"That was a while ago," Jess reminded him.

"Yes, hi, I'm from the blue planet," Jack said dryly.

"We know. You volunteered before we did." Jess smirked at that.

"Could just as easily drop you off on a planet without any colors," the Doctor replied, smirking a bit at Jack. "I know of one where microscopic creatures in the atmosphere survive on color pigments. Everything is greyscale because they literally eat the color from it all."

"Damn," Jack said with a bit of a grin. "I'd lose all my panache."

Jess just rolled her eyes and started exploring, albeit cautiously. She didn't know what to expect, after all.

Marie also started to explore cautiously. Neither of them got very far.

"So!" the Doctor said, beaming. "Up we go then! Into the trees!"

"Up into the trees," Jess said, looking at him for a moment. "Oh this is definitely going to be new."

Jack grinned and went first, finding a ladder up into the trees and making sure Marie was following him.

"It'll be fine," the Doctor said as he found one of the ladders up. "You'll have fun, trust me."

Marie carefully climbed the ladder after Jack, holding on perhaps tighter than she needed to as she went. She didn't particularly like heights.

"Here we are." Jack held out his hand to Marie up at the top, grinning. The city stretched out before them, a maze of structures and glass and towers, all of it intermingled with the tree tops in an odd mix of technology and nature.

"Wow," Jess murmured when she got up to the top.

Marie accepted the help off the ladder and looked around.

"This is incredible," she said.

"Isn't it?" the Doctor asked. "Solar-powered, too. Why not, with the planet circling a binary sun?"

"This whole place can for, well, pretty much as long as there's a sun," Jack said cheerfully. "Wanna take a look around?"

Jess grinned, not moving quite yet but already picking a few especially interesting looking spots to check out.

"Yes," Marie replied immediately, nodding. She wanted to see everything.

"Well, then, let's go," the Doctor said, grinning. "Come on, now, and watch your step, don't want to fall down to the forest floor, do you?"

"I don't know, you've never mentioned what's down there," Jess said, letting the Doctor take the lead.

Jack grinned and walked with Marie. "There's some good food here too, when we get a chance."

"Who says there has to be anything down there?" the Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow. "Can't a race choose to live off the ground if they want to?"

"So you really have been here before?" Marie asked as they walked. "The Doctor isn't just blowing smoke out his ass? I get the feeling he does that fairly often, so I wasn't sure."

"The way you said that made me think there is something down there, some reason they built up here instead of on the ground," Jess pointed out. "It's a lot of extra work to build up here, after all."

"Yeah, he likes to make everyone think he knows everything. He doesn't. But he was telling the truth about this." Jack grinned. "We really were here before, and this place is a lot of fun, even when you do get in trouble."

"I'm sure there are always reasons for things," the Doctor replied, shrugging a bit. "There's got to be a reason these people built their homes way up here. So I'm guessing you really don't want to fall to the forest floor, because of whatever the reason is." He grinned. "Branching, however, is a popular sport on this planet."

"How did you get into trouble here last time, anyways?" Marie asked, raising an eyebrow slightly and grinning.

Jess snickered. "Sounds interesting," she said. "Let's see about exploring some first and then maybe we'll try branching."

Jack grinned as he meandered with her towards the city center. "Well, apparently the young men on this planet have something of a competition going for women, and some of them didn't like how easily I caught the attention of some people." He paused. "Some of them didn't appreciate being flirted with, either."

"By all means, then," the Doctor said, gesturing. "Explore. I'll be right behind you."

Marie snickered a bit.

"You flirted your way to being chased off the planet?" she asked.

Jess chuckled but started looking around, just kind of walking. She figured she could get lost and then find her way back to the Tardis.

Jack grinned. "It has happened before," he said with an eloquent shrug.

The Doctor followed her, just watching her explore. He liked watching people discover new things.

"How many times?" Marie asked, grinning back.

Jess found several fascinating new things, and was having a great time exploring and looking at things.

"Oh a few," Jack said elusively. "Enough times that I've gotten used to it."

The inhabitants of the treetop city looked at them a bit oddly as they wandered about, but didn't bother them. The people looked like an odd cross between people and birds, although they didn't have any wings. But they did have patches of feathers in a wide variety of colors.

"How many is a few?" Marie prodded, still grinning a bit.

Jess adapted to that pretty quickly. She didn't try to approach anyone, but she did look at everything, including a little market.

Jack thought about it for a moment and then shrugged.

"Honestly, not sure," he said.

The Doctor grinned.

"Of course you manage to find the market first," he said. "Do you have some sort of radar for it or something?" He was teasing, for the most part.

Marie just grinned at that.

"Well, don't get us chased away too soon this time," she said. "I want to take my time exploring, first."

"More like a nose for it," Jess said with a grin. "I just followed what smelled most interesting."

Jack laughed. "Promise, not getting in trouble yet," he said, holding his hands up. "You explore as much as you want and I'll confine my flirting to you." He winked.

The Doctor grinned.

"That's one I haven't done before," he said. "Following your nose, excellent idea, they really do make some of the tastiest things on this planet."

Marie grinned and turned a bit pink.

"Then let's go look around," she said.

"Might as well try a few things, then," Jess said, glancing back at him. "And you are too, no getting out of this one."

Jack motioned for her to lead the way. He was curious to see where she'd go, and he'd already explored here before, so he could (probably) get them back to the Tardis (eventually).