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Title: Drums
Author: Kuroshokora
Rating: PG
Summary: "I can't work out if that's cruelly ironic or just plain stupid." the Master said hotly "You turned my drums into an internal iPod!"
Warnings: Utter, complete crack. EoT!Master.

**

The Master frowned, sitting up. He was on the floor of the Doctor's TARDIS. When had he got on the floor of the Doctor's TARDIS? He definitely shouldn't be here. He'd been sheltering under a tarpaulin in a quarry in England. Had the Doctor found him? Damn and blast, he knew he should never have gone to sleep! But sleeping took his mind off his hunger, and the drumming, the... the... hang on.

He paused, cocked his head to one side and listened intently. He couldn't hear, because somebody was playing some terrible music at full blast. But it sounded, it sounded like the drums were...

Gone?

Surely not. No. That was impossible. The drums had been there since he was a young boy, since he had first looked into the Time Vortex . But now, that repeated rhythm, that tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap, one two three four, one two three four...

Gone.

"They're gone." the Doctor said, strolling into view.

For some reason he was wearing a hat similar to one worn by his fifth regeneration- the pretty blonde one- only this hat was green and with a huge feather that slightly resembled that of an albatross, only red.

"You took my drums?" the Master ventured slowly, trying to get to his feet but finding that he somehow couldn't.

The Doctor must have created some kind of biomechanical force field that was inhibiting his motor functions, somehow dampening his synapses to make his limbs heavy and his whole body rubbery. The Master struggled against it, trying to think. It was made harder by the awful music. It sounded like some sort of terrible Elvis wannabe was warbling right into the Master's head in something that was apparently supposed to be a catchy tune. From his brief fling with Earth popular music, he recognised it as Cliff Richard.

"Can you turn your music down?" the Master added testily, shaking his head like a dog trying to rid water from his ears.

"Ah." the Doctor said, his smile fading slightly, looking uncertain. "Yes, well. I couldn't remove the drums completely. I had to replace them with something."

Slowly, the truth dawned on the Master and he stared at the Doctor in disbelief.

"You took my drums..." he said slowly "And replaced them with a Cliff Richard song."

"Not just Cliff Richard!" the Doctor replied quickly, and then smiled again, moving forwards "Watch this!"

The Master flinched back as the Doctor approached, but somehow his enemy managed to reach him faster, and pressed the Master's nose as though it was a button. Blinking in outrage, the Master paused as the tune in his head seamlessly changed into another.

It was Kylie's 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head.'

"I can't work out if that's cruelly ironic or just plain stupid." the Master said hotly "You turned my drums into an internal iPod!"

"And it's on Shuffle, so you never know what you're going to get. Like a box of chocolates." the Doctor wittered brightly "Though I could only get fifteen tracks, that was the only CD I had to hand, and I had to delete some disk space to fit the last five on."

With a growing sense of horror, the Master began to realise why he felt so floppy and confused; that idiot Doctor had been erasing his vital functions and brain cells to make room for pop music.

"Right." he said tightly, before he exploded with fury, and the Doctor turned to him with a hopeful, Bambi-eyed expression.

"Since you don't have the drums anymore, I'm going to keep you here on my TARDIS to help me save the universe until you're sane and stop being so evil." he said, and then added "And I'm in love with you, so I expect we'll get married."

-----

The Master woke up in a cold sweat, curled up in the dirt in an English quarry with a gnawed thigh bone clutched to his chest. He paused, and listened to the steady drumbeat inside his head, and not a Doctor in sight.

Thank Rassilon for that.