The Whole Can of Worms. (open)

[fuzzydude]

Nia looked every bit like a frightened, cornered cat as she watched Chance scanning the area before dropping down again and slinking towards her. She was pressed so hard against the cool rock that her entire back was cold now. The coldness spread through her entire body, despite the warm weather. Her ears could still pick up the noise of something large moving, and another sound, barely audible, of something whining pitifully. The whining suddenly stopped abruptly, leaving behind a dangerous silence.

"Don't know. Don't care. We move, that way," said Chance, softly but controlled and firmly.

Nia opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She closed it, then just nodded, bobbing her head in a short, quick movement.

"Stay close, move quick but be careful, quiet as you can."

Nia nodded again, struggling to get on her feet. She wasn't going to argue. All she wanted to do now was get as far away from where she was as possible. Ever muscle in her entire body was tense, all her nerves strung, from ear tip to tail. She scrambled after Chance, staying as close as possible to the safety he represented while struggling to keep from making too much noise in the absurdly long-limbed body she was now in.

Another fierce roar cut through the air all around them, followed by the cries of the few animals that hadn't already fled far away. Then, everything was still once more.

Nia shivered.

[HorusRe/Bila'reu]

Chance was agile for a man with a stride easily only a quarter of what Nia's avatar could attain, he was also swift while still being relatively quiet. He lead her away carefully at first, but after moving up another grade (and putting solid ground and plenty of foliage between them and the valley of the unpleasant noises) he broke into a hard jog. He had to move that fast, as Nia only had to do half the effort to keep up, and he wanted them clear of the threat with room to spare. So he put himself into a hard jog, so that she could move at a slow jog.

What could serve to impress Nia, that he never backed off that pace, eventually only served to be one more annoyance. He didn't speak again, except when he was forced to warn her of a danger he could have easily moved through (thanks to having an armored body), and kept moving at that pace until just after nightfall. He made up lost time by keeping a harder pace, and he made damn sure there was plenty of kilometers between that earlier threat and his charge.

They forded three rivers, dodged four colonies of the explosive spore-spitting Baby Stem flora, and she watched as he was surprised twice by the razor sharp slashing leaves of the semi-mobile Cillaphant shrub. The latter would have certainly been, at best, extremely dangerous for her to blunder into, as the leaves snapped out with such velocity it cut gouges into his reactive composite armor plating. Of course what slashed at his lower torso would have probably only slashed open her legs... but this far from home a wound that incapacitated (and put the scent of fresh blood into the air) could be just as deadly.

When they finally stopped the jungle had come alive, as it did every night, with that familiar fluorescent glow of the Pandoran wilderness. Chance let Nia rest, as he pushed her hard that whole day, and set himself to the task of erecting their night camp. The core of this camp consisted of nothing more technical than a small butane heater/stove, a collapsible pot to top the stove, and setting up a portable computer system. He then set up a small, inflatable, bivouac e-tent for himself (so he could pop his helmet and have a real meal) and the compact sleeping sack for Nia. Around all of this he arranged a series of IR sensors and motion detectors and linked the whole thing to the slim laptop computer. Once his early warning system was set he returned to the center of the camp and picked up the pot, setting a folding shade over the stove to block the light.

"Fast pack," he stated as he looked at the tired avatar, though he also assumed she had no idea what he was talking about. "I will go get some water so we can eat. Did you bring some fast packs for pup... er, avatar field operations?"

The fast pack was a common slang for field rations. They were the modern version of a military field ration, but were streamlined to the n'th degree, as they were high energy and high carbohydrate meals, with singular flavors. They were actually quite tasty, and soldiers used them like money about half the time, with the most rare meals (cashew chicken and pot roast) being the equivilent of roughly fifty dollars. On Pandora, with plenty of available natural raw materials, the fast packs were the dehydrated type, just add boiling water and wait for the stuff to set into its edible paste-form. They came in small packs, containing two compact bars. The bars were then crumpled by hand and added to the boiling water. Each bar could provide a full meal, with each pack providing two meals for the day. All that any soldier needed for peak performance.

Avatar fast packs were larger of course, made of different materials (catering to the different bio-chemistry of the species), but were basically the same thing.

Chance hoped she had followed normal procedure for extended operations in the jungle, followed the rules of the colony, and had followed the packing list that she should have been given. She should have enough fast packs for several days. No way to tell if they would meet her taste, civies were spoiled on fresh food and real cooking, but if she remembered to bring them she would have the energy to keep moving. So his question was an honest one. If she forgot to pack the rations they would have to feed her the smaller human portions... and he would have to get by on the nutrition IV system integrated into his HEAT suit. He knew they would both be better off with a hot meal and a full belly.

[fuzzydude]

After the close encounter with the creature, the silence had been welcome. Silence meant nothing was happening, and that was good. She simply followed behind while Chance adopted a practiced distance-eating gait ahead of her. And soon, she was too focused on just keeping up to worry about carrying on a conversation. Thankfully, this also helped keep her mind off of what they had nearly run right into. The lethal exploding and slicing plants also helped.

Half way through the day, she was sweating and panting heavily, her legs burned, and that little spot just below one of her lungs felt like it was turning into a singularity and trying to suck the rest of her into it through a straw. Her shoulders seemed like they were going to fall off where the backpack straps had been weighing down on them since they'd started. "State of the art weight redistribution design" her tail. If there was one good thing that came from evacuating Earth, it was making it so that whatever company produced the backpack could probably never manufacture another shoulder-sawing "weight-distributed" backpack again.

By the time the sky began turning a dark gray and Chance called a halt, she kept on her shaky legs just long enough to shrug off her pack before collapsing. She was just thankful they'd finally quit moving. She had no idea how Chance had just kept moving like that for the entire day. Even if she pretty much never worked out her avatar like she was supposed to, Na'vi were ridiculously stronger than humans. Or, they were supposed to be. Well, whatever. She didn't care.

Right now, she was just happy sitting on her rock, eyes closed, head between her knees, trying to keep from falling over while she pondered the fact that all this exercise was going to her avatar instead of her, even if she was the one suffering. She'd die for a shower right now. She could hear Chance moving around the camp, setting it up. She knew she should help but, frankly, she was just pleased she hadn't passed out yet. She couldn't help appreciating the guy for doing all that, though.

"Fast pack," said Chance. Night had fallen since she'd sat down. She looked up at him with a hint of confusion. Then her eyes grew wide. She forgot about Chance's question. All around them, everything was glowing in beautiful greens, blues, purples, and occasional yellows. She'd heard something about this, but this was the first time she'd actually seen it with her own eyes. The rest of the time, she'd been inside behind really tall walls. This was beyond anything she'd imagined.

"Wow," she whispered.

"Uh..." she looked back at Chance, backtracking in her mind to recall what he'd been asking. "Oh, the rations. Yeah, I think they should be in here," she said, nudging her bag with a foot. "Somewhere," she added to herself. "One second."

Reaching forward and opening the pack. She began digging through it. She'd packed every single item in the standard list, not knowing for sure what was really needed or unnecessary, and she'd packed all of it with a certain efficient mathematically elegant compactness that could only be possible for the mind of an engineer. Unfortunately, while it was space-efficient and the weight was perfectly distributed, she'd also packed everything in all the wrong places with the skill only possible to someone with no outdoors experience. The rations she was looking for ended up, of course, being at the bottom of the bag and practically everything else had to be removed to reach them.

The fact she kept looking around slowed the process somewhat.

"Wow," she repeated, her large orange eyes scanning back and forth. "It kind of reminds me of home," she said nostalgically. "You know, all the sky ads. Everyone always complained about them, but I always liked them. They were pretty. And there were a lot of good ones, too. Ever see that one with the funny purple dog with the green mohawk, and it'd dance around with the flamethrower and sing a jingle about saving credits before Christmas so you could spend them at Enigma Corp?"

Nia hummed a painfully cliche jingle-like jingle, miming some silly dancing routine with her hands that apparently ended with something getting incinerated. "What was his name... Rudy the Punk Undead Hound! And he'd always be like 'aroooooody' at the end," she recalled smiling.

"Loved the guy. Got really upset as a kid when I found out they weren't actually selling the dog." She paused thoughtfully. "Or the flamethrower."

She dug her hand into the bag again, producing one of the ration packs, which she held up for him to see.

[HorusRe/Bila'reu]

The soldier studied her as she spoke of things back on a dead world, nodding gently as that was all she could really get as a reaction from his expressionless armor, all the while as she emptied her field pack to dig out what he had hoped she had remembered to include from the provisions list. He had to hand it to the woman, she packed with a maximum space efficiency... but not a whole lot of field efficiency. He really couldn't blame her on that account though, as her profile made it rather clear she didn't know the bush. She packed for space conservation and weight distribution. It was a good start. If the colony needed her for more field work she would learn in good time what to pack and where.

"Rudy," he agreed. "Yeah. Liked that dog. Cool flamer. Cool commercial."

He turned and left the secured proximity, but not going too far as he set up camp close to a flowing stream. Fetching the water he returned and set the filled pot atop the stove. Setting the cover over the whole thing.

"Shouldn't think too much about Earth," he stated flatly. "This is home now."

He nodded to her fast pack and then motioned to the covered pot.

"You eat first. Feed the walking stick and then you can log off until 0600 hours. You know how to prep a fast pack?"

[fuzzydude]

Chance's agreement to her idle reminiscing caught Nia by surprise.

She'd come to start expecting either stony silence or noncommittal generic responses from him on any matter that didn't directly deal with their current situation. She smiled a little as he walked off to get water from the nearby stream. Maybe there actually was a human somewhere under there after all. Not that she was planning on holding her breath waiting for more of it to come out anytime soon. After all, she was already blue. Funny. The first connection they'd shared all day and it was over a purple singing flamethrower dog.

She had to admit, despite how much she hated this place, it really was beautiful, at least if she unfocused her eyes just right, it really did look just like home. The trees like buildings lit by signs, the moss lights reflecting off the wet pavement... Throw in a few familiar scents - cheap wonton, hotdogs, and crepes, and some exhaust - and they'd be all set.

"Shouldn't think too much about Earth. This is our home now," said Chance as he returned.

"Yeah," she agreed sadly. "Yeah, you're right."

She sat up, briefly reorganizing her supplies.

"You eat first. Feed the walking stick and then you can log off until 0600 hours. You know how to prep a fast pack?"

"Thanks," she said gratefully. "I still got some work back at the colony. The sooner I get out of this thing, the better. This is the longest I've ever had to pilot one of these."

She picked up the fast pack and held it in front of her.

"Instructions," she read out loud. "Heat water in medium pot to boil. Pull string firmly away from pack to open. Remove bars and crumble by hand into pot. Stir until contents congeal. Wait till cool before consuming. Mmm... congelation." She looked up. "Yeah, I think I can handle this."

She rested her hands on her knees and pushed herself up. Her walk to the stove was a little stiffer than she'd of liked. The muscles in her legs felt like they'd simply decided to freeze for the night.

[HorusRe/Bila'reu]

"Don't push too hard," he warned as the puppet rose with effort. "You worked the meat puppet hard today. Scared, on edge. It's gonna catch up with you as soon as you log. Get some sleep. Six will come quicker than you think."

He sat down nearby, his rump on a large root, and cleared the live round from his machine gun. Dropping the belt feed mechanism from the weapon and going about the regular effort of a field check of his essential equipment.

"If you lag because you loose synch, due to exhaustion, then we will only be out here longer. Time equals danger in this bush."

His hands seemed to fly over the weapon, and in a few dexterous motions the barrel was freed of its housing.

"Log out and feed your real body. Rest your brain. Your puppet breaks you can get a new one, but I'm not driving a meat puppet here, and whatever threatens you threatens me."

his amazing hands continued their work, liberating a cleaning rod from out of the frame and a bottle of oil from a slot at his belt. A twist here and a push there and a small brush emerged from the rod, a small drop of oil applied, and the rod was being ran through the weapon with a steady rhythm.

"Believe it or not," he continued as he worked. "I'm not in a hurry to die doing my job."

[fuzzydude]

"Six will come quicker than you think," Chance warned.

"Yeah, tell me about it," she sighed. She wasn't a stranger to all-nighters, but this was different. Even if she'd done nothing all day but lay in a gel bed, she felt like... well, about like she would if she'd spent the entire day sprinting through a crazy jungle on an alien moon, getting attacked exploding and razor-sharp plants, and evading big creatures that wanted to eat her.

"Maybe I can do some trading and get someone else to take over," she said to herself. Economy didn't quite survive after the trip to Pandora - nobody took credits seriously anymore now that every government and company that had ever existed stopped existing. However, it was pretty standard to trade the few luxury items or, more commonly, various jobs that people either really liked or hated, in return for various things.

This was particularly popular among the specialists, most of which would rather be researching, or programming, or building something, or whatever, and found the common things they were occasionally rotated to painfully boring. Trading in time clearing out weeds in the compound to make room for eventual agricultural expansion was one particularly popular practice since pretty much nobody liked hacking their way through vines all day and anyone could do it.

Regardless, she still wanted to personally check the link bed. The headache had been so ubiquitous in a journey so full of dangers that she'd stopped paying attention to it. Even so, it was still there, gnawing at her brain and affecting everything she was doing. She really did not want to go through another day of it.

The bubbling of the water snapped her out of it. She was already drifting every few seconds, and it felt like all her limbs weren't responding quite as fast as they were supposed to. Shrugging it off, she took out the bars and crushed them above it before rolling up the packaging and using it to stir. The mud water slowly turned paste-like. She'd forgotten to look at the package to see what this was supposed to be. Ah well, she could handle just one more surprise for the day.

She glanced over to Chance and watched with a tired fascination as he adeptly took part his weapons and began cleaning them. It was pretty impressive, really. It was faster than she could work, even on tasks she'd done a thousand times, too. Despite everything, she was more and more glad to have him around. Cardboard personality or not, she valued competence, and he seemed to have plenty of it.

The package she'd been stirring with bent and she looked back at the pot. Retrieving a bowl and spoon from her supplies, she dumped the contents in, replaced the water and set it on the stove again for Chance before sitting down and practically inhaling the food. It tasted like chicken. She hadn't realized how hungry she was. She'd have to do this all over again for her real body, but she could snack on some dry food while she worked on the link bed.

Soon, she'd removed all the equipment she had strapped to her and was in the sack Chance had set out for her.

"Night, Chance," she said, rolling to her side. She was already drifting off.

The last thing she heard before falling asleep was the sudden alarm from the laptop. The last things she saw before the tunnel of swirling colours were the glinting of eyes and rows of sharp teeth in the darkness.
____________

Nia inhaled sharply, finding herself staring at the emotionless circle above her head. Her clothes were damp from her sweat. Everything that had happened that day hit her all at once and she felt like the entire bed was rocking back and forth dizzyingly. Her body was no longer sore, but her stomach was flopping around inside her like a dying fish. She felt like she was going to crash at any moment, and it took her a second before the disorientation passed and her brain started working again. Then, she threw open the lid of the link bed, sitting up quickly.

"Get me back there! We're under attack!"

The late night techs just stared at her blankly. One was in the middle of pouring himself a coffee which was dangerously close to overflowing.

"RE-SYNCH, DAMMIT!" Nia yelled. She stayed up just long enough to see them jump back to work before closing the lid on herself.
____________

The laptop was still beeping frantically. Nearby, Nia's avatar was still wrapped up, an unmoving bundle save for the slow, regular rise and fall of its breathing.

From the darkness came a fierce growl, accompanied by the sound of claws digging into wood. Then, two bright eyes appeared and, as if the darkness itself had taken form, the sleek-black form of a viperwolf shot from it into the clearing.

It ran towards Nia's avatar before leaping right on her and over with a smooth movement of its six legs. Then, it ran full-tilt towards Chance. Rows of needle-sharp teeth glinted dangerously as it snarled without breaking its stride. Powerful haunches bunched up and it leaped towards the soldier, strong jaws wide open.

[HorusRe/Bila'reu]

She reaffirmed what he already knew, she ate, and then she curled up and promptly passed out. All as he expected. He had been security detail since the colonists returned to Pandora, having escorted some of the best minds, and the worst, that came along on the colony ship. There weren't that many former military service people to be found in the colony, most were civilian, and most of them were engineers and other essential personnel for the restoration of Hells Gate colony. Some scientists, some social specialists, 99% had no combat training and 99.9% no field experience in a dangerous, hostile, alien environments. He knew what happened to those meat drivers on their first few trips deep into the bush. He had seen it too many times to count.

Civilians thought big about their importance, and though bigger when they were running the head of a walking stick. Then they would log out, thinking they could leap up and take on the world, and they would crash hard from the mental stresses.

Meanwhile, after the brain went bye-bye, the meat puppet kept doing what a meat puppet does. Breathing, living, and giving off scents of food in a perpetual cloud that every scavenger and predator on the damned primal world could spew up from its hellish bowels. Meaning the security detail had to always stay on guard. Once the driver went back home, to a hot meal, a real bed, and clean air (that wouldn't kill you in a few minutes), the security escort got to babysit a sack lunch. A full rack of ribs, basted in the natural juices, just sitting there immobile and waiting for some critter to come along and belly up to the bar.

Someone should just ring a dinner bell every time a driver dumps the meat off and goes back to their real body.

Most in the colony used to think that all they needed were those walking sticks, that anything they needed to do could be done with a puppet body. Problem was that meant one or more of the avatars had to stay on watch while the other drivers got some sleep in their real skins. That meant that several puppets had to be used simply to allow for a constant watch on a rotation. They figured out REAL fast that this was a total waste of time. It took twice as long to get anything done, unless it was a quick operation, and twice the man power. That was when it was decided to use Chance, and those few people like him, as specialists. Give them the job, doing what they were trained to do, while the other meat drivers did what they had to do. This improved efficiency and cut back on man power.

He already knew she was going to crash. She kept nodding off as she waited for her water to boil, which (in Pandora's lesser air pressure) took significantly longer than would be normal. He finished his field cleaning and was checking the rounds near the start of his belt feed mechanism. If those first ten rounds were not seated just right, even off by a millimeter , the whole mechanism could jam. With a weapon like that such a malfunction could take several minutes to clear. On Pandora several minutes were always the difference between waking up the next day and decorating the foliage with your intestines.

The alarm warned him with just enough time to realized he was fucked. His weapon was assembled, but it would take too long to lock and load. He carried a utility knife, as a tool with that many uses was invaluable in the bush, but no standoff firearm... as anything much under 10x50mm didn't do much more than annoy the dangerous wildlife of humanities new home.

It was a viperwolf. By the size and fact it attack alone, chance guessed it was female. That was a lucky break actually, as if it came with a pack he would probably already have been dead. It went to Nia's meat puppet and then wheeled for the attack. Moving so damn fast it almost boggled the mind.

Fortunately Chance knew combat, he knew how to react without hesitation. His rifle was worthless as a firearm, but the 50kg frame was shock resistant and hardened. It was only a single handed blow, a baseball swing hard along the horizontal, but it was effective. He caught the beast along the side of the head with all of his augmented strength with the heavy machine gun. Dropping the belt in his other hand so he could fight the creature off with both hands.

Considering that the bite pressure of a viperwolf would ram those teeth right through his ballistic/composite armor the solider really didn't see any other option than to stand his ground and beat off the attacker. His amplified strength was equivalent to a Na'vi, so he could go toe-to-claw with a viperwolf and have a chance of not ending up a chew toy, and the moment he tried to break for cover he would be exposing his back to a faster opponent. That would get him dead, and fast. Besides, he figured the animal was attacking him to get him away from the easy meal the brain-dead meat puppet presented. Millions of years of evolution at work, the meat puppet smelled and looked like food... chance just looked and smelled like a threat to that food, so the one really in danger was the puppet.

Just like most of the other times the soldier had to go up against Pandora.

[fuzzydude]

OOC: Actually, water boils faster (but less hot) with low air pressure. As someone who can't cook and is a resident of a high-altitude area, you can imagine how often this further complicates food preparation when you're just trying to follow the instructions.

BIC: A sharp yelp cut through the night as Chance swung his heavy gun around like a baseball bat and smacked the viperwolf right in the head. It's head bent back at a rather unnatural angle and it slid back on its side across the ground before scrambling back up to its feet. Even something as small and light as a viperwolf was extraordinarily tough. There was a reason Pandora was considered so dangerous.

The viperwolf shook its head violently, then snarled, peeling back lips to reveal frighteningly sharp teeth that glistened white in contrast to its jet black body. Its growl weaved a counterpoint to the still frantically beeping laptop as it flared its breathing holes with a loud huff. Lowering its head nearly to the ground, it began slinking cautiously around where Chance had taken up a defensive position to protect Nia's still-unmoving avatar.

The creatures eyes narrowed into almost invisible slits as it faced off from the heavily armoured human. It found itself staring up into its own warped rictus blankly mirrored in Chance's visor. A second passed. Then another. Suddenly, with a whimper, the viperwolf shot off at an angle from Chance before disappearing in the darkness. For a few seconds the camp was still, save for the still-beeping laptop. Then, it became clear why the laptop had still been beeping even with the viperwolf inside the perimeter.

Growls and barks crescendoed from the night in a chilling, discordant angry chorus. It was as if the faint wall of shadow at the edge of the glow of the camp solidified and began glistening and moving around itself in strange, hypnotic flowing curves. Then, the shadows came alive.

A dozen viperwolves exploded into the clearing, claws scraping into the ground, teeth bared and glistening. And all of them ran directly towards Chance.

[HorusRe/Bila'reu]

((OOC: Actually, I was thinking that after I posted, that I was meaning "it too longer for the water to heat" as opposed to "boil". I took chemistry after all, and learned a few things... but it didn't come out that way I wanted. And I didn't expect to get called on it either. But yeah, mistakes happen eh. ))

The soldier stood his ground, protecting his charge, as that was his assignment. Silently cursing the timing this planet seemed destined to run on. Bad timing that is. It always seemed that Pandora loved to throw something at you right when you were the least prepared for it to happen. He was positive he could have gone the whole mission without ever being directly attacked, at least as long as he was awake and his HMG was loaded. Stop a minute to rest, or perform field maintenance, and the annoying planet would delight in shitting in your breakfast cereal.

He was dumbfounded when the viperwolf whined and turned tail. He had never seen one do that before. They usually pressed the attack until something was dead. Running away from a fight wasn't something he knew viperwolves to be prone to, especially not a human. He was smaller than the animal, and the species didn't have any evolutionary experience with his form of animal, so they didn't fear humans in the slightest. Hell, they didn't fear Na'vi or puppets either for that matter. So to have one dart off seemed decidedly unusual.

Then Chance realized the perimeter alarm was still going off.

He heard the chorus of animal fury echo in the Pandoran night, and turned to see the glitter of countless eyes materialize out of the darkness.

"Oh crap," he sighed. His tone both annoyed and resigned to the fact he was a dead man walking.

The darkness exploded, a surge of terrible claws and ferocious fangs, as a full pack of the beasts flowed out of the night. It really was almost as if the darkness had come to life. That half-joking description of the behavior of the viperwolf was not at all misleading. It was almost as if the elemental darkness of the planet had a dire direction, a sinister essence, all its own.

He brought his worthless weapon across his chest, ready to use it as a blocking device when the shower of bestial brutality befell him. Prepared and waiting for the inevitable.

The meat puppet was forgotten. He couldn't do a thing for her now. He didn't stand a snowballs chance, and she was snack food the moment the first viperwolf crossed their path. Now they were both fucked.

Difference was she would survive it. As for Chance... there wouldn't be enough left to fill a sippy cup. Not that anyone would come and look for him anyway. If someone did come along it would only be to salvage his HEAT and the machine gun.

That was the life of a soldier though. Ultimately life would be brutal, violent, and short. With nobody really giving a fat damn about him as more than an operating system for a needed piece of hardware.

It flashed though his mind, as the darkness enveloped him, that some company on Earth should have sunk a bazillion dollars in perfecting bionic and cybernetic replacement, that way he could simply be repaired after the fucking wildlife ripped him a new asshole. It seemed a more cost effective way of things really. He was nothing more than a brain, an operating system, a meat machine running a metal one. All that cash to make those stupid fucking meat puppets and they could just yank his brain out and stuff it into what amounts to a robot body... just proves why Earth went into the toilet, because nobody decided to just think like a soldier and tell the stupid masses of idiot-sheep to suck it up, when they started mewling about human rights and government injustices. The fat cats got fat while the sheep whined about things they never did a damn thing to fix. Money blown for nothing that mattered other than raping a planet. Greedy pricks.

It was an odd thing to think about. His life didn't pass in front of his eyes, just a pragmatic bitch-fest about how crappy his species was.

[fuzzydude]

A tunnel of lines and swirls, overloaded colours racing past. Faint, very faint, were some unidentifiable sounds, cresendoing in a perfect exponential line past the soft digital white noise.

Suddenly, the black end of the tunnel rushed forwards, slamming into her with the force of an industrial mag train. Nia's avatar catapulted up and she gasped a ragged breath. The sounds around her erupted deafeningly, shocking her like an explosion had just gone off next to her head. The alarm was still going off, but it was nearly inaudible now under the chorus of growls that seemed to be all around her.

She scrambled to her feet, looking up to see a wave of inky black shapes crashing forwards from the darkness. Chance was in front of her, weapon held forward as a feeble shield. The experienced soldier looked suddenly very, very small and insignificant in front of the rapidly advancing wave. Then, the wave smashed into him and he vanished in a swarm of shimmering black shapes.

Run!

That was her first instinct, but the part of her mind that hadn't been fast enough to fall into full panic yet yelled back at her. She wasn't really here. He was. And she was about to watch a fellow colonist get torn apart. She didn't matter. Her legs were shaking so bad she felt like she would collapse at any moment. A selfish part of her hoped these things killed quickly so they could both be done with it.

Nia charged forwards, tearing away a large branch from a nearby rotting log, and swung as hard as she could into the black mass of viperwolves. There was a wet, wooden crack, then she felt herself being pulled sharply forwards. She lost her grip on her makeshift club, fell forwards.

She fell forwards and awkwardly rolled away.

You're not really here... you're not really here...

Struggling back to her feet, she turned back and froze, watching helplessly. Strangely, a number of the viperwolves had disengaged and kept running past Chance. But the rest were crawling all over him. There was nothing she could do. Nothing-

C'mon, Nia! Stop standing there and think! What are your resources?

She glanced around quickly. A second later, an entire pot of boiling chicken-flavoured water-paste splashed over the viperwolves, sending a line of them jumping away with startled yelps. Nia rushed in after, swinging a small, heavy cylinder and smacking another one in the head. The cylinder was connected by a thin, reinforced tube to the plasma cutter she held in her other hand. A purple burst erupted from it in a blindingly bright flash. She waved it around wildly in front of her, eyes nearly closed. Cries erupted around her. She couldn't see a thing past the brilliant light, and just closed her eyes, continuing to wave it frantically back and forth. The HEAT suit would be able to mostly withstand the cutter for several seconds before it began taking damage. The viperwolves wouldn't. And for a while, it seemed to be working.

Then, a weight smashed into her chest, sending her crashing backwards. The cutter flew off to one side, stopped by the weight of the cylinder, then smacked into the ground and shut off automatically. It took a second before she could even see again. Around her, several viperwolves were whining and stumbling around dazed, but they were quickly recovering. This didn't matter as much as what was in front of her, however. In her face was a snarling viperwolf, clearly infuriated. She shoved an arm in front of her. Pain shot through it as the viperwolf latched down on her arm with an incredible amount of strength. She screamed.

The viperwolves would already be all over Chance again. She could feel the viperwolves closing in all around her. She'd be dead in seconds - or rather, waking up again. Chance wouldn't have a prayer. This was it. And, in a way, she was relieved. She'd tried everything she could and any second now, she'd be back in the colony, her arm would be fine, and she'd never have to go out here again - out here to this stupid jungle filled with killer plants and crawling with terrifying viperwolves. She wondered what it felt like to die. She'd know soon enough.

Nia closed her eyes tight, waiting for the inevitable.

The inevitable sounded like a really loud roar. She opened her eyes in confusion. Every single one of them, including her, were now looking in the direction the sound came from. Everyone knew that sound. You only had to hear it once for it to be burned in your memory forever.

Thanator.

And just like that, the viperwolves ran, vanishing past them as fast as they'd appeared.

[HorusRe/Bila'reu]

The black shadow of death crashed into him with an irresistible momentum, sweeping him to the ground in a flash of claws and the snapping of horrible, spittle shining fangs. He didn't resist this massive, multiple creature tackle, as that wouldn't do him any good in the long run. If he stayed standing he would be exposing his back to the beasts that would invariably get around him, giving his neck up to the first viperwolf that wanted to take a chunk out of it. Though he would not be able to run, and that resolve to dying was a certainty in the soldiers mind, he damn well was going to do his best to make the animals work for their meal.

The first beast that mounted him opened its maw to attack. Chance rammed the side of his weapon into that open opportunity and then slammed a hammer fist down across the monsters nose. The damn critters had the same blasted skeletal lacing that Na'vi possessed, basically having bones that were woven with Kevlar strands and possessing a superior strength... but the bones in the snout of a viperwolf were relatively thin and designed to tolerate compression forces and not such hard oblique blows. He knew the wound wouldn't be fatal, not anytime soon anyway, but it would put that one out of the running for having "Chance on the half-shell".

Of course that didn't save his left arm from becoming the target of another. Pain lanced through his body was vanished just as quickly, as powerful animal jaws drove hardened fangs through his forearm armoring like small daggers. The endorphins surging through his body made the pain something a little like a dull ache. Luckily viperwolves were always reluctant to release a struggling prey animal, so Chance kept struggling and the beast that had him wouldn't seek to latch onto something more vital.

He felt another try and clamp down on his right thigh, but the beast didn't have a strong position and the thigh armor was thick, so the teeth reflected off the curved surface and saved the flesh beneath... though the suit was punctured in places. The autoseal worked its technological wonders and maintained his suits environmental integrity, at least for the moment.

He didn't even notice that Nia was attempting to be a savior. His senses were overwhelmed in his instinctual fight to stay alive and all he could see or hear were the images and sounds of a horde of viperwolves. His life, what was left of it, was filled with that concentrated fury to resist what his higher brain knew to be inevitable; but the baser animal instincts were not to be denied, and the solider was not about to simply lay down and let the planet consume him. Life didn't roll over that easily, even when it was ending.

All at once it was over. His arm released, the black tide washing away and not drawing him down into oblivion. He sat up quickly, his forearm bleeding within the armor but the sealant preventing any of it from escaping, and looked around. Nia looked... confused.

Why was she confused, he had to wonder. As engorssed as he was in the struggle to prove as difficult of a meal as possible, he had missed the sound of the nastiest critter any human had ever encountered on Pandora. It wasn't until the massive predator let out a second roar that he knew why the viperwolves had ran off.

Thanator.

Something in that moment kicked him into high gear once again, perhaps a combination of his "fight" instinct and the surge of adrenalin from his wound, but he wasn't about to survive one threat just to die to another.

He could not see the newest beast of the hellishly dangerous world, but for him that meant a moment to prepare. A moment he didn't waste a nano second of, as he rolled over to where his belt was discarded, scooped it up, and jacked it into his weapon. He yanked back on the cocking level and pumped a fresh round into the chamber. In the back of his mind he knew that was dangerous, it was risking a jam, if the first ten rounds were mis-seated in the belt, but at the moment he didn't much care. Better to have a weapon that might work, than pretend a big club was going to do anything to a hungry thanator, other than offer it something with which to pick human and avatar bits out of its teeth.

The HMG loaded he swung the barrel and opened fire on...

... nothing.

It was warning fire more than anything else, with a secondary purpose of just clearing the first ten rounds and risking the jam. He'd rather not have that be a surprise when the monster was on top of them. Besides, he was hoping the discharge might make the most dangerous land animal on Pandora reconsider attacking them.

Holes blew out of trees, and three tracer rounds lit up their path as they streaked from the barrel and into the dense foliage. He didn't have a target, it was just a spray of random fire, off into the forest, but a twenty round burst went off without a hiccup and the soldier knew his weapon was not going to suddenly fail him now.

[fuzzydude]

The sudden emptiness of the clearing left Nia standing there disoriented. She felt dizzy, energized, and like she was about to crash all at once. Spots were dancing in her vision from the light of the plasma cutter. Her arm was wet with blood but, strangely, it didn't hurt. It didn't really feel like part of her at the moment.

Nia could feel the second roar vibrate through her skull. It crashed her, washing away everything but a very acute, pure terror. Then it was quiet again, with only the sound of her own rapid breathing to fill the silence.

Chance began moving. He had frighteningly deep gashes and teeth-shaped holes all over his armour. He wasn't hyperventilating, so the seals had somehow held. She couldn't tell how injured he was, but he was already hurriedly loading his weapon. That snapped her out of her stupor.

Nia rushed forward, tucked the canister she'd dropped under her arm, and picked up the plasma cutter. This time, she put on a pair of wielding goggles. They were auto-tinting, so she could still see in the dark right now, but the instant she turned on the cutter, she'd be blind. Then again, if she didn't wear them, she'd really be blind from staring at the plasma cutter even more. It was the closest thing she had to a weapon right now. It seemed woefully insufficient.

Eyes wide, she scanned the forest. Still, no sound besides Chance. The darkness cloaked the thanator. She wished she'd paid more attention to their surroundings earlier. The silhouettes of previous benign trees and rocks all suddenly looked much more threatening. Had that log been there earlier? Was it just something she hadn't noticed or was it stalking towards them? She strained to see more, but it was difficult past the dancing purple dots.

A rapid thunder erupted nearby, sending her into a terrified crouch. Her heart skipping a beat. It took her a second to register that it'd been Chance firing a burst into the trees. Had he seen something? She didn't see anything, but right now, she was depending completely on him with all his sensors to pick up whatever was out there.

As if the shots had broken some tentative peace, there was suddenly a loud, low grinding snarl and she could hear something big moving through the vegetation. Leaves began rustling eerily in the night as the treetops waved back and forth. Nia had inched closer and closer to Chance until she was right behind him, looking fearfully over him into the night.

The growls, roars, and rustling leaves continued, occasionally punctuated by the snap of a large branch cracking. The sounds seemed to echo, making it seem like there were more things out there. And the sounds were slowly getting closer and closer.

[HorusRe/Bila'reu]

The man's survival instincts were locked in a high gear, and his perception was zeroed in, into that zone where everything seems to be moving in a kind of slow-motion. He heard everything now, saw everything that his eyes passed over, and was correlating all the information he was being given with a mechanical precision. It helped that his passive night optics peeled away the shadows that would hinder other human vision. It helped more that his front facing, echolocation-based sonar was getting hits off the motion of the Thanator that was stalking them. His motion detector was still useless, as the predator was staying just outside the maximum range of the short range sensor system. Fortunately, for Chance and his charge, with the noise the Thanator made he had enough of a fix on the beast to draw down his weapon onto the center of opposing mass. Or at least close enough that a short burst would put at least three rounds right on target.

His eyes were steeled and hard, not that they could be seen behind the mask, but his voice was tinged with a similar stoic determination.

"You wounded?"

He had to ask, as he couldn't waste a moment of his time letting his attention lapse, and it was important to know if her blood would be a draw to other predators.

He slowly circled from the hip, the long weapon turning to stay on target, as the Thanator moved around the prey items looking for an opening to attack.

[fuzzydude]

"One got my arm," Nia replied. It still didn't hurt, exactly, but it felt wrong. She'd been intentionally not looking at it to avoid hurling up her dinner. It seemed like that was something she should really wait until later to do.

"It doesn't hurt. I think I'll be alright."

She still couldn't see a thing, but she could pick out the sounds of movement and the snarling, and the occasional snap of teeth. The thanator already sounded like it should be right on top of them, except it kept somehow sounding closer and closer anyway. It was those stupid Na'vi ears. She was hearing far better than she was used to, and it was making it hard to judge distance. Why was the thanator making so much noise anyway? It wasn't like it would be intentionally trying to freak her out. Not that it wasn't, of course.

"Maybe we should-" she began.

And then, the sounds stopped and the silence slammed down on them like an anvil. Everything was perfectly still.

"- run..." she finished in a small whisper. The whisper sounded distressingly loud in the sudden stillness.

She liked it better when it was loud - when she could hear something besides her own heart.

It was like a whisper or a distant rain. A small stream. A river. Loud, rapid crunches. She could feel something growing rapidly near. The ground itself began shaking, the branches from the trees ahead trembled in a wild rustle of leaves. It was coming towards them now, and fast.