A/N: Yeah, this is one of the reasons I'm so delayed on my Sparrow fics. My other obsession finally begged me to try oneshots. This started out as a game me and RaggyDoll play over IM, she playing 10, me being 11, and generally 'bzzting' one another with our imagined screwdrivers. Eventually she drew a picture on deviantart. The resulting retaliation is what you see below. Enjoy! Oh and P.S. for some reason the superscript isn't showing up, so if you see "The Doctor10" for example, the 10 is meant to be tiny. Thus, I slightly love deviantart more than you, fanfic! *Humph*

Green vs. Blue

It had been going on for months now. He wasn't even sure why he kept going back. The thrill of winning was addictive, but it was always cancelled out by the next failure. Every time he managed to get one point ahead, he vowed it would be the last time he would set foot in the paradox containment zone. Yet the Doctor's nagging sense of pride would get the better of him. Just one more triumph.

For the first time in days he had woken to find himself alone in the TARDIS without a single obligation. No distress signals, no messages on the psychic paper, no calls from anyone throughout Earth history. It should have been cause to celebrate, a chance to do absolutely anything in the universe one might do for leisure, but the infinite array of possibilities cancelled itself out and seemed boring. Besides, he'd done most of it before. Like a recurring itch he could feel the call of the game. No, no, no, no, no. He was absolutely not going to waste time on it any more. It was pointless and silly.

The Doctor yawned and sat up in his cabin-bed. He liked it more than the bunk-beds he'd given Amy and Rory. Initially a bed with a ladder had been the most exciting human sleeping area, until he remembered how much fun hammocks were. Eventually he had moved on to the cabin-bed. Cabin-beds were cool, and this one had a slide. The experience would be short-lived, he knew, but before River made another appearance, he was definitely going to enjoy it while he could.

Rubbing his face with both hands to clear the sleep, he then shuffled forward and pulled his dangling braces over his shoulders. It had been a tiring evening and he hadn't bothered undressing the night before. Anyway, you never knew when there would be an emergency. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, the Doctor slid down the blue slide and stumbled across the floor before going in search of the nearest bathroom – an adventure in itself since the myriad bathrooms, and their contents, within the TARDIS liked to swap round or materialise in inappropriate places. He had managed to stop that from happening whilst they had an occupant. The shrieking when Amy had popped up in the control room in a hot tub still rang in the recesses of his mind.

With his ablutions complete, the timelord paused outside the jungle-themed washroom. An elephantoid trumpeting at his back startled him into closing the door behind him. He adjusted his bowtie and eyed the length of the corridor. Mouth slightly open, he stared at a set of inviting stairs.

"No. Not today. I'm better than that."

The Doctor turned and made for the control room, slipping off past the next corner. A split-second later he was running back full pelt. "Oh no you don't!" He bounded down the steps two at a time, racing deeper into the complex maze of his ship. Tearing through the hallways, he skidded through the shimmering red veil that designated the paradox containment field. He had had the technology installed a year or so past, a very small portion of the TARDIS interior cordoned off to sustain a minor scale paradox. It was against the rules, really, but the power it used was minimal and it had strict rules of its own; a cluster of rooms able to simulate almost any environment possible, suspended in time and space for the use of more than one incarnation of the same timelord. He had only been using it to play the game.

He hurried through several apartments brimming with bizarre gadgets, across great lawns of wildflowers with skies of rising suns, over stepping stones in still pools that reflected shoals of rainbow fish swimming in the breeze. Other times he might have slowed to enjoy the sights but there was only one place he was seeking. Out in the snowy streets of holo-London, the Doctor discovered a familiar blue box. It was how she had looked before her change, a different blue and slimmer. Upon the door was a large post-it note with the phrase "Allons-y" scribbled on in black felt-tip.

Rolling his eyes, the Doctor stepped through the fake TARDIS door and found himself in a cosy little sweet-shop. Despite his eagerness not to lose the game, he could not help but smile in wonder. Colours and patterns surrounded him from ceiling to floor, beautiful and inviting. The smells of sugar and sherbert and mint and chocolate (as well as a few untranslatable alien delicacies) danced about the room, encouraging him to take deep breaths. He took a step further into the shop and froze as a beeping sound emitted from a corner. The Doctor turned to see a large monitor perched upon one of the shelves. It had begun to play a recording.

"'Ello," said the voice on the screen. A thin-faced man in dark-rimmed spectacles grinned and waggled his fingers in a wave. He was close-up to the monitor, but the collar of a brown coat was visible along with the top of a pin-striped suit. "You weren't in last time I popped by. Set off the signal, but you must've been asleep. Bless. Late night again? Body of your age, should be in bed by six o'clock. Anyway, thought I'd try a different tactic for our game and leave you a message. Ohh what an idea, brilliant, brilliant. 'Cause I can say exactly what I want and there's nothing you can do to stop me. Of course, sad news is I can't be there to see your face. Never mind. Next time, eh? Now where was I… what to say, what to say, ooh yes I know! I wrote you a poem."

The eleventh incarnation of the Doctor folded his arms and sucked his teeth in annoyance as he watched his past self produce a crumpled piece of paper and clear his throat.

"Your sonic's green, my sonic's blue,

Bowties are manky

And so are you!"

The Doctor10 lowered the paper and beamed out through the screen. "That was fun. Definitely trying that again. Poem needs a little work, but welllll, I was in a rush. Lots of things to see and do, I'm sure you know all about them being from the future an' all that." He scrunched up the piece of paper and tossed it over his shoulder. "So that's it for now. Point to me, I should think. What's that old human saying? Snooze, you lose? Love it. Anyway, bye!" He gave another inane wave before the screen went black. Almost immediately it sprang to life again. "Oops, sorry, almost forgot." The Doctor10 brought up his screwdriver and activated the sonic emitter, shining the blue light directly at his audience. "You're it!"

The recording switched off. In the silent simulation of the sweet shop, the Doctor11 stood with clenched teeth, his expression morphing through several types of frustration.

"Right," he said after letting out a long, slow breath. "Right. Okay. That's the way of it then, is it? Fine. Well, we'll just see about that." His eyes narrowed in thought, darted about the room and gradually his mouth formed a devious smile. "Challenge accepted, my old friend, my eternal rival, and I say: Bring. It. On." He turned and raced out of the shop.

Time rolled on into a new day and all was still in the simulated shop. A moment more passed before a bell jangled loudly throughout the containment zone. It was a tinny sound, the perfect match of an Earth shop-bell. A door opened behind the counter, allowing a man to saunter through. White converse padded quietly on the chequered floor, hands rested deep in pockets. The Doctor10 wandered idly across the floor, turning on the spot to admire the programming. Nothing seemed out of place since he had last visited and, despite the summons leading him to this very room, he could see no sign of his future presence. He waited a few minutes, smirking to himself and tutting mockingly.

All but given up on the appointment being kept, the Doctor10 reached into his coat and pulled out a tiny disc. Smug, he approached the slim box beneath the monitor. He whistled cheerily and reached out for the eject button.

A pinpoint of light blinked from the centre of the screen. He leapt back in surprise and stared at the image that followed.

"This thing working? Ah yes, there we go," The Doctor11 exclaimed from the screen. Crouched before the camera, his hands were seen to clap with glee. "Hello younger me!" He waved. "I see you got my signal. Oh and might I say, spectacular job on the holo-handiwork. Very snazzy. Must say, though, I'm less impressed by the poem. Not exactly Yeats standard, and it's factually inaccurate. Never mind the bowtie, how can I be described as 'manky' …?"

The Doctor10, already bored of the response, groaned. "Isn't that original? Using a pre-recorded message and doing exactly what your other self did? Bravo, Mr Copycat, well done. Ten points for creativity, no wait, eleven. That's your sort of number. Not happy with the round ten so you have to sneak in a smarmy extra digit just to sound clever. Off you go, you're still rambling on, forcing me to look at your weird face and that awful hair…"

"…like some gone-off cheese found in the displacement drive. Just rude, if you ask me. Like if I told you how funny you look when you get angry. Seriously, talk about rattus rattus. Anyway, I'm sure you've stopped listening by now and have already started whingeing on about how much better you are than me and how terribly rubbish I am using your idea. Well, guess what?" The Doctor11 revealed his own screwdriver, holding it vertically on the screen. He grinned goofily then leaned forward to grab the camera. The viewpoint turned to face a blank wall in some confined space. It showed a panel sliding open.

The Doctor10 saw the back of his own head.

"Surprise!" cried the Doctor11. "It's a live feed!"

His tenth incarnation whirled to see him peering out from a secret compartment behind the shelving. The green light of his screwdriver had already activated, but that was not the only noise. The persistent 'bzzzzzzzz' of the Eleventh's sonic came from every direction, a swarm of electric wasps humming in unison. The Doctor10 spun in circles, eyes darting about the room for the source.

"What?"

"I've had time to prepare," Eleven called above the din. "See the brilliant thing about a paradox containment field is you can bring an object in as many times as you like so long as you enter a room at a different moment and remove it again at a later point. Naturally you have to cross your own timestream, which gets a bit confusing seeing all your other selves setting everything up, but it's very handy if you accidentally drop something. " He laughed sharply. "And you thought you could best me? Silly old me. Here we go then…" With a great inane grin plastered on his features, the Doctor11 changed the frequency on his own screwdriver to a deafening high pitch. "GERONIMOOOOO!"

The Doctor10 yelled as a hundred screwdrivers joined in with the racket, causing entirely real jars of sweets to explode all around. Humbugs; lollipops; liquorice; fruit chews; from tangy lemon dippers to toffees and fizzy bootlaces, all showered down upon Ten's unwitting head. Green points of light lit him up like the target of a festive SWAT team.

Whooping victoriously, the Doctor11 pounced out, knocking the shelves barring his way to the floor. "You've been tagged!" He released the emitter, stopping the cacophony, and strode toward his counterpart.

Luck did not prevail. Eleven stepped onto a scattering of mint imperials and was sent hurtling into Ten. The two Doctors screamed, crashing to a floor littered with painfully hard candies and broken glass. Whimpering, they lay side by side, fortunately not cut, but surely bruised. Despite their discomfort, they remained prone for a time, listening to the aftermath of today's battle of 'sonic tag'.

The Doctor11 winced and shifted. The hand not gripping tight to his screwdriver brought out a paper bag. Offering it to the Doctor10 beside him, he wheezed:

"Jelly baby?"