Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Seven — In Which Broccoli Gets to Wear Many Hats
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 MillineryF — 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: FrolickingRank: FI 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 ResistanceRank: 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!This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.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: IntimidationRank: FI 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: CajoleryRank: 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: CaptainingRank: 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 ManipulationRank: 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.
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Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Eight — Clearing the Air
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Eight — Clearing the Air I pushed the brush forwards, carefully edging it along the sides of the plank so that not one drop dribbled off the edge. The wood beneath took on a beautiful wet sheen that matched the rest of the deck.Lowering the brush, I used the sleeve of a big shirt Gen-Gen had found for me, and wiped at my forehead. There was still a lot of the Beaver Cleaver’s deck to cover in varnish, but what I had done looked great. The sticky paint-like stuff made the wood look a lot darker and shinier, and with a bit of well-focused Cleaning magic I could remove any dust or stray leaves that landed on the stuff before it dried.Gen-Gen had even helped me find a big floppy hat covered in colourful stains.New Skill Acquired: PaintingRank: FThe ship was really coming along. Awen had replaced some of the pulleys with a bit of help from some mechanics that Rosaline sent, and the hull was completely repainted already.The entire ship was cleaned from top to bottom already, which certainly helped make it look newer.All we needed to do was finish up the painting and bring in some new furnishings for the inside. We didn’t need all that many bedrooms and rooms inside, and since we weren’t exactly using him for cargo hauling or anything, the room inside the Beaver was kind of... vast.At least, it was vast when I considered how space on an airship was usually at a premium.I was dipping my long-handled brush back in the pan of varnish when I heard some clunking from off to the side. A head of blonde hair soon appeared over the side of the ship between the two poles of a ladder, followed by Awen’s big inquisitive eyes. “Ah... hi,” she said, just her head and shoulders poking over the gunwale.“Hey!” I said. “You might want to wait before coming back up. I just painted that part of the deck and it’s probably still wet.”“Oh,” she said with a glance down. “Yes, okay. I wasn’t here to...”She lapsed into silence for a moment."To?" I finally prodded.Awen didn’t meet my eyes for a moment. I saw her hands tighten and loose on the topmost rung of the ladder. “Broccoli, I need help,” she said in a voice so small I had to strain all four ears to hear it.I dropped my brush to the side and walked over, ignoring the prints I was leaving on the still-wet deck. “Okay,” I said. “What do you need?”“Awa, it’s not that u-urgent!” Awen stammered. She wiggled her hands about in denial a bit, started to tip backwards, then seized the rung again. “Um... but, but if you want to talk now then that’s okay too, I suppose. Not here though.”I nodded and stepped up onto the ship’s railing. “In the workshop?” I asked. “I’m kind of curious to know what you’re working on.”“Ah, yes, okay.” Awen said before she started to scramble down the steps.I hopped down and landed in the courtyard below with bent knees and a big huff of expelled breath. A glance up the ship a dozen meters up showed Awen moving down with surprising alacrity.I might have taken the ladder too, but it wasn’t as fun, and I was wearing an old ratty skirt that one of the maids had insisted I wear instead of my battledress. They were probably worried I’d get it stained. Ladders and skirts just didn’t mix.Awen landed with a soft thud on the grass next to me, then she spent a moment brushing her clothes before turning my way. “Um. This way?” she asked.I nodded along, a bit of a smile tugging at the corner of my lips, but I didn’t want her to think that I thought she was really cute when she was all proper-like because that would make her feel bad.Awen led me over to the workshops that she’d practically been living in since Rosaline showed them to her. I supposed that she had years of pent-up tinkering to work through, and now that she had all the tools she could want or need at her disposal, she was going all out.There were a lot of projects strewn about and half-finished. I could only guess at what half of them were even supposed to be.The tension in Awen’s shoulders loosened a bit as we stood in the shop. She faced some of the machines and knickknacks covering an otherwise tidy workbench.I wanted to ask her what she needed help with, but I had the impression that she didn’t just need a pair of hands to lift something up, so I gave her some time to get her thoughts in order.That could be hard sometimes. I often found my mind going to all sorts of weird places when I let it.“Broccoli,” Awen began. She picked a wrench from the workbench and started to fiddle with it. “Did you ever fall in love before?”That explained what this was all about, at least in part. I took a moment to think of a nice answer for her. We would probably be retreading some earlier conversations again, but that was okay too. “Not really,” I said. “At least, not in the way you mean.”She turned the wrench over slowly. “What do you mean?” she asked.I found a cleared bit of bench and hopped onto it so that I was sitting. “There’re..” I paused and changed tactics. “There’s a place where I’m from that speaks a different language. They have a bunch of words for love. They mean different things. Like how you might love your parents and siblings, or how you love a friend, or you might love someone who’s really special to you.”Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.Awen nodded her understanding.“I love you. And I love Amaryllis. And I love Orange too when she’s not being a pain in the butt.” Which reminded me... where was Orange? I set that aside for the moment.“I think I see,” Awen said. She turned around fully, still idly fiddling with the wrench. “Broccoli, do girls where you’re from like... other girls?”“Some of them do,” I said. “Not all of them, of course.”“Oh. Back home that’s... not something that’s normal.”I didn’t know what to say about that. I really wanted to hug her, because hugs made things better, but I wasn’t sure if that was appropriate just yet. “I guess you can make it normal, then,” I said.Awen smiled wistfully for just a moment before the expression dropped with a sigh. She set the wrench onto the bench behind her and pressed a hand over her heart. “I don’t know how I’ve been feeling,” she said. “About Rosaline and about... you. It’s all weird, and I don’t know if I have the words for it. But it’s-it’s not nice, but it’s also not bad.”I tightened my grip on the edge of the table I was sitting on. “I think that maybe you’ve been through a lot? Like getting away from your family, and being free, and then being around me and now with Rose. You had a lot of big adventures in a short time.”Awen nodded. “I guess. I just don’t know what to do now.”I grinned over to her. “You can do whatever you want Awen. I’ll always be there to support you,” I said.She smiled back, a small smile, but a smile still. “You make it really hard sometimes,” she said.I was going to ask what she meant, but Awen stepped across the room and came to stand right up in front of me.“Broccoli,” she said.“Awen?”And then she leaned forwards and pressed her lips against mine. Just a quick peck that ended as soon as it began.Awen scampered back, face blossoming in bright red. “I’m... sorry. It’s just, you said that I was free, that I could do what I wanted and I’ve wanted to do that since I met you. And I know you’re not that way. And that’s okay. I think, I think I’m better now. But it’s all thanks to you and-”“Awen,” I said. Now I was the one blushing a bit. “It’s... okay?”She looked down, not that it did much to hide the incandessence of her face. “I... okay,” she said. “I’m going to date Rosaline.”I blinked. That had come from nowhere. “Uh. Alright.”“I don’t know if I feel the same way about her as I do... but that’s okay. She’s nice, and friendly, and I think that even if things don’t work out we’ll still be friends. So it’ll be nice to learn and-” she swallowed as her face somehow got even more red. “And try new things.”I nodded. “That does sound nice,” I said. “Can I be your bridesmaid if you get married?”“Awa! No! It’s too soon for that kind of thing!”I giggled and jumped off the bench to pull Awen into a big hug. She tensed for just a moment before loosening up. “So,” I said. “Want to show me what you’ve been building?”“Yes!” Awen said. She nodded her head like a crazed woodpecker and started to gesture at things. I let her go so that she could show off better.“What did you make?” I asked.“I started by improving on the design for my crossbow. It’s got a sight now, like a telescope. I still need to mark its ranges But that’s an issue for later.” She grabbed my wrist and pulled me deeper into the workshop while her voice grew faster and more excited. “I got to thinking. My uncle always said that air-piracy was a bit of a problem, and that the best way to get past them was to be an unappealing target. Even tigers hesitate to eat a hedgehog. But the Beaver Cleaver isn’t very scary looking, so that wouldn’t work.”“Okay,” I said.“So I had another idea.” She stopped before a big thing and gestured at it. “This!”I stared. It was about the size of a bike, with a bench at the back, set atop a pair of steel rails and a sort of turnable base with little notches to lock it in place. The entire front of it had not one but three recurve crossbows mounted one atop the other with a complex mechanism that I suspected was made to reload it with the pull of a crank.“What is it?” I asked.“It’s a rapid-firing automatic ballista,” Awen said. “It’s like my crossbow, but it fires much bigger and stronger bolts.” She opened up a box next to the chair and pulled out a three foot long shaft with some fletching on one end and a glass head on the other. “See the head? It’s a bulb that you can fill with anything you want. I was thinking some reactants could do the trick. Rosaline mentioned one that catches fire when in contact with the air. So it could be very dangerous against wooden ships. And we could fill them with acids too! If we come up against a more modern ship it could do a lot of damage to their hull. But I think the kinetic damage alone would do a lot.”“Yes!”“And the rails,” she went on. “I’m thinking that we can make them go from one side of the ship to the other. So that we could fire from both sides with only one device and it can be safely stored in the cargo hold until it’s needed. I made it so that you can turn it by moving your foot on that pedal, and unlock it with the other foot, and when you’re not moving, that third pedal cranks new bolts into the feed.”I smiled and let her babble on until Amaryllis found us some minutes later and started yelling at us to get ready for our big evening.
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