A story featuring Leni Loud of the Loud Clan.
"Garage Banned" was a great Episode. It developed Lori as a character, showed that Lincoln isn't the only one having problems with 10 siblings and gave once again the spotlight to somebody else than Lincoln which is really appreciated.
A very well done Episode in my opinion.

And I thought I could add a little more, sort of a coda but more for Leni but also a little bit for Lori. I was inspired by the scene of Leni handling Lana's nightmares not as good as Lori does.

I want to thank ultrablud2 for proofreading this Chapter. Thank you.
And I want to thank also my Partner MamaAniki, her support and advice helped me with this Fanfic.
Without further ado: Have fun reading this short story.

To be a Leader
by
Hatoralo

She turned around in her bed, sighed loudly, and did it again shortly thereafter. Her thoughts didn't give her any sleep tonight and she wasn't able to ignore them.

Meanwhile, Lori tried to ignore Leni's shifting and movement and the occasional sigh from her. Lori wasn't used to this.
Since she'd had moved back into her old room after a short stint where she tried to live in the garage, Leni had been acting strange from time to time. She seemed to be in deep thought at some times, which wasn't that unusual, but it was quite particular that she had become more silent.

She had stopped to take clothes from Lori, was talking less and tried to avoid saying stupid things and was in general less active.
But her bedtime was noisier than ever before, even worse than the time she thought, there was a spider-monster under her bed that would eat her in her sleep.

Lori knew that the other thought of her having a short temper but she always had more patience with Leni due to knowing her better. She ignored Leni's odd behavior for a few days, thinking it would vanish eventually but it didn't.
This was enough reason for her to rise up and say: "You are literally shifting like wild and almost sighing louder than Lucy. What is your problem?"

Leni, who didn't think she was making so much noise, shifted her view to Lori.
"Like… Like…"
"Spit it out Leni."
"Like, can I be a good leader?"
Lori raised an eyebrow in response. "A good leader for whom?"
"For our family," explained Leni. "A good leader like you."

The gears in Lori's head needed a second to process what she meant by that followed by a sigh. This would be a longer discussion.
"You mean the times when I am in command whenever mom and dad are not present?"
Leni nodded. "You do it so well and you are so confident. You always know what to do."
Lori felt the temptation to play humble, but she sensed that this was not the time, so she just nodded and said in a prosaic tone: "Thank you, continue."
"As Lana had a nightmare and came to me to seek refuge, I was happy to help her," said Leni. "But as she told me about blood-sucking aliens chasing her, for whatever reason, I thought that she was serious, that it wasn't just a dream."
"That wasn't her most unusual one," Lori told Leni. "Have you heard about the fire monster that looked like Firelord Ozai as a harvester spitting burning corn after her?"

"Yes, it sounded pretty scary, I would seek solace if I dreamt of something like that too. Back to the point," Leni continued in a more serious tone. "I totes, barricaded the door from an imaginary threat and only thought how you would make us feel safe, like you always do."
"But you don't come crawling into my bed like Lana does."
"You are close enough to me," explained Leni. "No need for me to come closer. I wouldn't like to bother you, especially because Lana needs the space in your bed more than I do."
Lori could not do anything else but to smile at that remark. She thought that her sister had the sweetest nature in the Milky Way.
"I was unable to make Lana feel safe and we stayed awake the entire night instead of sleeping. It was a totes disaster."
"At least you tried something to protect her."
"The next day, I felt silly," mentioned Leni in a sad tone. "It was just a dream, but I flipped out. I was too naïve and a bad sister."
"No!" contradicted Lori to her sister a little loud. She got out of her bed, over to Leni's and sat beside the sad sister. "You are anything BUT a bad sister. A bad sister would have thrown out Lana."
Leni did feel a little bit better and smiled a little, not much but a little.

"But that situation was, totes, easy in comparison to watching over ten energetic siblings."
"It is not that difficult," Lori tried to play it cool. "It is literally easy if you can read them and understand their desires."
"I know what our sisters and brother want," Leni informed her older sister. "But what if it comes to an emergency? You are able to keep them in order and lead them out of a dangerous situation, but can I do the same?"
"Just lead them out of the house should it start to burn," advised Lori. "In case somebody is hurt, you know how to use the medical kit, if the injury is too serious, call an ambulance."
"I know."
"Then what is the problem?"
"Like, I'm afraid I might make the wrong call. I did it with Lana, who says it can't happen again?"

Lori smiled in response and put her right hand on Leni's left. "You can do it, I am sure of it."
"I don't feel like I can," sighed Leni, ignoring Lori's gesture and carefully taking her hand away from Lori's. "Not to mention that you can have authority. They fear you in those instances but they also respect you. Me? They might respect me a little, but never fear me. I don't even know if I can force authority over them or even if I want to do that."

Lori, not one for showing off empathy easily, said this in response: "I am not happy that I have to be so authoritative to get you in line myself."
Leni looked up at her sister. "Really? I thought you liked commanding us around."
"I like to have the house in one piece, I like that we have a place to live after mom and dad come home," explained Lori. "Unsupervised, you guys are pretty good at dismembering our domicile. Do you remember the incident where you guys staged a rebellion and Lincoln took over as the leader?"
"Luan hunted me non-stop with her stupid fake spider," remembered Leni sullenly. "Then you came down and got us all to clean up the house before mom and dad arrived. I didn't notice much else, except some of Luna's fireworks and a tentacle creature."
"This is why we can't have Lisa unsupervised, even though she is more intelligent than all of us together," stated Lori frustrated. "But I see your point: Getting such a rowdy crew under control looks like an impossible job but I managed it, and so can you."

Leni, not encouraged by these words, looked down at her hands, her eyes still unsure and worried. "I doubt it. I don't like to give orders and I think that the others wouldn't even listen to me."
Lori rubbed her chin, thinking about Leni's statement, and smiled as she got an idea. "You know what Leni: Let's go through a few examples."
"What examples?"
"Examples that show your abilities when it comes to managing and supporting our family."
"There are none."
"Don't drag yourself down, little sister. I know your abilities. Just think of your cooking."
"Like, why?"
"Your cooking is the best. Nobody does better cinnamon rolls than yours."
"Except that one time I tried to make cinema rolls," remembered Leni, trying to bring herself down but instead, she started to laugh. "Like, I expected to catch the taste of good movies that way, but rolling up 8 mm filmstrips of "It's a Wonderful Life" around butter and chocolate was a, totes, terrible idea. I should have used marmalade and syrup instead."
"That wasn't the problem either," Lori tried to explain. "There is no way to make movies taste good."
"They will taste all terrible like the terrible movies?"
"They will all taste like Battlefield Earth."

Leni looked up, slightly happier now. She may not have been able to make a movie taste better but she knew that she was a good cook. She would have to remember to taste new dishes first before letting others taste it.
"I can make them good meals, but can I lead them?"
"You are able to babysit the twins," Lori told Leni. "You literally did it, mom & dad wouldn't trust anyone with those two rowdies. You are able to get them to places and back to our house without losing them and in one piece."
"Two pieces," corrected Leni her sister in a slight wisenheimer sounding way. "They are two. They care a lot about their individuality. Don't say they are one piece."
Lori sighed and wanted to correct her sister, but after a few seconds of thinking, she realized that Leni was correct. Maybe correct in another sense, but incorrect when it came to Lana & Lola.
"Yes, you are right."

Leni beamed with joy. She remembered how she was able to stop fights between the twins and fights with bullies (who ran crying home afterwards because the Loud twins were not people to mess with).
She was able to take care of them.
Still, she was asking herself: Would she be able to take care of the rest of them?

"I can keep the two under control, but the others are another story. Like, Lisa is smart, she can easily trick me."
Lori knew that her sister was easy to outwit and mislead. Luan just needed a few signs to send Leni out of the house on April 1st and into the inner city. It was not a harmful prank, but Leni felt very embarrassed after that.
"Just stay on guard," Lori advised. "Think twice or thrice before you do something when you are in command, especially when Luan or Lisa want something from you, or when you are unsure about what a certain action could cause."
"It is easy for you," countered Leni. "The clear thoughts and right decisions fly to you easily. I need to be extra careful not to do something stupid."
Leni looked out of the window. "It is not so bad when I hurt myself through a mistake, but if I hurt others through my stupidity, I could never forgive myself."

Lori rubbed her chin for a second while stroking carefully over Leni's back. Then she smiled. "You will be careful. When you already think so much about it, I am sure you will take care of our siblings."
"Like… What you say makes really sense," Leni agreed happily and cuddled closer to Lori. "I think I can care for them… Maybe that is enough to gain their respect."
"For some, yes but not for all. Luan is probably your worst enemy."
"The fake spiders."
"The fake spiders."
Leni's Arachnophobia was known to everyone in the Loud family. She could have inherited it from her father who had the same phobia but that was just speculation. Luan loved to hunt and prank her older sister with the fake spiders.
The one time Leni thought she saw through the ruse was the one time the pet spider of Lincoln's class Frank (later Francine) had placed herself on Leni's body. She had thought he was fake but that wasn't the case and it scared her even more than usual.
Since then, she wasn't able to trust herself when it came to identifying the difference between real and fake arachnids. All could be real; all could be the creepy little crawling arachnids that scare her so much.

Lori pondered about the problem and came to an easy solution.
"Train yourself to see the difference," she suggested. "Look at pictures of fake spiders and real spiders."
Leni swallowed hard. Looking at pictures of spiders alone was not easy for her but it was a solution, something she could work with.
"And if that alone doesn't help, then let Lincoln and Luna hide the fake spiders from Luan," advised Lori further. "They should be able to manage that."

"Lincoln would probably be a better leader than me," Leni sighed, knowing how good her brother was at managing them. "When he doesn't go to a very unusual route, he can handle us pretty good."
"He may be the "Man with a Plan", but he lacks authority or the willpower to control us when it gets to chaotic," explained Lori with a sweeping hand motion and a shrug.
"I fear that I lack that too," said Leni in return, standing up from her bed and going to the window to look out. "Can I gain the willpower and authority to keep the house from exploding if our family goes crazy?"

"You know, Mom and Dad didn't give me command overnight," Lori started telling a tale. "We once had either babysitters or Pop-Pop."
"I can't remember any of them," Leni remembered, or didn't to be exact. "None of them could stand us for more than one day."
"There was one," remembered Lori. "Her name was Liliana Scheuerkopf, if I remember correctly."
Leni smiled, remembering her fondly. "Yes, she was very nice despite being very stern at the beginning."
"She had to move because of personal reasons," said Lori. "But that was around the time I thought I could handle you, that it was an easy task."

Lori had felt like she was ready to supervise her younger siblings alone. She had mainly thought that she and her siblings would just have a good time together until their parents returned.
That night, the first one she was in charge, was like a dive into ice-cold water.
"You were pretty wrong," reminded Leni her sister. "It developed into total chaos ending with me, you and Luna wrestling a Bison in the kitchen."
How could she forget that? She wasn't sure how it came to that point and mom and dad were pissed after they found that Bison bound to a tree behind the house. The only reason they didn't ban her from ever taking charge and responsibility again was the fact that nobody got hurt, even the Bison.
Still, the house had been a mess and most of it wasn't even from the Bison. They had to clean up the house without help and Lori was forced to wear the brunt of it, cleaning most of it herself, because she felt that she had to.

"I didn't know what," Leni responded with the last bit as they told each other how they remembered the story. "I thought mom and dad made you do it."
"No, I felt guilty and did it voluntary," Lori explained melancholy. "Afterwards, I got better at keeping you all under control, but more and more louds joined the fray and I…"
"…Became sterner from day to day, from sibling to sibling," Leni finished the sentence. "Until Lincoln, along with us, instigated that coup against you. Afterwards, you mellowed out."

Leni could be surprisingly direct if with Lori if she wanted to. Lori suspected she wasn't saying that to hurt Lori but to encourage her.
"Yes, that is the story," confirmed Lori. "Neither my absolute sternness nor Lincoln's absolute freedom were the solution. A middle ground was needed."

"Can I keep such a middle ground without you around?" asked Leni her sister and herself. "I doubt I can do that alone."

"I will teach you a few details until the time comes," promised Lori honestly. "Just stay on my side, maybe you can regulate some stuff for me should I be in command next time so you can practice."
"I think our siblings have good relations," argued Leni. "They are all popular in their circles of friends."
"Regulations, not relationships Leni," explained Lori in a deadpan tone.

After a short time of thinking and digesting what they talked about, Lori joined Leni and looked over the nightly street outside their house.
"Like, I think I can do it sister!" she expressed with happiness and confidence. "I think I will be able to do that."
Lori in response smiled contently.

"But that doesn't solve one problem."
Lori's smile vanished. "Which one?"
"Like, when I have to take over command primarily from you when you will be gone. You will not be with us anymore."
Lori kept silent.
"You will be living in the university and not with us anymore. I won't have to share this room with you then. But since you moved temporarily into the garage, that prospect isn't that nice anymore."
Leni looked sadly into her sister's eyes. "I missed you. I, totes, didn't know how much I could miss you. Being alone in this room was so strange. After all these years wishing for my own room, like you did, I never thought how lonely it could be. We both grew used to have our loved ones close to us," said Leni whispering the last part.
"Being alone is something we aren't used to."
"Maybe we don't even like it."
Lori said nothing.

Leni, not saying another word, embraced her older sister, cradling her carefully. "I can't imagine this room without you, Lori."
"I…" Lori gulped, trying to look strong but she just had to tell the truth. "Neither can I Leni. Or any other room I may live in one day."
She returned the hug and gave her sister a soft cradling as well. "Even if we live separate, you can always come to me if you need help."
"Like, you, totes, can also come to me Lori," Leni promised, trying to holding back the tears.

They stood like that for a minute until Leni suddenly asked: "Spooning?"
Lori gave Leni an "are you serious?" look before sighing and then smiling. "I literally need that now."

A little girl with a red cap on her head opened the door to the eldest sister's domain and skillfully snuck in, closing the door behind her without making a lot of noise.

Her destination was the bed of her eldest sister, but in the weak light coming from the outside she didn't see the familiar shape of her eldest sister, since there was nobody occupying Lori's bed.
Confused, the little girl looked around, noticing that there was more mass in Leni's sleeping place than usual.
Suddenly the mass got up slightly. "Hello? Is it you Lana?"
"Yes, Leni. Do you know where Lori is?"
"She is with me," explained Leni. "Did you have another nightmare?"
"Yes," confessed Lana scared. "Is Lori still awake?"
Leni checked on Lori. She was still lying behind her, arms around Leni's belly, eyes closed. "No, she is asleep. Like, why don't you come to me instead and tell me what happened?"
Lana looked uneasy about the proposition. "But wouldn't you get scared again yourself if I told you about my nightmare?"
"Not this time, I promise," promised Leni. "Trust me, I will not panic like last time. That is, totes, not the proper behavior when you have to protect your adorable little sister."

Leni gave Lana a reassuring smile and motioned her to come into her bed. Lana shrugged, thinking it wouldn't hurt to give Leni another chance. If she freaked out again, it would wake Lori who could calm down both of them.
Little Lana jumped onto the bed and slowly robbed towards her older sister.
"My dream," Lana started scared. "I… I dreamt a dog with rabies broke into our home and hunted me."
That sounded a lot more mundane than Lana's usual dreams but more real too. "I tried to run away but the dog was too fast for me."
"And the dog tried to bite you? You poor thing," was Leni's sympathetic reaction while petting Lana on her check. "No dog is in this house except Charles and he is harmless."
"I know but… It was so scary, I… I was so scared…"

The thought of Lana being hunted by a large, scary, strong, wild dog with rabies was not a pleasant one and one that scared herself but Leni's rational side and willpower let her keep her self-control and banished the idea of panicking.
"No dog, even with rabies, can break into this house. I think you will be okay and the rest of our family too. There is only Charles here, a sweet little dog that can never do us harm."
"Hmmmhmmmm."
"Your nightmares are just that: Nothing real. They can't hurt you, they can never hurt you."

Lana, feeling safer, got closer to Leni. "Are you sure Leni?"
"Like, I am totes sure," assured Leni with her soothing voice. "And I am here too. I will protect you little Lana from everything."
Lana got even closer to Leni who welcomed her with a warm and soft embrace. Lana made a soft noise in return, like the yelping of a happy dog.
Leni chuckled, ruffling Lana's hair. "Now sleep, like, I will watch over you."
Lana, despite her skepticism, was able to close her eyes and started to fall asleep, soon followed after by Leni.

Lori opened her right eye, smiling. Carefully, she snugged closer to Leni.

Her family would be in good hands.

Done! And under 4000 words.
Ha, I can write shorter stories after all, who would have thought?^^
I hope you had a great time reading this story.

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Constructive criticism is always welcome too, be as hard of me as you can, only that way I can improve.

signed

Hatoralo