December 25th, 2190.

River 66, the longest river on Pandora. It stretched from a massive basin in the jungles and emptied out in one of the great seas of the moon, creating a highway used by humans and Na'vi alike. Currently, there was a human stuck right in the middle of it, calmly contemplating his current predicament.

"Piece of sh-!" he screamed as he kicked his beached hovercraft, only accomplishing smashing his foot. It had started smoking as he cruised over the waters of the massive river, and he had no choice to bank it or risk sinking. He hopped on one foot for a while, clutching his other in pain, and the sat down to the broken Gator, thinking of what he could do.

His ride had chosen to break down and the worst possible time: not only was he thirty miles from the next outpost, but it was Christmas Day. The PMC had told the security department to deliver a package, and his entire squad drew straws to see who'd have to go. Guess who came up short.

RRRrrrrrr...

Private Bailey shot up at the noise, expecting to get pounced by a Thanator or a pack of viperwolves. He drew out a combat knife and entered a defensive stance. Not that that would help him much if it was a Thanator.

RrrrrrrRRRrrrr...

Bailey looked down and the smacked himself in the head for his own stupidity. It was his stomach, and he'd been on the river for hours without something to eat. He looked around for any movement in the forest, and decided it was safe enough to go looking for some fruit to chew on. He didn't have to wander far to see several small apple-looking fruits hanging on a low tree. At least, low by Pandora standards. They were still much too high for the human to reach, and after several failed attempts to knock one loose with a rock, he withdrew his pistol and aimed carefully.

Blam!

Probably not the best of ideas, but he did manage to shoot one of the stems, severing the fruit from the tree and sending it to the ground, which Bailey caught before it could splatter all over the forest floor.

"Merry Christmas to me." he muttered as he dug into the juicy plant. Sort of.

Completely forgetting about his exopack, the large fruit smushed into the plastic surface of his mask, leaving a purple-ish smear. He sighed and sat down, laying his pistol beside him. He then began to tear off little pieces of the fruit, and would lift his mask just enough to get a piece in his mouth, and would then push it back down. The grunts would do it all the time back at the base when they were too lazy to go inside to eat, but they'd usually get yelled at by an officer if caught.

After he finished, he lifted the mask one last time, wiped his mouth off and headed back to his beached Gator, now able to think on a full stomach. He didn't know how to repair the damn thing, but he did have a flare gun in the back, and maybe he could signal for help. The private would probably get chewed out for the trouble of getting rescued, but it beat eaten by some of the wildlife.

As we walked back to the clearing where his hovercraft was beached, it took him a second to notice that he had visitors: two young Na'vi hunters, curiously poking through the the contents of the human boat.

"Hey!" he yelled, waving his arms. "Get away from there!"

The two aliens turned their heads to look at the human soldier, and then to each other. They stopped rummaging through the boat as Bailey walked up to it, making way for the human. As he looked through the boat to see if they had taken anything, he turned to the taller of the two hunters.

"Listen, I know you can't understand me, but I got a long ways to go, and I don't want any more trouble." he said half-heartedly. If the hunters were going to kill him, they already would have, and that was almost unheard of nowadays. Every since the PMC arrived, they spent years trying to make the natives not hate their guts. Humans were back on speaking terms, or at least to the point where the Na'vi wouldn't shoot humans on sight. The hunters continued to stare at the soldier as he opened up the diagnostics panel, and tried to troubleshoot the broken craft.

After a few minutes of the soldier staring at the screen and cursing out loud every time the software crashed, the two hunters walked back off into the forest, leaving the human to his fate. He eventually closed the panel, giving up. He turned around to see the Na'vi had left, bored with watching the ill-tempered human fiddle with his machine. His attention then turned to the package he had to deliver: a metal box, with the PMC's logo on it.

"What's in that thing anyway?" he asked, jumping inside the hovercraft and into the backseat. He'd been told that the package couldn't be late, but they never told him he couldn't take a peek as to what was inside. Just as he was about to lift the metal lid of the container, he heard a distant roar in the jungle behind him. We he'd arrived at Pandora, his chief security officer played a clip of that roar over and over to drill it into his head what it was.

A Thanator, and that cry was one it made it had found something to eat.

He scrambled to unfasten his pistol from his holster, and then realized that he had left it at the fruit tree when he shot down the Orangegrape. He jumped out of the craft and ran towards the tree, hoping to get his sidearm in time. The Thanator probably wasn't gunning for him, but he wasn't about to go down without a fight if it had.

He found his revolver sitting on the ground where he had dropped it after his picnic, and picked it up, checking the ammo. He loaded a bullet in place of the one had had shot, and ran back to the hovercraft. Using the flare gun was almost out of the question now, as it would probably attract the attention of the apex predator. He came up to the beach and jumped into the Gator, laying himself flat along the front seats.

Bailey stayed like that for hours. He finally decided the Thanator hadn't targeted him for a meal, and climbed back out of the Gator, shaken.

"Worst Christmas Ever." he said he he walked over to the back of the Gator to fetch the flare gun. He opened the emergency supplies box, and the large red pistol was sitting in a plastic holster on the side. Bailey took it out and pointed it into the air, then pulled the trigger.

Click.

"Oh, you have got to be shitting me."

He opened the pistol, and sure enough, there was no ammo for it. He looked around in the supplies box, and there was no spare munitions to be found. Letting out a defeated sigh, he threw the flare gun into the river. If he didn't make it by the end of the day, he'd probably start to be missed. All he had to do was wait until somebody came looking for him. Not only that, but River 66 had a fair bit of human traffic, and somebody eventually pass the broken-down Gator. He got back inside the craft and laid down.

The soldier nodded off. He didn't get nearly enough sleep as is, and some much-needed rest was the only silver lining of his situation. He woke up to see a giant standing over him. Bailey let out a panicked yelp, and scrambled over to the other side of the Gator, fumbling for his sidearm. As he laid his hand his weapon, he noticed this Na'vi was different. The alien had eyebrows, something the Na'vi lacked, and he looked much more muscular than the skinny aliens that inhabited Pandora. The alien raised a hand, and Bill could see he had five fingers, not four. It was an avatar!

"Nice to meet you too." the avatar said, eyebrow arched. Bill took a hand off his sidearm, and scooted back to the other end of the Gator, extending a hand.

"Sorry about that. I'm, uh, Private James Bailey."

The avatar smiled, and shook Bailey's hand.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Dr. Wes. My friends told me you looked like you were having problems with your machine."

"Yeah...my Gator died. I have no idea how to fix it."

"Neither do I."

"Oh, great."

"But! There is a Samson pilot parked near my linkup station, and she could take you back to base!"

Bailey turned to the back of the Gator, and shook his head.

"Sorry," he said, "but I have a package to deliver. Today."

Dr. Wes walked to the end of the Gator, and before Bailey could protest, opened the metal box in the back enough to get a peek. He smiled and closed it.

"Private Bailey, you're in luck. This package is meant for me."

"W-what?"

"Ayup. C'mon, I'll explain on the way back."

Dr. Wes whistled, and a direhorse came into the clearing. He patted it on the head, and with the box under one arm, jumped onto the massive animal.

"You can sit in the back."

Private Bailey really didn't have a choice in the matter. We walked over to the direhorse, and Dr. Wes used one if his long arms to pull him up, and onto the back of the animal. Bailey saw Dr. Wes connect his hair with the direhorse's antennae and Dr. Wes said something in Na'vi to command the creature to walk.

They didn't arrive at the linkup station. Private Bailey noticed this as they passed by the lab situated on a cliff, and turned toward the avatar.

"Uh, we missed that station."

"I know."

Bailey looked ahead to see their destination: a Hometree. He didn't say anything, but he wondered why the doctor was taking him there.

As they came into the vicinity of the massive tree, several of the natives in the area shot Bailey a strange look. Dr. Wes gave another command, and the direhorse stopped so suddenly it almost threw Bill off. As the doctor got off the animal, box in tow, he turned to the soldier.

"Tell me, Private Bailey, do you still believe in Santa Claus?"

Bailey was Santa Claus. More specifically, the package that Dr. Wes had requested was filled with toys, and was going to give them to the Na'vi children of the clan he had been accepted into. But, seeing the trouble Bailey went through to deliver the package, he decided that the honor of gift-giver better went to the soldier.

The private had never really cared one way or the other about the natives. Most of his job detailed patrolling the fences and occasionally doing errands for some the science team, but he had never actually interacted with the Na'vi on any level, but here he was, passing out gifts to alien children from the large metal box he had sitting next to him.

After he had passed out a toy to each of the children, Dr. Wes walked up to him, observing the children running around, playing with their new gifts.

"You make a good Santa." Wes remarked.

"Yeah, can I go home now?" the private replied as he stood up.

"Before you do, I think it's time for your Christmas present, for being such a jolly old soul." the doctor said, digging into one of his pockets and pulling out an intricate necklace, crafted from various beads and threads. He handed to Bailey, who simply held the thing out in front of him, not sure what to make of the present.

"Uh, thanks."

Dr. Wes returned him back to the linkup station shortly after that, the Samson delivering him back to base. The local security chief asked him where the hell he had been, and Bailey explained that he managed to deliver the package to Dr. Wes personally, and that there was a Gator out in the woods that needed fixing. His superior simply huffed and told him to check a vehicle before using it next time, letting him off easy.

Every year after that, Dr. Wes would personally come to Bailey's outpost and ask him to play the part of Santa Claus. The private eventually started to like the role, and even started making dolls in his spare time with help from Dr. Wes. Each year, Wes would also give him a necklace, which the soldier added to his collection.

After his tour ended on Pandora, he returned home to Earth, and donated the necklaces to a museum. They were estimated to be worth over twenty million dollars.