Chapter Text
It was a loud summer day, the heat from the wetlands making the sun unbearably hot, the humidity making everything glisten with a sheen of dew.
She glares jealously at the two other scantily clad examiners sitting next to her on the couch, or at least Menchi. Buhara’s weight probably wouldn’t crush the flimsy looking two-piece sofa the hunter’s commission provided, since it had withstood Menchi’s devastating aura previously during her rant.
Of course, she’d agreed with everything she said, but it was a bit too forceful for those aspiring hunters, even if Menchi was getting a bit edgy at Hisoka’s bloodlust. Though watching that sumo wrestler fly made her laugh under her veil just a little, watching Buhara swatting people like flies never gets old.
As the anxious muttering slowly died down, she interrupted with a polite clap of her hands as she stood up, handing Buhara her notepad. Buhara nods and begins to read, “Now now, all of you did fail Menchi-san’s exam, but there is still another round supervised by me.”
The crowd looks hopefully at her robed figure as she twiddles her thumbs while Buhara talks for her. “Though I didn’t expect everyone to fail, everyone from the previous round can still continue to the next stage if you pass my test.”
Muffling a laugh as the crowd groans in relief, she gestures at Buhara to keep reading, “This test is called: Ishmael’s Super Delicious 4 Man Crab Roe Soup Dumpling, three exclamation points.”
Someone sneezes, and she raises her hand awkwardly for an encouraging thumbs-up for both the confused examinees and Buhara, who was a saint for tolerating her and her antics.
“In this round, you will all be required to team up in fours, as the name suggests.” Buhara gestures towards the whiteboard next to them, on which are twelve crudely drawn ingredients of some kind, all with lines connecting to a big drawing of a soup dumpling.
“Each group will need to try and find each of the twelve ingredients from the forest and deposit them on the forward-most kitchen aisles. The only catch is that I only need a few servings of each ingredient, which means if the serving amount of a certain ingredient is met, you cannot deposit any more on the aisle.
Once you have successfully deposited an ingredient, your group will have passed and can no longer deposit any more ingredients. The exam will end once at least one serving of each ingredient is deposited.”
As Buhara finishes, she starts to write the ingredients down next to each drawing.
Crab
Chicken
Shirmp
Pork
Mushrooms
Seaweed
Eggs
Ginger
She nods at the still fuming Menchi as she finishes writing. Menchi still has her scowl, but it was more for show than her actually being angry. “Whatever…any questions?”
A kid with an atrociously green ensemble raises their hand, almost jumping at the opportunity. She turns to face him and nods in approval.
“Anno…Ishmael-San, how much do you mean by a serving?” The kid in green asks, rocking back and forth on his heels. She couldn’t tell if he was nervous or excited. Crossing her arms together to form an ‘X’, Menchi answers for her. “That means figure it out yourself, kid.”
Sweatdropping when the kid begins to puff steam out of his ears. “You have five minutes to form your groups of four, starting…now!” Menchi slams down a cute tomato cooking timer set to five minutes on the table and collapses back down into the sofa with a huff.
"I still think we should’ve failed everyone.” Menchi pouts as she crosses her legs. She knows that Menchi wasn’t talking for an answer from her, so she just settles next to her to watch the examinees mill about, forming their groups. She watches as the green one joins his other friends, their little group conveniently forming the four required for this round. She frowns at them a little, their friendship being a little too convenient for the test to her irritation.
She had only made the aspiring hunters team up in fours due to the remaining number of examinees left after the first testing stage, which was a perfect 148, and the number of dropouts that should be met considering the next stage, afterall, even with the near infinite capactiy of the trick tower, she’s sure that Lippo-san would appreciate the lightened workload, even if the man seemes to be a workaholic most times, managing a larger number of examinees would still be uncomfortably hectic.
She felt that same weird feeling of the universe nudging her to some unknown conclusion. And she didn’t like that one bit.
Though…speaking of that kid in green, his gravity-defying hairstyle reminds her of a certain asshole she had met a decade back, when she was still a green, newly appointed hunter exploring this abandoned temple just off the south coast of the Begerosse Union, the locals of a nearby town had claimed there was a long-lost herb said to only grow in its vicinity, and she was lured in with the promise of its legendary umami flavour.
When she finally made it through the unforgiving thicket, she saw a team of shady excavators tearing the temple down, muttering something about lost gold buried underneath the tiles.
In her defense, she was tired, hungry, and irritable at the lack of herbs. Ging had found her dangling the leader of the crew by his scruff over the cliffside, aggressively signing something about magical herbs in that beat-up-looking guy’s face. It wasn’t the best first impression.
“I take it that you’re not with the ‘excavation team’?” The voice was completely unexpected; for all she knew, she and the guy dangling above the cliff were the only people still conscious in a mile’s radius.
In her haste to turn around, she accidentally let go of the beat-up man. It was a long drop to the water below, but he might’ve survived if he had avoided the rocks.
‘Who are you?’ She signs, jittery at the hobo-looking guy who had sneaked up to her and withstood her reflexive punch to the diaphragm.
To her surprise, the hobo actually answered, “I’m Ging Freecss, a ruins hunter. I overheard them talking a while ago…seems like I’m a little late to their party.”
She looked at him strangely before signing back, his name weirdly familiar, ‘Well met, I’m Ishmael, gourmet hunter…sorry for hitting you earlier, are you ok? You look like you got into a scuffle. Did one of them wake up?’
The man freezes awkwardly for a bit before replying with a defeated look, “No…this is just how I look usually...” At his visibly deflating figure, she quickly signs back an apology, trying desperately not to sputter beneath her face covering, the painted eye in the middle of the cloth twitching as if mimicking a laugh.
“No matter, anyway—“ Ging coughs, “the ‘excavation team’ tore up the foundation of the temple, restoration would be tough, but doable. Though I think I saw you sign something about…herbs before? It’d be best if you collect them now; once restoration begins, the nearby fauna might be removed.” She nods at his suggestion, thanking him quickly as she hurries back to the destroyed temple.
She stops before she could forget, and turns back around to face the hobo hunter guy. ‘Actually, I think I’ve heard about you from one of my friends. Her team is gonna go explore this underground burial site at Kukan’yu’s capital city, said you would be interested.’
The guy did look mildly interested, so she pressed her luck, ‘Is there anywhere I can find you after? I can give you the dets later.’
“Nah, I’m fine, I’ll catch up to Aiyume myself, she’s not hard to find.” The hunter replies, then disappears in a blink of an eye.
And if that wasn’t a challenge, she wouldn’t know what it was. She giggles at her success in fulfilling the conditions of her nen ability and rides that high all the way back to the destroyed temple. Aiyume did say all that, true, but she did also mention that this Ging guy was pretty famous, and it didn’t hurt to have him down in her metaphorical ledger.
It isn’t until she had returned to the village victorious, backpack stuffed full of herbs and seeds, that she realized that, oh, she had met the mysterious deadbeat dad of the protagonist of the series.
…
Wait…protagonist?
Shit. That chipper kid in green was Gon!
Beep Beep Beep Beep
She’s torn out of her reality-shattering epiphany by the irritating sound of the tomato alarm. She clenches her fists and goes to turn the alarm off. Misjudging her strength in her anger, she slams her fist down on the button to stop it and accidentally obliterates the alarm in a resounding crack of cheap plastic.
To the untrained eye, it would seem that the alarm had suddenly exploded into dust.
Well...she had always been better at Enhancement even as a Specializer, sue her.
Jerking out of her daze at the shocked gasps of the examinees and the irritated but confused look Menchi was giving her, she immediately stood to bow frantically in apology, meanwhile also signing an apology to Menchi, promising to buy her a new alarm.
Buhara sighs, “Alright, you lot, the third round of the second stage begins—now!”
There are still a couple of people frozen at her casual show of strength, but most of them had shaken themselves out of their stupor and began to run into the forest in their groups. There is a lingering taste of bloodlust left behind by Hisoka; he’ll be annoyed at her later for stirring him up again, after all he was the only one in the bunch who knew what was under her disguise, unfortunately.
She offers a quick prayer for the other examinees who have to stay in the same forest as the bloodthirsty clown.
He had teamed up with Illumi and two other plain-looking wannabe hunters. She wouldn’t doubt that the moment the four entered the thicket, the two others would quickly disappear into the wilderness forever—she didn’t specify a rule where the team had to be whole to pass the exam.
Maybe she had a mean streak in her, too.
No wonder she had this terrible sense of deja vu this entire time. That’s why two of her brothers were here too, honestly, the moment she saw Killua should’ve reminded her of this, but she was getting way too distracted by the atrociously cooked pork.
It had been a while since she last saw Illumi; if she recalled correctly, their last meeting was all the way back when she got her star, collecting these really rare plants that were endangered, and somehow reverse engineering the plantation methods through her bullshit nen powers and kind of preventing the extinction of these plants in the forest areas of Kakin.
And apparently it was so effective that it was adopted for multiple other plant families nearing extinction. They even named it after her! Her teammates almost rioted.
She had gone out celebrating with her travel buddies when she stumbled into him; he had noticeably changed throughout the years, even though he kept his stoic persona on; she still knew that underneath that was a much softer brother than what he might’ve been without having her to rely on in the earlier days.
Back when their parents were still trying to figure out how to raise them, or in other words, committing child abusing atrocities any sane person would faint at. Naturally none of the Zoldycks are sane, even her, much to her dismay, she was simply a higher functioning one.
They had their fun, she helped him in his assassination of this company CEO and they hung out together, somehow Hisoka got himself involved in their activities too, it was then when she first met him, they didn’t hit it off instantly, but they were at least amicable at their first meeting, even if he was a bit weird at first.
She did give herself a pat on the back for the foresight to take her own hunter exam in her disguise, the idea which she had completely ripped off of her twin brother.
Keeping her two lives separate has proven to be more fruitful than she had thought, though not being able to speak was annoying if the people around her didn’t know any sign language, which meant she often had to resort to her notepads.
Thankfully Menchi and Buhara were old pals of hers due to their corresponding jobs, gourmet hunters liked to work in groups, she had learned early into her career. She had gotten to know the two pretty well. They didn’t actually take any classes for sign language, but they were hunters after all, and they adapted quickly. Honestly, she can’t decide whether their speed to adapt was scary or not.
She definitely made her ability to disguise her nen a little more trouble than it was worth, in hindsight, losing her ability to talk was a bit of an annoying drawback, but keeping her identity a secret has its perks, for example, not being subjected to an awkward family reunion because no one would recognize her nen signature, etc.
It wasn't as if she didn’t want to meet her brothers, but completely driving the plot points off the rails instead of nudging it like she had did before could cause disastrous consequences, it was crucial to be careful until at least the chimera ant fiasco had blown over, and if she wanted to follow her plan of stopping it from happening in its entirety she has to step carefully in all events following up to it, which meant she had to let the story run its course, no matter how much she wanted to help her little brother out right now.
He would suffer more if she did, and what big sister could do that to her little brother?
Of course, she wouldn’t want to claim to be as selfless as she’s projecting, chimera ants were hard to come by, and she certainly wouldn’t mind adding their queen to her collection. Think of all the new recipes she could concoct out of that.
That distinct acidy taste of the plentiful amino acids the ant meat would secrete, even better if its genetically fused with other animals! What variety of flavours could that produce?
She could already think of her younger disgusted face whenever her old grandpa would serve a horrid looking plate of those god forbidden things. She hadn’t had the matured enough palate at that time to fully appreciate it, but even the thought of home back on non-reversed continents has her all nostalgic and mushy.
So what if stopping a genocide was only for a taste of home? At least she’s doing something good in the process!
Not to mention the possibility of fulfilling the conditions of another nen ability that had been lurking in the recess of her mind, it took a very specific condition for it to activate, and doing this might prove fruitful.
…and saving her baby brother from further torment of course. And the idea of stiffing Pariston even just a little. Heh.
…But anyway, back to reality. The first of the hunter wannabes had returned bearing ingredients, there was a desperate race to the kitchen isle which ended in a minor scuffle and a down trodden team after they realize the serving size for mushrooms had been already met, which led them scrambling back into the forest in search for other ingredients.
Of course, there was more tact to be found in her exam than just a boring race to the finish line (sorry Satou-san, as effective as it was, it was still a little boring.)
There were many elements to this activity: firstly, information gathering—no point in perusing an ingredient that had already been gathered, or is being gathered by a large amount of people; then teamwork—believe it or not, being a hunter includes working with other people, surprise; and of course, general survival knowledge of where fauna and animals are usually located, the best way to collect them, and just the general knowledge on culture, since people who know how soup dumplings were made would have a distinct advantage as to the ratio of the number of servings needed; and lastly predictably, physical prowess, go figure.
If you couldn’t already tell, she was really proud of this exam. And the added bonus of getting to eat it at the end was just the cherry on top.
She did feel she was making it a bit too overcomplicated compared to the rest of the exams, but oh well, there's really no harm in having a bit of fun before the storm.