Josh, still getting zapped by electric shocks, tries to get a look at what is holding him. The cloud bank falls away, and he sees an enormous transparent canopy above him, glistening in the sunlight. It looks like an impossibly huge jellyfish, like a cross between a Portuguese man o' war and a blimp. Its clear membranous sac, or bell, is filled with hydrogen, produced by an internal biochemical process. The bell is 15 meters across, and the tentacles over 30 meters long.
The bell pulses to give some directional control, but mostly they drift with the wind. It expels gas to descend, and expels water from trim bladders to rise.
Josh sees a whole school of these things, like a fleet of ships, emerging from the clouds on both sides of him. Apparently they sweep the tops of the mountains for prey, stunning it with their electric shocks. Josh looks up and sees that the contracting tentacles are bringing him much closer to the pulpy mouth.
In the Samson, Grace and the others search the clouds for Josh. They see the fleet of gas-bags, and move toward them. Grace says they are AEROCOELENTERATES, genus MEDUSA. These are X. Medusa gigans, not too common this far east. She tells Onozuki not to fire because they are full of hydrogen and will explode like the Hindenburg.
Josh is hacking at the tentacles with the machete. They are tough and rubbery, hard to cut. His distress encourages some circling bansheerays to attack. As they dive toward him, we see the distensible jaws unfold, revealing glassy dagger-like teeth several inches long. Josh hacks at the first one, slashing it right across the face. With a shriek it veers off. The jaws of another snap inches from his leg, and he chops into it with the machete. It flutters off in a descending spiral, the shoulder of one wing hacked open. Some of the others follow it down, ripping it apart.
Trudy maneuvers the Samson closer. WHAM!!! They are slammed by something from above. The ship drops and she fights for control. Onozuki is almost pitched out. They pull him back in. A huge shadow... then they see it.
Like a bansheeray, only several times larger. It is the king predator of the air... the GREAT LEONOPTERYX. Striped scarlet, yellow and black, with a midnight blue head... it is iridescent and beautiful. It feeds on bansheerays, munching them like salted peanuts, and the occasional medusa when it's really hungry... but this fight isn't about hunger, it's about territory. It sees the Samson as a competing predator, and it's pissed.
The great leonopteryx swoops away, climbing with unbelievable speed, disappearing up into the sun. Trudy loses sight of it. Grace tells her to take evasive action. Fast! Trudy banks and dives. And we see the leonopteryx plummeting right behind her in a full delta tuck, like a hawk stooping. They build up airspeed and Trudy jinks left, then right, trying to throw it off.
Josh sees them go out of sight behind the flank of the Big Rock Candy Mountain, and knows he's screwed. He chops harder at the tentacles, hacking through another one in a spray of violet blood.
As he gets nearer to the pulsing sphincter of a mouth, he starts to hack at the gas bag overhead. He chops through the membrane, and hydrogen whooshes out, spraying him with a mist of blood. Josh hacks again, widening the tear. With a thin scream, like a tea-kettle whistle, the medusa starts to descend.
The great leonopteryx outmaneuvers the Samson, slamming into it with a bone-jarring crash. It flaps away with a piece of the engine cowl, and the Samson plunges, smoking, toward the ground.
Amid alarms and flashing lights Trudy fights for control. The cabin is full of smoke. The ship hits the treetops with a series of splintering crashes, and sails out over a clearing, crossed up and spinning. It plops down into a huge gray mud-spot. It has come to rest in the middle of an area of volcanic springs, where terraced pools of mud plop with steam from below, and geysers shoot up nearby. Visualize Yellowstone with purple trees, and a few floating mountains in the background.
Everyone inside is okay, though shaken. Bloody noses, bashed knees. Onozuki jumps out into the mud, in a rage, and slogs his way to rocky ground. He runs up a rise, screaming at the leonopteryx, which is a crimson kite banking away. He opens fire with his rifle. Grace has come out, shouting something to him, which he can't hear over the thundercrack of his weapon.
FROM A HIGH ANGLE we see the trooper as a tiny dot on the rocks below. The POV rushes downward. A huge shadow can be seen, rippling over the ground, rushing toward Onozuki, who is firing in the other direction, his backed turned.
We rush right down to him, meeting our shadow... the shadow of wings 15 meters across.
WHAM!! Angle on Onozuki as he is jerked up out of frame. His gun and helmet plop into the mud near Grace, and a terrifying shriek echoes across the landscape.
GRACE: I tried to tell him they always hunt: in pairs.
SEVERAL MILES AWAY, Josh is plummeting toward the rainforest, still wrapped in the tentacles of the deflating medusa.
The trees claw up toward him, and he enters a snapping, slashing hell of purple foliage. He is jerked to a stop, the wind knocked out of him, and his machete clatters down into the forest below him.
He finds himself hanging ten meters above the ground. The tentacles go limp as it dies, and he slips down, trying to hold onto them now. But they are too slick. He slides down this greased rope, falling the last two meters to the ground, where he lands on his butt.
He jumps to his feet and scrambles away from beneath the medusa. Panting, he looks up at it. It's still dead.
He finds his machete and stands surveying the gloomy forest around him. Alone in the bush, miles from nowhere. Great. He feels an overwhelming sense of doom. Josh backs away from the medusa, then turns to look behind him. CHOMP!! The striking head of a snake-tree snaps its jaws shut inches from him. He jumps back as several of the other heads lunge. CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP! He stands there panting, just out of range of the hydra heads.
JOSH: This place is like a goddamned: Roadrunner cartoon.
At the downed Samson Trudy has called the base. She tells Grace that they can't send a ship for a couple of hours, everything's committed. And Quaritch won't send one of his gunships to pick up civilians. Prick. Grace picks up Onozuki's rifle and tells Trudy to get back to the ship.
Josh is walking through the forest, moving in and out of patches of sunlight. He slaps at bugs. He finds the plant Grace used for insect repellent and cuts it open, smearing it on himself.
POV FROM NEARBY. Something is watching him from behind a curtain of leaves.
REVERSE... TWO EYES watch from the dappled shadows. Na'vi eyes. Piercing gaze, FILLING FRAME. A soundless motion, the eyes are gone.
Josh walks on through the forest, skittish and hyperalert. He keeps his machete gripped tightly. Something small rustles away through the ferns near him. He hears distant shrieks, chirps, grunts.
There is a crash and an explosion of splintered wood and flying leaves. A BULL HAMMERHEAD TITANOTHERE emerges into the clearing ahead of him in a shower of foliage. Its baleful eyes lock onto him. Josh is frozen. The titanothere bellows and lowers its ten foot wide sledgehammer of a head. It charges. The ground shakes.
Josh, in desperation, screams at the top of his lungs, spreads his arms wide and runs straight at the thing.
It stops its charge abruptly, with an oversized bleat.
ANGLE ON JOSH. He is amazed the gambit worked. He grins. Makes a face at the titanothere. Something rises up behind him out of focus... RACK FOCUS to it, revealing... A MANTICORE. This is what really stopped the Titanothere's charge.