"So…" a brave asked, not to anyone in particular, but to the whole group in general. "What do you thinks wrong with the world?"
The question wafted around the group of archers sitting on the Hometree branch and keeping watch on the plain in front of them. The brave was met with silence for what seemed like half a minute.

"Okay…" he muttered. "I guess that is a stupid-"

"Humans did it." Another archer muttered suddenly. "They would have planned this from the start."

"Can't be." Shee'kana said. "Why would they do something that kills their own people?"

"I heard some of the guys mention that some of their own warriors back at their colony have started killing each other. Maybe they don't care."

"They didn't sound crazy though. That's different."

"Ooh,I know!" The first guy suddenly spoke up. "Maybe, they did cause this, but they never intended this to happen. Maybe their presence here is what's causing all of these problems."

"Then why didn't this stuff happen last time they were here? Like, before the Battle?"

"Something must have changed then. They don't seem to need those masks anymore."

"True… but what else is different? They've been surprisingly quiet."

"There was that shooting a while back."

"And that got resolved. This has all been on our terms."
There was silence.

"So what's gotten the world like this?" Shee'kana asked.

"Why are you asking-"
The brave's face went still. His ears pricked up.

"What?"

"It's them."

It was coming around to dusk when the first arrows started to fly at the tree. As everyone feared they would, the now insane warriors of the Khalistheya suddenly came screaming out from the woodwork like from some B-Grade movie.
It was strange. If this had been caught on camera, the video would be dismissed as some segment from a b grade movie involving some tropical natives capturing some scantily clad 'botanist'. Of course, nobody was laughing. The defenders started to return fire as soon as they were in range, letting loose with arrows and the firearms that they had.
At least they were ready. Wikus had got in his bird beforehand and had been flying overhead to keep watch on the surrounding forest. He was already doing the best he could at peppering the enemy with cannon fire, although the canopy was making it hard to aim correctly.
And then the Khalistheya ikran started to come in.

"Keep these bastards from climbing the tree!" Jake yelled as he climbed the tree. "Anybody whose ikran is still alive and well, come with me!"

As the warriors started to climb the tree, the sounds of battle of shouting, screaming, the thumping of arrows and the roar of gunfire echoed around the tree. Jake could see the chopper switch to jet mode to evade the mad ikran, firing on them as it swerved to avoid getting hit.
As they shrieked around the tree, one of the braves noticed something about wrong about them.

"Why don't they have riders!" the young man cried out, pointing at them.
That was when one of the ikran smashed into the Tree and started to attack the tribe's already wounded ikran. It was outnumbered, five-to-one, so it was thankfully fended off.

"We can find out later!" Jake shouted as he got up to the branch where his ikran, his bird, his bond was standing, weary, but alert. "Just get on your ride, and fly!"
As he approached his ikran, he checked the leaf bandages that he had placed earlier. As he touched it, the beast blinked, as if it winced a little.

"You okay friend?" Jake asked.
The pain in the beast's eyes vanished. For a second Jake thought it gave him a look that said 'Don't worry about it.'
Jake grinned. "Let's ride then." he said, getting his footing on the beast.

Around him the other hunters clambered on their ikran, and waited for Jake's signal to start flying. He was just about to give it, when the chopper shrieked right passed, its wake almost shaking the branches. Several Khalistheya ikran shrieked after it.
Jake clipped his queue into his ikran. A brief sensation of information flooding in filled his senses before fading away. "Let's go!" he roared.

As Jake lunged into the air, the sense of falling was quickly replaced by the force of acceleration, as the banshee picked up. He quickly looked around as his allies streamed towards him to check for where the enemy banshees were. Before he knew it, one of them had lunged down at him.
Jake thankfully had the presence of mind to swerve away before the beast could take a bite out of him. He could still feel and hear the beast snap at him as it passed though.

And here I was thinking that only Last Shadows come down from the air.

He swerved back at the beast, lunging towards it before making his mount get steady enough so that he could line up a burst of fire at it. As he did so he started to stare at the beast.
It was coming back towards him. Jake could see that its face was practically painted in its own blood, streaming from its eyes, queues and other orifices. Its queues twitched crazily, and its eyes… they looked like they were looking everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
In short, it looked very much like a certain palalukan.
Jake fired.

The sound of gunfire was deafening to Neytiri as she clambered between pieces of cover around the tree. The ground defences had been arranged so that the archers fired from tree, the humans took cover behind barricades, and the warriors held off any madmen who were getting too close.
The sheer amount of gunfire in one place though was starting to deafen any na'vi too close to the barricades. At least the humans had ear protection.
As soon as there was a lull in the fight, she shouted out to Alex. It took him a while to notice and hear her.

"What!" he shouted.

"I think they've brought something else with them!"

"What, more reinforcements?"

"No, something else! I think-"

Before she could continue, something echoed from the woods.
The defenders paused for a moment. The archers higher up still tried to snipe at enemies, but even they had pricked their ears up.
Whatever it was, it was bad. Anything that made that sort of noise, and came from the forest had to be, it was basically a rule.

"Emile!" Alex shouted.

"What?" a voice answered him. It came from behind a small missile launching emplacement that the humans had set up. It was basically a rocket launcher mounted on a tripod. It was one of the few things that the humans had managed to salvage from the canoes. Emile and another militiaman were couching beside it.

"That thing ready?"

"Yeah."

"Good, because-"

Before he could continue, the something came out of the woods.
A massive, hulking and just plain BIG Hammerhead thundered toward the tree. It slammed through the madmen that were in its way and it didn't look like it had any intention of stopping if someone said please.

"Get out of the way!" Emile shouted. "I've got this!"

Just as the hammerhead reached the roots of the tree, just when the defenders dove for whatever could pose as cover, a great whoosh erupted from the launcher. Alex managed to catch a brief glimpse of the rocket just before it slammed into the beast's head.
For all intents and purposes, the hammerheads head vanished. Through what seemed like reflex action, it seemed to keep moving for brief and terrifying second, but then it tripped and collapsed in front of the barricades, kicking up as much dust as a crashing chopper would.

A great cheer arose from the defenders.

"Nice!" the militiaman next to Emile said in a rather flushed way.

"Yeah…" Emile breathed, surveying his handiwork. The beast had partially blocked the way under the tree, but they still had all the other openings to worry about. "Shame the heads gone huh? Would've looked great over my mantelpiece."
The two humans just managed to crack a smile when the same roar that had preceded the Hammerhead erupted again. They both stopped breathing.
Then they felt the vibrations through the ground. Footsteps. Of something big.

"Oh shit…" Emile breathed. He scrambled to aim the launcher in the direction of the footsteps. "Load another LOAD ANOTHER!" he screamed in panic.

"Hang on!" the other man shouted, fumbling with the launcher tubes, trying to reload the thing. "Hang on-"
The second Hammerhead thundered out of the forest and into view. Panic rippled through the tree.

"No hang ons!" Emile screamed as he set the sights on the rapidly approaching beast, hands trembling. "You get us killed, I swear to god Jack I will fucking kill you-"

"Wire's connected!" Jack screamed. "Back blast clear!" He dove to the ground too scared to just run away.

Emile fired. There was the same almighty whoosh and the same thunder of the explosion. The head exploded, like last time, and the beasts nervous systems carried it a few metres more before it collapsed, just like last time.
This time though, the hammerhead seemed to stop just a few feet in front of Emile and Jack. Right in front of them. Completely blocking their view.
Neither of them said a word.

Noh quickly pulled himself together. The explosion echoed just a few feet away , caused when some idiot fumbled a grenade, was causing his ears to ring like crazy. He scanned the defences in front of him. The Militia and the na'vi were generally okay with holding their ground. Aside from the monsters charging in, and the roughly ten or so casualties that they had suffered so far, they were holding their own pretty well.

The sudden movement in the corner of his eye caused him to spin around, just in time to see a blood-painted maniac swipe at him with some kind of staff weapon. He managed to avoid getting his head cloven off, but the force of the swing made him drop his gun.
As he went for his revolver, the maniac lunged forward, grabbing his throat and lifting him off the ground. Noh choked against the man's grip, trying to support himself against the maniac's arm, and only just raising his gun to point at the man's torso.

He fired four rounds into the man's midsection. He could feel the force of the rounds reverberate through the arm.
Its grip on him didn't slack.
Noh's eyes started to look at his opponents face. The na'vi had to have been barely into his prime, practically in his twenties or something, but he barely felt the rounds. His face had been painted in what was mostly likely his own blood. It was still seeping, slowly from his eyes and mouth. It had the same demented look as all the other Khalistheya monsters attacking them: twisted lunacy.
"How-" Noh managed to choke.

The monster who was holding him, seemed to tilt his head. His smile seemed to get bigger.

"The…. Half-blood…. Gives us strength." He said.

In English.

As Noh stared at him, the na'vi's eyes suddenly twitched off to the left. He suddenly threw Noh away from him and into something. It took roughly two seconds to realize the maniac threw him into a na'vi. As both himself and the na'vi man that he slammed into tried to get back up, the maniac lunged toward them with his weapon, intending to run them BOTH through with it.
But thankfully, an arrow hit him straight in the eye, dropping him to the ground.
Noh and the man behind breathed a sigh of relief.

As Alex slammed a new clip into his gun, he shouted over to the radio man for the time on the choppers.

"Five minutes!" the human on the radio, one of the APC crew members, who was forced to leave his vehicle behind, yelled back.

"Bullshit!" Alex snapped, charging a bullet into his guns chamber. "Nothing takes five minutes!"

"Their words not mine!"

He gave the surrounding area a glance. Aside from the battle on the ground, he could hear the screaming banshee's above him, both Jake's and the enemy's, and Wikus's Haast fight it out in the skies. The maniacs had finally started to trickle down in numbers.
He was just about to let himself relax when he got a headache.

"Ah, Jesus Christ!" he shouted, mashing his palm against his head. "Not now, not now!" He almost wanted to scream it out. Not out of pain, but frustration. This was the worst time for a journey to… that place.

"What's that sound?" A na'vi shouted out. The same thing was echoed by a militia man in English. The defenders, not seeing any targets, froze.

There was some kind of sound, coming out from the forest. Some kind of ringing, or whistling sound. It was just loud enough to be heard now, over the new silence that had broken. Maybe the maniacs had stopped because they heard it too.
Everyone was hearing it. They started to scan the forest, in the direction of the sound. They were looking at each other nervously, hoping that it wasn't some kind of new monster that wanted to turn them all into a banquet.
Then the sound started to get louder. As it did, Alex's headache started to intensify. The people around him started to train their weapons on the direction of the sound, trying not to shake from the tension. The sound was getting louder. There was no mistake, it was coming towards them. What was probably just ten seconds felt like ten minutes to everyone. Then Alex realised something. The sound wasn't ringing, or whistling.

It was a scream.

One great big scream.

And at that point, it hit them.

It couldn't have been described as a physical force. Nothing around them had changed one bit. But all the defenders of the Hometree, the humans and na'vi alike, felt it.
Almost everyone staggered where they were, or fell to the ground. Some screamed out, themselves briefly. Many cradled their heads. Above them, the ikran, both the ones ridden by Jake's people and the insane ones, screamed, and swerved around in a very dangerous manner. One of them crashed into the tree at one point.
Alex felt as if the scream screwed right into his head and started to shake the inside of his head. He covered his ears, but that seemed to do nothing.
It wasn't just a sound, it was more than that.
And then just like that, the scream vanished, echoes upon the end.
The defenders slowly pried their hands off their own heads. They started to look around, at each other, and realizing just how silent everything had become. The most notable difference: the madmen weren't around.

"Hello?" A voice came over the radioman's machine. It was Wikus. "Are you guys alright? You've all stopped shooting. The banshees up here went crazy for a minute."
Alex made his way over to the device, almost pushing the operator over in the process. He grabbed the handset.

"We're fine Wikus…" Alex began. "That scream shook us a little, but we're okay otherwise. How are you holding up?"

"Fine, but- wait…" Wikus paused for a second. "What scream?"

"What, didn't you hear it?" Alex said in an exasperated tone. "Everyone heard it! Everyone felt it for crying out loud! You didn't hear anything?"

"Umm…" Wikus said dubiously. "No… I didn't hear anything…" he paused for a moment. "It was a scream you say?"

"Yes, a big horrible scream! It was everywhere! How could you not hear it! It was as loud as a shuttle for Christ's sakes!"

"Well the fact I was up here might have had something to do with it." Wikus replied testily, the sound of his chopper leaking through the radio. "At least the crazies have stopped… And-"

There was a short silence. Alex's face turned a little red. "And what? Spit it out!"
The voice that answered was certainly more exuberant than before.

"The cavalry has arrived my friends!"

As the choppers started to touch down, the Tree erupted in the cheers of its defenders. For once, things had gone in their favour. Of course, Murphy's Law dictated that it couldn't last for very long, so they got cracking on the next job at hand: getting the wounded and non-combatants on board the choppers and getting the hell out before bad guys showed up.
Unfortunately, cramming stretchers of wounded men, children and civilians, human and na'vi alike, proved to be more frustrating than anticipated. Between trying to fit stretchers of wounded on the choppers, coaxing tribes people who had never been on such a machine before and keeping an eye out for the arrival of more bad guys, the defenders had a lot on their hands.
There was a more pressing problem: even though the choppers were over capacity, there was not enough room for everyone.
So when Jake landed again, the leaders of the humans and na'vi had a merry discussion (Involving shouting at each other) over who is going to stay and who will go. After two minutes, it was eventually decided that the last defenders would have to be carried out by both Wikus's chopper, and the ikran themselves. It was an admittedly ludicrous plan, but anyone staying behind would be doomed.
As the first Samson took off however, an arrow bounced off its fuselage. As it quickly got in the air, the defenders quickly began to suppress the treeline, while everyone started to get the hell out of dodge.
That was when word came to the other militia men about the new evacuation plan. Needless to say, it didn't go down well.

"WHAT, ARE YOU CRAZY!" Jade screamed at Noh. "I am not riding on top of one of those things!"
"Just do it! You'll all be fine, just hang on-"
"I'm not doing it boss!"
"You'll be-"
"I'm not-"
"JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET ON IT!" Noh screamed at her as a banshee and its rider touched down. "Get on, or it'll carry you in its mouth!"
"But-"
"NOW!"
They were probably going to continue to argue, but with the arrows flying closely, they finally figured that it was now not the time to argue anymore. Noh made the decision that now it was a good time to lead by example.

"It's not that fucking hard people!" He shouted as he rushed towards the nearest banshee. "You just walk up to these guys and rider will pull you on!"

The rider of this particular beast had only been told of the plan just seconds ago, and he was still getting it through his head. That's why he wasn't paying attention to the fact that his banshee didn't like this human walking up and trying to climb upon it. And that's why it suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Noh in its mouth.
Noh was only flailed around for about five seconds before the rider managed to get a grip on the beast. It was quite a sight as the human was swung around for a bit, screaming in fright before finally being let down again. As Noh got back on his feet shakily, the rider extended his hand down to him. Noh grabbed it after taking a deep breath, and was hoisted up behind the rider, on the back of the beast.

"See!" he shouted, trying to hide the nervous tilt in his voice. "Nothing to it!"

As the last chopper took off, Alex keyed into his radio.

"Wikus, me and the last group are ready for pick up. Can you land?"

"Affirmative." The voice on the other end responded. "Get to the nearest clearing. I'll pick you up from there."
The last group of defenders comprised of Alex, Jake's second-in-command Mu'kala, Dwight, three other militiamen, and two other na'vi warriors, with bows. The lot of them made a break for a crater that was caused by the recent Emperor attack, closer to the Tree. The sounds of the insane started to follow, getting louder, from the sheer number of attackers. The odd whistle made by arrows whistling at them started to sound all the more dangerous.

"It feels like a whole army is on our back!" Dwight shouted as he hoofed it to the spot.

"You tell me." Wikus chimed in over the radio. "From up here, it looks like the entire jungle is trying to kill you!"

"Tell us something we don't know!" Alex screamed back. He looked back up and saw the Haast begin its approach, its heavy rotors kicking up a dust cloud that both shrouded them from arrows, but
prevented them from returning fire as well. They could now only shoot at silhouettes that were getting closer and closer.
As the bird finally touched down, Dwight wrestled one of the doors open. He and the rest of the group started to clamber in, the na'vi having to crouch inside the confines of the crew compartment. It looked like things were going well.

Then an arrow slammed into the back of a warrior still trying to clamber in. He cried out and fell back onto the ground.
"Hold on!" Mu'kala shouted. He got back out and started trying to heave the warrior back in to the chopper. The blood from the arrow looked bad, but the man still looked alive.
Just as he was getting the guy in, a silhouette screamed its way toward them. A face, caked in blood and dirt burst out of the dust and into sight. Right when it did so, an arrow smacked into his face, causing him to flip onto his back. He twitched a little before he lay still.
"Nice shot…" Alex muttered to the na'vi warrior that had made the kill in his language.
"Thanks…"
As Mu'kala finally got himself and the wounded warrior in, Dwight started smacking the back of Wikus's cockpit. "We're all on! GO!"

The Haast began its ascent, lifting off from the clearing and moving away from the hot zone. As it did so, Alex could see all the madmen down there, screaming at them and firing the odd arrow at them. Dwight expended the last bit of his magazine at them before Alex told him to cease fire. He then turned to the wounded na'vi and Mu'kala tending to his wound.
"How bad?"
"He'll live."
Alex sighed. For the first time in hours he had finally been allowed to relax. He slumped back in his seat as the Haast cleared the canopy. One of the humans closed the right door, but the left one was left open, for air. As the sun started to set, the survivors gazed out across the jungle, finally earning a minute or so of peace.

"Got news from the others." Wikus yelled back from the cockpit. "They're good. Making good time to Hell's gate. We should- SHIT!"

"What, what!"

"BRACE,BRACE!"

Before someone could say another word, something with quite considerable mass slammed into the side of the Haast, spinning it violently. Almost everyone inside the crew compartment was thrown to the side, against a door that had only been shut minutes earlier. As the survivors tried to hang on to whatever they could grab and try to get themselves untangled out of each other, the chopper started to level again.

"Taking evasives!" Wikus shouted. "We got another psycho on our tail!"
As Alex held on to a seat, a screaming shape moved in the sky, out the open door. It banked a little upwards, before moving towards them again.

"Oh Christ…" Wikus breathed. "Quick! Close the door!" He shouted. "Do it now! Do it now!"

Dwight finally managed to get on his feet, and with all the strength he had, pushed the door shut. Before he lost sight of it, Alex could see the banshee, bloodstains and all, shriek at them from above.

What happened next was somewhat unexpected. The reason that most aircraft on Pandora were vulnerable to attacks from the flying wildlife, was that they could be easily grabbed. It didn't take much for a mob of banshees to swarm onto a Samson and force it into an obstacle. With the main rotor blades shrouded and plenty of grab points, it was certainly one of the leading causes of crashes for pilots on Pandora.

The Haast however had one major difference from the Samson and Scorpion choppers respectively. In VTOL mode, its rotor/wing acted as its main rotor assembly, spinning quickly to give it its lift. It was not shrouded, unlike the other two choppers.
That meant the Haast had two thick rotor blades spinning very quickly above the main machine.

So when the crazy banshee hit again, the chopper started to shake violently, and it was forced in direction, but only for a brief moment. Alex noticed that the whole thing started to become very unstable. Not flying in a straight line was an understatement.
He also noticed that the window on the door that they had just shut had turned red.

"Fok Yeah!" Wikus shouted from the cockpit. "We won't be worrying about that asshole again…"
Alex got up to his feet steadily, bracing himself against the movements of the chopper. He opened the door to Wikus's cockpit. First thing he noticed, was that the windscreen wipers had been at work. Wikus was still making them squirt to get the rest of the red stuff off the windows. Also, the seat in front of Wikus (the gunner/co-pilot seat) was empty. It looked like Wikus didn't have time to find a gunner he could trust, when he was leaving Hell's Gate. And then there was the exo-masked pilot sitting in front of Alex, he quickly swerved to glance at him before returning to his tasks at hand.

"You sure we're okay?" Alex shouted. "This things rocking like crazy."

"She'll be right." Wikus shouted back. "Those rotors are more durable than they look-"

Just as he finished, the sound of sparks above them came.

"Ah shit!" the pilot cursed. The Haast began to start swerving more violently. "Switching over to jet mode!"
As he started flipping switches, the rotor above them started to slow down. The Haast started to drop for a brief second before the rotor locked into place and served as the chopper turned jet's new wing. The Haast's engines directed thrust back, creating an acceleration that Alex felt. The swerving and shaking came to an end.

"Phew…" Wikus breathed, relaxing in his seat. "That was a close one. We nearly lost the whole bloody rotor when that psycho crashed into us."

"So we're good?" Alex asked.

"For now. But I can't risk making this baby's wings spin again. We'll have to land in jet mode."

A look of nervousness came on Alex's face. "You don't sound too happy about that."

"We should be okay. Assuming that we've still got a clear runway, the canards and other bits on this thing still work, and that there's a crash team on standby, there'll be nothing to worry about."

"What if something attacks us en route again?"

"Well then we're in trouble."

Alex and the others spent the next twenty minutes waiting in that cramped compartment, nursing their bruises and the wounded na'vi's bandages and trying to not think about the various scenarios in which they could all wind up dead. It wasn't a happy time.
Alex didn't need to see the halo's around the humans beside him to know that they were strained to breaking point. Between their vacant stares, the one guy snapping himself awake every now and the black lines under their eyes, Alex was fully convinced that these people needed a rest. Sending them out into another battle would probably get them all killed.
Then he took a look at the three na'vi in front of him. The wounded one was still conscious, and was trying to keep his mind on something less miserable than his wound. The second one was fiddling with a broken arrow in his hand. Mu'kala was on the other hand had been looking back at Alex until Alex had caught his eye. Then he dropped his gaze.

"Are you okay Mu'kala?" Ale asked in na'vi.

The man was silent for a while. Then, after taking a deep breath, he said "No. I'm not." He looked back at Alex. "And neither are you."
Alex sat quietly, hunched over and taking the words in.

Funny… He thought. I've been worried sick about everyone else, that I hadn't had a chance of looking after myself.

He started to imagine what he looked like right now. His thoughts weren't far from the truth. He looked like someone had shot him, dumped him in a ditch for a few days, and then dragged him back on his feet. His outfit was stained in blood and mud, his exo-suit was battered and starting to grind, he was wearing bandages under his helmet, he had a now rough five-o-clock shadow, he felt like his entire body was being eaten from the inside and his eyes were completely sore from the lack of sleep.
And then there was the fact that he could now see a human's emotional state just by looking at a phantom halo around each of them.
It's already happened Alex. He thought to himself. You've lost your mind.

He started to think up the various reasons as to why this was occurring. Maybe it was the concussion he had suffered last night. Maybe he was hallucinating. Or maybe he had finally snapped under the pressure of having to lead his men through a paradise turned hell, he didn't know. If he wasn't crazy, then at this rate, he was going to turn into a bona fide Garry Stu.
He wasn't sure if he should relinquish command or not.

"We're here people!" Wikus's overly happy voice came. "We're on the home stretch."
Alex got out of his seat and poked over Wikus's head. Out in front of him, he could see the Hells Gate coming into view, a pile of steel in a forest of green.

Control, this is Sierra." Wikus talked on the radio. "We've reached the barn. Is the runway clear?"

"Negative Sierra." A voice on the radio replied. "We've still got wreckage on the runway. Land at the VTOL pads."

"That's a negative Control. My rotor system's fucked, I can't risk switching over to VTOL mode. Can you get the runway clear?"

"Sierra, there is a broken down, flaming Valkyrie shuttle right in the middle of the tarmac, the place is unusable."

"Yeah, well, unless you want us to crash into all the other choppers, we need to use that runway! Are there any viable approaches? This bird can't stay up here forever, we took damage getting out of dodge, over."

There was some talking over the other end of the radio.

"Sierra, is your landing gear and brakes still functional?"

"Affirmative"

"Approach from Delta one-one –five. We'll have a crash team standing by."

Wikus steered the Haast towards the new coordinates. He turned back to Alex, who was still standing over him. "You'd better get seated Alex."

"You don't sound confident."

"I'm not. There's a fair chance that we'll crash right into the wreck." From behind his mask. Wikus looked grim. "So I'd buckle your seat belts if I were you."

Alex turned around and looked at his vacant seat. "But there's no seatbelt."

"Well… bummer then."

Alex got seated again and told everyone to hold onto their seats, including the na'vi. They got the impression that things were about to turn bad.
"Control, this is Sierra. I'm starting my approach. Get ready."
The sound of the landing gear being lowered warbled through the chopper. Then what was only a thirty second approach took an ungodly hour in the minds of the people onboard. Alex was gripping his seat so tightly he was losing feeling in his hand.

"Here we go!" Wikus shouted. The Haast touched down on the runway, the brakes screeching against the wheels and the engines shifting into full reverse.
"C'mon you focker, hold it together…" Wikus muttered behind gritted teeth.
Then about a couple of seconds into this, a godawful moaning could be heard under the chopper. Dwight looked down in fear. "I don't like the sound of-"
Then the landing gear gave in.
The Haast smashed down onto the tarmac, throwing sparks off to the sides, and making a screech that would give any of the wildlife on Pandora a run for their money. The entire crew compartment erupted in panic.

"Oh SHIT!" Wikus shouted, joining in. "Shit, shit… HANG ON!"

Then only moments later, the Haast started to shift its direction ever-so-slightly, while still going in one direction.
Which caused it to start flipping over.
The last thing that Alex saw was the entire cabin turning over and over a couple of times, the men being tossed around like in some sort of demented washing machine, before he slammed into something hard.

When Alex opened his eyes, he knew right away where he was. Reality it was not.
He was lying on the ground, right in the middle of a flat piece of land, and there was nothing in sight, just fog.

"Woo-hoo..." he muttered unenthusiastically. He would have stood up, but he felt sore all over. Like someone had locked him into a tumble dryer. He was too tired to do anything.
He did notice three particular differences about the Darklands, this time though. One was that the surface that he was lying on felt like the tarmac of the runway. Two, was that the whole place was deathly silent, and third, was that the fog had a slightly unsettling red tint. He didn't feel comfortable about lying here.

He had just finally started to recollect how he got there, when he felt someone else's presence close by. He stopped breathing for moment. He heard a few footsteps.
And before he knew it, there was a human woman looking down at him.

She was a middle aged human, with ginger hair, wearing a lab coat of all things, hands in her pockets and she had a look about her that said, "Seen it all before." She was regarding Alex with a look that made Alex feel like a student slacking off, but being caught by a teacher who approved of such mischief.

"You look like crap." She said.

"...Feel like it."

The woman gave a little smirk. "You know how you got here right?"

"I died in the crash?"

"Nah, you're not dead. But you're lucky, that's one thing for sure."

The woman started to walk away. As she did so, Alex shot right up where he was.

"Whoa, whoa... hold on, just stop right there." He said, regaining control of the situation. He got onto his feet unsteadily. "Who the hell are you? You don't look like some hallucination, or whatever. Who are you."

"It doesn't matter Alex."

The battered and bruised man frowned as he followed her. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Do you?"

Alex paused for a moment, screwing his face into thinking about where he saw her before. "I give up."

"Heh... but like I said it doesn't matter. What does matter, is that you need to put an end to this nightmare."

Alex cocked his eye. "It would help if I actually knew what the hell was going on." He gritted. "So, just what IS this place? Is it heaven? Hell? Limbo? Throw me a bone here."

The woman stopped where she was, and took a look around. Then she looked back at Alex.
"Okay then." She said matter-of-factly. "Are you aware of the concept of the Pandoran Worldmind?"

Alex racked his head a little. "You mean, the stuff about the Neural Network, Eywa being a virtual entity, and everything here being connected?" He nodded. "Yeah, I've read that stuff." He took a look around. "This isn't it is it?"

"Not quite. But you're close." The woman gestured around. "What you see here..." she began. "Is OUR Worldmind." She smiled. "Humanity's Worldmind."