(more James Cameron's Avatar brain worms)
It's a name most RDA faculty know.
Greenhorns fawn over his reputation, his dossier, both on Earth and on Pandora. They fear and anticipate the day John Price looks their way, even just to watch them do physical training, as if his stare is enough to shape them into echoes of the soldier he started off as.
The brass? Less enthused. His background was an ideal candidate for their work on Pandora, but also a source of tension. It's dread, it's irritation, it's a teacher hearing they have "that student" on their roster for the semester and buying a year's worth of booze in advance for their recovery. They grumble and groan under their breaths and pray he's in a good mood, that they can keep him in that good mood until it's not their problem anymore.
Because if there's one thing John Price is known for off the books, it's his questions. Jake Sully may have led the Na'vi rebellion, but John Price was one of the sparks to the tinder, speaking out when open ears are close about the rights and wrongs of desolating Pandora in the name of progress.
"Earth's brown as the shit we're mucking through. Won't be long till Pandora looks the same, yeah? Then what, we piggyback on another moon, another planet, until we can see a bit of green?"
Whenever someone mentions the Unobtainium, he visibly has to stop himself from laughing. The name is stupid. The reason is stupid. The resources being used to obtain the unobtainable, to fight the fauna, the indigenous... it's all stupid. "Now if Pandora was a moon full of oil, now that'd be something. Least we know oil, how to fight for it."
"Have you tried asking them nicely?" He snarks during a meeting, bouncing his leg while looking over the numbers. Resources, manpower, casualties-- both human and Na'vi, unnecessary and far too many for his liking, for natural resources the suits can only promise will be worth it.
It gets him a sharp inhale, a warning "John..." from Kate...
It gets him the attention of SciOps. An offer, a series of tests, an approval.
When John Price wakes up in his Avatar, it's... strange. They told him disorientation was common, but no one specified how weird it was to sit up for the first time in years without a twinge or a pull, to hear the world around him without the ringing ghosts of gunfire and grenades. He feels too tall, the world around him too wide and in focus, his team...
Well, his team stands off to the side, out of the way of the SciOps running preliminary tests and vitals, but Johnny looks like a shaken up soda can ready to pop. His lips are pressed tight together, sealing what Price can only assume is laughter, or a joke. Just when he seems to have schooled himself, Price will look over and it starts all over again. He gets maybe three or four looks and a hard elbow to the ribs from Kyle before an attendant asks him to step away for being a distraction.
But there's no missing the starry eyed wonder when Johnny looks over the shoulder of his escort, of seeing an Avatar take his first steps, to see one rock heel to toe once, twice, like Price has to make sure it's still him beneath the alien skin.
It's when he finally notices Simon's eyeblack cracked and wrinkled at the corners that he realizes his Lieutenant's grinning like a fool under that balaclava, and Price frowns.
"Don't mind him," Simon rumbles, and Price can hear the smile now, too. "We're just admiring the science at work."
Price's heartbeat ticks up on a monitor, his leg bounces, despite the SciOps grunts trying to keep him still. But when Nikolai peels around the corner looking like the devil himself is after him, the pilot's eyes wide and round as he exclaims something in Russian, that Price finally asks for a mirror.
He'd seen his Avatar in incubation. He'd seen the face-- so much like his own, but not, at peace in slumber, the edges smoothed and stretched over a more Na'vi skull. He'd been haunted by the sight at first, shoved it back into a corner of his mind with the overflow to think about another time, a time that never came.
And so John Price realizes for a second time that, while his perfectly sculpted and maintained beard is more effort and patience than genetics, the round, cherubic face he hid underneath it was all him.
And he's not sure he's seen a Na'vi with facial hair this entire deployment.
