Author's note at the end of the story!

Chapter 6: Crying out, Loud.

"Happy April Fools' Day, Luan Loud."

The single sentence rang in Luan's ears as she braced herself for the final moment of her life. Her eyes winced as she couldn't bare to see her end. She heard Hit's body move, and prep for an attack. Then, a single gust of wind blew out towards her face.

"STOP!" a voice rang out. For Luan, everything was silent and still. Confused, she reluctantly opened her eyes and saw Hit holding a pie inches from her face. She looked beyond the attacker and was astonished at what she saw.

"Lincoln? Is that you?" Hit seemed as confused as Luan did as he put the pie on the ground and turned to the white haired child. Lincoln looked hurt, tears filling in his eyes.

"Why did you stop me? The job was almost finished." Hit claimed. It was then another voice rang out from upstairs.

"Well like it or not, your clocking out early bro!" It exclaimed. Luan looked to see the rest of her family with concerned expressions at the top of the steps. They hurried down and Luan was soon cocooned by her parents.

"Luan, sweetie, are you ok?"

"You're not too hurt are you?" They asked very quickly. Luan could barely take in everything as she found herself shoving her family away.

"Stop. Just. What is going on here? First you hire this guy!" She cried out pointing to Hit. "Now you all rush down here and treasure me like the sun? Is this a sick joke or something?" The broken prankster asked. Her younger sister, Lisa, yanked her skirt and caught her attention.

"Luan, if you calm down and come with us to the living room, we will explain the entire situation." She reassured as she took her big sisters hand. Luan was afraid and skeptical, but didn't feel like she had much of a choice as she followed them upstairs again. Eventually everyone, including Hit, were all gathered together in the living room. Luan was wrapped in a blanket by Lola and Lana as she sipped out of a small cup of juice trying to calm down.

After a good 5 minutes of silence, Luan spoke. "I don't even know what you all want anymore. Is it just to see me suffer?" She asked. Her dad shook his head rapidly.

"No no no. Not at all! Luan we just. Well, I don't know where to start exactly."

"How about at the beginning? Like who is Hit?" Luan asked a little bitterly. Lisa cleared her throat.

"I can fill in that blank. It all transpired aproximatley a week ago." Lisa began

One week prior

Lisa was in her room working on a small gray device. She glanced back at her notes on the chalkboard as a reference. "Ok, if my calculations are correct. I should be able to open a gateway to an alternate dimension. Hopefully Multiverse theory proves correct, otherwise it's back to my bunker for another April 1st." She lamented. Lisa grabbed the device and pushed a button causing the house to rumble.

Meanwhile, Lola had been applying makeup in the next room over and the quake caused her to mess up and smear it over her forehead. She growled as she stomped across the hall over to Lisa's room. "Lisa! Knock it off with the experiments! If you make one more explosion, I'm turning those test tubes into tea pots." She threatened. Then, a mass of light gathered in front of the 2 girls and flashed into a giant cyan ball. Lisa adjusted her glasses with a proud look.

"A complete success."

"Ok, what is that? And is it going to explode?" Lola asked quizzically. Lisa turned to the pageant queen and started to explain.

"This, my stubborn sister, is a rift in space time." She stated calmly. "I have been working on inter-dimensional travel for about a year or so. I originally had it as a side project, but after Prankageddon, I made it top priority." She explained. Lola immediately caught on to what her sister was saying and narrowed her eyes.

"Oh, I get it. You want to ditch us and go into another universe for a day. Well sign me up too. Better than being one of Luan's targets." She chimed in with a smile.

"After you." Lisa offered as she stepped aside. But before Lola could walk into the rift, someone started to come out of it. The two sisters backed up as a thick boot stepped through the light, followed by a whole body covered in a trench coat. His eyes opened and observed the room around him until locking onto Lola and Lisa. The former was about to scream in fear when Lisa quickly covered her mouth and kept her from alerting everyone else. "An extraterrestrial being? This is incredible!" She cooed with excitement.

The man simply stared in wonder. "Where am I?" He asked. Lisa gasped in wonder after the being finished their sentence.

"And it speaks fluent English?! Incredible!" Lisa let go of her sister and grabbed a tape recorder and rushed over to the man. "Please, if you have a name, I'd like to know!" She asked awestruck. The figure simply stared with a calm expression.

"My name is Hit." They answered. Lola raised an eyebrow.

"Hit? What kind of a name is that? It sounds like your some kind of assassin."

"That's because I am." Hit replied. The girls were surprised and Lisa cleared her throat nervously and tried to retain her composure.

"Well Hit, I would like to ask you more. However, you probably don't like personal questions in your line of work and have more than one way to refuse them. So I apologize for the interruption and hope we don't inconvenience you like this again." She lectured, quickly trying to hustle Hit back through the portal. But Lisa soon found herself held back and restrained by her sister. She had a strange expression on her face that gave an aura of unsettling curiosity.

"Now hold on a minute, Lisa. I want to ask a couple questions of my own." She pushed Lisa to the side and approached Hit. "You are an assassin, right?"

"Yes." Hit responded.

"And assassins do certain… things for money right?" The young pageant queen asked. Lisa's jaw dropped as she immediately caught on to Lola's idea.

"Lola!" Hit followed Lisa's scream with a question that practically took the words out of her mouth.

"Are you implying you want to hire me? You are only 6 years old at most."

"True. But I don't want you to kill anyone for this job. And I can make it worth your while." She promised with an innocent smile and batting her eyelashes in a couple rapid blinks. Hit pondered her offer for a moment and hummed to himself.

"It would depend on what this job actually is. As well as what you would be offering as payment." Hit explained. Lola held up a single finger and walked out of the room without saying a word. In a few moments, she returned with a gold tiara from one of her pageant award bundles.

"Pure gold and 24 karat diamonds right there." She bragged as she placed it in Hit's hand. "And there is more where that came from if it isn't enough." Hit held the crown up to the light and knocked it against the wall a couple times. Then he took out a single jewel and squeezed it in between his finger and thumb. After deeming them as real, he turned back to Lola, who had a now devilish, toothy grin.

"Give me the necessary details."

Present time.

Luan stared forward, awestruck. "So it was LOLA who hired Hit!?" She practically screamed in anger. Lola didn't flinch from her sister's outburst, but she looked down at the floor in shame.

"Yes. But we didn't want you to die or get hurt. I only hired him so you would see what April Fools day is like for us." Lola explained. Luan suspended her anger at the last part.

"What YOU all feel?" Lucy chimed in and elaborated on Lola's statement.

"On every April 1st, we feel like you become someone else. SomeTHING else." She began. "And when you transform into that, for a lack of a better word, demon, you give off this aura. It crushes at our souls and strangle us in a sense of impending dread. We just wait for a new, unknown plague to befall us with no way to escape." The dark child explained. Luan pondered the explanation and thought of a question.

"Wait, then if you wanted revenge, why didn't you go all the way? Lincoln rushed in and stopped before Hit could sealed the deal." The family looked down at the floor, unsure how to properly express their feelings. At least, until Leni spoke up.

"Because it was… It was…" She started to choke on her voice and tears dripped from her eyes. "IT WAS NOT FUNNY! LIKE, AT ALL!" She wailed as she wrapped Luan in a hug. Lincoln stepped forward and continued his older sister's sentiment.

"At first, when we saw you afraid of Hit, we thought it was hilarious. But then you got home and we saw you get so angry at us." He explained. Their mother, Rita, continued with her makeup starting to run from crying.

"Then you started to beat yourself up and call yourself worthless. You had the 'I wish I was never born' look on your face and it just ate at me." She lamented. "But the final nail in the coffin was when you answered Hit's little question." Lori also found herself crying with her mother and jumped in to the family wide apology.

"You were literally giving up on life. You wanted Hit to actually kill you. We just couldn't let you stay like that." Luan was still a little confused at everything that transpired. She was uneasy and didn't know if the emotions her family displayed were genuine.

"So, you guys don't hate me or anything?" Luan felt her father grab her shoulders and looked her dead in the eyes.

"Luan. You are our family. We may not like what you do on April Fools' Day, but you are still Luan Loud. We will always love you. And we would NEVER want to see you hurt! That is a fact that will never change for as long as we live." He asserted.

Luan felt her heart explode with several emotions at once. She could only process a few at a time. She was angry at how far her family went for revenge. She was sad at how they had betrayed her and messed with her head. She was afraid their apology was a ruse and their plan for revenge was still underway.

However, for some strange reason she could not fully explain, there was one emotion that overshadowed them all. It pulsed through her intensely like a fire burning though the forest. And she couldn't control it no matter how hard she tried to.

Joy. Happiness and relief over the fact that it was no more than a joke and her family still loved her after all the pain inflicted over the years.

Tears started to flow from Luan's eyes as she choked out breaths. Her family feared they had lost her forever. Lola felt the worst since hiring Hit was all her idea in the first place. "Luan, be mad at me all you want. But don't hold it against them." Luan's face perked up slightly and her noises became more audible. The family were unable to speak as they saw an innocent smile come from Luan's face as she laughed.

The jokester girl wrapped her whole family in a hug as she laughed and cried simultaneously. She laughed for what seemed like a whole minute until she found the will to talk normally again. "Guys. I'm sorry for everything I've done. I've been a horrible person to you for years, and it took the idea that you guys stopped loving me to realize how much I really have in the world." She explained. Her mother smiled as she wiped the tears from her daughter's eyes.

"Lets all make a promise. No more hurtful pranks on April 1st. Physical OR emotional!"

"Agreed!" Everyone shouted with a smile as they hugged. Luan's eyes soon snapped open in alarm.

"Wait. There are still some things that still bug me." She began. "First off, where were you guys this whole time?" She asked in bewilderment. Lynn chuckled a little.

"We were in Lisa's bunker the whole time watching you with cameras like you were with Hit. Though I left for a little bit to place Leni's note on the mailbox." She explained.

"Ok, and secondly… What are we going to do about him?" She asked pointing to Hit, who was still in the living room. Hit turned to the side and scoffed.

"Your sister paid me my fee in advance and my job has been deemed acceptable by my client's standards. I won't be around here much longer."

"No. I mean how are you going to get back home? You came from another dimension." Luan pointed out. Lisa got up and went up the now dry stairs. Shortly returning with a small remote with a single green button.

"This device should get Hit back to his own world. And ensure that he won't be around in our dimension again, it's set to self-destruct after one use. So it's a one way trip." She then turned to Hit with a worried expression. "Nothing personal." She apologized fearing Hit's wrath.

"No offense taken." Hit assured as he walked to the door with the button in hand. As he opened the door and started to walk out, he stopped. "Luan, one thing before I leave." The louds looked at him, unsure of what the assassin was going to say. He turned with a small grin on his face. "You are by far one of the most unique targets I've ever been hired to deal with. If I didn't have such high self control, I would have fallen into hysterics with your clever jokes." He congratulated. With that, he walked out and closed the door.

Silence filled the house as all the Louds sat in the living room. Luan soon stretched and let out a yawn. "Well, I'm dead tired after today. Don't know about you guys, but I'm going to go to bed." She said as she walked up the stairs. She soon heard an echo of laughter from her family. "What's so funny?"

"Dead tired. Ha! It's nice to have you back, sis!" Luna explained as she walked up the stairs to their room. Luan pieced it together and chuckled.

"Oh, I didn't even mean to make that one!" She giggled as she and her sister changed into their pajamas and climbed into their bunks. Before she started to fall asleep, looked at the top bunk where her sister was laying. "Luna."

"Yeah?"

"Just because we all made that promise doesn't mean you're all off the hook for what you did." Luan warned. "Don't freak out, it's not going to be giant. But..."

"But what?"

"You know how Lori says her farts are because her shoes?" She asked. There was a brief silence until Luna snickered.

"If your thinking what I'm thinking, then let me help. That actually sounds hilarious. And we have more than enough whoopee cushions to do it." Luna insisted with delight. Luan smiled and closed her eyes.

"No problem Luna." And with that, she fell asleep.

…

Luan awoke to the sound of pebbles being thrown at her window in the middle of the night. She awoke and slowly stumbled over to the window. She looked out and her eyes widened when she saw Hit standing under a tree in the yard. He looked at Luan with a blank, serious expression. Luan returned with a furrowed brow and a nod in respect. Hit returned with a nod of his own and pulled out the remote. The wind howled as the button turned to dust and a portal appeared.

As he walked through it, he flashed Luan one last wink and a smile. Luan smiled and saluted him in return. She walked back to bed and sighed. "For a killer, he's kind of a softie." She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

"I'm a lucky girl."

THE END.

It took me a while to finish this story. But its done! But, there is one thing I want to get off my chest.

TigerVolcano5000, If you are reading this, I'd like to thank you for your review. Although I didn't intend for this ending to have an unhappy ending and was the "it was all a prank" cliché. Your review kind of gave me a bit of insight on the character's actions and choices. So I edited the ending so EVERYONE learns the lesson I had as the moral of the story.

"Pranks are fun. But shouldn't come at someone's long term expense." I hope this ending serves as a compromise. If you are still disappointed, I am sorry. Though I will still say the idea you pitched for an ending is intriguing.

Perhaps you would like to expand on it? You have my full permission if you want to publish it as it's own story.

To everyone else. Thank you for reading also!