With special thanks to LordK, Sightedjt, Dirtnap, and Firn, whose ramblings in the rolz room spawned this horrible monster. Also, I claim no responsibility if "hat" no longer looks like a word to you.
---
"Oriko Mikuni!"
Oriko looked up from her tea to see Sabrina glaring at her from across the yard. "Hello, Sabrina. It's a lovely day, isn't it?"
"Yes." Sabrina's gaze bored into Oriko's, the latter of whom mostly looked sleepy. "And I'm here to finish you off! I know the source of your power, and I can use that to defeat you!"
"I had a feeling this would happen," Oriko said with a slight smirk. "Very well, then. Are you going to fight me or not?"
"Not at all." Sabrina's words, for a moment, broke Oriko's practiced stoicism. "I know now that the true source of your power is that stupid hat!" Oriko's eyes grew wide, while Sabrina continued. "I realized its true nature when I saw you focusing your powers that time. Clearly, it is what enables you to see your visions! If I can dominate your hat, I can dominate you!"
Oriko nodded, frowning in an ever so slight fashion that was all that was visible of a seething rage at being found out. "Very astute, Sabrina. But how will you defeat a hat like mine?" In a flash of white light tinged sickly green, Oriko was clad in her magical girl uniform, with the large, bucket-like mitre now on full display. With a practiced, casual air, she doffed it, letting her platinum-blonde curls loose for a moment before putting it back in place. "Come then, Sabrina, if you think you can."
Sabrina drew her own Soul Gem, and let a soft blue light flood over her body as her longcoat took shape. She raised her hammer, and planted it in the ground. "Oriko?", she said, a note of mocking challenge in her voice.
"Yes?"
"
Watch this." Sabrina drew a marble of Grief from the folds of her coat, and let it discorporate into a cloud of dark smoke. She flicked her fingers, and with a flourish, she formed it into a strange, flat shape, which she forced over her head. A tall cone pointed upwards, and in moments, the shape of a wide-brimmed witch's hat had coalesced over Sabrina's head.
Oriko watched, bemused. "A witch's hat? You challenge me with a witch's hat? How quaint." But nonetheless, she did notice the tassels on her hat twitching oddly, which she silenced with a glare.
"Thought it appropriate as a starter," Sabrina said, cracking her knuckles. She appeared to be examining her hand for a moment, when, with a flick of her wrist, two more marbles appeared in her hand. "That was one marble. Let's see how you handle three."
The marbles cracked and issued the same dark smoke, which flowed into the hat. The brim became fully a meter across, and the conical point curled into a tight spiral, growing huger by the second. Though it remained a witch's hat, it was now easily one of the most impressive that had ever sat on a magical girl's head.
Oriko was now gripping the tassels of her hat as they writhed like small snakes. She reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out her cell phone. "Yes, Kirika, dear? Sabrina is being a problem. Could you bring the thing? Yes, the other thing as well."
Sabrina smiled. "Not even three marbles and you're already calling for help? I though that hat of yours was unequaled, but you certainly don't fulfill that reputation."
Oriko snapped her phone shut, with a perceptible glare. "You are plainly a novice to the art of hat-wearing, Sabrina. Do you think I walk around with my full power showing at all times? No, like a shounen protagonist, I conserve my hat for the most important moments." She unclipped her Soul Gem, and raised it to her forehead. "What you see now is my hat in its sealed form. I will lift the level of restriction by
one."
A sudden wind picked up, and Oriko became shrouded in white light. Sabrina covered her eyes with her sleeve, squeezing them shut to block out the wind. When she opened them, she had to close them again to make sure she wasn't hallucinating.
Oriko's hat had now doubled in size. It was significantly larger than her head, and the tassels now went below her waist. It had expanded an additional tier, giving it a resemblance to a wedding cake, and the ruffles that had once adorned it had grown into a full-blown veil in the front and a cape in the back. A dramatic wind blew about the seer, causing the veil and cape, along with her dress (which now seemed like rather an afterthought) to billow behind her. Oriko took a step forward, anticipating a victory.
But Sabrina refused to back down. Straight-backed, her gaze unwavering, she pulled a handful of marbles from her (evidently rather deep) pockets. "You think I'm a novice to hats? I'll have you know I've read comic books! Comic books by Jack Kirby!"
The marbles floated, one by one, into the air, before zooming into the hat. It bubbled and shifted, the witch hat dissolving into a black mass that took on a dozen forms as ideas flashed through Sabrina's magnificent brain. Eventually, it settled on a hat that towered almost a meter and a half into the air, one that blurred the lines of hat and helmet with its heavy black metal construction and nose guard. Its top was crowned with spikes, large horns stuck from the front, and a pair of strange, hard-angled ornaments now poked from either side, lending the hat the appearance of an enormous tuning fork. All told, it resembled more a sort of strange sci-fi building than any sort of hat, and yet there it was, atop Sabrina's head. The wearer of the hat (though "wearer" was becoming increasingly vague at this point) crossed her arms as her creation teetered precariously. "Try this one on for size!"
"
O-RI-KOOOOO!" Kirika skidded into the yard, a large canvas bag slung over one shoulder. "I got the thing!" She reached inside the bag, and removed a carton of ice cream.
"Thank you, Kirika." Oriko took the ice cream, popped off the top, and threw the carton into the air. Suddenly, the tassels sprang into action, coiling around the carton and squeezing it. The ice cream popped out with a loud squelching sound, and landed into the second tier. Unperturbed by this bizarreness, Oriko removed a spoon from a fold of her dress, and placed it within one of the waiting tassels. The tassel wrapped around the spoon, and lifted it to the top of the hat, where it took a scoop of the ice cream. Kirika gave a toothy grin and opened her mouth, allowing the tassel to feed her a scoop of the ice cream. She swallowed it, and leaned in to peck Oriko on the cheek. Oriko's face turned very slightly pink, but she nonetheless kept her eyes on Sabrina, who was currently gaping at the two as if they were on fire.
"Do you see, Sabrina?" Oriko said, as her hat continued to feed Kirika. "A true master of hats understands that a hat can be more than just a tool for war, but can also be used to increase the bonds between others. You only see in the hat the power to conquer, to override. That is why you will fail on this day." With those words, a hairline crack formed in the metal of Sabrina's hat.
"You're gonna need to recheck those visions of yours," Sabrina said, a bead of sweat trickling down her barely-visible forehead. The Grief Hat wasn't something she could maintain for long; it weighed on her consciousness and it wasn't something she liked having next to her brain. She would have to make this quick, she realized, as she removed a ball of Grief the size of a softball, and let it flow into the hat. Tapping into the minds of engineers, she
made her move.
The enormous hat dissolved again, and reformed into the largest one yet. It was barely even a hat anymore; it now seemed more like a complex machine had appeared over Sabrina's head. Gears, pulleys, and wires shifted in tandem, liquid Grief flowed like water through wheels, and the semblance of an assembly line now coiled around the top two meters. The apex, a bust of Sabrina herself wearing a top hat, was high enough to look into a second-story window. A set of gyroscopes spun, keeping the hat impossibly balanced atop Sabrina's head. Sabrina panted, attempting to hold up the enormous bit of headgear as Oriko looked on. "An appreciable design," the seer proclaimed. "But I doubt you can hold it."
"Sabrina!"
The blue-coated challenger, her face covered in sweat, looked to see Mami, Sayaka, Madoka, Nagisa, and even Homura standing together outside the Mikuni fence. "You can do it, big sis Sabrina!" Nagisa cried, waving her hands in an effort to be big as possible. "You can do it!"
Sabrina brushed aside the sweat, and straightened her back. "I won't let you down, Nagisa! I'll do this for you!" Raising her fist, she punched downward, and four enormous spikes shot from the bottom of the hat, embedding themselves in the ground and keeping Sabrina on her feet. "What was that you said, Oriko? You can't form bonds with your hat? Well, I have friends too! I have more friends than you, even! And they're all cheering me on!" With those words, the other four girls whooped and shouted encouragement, while Homura rolled her eyes. Sabrina, cheerfully, and seemingly in defiance of spatial reasoning, tipped her hat, causing the bust to smash through one of the few unbroken windows in the Mikuni household.
Oriko's serene face had shifted to a harsh, unrestrained glare. "You think you can control your hat?" She raised her Soul Gem a second time. "You can never control a hat, nor can you be controlled by one. Only by becoming one with it, and by living, not taxed by your relationship with it, can you hope to understand it!" The Soul Gem glowed a second time. "Release!
Level Two!"
Once again, the blinding light and the gale-force winds took over, and the sound of fabric and cloth stitching together drowned out all else. A dozen long tassels sprouted forth, and lifted the hat's bearer from the ground as she glowed in burning whiteness. When the light had faded, Oriko's largest hat yet became visible. It wasn't as tall as Sabrina's, but it was far broader, a vast inverted cone that seemed to burst from its point at Oriko's head. The tassels had grown into long, thick ropes with string-hands at the end, and they now held Oriko's feet slightly off the ground. Oriko flicked her finger, and with a titanic movement, a helicopter rotor, each blade fully ten meters in length, extended from the top of the hat. The rotor began to spin with impossible force, and the tassels retracted, Kirika holding on to one of them as it pulled her to a seat at the front of the enormous craft. Oriko was now airborne, and she grinned triumphantly.
"You can match me for size, Sabrina, but you cannot match me for skill! I have been wearing hats since I could fit things atop my head! What can you do to stop me?"
Sabrina looked at the other girls. Mami and Homura were attempting to shield the non-magic ones from the winds Oriko was picking up. Nagisa screamed, and Sabrina felt something catch in her throat. She would have to end it here; she didn't think any kind of final release would leave them safe. Eventually, she gritted her teeth. "I can
improvise."
Sabrina raised her hands, and drew the Grief from any source she could find. Mami and Homura saw their Soul Gems brighten, as did Oriko and Kirika, to their surprise. A passing troupe of familiars were sucked dry, dissolving into black smoke. The Grief Seed Mami had been keeping safe in her back pocket emptied of its dark energy, suddenly turning a bright yellow. A girl in cream-colored armor seemingly popped into existence, looking utterly bewildered, but Sabrina paid her no heed. Every bit of Grief in a hundred-meter radius was going into her newest hat, her last hat. A dark stormcloud now formed above her head, as every single piece of ornamentation Sabrina could imagine - and she could imagine quite a lot - dotted its massive surface, becoming solid bit by bit. Four massive turbines now held the enormous piece of headgear aloft, and the top seemed to contain thousands of hats, stacking on top of each other in great towering pillars that held an untarnishable majesty. It stretched into the sky, at the very limits of Sabrina's control, seeming to blot out the sun with Grief. Sabrina now hovered, her arms crossed, her eyes level with Oriko's. "What do you think?", she said, holding back a severe nosebleed with magical healing. "It's three times as big as your hat and about ten times as functional. You've got no chance!"
Oriko laughed. "Again, you see only the chance to best another with your hat! Can you say you feel a bond to it, an appreciation of it? I doubt you can even name it! You still know nothing of hats."
"Well," said Sabrina, "I think I know one thing about hats that you don't know."
"And what is that?", said Oriko, raising a thin eyebrow.
"They're damn good at headbutts."
Oriko's eyes widened for a moment before the enormous black mass crashed down on top of her. The resulting shockwave rent the two hats asunder and shattered the city block, reducing the remains of Oriko's old home to rubble. Homura vanished, along with the five viewers, and Kirika was catapulted a few hundred meters away, leaving only the two girls sitting in the wreckage of fabric and clouds of Grief.
Sabrina raised a hand, and drew the excess Grief into a medicine ball-sized sphere. "Tell you what, Oriko. Let's not do that ever again."
Oriko lifted her hat, now somewhat dented, from the wreckage. She flipped it upside-down, dumping out the melted ice cream, before replacing it atop her head. "You have a deal."
The two walked off in opposite directions, each one currently trying to ponder non-headgear means of taking one another off the chessboard.