Mostly it was just noise, but…

"Yeah." He said slowly. "I think so. Maybe. Some new theme park or something…?"

"Not quite." Norm shook his head and shrugged all at once. "I was pretty focused on training ahead of the launch but I remember it was a real fact that some archaeologists found a living kid from like, a hundred-and-something years ago in some kind of suspended animation. But it wasn't based on any technology - from a hundred years ago or now. They couldn't work it out but every bio test they ran proved the kid, at least, really was from a hundred years back. Remember? They shut the hospital down and quarantined like half a city because everyone was afraid some ancient super-virus would get out?"

Jake squinted into the middle distance.

"…yeah?" He asked. "That… sounds like a thing I maybe heard. So?"

"So," Norm sighed, apparently done with him. "Turns out; magic is real."

"Was real." Max corrected. "The kid said they all died out."

"Except for Harry himself." Norm retorted, a slight pinch around his eyes suggesting this wasn't a new argument. "So, is. Also, the fact of magic being real would remain even if he died, because we have evidence of it now. It'd just be that nobody was left who could practice it."

"Anyway!" Max changed the subject, flicking at the pad still in Jake's hand. Jake himself was kind of stuck on 'magic is real'. The fuck?

"So, this kid. He came down with the others. Hangs about their base. Apparently is like, super-charged being here compared to being on earth. Gets his magic on, then, few months later, starts getting headaches. Then migraines. The new guys' medical equipment is basic stuff but it picked up enough to make us worry, so we let the kid in for further testing." He points at the pad. "Thats what we found. At first we thought brain tumours."

"Or parasites." Norm chimed in. "That was a genuine worry for a while there."

"Yeah," Max shrugged. "Or some predatory species' eggs. It wouldn't be the first time some local flora or fauna discovered humans are prime host material. Except… we couldn't find any indication of foreign bodies. That ruled out our second guess, some kind of microbe that targeted bone rather than flesh, to all of our great relief."

"It was weird." Norm agreed. "And then it got strange."

"Stranger than a 'magic' human teenager sent to Pandora for some reason only to have his skull start caving in?" Jake tried.

"Every biopsy we - by which I mean Moa - did indicated that the growths inside his skull weren't foreign." Norm insisted. "And it wasn't out-of-control mutated cellular growth. It was… new, and strange, but purposeful. Not cancer, not tumours, not even much in the way of inflammation. Jake. It was mostly neural tissue."

"Wait… like this thing?" Jake grabbed his pony-tail (he called it like he saw it) and held up the squirmy pink end.

He glanced down at the pad but whatever the kid had going on didn't seem to be of that particular awesome/gross squirmy variety. Flicking to coloured photos and ejecting the notion of brain worms from his head, it was more like… maybe… a partly-curled frond of a fern, almost. Thin narrow stalk, flattened roundish bulb on the end. Except the bulb bent backwards, not forwards, and there were no bristly bits.

"Yes."

"No."

Max and Norm shared a brief scowl.

"Both an Avatar's and a Na'vi's tswin begins at the mesencephalon." Norm.. Educated? Argued? "It's essentially an extension of the body's nervous system. The medulla and pons are tied in too but the primary 'trunk' extends from the mesencephalon."

"Okay." Jake agreed.

This time Max rolled his eyes and he wasn't even the one making the argument.

"Harry's - the kid's - growths originate in-between the frontal and parietal lobes-" Norm tried again.

"The top part of the head." Max chimed in helpfully. Jake jerked his head in thanks.

"-but there are 'roots' of sorts that stretch into his temporal and occipital lobes as well." Norm continued.

"Mm-hmm."

Norm glared at him, daring him to keep pretending he knew what he was talking about.

"The tswin is an extension of a Na'vi or Avatar's nervous system," Max took pity, though on him or Norm it was impossible to say. "It essentially allows two-way access to something that runs mostly on the subconscious level. You might be able to mind-meld with an animal or person, but you don't actually control most of the connection itself, do you?"

"I guess not." Jake agreed. With the banshee, he'd felt their minds connect - and the banshee had stilled. Almost, become subordinate. Like their minds had found a natural sort of hierarchy? Jake hadn't really done anything, he'd just wanted more than the banshee had wanted and that had been that. Their bodies became extensions of each other, each knowing without needing to learn.

All in the space of a moment.

With a direhorse, there was even less effort. Direhorse minds were more simple. They were like blank pages with faint watermarks - his will easily overrode the animal's because it had barely any of its own. It essentially didn't mind doing whatever he asked of it because it had no particularly strong sense of self or desires of its own - beyond basic survival.

But that was pretty much the extent of his control. He could consciously feel them breathe, feel their exhaustion or fear and knew they could feel his in return. When they ran, he might give the direction but they were the ones who controlled the how. His body shifted according to their needs without any input of his own. His will might be dominant, but that didn't mean his body didn't become an extension of theirs as much as theirs became and extension of his.

Blending with a person had been… so, so different. He and Neytiri…

It was incomparable. Two minds, of equal force and complexity, exchanging information more rapidly than thought itself. He'd almost felt their minds work to balance each other, to work together, two systems finding where they connected and sharing the load, each only working better for it.

It had felt like, for just a few moments, they were one person.

Which, he guessed, they had been. Na'vi were built for it, just like the animals and the plants, built to share their minds and become something greater. No human could ever really understand it without doing it. And if they somehow could… he strongly suspected that most humans would find the experience invasive and threatening. A sort of body-horror reaction that his hybrid body thankfully lacked.

He flicked back to the weird scan, tugging it to fill the screen and pointed to where the time-lapse was showing two little growths popping out like daisies.

"Okay. So you're telling me that a human kid - who can do magic, because that's a real thing - came to Pandora and just… randomly mutated their own pony-tail. I mean tswin. Except times two. And it plugs into different parts of his brain."

"No." Norm looked at him like he was crazy.

"First of all, it's not wired into his central nervous system the way a tswin is. And it obviously can't connect to anything like a tswin. If it somehow could, the experience would be nothing like what a Na'vi experiences. But" here he looked pained "all of that is not really what we wanted to talk to you about. It's just background, so you'd understand. Because here's the thing, Jake."

Max sobered and Jake looked between the two suddenly grim-looking men.

"You were almost right about it being a mutation." Norm began cautiously. "Except there's nothing random about it. We think" Max cleared his throat loudly "I and several others think" Norm amended "that he's always had the potential to develop them. The sudden growth? Was just something in his genome flipping from 'off' to 'on'."

"Okaaay." Jake frowned thoughtfully. "'Random vestigial limb spontaneously developing' is still a little weird, though."

"It's not vest-! It's - look at the scan." His friend's finger stabbed at the datapad, briefly halo-ing with the pressure. "It's not just wired into his brain, it's communicating with it. There is near-constant activity going both ways but mostly from them, to his brain. I think they're some sort of sensory organ! (Which were probably meant to develop in-utero, growing naturally through the coronal suture between his frontal and parietal bones-)"

"English."

"-Ssst! When you're a baby, your skull is made up of multiple soft plates, right? And they don't fuse together until months after you're born. The placement of these growths suggest they might have been intended to grow while those plates were still soft or separate. It's a damned miracle his skull decided to spontaneously soften this time-"

"Magic." Max contributed facetiously.

"But whatever happened," Norm spoke over him "it matters, because, those switched-on genes that we think are responsible?"

Blue eyes pierced his own.

"You have them, Jake. So does Max. And so do I, and all the rest of us still here. I'd be willing to bet that every single human on Earth does too."

Jake's eyes widened. Okay. He looked again at the scan. At the two little growths that now looked a little like antennae.

Every human?

"Okay. I'm starting to get why you called." Every human. Shit. But wait…

"But what is it?" He asked. "What does it do? What, sensory input is it gathering, exactly?" And does it really matter? He couldn't help but ask himself. Beyond the inevitable new wave of experiments and scientists it would bring, of course.

"We don't know." Norm admitted, frustrated and fascinated. "We have… theories. We know it's feeding information into every active-processing part of his brain. It's possible that he experiences it as phantom sensation. But it's also possible he's experiencing it in a completely different way that we don't even have words for yet. Harry's denied any new sensations at all and didn't like us touching them once they popped out."

"It's probably just a magic thing." Max tried to dismiss. The line of his shoulders wasn't quite so nonchalant as he was trying to sound.

"Sure. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't have a purpose." Norm pointed out. "And Harry said it wasn't normal for his people as far as he knew, so for some reason it wasn't activating on Earth, magic or no magic. But it's activated now. Here. On Pandora. A totally alien planet that doesn't, so far as we know, have magic."

Both men suddenly looked at Jake.

Jake blinked.

"No magic." He blurted once he realised what they were silently asking. Both eyed him for a few more suspicious seconds before seeming to take his word on it for now.

"So then, there must be something about this place." Norm continued. "Something in the local food, in the radiation - he's had more of both than most of the people who came to Hell's Gate before. And if it's activated because of something found on Pandora, and if our theory that all or most humans have the same gene… then it's possible it could activate again in any of us. Or anyone who comes to Pandora in the future."

"Including you." Max warned, suddenly deadly serious. "That body may look more Na'vi than human, but besides the bone density and the visuals… it's actually more human than alien."

"Which is why we wanted you to come in, Jake." Worried eyes stared up at him.

"I'd like you to get scanned before you go - and if you start getting headaches, come in immediately for assistance. Your bone density is as strong as a Na'vi's now. If this gene does randomly switch on for you, it's probable that any growth would crush your brain because it can't get out."

"We're all getting regular scans now too." Max added.

Jake swallowed. "Yeah.. ok."

He tried to ignore the unwanted reminder that his new body wasn't really, fully, Na'vi. Even though the location of his tswin and his extra fingers drew stares from those unfamiliar with him (also suspicion, disgust, even fear from some), the idea that his body might spontaneously grow new human organs was just… ergh. Like his old life was stalking him, almost.

The three of them lapsed into a small bit of silence. Norm took his cup of coffee away to reheat and brought it back plus more snacks for them all. Max flipped back and forth through the scans on the pad, face set in a frown.

"You know," Norm said eventually "there haven't really been many times that I've missed being back on Earth. Maybe for a while when I first realised we probably couldn't ever go back. But now? I want nothing more than to go digging deep for answers. Harry gave me copies of what few digi-books on his own people's history he brought with him, but from what I've read so far - he's right. If it ever was a normal factor of their lives, it wasn't written about. It's possible that whatever it is, it's from a time so long ago that we don't even have stories anymore."

"He looks kind of like an alien." Jake observed, spinning the skull around with its two little antennae. "Or maybe a fairy. We've got plenty of stories about those."

"Yeah," Norm agreed slowly, blinking. "That's… yeah."

The silence stretched again, caffeinated (or bitterly not-caffeinated) thoughts swirling.

"Huh." Jake decided.

"Y'know," Max offered, with a sidelong look to Norm. "I was talkin' to Marie, who knew the doctor that came in with the kid. Before they had their little punch-up, the woman told her that when they left Earth's orbit, the kid had some kind of fit. And when he woke up? He was saying something about 'belonging to Gaia' and how she 'understood why he was leaving'."

"Holy shit." Norm muttered. "Wait. You're only mentioning this now?"

"Mmm. Also," he tilted his mug at Jake, something complicated in his expression "It wasn't a glitch or a trick. The ISV really did pull itself back together in mid-air, after it exploded. Because magic-kid genuinely has magic and can do magic and maybe has some kind of actual connection to Gaia the way Mo'at does for Eywa. Maybe. But my question is, if that's all actually true?"

Dark eyes locked with gold.

"What. The Hell. Is he doing here?"

Jake rubbed his hands over his face and really missed coffee.

Pandora

A few people asked for more information on the growths. I hope the description in this chapter helped, but for location:

Place your thumbs on the tops of your ears and touch your index fingers together over the top of your skull. Not the back, which our hands try to do naturally, but the top. Now lightly pinch your fingers and thumbs together until they meet, which should also be on top of the skull. That's where they're sprouting from.