THE CUTENESS GAUNTLET

A/N: Complete crack fic just because I love how Peter Capaldi portrays the Doctor in all his grumpiness. Enjoy!

Chapter One

Twelve stood before the throne and glared at its occupant. The woman sitting on it was wearing a large baby pink ball gown reminiscent of Glinda from The Wizard of Oz. She had long brown hair that went down to her toes and she was painted up to look like a geisha. The woman had kidnapped him and Clara, plucking them off a planet the moment they left the TARDIS and beaming them on to her ship. The ship was just as pink as her dress and was filled with cute and fluffy things. In fact, the room they were in was not only pink but was covered with adorable cat posters. The woman called herself Arabella, Queen of Castabella, which the Doctor had not heard of and frankly didn't care about. Now Clara was missing, spirited away from his side by cute pink robots with kitten faces and he was standing here before the throne waiting to hear his fate.

"What have you done with Clara?" he demanded.

"Ah, you mean your wife?" Arabella said in a high pitched, tinkly kind of voice that the Doctor found nauseating.

"No. I mean Clara, the girl that travels with me. Where is she?"

"We are going to cutesify her."

"And what exactly does that mean?"

"It means that here on my planet, everything is cute if you hadn't noticed."

"Noooo, really? And here I thought you had these cat posters on the walls because you were the bleedin' RSPCA or something."

Arabella frowned for a moment and then smiled.

"You do not like cute?" she said to him.

"Not really."

"But in order to live among us, you must like cute and be cute and dress cute."

"Well, I suppose I'm not gonna live among ya then, huh?"

"You have no choice, you must become cute."

"No, you have no choice. Give Clara back to me or I'll ram your fluffy, frilly dress down your narrow little throat and choke the living life out of ya."

"Tsk, tsk, such a sour demeanor. That is a naughty no-no here in my kingdom."

"Well, I'm sorry if reality in the form of me has rained on your neverending cuteness parade but you're the one that sucked us up here, and now I'm telling you to let us go!"

"I will…on one condition."

"You shut up and give me Clara, is that the condition you're thinking about?"

"No, you must run…"

She paused for dramatic effect. The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes while he debated punching the gaudy makeup off her chubby, baby face.

"You must run…" Arabella repeated and then paused for another dramatic pause.

"GET ON WITH IT!" the Doctor yelled at her.

"You must run…THE CUTENESS GAUNTLET!" she yelled as she raised her hands up to the sky.

She froze with her arms in the air to guage the Doctor's reaction. The Doctor returned her gaze with a combination bored and annoyed look on his face.

"I suppose I should ask what the Cuteness Gauntlet is now so you'll get on with it and tell me," the Doctor said after thirty seconds of no movement and silence. "I hate to deprive your of thirty more dramatic pauses and melodramatic vocalization while you describe precisely what running the Cuteness Gauntlet entails."

"The Cuteness Gauntless is a maze. But…not just any maze…"

The Doctor sighed when she paused for another dramatic pause.

"It is made up of cuteness," she finally said.

"Noooo, really? How shocking!"

"I shall put Clara at the end of it and you must run the gauntlet in order to save her. Make it to the end and you shall have her back. But…beware…someone like you will inevitably surrender to all the cuteness and become like me!"

"Yeah, sure I will," the Doctor said. "And that's it, is it? Just run your daft little maze with cute things in it and I get Clara back just like that?"

"Ah, the Cuteness Gauntlet is deceptive though," Arabella said, holding up a finger. "Many have tried to resist the cuteness but so far all have failed."

"We're the failures all spineless pudding brains then?"

"Talk all you like but we will see what you're really made of once you enter…"

The Doctor rolled his eyes at yet another dramatic pause.

"The gauntlet, yeah, I get that," he said.

"The gauntlet," Arabella said, ignoring him.

The Doctor snorted.

"Fine, put me in the Cuteness Gauntlet then before I die of boredom listening to you blather on about cuteness," he said to her.

"Very well! Guards, prepare him for the Cuteness Guantlet!" Arabella said dramatically.

The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes again when the kitty faced guard robots entered the room.

"Some days it's better to just stay in the TARDIS and read," he muttered to himself as he followed the kitty guards out the door.

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