The Doctor sighed. He was bored, very bored. He had nothing to do onboard his ship, the TARDIS; he had seen it all. He didn't even have Donna handy to talk to, because she, unlike him, had not seen it all onboard the ship. Of course, the areas being repaired were sealed off, so he did not have to worry about that. As he sat there at the controls to his ship, he recounted how he had gotten stuck in this mess.
It was all so simple. He never really thought an asteroid would hurt it, but when one hit the TARDIS, things got bad. If it had hit anywhere near the main deck, where he was now, both he and Donna would have died. Normally, an asteroid would have bounced harmlessly off of the TARDIS, but what with all the damage it had sustained recently, The Master's tinkering and the replica of the Titanic (in more ways than one) crashing into it, it was hard pressed on some of the outer reaches. This, sadly, included The Doctor's bed on the ship, so he had nowhere to go. Sure he had a library, and a gym, and an arts room, but he had seen in all already. Nothing onboard his ship really seemed to interest him right then. To sum it up in one word, The Doctor was bored. There was that annoying word again, bored. Ugh, he hated that word. Bored was just something he didn't get. Not with a time and space traveling ship, that is. There was always somewhere new to go, something new to see. The Doctor had the whole of time and space to explore, how could he get bored?
But there he was, sitting in one of the chairs meant for turbulence, bored. Just totally uninterested in anything. He had been sitting there for almost three hours too, and was starting to consider sleep. But, before he could close his eyes for even a second, the monitor on his controls beeped.
"Oh, yes!" He shouted, hopping up to check the screen, as if he had made the repairs finish.
"Donna!" He called, reading the checklist of rooms. After a few seconds, he realized that she was probably to far away to hear him. That was the only problem with having a ship that was bigger on the inside. All that space tended to absorb sound, which was a slight problem.
But, not one to be deterred so easily, he flipped a few switches, hit a few buttons, and picked up the phone on the control board and said, "Donna, please come to the front." He had changed the setting a little bit so it turned into a sort of loud speaker, broadcasting his message all over the ship. "I sounded like some convenience store clerk," He said to himself with a shake of his head, hanging up the phone.
"Oi, what did you want?" Donna asked, walking up behind him.
"The TARDIS is done repairing itself, we can continue on." He told her, mentally checking off the rooms.
"Well, what are we waiting for then?" She asked.
" Nothing, I'm just making sure all of the rooms are back."
"You mean the TARDIS might not have all of its old rooms?"
"No, I'm saying it might have added some new ones."
"Why would it do something like that?" Donna asked, trying to make sense of the rather long list of rooms scrolling past.
"Because it adjusts to whatever it feels I need. Sometimes it adds to the rooms already there, and, very rarely, it adds a new one."
"So, what, you might get like, an arcade, or something?" Donna asked, still watching the list scroll at a speed that only the Doctor could read.
"An arcade? Why would it add an arcade?" The Doctor paused and asked.
"I don't know, maybe the TARDIS thought you were bored or something." Donna answered, looking at the now still list.
Seeing that Donna was staring at the list and suppressing laughter, he turned his head to look. There, at the bottom of the list, was the very thing.
One little word: "Arcade."
"What?" The Doctor exclaimed, pulling up the location of the new room. After seeing it, the Doctor dashed off into the depths of the TARDIS.
"Hey, wait up!" Donna shouted, running after him.
Following him around corners and just barely keeping up, Donna stopped and leaned against the wall when she finally stopped at the new room.
The Doctor, on the other hand, was thoroughly examining each of the games, as if they were secretly bombs just waiting to go off.
Donna walked up to him while he was giving a Pac-Man machine a methodical probing with his sonic screwdriver.
"They're just games, not time bombs." Donna said to him, while bending over to plug in the game.
"While that may be, I've never seen anything like this before." The Doctor replied, moving onto a rather nefarious looking Gauntlet machine.
"You've never seen a video game before?" Donna asked incredulously. "You travel all over space and time, how could you have not seen a video game before?"
"I don't usually enter places where so many teenagers are. Too many hormones, messes with my head." The Doctor said, still poking and prodding with his screwdriver, this time on a Q-Bert machine.
"Are you saying that you can, feel hormones?" Donna asked, while trying to figure out how to turn on the Pac-Man console. "How do I run this thing, there isn't even a coin slot?"
"It isn't really like feeling, like you would if you were touching something. More like, I can just sense it. And they can affect me if I'm around them to much." The Doctor was looking at the underside of an air hockey puck now.
"So, you're saying if you spend to much time around a bunch teens, you will start acting like one?" Donna laughed, while still trying to figure out how to play the game.
"Pretty much, yeah." The Doctor said in a as-a-matter-of-factly way.
Forgetting the game, Donna, just broke down laughing, leaning against the console for support.
"What is so funny?" The Doctor asked, finishing his search of the air hockey table.
"Just the thought of you acting like some awkward teenager." Donna said between bouts of laughter.
"I still don't see why this is so funny." The Doctor said, looking mildly insulted.
"It's just, the thought of you as a teenager, doing normal teenage things. I can so see you using your screwdriver to mess with your school's computers." Donna snorted, regaining her composure.
The Doctor just left with a huff, deciding that a good nights sleep was due after the day he had.
XXXXXXXXXX
Later that night, Donna was getting out of her bed in one of the TARDIS's many spare rooms to get a midnight snack. Passing by the arcade on her way to the kitchen, she heard an odd phrase come out of the room.
"Red warrior needs food, badly!" In a poorly rendered voice.
"What was that?" Donna thought, peeking her head around the corner.
What she saw was enough to make her laugh every time she passed the arcade during her time with The Doctor. There he was, in front of the Gauntlet machine, playing all four characters at once. The look on his face showed that he was so concentrated on his game that he did not even notice Donna.
"Yes, I now that the warrior needs food!" The Doctor shouted in anger, growling as he played.
XXXXXXXXXX
A/N: It makes sense that The Doctor could play all four characters in Gauntlet at once, seeing as he can fly a ship that is supposed to have six pilots, no? The idea to give The Doctor an arcade came to me one day while I was wondering just how many rooms he had on his TARDIS. The show never elaborates, so I'm assuming a lot. Especially since it is a ship that is supposed to house six people.
Sorry if they're OOC. I did my best to keep true to their characters. However, if any nice people from across the pond would like to help me with the British dialect, that'd be nice. I'm just some guy from the States, so I don't know a whole lot about how British people talk.
P.S. Maybe if I can get enough reviews, I'll show what happens when the Eleventh Doctor rediscovers to room. So, yeah, be nice and clicky that little review button right below this, please!