MINERVA TRANSMITS WITCHCRAFT

Disclaimer/Notes: Higurashi in its various incarnations is the property of 07th Expansion. The author claims no challenge to this ownership, as this work is of amateur and recreational non-profit design. So here's my attempt at doing several things; primarily celebrating the wonderful and maddeningly complex characters and universe of Higurashi that I have come to cherish. Second, it is also my attempt to branch out and try new things as a fic author. The following is an ongoing series of self-contained short stories, spread across the many -hen worlds already established, as well as those that have been only hinted at. So yeah. Hopefully it turns out okay. :)

trampled by the crowd of wheels

For what felt to have been the hundredth time since he'd set foot in her room twenty minutes ago, Keiichi sighed. Reveling in her defeat only had any meaning when she stood a chance in the first place.

He gestured vaguely to the top of her worksheet as he leaned over the table. "Alright alright. It's not really that difficult to grasp. You just need to look at the basic structure."

Mion bit her lip, eyeing the weird sequence of numbers across the page. "'Looking' isn't the issue here. I can see just fine."

"Fair enough," Keiichi allowed. He sat back and paused. "Take two then." He cleared his throat theatrically, pooling as much condescension into his voice as he could before speaking again. "So if we apply Ptolemy's theorem to the cyclic quadrilateral ABCD defined by four successive vertices's of the pentagon -"

"And you lost me again."

"Don't you think it's pretty unreasonable to ask me for help if all you're going to do is give up before I can even make it through a sentence?"

Mion shrugged, tapping the eraser of her pencil against the table. "Well, I figured you'd have some neat way of phrasing it that would make it sound, you know, sane. Not some mutant sea-creature speak."

"Funny how the rest of the world seems to understand it just fine."

Leaning back in her chair, Mion draped herself in indifference. "All this means is that you've failed miserably, and I should remember this for the next time I think to ask you for assistance."

He blinked at that logic. "So. . . you can't grasp simple trig, and I'm the one who failed?"

"Spot on, spot on."

Stray seconds elapsed, a quiet marching of soldiers, Keiichi then throwing his hands up in surrender. ". . . Alright, I'm going home."

Mion laughed at him playfully, waving her hand. "Okay okay, sorry. Please. I won't be such a pill. Can we try again?"

"I guess," he relented. He spent a moment ruminating on how to make the dull task of pouring over the exact same homework he'd done a few hours previous again even remotely interesting. The answer that came to him was simple and acceptable: don't. "How about you try another problem, and tell me where you get stuck. It's kind of tough to do this blindfold tutoring thing."

"Okay."

As Mion returned to silence, brow furrowing in concentration as she tried to decipher the torturous glyphs and runes that symbolized the horrors of pseudo-advanced mathematics, Keiichi rose to explore. He had never before been invited into Mion's home, let alone her room, and the opportunity to rummage was much too interesting to pass up. Wealth seemed to leap from the walls - lacquered shelves housing drafts and documents he knew she received from the burden of inheritance; archaic scroll paintings lilting down in soft mists of color; books of stylistic design, bound by well-manicured covers, kept in spectacular form by patience and care. This was the room of a girl who was vast and alive - reaching out, touching the world, pulling back as much as she gave away.

And manga. A whole lot of manga.

Mion watched him from the tips of her view. "Please, by all means, look around my room. It's not like I'm right here and can't see you inspecting my belongings while I didn't give you permission."

Completely ignoring her objection, Keiichi came to stand in front of several shelves of graphic novels. "Wow, you really do have a lot of this stuff." He ran his fingers over the titles he recognized or seemed interesting. "Have you actually read all of these?"

"Yeah," she shrugged.

An eye-patched rogue peered back at him from dozens of faces. "You're a big Leiji Matsumoto fan, I see."

Mion nodded. "Emeraldas is awesome."

Keiichi found himself grinning. "I am Keiichi's total lack of surprise." The quiet cadence of a turned magazine page shifted his attention to the right, and he immediately found himself encapsulated by the clumpy haze of dazzling orange staring back at him. "Huh." Cautiously, as if one false move would melt his hands down to plaster, he lifted the object from its perch on the shelf and turned to Mion at the table with it outstretched in his uncertain hands. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but - Mion, what is. . . this?"

"Hm?" she murmured, turning to face him. "What is - oh."

"Yeah," he replied awkwardly.

Her pencil clacked softly against the roll of papers before her, and she sighed. ". . . Okay. You're going to laugh at this."

"Hopefully."

She swallowed nervously. "Anyway, it's - it's a plush."

"Uh huh. I can see that," he replied, lightly shaking the stuffed tiger in his hands in plain emphasis. "I was wondering about the additional information that goes along with that obvious fact. Y'know, like, why you have it in your room."

Mion's mouth was already exhausted and dry from mounting embarassment. Of course she'd just leave it there for him to find. "It's from one of those Disney movies, okay? It's from like eight or nine years ago. I thought it was cute at the time, so my Dad saw it a little while later and picked it up for me. Alright?"

Keiichi flipped the plush over to look at its bottom, finding a white badge fastened to its laundering information, and Mion's face suddenly went ashen in realization. "That's funny," Keiichi remarked casually, unable to suppress the fiendish light shimmering in his amused eyes, "because there's a price-tag on the bottom here. It's from the store your Uncle runs. And it says 'received 03/83', which was like three months ago."

Unrestrained and cornered, Mion threw her pencil onto her workbook in bitter resignation. "FINE! I bought it a few weeks ago because I just saw that movie and thought it was- was- SHUT UP! So put him back, okay? Your hands are filthy anyway. Look, I don't want you getting him all dirtied up! It isn't easy to clean moron germs off of cute things!"

"Pffsh -"

By then it was far too late. The words had been said, the contract signed, the transference complete. The sweltering jungle about Mion's thoughts descended upon her in a primordial rush. She knew what was next.

"Oh my God," she whispered, somehow trying to rewind time. "Kei-chan- uh, um, hey- look, don't start -"

Right on cue, Keiichi burst into mocking giggles.

Mion sighed mid-sentence. "- laughing. . ."

The tiger dropped to the floor as Keiichi chortled at her misfortune of having a very guilty pleasure exposed. Across the room, another magazine page flipped. Keiichi pressed his hands to his eyes to wipe at the moisture building from his hysterics.

"Oh, Mion- your face. . ."

Fingers congealed into fists. "Oh, think that's so funny, do we Kei-chan? Huh? My embarrassment is that amusing to you, is it? Well laugh it up, jackass!"

"Okay!" he agreed readily, laughing further.

Oh, it was on.

"You- you stupid -" Years of honed instinct and calculating design throttled her faltered engines, devices of attack howling into swift, violent life. Eyes warped into feral mirrors. Her hands slammed down on the table, standing suddenly, chair pushed back from straightening knees. "Fine! So this is how it goes? So be it! I hereby invoke my authority as Club High Commander to warrant an immediate challenge between myself and this smarmy hyena that demands absolute solemnity where no single participant can laugh - and doing so results in immediate disqualification! The hammer falls as soon as I'm done speaking this sentence, so three-two-one GO!"

Keiichi was cognizant enough to understand what had just been engaged, but was carried too far along by inertia to halt its mechanisms. "Ha ha haaaa. . . No, wait!"

A magazine page turned.

Emulating Satoko in pure, unfiltered jubilation, Mion found herself cackling at the reversal of fortune. "Ho ho ho! Kei-chan has been defeated in honorable combat! What a shame, looks like you lose yet again."

Suddenly Keiichi didn't think the situation was so hilarious anymore. "What the hell? What kind of contest was that?"

Mion stalked around the table casually. "Too late to backpedal at this stage. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we move on to the much anticipated Punishment Round. . ."

"Whoa, red light! That was entirely unfair!"

Mion stood before him, hands resting on her hips, malevolently drinking in the terror spiraling between the two of them. "Oh I don't think so! You can dance around it all you want, but I have regulations and procedure on my side, chump. The laws of the universe have you bound to defeat at my hands yet again."

Keiichi scoffed, waving his hand in dismissal. "As if. Pull your head out. The rules of the universe clearly state that all duels of honor must be made in advance and with plenty of time for me to prepare myself so I can find a way around your rampant cheating!"

Mion could not care less about his arguments. She found her eyes roaming to the other side of the room where her closet rested - beckoning out to her with devices of frilly and lush despair. "Let's see. . . swans? No, we did that like two days ago. The floral mu-mu needs to be washed, so that's out. I think I still have the fur-lined purse around here. . . I don't know if you'd be able to fit into the gorilla panties, though. But that might make things all the more interesting. Hm, but I don't want you to rip them or something. . ."

"Tune back in over here, Mion! I'm not done making my case! I - Wait, gorilla panties?"

Her gaze whirled back to him again, brutish grin of sadism masking her features. "Step into my torture chamber, Kei-chan. I have evils prepared for you that you can't even fathom. . ."

"Okay screw this. You didn't even give me a chance. We're doing this again for real."

"Nope! That's a Forfeit!"

"My ass! It's a Do-Over!"

Mion frowned angrily. "Forfeit!"

Keiichi returned her glare. "Do-Over!"

"Forfeit!"

"Do-Over!"

"Forfeit!"

"Do-Over!"

"FORFEIT!"

"DO-OVER!"

The tide of battle subsided briefly, rolling on through the cloudless evening. A martial impasse as two monoliths hovered in rigid yet meteoric opposition, iron walls standing fast against the silence of time. Neither gave one inch. Light crept out from the shadowy netherworld, spurned back to the darkness by their merciless, uncompromising towers. Until Keiichi sneezed.

". . . FORFEIT!"

"DO-OVER!"

On the other side of the room, lounging atop Mion's bed, Shion flipped another page of the magazine she had been reading. She paused briefly to look at the two of them over the lid of the page. She sighed.

"Okay. You two? Dumb as hell."

Her attention seemingly returned to article she had been skimming. She bit down the urge to laugh before speaking again.

"And Kei-chan, that was clearly a forfeit."