Quaritch hadn’t expected this part.

The strength, he’d anticipated. The reach, the balance, the way the world felt larger and sharper in a Na’vi body. That all made tactical sense. What caught him off guard were the sensations—the way everything landed heavier, brighter, more immediate.

Touch lingered now. Not just registered, but stayed. Heat traveled differently along unfamiliar skin, nerves firing with a clarity he’d never had before. The air against him felt thicker, the ground more responsive beneath his feet, like the planet itself insisted on being felt.

Pleasure, when it came, was not subtle.

It rolled through him slow and deep, less detached than anything he’d known as a human. Harder to ignore. Harder to compartmentalize. His new body didn’t let him distance himself from sensation—it demanded presence, demanded attention.

Quaritch found himself pausing at odd moments, caught off guard by the simple fact of feeling. By how much his body insisted on reminding him that he was alive, here, changed.

“By God,” he muttered once, half in disbelief, half in reluctant awe.

Pandora had rewritten him cell by cell. Not just muscle and bone—but experience itself. And as much as he hated admitting it, this body didn’t just fight better.

It felt better.

Different. Deeper. Impossible to fully ignore.

And Quaritch was beginning to understand that this, too, was a kind of weapon—one the planet wielded expertly.