Chapter IV

When The Tigers Broke Free

The TARDIS became stationary, unable to move at all without simply floating with leftover momentum. The two passengers, by this time, could not breathe. Their skin had turned a pale sky blue due to the absence of blood. There was no getting out of this one. The two people inside were dying, and nothing could stop it. Jake began to breathe his last breaths. He never saw it ending like this...

The Doctor held on to the TARDIS key-the last link to the TARDIS. The key was not only used to open the doors on the TARDIS, but also had a specific, almost symbiotic link to the ship. The key had the ability to call upon the TARDIS from a distance, but only with enough energy. Hence, where Norm came in.

'Norm, try to get the wires carefully!' The Doctor explained. 'We need just the right amount of energy...get one wire wrong and you'll have the force of a nuclear bomb on your hands!' The contraption was essentially a few wires attached to wrecked pieces of the Samson that Trudy had fetched, with the TARDIS key on the other end, pointing to the sky. With a burst of electricity (e.g. Lightning), a strong connection would be made with the TARDIS, dragging it back to where it came from.

Jake and Neytiri looked each other in the eyes, then passed out. The TARDIS floated right into the path of the UV light coming off of the white hole. The TARDIS was burned, but the light passed through the glass light at the top of the TARDIS, which absorbed the energy, causing it to connect up with the TARDIS key!

It was a good job there was little vegetation around, as Norm's machine exploded, destroying his hard work.

'Goddamnit!' he shouted. 'Now we'll never find th-hey, what's that light?' The doctor grinned from ear to ear. The rest of the machine had exploded because the TARDIS key had made contact-only the other way round. The key floated about three feet in mid-air.

'What kind of crap are you pullin', Doctor?' Trudy interjected.

'This...' the Doctor mumbled in stunned amazement, '...is what pure energy looks like.'

'But surely my eyes would have melted by now?' asked Norm, also astounded.

'Ah, but this is controlled, you can look at the beam, just don't point the beam at your eye.'

BFFKK... one or two sparks hopped out of the key.

'Er, just to be on the safe side...' the Doctor muttered, stepping back.

The TARDIS made a pained creaking noise as it attempted to come back to Pandora. Damaged by the radiation, it was effectively suffering the equivalent to radiation poisoning. The burned machine's light began to illuminate (although you couldn't see it over the UV light) It made several excruciated whooshes before vanishing from the hole, just as something emerged...

WsssSSSSzSzZSSh... WsSSSssSSSHSH...the TARDIS appeared, damaged. The blue outer frame had gone almost black. The Doctor ran over to it, worried.

'That's what you call a spaceship?' Trudy laughed. 'It looks like a stupid old box to me!'

The Doctor listened through the door. The TARDIS had appeared around the TARDIS key, with the key sitting in the lock.

The Doctor turned the key, carefully. The key had been subjected to all the forms of energy at once: heat, light, kinetic, even potential, meaning that it was still quite hot. Cooking his hand slightly, he turned the key, the door opening. Inside were Jake and Neytiri, unconscious. The Doctor, panicking, dragged the two outside.

'Norm, fetch that Exo-pack!' he shouted. Norm grabbed the discarded mask. The Doctor picked it up and burned a hole in it using the key, allowing Pandoran air to rush in. He turned its knob up to MAX, then, using leftover parts from the Samson, created two breathing pipes. No reaction. The Doctor began resuscitation procedures, but they still didn't react. They were dead.

'Doctor...I...' Trudy tried to help, but the Doctor turned away. The greatest leaders of the Omaticaya had died...of air exposure.

The white hole's edges began to bulge. The hole was beginning to get larger. The bright light began to get so intense that from earth, the white hole would be seen as a star (in 4-3 years' time). The hole began to get so bright that several occupants of nearby planets were blinded permanently. Luckily, they were small enough to be swallowed by a small dog, so nobody noticed (Author's note: Thank you, Douglas Adams). The intense energy got too much, and the items at the other end were expelled, before the hole scattered many of the items on the other side around the universe, before imploding. Ironically, this all happened in the second that the TARDIS vanished.

The Doctor sat, alone and sad, inside his TARDIS. He couldn't save them. His guilt was unimaginable. He just couldn't face the prospect of leaving his spacecraft ever again. He kept his doors locked. He allowed nobody in. He didn't even attend the funeral, he just sat, thinking. The Na'vi usually cremated their elders, but as per Jake's request just months ago, he had his and Neytiri's queue connected and then severed, having them buried before he and Neytiri were cremated so they could stay together.

An image flashed on to the screen. An alien, with a wrinkled forehead, growled an odd language. He shouted:

'Hab SoSlI' Quch!' The Doctor leaned in.

'A Klingon?' he mumbled. Surely it wasn't talking to him? He retuned the TARDIS so he could understand what it was saying.

'You are an enemy of the Klingon race.' The Doctor couldn't understand it. Where he came from, the Klingons were part of a fictional TV...series...

'Oh, I am so stupid!' shouted The Doctor. Of course the TARDIS isn't recognising Pandora! This is a parallel universe! I must have fallen into the inter-universal anomaly as well!' He began making calculations on the keyboard. 'So, if my calculations are correct...' The screen suddenly recognised the moon. 'So that would explain why the TARDIS wasn't damaged! It went through a 'safe spot' rather than a 'weak spot'! The Klingon transmission was lost, and that was when he heard a bang on the door.

The Doctor opened his eyes. He had bled badly, so he must have been hit. He couldn't remember anything after hearing a bang. He took in his surroundings. On either side of him were Norm and Trudy. They were all tied up. He heard the announcements.

'...and "Doctor", who killed our eyuktan and tshaik!'

As the crowd began shouting he realised what was going on. He was about to be executed. The Doctor decided to accept his death. Perhaps 900 years was too long. As the executioner approached, he prepared for what was about to happen. He closed his eyes so that he wouldn't see the blood, and mumbled a prayer in Gallifreyan.

'Delete.' The Doctor opened his eyes and looked to his left. Standing there were the Cybermen.

'Cybermen?' the Doctor asked, confused. 'This week just isn't my week!' Suddenly, zooming out of the sky came three spaceships. The first was large, cube shaped. The next was a large, tadpole-shaped structure. Another, manta-ray shaped one came down.

'Oh, Jesus Christ!' shouted...Norm, surprisingly. 'Can I have my head cut off without the planet being razed to the ground first?' The cube began to announce, loudly and mechanically:

'We are the Borg. Your culture will adapt to serve us. Resistance is futile.'

'We are the Cybermen. You must be deleted.'

By this time, the executioner had stumbled backwards and away, along with the rest of the retreating tribe. Nothing could get any worse than this—could it?

Yes, it could.

The Dalek spacecraft came down, a massive fleet of Daleks surrounding it.

'Greetings, Doctor!' shouted the voice from above. 'I thought I'd fetch some friends from other universes to come and help!'

'I thought Daleks hated Cybermen?'

'In your universe, yes. In a combined one, no!'

'So, are you going to introduce us?' shouted Trudy, sarcastically.

'Why certainly. We have the Borg, HAL 9000, the K- wait, what am I doing? BURN THE PLANET TO THE GROUND!'

'Friend of yours?' asked Norm.

'No!' The Doctor replied, not realising the sarcasm. He then went on to explain the entire Time War until Norm stopped him.

'OK, OK, dude...! Sar-ca-sm. Heard of it?'

The Daleks were on a mass killing spree. The ceremony for Jake and Neytiri had only happened recently, and they were going to be cremated—until the attackers flew in. As Klingons razed trees, Borg and Cybermen assimilated Na'vi. The Daleks destroyed the ceremonial burial ground where Jake and Neytiri were staying—and believing they had killed everybody (unaware these people were dead anyway), left.

One of the Dalek's rays had hit the small pit where the severed queues were laying. Dalek guns operated on electricity, and so did the queues. As the connected queues were hit with electricity, they came back to life. Still connected, the two queues managed to climb out of the pit. The nerve endings were so close to the brain, they were intelligent enough to move themselves.

The Doctor tried to escape. Clearly, they had left him to die here. He tried anything and everything to get out. He even at one point knocked himself out bashing his head against the bar holding him up. That was when the Spaceship Discovery came down. A soft, conversational voice sounded.

'It appears to me that you are a threat to my target objective. I am sorry, but I will be forced to put a stop to it.'

It was HAL. HAL continued. 'Thus, I am afraid I will have to release nerve gas to prevent your escape. Goodbye.' A slight hiss sounded.

'Son of a bitch,' Trudy seethed.

There was no escaping this one. Was there any way out of this?

The queues, began hunting for the correct fit among the dead bodies. Charged with enough electricity to light Stockholm for five days, there was no way they'd run out of energy to find the perfect fit to connect with (Author's note: This is awfully morbid, isn't it?). It wasn't long now...any second, they were bound to find the right fit.

The gas released painfully slowly. One inhalation, and the three would be having convulsions and dying. The Doctor realised that having his head removed was a damn sight better than salivating and twitching yourself into an asphyxiated death. Still, there'd been worse deaths. He hoped. All he could do now was wait.

Trudy, stood between The Doctor and Norm, was waiting also for death. She'd joined the SecOps at 19, witnessed a terrorist attack by her own race, fought for survival, been killed by Quaritch, and resurrected by Daleks. And now she was going to die at the hands of a spaceship that whispered sweet nothings to you before you died. Fantastic.

Norm stood at the end. He had trained for years, learned by Dr. Grace Augustine, knew Na'vi off by heart. He had met Tom Sully, heard of his death, then met Jake Sully, his brother, and now he was going to die an undignified death. The gas was released more and more. Within the next hour, all three of them were going to die.

It was then that the Doctor heard what he didn't want to hear: a knock. Months ago, in his own universe, he had recieved a prophecy that 'he will knock four times'. After the fourth knock, he would die. Upon hearing the first knock, he swallowed, the spacecraft, floating in midair in front of him, turned to reveal an arrow in its side. Oh no, were the Na'vi coming back for more?

Krnk. The Doctor looked up and saw an arrow had gone right through the knot tying him to the wood, breaking it and freeing him. Shh-krnk. Shh-krnk. To his left, he saw that two other arrows had perfectly destroyed the others' knots. Puzzled, he slowly turned his head, almost mechanically. Nobody? Then who shot the arrows?

CRASH! There was an almighty clatter as the Discovery fell down to Earth, the hissing and the voice of HAL forever silenced. Several arrows were sticking out of the Discovery, including one aimed very precisely at HAL. This could only mean one thing. The ceremonial bow. All three looked over to the other side of the clearing.

Standing there were two blue figures, with their queues attached to each other.

All characters, settings, identities, names, space-time travelling vehicles of a certain blue nature, and other copyrights that have been used in this story are the property of their respective owners. I take no credit for the creation of these.