(Author's note: Since this is slightly confusing, I should clarify the scene: the Doctor and Tom Sully have just stepped out of the TARDIS, after Tom was "rescued" in Chapter 2, and are standing beside Jake. All three of them are using avatars. Grace has just entered her avatar, and is interested in what the three of them are talking about.)
A mildly confused Grace approached the three blue men."Should I ask?" she said cautiously.
"Yes, actually," replied the Doctor, with his omnipresent enthusiasm. "I promise it'll make sense."
"Go on, then."
"This is Tom, who I murdered half an hour and/or 6 years ago, before giving him a new body and bringing him here."
"You...!" started Jake, understandably angry.
"Hang on, I'm still talking!" the Doctor stopped him. "I only did that because you were here earlier to tell me that you're here because your brother got murdered just before the mission launched, and I thought that that was unfair."
"But that means..." Tom thought aloud.
"Yes, that means I only killed you because Jake was here to tell me you were killed," said the Doctor.
There was a moment's silence while this sank in.
"Do you do this sort of thing a lot?" Grace asked nonchalantly.
"Well, there was a time when I got stuck in the best prison in the uni―"
"Wow," said a new voice.
The four of them turned to see a blue Amy walking slightly unsteadily towards them. "So this guy is this guy's brother," she said, "and you... what? I had this the first time."
"Remember when you broke me out of the Pandorica? Actually, no you won't, that was Rory, he'll explain later, or he'll probably ask me to do it, actually..." the Doctor trailed off.
"Timey-wimey?" she prompted.
"Yes, timey-wimey," the Doctor agreed, before Grace gently but firmly pulled him away with a stern, "We need to talk."
Amy started to follow them, but she was stopped when she heard a quiet purring sound from Jake. Before she could react, Tom had gently hit him across the ear, with a joking "you're out of practice," before affectionately laying his arm across his shoulder.
She suddenly realized what Jake had meant, and replied with a casual, "Not too bad yourself."
The Doctor quickly spun around on one foot, saying, "She's married," before continuing around in a full circle to distract Grace from considering what he'd just said.
"You could've fooled me," said Jake, trying to hide his disappointment. "Where is he?"
"Who?" a taller, blu-er Rory said, managing to materialize behind Amy.
"No-one," she said hurriedly.
He raised an eyebrow suspiciously, while Amy did her best look offended at his doubt. Tom rolled his eyes at Jake, who looked away sheepishly.
Shortly, the doctors turned back to the group. "We have a plan," Grace announced.
"Oh good," Rory and Tom said simultaneously, before exchanging raised eyebrows.
"'scuse me, am I interrupting?" Norm said as he approached them, carrying a basketball in his long, skinny arms. Everyone turned to look at him, and he withered under the combined attention. "...Sorry."
"Jake," Grace continued, "you're coming with Norm and I, since we still have field tests to run, and we need a gun. Tom, you're going with the Doctor, Amy and Rory to... well, he keeps telling me, 'spoilers.' Also, I want the Sullys out of Quaritch's sight, since we'll have more leverage if he doesn't realize there's two of you running around. Everyone OK with that?"
Unanimous agreement.
"Sorry, Norm, what did you want?"
"Only Max was wondering if anyone wanted to play basketball, since we're all standing around here," he said.
"Basketball is cool," replied the Doctor, easily withstanding Rory and Amy's experienced, tired glare.
―
Some time later, Rory, Amy and the Doctor, all now Time Lord lookalikes again, met up with Tom just outside the base perimeter, to wait for the Doctor's surprise.
As Tom approached, he noticed their headgear. Or rather, lack of headgear. "You're not wearing resp... How?" he said.
Rory cut in before the Doctor could say anything with, "He's got a magic wand."
"I do not a magic wand!" was the indignant comeback.
Although he physically towered over them, Tom realized he was slightly scared of the Doctor, and didn't want to get involved. He stopped walking and crouched to match their height.
"What's the difference, then?" Rory replied.
The quiet before a fireworks display.
"...'Magic wand' sounds silly," the Doctor said coldly.
Tom only mumbled, "I'm sorry I asked."
"Doctor, that's not the surprise, is it?" Amy asked, looking skywards. Everyone followed her gaze.
"No, it's our ride," he replied more warmly, as a gunship came into view above them.
As the gunship landed, the Doctor casually sauntered up to the cockpit window. "Room for―" he glanced over to Tom, who had stood back up,"―six?" he ventured jokingly.
"You'll be the Doctor, then?" the pilot asked.
"Absolutely, and would you like a jelly baby?" he said, the brown paper bag materializing again.
She gingerly took one. "I'm Trudy. Augustine tells me you're going up to the ― what?" she said, as the Doctor raised a finger to his lips.
"Amy and Rory don't know," he whispered conspiratorially.
Trudy leaned out the window to look at the group. "Sorry, you'll have to introduce me."
"That's Rory, with Amy, and―"
"I know him―"
"―Not Jake," Tom finished.
"...Not Jake?"
"It's complicated," the Doctor didn't explain.
Trudy paused, unsure of what to say. The Doctor was quite clearly mad, but Grace had warned her about that, and everyone else with him seemed sensible... mostly. "Right. Get in," she said after a moment.
There were, in fact, six seats in the cockpit. This didn't help, but they set off anyway.
"It's cold out here," Tom moaned from behind the cockpit door after a while.
"And it's about to get colder, we're just passing the cloud layer. Sorry," said Trudy.
"I've never seen clouds from the inside before," said the Doctor, matter-of-factly. His companions just looked at him, then each other.
"You ain't seen nothing till you've seen clouds from the inside?" suggested Amy.
"Nope, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen the Hallelujah mountains at night," Trudy replied.
"Why are they called the...?" Rory trailed off.
"Wait a sec, you'll see," she didn't explain.
There were two sharp gasps as they broke through the clouds and saw them from above: a dark, immaterial, almost divine ocean, stretching out forever in all directions. Amid this ocean stood great majestic monoliths of rock, drifting slowly through the clouds, the ships of some giant race who were inexplicably terrible at masonry. Draped across these towers were dresses of glowing ferns and trees, turning the misshapen ships into enormous shifting lighthouses in a featureless, infinite sea. The nearest mountain quite easily dwarfed the gunship hundreds of times over, and shone with the luminosity of a city.
Amy and Rory just stared, while the Doctor grinned from ear to ear.
A noise came from behind the cockpit door, and the Doctor dropped his grin. "Yeah?"
"I've got the best view!" Tom taunted.
Exactly 30 seconds later, the door burst open, and the Doctor, Amy and Rory spilled out into the main hold to find Tom dangling his feet out of the open door.
"Whoa," the couple gasped in unison, having discarded the cockpit's grimy window.
"What, you've never seen this before?"
"Nope," replied Rory, still dumbfounded. He didn't even turn to make eye contact, only gazed out onto the infinite sea.
Tom turned to the Doctor, mock-scathing "How could you, Doctor? Not showing your loyal companions the Hallelujah mountains?"
"We just came from Barcelona!"
"...I've been to Barcelona," said Tom, underwhelmed.
"The planet ―"
"Is that a waterfall?" Rory intervened.
There was a craning of heads.
"You can't have a waterfall from a flying mountain," Amy said, confused. "Where's it coming from?"
Everyone turned sideways to the Doctor.
"I don't know!" he said.
"Do you want to find out?" Trudy called.
"Yes please," said almost everyone at once.
As the aircraft slowly changed direction, Tom slid the door closed, and the three humans – or human lookalikes – scurried back into the cockpit. They were in for another surprise.
"It's stopped," Rory said.
"What." the Doctor concurred.
They leaned forward slightly, and watched the tail of the waterfall disappear beneath the clouds. Then, it was gone, and the mountainside looked as though the mysterious river had never been there.
As they got closer to the rock, Tom became agitated. "Doctor...?"
"Hmm?" the Doctor replied.
"Can you hear that?" Tom said.
"Hear what?" Amy asked.
"They're... sort of―" He got interrupted by the thump of landing. "voices, except it's like there's a wall in the way..."
The Doctor was already sliding the door open and getting out of the gunship. As he stepped out, he looked around and said enigmatically, "Oh, good."
"Good?" asked Amy, as she followed him.
" Good, Flesh Na'vi are just as good at telepathy as the real deal are, and it seems that telepathy runs in the Sully family, and good because something wants to talk to us, but bad, because I don't have the hardware to talk back." As he spoke, the Doctor paced around the area randomly, following paths that existed only for him, before suddenly spinning on the spot to look Tom in the eye.
"Telepathy?" was his confused response.
"Well, yes, comes with your brain having its own aerial. The trees just want to say hello," the Doctor said, smiling.
" The trees what?"asked Rory.
"Sorry, I thought I explained this. All of the trees on Pandora are connected into a gigantic network that spans pretty much the whole moon ― well, did, anyway, also transmits very low-amplitude BQ field which lets most of the native life... talk to the trees. It's nothing like that really, but you don't know about Berekov―"
"So what do you want me to do?" Tom gently interrupted, slowly getting used to the Doctor's rambling.
"Well, the sonic screwdriver―"
"—magic wand―" whispered Rory.
"—can amplify BQ wave manifold and produce a greater resonance... Hang on, no. It can give you a better signal, if you imagine for a moment that telepathy works like a TV. It's not anything like that though I..."
"So... switch it on?" Tom said.
"Sorry, only works at short range. I'd have to put it up your―" the Doctor gestured.
"Wait, what? I'm not putting something that long up my―"
"Nono, in your braid, not... down there."
"Oh, right. Yes, duh. Er... It's not going to hurt, is it?" Tom asked.
"No. Just, kneel down, there's a good kitty― oops, shouldn't have said that..." the Doctor caught himself.
Since Tom's eyes were now almost level with the Doctor's, he glared at him, but the Doctor didn't flinch, and just held the screwdriver near the end of Tom's queue. As the snaking tendrils caught it, he flicked a switch, and the green light continued even as his hand moved away.
"Oh, wow. Doctor, I can hear them, I can hear the voi-ARRRRGH!" screamed Tom, as he toppled sideways. Suddenly, he twisted himself around and tried to leap at the Doctor, but it was as though the two sides of his body refused to cooperate, and he missed and veered wildly off to the side. He started to recover as the Doctor started to run out of leaping range.
"Doctor? What just happened?" asked Amy.
"Rory, I―" tried the Doctor, before having to tumble out the path of Tom's disorganized charge.
"Doctor!" snarled Tom, in a voice quite unlike his own.
"Rory, grab the screwdriver!" yelled the Doctor. Tom was getting more organized now, and more in control of his body. At least, something was more in control of the body, and the Doctor was finding dodging the assaults more and more difficult.
"Are you mad?" screamed Rory.
"We want... – no, st―! w-want..."
"YES!"
Tom had collapsed again, but this time, the Doctor realised, he was between him and his companions. Tom ― or the thing occupying Tom's body ― realized it too, and started running in the wrong direction, away from the Doctor. A split-second later, Amy and Rory realised it, and started running themselves, but Tom had the advantage of being three feet taller.
" ...con-control. Humans unwanted. Humans chaot―, please― c-cha-oo-tic."
"Doctor, a little help?" asked Rory, visibly panicking.
"Help me get the magic wand back!" shouted the Doctor, running towards the three of them.