**A plot bunny that came as they often do: mid-morning when I'm just about to walk out the door. Enjoy!**
The Doctor had set the coordinates for random, so random's what they got. He didn't check the monitor, as usual. He jumped out the door without waiting for Clara to put on a sweater, and the first thing she heard was:
"Holy TARDIS of Gallifrey! Clara, look at all of the FEZZES!"
Earlier…
"You know what would be great?"
Clara leaned with him against the metal bar and humored him. "What, Doctor?"
He smiled and twitched his red bowtie ever so slightly with his fingers. "A fez. Better yet, a lot of fezzes. Maybe a whole TARDIS filled to the brim with them! Now that, that would be a lot of fezzes."
The lights above them flickered and a frown crossed the Doctor's face. "What do you mean that wouldn't be a good idea? Old girl, you don't understand. Think of the potential! You could have a separate hall with an infinite number of rooms just to contain them all."
The lights flickered on and off like strobe lights for a moment, and one of the buttons on the console emitted a burst of sparks on its own. Clara grinned. "Seems She doesn't like that idea."
"Course She does, She loves the idea." He looked to his flat brown shoes and grumbled, "She just doesn't know it yet."
In an instant the Doctor's face brightened and he bounced off the pole, a gleam in his eye. "Off to an adventure! What do you say, Clara, backwards, forwards, or somewhere in the middle? On second thought, don't choose that last option, I would hate to end up in another dimension.
Clara shrugged. "We haven't done random in a while."
"Perfect!" The Doctor flipped a tiny switch, spun a dial, and suddenly the time rotor was in motion, rolling up and down in perfect synchronization with the ship's groans.
Now…
No, no, Clara thought. Not fezzes, he can't be serious…
Clara tried not to audibly groan as she stepped out of the time-and-space ship and saw that he was not mistaken. They had landed in a deserted field, a magenta-tinged sky above them, and at their feet lay miles and miles of maroon fezzes, stretching to the far horizon. Some were in piles that towered above their heads, and other sections seemed only a hat or two deep, but no matter where they looked there was a fez. They might as well have been standing on a landmass floating on the water made entirely of those stupid velvet red hats Clara loathed so much.
Which was why Clara had such a hard time preventing herself from running right back into the TARDIS and attempting to dematerialize on the spot, fezzed-up Doctor be damned.
The Doctor was an excitable mess, never moving from his spot next to the TARDIS (couldn't risk stepping on one of his precious "discoveries", Clara seethed), yet filled with nearly uncontainable energy. "Look, Clara! All the fezzes all in one place! This must be a whole planet covered in fezzes!" He stopped flailing his arms about, leaned down, and stared hard at the fez closest to him, scrutinizing it with both eyes. "Do they grow here? Do you pluck them from trees or dig them up from the ground like turnips? Where do they come from? And why haven't I seen or heard of this planet before? Are they made by a local species?" He looked quickly at Clara and gave her his most winning smile. "Clara, we must find the makers of these fezzes! He can custom make them!"
Good thing his "winning smile" had lost its charm a long time ago. Clara crossed her arms and shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. But even as she planted her feet more firmly in the "ground" (there were too many hats to tell if it was dirt or grass or anything solid), she made sure to keep as far away from the hats as possible. There was something in the air…a sense of foreboding that the Doctor was too excited to sense yet. Why'd the TARDIS bring them here? And where was everyone? No field could be this devoid of tall trees, or life…or some amount of movement.
Inevitably, the Doctor's hand shot out and grabbed the fez he had been looking at. He stood up tall and admired the hat against the pinkish sky, and grinned when he liked how the sky's color complemented the fez's beauty rather than diminishing it.
"Careful…" Clara couldn't help but mutter.
"Careful? Of this hat?" The Doctor replied glancing her way for only a moment. "It's such a magnificent hat. I think I'd to keep this one."
He was right, she was just being foolish, worried about what a stupid hat could do. But the lack of wind on this planet unnerved her. The distant piles of fezzes were starting to look more and more like gravestones.
The Doctor, now finished admiring his prize, raised the fez to his head to put in on. It sat on his thin head for a few moments, before surprising them both by leaping off on its own accord and floating back to its fellow hats.
"Moving hats? Moving—AH! They're alive!" The Doctor shouted triumphantly. Clara blinked hard and subtly moved closer to the TARDIS, now wary of the pile of motionless fezzes closest to her.
"How fascinating! Clara, over here!"
She shook her head, despite the fact he was squatting among the field of fezzes and couldn't see her. "Doctor, no. For once, let's leave before we have to run for our lives."
The Doctor put his arms on his elbows and rested his chin on his hands, like some thoughtful monkey. "But Clara, these hats are alive! Maybe they're not hats at all and are a species that just looks like them. Maybe this planet is what inspired the design for fezzes."
Clara rolled her eyes and rubbed her sleeves nervously. No signs of movement, and yet she couldn't shake the feeling that the red hats were watching them, waiting for their next move.
The Doctor, perhaps satisfied that he'd calmed his nervous-prone companion for the moment, picked up the hat again. Its motionless state did nothing to calm Clara's nerves.
"See? Just shy, is all! Aren't you, my little fez?" He cooed. "Just a perfectly formed, maroon-colored—OW!"
At the same moment the Doctor jumped to his feet with a fez clamped around his hand, him trying desperately to pry it off, the entire field came eerily to life. Clara watched in terror as the multitude of fezzes shifted and rolled like a swarm or a sea, the distant piles of red velvet hats moving closer with the tide.
"Doctor!" Clara shouted frantically, retreating to the TARDIS as she tried to keep the swarm within her line of sight.
"I see it," the Doctor grunted. After finally managing to make the fez release him (twisting the tiny ball on the top seemed to be painful for the living accessory) he raced back to the TARDIS, shoving Clara inside first and slamming the door shut after him.
The ocean of fezzes had caught up with them, and they pounded into the TARDIS like walls of rocks, making the whole ship shift back and forth. "Are they burying us?" Clara muttered.
"Almost, but not quite," the Doctor replied as he pranced around the console. "A planet of deadly fezzes!" His frown was so deep it made his whole face crease. "That's simply terrible. Clara, remind me to never go there again."
She glared at the back of his head. "You don't have to ask me twice."
Outside, one of the fezzes, the one the Doctor had been admiring in particular, settled directly above the TARDIS light. It covered the lamp perfectly, and the creature marveled in how perfectly it fit and how nicely the light warmed its insides. Not that it really had any; the "deadly fezzes" were created by an eccentric, and lonely, scientist who'd wanted a hat to be his companion. However, his experiment soon affected every hat in town, and for some reason the fezzes became the most aggressive of them all, consuming everything in their path. The Doctor and Clara had come in a small pocket of time when the fezzes had overtaken entire planet, before their lack of space travel and ability to reproduce eventually led to them rotting to death.
The little fez did not have much awareness for its brethren, and only cared for itself. It liked its spot on the lamp, and did not want to move.
But the warm lamp did eventually leave, along with the rest of the TARDIS (who seemed to be laughing in an odd, mechanical, telepathic sort of way), and the fez had to float to the ground with the rest of its doomed species.