How much more surreal could this possibly become? We were hunting a group of robots, lead by an alien with a Phantomas mask, who were robbing the south of France from all their cauliflowers, and we had them surrounded, armed with nothing more but water-guns. Super-soakers, to be more specific. Could this get any weirder?

"Halt!" Cruchot shouted at them, "You're surrounded! Make on move, and we'll spray you!"

I had to ask.

The robots looked at us, while Phantomas stood still, apparently not knowing what to do.

"I always hated guns, and now you're telling me to fight with water..." Maen moaned.

"Pay no attention to our friend here." the Doctor pleaded, "He just wants to kill you, but he agreed to let me try to talk to you first."

Cruchot widened his eyes at the sound of that: "I never sai..."

Emma pressed her hand against his mouth, shutting him up.

Only one of the robots reacted. A flash of light appeared, and suddenly there stood... a wrestler. The other robots followed his example.

"Er... Doc?" I asked, "Does this mean they can survive water now?"

"No it doesn't." he replied.

The robot-wrestlers were about to launch an attack on us, but as soon as they heard the Doctor give that reply, they withdrew.

"You know what they are?" Phantomas asked... with high-pitched voice that didn't fit someone of that appearance.

"And I know what you are." the Doctor replied, "What I don't know is what brings you together like this."

"That's a long story." Phantomas was about to take his mask off as he talked.

One of the robots pushed him, stopping him from doing this: "You're here to kill us again, aren't you?"

"That's right!" Cruchot shouted, not letting Emma stop him this time, "You tried to invade us, but we stopped you! I can do that again if I want to!"

Despite what the Doctor told him, he still believed those robots were a threat. Then again, seeing how they were treating Phantomas, I couldn't blame him.

"Now look..." the Doctor jumped in between them, "Being the only neutral party here..."

Cruchot took out his service revolver and pointed it at the Doctor: "I'm not so sure about that either!"

As soon as I thought this was going nowhere, Maen dropped her super-soaker, activated her light-saber, with which she destroyed her super-soaker. Before I could understand what she was doing, she opened a hole in my soaker's water-supply, rendering it useless, ran to Emma to do the same thing, cut Cruchot's weapon into two pieces, and cut off one of the robot's legs. Other robots joined in, but Maen cut off some their limbs as well.

"What was that for?" both the Doctor and Cruchot asked.

"Now we're on equal footing." she said, after deactivating her saber, "None of you are armed, and I won't use my light-saber unless provoked."

"You cut off my arm!" one of the robots complained.

"You're a droid. You can fix that." she snapped back.

"Thank you." Phantomas said, upon which he could finally take off his mask.

Underneath the mask there was what appeared to be just another man, except he wore a strange sort of stretchy hood, which had half-spheres covering his ears. This had to be that Oxoan that the Doctor mentioned before.

"How nice to finally see the Oxoan behind the mask." the Doctor said.

"You know I'm from Oxo?" he sounded ecstatic.

"Indeed." the Doctor replied, "What I don't know is why you're siding with these robots."

"I had no choice." he explained.

The robots started shout threats at him in an attempt to stop him from talking, but Maen activated her light-saber, and they stopped abruptly.

"Thank you." he told her, "My ship crashed here several moon-cycles ago. I tried to mend it, but I needed help to do that. At a junkyard, I found the remains of these robots. I thought if I could activate them, they could help me fix my ship."

"And they did?" the Doctor asked.

"No." the Oxoan said, "They wanted me to help them report back to their home-world. I told them I couldn't do it, because there isn't enough room on my ship."

"How does that excuse you from stealing?" Cruchot asked.

"They thought if they couldn't report back, they would have to file a full report unto one of your diamonds, which I would then..."

"Wait, what did you just say?" Emma wondered.

"Of course." the Doctor said, "Using diamonds to store data. It's not uncommon in the whole universe."

"Correct." the Oxoan said, "They hoped to store their report on the diamonds, which I was to bring back to their home-world, so they'd send a ship over here to pick them up."

"And you hoped that by disguising yourself as Phantomas, people would be too terrified to come after you."

"Who's Phantomas?" he asked, "I just needed a disguise, because I can't change into someone else like these artificial men can."

"And what about all the cauliflower?" I asked.

"It's the only Earth-food that I know and like." he replied.

"Naturally." the Doctor understood, "They need very little to sustain themselves, but you constantly need food, so they'd steal all the cauliflower they can find."

"Don't you think you're being too needy?" Emma asked, "With all the cauliflower you stole?"

"I don't know why, but these artificial men always stole more than I needed." the Oxoan answered, "Too much of them would rot too soon. So your sudden announcement that you'd have cauliflower was exactly what we needed."

In that case, I wondered how he felt about the Doctor wearing that mask and calling himself Phantomas, since the Oxoan made it clear he had other reasons to wear the mask, being completely oblivious to its meaning.

"Well then..." the Doctor said, "... there's no need for any of this any longer."

"How do you mean?" the Oxoan asked.

"You want to get off this planet? I can help you with that."