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9. First contact with the natives
🕑 Added 2023-05-02 11:23:51 +0000 UTC(<Blah blah blah> That indicates it's spoken in Na'vi.)
It has been nearly a month since Liam killed the great austrapede. He counted the days, he was at 56 days and it would go beyond that, keeping count kept him grounded in reality. His current memory stopping from forgetting to miscount
And that's why there was no random object painted with his blood on it and with a name such as Wilson, then followed by him talking to it as an actual person.
He was extremely lonely, he missed his home, his family, and his friends that much he knew, but he was not insane, not miserable enough to go down to that level.
He didn't wallow in self-pity at his situation, and neither was he looking to blame any higher being for responsible for it. Or some cosmical event that he was unlucky enough to be caught in, either way, it was out of his control.
And worrying about aspects of life you cannot control in any way shape or form is a rabbit hole that led to many unpleasant things. A type of thing he preferred to avoid at the moment.
The sky was clear of any clouds, the warm rays of two of the three suns bathing the great plain, and walking along a path of dirt in the tall alien grass were Liam, who was coming back from a rather successful hunt.
He was proud of himself to have finally managed to cleanly kill one of those strange paranoid deer-antelope-like animals, otherwise known by humans as hexapede, shy and wary creatures that ran away from anything and everything at any signs, even the wind. Very elegant too, and delicious.
Hunting for his own sustenance was something he found he loved to do, not the act of killing the animal, but the thrill of hunting, joy at a successful hunt and there was something else, something unique compared to buying food at a supermarket or killing at the family farm. And it tasted better.
Opening the 4 (13ft1) meter giant door made of clay, wood, thatch, and stones, one similar in many ways to an adobe dinosaur gateway with a grunt he closed it right after.
The dry ground below showed trails of dirt and a lack of vegetation due to it being open and closed regularly. One door that no regular Na'vi and even less normal human could open by themselves.
All around the giant tree where his nest-like house was were hundreds of tree trunks with clay in between one another and stone served as a tall wall encompassing his entire base, protecting against most creatures.
There also were hidden trap doors connected to the outside in case of urgency where accessing the main door wasn't an option or in case of stingbats swarm or even possibly stampedes from various animals. It was his approximately safe-ish haven.
The death of the great austrapede was soon followed by an explosion in wildlife, not surprising considering the aggressiveness and overpowering territorial instincts of the murder bird.
One thing he was worried about was if another of such animals were to come but for the moment this worry seemed unfounded. He was still mentally, and physically prepared to face another one.
Because life never misses a chance to fuck you sideways with a cactus, that is what he learned even more when you act rashly without thinking things through, so better be ready when it happens than not.
Taking out the dead hexapede from his inventory he placed it on a stone slab with residues of dry blood, the body void of any injury but its head where a hole that let Liam see from the back of its head to where once was one of its four eyes.
One clean throw with a bronze javelin to the head from one 90 meters (295ft) was all it took. The critter didn't see it coming nor did it understand it was dead before its brain was already skewered.
A knife materialized in his left hand and he started to properly prepare the carcass, all the while he was whistling something that didn't have any particular meaning.
His whistling was answered to by a happy chirp from a hole carved in the trunk of his tree that was covered by many layers of ropes and leaves.
*Qweep!*
"Yes, I'm back.", he stopped whistling and said, with a slight smile on his face, another happy chirp followed in response.
It was the egg or more precisely the chick that was developing within its confine. It had only been 5 days since it started, and before that, he was starting to doubt if he messed up and killed the developing fetus by accident.
Incubating chicken eggs with a machine specially built for that and doing the same with nothing on a murderous alien version of one, not that chickens didn't have a murderous streak themselves. He was more surprised that his idea even worked so far.
And since then he couldn't store the egg in his inventory, which was an excellent piece of news but also annoying as it forced him to leave the egg alone while he was out doing various things like hunting and gathering resources.
About an hour and a half later, the corpse was butchered properly, organs that he deemed unfit for consumption such as what remained of the brain, and the genitals, and most of the bones were going to be burned to ash to be used as fertilizer.
After that he did his usual routine, eating way more than what a human his size should be capable of, then purifying more metals from stones he picked up by using a less primitive furnace than before but far from what he needed to really work effectively, he was also working on a blast furnace but one thing at a time.
Lian finished placing the last ingot of bronze in a storage box made for that purpose, one of the many for the various metals he got. He cracked his neck and gazed upon the sky, it was getting dark.
Smelling himself he frowned in disgust, he stunk like a rotten corpse, 7 days without taking care of one's hygiene while being active around 80% of the time with his routine do that to you apparently.
Anyway, he stripped himself naked without a care in the world, storing everything on him in his inventory. Not like there was anyone to see. He was going to clean those too, and also see if anything needed repair or to be replaced while at it.
Walking up to the bronze head of a shower attached to a mostly underground piping system made of bronze and bamboo-like plants connected to a reservoir for rainwater and the water table below.
Using a water pump connected to the pipe system he waited as the water was slowly and painfully drawn before the icy cold water flew in abandon on his body, drenching his messy hair, regrowing beard then down his broad shoulder, chest, abs, and everything else. The cold barely bothered him, it was pleasant in fact.
'I can say whatever I want but damn do I love my physique… I did a good job with the character creation.', he thought, with plain and obvious narcissism and a hand running over his abs.
Truly. It was not pleasant to acknowledge this due to various circumstances but he preferred this body over the one he had for 24 years. It was a strange feeling, to have a new body, and become someone different yet similar.
He is faster, stronger, smarter, more resilient, more agile, taller, bigger in various aspects, better looking, and in possession of extensive knowledge in various fields some not even conceivable due to the technology gap to his Earth. There was no comparison to what he was before.
Stronger physically and mentally. It was factual and he was a man who leaned toward this over anything else, and this facet of his personality seemed to be even stronger here.
The only reason he was still alive and will continue to do so was this. Besides, he would have died in not even a minute with his old body on the beach thanks to Pandora's less pleasant atmosphere for normal humans.
He materialized a soap bar that was made of animal fat, hardwood ash, and a plant that smelled like lavender from his inventory and finished washing his body of grim, dirt, dust, blood, and other unspeakable that wouldn't go with only water.
In the middle of the night, Liam was rudely awakened, by an unknown scream attaining his ears, one of evident pain and distress that was disturbingly human sounding.
He was alerted and confused by it. He delicately put the egg away from his body, the chick inside still asleep. Good.
Putting on his light bronze armor in record time, a helmet on his head with two holes that only let his piercing grey eyes be seen.
He climbed down the tree, his gaze was on the sky, and then the great plain to look at any would swarm before it fell upon two tall figures.
One slower than the other getting dragged by the one at the front and behind them were one, two, three no five viperwolves pursuing them.
"Are those Na'vi?… Shit. And they are going to get killed.", he said in a voice with mixed feelings. He was not pleasantly surprised by their sudden appearance but it was to be anticipated that at some point he was going to meet the native.
The first impression was the most important he was strong, stronger than an adult Na'vi by a lot. But not impervious to a volley of arrows and hundreds upon hundreds of other ways that could make him depart from the realm of the living.
He needed to thread on this pass with extreme care if he didn't want to become a porcupine of arrows or a slaughterer of tall blue cat people.
He was beyond pissed at that, he would have preferred this to happen later when he was better equipped and actually prepared for that meeting but when life throws lemons at you, you make lemonade or squeeze the juices back in its metaphorical eyes.
Down in the great plain. Tutee was breathing heavily, the cool night air of Pandora was like fire to the exhausted cells of her lungs but she continued to run to the tall tree.
Stopping now would mean an inevitable death, behind her holding her hand with her bloody ones was Mìruk, a young male her age, 13 Earth's years, one she knew since before both could even speak.
It was his, no, her fault for this situation. All because of a bet she made that he couldn't hunt a lone plain nantang in Na'vi or plain viperwolf for humans after the light went dark and in their territory.
It didn't go well, as anyone but they would have guessed, it turned for the worst oh so rapidly but alas for both of them, foolishness is always rewarded by great pain be it emotional, physical, or both.
Then all of a sudden her heart felt like it stopped and her pointed ears flattened, at the sight of a great wall made of trunks, her foggy mind filled with panic didn't notice it until now, then she saw a strange and tall door. A door she knew both could never open, so alone even less so.
Looking behind with horrified eyes she saw the gravely bleeding Mìruk, claw and bites mark covering most of his limbs, a miracle he was still capable of running. However, he was incapable of forming coherent thoughts, head muddled with pain and body exhausted.
<I... Will be fine… Run. Away… Please. Tutee...>, Mìruk tried to speak but it was feeble, barely a whisper, yet still audible to the Na'vi's keen sense of hearing. He wanted her to abandon him, let him be used as a diversion while she ran and survive.
<No… We will survive together, Mìruk. Hold on!>, she responded, lying to him and herself tears trickling down her cheeks, not moving, not wanting to abandon him, then before her horrified eyes a viperwolf, the biggest of the five, pounced at them with ferocity.
Her brain couldn't process what followed, a small but burly figure, around the size of a preteen for a Na'vi, covered in strange shiny clothes she had never seen, with what looked like a spear cut the head of the beast clean of.
The head flew while the body fell with a heavy thump blood spurting from the neck while the headless body twitched uncontrollably. This instantly alarmed the four remainings, it was the pack leader.
"GET THE FUCK AWAY MUTS!", the figure yelled, a voice deep, clearly male, adult, powerful, and booming in a language neither of the two Na'vi understood and loud enough to make them flinch in pain.
It was effective as three of the intimidated viperwolves scampered away, their conflicting instincts screaming at them, but the side for survival was stronger and they ran into the tall grass to hopefully never cross paths again.
While the fourth and youngest of the pack was momentarily stunned. A time that was used by the figure who took a knife from his belt and threw it into the young viperwolf's forehead, killing it instantly.
The figure moved to the corpse spear in hand he calmly picked up his knife before sheathing it in its scabbard, and slowly approached the two teenagers.
<Please help him…>, Tutee pleaded, terrified beyond belief by the figure, stopping herself from instinctually hissing at their savior.
"I don't understand you… You probably don't understand me. But don't worry I understand what you want and I would have done it either way.", Liam spoke in English, voice as soft as possible, which sadly didn't work with his already deep voice and his helmet slightly altering it.
