Mahou Shoujo Nobu-chan
Haru found another magic stick in her bedroom closet just a few days after her meeting with Sona. It was a quaint little thing that she found while cleaning up her room for the second time that month after another unremarkable stray devil attempted to take her out despite the plethora of wards defending her home, hidden deep inside of a chest that she thought was owned by her parents and was left behind in her bedroom by accident. It was a cute little thing, honestly, but it was overall pretty derivative of most general purpose magical girl designs. It reminded her of Cardcaptor Sakura's magical stick, if she was being quite honest, with the star in the middle of a ring, though for the most part the only thing that made it unique were the pair of wings near the ring, which shared the same color with the wings itself.
Haru thought that she had merely misplaced the stick inside of her closet when she put everything away to where they should be, like the box inside of the big hole she just filled in with dirt and grass, and the costume in the laundry to be washed and cleaned, but the obvious difference from the much simpler design choice made the distinction quite clear. She then thought back to her parents, whom she knew to be very big nerds in their youth and thought that they might have had something to do with it and the box that it came with, but brushed that thought to the side, thinking that maybe that even this would be a stretch to think that her parents had a hand in everything nerdy that she had experienced so far.
It was actually pretty mean to even consider that anyway, but there was a perfectly good reason for that assessment so far. Letting their kid go to the school halloween party in a dress was one thing of course, but hiring a professional cosplayer and tailor to knit a brand new costume in just 2 weeks in their bid to let him go all in was another. That she wouldn't bat an eye at the thought of them actually having spares said a lot.
Still though, the box and wand were enigmas she didn't quite have the answers to. The chest wasn't something she was wholly familiar with, though she clearly remembered it inside of her closet molding for at least a year so far, but the fact that she didn't bother wondering why or how on earth it found itself inside of her closet was pretty curious. Or it might simply be that she wouldn't have needed to. She was the person airheaded enough to trip and fall into a magic circle when there were next to no pebbles or bumps on the road home in the first place, or to carelessly walk into it, mesmerized, rather than walk away from it like a normal human being.
Crouching on the ground and touching the smooth metal did give her an idea though, and if the magic infused into it that she could feel pulsing inside of it was any indication, it might as well have been the real deal. Who would know if her mother or grandmother might have been a magical girl themselves? It all made sense if she thought about it, considering her deadpan acceptance of the supernatural occurrences around her, her dismissive nature towards Miss Serafall's outfit, and especially with how easily she bought into the Magical Girl excuse herself. After all, who else but a retired veteran magical girl would be so perceptive about the skills and abilities of a neophyte magical girl? ... Nah, it couldn't have been. But it was pretty cool thinking about it.
Standing up straight, patting her pants of any dust and ignoring the stench of the blood and guts that hadn't quite subsided yet from her bedroom. It was for this reason that she left the windows open for most of the day—the neighbors filed a complaint about the smell one day later, but it was easily ignored. She gripped tightly on the magical girl stick and imitated all sorts of poses she remembered from the magical girl anime she actively watched as a kid. She danced and weaved around her bedroom, taking due care to avoid any of her valuables or for any bits and pieces that she had just cleaned up to clutter on the floor once more.
Thinking back on it, she realized that she hadn't done a full on transformation sequence yet. Her introduction to Sona didn't involve one as she originally planned since she didn't really have the time to represent it, but she did try her best to incorporate bits and pieces of it by (menacingly) materializing parts of her uniform whenever it seemed cool. Maybe today was when she should try it out...? She stood up straight, a hand rubbing her chin with her arms crossed with the wand held on the other hand. She snapped her fingers after making out an idea, causing the stick to fall into the floor and clatter, and she would immediately scramble to get it back.
After recovering it, she breathed in. With the wand on hand she set her plan into motion, allowing herself to get into the feel of things. With her arms pointing back, and a knee raised upwards, she looked absolutely ridiculous. Using the minor floating powers that Nobunaga possesses she raised her hand afterwards mockingly, preparing to pretend as if her ability to spontaneously change clothes due to Nobu's inherited abilities had a direct correlation with magical girl powers like Sailor Moon and the Pretty Cures.
As she slowly lifted up from the floor, Haru was thinking. I... hmm... I'm not really good at making lines of my own but if I just take a few notes from what I remember from Nobu's Noble Phantasm chant, then... That should work. As she slowly raised her arm, chanting lines derived directly from the only thing that Nobunaga has ever said consistently without variation. "Show your corpse to the Three Thousand Worlds... Demon Descent! Behold, the Demon King's Transformation!" She thought it imperative to make the distinction between dumb, cutesy stuff to awesome transformation sequences, because you see, she was a mature magical girl, damn it, and if she had to live with that distinction for the rest of her life, then she'd try her best to do so no matter what the cause.
Not to say that she didn't like cute stuff, of course. She just thought that it would be pretty funny to have such a clashing of themes be a central aspect to her floaty coolness. As she floated upwards, up until the stick hit the ceiling, magical energies coursed through the area, shaking her house slightly with magical energies, enough to vibrate the desks, beds and other furniture, but not enough to actually destroy the whole foundation. Unknowingly most of the energy actually went inside of the stick, an action that Haru... Didn't really notice, considering how into it she was in the first place.
In a flash, the transformation sequence that she was looking for happened. Slowly her clothes disappeared in orbs of light, slowly filling her entire being—though that was because she was wearing a lot of clothing to conform with PPE regulations that her parents reminded her of—and were replaced immediately by the flashy clothes that Nobunaga technically was never known to wear but suited her completely regardless. Thinking back on it, the fact that she was already so used to referring to Oda Nobunaga of all people as a woman was a testament to her apparently deteriorating mental health.
Then again, memory serves that Nobu said she was hardly the most outrageous example of history not remembering their historical figures properly anyway. At least, that was what Nobu told her about her own universe. She grinned, looking down on her bedroom floor, pretending that all of the jerks that talked her down and were mean to her, were then and there looking up to her in awe. From there, her mind moved from them practically groveling at her feet, to them being shot by bullet after bullet, blood splattering all over as they die immediately with bullet holes dismembering their entire being. Though satisfying it may have been, the moment she realized what she was thinking about, she immediately dropped all pretenses in horror, because no matter how much she detested them... She wouldn't go out of her way to kill them.
The floating girl took measures to avoid thinking too much on the subject, making sure that she at least had some enjoyment left that she could make use of. She slowly floats down to the floor. She mutters quietly, "Well, I guess that was pretty cool anyway... Still, I can't be much of a hero's successor if I actually went out of my way to kill innocent people, right…" She smiles.
"Pretty cool? You think? That was pretty awesome, actually! And the fact that you went out of your way to stop yourself from killing your imaginary classmates was awesomely honorable! Believe me, Haru-chan, you're a lot better than you think you are!" A noise retorted from her right hand, chastising her for thinking herself too lightly. Haru nodded, accepting the honest criticism but not thinking about it too much. "Besides, you're a really nice kid! Who wouldn't want you as a friend? Those bullies had no right to treat you that way."
"Well I guess, but you know how it is... When you just get used to stuff like this, things just happen... I appreciate the thought, though." She smiled looking happily at the sound source with her eyes closed... Until she realized something. She opened her eyes, and she looked down on the stick which was suddenly so animated, and looked at her with a look of confusion on its eyes. Her mouth was wide open, her entire body twitching every so often as her eyes morph into abject horror.
"What is it? Is there something on my face or something?" The stick asked her a question. It was sentient, as it appeared, like most magical girl animal or inanimate object sidekicks would. It honestly shouldn't have been as surprising as it should've been, considering what she had gone through with the whole thing about magic and heroes and magical creatures, but that wasn't the point. Sure, there were magical girls out there, key example being Serafall-nee who went out of her way to be thematically a magical girl in the first place, but that was the point. Magical girls as they knew it didn't exist, since even the concept of giving contracts to become dolled-up superheroines was ridiculous enough on its own.
And that was enough for her to throw it to the other side of her room, smacking onto the wall loudly, the stick leaving a dent as it fell to the ground. The stick itself appeared rather pained and confused, rubbing the top half of its wings. Haru quickly shuffled back to her side of the room, leaning against the wall and immediately carrying a large musket and a few more around here to scare the perceived threat away from her. "S-Stay back, I say! I d-don't want any trouble, or a-anything y-you're offering! I already have enough problems with Nobu on her own as is, I-I don't want another roommate when I have enough problems with just one of them! Honest!"
The stick looked mildly confused. "What...? What are you talking about? Um... Ah." The stick scratches its "head" with the butt end of its lower half. It floats around for a little bit, cautiously moving towards Haru despite the very real threat of it being turned into an ashy mess being emphasized. She floats towards her, close enough to Haru's face to be enough of a privacy problem. Haru would slowly push the floating stick away from her with the gun, only holding the handle to avoid accidentally puncturing a hole into the bedroom wall, or worse, hurting someone in the process.
"You know that I could give you magical girl powers, right?" She nods. "You got that much from watching all those magical girl anime and manga when the shounens weren't airing, right?" She nods, a little bit more hesitantly because that was a detail only she really knew about. "You also understand the implications that could arise if you went ahead with this kind of thing… whatever they may be?" She nodded again, much slower than the last. "And more importantly, you already had experience with magical girls out there in the world, if your ambivalent opinion of me were any indication."
She blanked, and thought back to the quirky sisterly pair she had met by then, close friends, and elder sister figures by way of her incredibly awkward–though adorable by the honest opinions of Serafall and Sona—attempt at convincing them to accept her into their family. To this, she nodded harshly, the whiplash from her hair being just strong enough to whip the Kaleidostick away a short distance. When she came to, she asked, "How the hell did you learn about that anyway? You can't possibly have observed everything me and my family have been doing for the past few years. That's just creepy!"
"Actually, I did." She slumped. The so far unnamed stick scratched its head wings. "Um. Well, basically my boss dropped me into your house a year ago roughly, and left me in a mostly inactive state. I used the active parts of my being to tune into the household wherever I could, and started to read into everything I could've." It looks down. "The rest of me started to wake up when those wards of yours started activating. They caused just enough of a disturbance for me to slowly absorb the atmospheric mana that was broken apart by the wards. All of that kickstarted when you opened the box he stuffed me in, and picked me up."
It breathed in. Somehow. "Does that make sense to you?" Haru shook her head. "Ah, well fair enough, I guess." It floated a little in the silence. The guns were still pointed towards it, but they didn't really pose enough of a threat for them to be a concern. Regardless, it sighed—somehow—and decided to break the ice once and for all.
"I mean, I kind of get your concerns, but ask yourself, why not? You're a superhero already, I get that, but becoming a magical girl might be a pretty good change in perspective! You just need to tell me your name and we can get started with it. Come on, give it a try!" The stick looked expectantly at Haru, as it waited for an outward response.
Haru took a brief moment to think, and spoke to Nobunaga about her own opinion about the situation at hand. She sighed, as it seemed even Nobunaga concurred. "Why not, " Nobunaga boisterously replied, "It's a totally new thing for the both of us, and it might serve to get yourself a little more power of your own! Besides, I don't know what it's like to be a magical girl myself! It might be a new experience that could be calling for you, Haru!" Haru didn't have much to reply to that.
Haru looks up to the stick, and nods. "Fine, I'll do it. But only so long as you give me a name to call you by! I didn't know what to call you so far, so I just called you jerk stick inside of my head." A large bead of sweat dropped on the side of the Kaleidostick's star, but before it could say anything, Haru did it for it. "It's Haru Hyoudou, by the way. I think you already know the origin behind that…"
"It's nice to meet you, Haru-chan! That was all I needed to know to write you down as my master. On my end, I am the magic stick of justice and compassion, Magical Emerald! I take after my elder sister Ruby a lot, for the most part, but I try my best to be as close to my elder sister Sapphire as well! It's really nice to meet you, believe me—"
"Yeah yeah, just get it over with already. Come on." Haru dematerialized the guns at once. She beckoned the now-named Magical Emerald over to her hand. Emerald would try to say something in order to call her out on her frankness, but there was no point in doing so. It shrugged, and gingerly floated into her hand. "What do we do now?"
"Ah, that's easy. I'll do it now. Compact full open!"
"I'm sorry, wha—!?" Haru's body becomes enveloped in a bright light, covering her entire body up to her neck and arms, moving her limbs in rhythm to facilitate the transformation better. "Mirror world circuits: maximum engage!" Orbs form around her, and a big white one formed between her hands, practically hosting the magical girl spirit that Emerald called for.
A ruffly leotard blouse thing formed over her body. Though it didn't go over her shoulders, it still had a separate collar and a cute little bowtie in the middle. It had disconnected sleeves, wrapping neatly around her elbow, nylon frills cornering each side, and with ribbons decorating them. Two gloves formed, kind of like Illya's, with the added bonus of having a golden lining around the edge to bling it out even more. A few petals, for lack of a better word, circled her waist to form the basic skirt.
She smirks, winking at a nonexistent camera. "That's it, Haru! The mischievous cuteness of a magical girl suits you so perfectly!" Or so the stick said, its attempts to break the fourth wall not going anywhere.
Finally, her legs began to change. A long pair of bright green boots with short heels that went up to her knees materialized slowly, ribbons wrapping around the shin, and a ribbon tying themselves on the shoe laces. A pair of stockings, garter and all, would be seen by the prying eye, but otherwise would only be seen by the most dedicated of degenerates. This was because of the skirt that formed over them, ruffly and poofy, poofing outwards thanks to the crinoline keeping itself together. Her hair had two emerald studded rings on both ends of her head, splitting part of her into a pair of pigtails, and a small golden tiara on the center rounded out her appearance.
All said and done, the newly minted magical girl (though she technically already was one) posed coolly, one hand holding the stick and the other with a peace sign over her eye. The transformation was complete. And in a flash, she was back in her room, her clothing somehow wrapping itself neatly once more on her beddings once again like the last time she did something like this. Haru would move her hand up her face to wipe a bead of sweat that built up on the sweltering heat.
The keyword being would. Somehow, somewhere, she couldn't move her body, which had apparently decided on doing something on its own, namely shaking in confusion as her eyes moved towards her hands, which were slowly moving upwards to her line of sight. "No way…" A sick feeling in her stomach was all that she could feel after realizing that she didn't say that line herself. Nervous sweat arises as she tries to call for Nobunaga all around her mind, until she realizes something. Nobu wasn't inside of her mindscape this time around, she wasn't exorcised or anything like that, and the only place that she could be besides her mind would be in the driver's seat. Which means to say…
"Why am I controlling your body, Haru!?" Nobu shouted, very afraid of the implications. "Haru, are you there? Please say yes! I don't want to even think that I might have killed you for good…!" It took a while for Haru to find a place for herself to respond, but when she did, she did.
Y-Yeah, I'm fine, Nobu. I'm still here… I think we just swapped places.
"What? That makes no sense whatsoever, only I could do that! Hey you! Magical Emerald! Explain for us, please!"
"Ah, u-um. I didn't honestly expect a heroic spirit to be lying dormant inside of you, so I'm guessing it just kicked Haru out of the bridge. Honestly, I don't know what happened myself!" This didn't satisfy Nobunaga, who felt content to pick up the defenseless little stick and threaten it to answer.
"Why you little…!" The door was knocked loudly, attracting both Nobunaga and Emerald's head towards the door. "Haru, are you in there? Haru!" The door opened, revealing the middle aged woman who also doubled as Haru's mother. "Haru! Haru, I… Hmm." The mother stood still, still holding onto the doorknob as she would observe slowly the attire of her former son-now-daughter. She judged cautiously, and stared at "Haru" blankly with the expression she opened the door with still for a few moments.
The awkward silence was broken, when the mother decided to intervene herself.
"Do we need to talk about this on the dinner table?"
Nobunaga smiled nervously, and nodded her head once, also releasing the tight chokehold on the stick. She stood up with her hands behind her back, taking care to avoid any suspicion from the mother. Though the mother had good reason to ask more on the topic, she decided it was worth continuing the dinner table anyway.
"Alright, that's fair enough. Just try to get dressed in something more appropriate for the time being, okay? I know how much you like magical girls. But just don't get too into it, alright?"
The door closed. All the pressure built up on her knees was released, as she fell to the ground in a heap. Breathing heavily, she glares straight into the "eyes" of Emerald, who could only gulp helplessly.