Two days passed since Lincoln had crossed paths with Nora, and he still waited to hear from her with little clue what to expect, but really was hoping to just find a letter to him in the mailbox telling him where to take the briefcase, but he had taken 25%, so now he was in debt to being her worker. Whatever that meant, the young boy had little clue. He lay in his bed, snoring from how tired he had been.
Lincoln had stayed up until three in the morning last night, to make sure that his entire family was asleep. He had spent one day buying the gifts and getting them all prepared, or waiting for them to be prepared before he had to go pick them up the next day. Once he had gathered every gift for his sister, Lincoln snuck into each one's room during the night and left their presents nearby them. He fell asleep right after that, thankful that most of his sisters shared rooms. Otherwise that would have been a pain to have to sneak into ten variously cluttered rooms.
"OH MY GOSH!"
Lincoln jolted awake when he heard multiple voices simultaneously scream in shock.
"Wha? Did Charles mess up the laundry again?" Lincoln groaned, holding his head. He doubted that his dog had accidentally knocked over laundry, not unless half the house was working on it. He never had heard that many loud shouts over ruined cleaned pieces of cloth. Lincoln forced himself out of bed, still wearing his pyjamas and boxers.
"Everything alright?" Lincoln called out as he opened his door and stepped out of his room. He suddenly got hit in the side of the head by a soccer ball, making him stumble.
"Ow!" he groaned, rubbing his head. Either he got in the way of it at the worst time, or the one that kicked it expected a lot better reaction time from someone that had been awake not even five minutes.
"Sorry Lincoln, I'm just really excited and couldn't wait to practice," the preteen heard another sibling of his. Lynn, the fifth oldest of the Loud family, approached, wearing a red and white jersey with a '1' symbol on the front of it, and matching pajama bottoms, her auburn brown hair being done up into a small ponytail.
"Well… it was a nice kick," Lincoln lost his irritation pretty fast from seeing one of his siblings happy. Lynn was a lot more athletic than most of the family. If it could be turned into a sport, she would find a way to do it. And there was only a few sports she wouldn't play, though all that bursting energy had to be burnt out on something, and Lincoln had wound up being her practice opponent one too many times. Not that he minded, he just was not able to keep up with her since a lot of times she tended to be a little too competitive, but as long as she was happy he was fine with it.
"So what's got you so excited?" Lincoln already had a good clue why, he could hear some of his family downstairs already, presuming that Lynn was the last one to awaken right before him. His slightly older sister presented a pair of tickets to his face, Lincoln gaining a small smirk.
"My gifter gave me two presents! The soccer ball was in the first and that's nice, but these are special Rosetta tickets! I thought they were sold out!" Lynn excitedly explained. Lincoln just let her continue talking to fill him in on what she thought he had no clue about. In actuality, it was him who got her the two Rosetta tickets.
Every couple months, several famous sports groups would gather at a grand charity event they dubbed the Rosetta charity, in honor of the one who started the charity fund Virginio Rosetta. The groups that gathered would share a lot of news of their upcoming plans, before letting civilians chosen at random to play in mixed teams alongside and against other members of each group. Anyone could go to the fundraiser, but only those with Rosetta tickets could get to compete. Lincoln recognized the details, and knew Lynn would appreciate being given those.
"Well that's great, Lynn. Congratulations," Lincoln claimed. He recalled how the last few times the Rosetta charity fund had come through Royal Woods, Lynn had missed all her chances to get the tickets, mainly because people would swamp anywhere that was selling them, and they would all be gone in minutes, due to all the groups' popularity that would allow their merchandises to be sucked dry in sales.
"I just can't believe it. When I find out who got me these two tickets, they're coming with me to compete!" Lynn declared, picking up her soccer ball before hopping on the staircase railing and zipping off downstairs.
"I don't think I'd survive five seconds against many… let alone pros," Lincoln muttered. Not like anyone was meant to know who their gifters were. He could then hear the sound of an electric guitar echoing from an open doorway. He peeked his head in, that smile of his growing.
"Morning, Luna," he greeted his rock and roll loving sister. It was quite clear that she had found her present.
"Lincoln! Hey, check it out! My guitar's no longer trashed!" Luna showed that formerly broken guitar, which was now back to fully functional condition and looking almost brand new. Lincoln pretended to be surprised, hoping he could pass off any oddness from his reaction on his late night stay up.
"Really? Wow, your gifter must work fast," Lincoln laughed a little, though in his head, he recalled talking to the man about repairing the instrument. It was irritating because the instrument store owner that specialized in repairs, had tried to talk Lincoln out of wasting money on something that was not anywhere near the price it was worth to repair. After some persistence, he got the man to agree to fix it up to almost brand new shape, and expedited it by throwing another hundred in.
"Yeah. I think it was Lucy, but she said the pieces got taken from her room when she went to bed," Luna explained. She went straight to Lucy since she had the bits and pieces of the guitar last.
"Really? That's weird…" Lincoln played dumb. Sadly he was good at feigning ignorance. He would rather be a better liar than a better actor.
"Yeah… weirder is someone also got me that new album I've been eyeing. But hey, I won't complain about two gifts," Luna declared. Lincoln was glad to see her happy, but in one half a second blink, Luna had cranked her amp up to max.
"Let's hear ya howl again!" she struck the strings full force with the guitar pick. Lincoln got blasted out of the room by the giant blast of sound coming from the amps, landing on the hallway floor, partially deafer than he was when he first entered that room. With a high-pitch ringing torturing his eardrums, Lincoln calmly closed the door to his older sister's room. It did not help the noise much, but it was better than nothing.
"Lincoln, honey, can you come here?" Mrs. Loud called from downstairs.
"What?" Lincoln shouted back, trying to get over the constant high pitch ringing still in his head while being told this. He finally understood and made his way down. It seemed like some of his younger siblings had yet to come downstairs. Lincoln wished he had their heavy sleeping abilities, which they somehow were a lot more used to loud noises.
"Sorry mom, my hearing's a little messed up and… aww…" Lincoln stopped himself when he saw his younger sister, Lily, drinking a bottle of milk in her mother's arms, but also was wearing a new costume she had gotten, which was a grey chinchilla costume, complete with a fluffy tail and hood.
"You look adorable, Lily," Lincoln commented with a warm smile, poking her tummy, hearing his sister giggle in reply. She seemed to adore the chinchilla costume so much. Lincoln had gotten it for Lily as a surprise. He did not want her to be left out of the family name drawing gift trade after all, but since his baby sibling had no room of her own and instead just shared one primarily with their parents. Lincoln had opted into leaving the gift in his parent's room.
"I wanted to ask what gift you got," Mrs. Loud asked her son. So far everyone this morning was immensely happy, and it was nice for her to see.
"I got a family blooper CD," Lincoln replied. He needed to really watch that more. Now that he had repaired his sibling's guitar, he no longer had too much guilt from having broken it. The preteen was glad no one else had so far inquired about his ruby black widow ring. He had tried a lot of things to get it off, putting ice on his hand, using a mixture of soap and butter, even clamping the vice in the garage onto it and tried to just force it off, and even after all that together at once, sadly there was no luck.
"That's nice. It looks like everyone got each other two gifts," his mother commented, glad for her children all being happy and thinking of each other, "And it's nice that someone thought of Lily… I was going to get her a gift so she wouldn't feel left out, but someone got her this precious costume."
"Yeah… I- huh?" the preteen quirked an eyebrow when he suddenly felt someone hugging him, looking behind him to see Lucy. Aside from her PJ's, she now had a brand new necklace that had a very scary looking skull dangling from it.
"Heh… didn't want to scare me this time?" Lincoln joked while wrapping an arm around her, smiling. Lucy had not tried to scare him this time. Only reason she really got close to him unnoticed this time was due to his damaged hearing.
"Thanks for the present Lincoln… I love it," Lucy was very thankful for it. The jewelry was a lot more than she expected, but she could not be happier with it.
"Hey, I promised I'd make my favorite little vampire happy," Lincoln reminded, their embrace breaking. They noticed Lori come downstairs, with something square gripped tightly in her hand and a bright expression across her face.
"Mom! Mom! Look, I found this in one of my gifts!" Lori excitedly presented a weird looking flat phone, so slim that it looked like a steamroller had crushed it and yet it still worked fine.
"Oh it's a phone… that's nice," Mrs. Loud had no idea what made it special. She was just happy to see all her children in joyous states. Still, she had a lack of knowledge with technology to a severe degree.
"Oh, that's the mini square, isn't it?" Lincoln quirked, pretending he had seen an advertisement for it before on television months ago. He had heard his sister talk about how she wished she could get that new phone, but it was tremendously expensive.
"Yeah! It can do so much! Best of all is it can be folded up to take nearly no space!" Lori demonstrated. One button press and the phone folded in on itself a lot until it turned into a small square that was maybe the size of a big fingernail.
"Wow! That's awesome Lori!" Lincoln smiled. He was the one who had purchased it for her after all. However that was one of the most expensive of the items, having took away a thousand dollars alone. The only thing that rivaled that price was Luna's guitar which was not even at half the cost, nor was that fancy dress Lola had wanted. Even that weird tool that his younger sister Lisa wanted that Lincoln could not even pronounce the first part of. By the end of the gift shopping spree, Lincoln was left with only 300 of his 2,500 dollars.
"I have to call Bobby and let him know, this is the best day ever!" Lori excitedly hummed, referring to her boyfriend whom she was almost always on the phone with. Lincoln and Lucy had to step back as they noticed everyone else come downstairs to show their mother their gifts. Lincoln heard his mother laugh a little to herself. 'Loud is as loud does', a motto she knew about the family.
"Well Luce, wanna go get… Luce?" Lincoln saw no sign of Lucy again. He guessed she already was ahead of him on the idea of getting breakfast, especially when seeing nearly all of his sisters excited. All he could do is just watch and smile, though the preteen wondered where his father was thinking. He might just be back at work early.
"Girls, girls. Breathing room please," Mrs. Loud requested, which then got a few more inches of space for her and Lily, the infant giggling at the circus show in the house. Lincoln heard the front door bell go off, a sound that made everything stop in an instant.
"I'll get it," Lincoln reassured, right beside the door. He opened it up with a bright smile on his face, which however faded faster than a bonfire in a rainstorm when he saw a Royal Woods authority badge being shown. The person holding it was all too familiar; the ruby animal style rings, the fancy getup and that empty look in their eyes.
"N-Nora?!" Lincoln's internal system screamed. Sweat beaded across his forehead while he did his best not to speak her name. Why she would make herself known to his family was unknown. Lincoln had wanted to keep everything that happened secret after all, and what she said made the silence turn into soundly surprise and concern.
"Good morning, I'm from child protective services..."