He stared at her agape, shock shining in his eccentric blues. "Play?" he echoed, taking in her changed attire. He furrowed his brows in puzzlement at his companion's antics. How could anyone think about games at a time like this? Of course, the curly-headed man was always so childish, a jester as it were. But, there was a time and a place! His TARDIS was perpetually deserted in the great expanse of space, unable to receive or transmit coordinates. Unable to transport him and Sarah to the marvels and wonders of the world and through the constellations, or even to Earth. They were stranded in the dark, vast, ventricular valve within the cosmos. And, she wanted to talk about games?

Despite his initial mockery, he found himself considering it for a moment. It would distract him from the reality at hand and the ever-looming boredom that paraded itself around his Gallifreyan mind.

"Alright," he agreed, walking over to her with an open, quizzical look. "Play what?" he inquired with newfound interest, not understanding her implications. Humans -- especially Sarah -- could be so confusing sometimes.

[TAG -- sarah jane smith ]

Eccentric hues remained glued to his ever-imaginative companion, still wild and ever the curious. Much like the cat, you might say -- except, of course, he was not very fond of the notion that came afterward. He drank her in, consumed her words as if they were vital information, but, of course, they were only constructs of Sarah's current mischief, childishness, and foolery.

While he was usually the advocate for the former two, sometimes, foolery could be the most difficult one to be in concurrence with -- though, it depended on the situation and on the intelligence of the individual. He quite liked foolery when it was synonymous with his jest, pertaining to him and Sarah's playful banter. However, more often than not, he could only envision any use of the word when defining a handful of idiots, or, much more likely, when Harry Sullivan was in the room. Though, thankfully, the last two cases were not anywhere near his current one.

After a moment of staring at her, in which all that time, he had been thinking, his brows furrowed slightly. "You mean that ball over there? That's a little boring, isn't it?" he conjectured, a large hand pointing at the striped-rainbow one in the corner with a quick blue glance. He feigned slight ignorance just because that was one of the ways he teased her, knowing how it irked her. After a moment though, his gaped mouth broke into a goofy, toothy grin reminiscent of his jokes and his starry sapphires crinkled in amusement, but honest words sauntered out. "Really, Sarah, I don't mind patting a bit of ball around," he admitted. He winked and tapped his nose with his index finger, as if to relay a secret. "But, don't tell anyone over at UNIT. They would have a ball, if you know what I mean," he snickered at that last part, feeling at ease with his brunette companion, and ever the one to never tire of jokes.

It was then that there was a loud stir, a massive whirring alarm echoing all around them. Large hands immediately covered Sarah's ears as he bared teeth against the blaring noise of his own ship, and the flashing lights that signaled warning that there was something amiss.

 The sound stopped, but room with white roundels seemed to tilt, turn on it's head, which inadvertently had the curly-haired man and the journalist falling through what, for a moment, seemed to be space-time. But, just as quickly had they been perpetually pushed and plummeted into a world of eternal possibility, had they landed into another familiar room.

Into the swimming pool of the TARDIS.

[ TAG -- sarah jane smith ]

He tried to silence her cries with his harsh hushes, his voice calming but simultaneously brisk, but not quite loud enough to overcome his ship's siren. Something had obviously gone terribly, horribly wrong, but he hadn't much time to decipher the implications or the probable causes before him and his brunette companion were flipped upside down. Turned topsy-turvy, as it would seem.

Their falling seemed to last forever. Into eternity. Into the brilliant specters of the cosmos. Through time and space, itself.

It was a miracle they were still in one piece, that they hadn't been ripped apart by the seams and splinters of infinite realities.

But, somehow, they had landed in water. His frockcoat and trousers were immediately drenched by the spacious depths of the TARDIS swimming pool, located somewhere in sector c. The brown hat he had been wearing hovered upon the surface of the aquatic infrastructure, and it was briefly after that his head surfaced as well, his long arms rowing long strides. Chestnut churls were flattened by the moisture, and clung to his forehead, shadowing his eyes. He blinked a couple of times before understanding where he was. His mouth became a water spout, and he spit up what he could. Fortunately, he hadn't gulped too much.

He squinted between the dampness that lie around his sapphires, his gaze scrimmaging around for her -- knowing he hadn't dove in alone. He turned this way, then that, With no sight of her, his brows furrowed in curiosity and slight concern. "Sarah?" he called, spitting a sprout of water. He traded traditional swimming for reliance on his legs and left arm momentarily, which allowed him to use his other hand to brush his hair backward, and away from his face, and gave him a more peripheral and encompassing view. The noise of the alarm and the blaring lights were gone. Now, there was only TARDIS-light, and a steady hum. Generally, that would mean that things were back to normal... but, given what had just transpired, the Doctor knew that something seemed to have upset his marvelous time-travelling machine. Something was messing with the transcendental spheres, perhaps? Though, he wasn't quite sure how, if that was the case...

Then, in the midst of his thinking, he heard her sputtering, and he knew that she must be alright if she was capable of making all that noise. "Oh, there you are," he remarked, rather flippantly, giving a brief glance over at her. However, there was a hint of amusement dancing beneath his baratone before turning back to the matter at current. His blue eyes surveyed their surroundings. "It seems we're not in Kansas anymore," he told her, somewhat jokingly. Although, in the back of his mind, his Timelord intellect tried to calculate, what, exactly, had happened that could have possibly landed them here.

With some moderate ease, he waded to the edge, and helped himself up onto the dry floor. Still in a crouch, he gave Sarah a hand -- both in the physical and metaphorical aspect.

[ TAG -- sarah jane smith ]

He really could have done without the unexpected bath. "You didn't have to drop us in the swimming pool!" he bellowed towards the ceiling of his TARDIS, at whatever being was orchestrating their new conundrum. "We could have just as easily been dropped into the old control room, or the library, even the storage of Madrogana Helix. Quite frankly, anything would have been better than ruining my scarf." he wallowed in a mumble of annoyance as he looked down at his apparel with out-stretched hands, at what he assumed his trusted machine had done to his beloved article of clothing. His scarf was unimaginatively and undeniably soaked, and now weighted him down, along with his frock-coat, which now looked enormous thanks to the detrimental amount of water that drenched every inch. Though, if he had to do without one of them, then he supposed it would have to be his coat. He shook it off, and tossed it to the side, then unraveled his scarf so he could squeeze out the tendrils of aquatic chlorine, only to wrap it back around to its former position, all the while with a disgruntled frown.

His blue eyes found her brown ones, and he found himself slightly amused by her question, even if he was currently slightly irked by the situation they'd suddenly discovered themselves in. "Don't be silly, Sarah," he told her diligently, with humour and cheek cloaking his voice as he gave way to explanation. "The TARDIS is fully alive, a sentient being capable of many things, but she wouldn't do something so drastic as to have us fall through the cracks of indefinite eternity and into a large swimming pool just because you hit me, now would she?" he countered with a hint of jest as he turned back to glance at her, his mood beginning to become less sour now that they were out of the wet weight of water. He marched towards the exit of the room, hands dug deep into his damp trouser pockets, the way they did when he was on a mission. His mind was a series of wonderings, of possible probabilities, and he continued to stifle through them as they both walked.

"I'm not entirely sure," he admitted, recounting what he currently knew. He continued walking. Walking and talking. "But, I can make a very deductive theory that something is tampering with the transcendental spheres of my TARDIS, and interfering with her ability to travel through time and space. Somehow, her reality, her trajectory has shifted, causing a disturbance inside."

If he could just get back to the main control room, perhaps they could figure out what was causing such a thing.

[ TAG - sarah jane smith ]

"Precisely, Sarah. Precisely." he delivered, his feet coming to a stop as he placed his handle on the library's exit door. His leftover index met his lips in a gesture that he was unconscious of, his face grave in the meaning he was trying to convey as he explained by signaling that everything was at stake. "Something must have interfered with the TARDIS from the inside." He paused, serious, then added surely, "But, it wasn't me." The intensity in his gaze deepened, as if trying to make sense of it all. His eyebrows meeting together in hard thinking, then his sapphires falling back into place to meet his companion's. He had never seen this before -- his marvelous machine acting so strangely. And, although he was quite capable at figuring out plots and stopping villains and impostors, this was different. This was the TARDIS -- his home away from home, as it were. His friend. His dependable travelling vehicle that always got them from Point A to Point B. And, she'd be there since the very beginning.

His hand twisted the knob, opening the door, but as he did so, his large skies widened in surprise. Suddenly, they were met with white brick on the other side. No room. No corridor. No twisting maze of magnificence. "Sarah? I don't think tools will help this time. It seems we're staring at a wall," The curly-haired Timelord mused in reference to the situation at hand -- literally and figuratively.

He closed the wooden entrance promptly, his mind wondering what in the world could be going awry with his TARDIS, and he submitted himself to sit down onto one of the few steps that rested in the middle of the room, staring into nothing with his head in his hand. What to do.

[ TAG -- sarah jane smith , I'm saving the fish for later. ]

"It is very well a possibility... that there may be something hiding in here with us," he conjectured, then gave the brunette journalist a slight glare, buried within a look of disapproval. "However, I highly doubt that the TARDIS would be angry. Sentience is not synonymous with sentiment." he concluded, somewhat dismissing his companion's theory as he mulled over his own, sitting contemplatively upon the step. Though the cause of all of this was like an annoying bug, buzzing in his ear, without any fathom or apparent reason as to why. Which only proved to irritate him further.

To ease his frustration, he idily took out his trusted yo-yo from his frock-coat and began broodily testing the gravitational weight of the TARDIS with a glower. At least he could trust the balancing toy to act accordingly, much unlike a certain blue telephone boxed-Type 40 TARDIS. Though, he considered -- it could be worse. They could be floating near the ceiling, and attempting to ground themselves with anything they could grab onto. They could be being cornered by Silurians, or being chased by dinosaurs, or falling to their deaths with no hope of survival and only holding onto the whim of Fate's merciful hand--

But, instead, they were quite literally stuck inside his own time-traveling machine. Anything would be better than being insipidly trapped, with no foreseeable way out.

The best they could do was wait until the TARDIS did something else strange and extraordinarily out of character. 

[ TAG -- sarah jane smith ]