𐌄𐌋𐌙𐌉𐌍Ᏽ Ꮤ𐌉𐌕𐋅 𐌕𐋅𐌄 𐌍𐌌𐌀𐌕𐌉𐌊𐌀𐌙𐌀 (Aᕓ𐌀𐌕𐌀𐌓𐋄𐌍𐌂𐌔)

\\ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝟝//

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"Get up get up get up!" Nate grabs Jake's arms and they both begin to sprint away. 

With a hideous bellow, the Thanator crashes after them, splintering trees. The two marines run in a blur, dodging between trunks as a glistening black tornado shreds the forest behind them. Nate's sharp ears pick up the sound of running water and he sees a cliff ahead. Taking a large breath, he grabbed Jake's arm and jumped with all his might. The Thanator's jaws snap shut inches behind Jake as they fly out into open space and splash down into a swiftly moving river. The Thanator skids to a stop on the cliff edge, Jake and Nate's heads burst through the surface, and they gasp for breath. The two Avatars are carried along by the current but manage to grab a limb on a fallen tree. Nate weakly pulls himself up, and just lies there gasping on the trunk.

"Jake..." He pants. 

"Are you~ okay?" He lifts his head to look over his comrade. 

"Yeah~" Jake pants heavily, nodding furiously. 

"Yeah..." 

Morning turned into late afternoon, Nate and Jake, wet and bruised, crouched under a screen of giant leaves, having made it out of the river and back into the forest. Nate sat with his arms folded over his legs as he watched Jake hack manically at the end of a cut sapling with his knife, forming a crude but sharp tip. 

"You think that's gonna work?" Nate commented, feeling a shiver run over his body at the thought of having to face another Thanator. 

"It's all we got," Jake answered as he stood, blowing off the tip. 

Nate sighs, scratching his scalp through wet hair before standing. The two Avatars walk through the forest like it's a minefield, ears perked and tails stiff on alert. Jake, carrying his spear, white-knuckled, while Nate clenched his knife in his fist. The trees here are a hundred meters high, blocking out the sky. A few pencil beams of sunlight filter down into the cyan gloom. Jake moves warily through the forest, his weapon at the ready. Nate passes under a tree limb, pausing for a second as the hairs on the back of his neck begin to tingle. Turning to look around, Nate searches the forest floor and large trees for movement. Invisible to him, however, draped on the tree limb like a leopard, is a striking Na'vi girl. She watches, only her eyes moving. Jake passes less than 2 meters beneath her, oblivious. She rises soundlessly, in one fluid, sinuous movement she nocks an arrow to her bow and draws. Utterly silent, Nate scans around sensing her eyes, only to see nothing and no one. He turned to follow Jake. The Na'vi girl blinks as she follows them with the bow, muscles tensing for the shot before something drifts down in front of her, and she hesitates. A single woodsprite floats down to land on the arrowhead. Like a dandelion seed, but larger, the woodsprite waves its silky cilia, feather-light, as it balances on the deadly point. It glows faintly in the dark shadows. The young girl frowns, puzzled, and lowers her bow slowly. The woodsprite whirls away into the gloom.

The bright sky had faded to a silky black, and night had finally settled on Pandora, with a giant planet rising behind the black trees. The two Avatars have got a new problem. Nate can see shapes moving with liquid grace in the night shadows behind them. They are being stalked by a pack of viperwolves. Jake catches only glimpses, a glint of eyes, a slinking black movement, then nothing. Darkness. Jake's hands as he knots his T-shirt around the butt end of the spear, raising it to dunk in thick sap trickling down a tree-trunk. Jake jams the makeshift torch into the sap, soaking the shirt with it. A waterproof match from his survival kit lights the torch. The torch creates a pool of light surrounded by pulsing, leaping shadows. Nate turns warily as he paces on the spot beside Jake. Behind him are several pairs of reflective green eyes. Another pair flanking him beside the trail. Black-on-black shapes that seem to flow like liquid. Jake looks up and sees one cross a limb overhead. Another on their opposite flank. Then a hideous sound, like a hyena's psychotic laugh. The viperwolves can run like a dog and climb like a monkey. They are hunting the two marines from the ground and the trees.

The two men run by torch-light, on the edge of panic. Jake reaches a steep banked stream and -- without thinking, runs across it on a horizontal trunk. Nate clenched his jaw and growled as he followed, only to bump into Jake who was stopped dead on the other side. The torch illuminates green eyes cutting ahead of them across the trail. The viperwolves have them encircled. The psychotic barks become more intense as they signal each other, getting excited. One makes a run at Jake, angling on his legs from behind but Nate lunges, slashing at it with his knife. It yips and goes past, but another moves in. Jake jabs it with the business end of the spear and it snarls, retreating, baring its fangs. Now half a dozen are circling them in the open, and Nate sees what they're up against. The viperwolves are six-limbed with shiny chitinous skin, their paws leathery black hands. Glistening black teeth in dead white gums. Jake realizes that he and Nate are making thier final stand. He whirls the torch in an arc, keeping the wolves at bay, feeling a rush of adrenaline. It goes through him like a lightning bolt and the fear is gone. 

"I don't have all goddamn night..." Jake grumbles. 

"COME ON! COME ON!" He screams. 

With snarls and a blur of motion, they attack. Nate huffs a few breaths before stepping forward and slashing his knife. Jake cracks the spear down on one, then spins as another leaps at him and he plants the spear in it, striking true. But its momentum wrenches it from his hands, and the torch goes flying. Left in semi-darkness, Jake draws his knife as another wolf lunges, sinking its teeth into his arm. He yells in pain and fury, slashing with the knife which cuts deep into the beast's shoulder and it let go. Nate approached and fended off the wolves as Jake got to his feet, trying to escape, but a snarling viperwolf leaped, grabbing him by the ankle with its forehand. 

"JAKE!" Nate tried to turn and help his comrade only to be tackled by another wolf. 

Jake tears away, sprawling, scrambling to get up as Nate twists his body to pin the wolf under him. Three wolves charge at once. The nearest leaps at Jake's throat just as, THUNK!! An arrow appears in its chest. The wolf lands on him, already a dead weight. He pushes it off in time to see a blue Amazonian emerge from the trees, nock another arrow, draw, and fire in one fluid motion. An unearthly yowl as another wolf falls. 

The Na'vi girl leaps right over Jake and cracks her bow down on the skull of a circling wolf. Another springs at her and she drops under its weight, but rolls, coming up on top of it with a knife in her hand. Her knife flashes down, buried to the hilt in its chest. snarling, a wounded wolf attacks Nate, and he kicks it away, but it spins and leaps back onto him, and Jake barely catches its throat in time to keep the snapping jaws away from Nate's face. The Na'vi woman swings her bow in a big arc, cracking it across the heads and shoulders of two remaining wolves. 

"Rrreeyaaah! Hyaaaah!!" She hissed angrily at the wolves.

The wolves slink and circle, yelping as the bow whistles past them. Finally, they break and run, with the Na'vi chasing. They bound away through the foliage as she shouted after them.

"Raaaarrrr!" She gave a final snarl as she made sure they had all fled. 

Jake has Nate's adversary pinned and is choking it with all his weight. Finally, it stops thrashing. Panting, he released it, with Nate falling to his back and closing his eyes as he too panted. Jake looks up at the indigenous woman, her tail lashes as she scans the forest, listening to the fading yelps of the wolves. Satisfied the attack is over, she turns. She regards the two Avatars coldly for a second, then walks past. Neytiri picks up the torch, 

"Wait, don't~" Jake tried to stop her but she extinguished it in a stream.

Jake blinks around in the darkness, realizing he can still see. In fact, with the blinding torchlight gone, the forest is transformed. The jungle has come alive with bioluminescence spots and patterns, ghosts, and galaxies of blue-green light.