Chapter 10: She is Mine

Alright. Here we go with the latest chapter of Two Peas. This time, we have the confrontation that has been building for a while. While Lincoln spent 2 chapters finding out various factors which could help him deduce the truth, Lynn found out first hand who was behind the setup involving her baseball coach. Viribus is back, and he has a few words of the sporty Loud girl.

As I said previously, the rest of the fanfiction past this point needs to be written from scratch, so it will likely be the case that the rate of progression concerning time between each new chapter being uploaded will slow down a bit. Still, I will be getting to work on writing the rest of it very shortly, especially since I already have an outline of the direction the narrative will take and what everything will lead up to.

Also, this chapter will concentrate on the character Viribus, from my previous FanFiction, Pushover or Payback. I fathom most readers are already familiar with that fic, and by extension, this character. For anyone who isn't, I suggest taking a little read of POP so you know who he is. Basically, he's a guy who encouraged Lincoln to become one of his followers after Lincoln left the Loud House. But his intentions were toxic as he had wild ambitions for societal change, and his and Lincoln's alliance came to an end as the Loud family and friends banded together and stopped Viribus's plan. Now, he's in prison, which is where we are. But for those who still need more information, I suggest reading POP. Or just read it anyway, I recommend it. Anyway, I'll leave that to you guys. For now, let's see what happens between Viribus and Lynn. Let's begin the chapter…

Lynn was stood motionlessly before the barbed wire fence that separated her from the fearsome man on the other side. She couldn't believe the fact that a mere several feet away from her was the person who endangered the lives of her entire family. The fear in her mind was dominant, but there was also the emotion of anger that she held at that moment…

"YOU! Why are you here?!" Lynn asked.

"I'm in prison. It's where I was sent after you and your family ruined my plans for societal reform." Viribus responded.

"I thought they'd just put you in the chair!" Lynn firmly told him.

"Sorry to disappoint you." he sarcastically replied.

"I can't believe I'm in here with you! You and your disciples!" Lynn remarked.

"I know. I keep watching them playing over there through the holes in this wall. I can't interact with them, of course, since they never go near this fence!" Viribus said.

"Then maybe they're not dumb after all." Lynn claimed.

"It's sad, really. After I developed them into superior beings, soldiers under my guidance, this place has slowly undone all of my hard work." Viribus reflected.

"Good!" Lynn bitterly told him.

"Now I'm all alone again. I've ended up the same way I started." Viribus stated with a slight hint of regret.

"Well, you deserve it! You're a monster!" Lynn told him.

"Why do I? Everything I've ever done, I did to help people. To help this world become a better place so people like me don't have to suffer." Viribus insisted.

"You can't possibly be so delusional that you still believe that!?" Lynn questioned.

"Loud, you may not understand, but some of us have it hard. You were a sports legend among children in Royal Woods. Everyone loved you. You had it good. Me, not so much. I did what I had to do to survive." Viribus justified, claiming he had to suffer with difficulties that Lynn couldn't relate to.

"Is that so?" the jock asked.

"Yes. You could never understand my situation, kid. You've never had to deal with adversity like I have." he explained.

"Yeah, well, you're wrong! I do get it! I didn't have it that easy myself!" Lynn corrected.

Lynn then turned her eyes away from her interlocutor for a second, as the conversation was making her feel rather uneasy. She didn't especially enjoy talking about her deeper feelings at the best of times, let alone when she was confronted by a destructive psychopath.

Viribus, of course, picked up on what she had just said…

"Really? When I took Lincoln on as one of my followers, he shared some information with me about you, Lynn. He told me that you were a bit of a jock, and a bully. Granted, he was angry with you and your family at the time." Viribus said to Lynn.

"Lincoln has gotten to know me better since then. I'm not as much of a star as you might think." Lynn said.

"Really? But you're a sports legend, a tough girl with a loud attitude. Why would you ever be vulnerable?" he asked.

"In middle school, I had it hard. All the kids picked on me, pulled pranks on me, laughed at me, and made me feel worthless every day. It only stopped once I acted tougher!" Lynn explained.

Viribus saw an opportunity he could exploit, and began to expand the discussion further…

"I see. So, behind all the sports and aggressive behaviour, and the compulsive need to win at every game, you're just a little softie who wants to be accepted and respected by those around you?" he inferred.

"Hey, don't you try and play therapy with me, jerk!" she snapped.

"Take it easy. I'm just taking the chance to learn more about you. After all, we barely know each other, really. I'm just finding out you're not quite the mindless jock I thought you were. It appears there are more… unfortunate implications concerning you and your past." he replied.

"Yeah, that's right." Lynn softly responded with a lowered head, saddened and depressed by the harsh reality she was being faced with.

"The way that little runt you call a brother described you, I thought you were a one-note bully who needed a good beating! Hence why I held you up and ordered him to strike you. That was the way he made you sound. But now it becomes clear, that's not true, is it?" Viribus told the upset girl.

Lynn then tilted her head back up to face Viribus directly, captured by the implications of his words...

"I'm starting to see you in a different light, Lynn. You're not a vicious bully or a violent brute, are you? You're just someone who is doing everything she can to protect herself from the harshness that surrounds her in her everyday life." Viribus said.

"Stop it! You don't know me!" Lynn bit back.

"Oh, but I do. You have a massively competitive mentality. You feel like you absolutely MUST win in any competition, because if you lose, everyone will look down on you, laugh at you. They will just view you as worthless. You watch as all your siblings make friends and get by in life, and are accepted and loved by everyone for who they are. But you, people just wouldn't do that with you, would they? You tried so hard to be nice, and respectful, and to get along with other people and just be liked for who you were. But everybody was just too cruel. They took advantage of your well-meaning and passive nature and made you a victim of harsh treatment. So, you became who you are today. Someone not to be messed with, someone who is a winner." Viribus said as he assessed the young girl standing in front of him.

Lynn could only stand and listen as she was completely taken aback by how this man could understand and evaluate her so precisely…

"But sure, you have your friends and some people look up to you because of your talents, but let's face it. So many people, including your family and closest friends, have thought so negatively of you as a result. I bet quite often your sisters and brother will judge you unfavourably because of your destructive ways, or your friends will find you annoying because of your over-competitiveness." he continued.

Viribus then sat down, so he could stare at Lynn and continue his mental analysis against her from an eye-to-eye level. He knew he was getting inside her head, and he wanted to exploit the chance to warp her mind.

"Not only that, but I bet there are so, SO many people out there that hate you for who you have become. While your aggressive and competitive ways made you less of a target for bullying, the changes you've made to your personality have only made you so many more enemies. Face it, kid. All those people out there, they hate you! They despise you with a passion! They look at you and see a rancid child who deserves to suffer, and it looks like those people have got their wish, with you being sentenced to confinement in this dump!" he told her.

"Stop it!" Lynn told him.

"It's not fair, is it, Loud? If you're all nice and reasonable, people pick on you and treat you like a joke. But if you're mean and violent, then people think you're a monstrous brute. You just can't win, can you?!" Viribus asked Lynn with a venomous tone.

"Stop It!" Lynn demanded, really becoming overwhelmed by his words.

"All those people, they were the reason you became who you are today. If they weren't so cruel towards you, you never would have developed such a violent, competitive mentality. But now they all judge you for it. But who are they to judge you!? Who are they to pretend they have the right to pass judgement on your actions?! Like they're any better than you! Doesn't it just drive you crazy?!" he challenged, knowing he was pushing Lynn's buttons and making her crack under pressure.

"STOP IT!" Lynn yelled as she reached her limit, showing that Viribus's pressure tactics worked.

Lynn was angry, depressed, and all mixed up in the head because of how Viribus was getting inside her mind. She was breathing heavily after having yelled, and had reached her emotional tipping point.

"JUST SHUT UP! How could you even know all of this, HUH?! What makes you such an expert about me?!" she questioned, walking right up next to the fence and as close to Viribus's face as she could.

"That's easy, kid. Experience." he coldly and simply replied.

Lynn couldn't immediately think of a vocal response, unsure of how to react to what Viribus had just told her.

"Your whole shtick of being the toughest person around and the number 1 at all times, all just to prevent others from victimising you… that's me." Viribus comparatively stated.

"W… what?" Lynn struggled.

"That's right. You and I, we're not so different. Everyone else out there sees you as a selfish and mindless brute, despite the fact that your abrasive attitude is merely a by-product of their behaviour. Pfft. It would be like all those worthless sheeple to shift all the blame onto you, when you're only acting in a toxic manner because you're reacting to a toxic environment." Viribus stated, mentally seeing a strong comparison and level of similarity between himself and the passionate sports girl.

"No, you're wrong! We're not the same! I'm nothing like you! I…" Lynn tried to argue back, before being cut off.

"Is that true?! Really? Why deny the truth when you know it's right, kid? Honestly, I can see it, you're just a younger version of myself. The motivations behind your behaviour, your hungry desire to prove you're better than everybody else and that you're worth something. Your abrasive and aggressive way of treating people, all as part of a strategy to make sure people treat you with respect. We've taken the same life pathways and made the same life choices. The only difference is I've taken my efforts to greater extremes!" he concluded.

Lynn just couldn't argue with him. His analysis of her was so on-point. She knew that he was completely right about her, and as much as the thought made her sick, she knew that Viribus shared a lot of qualities with her.

"Kid, I understand. Better than anyone. I understand what you're going through. The rest of the world out there just doesn't get it, it just doesn't get you… but I do. Lynn Loud, you would make an excellent ally of mine." Viribus tempted her.

At that moment, Lynn snapped out of her moment of confusion and silence. She realised that all of his analysis and words were part of some tactic he had in mind. He was trying to warp her mind so that she would adopt his way of thinking, and align herself with him and his ambitions. She was quick to tell him what she thought…

"You sneaky little… you almost had me." she said quietly.

"What do you mean?" he asked in response.

"You're saying all this just to get me to do what you want. Isn't that right? And I almost fell for it… Almost!" she told him as she began to gradually raise her voice.

"I'm just saying, Loud, that you and I would make an excellent team." Viribus tried to encourage her.

"Are you serious!? After everything you did to Lincoln, and to me?! Even getting Henry to set me up to go to jail!?" she cynically asked.

Viribus simply responded with an indifferent shrug, denying the significance of all the crimes Lynn was verbally directing towards him.

"You gotta be kidding me! Let's take a look at what you've done! When we first met, you brainwashed my brother, and tried to make him punch me in the face in front of our whole family! Then, you take over Lincoln's school and we have to come and stop you! Now that you're in here, you've set things up so that my baseball coach would force me to take your dumb steroids, get arrested and go to juvie! Look at me, I've already had one vicious beating in here and I haven't even been here for half a week yet! Now, after all that, YOU WANT ME TO HELP YOU?!" she asked, genuinely baffled by how he could suggest an alliance under such circumstances.

"You may be angry with me now, but in time, you will see that helping me is the logical thing to do." He calmly and coldly told her.

Lynn, finding it difficult to even continue looking the madman in the eye, stood back, tried to compose herself, before continuing…

"There's just one thing I want to know from you. Why me?" she asked.

As he was about to answer, he was interrupted as she continued into a mini-rant…

"Really? Why me!? It's not like I'm the only one you have a grudge against! Lincoln, my sisters, the whole family, Lincoln's friends, the Casagrandes, pretty much all of Royal Woods! We all kicked your butt that day and brought you down! So why are you only coming after me?!" she wanted to know.

Viribus then let out a little chuckle, before telling her…

"Honestly, I set this whole thing up with Coach Henry as an act of payback. I wanted to exact vengeance against Lincoln Loud for what he did to me. I wanted to get back at him by hurting the ones he loved. I thought, what better way to get revenge than to get one of his wretched sisters in a prison cell like me?" he explained.

"Well, okay. That says why you went after one of us, but why me in particular?" Lynn questioned further.

"You were an easy target. Sure, all of you Louds have quirks and character flaws that I could exploit to get you in trouble with the law in some way. But you, you have so much instability and so many psychological problems, someone as destructive and reckless as you was always going to be the easiest option. I guess there was that comedian sister, Luan, and her April Fools pranking sprees? That stuff could easily land her in juvie. But of course, I'd have to wait until April to exploit that. As far as someone who's an unstable troublemaker all year around, you were the obvious choice." he said.

"So… all of this, was just a way to get back at Lincoln and my family? Well, are you happy?" she asked, tearful and bitter towards the man whom she was facing.

"Not yet. My ambitions span far greater than a simple revenge scheme against you, but it's a start." he told her, before he continued.

"But, as I said, while I thought were just a one-note brute, I now see something much greater in you, Lynn Loud. I am sorry I caused you this misfortune, but I genuinely think it was for the best. All this has given us the chance to finally meet one-on-one, and it could lead to an outstanding partnership." he proposed.

Lynn then began to slowly walk away, seemingly done with the conversation she was having. She was clearly disgusted with what Viribus had done to her in the name of revenge, and at that moment, saw his offer as nothing but absurd…

…but then she quickly turned back to get one last word against the fallen madman.

"Listen, lame-o! You and me, we're worlds apart, and I'm not just talking about this dumb wall between us! Here's the deal. I'm only in here for a year, and with good behaviour, that year will probably turn into 3 or 4 months. Soon, I'll be out, and ready to get my life back on track! It will be tough, but I'll handle it. You? You'll be in here for the rest of your dang life! You're never getting out of here! Now if you'll excuse me, I'd rather stop looking at your ugly face, and leave you here to rot in peace!" she spat at him, before finally walking off.

But Viribus, too, was one who liked to have the last word…

"You say that now, Loud, but I don't believe you. In fact, I think that soon, you will help me. You won't even know when you're doing it, but you will assist me greatly, and then, Viribus will rise again." he cryptically but confidently informed the young girl.

Lynn brushed off his comment and kept walking, having had enough of the conversation with Viribus. She tried to maintain a strong front, and not show that his words affected her.

But Viribus knew exactly how much they did. He had played her like a fiddle. He was inside her head. He smiled to himself as he relished in the fact that he was plaguing the young Loud's mind. Viribus had plots and plans bubbling away inside his brain. Everything that had transpired had done so according to his design, and everything to follow, too…

"She is mine." He happily said to himself.

Well, there goes chapter 10. There's still plenty more to come, but that will happen later. For now, this may be the last chapter I upload for a couple of weeks as I try to get ahead again. Plus, I have a review for Racing Hearts which I'm currently finishing off and polishing up, which is a review you will be able to view on DeviantArt soon enough.

Since this is the last chapter I may upload for a short while, I guess I ought to say what is overdue. Obviously, over the course of the last 10 chapters, there have been a few changes, mainly with the format I have used to write my story, plus a little bit of a change in how I use my exposition. Point being, alterations have been made where deemed necessary for qualitative enhancement. I would just like to take the opportunity to thank those responsible for giving me pointers and advice on how (and why) I could make changes for the better. When I uploaded my long post on DeviantArt titled 'Understand FanFiction Criticism', the purpose of it was not to be a smart-aleck or to just aggressively call people out, but instead to understand the arguments of those criticising, and gain a new perspective so I could understand why I needed to make some of the changes people were talking about. While I defended and stood by some of my creative decisions, certain issues like the format I originally used, I decided to adjust according to constructive feedback, to improved reception. As such, the users Ink-Dub and Delquea gave me some useful feedback which I used to improve my approach to writing this story, so I thank them for their input. Also, I thank other users for taking the time to provide their honest and constructive feedback, including ThatEngineer as well as various other users including guests. I always appreciate constructive feedback and aim to continue improving as a writer and as a content creator in general.

Anyway, as I said, I now need to get to work with writing some more chapters for this story. There is more yet to come, as you can probably imagine at this point in the narrative. For now, I'll leave you all to get on with your day. Oh, and make sure you read my previous story, Pushover or Payback, if you haven't done already.