Update may be a bit slow for this arc, as even until now, I'm still having problems with the plot and how things should progress.
Chapter 10
When the Cicada Cries! Welcome to Hinamizawa!
Up in the skies of a certain village somewhere in Japan, a star could be seen flying through the sky. Actually, you can't see any stars in the daytime because the light is too bright. However, the warp star is bright yellow so one could still see it flying around. Not that there's someone around to watch it though…
Anyway, this warp star that is containing Wario, Bowser, Ike, Kirby, Ness, and Toon Link blazed across the sky and started to move in a circular path in air while descending. "We're heading down," Kirby said.
"It's not going to be a rough crash, right?" Ness said.
"I'll be more exciting that way!" Toon Link said.
"You won't be saying that if it really happens…"
Kirby looked around and saw lake down below. "That's a good place to land. Let's go!" And he steered the warp star in the direction of the lake and moved downwards.
The warp star made it the surface of the lake and it skimmed across the surface gracefully, sending water to splash in both sides. "That's some graceful landing!" Bowser said.
However, there was a random rock in front of them and the warp star bumped into it and tossed all six of them forward. Five of them landed face first onto the rocky bank while TL pulled off several flips and turns in midair and landed perfectly on both feet. "Tadah!" he exclaimed. "That was fun!"
"At least for you…" Ness groaned, pulling up his injured face.
-
So the Smashers got back onto their feet and began moving through the only path before them. On both sides of the dirt path were tall trees that looked very friendly, as friendly as a tree can get…
"You sure this is the place?" Wario asked.
"The warp star can bring people to the place they want to go, even if they do not know where the actual location is," Kirby replied. "So rest assure that the village we are looking for is nearby."
"I see a clearing," Ike pointed out.
They managed to walk out of the forest and saw a peaceful countryside area before them. There were some bus stops situated on the sides of roads and also some wooden shacks. Farther into the distance one could see a couple of houses.
They walked down along the side of the path and approached the bus stop. Bowser looked at the sign that was placed there and read from it, "Hinamizawa… Up ahead…"
"So we're near after all!" Kirby said.
"It's not that far from here, so let's just walk," Ike said, looking at the houses in the distance.
"Doesn't look like there will be a bus coming anytime soon too," Ness said, looking over the horizon. Indeed, there were no vehicles of any kind at all approaching, so they decided to travel on foot.
After several minutes of walking, houses began to become more and more common and it seemed to imply that they are within the village now. "I think we're here," Ike said.
"You sure this is the place?" Wario asked.
There were some people standing around, and they all looked like farmers and poor people from the way they are dressed. They stopped what they were doing and looked at these strangers who just entered the village. "We're grabbing quite an attention…" Kirby said.
"Perhaps this place doesn't have many outsiders?" Ness said.
"This place looks like a slum…" Bowser commented. "Are you sure the other half of Everything is hidden here?"
"The advisor said it is, so it has to be somewhere around here," Ike said.
"I'll ask then!" TL said, and he ran up to the nearest person and began talking to him. After exchanging a couple of words, he came back to his friends.
"What did you find out?" Ness asked him.
TL shook his head and replied, "He doesn't know what I'm talking about… But on the bright side, this is Hinamizawa."
"We're at the right place after all!" Kirby said.
"If the people here know nothing about this power, how are we going to find it?" Wario asked.
"This place doesn't look very big, so it shouldn't be too hard to find," Ike said. "The best we can do know is to learn as much we can about this place in order for things to be made easier."
"You have a point," Ness said. "How do we start? We're foreigners here, so it won't be easy finding someone who is willing to help us, given that the people here are giving us strange eyes…"
"I'll ask someone then," Bowser said, and he ran up to a couple of kids that were nearby. "Hey kids!" But the kids ran off screaming the moment he approached them. "But I didn't say anything yet!"
"You should watch that your face doesn't scare anyone here…" Kirby said to him.
The Smashers continued walking down the road and wondered what to do, and then they saw someone coming down the road. Of course, there were already people walking up and down the road to begin with, but for some reason, I'm stating this particular person. When the distance between them was at a point where both sides could clearly see each other, the person, who turned out to be a schoolgirl, began rushing over at a very fast speed. The speed was so fast that dust was kicked up behind her.
"Hey, someone's coming over," TL stated.
Before they could act, the girl reached for Kirby, hugged him tightly in her arms, and squealed out loudly, "AWWW!! SO CUTE!! I'M GOING TO TAKE IT HOME!!" And then she ran back up the direction she came from as fast as she came.
The Smashers stood there dumbfounded at what just happened, and then they snapped back to their senses again. "A psycho orange-haired girl just took Kirby!!" Ness gasped.
"Quick! We must rescue our friend from that kidnapper!" TL said in panic. "She couldn't have gone too far just yet!"
"We can just follow the footprints," Ike said, pointing to the shoeprints left behind by the girl when she ran. She must've stomped the road so hard for these to appear…
-
In an open field, the same girl that took Kirby away was sitting with her other friends. "Wow! This thing indeed is cute!" said a green-haired girl.
"I've never seen anything like this before-wa!" said a young blond girl. "Looks like a piñata if you ask me."
"He's so cute, and he can talk too!" said another young that has long dark blue hair.
"Must be some kind of undiscovered creature," said a brown-haired boy. "Where did you find it, Rena?"
The girl that the boy called Rena, placed her finger on her chin and thought of a while, and said, "Now that you said it… I wasn't paying attention to the surroundings either… I only know that I found it on the road and there were some people around him, but I only thought about taking him home."
"Dense like always when you see cute things, eh…?"
Kirby ate some crackers and said, "Thanks for inviting me over, even though I do not know who you are. I better get back to my friends before they get worried."
The boy turned to Rena and said, "Um… Did you just kidnap him?"
Rena had a guilty look on her face and said, "He's so cute… I couldn't resist…"
"Actually, I don't have to leave to look for them, because they're here," Kirby said, pointing to the direction the Smashers were coming in.
"I found him!" Ness said.
-
To make a long story short, the situation was explained peacefully and thus there were no bloodshed, if you know what I mean.
"Sorry for taking him away so suddenly," Rena apologized.
"That's quite all right," Kirby said. "I had some nice bites here too!"
"Sorry that she can't help it whenever she sees cute things," the green-haired girl said.
"Never mind; so long as nobody is harmed, it's no big deal," Ness said.
"It's no surprise girls like cute things," Bowser said.
"By the way, I've never seen you people around here before," the boy said. "You new here?"
"You can say that," Ike replied. "We're just… travelers who are looking for fun places to go."
Wario said, "Actually, we are…" But he was stepped on the foot by Ike. "Yeow!"
"What he wanted to say was that we are a bit confused about this place since we've never been here before," he said.
"Funny how you pick a place like here for traveling," the boy said. "This isn't the most well known or most fun place, you know. Anyway, my name is Keichi."
"I'm Rena!" the girl who took Kirby said. "Nice to meet you!"
"I'm Mion, the leader of the bunch here!" the green-haired girl said.
"I'm Satako, and I don't want to talk too much to strangers-wa…" the blond girl said.
"My name is Rika Furude," the girl with dark blue hair said. "Welcome to Hinamizawa!"
"Now that you lot introduced yourselves, we might as well introduce ourselves too!" Bowser said. "I am the Koopa King, Bowser, and these are my underlings!"
"Who is your underling, turtle-breath?!" Wario shouted. "Anyway, I'm the Great Wario and these are my underlings unlike what he said."
"Ignore them," Ness said. "I'm Ness!"
"My name is Toon Link!"
"Kirby!"
"Such a cute name!" Rena squealed with a happy face.
"Ike."
"As you can see," Keichi said, "there's really not much to look around here. It's a small village with a small population, so people here know each other very well. There's a town not too far from here, and sometimes we would go over there. We might want to check that place out."
"Thanks for the suggestions," Ike said. "Though we want to stay here first."
"Yeah, we want to move away from city slum and breathe some fresh air once in a while," Ness added.
"And tasting countryside food would be great too!" Kirby added.
"Well, then we won't stop you," Keichi said. "Enjoy your stay while you're at it. Since there isn't an inn around these places, the best thing you can do is to rent the house towards the northwestern part of the village. It's very cheap."
"Thanks for all the info," Ike said.
"Looks like you people are all students," Ness said. "I can tell by the way you are dressed, at least you three."
"We come from the same school," Mion explained. "Our school is very different from the others, because there's only one room… Students of all grades sit together in that room and get taught by one teacher."
"Reminds me of the olden day schools… Surprise to hear that these kinds of school still exist."
"The five of us stick together all the time and I'm the class president; therefore I get to do whatever I want with my underlings. Ha!"
"And you must be a lucky boy too," Bowser said to Keichi. "You're sticking together with lots of girls, two of which are your same age! Feeling lucky?"
Rena and Mion blushed at hearing this, but Keichi just laughed and said, "They're just good friends, nothing more."
"Well, if there is nothing else, then we're on our way to look around," Ike said.
"It was nice knowing you guys!" TL said.
"Well, good luck on your trip! Hope you enjoy it here!" Keichi said to them.
"Awww… You need to go already…?" Rena said to Kirby in a tone f letdown.
"Don't worry; we'll be staying here for some time, so we will meet each other again!" Kirby said. "Be happy!"
"Awwww, so cute!"
And thus the Smashers waved good-bye to their new friends and then went on their way. "All right, let's get going too," Mion said to her friends.
"I don't really like the look of that turtle and the fat guy," Satoko said. "They give me the creeps-wa."
"They look like pretty nice people," Keichi commented.
"Kirby is so cute! I wish that he could stay with me at home!" Rena said happily with a lovey-dovey face.
As the group went on their way, Rika turned to look at the Smashers who were walking off in the distance and thought, "Why do I have a feeling that they are…? Must be a mistake…"
"Rika! Are you coming?" Mion called to her. "Something bothering you?"
Rika turned around and said, "Nothing! Nipa!"
-
"So what's the big idea of stepping my foot?!" Wario said to Ike angrily.
"You were about to slip out top secret information," Ike said to him.
"What's so secretive about that? If we ask them, we can learn where to find the power we need to look for fast!"
"We better keep it a secret for now."
"I agree," Ness said. "I'm sure there are some people here that know about this power, and the power, as you know, is something that is to be protected at all cost. If people know that we are looking for it, they might take us for evil people who are hunting the power for our own good."
"That's what I'm thinking, so I think let's keep this a secret to the people around here and search for it ourselves."
"That would make us look like thieves," Bowser said.
"Don't worry; I know what we should do already, so just go with everything for now, okay?"
TO BE CONTINUED
Not the best chapter, but at least we are introduced to some supporting casts for this arc. Things can get pretty complicated from now on, so I'm not sure if I get the chapters out faster than before.
Anyway, this is from the anime series Higurashi, though the series actually started off as a game, an interactive visual novel to be precise, but its popularity really kicked off when the anime series was made.
