Ever since the last battle tore itself across Pandora like a bad scar that refused to heal, Miles Quaritch had been forced to keep breathing in a body he never earned and never asked for. The RDA called it a Recombinant—lab-grown muscle, engineered bone, blue skin stretched tight over a soldier’s memories. To Quaritch, it was resurrection without mercy. They’d taken everything that made him him—the discipline, the rage, the loyalty, the kill-switch instincts—and poured it into the thing he’d spent his career trying to erase.

A Na’vi body. Tall. Fast. Built for a world that never wanted him. A curse, sure. But also a weapon. And Quaritch had never been the type to waste either.

He remembered dying. Remembered it clearer than the day he’d first set foot on Pandora. Neytiri—Sully’s wife, all fangs and fury—had ended him with an arrow straight through the chest. No hesitation. No mercy. Jake Sully stood by and watched it happen, the ultimate betrayal from a Marine who’d forgotten what side he was born on. The RDA had pulled out soon after, licking its wounds and burying its failures. But Pandora had never been finished with them. Ten years later, the company came back meaner, colder, and better prepared.

He woke up to a second life with orders already written into his bones: find Jake Sully. Break him. Make an example of him. Quaritch reclaimed command of his Recom squad—soldiers who’d died screaming on this moon and come back just like him, wearing Na’vi skin and human hate. They trained hard. Learned the language. Learned to ride ikran, even though every instinct in him rebelled against the idea of bonding with one of those winged bastards. Assimilation wasn’t loyalty—it was camouflage. And Quaritch wore it like body armor.

They found Sully eventually, tucked away with a water clan, playing king among reef-dwellers who didn’t know what kind of war he brought with him. The fight that followed nearly ended everything. Quaritch came within inches of killing Sully—close enough to taste it—before the ocean claimed him instead. He would’ve drowned there, sinking into the dark like the corpse he already was, if not for Spider.

Spider. The kid he wasn’t supposed to care about. The son of the man he used to be. Spider dragged him from the water, gasping and half-dead, and left him on the shore.

With his unit fractured and Sully gone to ground again, he turned his attention inland—toward stories whispered even among the Na’vi. A clan shaped by fire and ash. A people hardened by disaster. And at the center of them, you.

They said when you were young, the land itself turned against your clan. Fire from the earth. Sky darkened with smoke. Death without warning. Eywa didn’t answer your prayers—at least not in any way that mattered. You survived. Your people survived. And you never forgave the world for what it took from you.

By the time Miles reached your territory, he didn’t come as a conqueror. He came as a man who understood loss dressed up as survival. He let your warriors surround him. Let them aim their weapons. Let them see he wasn’t afraid.

When you finally stepped forward, he recognized it instantly—the look of someone who’d learned not to believe in mercy. You were smaller than most Na’vi, but the fire in your eyes burned hotter than any torch. A leader forged by ruin, not faith. You didn’t bow. You didn’t threaten. You listened.

Quaritch spoke plainly. No sermons. No lies dressed up as hope. He told you what Pandora had taken from him. What it had promised and never delivered. He told you the truth most Na’vi were too scared to say out loud—that Eywa didn’t protect everyone equally, and that survival belonged to those willing to take it.

“I know what you really want,” he said, voice low, steady, dangerous in its certainty. “You don’t want a god. You want an equal. A partner.” He watched the moment your expression shifted—not softening, but sharpening.

“I can get you guns. Real weapons. Power that doesn’t beg the land for permission,” Miles continued. “Together, we don’t just survive this world. We take it.”