Epilogue

Cheetu, the dirty dirty cheater that we was, led them through the entrance of Ten Flags with a wide grin on his face. Not that Riakke could see it with the trench coat hiding all his features, but she knew it was there. After they had gotten to the Hunter's Association Headquarters, Pariston was hauled away and Ging had been given a slap on the wrist. Or at least, she thought so since he wasn't being taken in alongside the blond and was coming with them to the thrill park. She hadn't been privy to the conversation between Cheadle and Ging.

She walked backwards ahead of the two later after a few roller coasters with some food on a stick in her hand. The men of her group weren't faring as well as she was. They looked like they were going to throw up at the sight of the corn dog in her hand. "Come on! Let's ride that one!" Riakke turned to point excitedly at one that looked like a set of infinite loop the loops, twists, and drops.

Identical groans behind her caused her to grin. "How can you not be sick after eating so much?" Cheetu moaned as he followed behind her. He had given up the cloak he had been wearing before, revealing the sick mask, beanie, tee shirt, gloves, and baggy pants that made him seem normal in a crowd. "Weren't you the one at first that didn't want to go on any of the rides?"

Riakke finished her food with a smirk within viewing range of her friends. "Yeah, I don't like roller coasters all that much, but since you insisted I ride with you, I'm going to insist that you ride with me until you throw up."

Ging did a very good impression of a zombie when he incredulously asked, "But why aren't you even a little nauseous?"

She smiled, and slipped through the crowds to the ride she had pointed to before. Behind her, she heard Cheetu answer for her. "It's that flying thing she does. It feels like you're dropping without an end."

"So you've felt it before? If you knew this was going to happen, why'd you start this in the first place? I blame all of this on you."

"Because her screams at the beginning are hilarious!" Cheetu seemed to be feeling better, maybe she should go with a harsher ride? Nah, Ging wouldn't be able to handle it. "Besides, she won't really make puke. Riakke's too nice for that."

"Aww!" The female Hunter cooed and she spun around. "Did Cheetu just say something nice! I'll have to get you something! Have you had a cannoli before?" She asked eying the sweet on a menu they just passed by. She almost cackled at the Chimera Ant's comically widened eyes.

"Uh, I haven't?" He answered like he was unsure if this was a treat or punishment hidden as a reward.

She ushered them both to a table that had a bit of privacy and ordered some sweets to be brought over.

Ging seemed surprised by the sudden kindness, but Cheetu just relaxed in the metal chair after a few tense moments.

The desserts arrived a little later, and was quickly devoured after Ging had gotten his stomach back in working order.

"I think I'm done with these ride for today." Riakke thought aloud with a toothpick mining after a strawberry seed stuck between her teeth. The Chimera Ant stole a glance at her, and shrugged at her.

"Your choice."

Ging looked too distracted by a round of York New cheesecake to be listening, to her amusement. Then he had to say that accursed word. "This is the best vacation ever!" He crowed before digging in.

With wide eyes, Riakke got up, and started to walk away, leaving behind enough jenny to pay for the bill. "I'm out of here."

"Wait, where are you going?" Cheetu asked after her confusedly. She could hear him getting out of his seat to follow her.

"Going to go back to work." If she got back to her apartment, maybe it wouldn't happen…

"Why? We only got here a few hours ago. What's wrong?" Ging asked; she hadn't registered him following her. Riakke didn't answer. Instead pulling out her phone and hitting speed-dial. "Please tell me you have something for me to do." She said as soon as the call connected.

"Fellarock." Morel grunted. "I don't care where you are in the world you are. You have my time zone set as one of your clocks on your phone. I know you do. Stop calling me so damn early if it's just to keep you from boredom!" There was a click, and Riakke pulled her phone away from her ear to look at the screen fondly. Morel never was a morning person.

She was still weaving through the crowds of tourists to the exit with her friends trailing after her in apprehension when she hit speed-dial again. Before he could say something, she interjected, "Catastrophe prevention here. Give me something to do." From the corner of her eye, the brunette saw Cheetu and Ging share a glance.

"Well, if you don't mind being a taste-tester for me, you can come by Morel's place." A different voice than she expected answered her instead with an amused tone. "And can you tell me why Cranky Face with his doom glasses threw his ringing phone at my head?"

Riakke couldn't hold back the bubble of laughter from the unexpected question. "Sorry, I was disturbing his beauty rest. I'm Riakke. What are you doing at his house?"

"Menchi. Nice to meet 'cha! Morel knows his seafood, and I wanted a second opinion on this dish I'm working on." There was a yawn from the other end. "So? Cranky Face doesn't seem to be getting up any time soon. Want to be my guinea pig?"

Riakke hummed, sending a glance back to see Cheetu explaining what was being said. Right, his super hearing. She forgot about that. The Chimera Ant finished, and they both nodded in agreement with happy grins. "Sure. I've got two other volunteers with me. Is that okay?"

"The more the merrier! When'll you be here?"

A moment of contemplation, and Riakke guessed, "Around two hours?"

"See you then, Riakke and volunteers!" With a smile, Riakke pocketed her phone and stepped through the turnstiles in a way that showed she had done the motion more than a few times. The woman waited for the two to catch up, having gotten separated with them in the lineup to the exit. A minute later, and she saw them approaching, looking a little more haggard than before. Amused, she called out when they were close enough, "So Ging, who do you want to ride with? Me or Cheetu?"

Ging looked back and forth between his choices, he seemed to remember their previous conversation about how it felt flying with her though, since he picked Cheetu. The Chimera Ant patted him on the back. "Good choice." She heard him whisper.

"Okay," the female Hunter interrupted, "let's get to an unpopulated area. Don't want to tear someone's skin off by being too close."

"Wait! You can do that?"

Riakke scoffed, and Cheetu answered, "Nah. The most that usually happens are a couple of flipped skirts."

"Cheetu!" The Chimera Ant had already hoisted Ging over his shoulder and run off. With pursed lips, Riakke jumped lightly up to the roof of a nearby building and started to fall from there. It didn't take long to catch up with her charge. "I can't believe you did that." She said, smothering her laughter and forcing the corners of her lips to not curl into a smile.

She started a race with them to Morel's home while they were bickering about something, leaving Cheetu to catch up with a shout of "I don't know where that is!"

Riakke put on the speed, leaving an amused "It's this way!" behind.

She won, but she usually did when they raced to a new location. It probably wouldn't happen again after Cheetu learned how to get there. Riakke sent a gloating smile towards Cheetu and the apparently motion sick Ging, and knocked on the door.

Menchi dressed the same way Cheetu preferred, was her first thought when the door opened. Those were some short shorts. Her second wondered how she wrestled her hair into the strange position without concrete hair gel. She very purposefully didn't say that thought aloud, and stepped on Cheetu's foot when she saw him gearing up to ask it himself.

She heard some grumbling deeper in the house, and grinned when she saw Morel shuffling down the hallway in pajamas and slippers and a steaming mug in his hand. "Morning Morel!" She chirped loudly.

"Exactly. This is a time to be quiet." He rumbled back quickly. "And what have I said about showing up unannounced?"

"But I did call ahead, you were just too grumpy to know better to say yes." She shot back, stepping past Menchi with the ease that wind had attained.

"Why would I know better to say yes?" He questioned. "Every time you've been involved in anything recently, trouble has been waiting around the corner." He pointedly looked at Cheetu while passing a confused look at Ging as to why the former Zodiac member was in his house. It was really weird to be able to see what he was doing without his sunglasses on.

"Because bad things are going to happen if you didn't give me something to do!"

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a prediction that is rarely wrong."

"Hope you're wrong then. I've got nothing."

"Don't worry about it. We're Menchi's taste-testers today!"

Morel looked to Menchi for conformation, and the other three looked like they had just watched a tennis match. The Culinary Hunter snapped out of her daze first, nodding in agreement, elbowing the other two and shuffled them inside and onto stools next to the bar through the kitchen window.

Riakke obligingly sat in the third seat, leaving Morel to sit in the last stool. Menchi piled the bar high with food, and Cheetu being the fastest already had his plate full before anyone else could reach for their utensils. He was also the first to take a bite. "What the hell!" He cried, chugging his glass of water in the time it took Riakke to blink. Then she started to laugh. "Why is there fire in your food?" He demanded with his tongue sticking out like it was blistered, and of course Menchi got insulted by that.

It went downhill from there, eventually insults were slung about, and Riakke would believe that Cheetu took the time to research insults to the best of his ability once he realized they were a thing. Then Menchi exclaimed, "You're not human if you don't like spicy food!"

There had been a heavy pause where Ging, Riakke, and Morel stared at Menchi as if she didn't know what she just said. Did the Chimera Ant look human to her? Maybe the disguise from Ten Flags really worked.

Cheetu looked like he was struggling to find words to say.

The Cuisine Hunter seemed to take the silence as a win, her smug smile growing when Cheetu finally spoke. "But… I'm not human."

"What, really?" He nodded cautiously, probably not sure how this stranger would react. "Oh. Okay." She paused. "This still doesn't mean you can't like spicy foods though!"

"But- You just said-!"

"I don't care what I just said!"

Riakke couldn't hear the rest of their argument over her own laughing. Yeah, Cheetu and Menchi would get along like a house on fire.

Speaking of which, does Morel have fire insurance on his house?

Somehow, by the time she had gotten her laughter under control, Ging was explaining what they were doing before she had suddenly called Morel. "And then she started to walk off like a Manipulator had gotten her when I mentioned how this vacation was going."

"SHUT UP!" Riakke yelled, plugging her ears in hopes that her bad luck wouldn't come. Her open eyes froze on her still empty plate. She hadn't done anything yet. Whatever she was trying to stop had probably already happened. With a reluctant sigh, she pulled her fingers from her ears.

"-yeah, there was another weird public broadcast about an hour ago. I was listening to it when I was bringing in the groceries. Here, I think I recorded it." Menchi picked up the remote control from the coffee table and turned on the TV, and started going through the settings.

Watching her, Riakke spooned some food onto her plate, and started to eat. She nearly chocked on her first bite when Junior's face appeared on the screen. His smug grin and a different set of billowing robes that more than likely hid his injuries from his fight with that clown were frozen with the pause symbol blinking in the upper right corner of the screen. The desert plain behind him was very familiar.

"Ha! I told you it was too spicy!" Cheetu crowed at Menchi. She just flipped him off, and pressed a button on the remote to start the recording. "Wait, isn't that guy dead?" The Chimera Ant sounded confused.

"He should be." Morel responded, sounding more awake than he did before. Riakke looked up at him. The Sea Hunter was watching the recording with a serious look on his face. He sighed. "Looks like being a taste-tester didn't stop your bad thing from happening."

Riakke ignored the broadcast. Her phone was vibrating, and she knew who it was without taking it out of her pocket. She did so anyway, and answered the call. "I have no idea how he survived the explosion." She said as a greeting. She slid to her feet and stepped out of the room.

"And Hisoka can't be reached either. I know it's more dangerous this time, but can you get a group together and take care of him?" Cheadle said back.

"Who? Hisoka or Beyond?"

"If their working together, yes."

Riakke sighed. "Yeah, but you call someone else to fix your problems next time."

"As long as you handle the ones after that."The Chairwoman responded playfully. "Oh, and bring Ging along. He's supposed to stick with you for the next three months."

"Really? News to me." Riakke said. "See ya." She hung up.

The Hunter got many expectant looks when she stepped back into the living room. She noticed the TV was off again. The recording was probably pretty short to finish before her quick conversation with Cheadle.

"Anybody want to join us in telling a dead-man he's dead?" She asked the room. Menchi shrugged, pulling out her own phone and leaving the room. Riakke wasn't sure if that was a yes or a no.

Morel was already heading towards another hallway that she knew led to a set of bedrooms and more likely his gear for traveling. Cheetu grinned nastily, and Ging looked like he was having second thoughts of befriending the Chimera Ant if this was his reaction.

"You plan the worst times to have a vacation, Riakke." Cheetu claimed gleefully. "Managing to have them happen when they'll be most likely to be interrupted, and all that." He laughed.

"I'm not even sure if this is the strangest one yet." She replied. Morel returned with a bag over his shoulder.

"Knuckle and Shoot want to come as well." He said with no other explanation, not that it was necessary.

She nodded, and continued. "I was on vacation once, a guy followed me around blathering on about a quest and how we were soul mates, and I didn't bother to listen to all he was saying, but I managed to lose him after a few days of flying around the different continents."

The others started to laugh at that, and that was when Menchi came back with a serious look on her face. It quickly turned to confusion at the boisterous laughter. "What'd I miss?"

"Don't worry about it." Riakke grinned and waved like she could shoo it away. "Let's go kill that fucker."

((A/N: Yay! First ever multi-chapter story is complete! I'm so happy with myself (and I couldn't have done it without Pitou77 from Ao3. Seriously, it probably would have remained a one shot if it wasn't for her).

Also, looks like I was right about the final word count for this final chapter. Kind of surprising, since I usually go over or under by a lot. Meh...

Did anybody see that ending coming? Honestly? I wrote a really sparse outline of what was going to happen, and I just wanted that group to find Junior broadcasting from the Dark Continent saying, "GUESS WHO'S BACK BITCHES?" And they all had a collective "NOPE!" moment, but I wanted to stay away from the crack category, and this was as close as I could get.

Let me know what you think down below!

Also, I've been writing some other things, but haven't let myself post them until I get this completed, so expect more on my works soon!))