Whoo, back again! Higurashi Month 2019, because it has become one of my lowkey life goals to keep perpetuating this until it becomes a proper tradition for all three-and-a-half people in this graveyard of a fandom. And then keep doing it anyways, because tradition. If you wish to check out the prompt list, its on my tumblr page under the same username.

June 24th, 2019

The ground was dark, the grass wet with dew and shrouded in shadow. Crickets and cicadas chittered noisily from every direction, and the deep blue sky was smudged with a bright nimbus of yellow, orange, red, and pink. The large, looming mountains that ringed Hinamizawa's small township were hulking masses of shadow in the predawn light, hemming in the anciently-thatched collection of small buildings.

"Ugh…"

Keiichi Maebara hung bodily over the worn wooden railings that fenced off the outcrop near Furude Shrine. The centuries-old wood was smooth, dew-damp, and heavy, holding up the drowsy-eyed brunette easily as he drooped over it like a wilted stem of grass.

Why did I agree to this?

"Still feeling sleepy, Keiichi-kun?" a disgustingly chipper voice came from his other side –though Rena did sound more tired than normal. The auburn-haired teen wore her usual white dress, and her purple bows were tied as neatly as ever at her throat and the small of her back, and her favorite white beret was at its usual angle on her head; the only concession to the abnormally early hour was the dimmer gleam of her blue eyes and the slight droop to her head as she leaned against one of the posts to the same fence he was draped over. She didn't seem concerned about the damp stone of the pavement under her white dress, or the potentiality of crawling bugs –like him, she was waiting.

"Oh-ho-ho~! It seems as though the two of you have grown too old to be waking up so early!" Satoko laughed triumphantly from one of the stone benches behind them, swinging her jean-shorts-clad legs exuberantly to and fro as she did. Rena spared her a fond smile, while Keiichi only grunted and weakly flapped a hand with a vague attempt at threatening menace.

Satoshi might have scolded his younger sister for her acerbic statement, but he was sprawled, asleep, with his back against the other low, armless stone bench, one arm folded over his chest as the other dragged against the ancient stone pavement. Even though, technically, they were all supposed to stay awake at this point, no one felt the need to disturb the pale, wan-faced boy's slumber.

"Mew, Satoko, you shouldn't be so mean. They did have to wake up earlier than we did to get here on time." Rika supplied cheerfully from Satoko's left side, wriggling her bare toes inside her loose white sandals. "Our house is right next to the shrine, after all."

"Hauuu…so…tired…" Hanyuu yawned from Rika's other side, leaning against her cousin with drooping eyes. Out of all of the gathered members, she was the most visibly exhausted; her long lilac hair was even curlier and more full of volume than normal, and the strap of her pink sundress had slipped over one shoulder as she leaned against Rika, half-asleep.

"Hey, hey, hey! What's with all the sleepyheads?" came an exuberant voice from behind the group, back towards the path that lead to the shrine, and Keiichi grunted and weakly turned his head to look as Rena raised her eyes and the trio on the bench glanced over their shoulders. Satoshi's eyes slid open as he lazily turned his cheek to glance towards the voice.

Mion Sonozaki stood at the entrance to the outcropping, flanked by shrubs and other various riotously growing summertime greenery, her sister Shion behind her. The elder Sonozaki twin was grinning, and a notepad was tucked under one arm, a pen behind her ear. "Aright losers, who's ready to greet the sun on this fine Midsummer's morning?"

"Me!" Rika trilled, raising her hand brightly.

"Ready, sir!" Satoko saluted, swiveling her hips to face herself the other way on the bench and cocking her arm in an exuberant, if probably not correct, salute.

"Hau..." Hanyuu yawned again, slumping slightly as the support of Rika's body shifted.

"All right, Mion, let's get this party started!" Keiichi said with forced energy, heaving himself away from the brink and groggily punching his fist in the air.

Rena stood up and smiled, locking her hands in front of herself. "Ready, Mi-chan!"

Satoshi slumped his way upright and yawned behind one hand, peering at the two green-haired twins in befuddled exhaustion. "Muu, why do we have to wake up before the sun does, Mion?"

"Like, duh!" Mion brandished the clipboard at her assembled companions like it was a policeman's badge, flashing her bright white teeth in a gleaming grin that was almost threatening in its enthusiasm. "Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the entire year! We aren't wasting one single minute of daylight!"

"What Onee means, basically, is that today is the endurance trial for the Hinamizawa Club." Shion announced with equally ominous cheeriness, pointing one slender finger upright in illustration. "From the first light of the dawn until the last gleam of sunset, this summer solstice will hold an Olympic-level matchup between the fearsome members of our organization!"

"Hell yeah!" Keiichi showed wakefulness for the first time that morning, straightening his shoulders as he clenched his fists, periwinkle eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. "Today will be the day that the sun rises on Keiichi Maebara's empire! What's the first challenge, Mion?"

"Yeah, Mi-chan, what are we doing?"

"Bring it on!"

"Alright!" Mion laughed. "That's the kind of attitude I like to see from the Hinamizawa Club!"

She plucked out the pen that was tucked behind her ear and spun it rapidly around her fingers before putting its tip to the paper. "As you all know, I canvassed each member of the club for an activity that they'd like to see, host, and judge, and I, as your leader, have spaced these activities throughout the day accordingly. After we see the sunrise, and greet it appropriately, we'll retire to Rika and Satoko and Hanyuu's house for a spot of Russian Roulette Breakfast, suggested and hosted by our dear Rika Furude. Whoever can eat the most and tell us the most about what they ate wins –bonus points for not revealing it when you bite into something nasty. Following that, Rena Ryugu has submitted the contest of River-Raft Pooh Sticks –we each build a raft to the best of our ability, and the first person to drift past the suspension bridge on a raft without paddling, swimming, or otherwise helping move their raft in any way wins."

"That's why she said to bring our swimsuits." Keiichi muttered under his breath, eyes lifting upwards with his epiphany.

"Afterwards," Mion continued brightly, unfazed by his near-silent interruption. "-Satoko-chan has put forth the challenge of Mountain Capture the Flag. The same general rules of capture-the-flag apply, except we'll be holding it on Satoko's trap mountain!"

"Oh-ho-ho~!" Satoko cackled, holding a hand to her mouth, as everyone else shivered and edged away.

"In the next slot," Mion grinned, flashing her bright white teeth. "-my most munificent sister Shion has suggested a Frozen T-shirt Race –players must melt and then put on one of the waterlogged T-shirts that's been chilling in our freezer for a few days, then run a race from the shrine to the school and back. Afterwards, we'll have lunch for my own suggestion; a Picnic Basket Relay. Two-man teams will race to see who can lay down their picnic down first; one puts out the blanket and accoutrements, and their partner then puts it all back. This game has an additional penalty; whichever team comes in last has to set up everyone else's picnics for real before we eat, and clean everything up after."

"Mew, I hope everyone is a very neat eater." Rika chirped from the bench, closing her eyes and swinging her bare legs merrily as her green dress swished around them.

"Hehehe." Mion chuckled, her teal eyes glinting in a way that would more befit the Prince of Darkness than an average Japanese schoolgirl. "No promises. Anyways, after lunch, we have Keiichi's suggestion, which is your average game of Dodgeball –but with water balloons! Whoever stays the driest by the end of the time is our winner! That'll tide us over for a while, and then we have Satoshi's game –a Blanket Run! In the same teams as our Picnic Basket Relay, we will have one partner get on a blanket, and the other will drag them in a race across the lawn. But this is no ordinary race!"

Everyone jumped at Mion's sudden increase in exuberance; a fearsome thing, and something one would previously have thought impossible. The mint-haired leader of the Hinamizawa Club flourished her clipboard again, eyes gleaming as she assumed the stance of some victorious general about to lord it over her defeated foes. "The course of this blanket run is up the steps of the shrine, through the woods, across the stream, and then back to the school again, and the partner on the blanket may not leave the blanket at any time!"

There was a universal gasp and paling of faces; also, a decent amount of sparks glinting in the eyes of Mion's comrades as ambitions and plans were kindled, and thirst for blood rose.

"Following that, our dear Hanyuu Furude's suggestion; a Sponge Launch, in which our teams have one partner use a slingshot to launch a wet sponge at his or her teammate, who then catches it and wrings it out into a bucket. Whoever fills their bucket first, wins, however you might discover that finding your bucket is harder than it looks. To keep matters fair, the rest of these suggestions are of my own design, as there isn't quite enough time in the day to do a double-down for everyone else. And so!"

The clipboard was raised high to the sky.

"A rapid-fire set of endurance trails for our evening set! First! Firefall, in which we all gather tinder and firewood for our barbecue dinner, followed by a Marshmallow Race, in which we get American, and whoever roasts the most hotdogs and the best marshmallows for smores is our winner! Afterwards is our Christmas in July, in which we race to build the best forts out of any outdoor material we can find and then exchange a barrage of snowballs, in the form of more water balloons! Whoever lasts longest, without their fort falling apart or getting themselves wet, snatches the victory! Last but certainly not the least, a firefly-catching game, in which whoever catches the most fireflies before the sun sets is the winner! What do you say, my fine band of friends!"

The answer, as always, was unanimous. Every fist was clenched and punched into the air, and the words "HELL YEAH!" rolled across the predawn clearing.

Thus, the battle lines were drawn, and an almost palpable aura of readiness and bloodthirst shuddered across the dimly lit clearing as all eyes turned to the thin line of gold along the tree-studded horizon, and all minds turned to plans on how to snatch victory for themselves.

Mion, as usual, had calculated things to a nicety. It wasn't more than a few moments after she and her twin had arrived, that Satoko shouted aloud and pointed to the distant horizon, where a burningly bright sliver of orange-gold peeped over the edge of a mountain slope, scattering spear-like rays the same color of the inner flesh of a grapefruit over the velvety mass of trees.

"Whoohoo!" Keiichi cried, pumping both clenched fists in the air as the sun showed its edge, piercing a golden dot in lower edge of the rosy dawn sky. "Today, sun, you rise on my day of triumph!"

"Alright!" Rena laughed, waving merrily to the infinestably-slowly rising ball of fire as it crept millimeter by millimeter into the skyline. "I feel like today's going to be a fun day, I do!"

"Oh-ho-ho~!" Satoko laughed behind her hand, springing up onto the ancient wooden railing and hanging off it by her feet and one hand as she waved exuberantly to the sun with the other. "On this Midsummer's day I shall taste triumph over all you pathetic peasants! Oh-ho-ho~!"

"Mew. I feel like much blood will be spilled today." Rika chirped in the background, smiling as her violet eyes briefly closed.

"Hau, hauhauhau!" Hanyuu whimpered, clutching both hands to her petite chest. "W-who do you think will rise victorious?"

"Ha! That shall be none other than me, Shion Sonozaki!" the younger Sonozaki twin cackled, folding her arms as her teal eyes gleamed with confident bloodlust.

"Ahahaha!" Mion laughed. "Good, good, this is what I like to see! Well then, with the sun having dropped the checkered flag, let's all head to Rika's house and get ready for pain!"

Keiichi surveyed the battlefield grimly. After the group had all packed into Rika, Hanyuu, and Satoko-chan's dining room, which was also their bedroom, the meal had been laid out by an innocently-beaming Rika-chan on a low table in the center of the bare floor. Everything was a bit squished, since the room itself was small and there were eight inhabitants, but they made it work, especially since Rika-chan retired to the small kitchenette, wide, seeming-innocent violet eyes gleaming with wicked intent.

The brunet swallowed hard as he looked at the feast laid before them. Everyone had been given one paper plate of tamagoyaki, miso shiru, and natto, with a communal plate of salmon and pitcher of milk. Keiichi's right eye twitched as he surveyed his opponents, wondering who would be first to crack. Both Rena and the Sonozaki twins had scary-competent poker faces, so they were currently his biggest threats. Satoko was a grinning demon, used to expressing her emotions, and Hanyuu practically radiated everything she felt, so they were not as likely to come out on top.

Rika-chan was already munching on her own breakfast with a notepad close by, cheerfully immune to any suffering the rest of them would be cast into within the next few minutes. Keiichi's eyes narrowed; perhaps that would give her an undue advantage in the next course, as she wouldn't be curled around her stomach and writhing in agony.

"Well!" Mion scoffed, snapping her chopsticks apart briskly and grinning at the meal laid out before them. "It's not gonna get eaten just by staring at it! Let's get this party started!"

The others followed her example, some with bravado, some cautiously, and Keiichi gulped again as he looked at his portion. The "tell what you ate" was such an obvious blind; it was clear that this was just an excuse for Rika-chan to feed them disgusting ingredients and watch them struggle to save face. But what to sample first…

The milk was probably alright, but he couldn't smell anything untoward from the rest of the meal, and that worried him. Cautiously, Keiichi reached for the pitcher and poured himself some, taking a sip of milk to calm his nerves.

He nearly choked as an obnoxiously salty taste assaulted his tastebuds, but managed to swallow quickly as the others looked in his direction.

"Something wrong, Kei-chan?" Shion grinned, and he managed a feral grin of his own, fingers tense around the cup, before his eyes slid to Rika, who was smirking to herself in a way rather indecent of a cherubic-looking ten-year-old.

She put salt in the milk! No wonder I couldn't smell anything –its soluble!

That sort of diabolical planning was par for the course with the club, and Keiichi seethed at being caught out by it so easily.

"Oh-ho-ho~! I'm glad Keiichi-san fell for such an obvious trap –it shows the rest of us what not to do!" Satoko crowed gleefully, red eyes gleaming at him. "Such a stupid mistake –why on earth would such a small pitcher of milk be used to serve all seven of us? Its obvious that there's something in it we won't like, which will limit our consumption! Oh-ho-ho~!"

She cackled gleefully, and Keiichi scowled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Alright, so what?!" he barked back. "The milk's got salt in it. It's no problem! Its fine! I could eat this whole damn meal and never flinch!"

Mion laughed, and the game was on again as Rika made a single mark on her notepad.

Keiichi soon ate his words –quite literally– as he decided to commit everything to a simple strategy; scarf down everything in front of him in the hopes that the taste would not register until he had already swallowed, and get the entire charade over with in a single fell swoop.

He regretted this strategy quite fast, as a medley of different disgusting flavors met his tongue –hot, spicy, sour, salty, and bitter, and Hinamizawa's Magician of the Mouth howled in agony, a burst of steam escaping his mouth as he collapsed back onto the tatami matt, twitching vacantly with comatose eyes.

Rika made a mark on her notepad. "Keiichi's first out." she commented brightly.

The remaining combatants looked at each other uneasily, watching Keiichi quiver on the ground like a broken insect as something misty that they were fairly sure looked like a chibified version of his soul hovered above his slackened mouth.

As Keiichi had predicted, it was indeed Rena who won this challenge of bluff and tells, and it was she who led the other club members outside, groaning and clutching their stomachs, minus Rika, who was all-too-cheerful at the success of her game.

"Let's get changed!" Rena chirped brightly, indicating the canvas bags everyone had brought their effects in and left by the stoop of the house, and Satoshi bent down to haul the still mostly-comatose Keiichi behind the shed, the brunet's heels dragging in the dirt and leaving two furrows behind him. Satoshi dropped him and came back for their satchels, carrying both back with him so they could change and afford the girls their privacy.

In the interests of fairness, Rena had merely told Mion that a swimsuit was necessary and made her commit to a decision before telling her what kind of contest they would be staging, so therefore the club president was no more prepared than the rest of them, except for Rena herself. She, Satoko, Rika, and Hanyuu were all in their school swimsuits, while Mion had opted for her two-piece red swimsuit, and Shion her blue flower-print bikini.

The girls were just pulling on their shirts when Keiichi and Satoshi walked back around the edge of the building, both in swim trunks and sandals, with weathered T-shirts of their own. Keiichi had revived somewhat and was walking under his own power, though he still looked a bit groggy.

"Alright!" Rena giggled, skipping a little as she led them down to the bridge crossing the river near the Furude Shrine. Bugs darted around the group's faces in the humid summer heat, and so the cool breeze and the scent of water as they walked out onto the steel expansion was welcome. Rena pointed down the dark, blue-green ribbon to a place upstream.

"You guys can build and launch your rafts down there, I left a flag at the starting point. The first person to drift past the bridge right here on their raft without paddling, swimming, or helping themselves whatsoever wins!"

"So basically, we just need to craft a raft and sit on it, and let the current carry us." Satoko replied, eyes narrowed as the wind ruffled her short blonde hair.

"Exactly!" Rena chirped. "You can lay on it, or drape yourself across it, but you still have to be mostly on your raft when you cross the bridge."

"Alright!" Mion laughed, cracking her knuckles. "Bring it on, you guys!"

"Muu, w-we won't let you take our victory so easily!" Satoshi cried, clenching his fist and attempting to look intimidating as Keiichi swayed groggily beside him. He grabbed the other boy by the shoulders and bodily steered him towards the other end of the bridge, where the path that led to their assumed docking point started. "C'mon, Keiichi-san!"

Satoko studied her options carefully. The pebbly beach that led to the water was safe enough, she supposed. The problem was the actual construction of the raft itself –Rena had left them only a few coils of light rope each and a sharp, long knife. They would have to, quite literally, build their rafts from scratch, and not only must these rafts float, they must also be light enough to carry a person…and tough enough to deal with any interference from the rival players.

Logs, she decided. Bind together logs with the rope. They would be buoyant enough to carry her, and solid and heavy enough to stand up to all but the most determined punishment. Thus thinking, Satoko grabbed her knife and brandished it, looking around the small scrap of clear space for some proper saplings. She was too small and far too weak to chop down an actual tree, so she would have to either settle for their straighter branches or the trunks of the more slender new growths.

She spotted some delicate, thin branches over the crest of a small slope. Perfect –those would be growing from saplings of the right size.

Machete in hand, swatting a few errant bugs with her other, Satoko climbed through the undergrowth, well aware that time was a problem as well as the proficiency of her craftmanship –she could build a sea-worthy raft, probably, given enough time, but there wasn't any time. She needed to build her raft and get it out on the water before any of the others, because then her victory was practically assured. It didn't matter if she built the slowest raft in existence, if she got it out when everyone else was still fumbling for raw material, the sheer size of her head start would bring her triumph, in the end.

The saplings were birch, white and slender, and Satoko knelt beside the nearest one, starting to hack at the base with her knife. Even with her childlike strength, it only took a dozen chops before the sapling was severed from its base, and Satoko gripped and lifted it briefly, testing how heavy her new log was.

Not bad. She could probably carry two or three.

She shimmied to the side, and a few quick scrapes with the knife rid her of any dragging, trailing branches, and she got to work on the next trunk. Before long, Satoko had a decent pile of about size or seven trunks, with the accompanying litter of discarded branches and leaf debris, and she exhaled in satisfaction, wiping some sweat off her brow with the back of her wrist. Grabbing as many trunks as she could lift –four– Satoko began to haul them laboriously back to the beach.

When she got there, it was clear what everyone else's plan of attack was. Keiichi and Shion, with their wretched high-end urban education, were clearly copying designs taught to them in class –while Satoko was merely going to construct a simple square raft, they were both obviously trying to craft more streamlined designs in the same method. Time would tell whether or not the increased construction time would be balanced by the swifter movement in the water.

With Keiichi, probably not. He seemed more focused on his design appearing functional than being functional, and Satoko quietly but smugly edged him out of her mental check of the race. Form was not more important than function, and focusing on the latter was a sure way to lose this game.

Mion, on the other hand, seemed to be trying for something similar to Satoko, but her tree trunks were thicker, and she seemed to be planning to layer them in a grind, for greater durability. Satoko would have to watch out for that.

Rika was also very clearly going for the streamline design, with a raft longer than it was wide –if Satoko was reading her right, the blue-haired miko was planning to construct something similar to a surfboard, something she could float upon on her belly and slide through the water with. Another design to be wary of.

Hanyuu, somehow and strangely, was weaving branches of a plant Satoko didn't directly recognize into a circular shape, apparently planning to create a raft like a dish. Satoko didn't understand the logic behind such a decision, and was therefor also wary of it

Yes, Hanyuu and Rika would be her main concerns here –the older club members may have more craft and guile, but the three who shared Rika's house had one thing in common: they were all much smaller, and required smaller rafts and less cumbersome materials to keep them floating. The three of them would all likely be launching at the same time, or near it, and their designs would be so different that it was hard to say which one would have the most immediate head start.

Satoko turned her head to cast a concerned eye on her brother. Satoshi was working patiently, and seemed to be crafting a raft halfway between hers and Rika's –long and thin, but with longer logs bound together with rope, rather than Rika's series of short, flat ones. That would be something to watch out for, too.

The blonde trap-master focused back on her work, smirking in anticipation. The raft wasn't the only thing she was planning to make for this race, oh no.

Satoshi swallowed nervously as he dragged his finished raft to the water's edge, pushing it in carefully. It floated, which was one goal accomplished, and he quickly followed the wooden construct into the shallows, grabbing the rough edges of the outermost logs and laying himself stomach-down on his craft as the current began to tug it forward. He would feel pretty stupid if he lost because his raft ran away from him.

Keiichi-san was the only one behind him, now –all the others had already launched their rafts, with Rika-chan, Satoko, and Hanyuu-chan starting off first. Since Shion and Mion-san had started off somewhat earlier than he had, Satoshi calmly folded his arms, resting his chin on them and relaxing as the current carried the raft. The wet, green, growing scent of the river surrounded him, the birds twittering in the trees alongside the banks and the irritating gnats and suchlike banished to the water's edge. The sun was warm on his back, the water cool, not cold, and everything was peaceful.

If this wasn't a race, he might have dozed.

There was a splash behind him at some slight distance, proving that the last club member had entered the race, and Satoshi raised his head a little, looking ahead. He could just spot Mion and Shion's backs, nearing a curve in the river.

Well, there wasn't anything he could do…now…

Satoshi blinked as Keiichi passed by him, a clumsy T-bar of logs fastened to his raft, and from it hung…his shirt?

Yes, Keiichi had removed his shirt and was floating bare-chested down the river, using his shirt like a sail and grinning madly at Satoshi as he passed by!

"See you on the flip side, loser!" the brunet crowed triumphantly as he floated ahead, and Satoshi shrugged and nestled his chin back down into his folded arms. If he lost he lost –Satoshi's raft was too small and thin to support him sitting up on it at all: the only thing he could do to increase his speed was straighten his feet so they didn't drag in the water behind him, and since the current was coming from behind, having some drag was actually beneficial, because it gave the water something to push against.

There were shrieks from up ahead, and the two boys blinked as they neared the bend in the river.

"Oh my god –look, there's a trap!"

"Go back! Go back! Its –ack!"

The second cry was cut off with a splash, and Keiichi and Satoshi looked at each other uneasily. But it was too late to think of whatever vague retreat they could accomplish –they had rounded the bend in the river, and Satoshi was just in time to see Mion squirm strangely on her raft, something white and thin bobbing alongside her, then fumble and drop off with another splash. Her head popped above the water as her raft floated some distance down the stream, scowling in disgust.

Then Satoshi saw the trap.

Someone –no prizes for guessing who– had saved some of their rope and made a lasso, which they had swung across the river and caught tightly on a branch, then somehow fixed to the other side of the bank. Knowing Satoko, she'd probably tied some logs together in an X to form a rough grapple and made sure to catch it between some rocks.

The end result was a cord stretched diagonally across the river at roughly navel-height for the kneeling club members, and it had unseated both Mion and Shion, the younger twin currently swimming for her remote raft, already some distance down the river.

Keiichi looked in both directions frantically, but there was no way to duck under the trap. In a last-ditch attempt, as the current swept him closer to his doom, he reached out and grabbed the string, trying to pull it up and over his makeshift sail, but alas, too late. The string caught near the top, and the slow inevitably force of the current overset the raft and dunked Keiichi, just as it had dunked the two Sonozaki siblings.

Satoshi, lying flat, passed right under the rope easily. He wondered for a moment, as Keiichi flailed and spluttered to the surface, if that had been intentional on Satoko's part, and paused to give Shion a sympathetic wave as he floated by her frantic attempts to remount her raft without using the distant bottom of the river or by delaying her time in getting to a bank.

Thus Satoshi moved up to the middle of the race.

The cries of Keiichi, Shion, and Mion became fainter as he floated on, and Satoshi was fairly sure that he heard several more splashes, as if they were engaging in some creative interference on each other by themselves. That would only further the distance between them, though, as the trio focused on petty revenge and unseating their rivals instead of getting ahead –and so Satoshi floated on, unconcerned, and feeling pretty good about his chances to win, or at least, not come in last.

He drifted on the river current for a little while longer –enough to privately vow to do this again sometime, under less strenuous circumstances and on a more comfortable raft– before the river curved again, the current rushing a little faster as the water was forced around a sharp turn. His goal lay before him, the distant line of the suspension bridge crossing the river as a thin grey smudge. Lighter, higher shrieks and triumphant laughter carried back to him over the water's surface, and he could spot three indistinct splotches of color, much closer, on the river. Satoko's diabolic cackling in particular was distinctive, and Satoshi sighed through his nose as there was a despairing cry and a splash. What was his sister getting into now?

Apparently, he saw as he floated closer, Satoko's bag of tricks had not ended with the tripwire. She had somehow gotten clods of dirt –not hard enough to injure, but certainly heavy and dense enough to hurt a little when thrown and do damage to rafts– in a rough-woven basket on her raft and was throwing them gleefully at both Rika and Hanyuu…at least in theory, because it seemed as though Hanyuu's frantic attempts to dodge had overset her own raft, and the small lilac-haired Furude was paddling with her raft over to the bank, "hauhauhau"ing her distress all the way.

"Mew, Satoko, no fair!" Rika cried petulantly, arms over her head, as Satoko bombarded her with pellets, her raft slowing a little as she wiggled to try and avoid them.

"Club Rule Number Two: You are required to put forth all your effort into getting first place, no matter what!" Satoko replied with a wicked grin as she floated closer, reaching out and overturning the raft as Rika squealed and spluttered.

Satoshi sank lower on his raft and guiltily attempted to look inconspicuous as he floated past Hanyuu, who had by now managed to kneel again on her dish-shaped raft and continue forward.

Rika surfaced again and spat out a stream of water –directly at Satoko– before shaking her wet curtain of hair out of her face and paddling towards her best friend, vengeance in her innocently-gleaming violet eyes.

"Rika –Rika, no, don't you dare-!" Satoko squeaked as the miko swam closer, grinning evilly as her blonde friend gulped. "Rikaaaaaaa!"

Satoko wailed as her own raft was overset by a strong push from below, surfacing with a splash as she immediately swept her hand out, flicking a wave of water at her best friend.

"How dare you!"

Rika and Satoko promptly began a splash-fight, either ignoring or not cognizant of Satoshi and his raft as he quietly floated by, instead too focused on making the other pay for their overset.

"Hau, and serves you right." Hanyuu said primly as she drifted by the two, and then squealed as they exchanged a glance and promptly overset her as well, splashing the lilac-haired goddess for good measure when she came up, spluttering.

Satoshi blinked and turned his head a little as he floated onwards, leaving the trio several dozen yards behind him. Wasn't he…in first now?

Let's see, Keiichi-san, Mion-san, Shion, Satoko, Hanyuu-chan, Rika-chan…yes, he was in first.

Huh.

Satoshi shrugged quietly to himself and settled down against his raft, lowering his eyes and sleepily gazing out at the world as he quietly drifted towards the bridge.

"The winner of the River-Raft Pooh Sticks competition is…Satoshi Hojo!" Rena announced happily, blinking a little as she looked over the others, who were all in varying stages of dripping wet and grumpy about it, while Satoshi, standing at her side, was the only one who was but mildly damp. "Did you guys have fun?"

"Muu, it was very relaxing." Satoshi answered with a gentle smile, while the others glared viciously at his grinning younger sister.

"I'll get you for this, Satokooooo!" Keiichi, as usual, was less than subtle, and lunged for the small cackling blonde, hands upraised into tickle-ready claws as he chased her around the pebbly beach underneath the suspension bridge.

"Ah, but Keiichi-san, if you get me, then who will give us all your new challenge?" Satoko squealed gleefully as she and Keiichi circled cartoonishly in a run around a dizzy-looking Hanyuu.

"Alright, enough of that." Shion huffed a moment after, grabbing Keiichi by the collar of his transparently wet T-shirt and bringing him to a choking halt.

"Yeah, save your energy for the next game, Kei-chan." Mion added, wringing out her long tail of wet hair.

"Indeed!" Satoko skidded to a halt and turned around, flinging out her arm dramatically as her eyes gleamed with evil intent. "For the next challenge was submitted by none other than me, Satoko Hojo – Mountain Capture-the-Flag!"

The club members calmed and gathered, Rena moving to take her place with the others as Satoko was left standing alone, facing the group.

"This is but a simple, ordinary game of Capture the Flag." the young trap-master began, though her wicked grin belied the words as she rubbed her hands together diabolically. "Hosted on my very own mountain, your objective is utterly basic –be the first person to grab the golden flag which I, Satoko Hojo, have hidden somewhere on my mountain. For this game there are no official teams, and the rules are as simple as the game itself: find the flag, which is indisputably on my mountain, and the first person to do so is the winner! The simplest game of all, today!"

The entire club deadpanned as she ended her speech and beamed, a cloud of gloom soaking over them.

The amount of traps Satoko had waiting for them must be absolutely legendary.

A short hike later, and they were at the place Satoko had deemed fit for a starting location, changed out of their swimsuits, inasmuch as they had put more substantial clothing over them –no one trusted Satoko not to have a water-based trap lurking somewhere about on the mountain currently looming above them.

"I will be supervising your efforts through binoculars on the roof of that shed over there, and the game will be ended by a whistle blown by me, followed by another rocket for those of you who don't hear." Satoko began pompously, gesturing to the small shack they all remembered from their efforts against the Wild Dogs and Takano. She reached up and patted Kasai, who had met them here in canvas trousers and a green T-shirt, along with his usual treasured dark sunglasses –there was something amusing in the image of the tiny blonde girl so condescendingly patting such an imposing-looking bodyguard at the easiest place for her to reach, which was about his knee. "Kasai-san has kindly volunteered to be your supervisor for the duration of this match. Should you encounter any, heh, difficulties that you are unable to get out of, Kasai-san will meet you and blindfold you, then take you back to the starting point here. Any questions?"

"Can I get some hints from you?" Shion asked her bodyguard, wiggling her brows coyly.

"Regrettably not, Shion-san." he answered, stoic-faced. "Hojo-san has instructed me most stringently to not give any of you aid beyond that of rescuing you from her traps –and she was very specific about providing any outside assistance to you in particular, Shion-san."

"Boo, boo! Kasai, you're such a spoilsport! Why can't you cheat and give me a leg up?" Shion whined, sticking her tongue out at him. The mustachioed guard did not dignify her response with a reply.

"Alright then! Kasai-san and I will make our way up the mountain, and after I shoot off the starter's rocket, you can begin your path down to hell!" Satoko chirped, her red eyes glinting demonically as she grinned. She then reached up and took some of Kasai's fingers in her smaller hand. "C'mon, Kasai-san, and remember to step where I tell you."

The two made their way up the mountain along the path, and the club members were left to strategizing. Rena eyed her friends sidelong –she was pretty sure that Keiichi would be knocked out of the running fast, what with being so susceptible to Satoko's traps ordinarily, even outside of the advanced ones on her mountain. Shion and Rika, especially, she would have to watch out for –they knew Satoko best, and Shion, whatever Satoko might have ordered, may just receive extra help from Kasai anyways, even if it was something as mild as him hastening to her aid more quickly than the others.

She wondered how adorable the flag would be, and a certain powerful gleam began to light Rena's sparkling blue eyes.

"Man, I wonder what the other villagers will think of our signal-" Keiichi began, folding his arms behind his head, but cut himself short as there was a shriek of tortured air, and a bottle-rocket soared up from near the shack, exploding in the air with a sharp pop.

"That's our cue to start –let's go!" Mion cried, waving her arm forward as she and the others charged recklessly into the forest, and were swallowed up by its branches.

Ten minutes into the game by Kasai-san's watch, which he had generously left with her on the roof, Satoko watched through her binoculars, eyes gleaming avidly, as the pitiful fools swarmed over her mountain, like fat flies blundering into a spiderweb. Predictably, Keiichi-san was the first to fall, and had the blonde rolling around on the rooftop with giggles as she watched his expression –as Kasai, needing to guide the victims blindfolded, simply opted for sweeping the younger brunet up in his arms and walking back to the start with Keiichi-san held bridal-style, and the discomfited, embarrassed expression that Keiichi-san had on even underneath the blindfold made Satoko laugh hysterically.

Rena was making good headway, but even she failed to navigate the bamboo maze of traps Satoko had left out along the eastern slope, a trap which had already claimed both Mion and Hanyuu –soon all three hung gloomily in the air, waiting for Kasai to rescue them. Satoko waited until he deposited the sulking Keiichi-san at the start before radioing in their location, and then resumed her surveillance. Rika was threading the needle up the mountain, using a surprising memory of Satoko's preferred patterns and methods of safe-pathing to cautiously worm her way upwards, meter by meter. Ni-Ni was stewing sadly in a mudpit trap she had left out, somewhat lower down than Rika but higher up than Mion, Hanyuu, and Rena. And Shion…

Satoko paused, and swept her binoculars around some more, her eyebrows squinting into a furrow.

Where was Shion?

Shion, creeping through the underbrush behind Rika-chama, was being clever –or so she had figured. After all, who knew Satoko-chan the best? Rika Furude. Satoshi knew his sister well, of course, but he had only recently gotten out of the hospital, and Rika-chama had been living with Satoko for years and been friends with her for even longer beforehand. Rika-chama would know the most about Satoko's preferred traps and what patterns, if any, the devious blonde laid out. However, since this was the God-Sent Master of Traps, Satoko Hojo, it was beyond likely that Rika-chama would, eventually, fall victim to one of the many traps lying in wait around the mountain.

And since Shion was right behind Rika-chama, faithfully copying her every step, Shion would benefit from that mistake, whereas Rika-chama would be taken all the way back down the mountain in disgrace.

They both seemed to have the same goal in mind: to get to the shack where Satoko was holding court. After all, the rest of the club knew by experience that it was the best vantage point on the mountain, and Satoko as a matter of course would want to keep an eye on the fateful flag while also cackling at the misfortune of her victims –Rika-chama was taking the safe course, that of rather than wandering all over the trap-infested mountain, make her way to a key vantage point and work onwards from there with a clear goal in mind.

Shion's goal, of course, was to follow in Rika-chama's footsteps and wait for her to misstep, then carefully proceed onwards, likely with a stick of some sort in hand to test the ground ahead of her.

And sure enough, soon Rika-chama was clasped tight in some sort of mattress-pitfall, and Shion sunk down into the bushes, hiding herself best she could as she waited for Kasai to show up. If this were the only safe path along the traps in this area, she would have to risk moving aside when she heard him coming…

Crackles in the undergrowth.

Shion slowly sunk down a little more, making sure to keep her movements subtle and as minute as possible. Her green hair did help her blend in rather well, after all. Crouched on her haunches, she waited for Kasai, one hand splayed against the dusty mountain grass as she listened with all her might.

He was coming from the right –excellent, that was the same rough trajectory as the small shack.

"Mew, I guess I messed up." Rika-chama chirped regretfully from beyond Shion's line of vision as the rope she hung from creaked a little, Kasai's footsteps almost on top of them.

"Indeed. Please exercise patience, Furude-san, and I will have you down shortly." her bodyguard replied gravely, and Shion heard the snick of his pocketknife being flicked open. There was a slight twang as he sliced the rope (and in all likelihood, caught Rika-chama in the same movement) and the branch that had held the trap sprung back to its original position, and Shion mentally rubbed her hands in glee, squirming a little to peer through the gaps in the bushes around her.

As expected, Kasai had Rika-chama safely in his arms, and even cradled her one-handed with ease as he calmly replaced the pocketknife in his canvas trousers and pulled out a blindfold in its stead. "Please put this on, Furude-san, and I will take you back to the start point."

"Mew, guess I can't see the safe path, huh?" Rika-chama agreed with a theatrical sigh, taking the blindfold from his hand and putting it on obediently. A radio, secured on Kasai's hip, buzzed suddenly, and he again cradled Rika-chama's tiny body with one arm as he reached down and activated it.

"Yes, Hojo-san?"

"Oh-ho-ho~! Keiichi-san has gotten himself stuck in another trap, Kasai-san! That's the second one in twenty minutes, the pitiful fool!"

"I see. I shall be there shortly, as I must deliver Furude-san to the base of the mountain." Kasai replied calmly, his deep voice even. "Please be patient, and I will be able to hear the location from you soon."

He turned to leave, and Shion froze –even more– as his gaze swept the undergrowth. She didn't think he could see her, but then again, Kasai was one of the elite of the Sonozaki forces, so it figured he'd be good at spotting people hiding like this…

Footsteps crunched away. He hadn't seen her…or if he had, he was keeping quiet about it.

A devious smile curled Shion's pale lips. Despite Satoko's orders, it seemed as though fortune –and Shion's butler/bodyguard– was favoring her.

"Cheating! Cheating cheating cheating cheating!" Keiichi roared, flapping his arms angrily as Shion grinned at him, the shining golden flag gripped securely in her hands.

"Nope~!" the younger twin grinned, flashing him a peace sign with her other hand. "I won fair and square, you know~?"

"LIAR!" the disheveled brunet bellowed, making Rena jump, the mud caking her body flaking a little with the suddenness of her movement.

Every club member –minus Shion– was in varying stages of unkempt as they stood there at the outcrop near the Furude shrine, ranging from Mion, whose hair was merely snarled with twigs and leaves and her pants bearing a few smudges from dirty ropes, to Hanyuu, who was covered head-to-foot in mud and paint and with several small rips in her clothes. Keiichi had several thorns and burrs tangled into his shorts and shirt, which no doubt explained the sudden bite of his temper.

"Don't you think its slightly suspicious that Shion won in a game chosen by Satoko-chan and marshaled by Kasai-san?" Keiichi added desperately, jabbing a finger at the grinning Sonozaki as he looked around for support.

"Muu, I think its fair." Satoshi shrugged, scratching a few flakes of paint away from his cheek from a paintball trap.

"Shi-chan didn't get any help from Kasai-san though, did she? Did she?" Rena asked, tilting her head, and all eyes turned to the impeccably outfitted outdoor marshal for their contest.

"I exchanged no information with Shion-san in any way, shape, or form during this contest, or beforehand regarding this contest, except the conversation which was witnessed by all of you at the beginning of the game." Kasai responded promptly, adjusting his black glasses with a single finger. "I did not even see her for the duration of the game until its end."

Shion's smirk widened, and she brandished her glittering trophy at the others smugly. "So then! That's one victory for me, one for Satoshi-kun, and one for Rena-chan! Honestly, the rest of you should really step up your efforts~!"

"Gaaaaaah! You just wait, Shion!" Keiichi roared, fire flashing in his eyes and darting from his mouth. "I'll get you the next round!"

Shion grinned. "Oh, I don't think so, Kei-chan. For you see…"

She clapped her hands twice, and Kasai, dutiful as ever, grabbed a small cooler from near the stone benches and dragged it over.

"The next contest is one of my own design! Here within this frigid cooler lies seven T-shirts, soaked with water and stored in the Sonozaki freezer these past three days! It is your challenge, now, to grab one, get it on, and run all the way to the school, and the first one to make it back to the shrine here, wins! Simple enough for everyone."

Keiichi paused, rubbing his chin. "When you say get the T-shirt on, like it's a challenge…"

Shion grinned wider, baring teeth. "Why yes, Kei-chan. The T-shirts are, indeed, frozen pretty much solid. Have fun~!"

"Ggh!" Angrily, Keiichi beat his stiffly-frozen T-shirt against the wooden railing of the outcrop near the shrine, grunting with the effort of trying to soften it up. Mion was whacking hers against the stone benches with the same determination, while Satoshi and Rena seemed to have opted for wrapping their arms around the frozen white boards and hugging them, trying to warm the glittering fabric with their body heat. Rika, Hanyuu, and Satoko had gone off somewhere else to try a different strategy, of which he knew nothing.

Bare-chested, Keiichi occasionally paused to press the ice-cold fabric against his sweaty skin, a bone-chilling shudder sliding through him at the frozen contact against his flesh.

Oh, this would be a very cold race.

Finally, he had managed to beat off enough ice crystals, and the sun and his own heat had warmed it enough, that the fabric was roughly pliable, and huffing and struggling, Keiichi pulled the white shirt over his head, shuddering at the icy touch as goosebumps erupted across his skin. Mion, too, had thumped hers into submission, and strained to pull it over her head and down her chest.

Down her very…curvaceous, chest.

Keiichi coughed and looked the other way. This was going to be a challenging race, in more ways than one.

Sure enough, halfway down the steps, Keiichi found his prediction to be correct –this was going to be a very, very tough race, for him, specifically. There were two very attractive young ladies running the race with him, two young ladies with bosom sizes ranging from modest to bounteous, and they were only wearing swimsuits underneath these frozen, white T-shirts, and the ice was slowly melting, turning the white fabric transparent and, moreover, making it cling to their youthful curves, with water droplets rolling down their athletic legs…

"Gah!" Too distracted with his competitors to focus, the teen boy tripped and rolled head-over-heels down the stone steps, ending up faceplanting on the dusty ground at the very bottom as his legs were flung upwards and then fell flat, the twitching brunet belly-down on the ground.

"Kei-chan! You okay?!" Mion asked in concern from a slight distance as she jogged down the steps, and he raised a vague hand and waved it dizzily.

"No, no, I'm good…" Keiichi mumbled, not looking up or even moving his face from the ground, afraid that the girls would see his flushed grin and the blood dripping thickly from his completely undamaged nose.

Above near the shrine, Shion smirked and made a note on the clipboard she had borrowed from Mion.

Kei-chan –first out. Cause of eventual elimination: Perversity of Thoughts.

As it turned out, Rika was the winner –with the ingenuity to melt her T-shirt over the stove, and the speed of feet to outrun Satoko and Hanyuu, who had the same idea. There was a slight pause, what with the sun now high in the sky, to fix any wardrobe issues born from Satoko's traps in her earlier contest, before Mion plucked another, larger basket from the redoubtable Kasai and led them all to the grassy space by the shrine.

"Alright!" the green-haired leader swung around, brandishing her enormous basket at the group. "I've heard some growling stomachs from the rest of you, and its already just around noon, so now is as good a time as any to start this trial –the Picnic Basket Relay! Hosted and participated-in by me, teams of two will rush to set up a full picnic –blanket, plates, silverware, and food– and take it back down again, timed by Kasai over there." She gestured to the mustachioed Sonozaki guard, who now held a pocketwatch timer on a cord and Mion's clipboard from the sunrise earlier. "The fastest team to do so is our winner! The slowest team to do so is, with all the others, our losers, however, this team will also be the ones to clean everything up after the rest of us are done!"

Rena giggled and rubbed her hands. "This sounds like its going to be a fun competition, it does!"

"Oh-ho-ho~!" Satoko giggled behind her hand, sending a sly glance towards Keiichi. "Will poor Keiichi-san be able to keep from being our nursemaid? After all, he's come in last in nearly every game so far~!"

"Poor, poor Keiichi-san." Rika chirped gleefully from beside her. "Doomed to be a frilly-dressed maid and a loser forever, mew."

"Screw that!" Keiichi snorted at them, and wiped the lingering traces of blood off his nose, before crackling his knuckles, periwinkle eyes shining with determination. "What are the teams, Mion? I'll crush anyone who stands in my way!"

The club leader smirked and rolled her shoulders a little, before setting the basket down on the ground. "I like your spirit, Kei-chan! First off, it's you and me, Kei-chan. Second, Shion and Satoshi-kun. Then Rena and Hanyuu-chan, and finally Satoko -chan and Rika-chan. Does that arrangement sound fair to everyone?"

"Sounds great." Keiichi said, eyes gleaming as he sent a sly grin of his own towards the others. Rena intercepted it with a bloodthirsty smirk of her own, and Satoko cackled as menacingly as she ever did, rubbing her small hands together. After all, the longer each team had to wait, the more methods and shortcuts they could study and implement on their own.

"Mion-san, when you are ready." Kasai rumbled from near the verge, nodding towards the large basket. Mion nodded back, and she and Keiichi took their positions as the others quieted and, hawklike, fixed their eyes on the first members to run the gauntlet.

"On you mark. Get set. Go!" the Sonozaki guard announced loudly, and Mion whipped the lid up in an explosion of movement, diving her hand recklessly fast into the basket and coming out with the faded blanket in hand. With an expertly-placed snap of her wrist, she sent the worn fabric out as the cloudy pink blanket unfolded, billowing, and knelt just as quickly to set the corners as it rustled to the ground. Mion plunged both hands into the basket again, coming out with the plates.

"Sonozaki Dish Diagonal!" she cried with a determined glint to her eyes, twirling and flicking her arms out in a move very reminiscent of anime combat arts as the heavy-duty ceramic plates flew out and skidded into place on the flattened blanket.

"Demon Chopstick Rain!"

"Goblet of Fire!"

"Feast of Furudes!"

Within five minutes of nigh-on impossible martial antics, a panting Mion stood over the spoils of battle –in other words, the more-or-less-perfectly set picnic, spinning on her heel to slap her hand against Keiichi's in a high-five, tagging out as she stumbled a little and moved to sit down.

"R-right!" Keiichi cried, rushing forward to undo Mion's hard work. He grabbed the tupperware the food had been stored in and began scooping various dishes back into their containers, piling them rapidly into stacks on the inside of the basket. With slightly more exaggeration in his movements, he began a similar sequence to Mion's, his periwinkle eyes flashing light a demon's as he moved across the picnic field of battle in a blur of movement.

"Maebara Mop-Up!" the brunet cried, sweeping the plates into a stack, similar to how one would, say, sweep up a clutter of painting pallets from a distracted parent for the dishwasher.

"Paintbrush Clenched-Fist!" he roared, raking his hand across the blanket in a flash as he gathered up the chopsticks, flinging them carelessly into the basket.

"Cosmos Can Carry!"

"Canvas Retrieval!"

Kasai clicked the timer as Keiichi slammed the basket shut with somewhat undue force. "8 minutes and 12 seconds." he announced in his deep voice, and the exhausted Mion and Keiichi looked at each other and grinned, high-fiving again. The bodyguard's glasses-hidden eyes raked the field, landing on his young charge and her partner. "Next is Shion-san and Hojo-kun, correct?"

Shion and Satoshi squeaked in at 8 minutes and 58 seconds, which was neither fast enough to give them victory nor, as they watched Hanyuu and Rena start off, slow enough to assure their fates as the after-picnic cleanup.

Definitely not in line to be the cleaners, what with how Hanyuu and Rena started.

"Hau, hauhauhau, Rena-san, let go!" Hanyuu squealed, wriggling in Rena's grip as the ecstatic older girl charged down the stone steps to the shrine, Kasai in hot pursuit (timer in hand) with the rest of the club not far behind. Apparently, Hanyuu's panicked expression and flustered movements as she frantically arranged the picnic were enough to trigger Rena's dreaded Take It Home Mode, and thus the worriedly-squealing shrine maiden was tucked under the happily-squealing auburn-haired teen's arm as Rena ran headlong back to her house –all the way across the village. "We still have to finish setting the picniiiiiiiiic!"

"Awwww, you're so cute! Adorable! I'm taking you home~!" Rena sang happily, her blue eyes gleaming with a manic shine as she hurled down the steps.

"5 minutes 23 seconds." Kasai announced, deadpan, as he glanced down at the timer in his hands, still running, legs pumping, after the fleeing teen. "I recommend you return to your task soon, Ryugu-san, or else you will slip into last place."

"No way~! I'm taking Hanyuu-chan home with meeeeee~!"

"18 minutes 29 seconds." Kasai told the group, barely breathing heavily despite the exhausted club sprawled across the clearing, as Rena hung, pouting and whining, in the makeshift lasso Satoko had hastily formed and then slung over a thick branch in one of the nearby trees after they'd caught her.

"Hauuuu, Rena-san, how could you!" Hanyuu whimpered, tears gushing from her eyes. "Now we'll be in last place and have to clean everything up!"

"Aw, I wanted to take Hanyuu-chan home with me…" Rena whimpered up above with crocodile tears in her blue eyes, either uncaring or oblivious to the plight of her partner.

"Next is Rika-chama and Hojo-san." Kasai interrupted brusquely, turning his gaze to the two youngest members of the group.

Though the two girls put in a valiant effort, coming in at 8 minutes and 37 seconds, Mion and Keiichi were still the clear winners, and they celebrated with the typical exuberance of the Hinamizawa Club, while Kasai unbent enough to accept some pickles and juice of his own.

"I am given to understand you do not need my services for the rest of the day, Mion-san?" he asked respectfully between bites, and Mion nodded, swallowing her hamburger steak.

"I can judge the last few games that I submitted, they don't need a supervisor." she agreed as she came up for air, flicking casually with her chopsticks. "It's all objective –counting how many of such-and-so everybody got. Thanks for spotting in for me for these last two games, though."

"It is my honor and privilege to serve the Sonozaki family in any capacity I can." Kasai responded calmly, his somber business demeanor somewhat offset by his khaki trousers, green shirt, and the flower-patterned plate that held the scanty gleanings he begrudgingly accepted from the club members.

The club members all laughed at the contrast of images, and continued chattering, bantering on the losses of each member so far, boasting of the achievement a few of them had gained, tallying up the leaderboards so far, and eagerly planning for the games to come, the adventures for tomorrow and all the days after. The merry chattering continued as Rena and Hanyuu wearily packed away the dirty dishes and so on in the hamper, and even down the steps, as Mion led her companions towards the now-abandoned school, parting from Kasai by his car, which had been waiting on the shoulder of the road nearest to the shrine this entire time.

He bowed goodbye, and the group, once again clad in swimsuits underneath clean white T-shirts, marched towards the school, where several bucketfuls of water balloons waited, a plump array of jelly-colored plastic missiles lying in ominous wait for their victims.

"Alright, now remember the rules!" Mion cried, kicking her foot up onto the edge of one of the bins, near the outdoor school faucets. "This is a free-for-all, a battle royal with no holds barred and no teams! You can grab any water balloons you want, as many as you want, as often as you want! There are no safe zones, and you cannot leave school grounds! One hit does not constitute an out –we are in play until the end of this kitchen clock right here." She pointed to the innocuous-looking timer set out on the concrete lip of the facilities. It was set for one hour. "At the end of the time, everyone congregates back here, and whoever has the least amount of water on them –whoever's driest– is our undisputed champion! Now, any questions before we begin?"

"Are you ready to lose?" Keiichi sneered, rubbing his hands together, and Mion barked out a laugh.

"I was about to say the same to you, Kei-chan!"

"Bring it on, Onee!"

"Rena's really excited for this, she is!"

"Oh-ho-ho~! You are pitiful fools indeed to set this contest within the school grounds that I know so intimately!"

"Muu, I've never played this before…"

And so lusty and furious battle was joined.

An explosion of warm liquid splattered the ground, and Hanyuu fell back with a hair-raising shriek, a wet patch growing on her chest as her limp body flopped down onto the war-torn ground, droplets flying everywhere.

"Hauhauhau, no fair!" the Furude maiden wept in the dust of the schoolyard, her chubby cheeks puffing out as she rolled over and hastily scampered behind a low wall. "No fair, no fair!"

"All's fair in love and war!" Satoko cried triumphantly, before bending down and loading one of her catapults with another squishy water missile as she cackled, and across the yard, Shion ducked out of Rika's range, the miko ensconced firmly on a stack of barrels as she bombarded her opponent with a carefully-coordinated barrage of balloons.

Satoshi was getting his belated exercise in, not even trying to hit anyone back –not even carrying any water balloons– as he jumped, ran, and slid across the schoolyard, proving to everyone why the Hinamizawa Fighters had held him in such esteem. A long stay as a coma patient did not seem to detract from his muscle memory at all, though the same could not be said for his strength and stamina –the young blond was winded easily, and his stamina was low, forcing him to frequently duck behind hiding places as Mion, in hot pursuit, peppered the ground behind him with water balloons.

Keiichi and Rena…well, it was a good thing that Rika was occupied with Shion, because if she had seen the two flinging water balloons at each other, a hoard of the squishy missiles held in a schoolbag bouncing on both combatant's hips, on top of the school roof –a battle measured by an hour-long timer, no less– it was fairly likely that the young miko would have had a déjà vu-based heart attack.

"You cannot win, Rena!" Keiichi howled, charging down the slope of the baking metal roof as he hurled a water balloon. She dodged, and the fragile plastic split open upon its violent impact with the roof, spilling tepid water across the roof as the hot metal sizzled and hissed.

"Tough words from the club's most heavy loser, Keiichi-kun!" she shot back, replying with a missile of her own in kind.

The two teens jumped and slid and ran up and down the roof, bodies moving athletically as they spun and twisted to avoid the rainbow storm of pastel-colored balloons each flung at the other, spitting barbs and insults and banter just as thick and fast as their watery missiles. (Rika definitely would have had a terrifying flashback to Atonement, if she would but just look up.)

Keiichi's shirt clung to his heaving chest, sweat and water making it stick to his skin, and the entire left side of Rena's hair stuck to her cheek in dripping spikes and strands, from a lucky near-face shot from her brunet partner earlier.

Thus the lusty and furious battle continued.

At the end of the stipulated hour, the club gathered again, all in various stages of soaking wet. Keiichi and Rena, their supplies of missiles exhausted from their valiant duel atop the school roof, were absolutely drenched, to the point where their sneakers squeaked and squelched as they walked. Rika was drier, but her entire back was soaked from when she had seen Satoko's barrage coming and quickly turned away to protect her face, the young miko's long blue hair a wet curtain that clung to her back and arms with her every movement. Satoshi had the misfortune to run into not only Mion but also Shion's ambush at one point, and was dripping wet from the waist up, though not overly concerned about being so. The twins, in turn, had engaged in a furious competition of their own, and were nearly as wet as Rena and Keiichi.

It was Satoko, who had only sustained a few errant blows from those bold enough to test her defenses (and garner her attentions), who was the clear winner in this contest, a fact she did not cease rubbing in as the club waited for Mion to fetch blankets once more.

"Alright, so…this is my contest." Satoshi began vaguely as the dripping club leader squelched back with four blankets, likely pilfered from the Sonozaki family's shed. "We have the same partners as the picnic relay, I guess, and one of you gets on the blanket and the other drags them up to the shrine and then back here. You can't progress any farther if the person on the blanket leaves the blanket –you have to go back to where they fell off and make them get on again before you can move forward. Whoever gets back here first wins."

Everyone looked at him, and sighed exasperatedly a little.

"So then…any questions?" Mion asked with a tentative grin, clapping her hands together.

"Sounds pretty straightforward." Keiichi answered for everyone with a shrug, scratching the back of his dripping hair. He glanced at Satoshi. "Who goes on the blanket?"

"Muu…I guess the teams figure that out between themselves. Would you like to do it, Shion, or should I?"

As it turned out, a good few minutes were spent arguing between each time about who was going to be bruised and dragged about on the blanket, and only the fact that Rika and Hanyuu agreed to be the blanket-layer to Satoko's and Rena's blanket-bearer within a few moments kept the arguments from continuing for ten minutes or more. Satoshi, who had been disputing with Satoshi about the advisability of him dragging anyone anywhere, was pushed down on the blanket, and Mion, disdaining subtlety, had gaped at the retreating backs of Rena and Satoko, and then judo-flipped Keiichi onto their blanket with a cry.

At first, the race was fairly normal, so far as such races went, with the blanket-runners dragging their passengers behind them and the passengers curled up into fetal balls, typically with one arm around the head and the other keeping their purchase on the blanket. Occasionally a runner would lag, hitching up and reaffirming their or their passenger's grip on the blanket, but otherwise the teams seemed to be fairly even as they ran across the Hinamizawa roads and their partners bumped along behind them.

It got challenging as the road skittered off, and the scrub-laden forest began.

It got worse at the river.

Rena barely broke pace at the head of the pack, turning to scoop Hanyuu up, blanket and all, before she charged across the shallow ford, and the others were quick to follow suit, some with more efforts thank others, as their partners were of more incompatible weights and the runners of disparate strengths. But the whole group got across, somehow, some with more comic staggering and panicked squeals than others, and continued fighting through the forest towards the shrine path.

And the shrine steps.

"I –should– really –have– a –helmet!" Keiichi gasped as he bumped up the rough-cut stone, both arms curled around his head protectively and only the pinch of his elbow and knees keeping him on the blanket.

"Hauhauhauhau!" Hanyuu wailed faintly from the top of the staircase, apparently having faired no better.

"Eat dust, Onee!" Shion cried from slightly closer, one hand keeping Satoshi steady on his blanket as she charged up the steps, leaving the blond free to protect his head as much as he pleased.

"Grr, just you guys wait! I'll get you on the home stretch!" Satoko shouted from the bottom of the steps, Rika's normally-chirpy cries interspersed with squeaks of alarm as the blonde began to drag her up the steps.

Ultimately though, her threats and the others' efforts were of no use. Rena had too much of a head start, and the size difference between her and Hanyuu made it easy for the auburn-haired teen to drag and manhandle the young Furude as she saw fit, and Rena came in first by a mile. This, as the others quickly realized after a brief tally, put her in first: everyone else had won exactly one game each, but with the team-victory of her and Hanyuu, Rena was now sitting pretty on two victories.

The sun was beginning to slip down to the opposite horizon, though still bright, as Hanyuu told the others to wait near the school shed, while she went out to fix the components of the next game. Both sides of the last game were all too ready to take a break, and interposed their languid, semi-exhausted and bruised wait with sips of mineral-tasting water from the faucet and flapping their damp clothes and hair, encouraging a breeze.

At length, Hanyuu returned, wiping some sweat off her petite brow.

"Okay!"

The other club members, sprawled in varying stages of rest across the schoolyard fixtures, sat up and offered their attention. Hanyuu smiled timidly and clasped her hands together, fiddling with her fingers.

"S-so, we're playing my game now…a Sponge Launch. We're playing in teams again, and each team must pick one of the catapults I've set up along the school wall. One partner has to fire sponges at the other, who must catch them across a certain line, then go find their bucket and empty them out. You can't use a sponge that you haven't caught –you have to be able to catch them to wring them out, and if you don't you have to send it back for your partner to try again. The buckets are the same color as the catapults, and they're all on school grounds. Whoever fills their bucket to the white line first wins the game. Any questions, hau? It's pretty simple, right?"

"Its veeeery simple." Rena hummed, eyeing the others with a suspiciously innocent smile as her blue eyes gleamed. "And if we win, again, then Rena's going to very, very far in first~!"

"Hah!" Satoko threw back her head with a mocking laugh. "Bold of you to assume I would fail in a contest of catapults, Rena-san! Let's get started!"

The teams hastened to the other side of the school, where they found catapults tied with red, blue, yellow, and green rubber bands, and a line of jump-ropes stretched across the dirt at a respectable distance away on the other side of the yard. There was a few moment's pause as they teams found their catapults, and then a bit more nonsense as they decided who would be which partner, but at length, Keiichi, Shion, Hanyuu, and Satoko were seated behind the catapults, a huge basin of dripping sponges behind them for ammunition, and across the yard, Mion, Satoshi, Rena, and Rika were all stood waiting, ready for the first sponge to be flung.

"Hau, on your mark, get set, go!" Hanyuu squeaked, and with that, the second battle of the Hinamizawa School Branch began.

Everyone's strategy was pretty clear, Mion thought as she raced headlong through the schoolyard, looking everywhere for a red bucket. The throwers were the ones that could afford to be lax –the best of each team was placed on the opposite side of the jump-ropes, the best catchers and the best athletes, the best to search and find and seek and run. Between her and Keiichi, it was obvious who was the better choice –Keiichi was still working off the effects of being a cooped-up city-boy, while Mion had been running and playing in the tough terrain of a mountain village with all the rugged energy of a tomboy her entire life. She also knew the special Sonozaki family martial art, but that was mostly for elegance and self-defense, and also really not relevant to this situation.

Most importantly, they needed, at all costs, to keep the victory from Rena. There were only four games left after this, and in the high-stakes club competitiveness, it wasn't likely that any one person would definitively triumph over the rest. Therefore, if Rena won this race –or any of the subsequent ones– her place as the victor would be all but assured, and Mion refused to let that happen. She had her place and her pride as club leader to consider.

So it was pretty clear, as Rena ducked and dodged under the thrown branches of Satoko, that sabotage and delay would be the name of the game for the rest of the club, while Rena had to contend with both their misdirects and her efforts to find and fill her own bucket before the sponges she carried dried out.

Mion grinned as she spotted the flash of red, situated awkwardly atop the roof of the school shed. How Hanyuu had gotten that bucket up there without them hearing or seeing…oh well.

Mion Sonozaki had a target and a mission, and she was not about to lose.

"Hau…" Hanyuu whined sadly about an hour later, pouting as Mion proudly displayed her full red bucket, sparing a hand to high-five Keiichi with a grin. "That makes Rena-san, Keiichi-san, and Mion-san tied for first place, doesn't it?"

"So it does." Mion hummed, grinning wider and rubbing her hands. Then she abandoned the pretense of a plotting villain and looked around, squinting a little. "Anybody got a timepiece?"

"We can use the clock from the dodgeball game." Rena answered, going over towards the outdoor faucet and picking it up. She turned the small plastic box over and squinted. "Its just about five o' clock in the afternoon, Mi-chan."

"Excellent…" Mion smirked and rubbed her hands again. "Well, I guess we're going into my last stretch of games, aren't we?" She spun in place and pointed towards the distant mountains. "Everybody back to the Furude Shrine, where we'll finish out this most munificent Midsummer's Day!"

"Right!" Mion announced near the outcrop looking out over the village, ticking off the various marks of the club and their achievements on her clipboard, updating the scoreboard from the last few games. "Home stretch! These games may be interconnected, but make no mistake, each one counts as a separate victory towards your cumulative whole!" She spun her pen and pointed towards the small ring of stones that had been gathered and formed on a stretch of bare rock that peered through the shallow dirt and dusty grass. "First off, we have Firefall! Each club member goes off into the woods and gets some timber and kindling and branches and sticks and twigs and –well, whoever collects the most firewood for our summer campfire wins! And remember, the amount of tinder is almost as important as its suitability –you get less points if you just bring back a whole mass of logs! It's the collective whole that's important! And as an additional treat, whoever brings back the most wood also gets the honor of being the first one to try and start the fire! Any questions?"

"None whatsoever." Rena grinned, and beside her, Keiichi formed his features into something vaguely resembling eager approval, while he frantically tried to remember just what kinds of wood were suitable for fire-making.

"Let's see…" Mion hummed as she strode along the line of firewood materials, hands folded behind her back as she marched with the air of a conquering general. "Very well-done Rena, a thorough presentation. Not that many, but definitely well-chosen."

The auburn-haired teen smiled modestly. "I picked out all the pieces that seemed cutest, Mi-chan~!" she sang, and Mion nodded with no small amount of relief, glad that Rena's compulsion towards her Take-It-Home Mode had kneecapped her for once instead of the other way around, since there were a limited amounts of tinder that could be deemed "cute" by Rena's taste in the woods, and there were only so many she could pick up even in her super-fast state of taking-home ecstasy.

"Rika, nice job. You got a lot of kindling, though the number of logs is a bit substandard." the club leader graciously added as she passed the miko, looking at her respectable pile of bark shavings and slender twigs.

"Keiichi…" Mion trailed off, and shook her head sadly. She'd hoped otherwise, but it was painfully obvious that Keiichi had no idea of what he was supposed to gather beyond "sticks and logs," and had spent far too much time covertly spying on the others to try and figure out what he was supposed to bring in. His pile was smaller than the others, and most of the non-log pieces were at least slightly substandard in some small way. "Good try for your first attempt."

He flushed bright red, and didn't say anything as Rena giggled and reached out, sympathetically patting his shoulder.

"Very nice, Satoko." Mion added as she passed the small blonde, seeing her neat piles of kindling, twigs, and logs. Satoshi's pile, beside hers, had nothing to comment on –perhaps he had slightly less, but then again, that was to be expected from a former coma patient. Mion had full confidence that the older blond would improve steeply once he got his old fitness back, and give everyone some real competition.

"Hanyuu…that's very impressive." Mion said blankly as she looked at the surprisingly large pile of materials that Hanyuu had assembled. The lilac-haired Furude smiled and "hau"ed modestly, beaming in pride at her accomplishment.

However, the winner was clear. Though Hanyuu and Mion both came in at close second, Shion's enormous pile of tinder put the rest of them in the shade –almost literally.

"And our winner –Shion Sonozaki!" Mion announced with some small amount of inner pouting, gesturing to her twin with a flourish. "As such, she will be the first to attempt to build and light out little campfire. Shion?"

"On it." her twin replied smugly, starting forward and crouching down near the circle of rocks. She scooped some of the kindling into her hand, creating a careful hollow nest in the center of the rocks, laying sticks along and over it, before carefully looking over some larger logs and sticks and selecting several that she laid aside the stones, but did not place in the makeshift firepit yet. "You got Kasai's lighter, Onee?"

Mion pulled out the Bic lighter and handed it to Shion. Flicking the lighter a few times, Shion made sure the slender flame caught in the fluffy bundle of bark shavings and fibers, which slowly but surely smoldered and spread towards the twigs caging it in as she pulled her hand away. As they caught, Shion began quickly lying larger lengths of wood in a pyramid around the little nest of flames, which gradually bit into the bigger branches, the fire growing. After carefully dropping some wrist-thick logs of wood in another pyramid around the flames, Shion pronounced herself satisfied and sat back on her heels, watching the warm glow of the fire with a smile on her face. Although the sun was westering in earnest now, the light of the day fading, it hadn't even come to the point where the glow of day turned orange and red and gold –night was coming, but not yet immediately imminent.

"Okay then!" Mion smiled and clapped her hands together. "This part isn't a competition –but everyone find something to sit on while I go get our s'more and hotdog supplies from Rika-chan's house."

Despite her words, there was a somewhat vicious if unspoken competition for Best Improvised Chair as soon as their president was out of earshot, which ended when Mion returned with a load of supplies –a wheeled cooler with a box of chocolate and graham crackers strapped onto it, a large plastic bag of marshmallows tucked under her arm, and a strange arrangement of long, thin, forklike metal implements under her shoulder.

"So, who knows how to roast marshmallows and hotdogs?" Mion asked, pulling the cooler to a stop and setting down the fluffy plastic bag. No one raised their hand –such an occupation was rather uniquely Western, and Shion's Catholic school had been too prim and uptight for such festivities.

Mion nodded at the expected silence and sat down on the cooler, passing around the long forklike instruments. Everyone took one –the instruments consisted of a long steel wire, a bit thicker than that of a coathanger, with both ends forming two prongs at the instrument's tip, which then curved down like horns to meet and twist together about five inches down, creating a fork, before the two sides of the wire twisted apart once more as they continued in two parallel bars down to the base, which was rounded in a seamless, rubber-covered whole.

"See, you stick a marshmallow on one or both of these prongs here." Mion explained, ripping a jagged hole in the soft plastic bag before retrieving two marshmallows, and impaled the puffy white globs on both ends of the stick. "Then you hold them over a fire, and rotate them periodically, until they're just a little bit golden on all sides.

She clasped the pronged instrument between her knees, quickly rummaging in the other two boxes before pulling out a bar of chocolate and a single cracker, which she broke in half. Handing one half of the golden bar to Shion, she held the other on her knee, stacking a fragment of the chocolate bar on top of it. Mion picked up the pronged instrument and rolled it slowly, roasting the marshmallows, until they received the proper golden texture a few minutes later, and then brought them out from above the fire, laying one on its side on top of the chocolate.

"Cracker please." she asked Shion, who handed her the requested item. Mion took the cracker and squished it down on the top of the marshmallow, creating something rather like a puffy chocolate-marshmallow sandwich. She held it up with a triumphant grin. "Ta-da! The American delicacy known as a s'more! Pass it around, guys, give it a try!"

She handed the s'more to Shion, then quickly broke another graham cracker and squished the second marshmallow between it and another snippet of the bar of chocolate, passing the finished s'more around the opposite side of their little circle.

"Wow, these are really good!" Satoko hummed in surprise after she took the requisite tiny bite, licking a smear of slightly melted chocolate from the corner of her mouth.

"We've also got hotdogs, buns, and some seasonings." Mion announced, getting up from her makeshift seat and opening the lid, picking up several plastic packages of hotdogs and hotdog buns, as well as several bottles dripping with icy condensation. "Everyone knows how to roast a hotdog, right?"

"Yup!" the club members replied cheerily.

"Well then!" Mion sat back down, grinning. "The next competition is also our dinner –whoever roasts the best hotdogs and marshmallows wins the game! We're not going for volume here, this is a gourmet event, and we're looking for what's tastiest!"

"But Mi-chan, isn't that mostly subjective, isn't it?" Rena asked, tilting her head as she blinked curiously. Mion nodded and shrugged in acknowledgement.

"Yes, but this is a group battle –everyone's food will be judged by everyone else, and a cumulative vote decide the winner!" she explained, holding a cautionary finger up in the air. "No interference with anyone else, if you please. We are dealing with open flames, after all."

The gathered group nodded. They may be more cavalier with various safety rules than Keiichi, for example, was used to, what with being rural children with far more independence and access to slightly-to-very-dangerous materials than their urban counterparts, but fire was another kettle of fish entirely. One wrong move could not only harm them, but also burn down a significant portion of the surrounding woods, shrine, and village.

Mion passed around the bags of food, and everyone settled down to a slightly less frenetic challenge, relaxing in the warm, comfy aura of the flames as they slowly spun their roasting forks and chattered about various things, bantering on the day now almost gone by, reminiscing on some of their previous challenges, or simply sitting in contentment and basking in the presence of their friends.

As the sun sank further, the air turning a rich orange-gold as the sky began to change hues, they finished up, licking sticky fingers and berating and congratulating each other on the results of the game. Despite Rika's culinary mastery, Satoshi's patience –and experience, perhaps, with past baseball cookouts– had carried him and his expertly-toasted marshmallows over all the rest, though Shion, who had attended one or two of those same barbeques herself, came in close second.

This changed the color of their competition somewhat, as Satoko, Rika, and Hanyuu were the only ones without two victories to their names, and there were but two competitions left. One of them would, undoubtably, be in last place, whereas Satoshi, Keiichi, Rena, and the twins were sitting pretty on two victories each, leaving them comfortably in the lead –except in the highly-unlikely case of one of the three girls snatching two consecutive victories.

"So then," Mion began briskly as she led them towards the edge of Rika, Hanyuu, and Satoko's backyard, twirling her pen in one hand. "-our swimsuits have all dried off from sitting by the fire, have they not?"

"Yup." Keiichi answered with a slight yawn, hands stuck in his pockets. The day had been long, and he'd woken up obscenely early, after all.

"All dry here!" Rena added brightly from behind him, smiling.

"Truly, such excellent pacing and planning is a hallmark of our club's devious leader, isn't it, Onee?" Shion asked with a grin, fluttering her fingers at her twin coyly. "Running around getting all wet, and then sitting in front of a nice toasty fire for long enough to dry off –just in time for more water! Really, I must congratulate you."

"Yes, yes, yes indeedy!" Mion cackled, sticking her pen in between her fingers as she rubbed her hands deviously, clipboard under one arm. "For now comes our penultimate challenge – Christmas in July! Once again joining forces in teams, each of us will undertake to build a "snow fort" out of the material available here –trees, branches, and so on– and arm ourselves with the buckets of water balloons the redoubtable Kasai has so kindly left out for us. There is a time limit of thirty minutes to construct our forts, and not even a leaf may be added after the timer goes off. Much like our earlier game of dodgeball, the objective of this particular challenge is to not get wet –whoever gets the most soaked by the end is the loser, with additional points removed should their fort collapse. Any questions?"

"Are you all ready to surrender now, mew?" Rika asked cheerily. After all, this was she and Satoko's backyard –what they didn't know about the terrain wasn't worth knowing.

To the surprise of absolutely no one –Keiichi included– both the race to build the forts and the exchange of watery missiles afterwards was a long and bitter battle, with each of the four teams striving with varying levels of desperation for the ascendancy. For Rika and Satoko, this was one of their last two chances to keep from receiving the dreaded club punishment games –for Hanyuu and Rena, it was a chance to avoid the same and to crown her achievements with glory, respectively. Each club member drew forth their fullest and deepest potential but, alas, by the end of the match it was no use.

Rika and Satoko knew too much about their surroundings, had known where to find the best pieces of wood to construct the sturdiest fort, and their diminutive size had allowed them to hunker down behind its formidable bulwarks and rain a never-ending hail of squishy balloons at their collective foes, thus earning them victory.

Mion noted aloud as she ticked off marks on the clipboard of scores, to much frantic "hauhauhau"ing and gushing tears, that this left Hanyuu as the only club member without two victories to her name, and with only one game left, it seemed unlikely that she should prove ascendant.

Especially with such an arbitrary game.

The sun was sinking well and truly now, the orange disk bleeding out into the horizon as it dyed the Hinamizawa crimson, and shadows were falling thick and fast on the forest-shrouded mountain slope as Mion gathered them together again, this time near the back of Hanyuu, Rika, and Satoko's house, where a series of odd globes had been stuck into the ground.

"Our last challenge for this glorious Midsummer's Day, everyone, is simplicity itself." the club leader announced gravely. "You all see the fireflies?"

The soft, yellow-green blinks of light were indeed beginning to weave among the trees and tall grass, and everyone's eyes briefly followed the tiny dancing sparks. The club acknowledged that they did, in fact, see the glow of the bugs.

"Well, for this, our twelfth and last game, the objective is simplicity itself. The sun will set at precisely 7.01, and whoever catches the most fireflies by that time is our final winner!" Mion cried, jabbing a slender finger up in the air as she punched her fist towards the sky. "So everyone grab a sphere and let's go!

With a laugh and a giddy cry, the club members seized the globes and plunged into the cool velvety darkness of the woods around the shrine, eyes gleaming as they chased after the elusive flicker of the drifting fireflies. Grass swished around bare legs, resinous swatches of sap clinging to palms as they lunged and half-fell to swing the globe and stick like a flyswatter at a fleeing bug, scrapes rubbing across knees and elbows as the children chased the flickering spots of light through the tangled, chirping mess of nature, the drone of the cicadas slowly fading away as day gave into the inevitably slow approach of night.

Calls echoed among the trees, faint and far like the whispers of a ghost, the club members laughing, congratulating, and taunting each other as little seeds of light grew and glowed inside their crystal balls, catching firefly after firefly as the tiny bugs landed and crawled around inside, the globes bouncing and clanking softly against their sticks as the children ran after the next glimpse of ghostly light-sparks.

"Well…" Mion began, then trailed off. There really wasn't anything to say, and everyone seemed beyond even understanding such an outcome –except for Rika, who was glaring daggers at her oddly sheepish-looking cousin.

For Hanyuu's globe was shining brightly, with dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of the pin-sized insects fluttering and crawling inside, and even as the other club members looked at her, more of the bugs seemed to settle softly around the shyly grinning Furude, circling around her head and horns and drifting around her body.

"Mew, Oyashiro-sama must have really blessed you, Hanyuu." Rika said at length, placing odd emphasis on her words and narrowing her eyes as Hanyuu squeaked and flushed guiltily, for some strange reason. "Now we all have two victories each, which makes this day a club-wide tie, doesn't it, Mi?"

"Eh…" The club president coughed and looked down at her sheet again, double-checking the scores. "Uh, yeah…no doubt about it. Double-wins for everyone! Well, isn't that convenient? I thought for sure Hanyuu-chan was going to end up with the triplicate club punishment for today!" she laughed.

Hanyuu began to sweat as Rika eyed her even more obviously. "H-hau! Yes, it must be a miracle! So the games for today are done, yes? My goodness, it was fun!"

Rika turned away from her cousin with a slight sigh, as though resigned to something, and smiled up at Mion. "Mew! Today was pretty fun! What are we doing tomorrow?"

"Who knows –but I can promise you it'll be fun!" Mion laughed, putting both hands on her hips.

AN: This one was so fucking long, I gave up trying to write actual thorough scenes of each game after I got a little more than a third into it. I was gonna do this originally for the summer solstice, but, alas, it took too long to write, even though I actually started this before June even began. Oh well. ITS FINALLY FUCKING DONE AND I DON'T HAVE TO CARE ABOUT IT ANYMORE, HA-HA!

7.45 AM, USA Central Time