Author's Note

Notices going into this:

A) OCs are present (about 3 are central characters, many are one-off names).
B) Does not even remotely require having read any previous works with the "Cicadas" label but you should totally make that time investment anyway. This will be the final story in the "series".
C) The new format is roughly 3k words for each chapter (chapter count will go up so really nothing is changing).
D) This time around the intro is quite long.
E) Everything else I'm keeping a mystery.
F) I don't own Higurashi or Ciconia. Or Umineko come to think of it.


Cicadas' Night Parade

We watched the masons burn our house
They hollered and cheered and cried for freedom.
We watched the masons burn our roads
They hollered and cheered and cried for equality.
We watched the masons burn our city
They hollered and cheered and cried for justice.
We watched the masons burn our land
The land burned them right on back.
~ Fredericka Bernkastel

Cement Mixing Chapter – Part I

More often than not, the road that leads off the deep end truly begins when we're young – as a child's dream longing to be fulfilled, a thirst for affection or pride that is never quite quenched, an aching desire for boundless fortune, or even a pining for self-worth or belonging. What ruins us is often so childlike in nature that it runs against logic and even trick, unbound by any justification one might give whose only true equal is cause and effect.

The farce that is about to unfold cites a forlorn longing for vengeance. Vengeance for a life that was wasted away, for a stability that never came, against a people that refused to change, a vengeance creeping in the dark, waiting for the perfect moment to set upon its mark. At the first crack of light at long last it springs forth like a monkey from a box, gleefully trampling down the road to the end it doubtlessly sees of its own volition.

The end may be inescapable, but every moment leading up to it is an endless delight worth everything that was lost along the way. The path forward, after all, is the truest justice there is. Justice for the life that was wasted away. Justice for the stability that never came. Justice for a people that refused to change.

Then and only then, once the path off the deep end is not just the only way but the right way, that the course can't be changed.

And so it is, that such moral insanity often finds itself a happy home, basking in the summer air of Shirakawa-go, a land where such base desires converge.

We step into the story of such a place, in what is both a tragedy and a call to action, at the precise moment that it was too late to stop it, a point which we can never return to and try again or go back on. It is a moment we must live with from now until the very end. And while it is a moment that can never be taken away, it is no less a moment that will rear its ugly head again and again ad infinitum.

The difficulty is below average. And it is for that very reason that the players abandoned this game and let it sit for so long.


March 2006.

Glancing nervously around the room he found himself taking in far more than he could handle – on all sides there were businessmen lounging around long after hours, half empty bottles of beer lining the tables and the bar at the center. Every one of them laughing like a hyena or struggling to keep both eyes open, it was a cesspool of regulars, their earnings strewn about the counter-top.

Wearing his heart on his sleeve he manages to shuffle his feet just enough to move across the floor, the only thing he could do to keep the entire room from taking notice of him.

His brown hair slicked all the way back and dressed like he just got off the bus from trad school, if he was in a place he was comfortable with he would've come off as pretty professional, even for his age. But as it stands, he might as well be every bit the little runt out of his depth that he really was.

Noticing this all too easily, the man that he was with places a hand on his shoulder. The boy looks up at him- and right away seeing his laid back smile he gets the same odd feeling as always. He was feminine enough both in his looks and his touch, but easily just as bold if not perhaps a bit carefree in how he carried himself.

Such was the appearance of his one and only uncle – not quite the most reassuring person on the planet, but things would work out with him around, for the most part.

With that very brief exercise in what he had to assume was an attempt at good parenting, his uncle then pushes him forward the rest of the way. Coming close to the bar, he slides a few 5,000 yen bills across the counter, saying something to the bartender that the overwhelmed boy simply couldn't hear. A few moments later, they were out on a balcony overlooking the entire city, where a quieter but no less gaudy group sat at much nicer looking tables with far more expensive drink. Men dressed for success, women dressed as though they'd already had their fair share of it for the evening – if he had the option he would've gladly turned around and gone back the way he came.

Finally coming to a rest at a table near the edge of the balcony he finally remembers to breathe. Sitting down he hunches over almost on instinct.

"Hey, sit up straight." His uncle corrects him with a light, almost feminine voice, and in that instant he fixes his posture, still glancing around nervously. "Easy, Kacchan." He sits down right across from him.

Really, he just feels straight up embarrassed. His semi-but-not-quite loser uncle could just hang out here without a single care in the world, meanwhile here he is about to crumple like a stack of cards.

"Y-yessir." He blurts out on reflex. A few moments later, he can't help but admit to it. "There's too many people in here."

"You're gonna have to get used to this kind of crowd one day." his uncle smiles. "You're thirteen today, but by the time you're twenty you'll know how to walk circles around these guys." With that he waves over a waiter to order drinks. For a moment the boy's heart rate picks up again. He wasn't going to buy him a drink, right? "Hey, you still do non-alcoholic, right?" The waiter nods and walks off. The boy sighs. "What's with that look? Come on, even I know better than that. Besides, your aunt would notice. Prolly faster than I could hide it, too." He said in a lowered voice, rolling his eyes.

"But why are these people so important, anyway?"

"Because they've got money! And way more than we've got."

"But what about your promotion? Weren't you supposed to make a lot more?"

"How'd ya think I got us out here in the first place? I'm still the mayor's assistant, you know. But, one day, that's gonna change." He speaks fairly confidently. "They might be laughing at me now, but let me tell you something – the least imposing guy in the room has the biggest advantage in the room."

The waiter comes back with their drinks – some wine he couldn't begin to name, and a glass of what was probably lemonade. His ears turn red, but he silently sips at his drink.

What comes after that is a lengthy silence as the deceivingly older man starts on what was sure not to be his last drink. "Sooo…. What're they teaching you in school?"

He looks up at his uncle utterly unimpressed, which is returned with a shrug. At the very least maybe that managed to calm him down a little.

"Just the fundamentals, again." He groaned.

"Well you've gotta know them by now, right?"

He just nods his head in response.

"Alright, then tell me – the prosecutor's got one big responsibility, right?"

"To elicit the truth from evidence and testimony," he recited right off the top of his head.

"Heh, yeah, that's about right."

"What's so funny?"

"The last time I came across a prosecutor that went around looking for that, he ended up stuffed into a waste bin. I heard they chopped him up in little pieces."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

The waiter brings him his second glass and he gulps down half of it straight away, giving the waiter a sidelong glance before he walks off. "Remember what I told you? About how a public office in this city should always act?"

"The other guy is always guilty?"

"No, the other thing."

"Opportunity comes first?"

"That's it – we can sit here and read off a big list of everyone's good deeds till the sun sets, but someone who's sitting out here drinking every week has about a line or two in there tops. In fact, everyone else probably had him standing on their shoulders, and not just one time."

The boy stares at him blankly. "What I'm saying is, always screw over someone who has money! Uh, well, unless it's someone you report to, or who he reports to, I guess, yeah..." He rubs the back of his neck, a little embarrassed.

"Is that why dad ended up in jail?" The boy finally speaks up. "Did he screw over someone he wasn't suppose to?"

"W-Woah, I didn't mean it like that. Hey, your dad wasn't like us – he was a good guy, he didn't mess with anyone! Anyway!" He gulps down the third glass in its entirety as soon as the waiter leaves it on the table. "Yep, another, thanks, get me two more actually – anyway, your dad didn't need to take advantage like that. See, he just had a way, you know? He could convince people of just about anything by talking to 'em."

The boy's eyes widen a bit, a whole lot less enamored with his concerns from just seconds ago. Was his uncle actually going to talk about his dad for once? "A way? What kind of way?"

"Geez, you've got so many damn questions." He complains while letting out a belch that didn't match up with his appearance at all. "Ah, but that's okay! Really! I mean, I don't really remember it that well, or anything, but he could just open his mouth, and if there was a girl his age in the room, it'd be like a huge geyser."

Despite his animated explanation the boy just stared at him like he was speaking another language.

"He was good with words. Does that make enough sense?"

"Oh."

"Hey, don't you oh me. It was a big deal!" Another two glasses down the drain. Was that even wine or was it some non-alcoholic drink he ordered just to look cool in front of his nephew? He's never held his liquor that well. "What's more – you've got it too, I think."

"What gives you that impression?"

"I mean, I saw you the other day, the way you turned down that cute blonde, in the hallway? In front of a bunch of other kids? That's nothing you got from me, that's for damn sure."

The boy groans. "Can't you take this seriously?"

"I am being serious. It'll make you near unbeatable in the courtroom too. Most of those bigwigs just parrot each other – coming in being able to speak like you know what you're talking about puts you in the top twenty-percent."

But while his uncle put it about as poorly as possible, could it have been true? He couldn't help but sit there and imagine his own father, and what he might've been.

"Being perfectly honest," his uncle broke the silence in a much firmer tone of voice, "If you're not feeling like you belong there - I know you went along with all this law school shit just because you're a good kid and all, but you can back out if you want to."

The boy looks up at his uncle, first in confusion, then in disbelief.

"No, I..."

"But you've gotta want it, more than anything else. Otherwise, you'll always regret it. You're going to come out of school with crummy grades and you're just gonna blend in the background."

His uncle pulls something out of his jacket pocket. "Today you're thirteen, so I'm gonna show you this." It's a small photograph, at least a decade old just from the wear on it.

Taking it from his uncle's hands, almost right away he understands why it's so significant.

In the photograph were two teenagers, only a bit older looking than he was himself. On the left was a face he knew all too well – it was his father during his younger years, with his calm eyes and his usual laid-back smile, the very same he caught his uncle trying to copy every now and then. The other was a young woman with long, jade hair tied into a ponytail, her arm thrown over his father's shoulders, smiling broadly and making a peace sign at the camera, her face pressed up closely against his. He'd seen plenty of pictures of his father with his aunt and even a few with his uncle from back then, but never one with this woman.

"Is that Mion Sonozaki?" he speaks in a murmur.

"Yep."

"I didn't know they were like this." He stares at the photo intently as though to bore a hole into it. "Oyajishi, tell me."

"Pulling out all the stops today, huh?" He responds with his usual carelessness, though his tone doesn't reach his eyes. "Yeah, they were close like that. Your dad saved her, kind of the same way he saved me."

"She's not my mom, is she?"

"I've really got no idea, but somehow I doubt it. I don't think there's a single Sonozaki that didn't come out of the womb green and perpetually pissed, and at least as far as I know you were neither."

"But then why did she do it?" He grits his teeth slightly.

His uncle shrugs his shoulders. "If you take the bench, you might just find out. Otherwise there's no way. She's been on the stand more times than I can count, but she's never come off it in handcuffs."

He continues peering at the picture of his father and that woman. He knows what the obvious answer should be but he doesn't have it in him to say it. Bottom line, he's just too young to be able to even imagine things like committing his whole life to a single thing. All the same, he was being pushed to make a choice.

But looking at that one picture, maybe the decision wasn't so hard to make. Surely there was no way he could go to sleep that night without thinking about it. Without thinking of the two of them, as happy as they were.

"Look, it's like this." His uncle continues. "We're not like your dad was – your aunt and I were born second-rate, poking around for just about anything we could get our hands on. We're not even putting you through school on our own cash, by the way." He downs the rest of his drink in a single gulp, the waiter nowhere in sight. "I've really got no way to repay your dad for anything. Getting to the top – it's not exactly a noble idea. Not for anyone that's gotten there before, and not for me either. I definitely don't have the balls to stay good like he did. I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up screwing over plenty of people the same way he was. I never really wanted you to have the Houjou name, because one day people around you will be talking even worse about it than they were when we were kids."

"Then why do it?"

"Because I'm going to be the one standing on them, not the other way around. I'm going to own them, and they'll have to answer to me. I'm going to play their game and win it. And that's about as good as it's ever gonna get." His uncle's words are perhaps the first that have ever come directly from the heart. "That's what I'm going to do. Now what're you gonna do, Kacchan? You've gotta decide now while you've still got the chance. Don't wait like I did."

He looks down at the photograph again. Staring deeply into the depths of Mion Sonozaki's eyes, he states very plainly. "I'm gonna get the truth out of her."

His uncle smiles. "Now you've just gotta make it happen."

He may not be able to understand the gravity of the choice he makes. He may not have the slightest clue where such a small aspiration will take him. What compels him in this present moment that soon will become a distant memory is a feeling, a mix of longing, jealously, spite, all stirring together in a quiet seething. One day he may even forget where it came from, but that feeling will never go away until it at long last is repaid.

Rule T. Kanbei Maebara always receives the photograph on his thirteenth birthday.