(Backdated to October 30th, 2025)

Yasmeen was excited. Sure, she'd put off getting her costume together until the absolute last minute, but she'd been busy, and, worse, so had her mother, so there hadn't really been a chance to go shopping. Her mother hadn't talked much, just said the public library had a new librarian from overseas, and that she'd needed to help the new librarian get accustomed to the library. Which was all well and good, but tomorrow was Halloween, and Yasmeen still didn't have a costume. Khaz had said he'd throw together something appropriate to go with Yasmeen, as long as it could be done quickly, so he could take her trick-or-treating if their mother wound up having to take work home with her, which, since she was subbing for a teacher at the elementary school who was on maternity leave, their mother had been doing a lot lately.

Toward the end of getting their costumes sorted out, Khaz had come to pick her up from school so they could go shopping on the way home.

She glanced up at him. He'd told her a few nights ago that he had grown into the next senshi stage, and was now a Super senshi. He didn't have a full sense of what that meant, not just yet, but he promised he'd let her know when he did, aside from the fact that it had come with changes to his fuku, he felt more powerful, and he could apparently make papyrus reeds grow at will. He didn't think that all supers could do something like that, but it seemed to come with the territory for him. Still. Exciting, though he looked the same as he ever did, handsome, a bit mature for his age, with their mother's sea green eyes, and comfortable in the navy-and-crystal blue colors of Azure Valley Academy, the tech high school he attended. Absently, as they walked, she wondered when she'd get there, and what it would be like for her.

So lost in thought was she that she almost missed his question. "Hmm? Oh. Ummm. I wanna go as Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service, so I need a simple black dress, a red hair ribbon, a pink messenger bag, and a broom. I've got the right shoes and a stuffed Jiji that I can take with me, but I don't have the rest."

Khaz had pleaded babysitting responsibilities to get off from afterschool activities early today. Not that he minded, most of what he was missing were club or team Halloween parties, which...yeah, those ranked below hanging out with his sister. Sure, it was a bit odd, given their age gap and the ostensible difference in genders, but Khaz only sort of identified as male to begin with, and had been in some ways more present in her life than their father had been, so, yes, he did enjoy hanging out with his little sister, particularly around holidays. He was only a couple years past the end of his trick-or-treating days, and, while he had hit the point where it felt socially expected for him to stop, that didn't make it easy to just give up and walk away from the tradition. So volunteering to take his kid sister, and dress up to be her partner felt like a happy medium.

All in all, a win-win situation for him, though some of his classmates had looked at him with sympathetic eyes.

Sympathy that he did not want, under the circumstances.

Plus, much as he feared for her safety, being able to talk to Yasmeen about senshi business took a lot of stress off his shoulders. She was aware of his double life, didn't judge it, accepted his ground rules for being a senshi herself (and more vulnerable than him, since she'd admitted that her magic would probably carry a misfire chance until she stopped being a chibi...whenever that was), and was generally the understanding and sympathetic touchstone that he emotionally needed in his life right now, given that he was neither cisgendered, nor heterosexual, and a senshi, now Super Senshi, on top of that. It was a lot of secrecy that went begging for emotional support, and Yasmeen, along with their cousin, Keesh, who was a Page of Earth, were both happy to give him.

As they walked after he collected her from Knightside, he asked, "Sooo...any ideas for a Halloween costume? Anything you don't have, we need to find before we go home. If it takes too long, I'll call Mom, let her know what's going on, and ask if she can meet up with us at a mall or something for dinner." If there was one thing their absentee father was good for, it was for earning enough money for his wife and children to live extremely comfortably far enough away from his side of the family so as not to get harassed.

Yasmeen's answer, however, surprised him a little. "Kiki? She's a witch, right?" Yasmeen was into anime, particularly magical girl shows and movies, so Kiki wasn't surprising. What was surprising was the fact that she hadn't chosen some other character. "Not a princess or some kind of a bright and fluffy magical girl, like Cardcaptor Sakura? Or Princess Tutu?"

Yasmeen kicked at a rock a little as they walked. "Those would be fun, but I'd been thinking of doing Lucy from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, you know, the youngest sister of the four kids. But Keesh said that looked too similar to...y'know," she said, deliberately not saying anything about their senshi identities, in case someone overheard, "so I decided to go with Kiki instead."

Khaz nodded. "Okay. I think I can picture the girl you mean, and I think it is too similar to that. Sorry, I agree with Keesh, that's not a good idea." He paused, considering her list of items. "You can probably borrow the broom from home, and I think we might be able to get a hair ribbon at a craft store, maybe start with Michael's, but I'm not sure what to do about the dress, or the messenger bag. Any idea if any of those geek stories like BoxLunch or Hot Topic or something has something for the bag?" he asked, mentally working out an itinerary, hoping it wouldn't take a ton of searching for the dress or the bag.

Yasmeen shrugged. "I think BoxLunch might have the hair ribbon, but not the dress or the bag. I don't think Hot Topic has any of that stuff right now--"

They turned a corner and a Halloween costume in the window absolutely took Yasmeen's breath away. It was a basic princessy costume, high-waisted, with an almost scooped neckline, a layer of floaty sleeves over a layer of tightly fitted sleeves, and two layers of skirt, all in a dreamy crystalline blue trimmed in creams and light golds. It was so unspeakably pretty and princessy that her heart immediately ached for it as she came to a sudden stop, staring at it. Oh, no, it was sparkly, too, with sequins and beadwork, and the skirts were long and floaty in a way that absolutely screamed that they'd be a joy to twirl in. A beaded and sequined headband completed the ensemble.

And yet, she knew what the answer would be. Even though the colors were wrong, the skirts were wrong, and the sleeves were wrong for her fuku, the silhouette looked vaguely similar, and there was the collar around the neckline, clearly not a senshi's collar, but one that looked vaguely enough like one from a distance that the answer was going to be an emphatic "no." She still sighed in hopeless adoration as Khaz turned around to see what held his little sister's attention.

Khaz nodded as she began. BoxLunch seemed like the better bet, anyway, Hot Topic was less likely to carry Studio Ghibli merchandise the way BoxLunch did.

And then she stopped talking, and, he realized after a few moments, she had also stopped walking. Right as they passed a fabric store, with displays out front of the kinds of costumes that people could buy patterns, cloth, and other sewing notions for so they could make those costumes themselves. He sighed, turned around, and headed back to see what had caught her attention.

The dress in the window was absolutely adorable, elegant and princessy, but not the kind of princessy that Disney or a Disney knock-off would sell to kids more obsessed with brand and character than with the actual aesthetics. Someone had put rather more effort into this, and the effect was exactly the kind of fairy tale princess dress that would steal his baby sister's heart.

Which, given that her senshi fuku was very much also a princessy dress, just more athletic, and colored much more like it belonged to a warrior princess, possibly from one of the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table...that alone ruled out the advisability of a dress like this. The fabric store, this close to Halloween, might happily sell it if they asked, just so they could get it a good home with only some minor adjustments, but Khaz could not sign off on the purchase in good conscience.

He sighed, wishing his answer could be different. But they were on a mission, one they needed to stick to, and, as disciplined as Yasmeen tried to be, having this around as a temptation wasn't the smartest plan, as it would take an iron will to resist the allure of a costume like this one. "I'm sorry, Yasmeen. I know it's your ideal look," he said softly. "Maybe we can find out which pattern it is, and get Mom to make you a version in some other color scheme?" he asked, hoping to mollify her. "You'd still have to be careful wearing it around other people, but I can buy that for you for a later date, if you can quickly research a shortlist of places to find the parts of the Kiki costume, okay?" he offered gently.

Yasmeen's eyes lit up. Sure, her heart sank that her brother would not sign off on this dress, as it was, but, still, getting a copy of the pattern so their mother could make her a copy in the fabrics of Yasmeen's choice seemed like an extremely generous tradeoff, given that it still couldn't be her Halloween costume, possibly not ever.

She nodded, whipping out her phone to start looking up ideas for where to look in the mall, since they'd need to go to the mall for BoxLunch. "You got it!" she said, following her brother, both of them smiling, into the fabric store. "Also, I think you should pick where we go for dinner. You know, as a treat, for being the best oldest brother in the whole world."

Khaz blinked. "That's really sweet of you, Yasmeen," he said as they navigated toward the pattern catalogues and cabinet of drawers holding countless clothing pattern packets. He paused as they searched for, and successfully located, the desired pattern. Surprisingly, it had a set of sizes for children, as well as for adults, which would be nice if it proved useful later on down the line.

"Hmmm," he said, considering the options as they reached the checkout line. "I've kinda been craving Chinese lately," Khaz admitted. "Koi Palace sound good to you?" he asked, naming a nice Chinese restaurant in the mall they were going to. "Text Mom that we'll meet her at Koi Palace after she gets off work, and you can show her what all we got," he added.

The rest of the afternoon, for all the challenges of continuing to shop for the Kiki costume, was rather brightened by pleasant thoughts of what futures both short and long might bring.