Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Seven - In Which Broccoli Gets to Wear Many Hats

I stared at the straw hat with its one poked-through hole, then I glanced up at the prompt I’d summoned from Mister Menu.

Mad Millinery

F - 00%

The ability to gain proficiency or skills from wearing headgear.

I looked back down at the straw hat and tried to put two and two together in a way that made sense. Instead I came up with a fat load of nothing.

Amaryllis leaned to the side a little, as if to better see my face. “I can ask the woman at the counter to see if they have a washroom,” she said.

“What?”

She gestured to my face. “You’re either more confused than usual, or you’re trying hard not to pass gas.”

“Amaryllis!” I said before looking around to make sure no one heard. “That’s rude!”

“Says you,” she said. “So what’s got you so confused? It can’t be the hat. If it falls apart at one poke it’s just plain unimpressive. We might have to buy it to avoid making a scene though.”

I wiggled the hat I’d poked. “When I made a hole in this I got a skill,” I said.

She closed her eyes and let out a long suffering sigh. “Please tell me you didn’t get some hat-destruction skill?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing like that,” I said. “I got.... Mad Millinery.”

Her brows knit together and she looked between the hat and myself. “That’s a new one to me. Millinery not so much. It’s a rather dull but necessary profession. It’s the ‘Mad’ part that sounds bizarre.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The skill description says something about gaining skills from wearing headgear.”

Amaryllis’ eyes narrowed. She took the hat from my hands, twisted it around a bit, then jammed a talon through it to make a hole opposite the one I’d already made. “Put this on,” she said.

I snorted and bowed my head a bit so that my ears could dip forwards. It was kind of tricky pointing them into the holes, like sliding a thread through the eye of a needle, only instead of thread it was a somewhat prehensile furry limb and instead of a hole it was... a hole with bits of quashed straw around it.

Wiggling my head a little so that my ears waddled through did the trick once the first bits were through, though that did make the tufts of white fur at the base of my ears squish too.

New Skill Acquired: Frolicking

Rank: F

I blinked. “Amaryllis,” I said.

She took a deep breath as if expecting something terrible. “Yes, Broccoli?”

“I just unlocked the Frolicking skill.”

The harpy smacked a wing over her face. “World dammit, Broccoli.”

I pulled the hat off my head and held it up halfway up my ears.

Skill Lost: Frollicking

“Ohh,” I said. “I get it.” I let the hat go and it plopped back down after I wiggled my ears a bit to loosen them. I regained the Frollicking skill. “My new skill provides a skill based on the hat I’m wearing.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Amaryllis said.

“Of course it does,” I said. “It’s a skill-skill. The hat helps you do something, in this case.” I tapped the brim of the straw hat. “Frollicking! I guess that at the lowest rank the skill it gives isn’t all that helpful, but I bet it’ll get higher if I get my Mad Millinery skill up too.”

“And how, exactly, would you increase that skill’s rank?” Amaryllis asked.

I rolled my eyes. Not because I was an eye-rolling kind of girl, but because I knew it would bother the heck out of Amaryllis and she was cute when she got flustered. “Obviously by wearing nice hats.”

I frollicked expertly over to the nearest rack of bun-wearable hats and started to search through them. This new skill was giving me all sorts of ideas. Not only was I now able to get some new, temporary skills, it also allowed me to try all sorts of things that I might like. And then I could figure out which hat was appropriate for any given situation.

It was perfect!

“Just don’t go overboard,” Amaryllis said as she followed me at a more sedate and boring pace. “I’m not going to bankroll your hat-shopping spree.”

“Just you wait. I’ll find a banker hat and become rich in no time at all.”

I slid the sunhat off and handed it to Amaryllis who tucked it under a wing, then I looked over the many, many hats on display. I couldn’t afford that many of them, so I’d need to pick out those with the neatest skills tied to them.

The first hat I picked off the rack was the strangest one there. A pair of long wooly tubes that looked more like socks, held together with a cloth strap between them. They were open at the ends and very floppy.

I wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t socks until I used Insight on them.

A pair of new Bun earmuffs of uncommon quality.

I picked up the earmuffs and carefully slid my ears into the tube until just the tip was sticking out of the top. They were quite snuggly and warm, and the little strap made to run down under my chin kept them firmly in place.

New Skill Acquired: Cold Resistance

Rank: F

“Huh, cold resistance,” I said. A glance at the price, which was fairly low, and I decided that I could use a pair of nice warm earmuffs. I might have to buy a second pair for my other ears, but that was okay. I bet I could find some with matching colours! Or contrasting colours!

I gave the bunny-ear muffs to Amaryllis, then picked up a nice bonnet with some silk-lined holes cut into it.

New Skill Acquired: Intimidation

Rank: F

I pulled the bonnet off and used Insight on it.

A pretty floral bonnet of common quality.

“Oh-kay,” I said as I set that one aside.

I tried on a beanie that gave a bonus to poison resistance, and a small sombrero that granted guitar-playing skills.

Those weren’t the hats that really had me excited though. Those I set aside and lined them all up. Three beautiful pieces of headwear that stood out from all the rest.

The first was a nice top hat, all black satin with a red band around it that partially hid the holes cut into it. I set it atop my head with all the reverence it deserved, then grinned wide as its prompt appeared before me.

New Skill Acquired: Cajolery

Rank: F

“Perfect,” I said. “I should wear this one to the ball!”

Amaryllis tilted her head to one side. “The band’s the wrong colour,” she pointed out.

“I’m sure I can find a blue one to go on top of it. Or we could get it replaced. It can’t be that hard.”

“Fair enough. What’s the skill for it?” she asked.

“Cajolery,” I said. “It’s not ballroom dancing or gentlemanliness like I thought it might be, but it still sounds like a useful social skill to have.”

She nodded. “That does sound good to have. World knows you might need it.”

I added the hat to the hat pile, then picked up the next one. It was a tricorn, with a big feather in its side and an expertly pinched top. It was no doubt one of the biggest, most elaborate hats around, especially with the bits of silver poking through in the form of bird-shaped brooches here and there.

New Skill Acquired: Captaining

Rank: F

“Yes!” I cheered. “Sky captain Bunch is a go!”

Amaryllis shook her head to hide a smile. “You got an airship-related skill?” she asked.

“Captaining,” I said. “It sounds perfect.”

She sighed. “I suppose. The only issue is that I’d have to accept you as my captain on our trip.”

I turned to her, eyes widening and ears drooping.

“Urgh, I don’t mind it that much,” she said. “Now stop looking at me as if I’ve offered to sell your eggs by the dozen.”

I laughed and pulled her into a quick hug. A quick one, because I had one last hat to try on. The tricorn came off and was added to the growing yes pile, and then I rubbed my hands together in mounting anticipation.

The final hat, unlike the tricorn, didn’t have all that many embellishments, feathers or doodads stuck to it. It was a rather plain hat, if a bit of a big one.

“Insight,” I muttered.

An old bun wizard's hat of uncommon quality.

For all its plainess, the wizard’s hat was gorgeous. Tall, with a floppy peak and a brim so wide that it gave the sombrero a run for its money, the wizard’s hat was exactly what I imagined a proper wizard ought to wear.

“That thing is disgustingly old fashioned,” Amaryllis said.

“It’s perfect,” I rebutted as I picked it up and plopped it on. The hat’s brim drooped a bit around me, and its peak flopped from one side to the other until it was pushing one of my bun ears out of the way, but it was still a comfortable fit.

New Skill Acquired: Mana Manipulation

Rank: F

“Yes!” I said as I bounced up and down. I crashed into Amaryllis with a big happy hug so that I could share some of the joy. “It gives Mana Manipulation! Fireballs for days!”

“I shudder in sympathy for the world,” she deadpanned.

I giggled as I imagined how much easier casting big complicated fireballs would be now. To be fair, at rank F, it wasn’t that big of a boost. In fact, the lowest rank of stuff didn’t seem to give any instincts or knowledge at all, nothing that I couldn’t figure out, at least. So I’d need to get things to rank E and D to really profit from it.

Which meant grinding my ability to wear hats.

That sounded easy enough.

“Are you going to try on your turtle hat?” Amaryllis asked.

I nodded. “Of course! I’ve been wearing that one for a long time now. But it’s back at your house.”

I hadn’t seen much point in shopping with armour on, so I’d gone out in only the dress part of my battledress. It was a lot breezier and not as heavy.

“Can you pass me the straw hat? I want to see if I can practice my frolicking technique.”

“You moron,” she muttered as she juggled through the pile of hats I’d been shoving into her arms and fetched the one at the very bottom. In thanks, I plopped my new wizard hat atop her head.

“That looks nice on you,” I said. “You should get a proper wizard-y outfit. Maybe a staff?”

“That’s a bit phallic for me,” she dismissed.

I shrugged. I didn’t know what style that was, but if she didn’t think it suited her, then that was that.

“You’re thinking stupid thoughts again,” Amaryllis said.

“What? No I’m not! I’m thinking that you’re able to pick out your own way of dressing,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes. “That sounds borderline idiotic.”

I protested in the most civil way I could think of by sticking my tongue out at her and frolicking my way over to the counter to pay for my bounty of new hats.

***