Challenge #01871-E047: Know When to Walk Away

Hello! I would find it immensely amusing if you would write a fic where Maxim (Girl Genius) and/or any of the Jägers run into Taako (TAZ) and strike up a conversation about hats. Your writing is great and I am highly impressed with how much you manage to write. Thanks for listening! :) -- HowShouldIKnow

Never mind how they got there. The meeting should have been brief. It should have resulted in one of them knowing something the other had to bargain and both of them walking away and muttering, "Sucker..." in evident glee. And yet, the conversation had turned to, of all things, hats.

"Of course it changes every day. I'm a wizard. My hat is me. It suits my mood, my wardrobe... goes with everything, darling."

Maxim was no fool. He'd tangled with technomancy, struggled against sparks, this was not the day to waltz with a wizard. "End who do hyu hev to keel to get vun like dot?"

"Well, technically, I stole mine," said Taako. "Just as good. But... you still have to be a wizard. You don't know what little security systems I've imbued into this little baby over the years." The glamorous Elf pondered this. "In fact, I don't think I remember half of them either. Do you feel lucky? Punk?"

Maxim swiped it. "Hy tink hy do. Tenks." But before he could nestle his prize on his head, a bucket's worth of loose, chocolate pudding oozed out and over the Jäger.

"Oooh, chocolate," said Taako. "That's a devil to get out of anything fashionable."

"Very fonny," growled Maxim, still putting the hat on. Chocolate pudding or no chocolate pudding. "Henny odder tricks up hyu sleeve?"

"It's not my sleeve you stole, homie." Taako magicked a stopwatch out of nowhere and watched its hands in anticipatory schadenfreude. "And I want to remind you at this point that it's real bad luck to steal a wizard's hat."

VADABLAM. A stroke of lightning, out of a clear blue sky, avoided all the gothic steeples and lightning rods in the immediate area and turned Maxim into a charred silhouette. Maxim coughed. "Hokay... dot vas a leedle on de rough side..."

"It gets rougher," singsonged Taako. "That was from my sister, bee tee dubs. The next one aughta be from me. And she and I were trying to beat each other in a 'what's worse' contest."

Someone shrieked. It was not the kind of shriek that Jägers were used to. This was an oh-my-good-golly-gosh-that-is-a-famous-person-in-my-line-of-sight shriek. "It's Schvartzengelber!"

Maxim was instantly swarmed by avaricious teenagers who were determined to grab hold of a little slice of fame. Literally. He was lucky to escape with only light cuts and his underdrawers intact. Of course, the hat never obtained the slightest touch of harm.

And then he was struck by lightning twice.

"Much though I love my sister, I do," said Taako. "She's real unoriginal when she's drunk."

"Hy changed my mind," croaked Maxim, removing the hat and handing it back. "Dis is not a nize hat."

Taako took it back and put it back on. "Suits me just fine, bro. Now. If you wanna steal some quality millinery... You see that fancy boy over there with the glasses and the magic wand?"

The words 'magic wand' percolated into Maxim's mind and came out as, 'trouble'. "Hy'm not goink hennyvere near heem."

"And they said Jägers were stoopid..." said Taako.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / MariaZebroff]

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