The base's fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped insects, their sterile glare painting Jake's face a sickly gray. He slumped against the steel table, his fingers absently tracing the fresh burns streaking his forearm—Tawne's parting gift, a lattice of blisters shaped like dragon scales. The air reeked of antiseptic and dread, a far cry from the ozone-charged storm where she'd carved her threats into the sky.

Norm hovered at the edge of the room, clutching a datapad like a shield. Behind him, Trudy leaned against a blast door, her flight suit streaked with ash from the latest evacuation. She smirked, but her eyes stayed sharp, darting to the security feeds where crimson smoke still smudged the horizon.

"So," Norm began, too casually, "did she at least consider not reducing the eastern delta to a charcoal briquette?"

Jake's laugh was a dry rasp. He tossed a charred feather onto the table—Tawne's, plucked from the inferno of her transformation. It pulsed faintly, its barbs still smoldering. "She's got a flair for metaphors. Something about cleansing fires and human arrogance."

Trudy whistled low, poking the feather with her knife tip. It hissed, etching a black scar into the metal. "Y'know, most girls just ghost you. This one literally turns into smoke."

"Grace's notes called her a 'biogeothermal regulator,'" Norm cut in, swiping to a hologram of Pandora's neural network. Veins of molten unobtanium snaked beneath the continent, converging where Tawne's lair pulsed like a glowing wound. "Kill her, and the planet's magma flows go berserk. Quaritch doesn't care if he cooks the ecosystem—but we should."

Jake's Na'vi knife appeared in his hand, its obsidian edge reflecting the hologram's sickly green. "Quaritch isn't hunting her for kicks. He wants her firepower. Imagine AMP suits armed with dragonfire."

Trudy's smirk died. "Oh hell. He'd torch the Tree of Souls just to watch it burn."

"Worse." Norm zoomed in on Tawne's thermal signature—a supernova coiled around a RDA drill site. "Her blood's laced with hyper-conductive unobtanium isotopes. Grace thought she was a living reactor... or a bomb."

Jake stood abruptly, the knife plunging into the hologram, scattering pixels like startled fireflies. "Then we move first. The clans won't follow a human into this fight. But they'll follow her."

Trudy raised an eyebrow. "You wanna recruit the pyro queen? Bold. Stupid. But bold."

"Not recruit." Jake yanked the knife free, its tip glinting with resolve. "Bait. Quaritch wants a dragon? We give him one—on our terms. Tawne burns everything but what we need intact."

Norm palmed his glasses, voice fraying. "And if she decides we're the kindling?"

Outside, thunder rolled—or maybe it was Tawne, laughing from her storm. Jake pocketed the smoldering feather, its heat seeping through his fatigues like a promise.

"Then we pray Eywa likes barbecue."

SCENEBREAK

The cavern breathed with her rage. Bioluminescent fungi dimmed as Tawne rose, her scales rippling like molten obsidian under the glow of flame-vines that writhed across the ceiling. The clicking sound—Jake's human boots on soulstone—echoed like a provocation. Her lair recoiled at his presence; stalactites shuddered, dripping acidic nectar that hissed where it struck the bones of RDA mechs piled at her feet.

"I told you to leave, Sully." Her voice slithered through the chamber, harmonizing with the deep, geothermal hum of the cavern's heart. Her claws flexed, scoring trenches into the stone that filled instantly with liquid fire—Pandora's blood answering her ire.

Jake stepped forward, the Tree of Souls' sacred pollen still dusting his shoulders like ash. He didn't flinch as a flame-vine lashed near his head, its searing tip singing the air. "They're bringing dragonforged drills," he said, the words raw. "Not to mine. To desecrate. You think they'll stop at the Tree? They'll crack this mountain open next. Mine your heart. Your hoard."

Tawne's tail slammed down, splintering a human skull into shrapnel. The cavern wailed, tremors sending Jake to one knee. "Your people's weakness invited them," she hissed, looming over him, her breath scorching the sweat from his skin. "You beg for my fire to clean your mess. Pathetic."

Jake glared up, his human eyes Na'vi-fierce. "You're right. We're weak. Broken. But you—" He gestured to the walls, where bioluminescent veins pulsed in time with her growls. "You're not just a destroyer. You're part of Eywa's pulse. Letting them gut the Tree... it's a wound even you won't survive."

Silence.

The flame-vines froze. The molten trenches cooled to glass.

Tawne's snarl faded, her six eyes narrowing to slits. For a heartbeat, Jake saw it—the flicker of whatever ancient kinship bound her to Pandora's soul. Then she laughed, the sound like boulders grinding in a landslide.

"You wear your desperation like a crown, Toruk Makto." She circled him, her shadow swallowing the light. "I will burn their machines. I will feast on their screams. But not for you." Her claws hooked beneath his chin, drawing blood. "For the mountain. For the fire that will outlive us all."

Jake held her gaze, the cut on his throat searing. "Then burn them. However you want."

She released him with a flick, sending him sprawling into a heap of scorched RDA armor. "Leave. Now." Her form began to shift, scales splintering into embers. "And tell your Colonel..."

The last thing Jake saw was her humanoid silhouette wreathed in wildfire, her voice echoing from the inferno:

"When the sky burns, he'll pray it was me he feared—and not what follows."