She unlocked, opened, closed and locked the door. She found none of her parents inside, and so she readied her search. As was expected, the costume wasn't anywhere inside of the house. Opening every single cabinet, drawer, nook and cranny with superhuman speed, she was just about ready to resign and use the lesser quality costume inside of her closet until she remembered that she noticed something peculiar.
Going back to one of the kitchen drawers, specifically inside of the drawer that held the aluminum foil and ziplock bags, she pulled on the knob. Noticing a piece of paper taped on top of it, she takes it off and reels, fear setting in and worry starting to pour in. It was a picture.
On the picture was her former boy self on the disgraceful magical girl outfit of two years ago. He was posing with a peace sign next to the very blond haired and not at all Chinese looking Shidou wrapped around her arm, cheap wand pointing down and with a sweet grin of innocence. The costume fit her then like a glove, the light make up, androgynous looks and appropriate behavior fooling everyone in the Halloween party of his former identity, provided they didn't know who she was in the first place. She would be honest with herself, the Haru then looked adorable, but any amount of gushing that either side of the argument might have been capable of opining went down the drain when very quickly she would note that the person on the picture was her. Any other day, she would gush over the cuteness. But the fact that it was her back in the day hurt herself in the inside.
Even then, though, it was one of the first competitions she won fair and square, with all of the judges agreeing unanimously that old Haru was wearing the best costume in the school. She didn't even need to talk about the quality of the costume itself, because it was made of the toughest, most resilient of materials while still being silky smooth and light to the touch. It wasn't low quality at all, and it was totally custom made. The fact that she actually roleplayed as Sakura rather convincingly at the time was enough reason for them to give her the gold medal at the time, but the crown jewel here was that Shidou went along with along with all of it, even recreating the scene where Sakura jumped to kiss Syaoran in the movie. The romantic subtext went over her head even now, though, but everyone else could see it.
She twisted it on the other side, and read the message taped on it. The message read, with her father's handwriting no less. It read:
Haru, if you and that magical girl friend of yours went out fighting evil together in the future, I think that it would make do for you to wear the appropriate attire. Remember the Sakura outfit you wore at your school's Halloween festival a few years back? It's the image you're holding right now. I've dug a hole for it in the yard a year ago when we couldn't find any room for it. The idea was that it was a time capsule for your kids. The box itself is covered in plastic and duct tape, so if you want or need it opened just cut it through with a knife. - Love, your Dad.
On a section labeled "addendum", it read. We've also made a commission from the tailor to make a few more copies for you to use in the future. Some of them are on your size, and others the rough estimate that you would be in the future. Don't ask me why, your mother put her up with it, so you have to deal with the consequences. I think it was some deal they made. Below even that was another addendum, with a seemingly sardonic tone, reading Don't ask me why I decided to stuff the costume inside of a time capsule, or why I thought it was important enough to give you the directions to open it now of all times. It was your mother's idea for the most part.
Just before she could interject, Nobunaga adjusted her eyes to the drawer, where another photograph faced down on the equipment lying down.
The back of the photograph read, "We love you no matter what you look like, Haru. You are, and will always be, our one and only son." On the front side was a photo she had never seen before. It was her mother and father, looking much younger and lying down on a hospital bed. Her mother was lying on the bed with arms cradling a young babe. Father was sitting down next to her as they posed for the camera.
Even with the tired look on their faces, their smiles were of unsuppressed joy, enough to make a teardrop to go down her eye. The dopey look on male Haru's baby face was enough to make her smile. She took both photos, and placed them both on her wallet till she could find a safe place to put both of them in.
Observing the situation, Nobunaga added. "I think they set up all of this for you when they saw how stressed you seemed, Haru. They were worried, I guess, when it seemed like you were going to pressure yourself into doing something you couldn't back out from. Something I influenced you to do, and I really am sorry about that ..." The mental image smiled weakly. "But all things considered, they really love you, you know. I think that's the most important part. " Haru muttered a "Thank You, Nobu" and walked to the place in the yard she knew would most likely be hiding the goods.
Shoveling all of the dirt where she reckoned the box to be, she found it just peeking slightly on the side. Pulling it out of the hole it found itself in, she cut the tape and plastic it was covered in, and dusted it off. Taking the top half off, she ignores the massive imitation of the one organ she would never hold on her hands ever again and pushes it to the side, so as to focus on the one important thing that she was looking for. Beneath all of the junk and gunk was a pretty pink dress, a pink beret and some other stuff. It felt familiar just holding it, which was reassuring. The one thing that didn't pop up was the pair of socks she would have used, but that was mostly because she repurposed them to be used in her regular school uniform, because nobody could see the more girly aspects to its design being that they were cleverly hidden behind her all of the black slacks.
She muttered something beneath her breath, and at once her clothing disappeared into a few orbs of light. This was a trick that Nobunaga told her about earlier, who noted that though she never actually did such a thing in life it would have been as simple as willing it on or off when she became a servant. The clothing wouldn't disappear for good, of course. Rather, it would reappear when she willed it into being again, like her guns. Hefting the crate up, she stood up and prepared to move.
There thankfully wasn't much else for her to do outside, and there wasn't much to see underneath all that baggy clothing to begin with, but she did bring the box up the stairs with her. She pointedly threw the adult junk into the pit so as to avoid any questioning from her potentially, understandably, concerned parents. The lean, fit figure of Nobunaga's youthful body was something she wouldn't quite be used to yet, even when she was wearing the baggy uniform.
Still though, just running around while hefting a box a great deal bigger than their body size up the stairs made the differences in her physique obvious, so she had to move in a specific pattern. It made her move in awkward positions so that she could avoid obstacles, squeezing her thighs while moving up the stairs sideways to fit on the tight staircase. That on its own made the lack of a certain tool obvious, something she didn't necessarily notice or care about until now. It didn't feel right not having something between her to balance her hips, at least, or something to that effect because she was actually busy with something at the time and thus was incapable of articulating it eloquently.
Opening the door, she dropped the whole thing next to her bed, and brushed a bead of sweat away. She then sat down and prepared to dress up in the Cardcaptor cosplay, wiping all of the sweat away with a towel she had left behind after bathing that morning. She pulled up the knee high socks before the rest of her clothing, and moved to the rest.
On the inside of her mind, a certain warlord questioned how useful dressing up as a mahou shoujo to entertain a chuuni magical devil girl's equally chuuni magical devil sister would really be. Though she had her fair share of gambles in the past, they never necessarily went out of their way to do something as ridiculous as this, besides that one time she made Katsu crossdress to act as bait. Katsu looked really cute in that yukata though, so maybe if she ever met him again in this life she would make him do that again.
She said, "Haru, I'm not normally the kind of person who should say this but... What would you gain out of this? And why?" She scratched the back of her non-physical neck within the realms of Haru's inner sanctum. " You could've talked to her normally. Greeted her, said hello, how are you doing, 'I'm sorry for hurting you badly, miss' instead of doing... you know. I respect your audacity, kid, but this goes beyond the typical 'I grew up as a girl and hid it so well, history remembered me as a man' scenario I've grown familiar with, heck I'm one of the peak examples! You're basically jumping the shark already, Haru, and you just started your hero's journey!" She sighed, and weakly smiled.
"Fact is, I just want to make sure that you were okay. It was to make sure that you weren't doing this out of sheer desperation. ... Am I right? Please tell me I'm not wrong." She was left in the silence as Haru stoically put on the magical girl costume, pointedly ignoring her speech. Nobu fidgeted a little bit, wondering if she started ranting too early.
The mental image perked when Haru appeared to follow through after putting on the beret, a deep sigh coming through her mouth. "There's no deep meaning to all of this, Nobunaga—" Nobunaga interrupted her, despite her grumbling about Haru not saying anything meaningful for the past few minutes.
"Just call me Nobu, Haru. Everyone called me that back in the day, anyway. The formal talk was something I let you go ahead with because I thought you were just trying to be polite, but now it's starting to be a mouthful." She grins. "I think we've grown close enough to go for a nickname basis, so just call me Nobu okay."
The interruption silenced Haru, making the situation too awkward for her to continue the rant she was about to say. "A-Ah, sure thing, um... Nobu." She coughed, and did her best to continue the discussion as smoothly as possible. "A-Anyway, moving on... You could say I was looking forward to this?" To this, she was met with silence.
She judged the situation, and relaxed. "I guess you could say this is the closest thing to meeting up with an old friend... I mean, I did ask for mom and dad to get this one so I could play dress-up with Shidou..." She slouched a bit. "But I didn't intend for something of this extent to happen."
She stood up and looked straight at the mirror. Though just a little bit smaller on her now, thanks to the leaner build, it still fits perfectly. If you divorced the fact that Haru didn't have red hair anymore, then yes, Haru looked okay if a tad ridiculous considering the conflicting appearances of a serious little girl wearing a pink magical girl dress. Her face was flat and unmoving. Her eyes looked up and down the reflection, contemplating the overall appearance. She bunched up her hair into a ponytail shape for a little bit to compare it to her appearance then.
Her head faced down and her shoulders slouched. She was beginning to regret going ahead with this decision. "I'm starting to think this was a bad idea." To this, Nobunaga replied. "Well, you got this far ahead, right? Then just go for it, I don't see a problem with this." Still staring back at the mirror, Haru nodded back at the reflection, and went downstairs to clean everything else that she couldn't be bothered to describe. Once done, she went back to the park, still debating on some aspects of the extremely impractical battle plan that Haru wasn't backing out on.