Chapter thirty-eight.

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Turning the prop over and tapping the bottom, Luan kept an eye of the opening, to see if anything came out. Frustratingly, the collapsible staff just rattled. Seriously? Breathing in deep, before letting it all out, Luan slipped her phone from her pocket and turned on the flashlight.

Even with it's help, she couldn't see down the length. Somehow things that were both narrow and long seemed to nullify light shined into them… She didn't get it; you'd think that would just result in the… Eh, whatever… She already knew what was wrong with it, the spring was broken. When she tried to get it to shoot out to it's full length, nothing happened. That, combined with the rattling, told her all she needed to know about what was wrong. Didn't help her if she couldn't get it out to replace it; why didn't they put screws on this thing? She didn't want to accidentally break it while she was attempting to open it, but it wasn't looking like she had much of a choice… which was really a catch twenty-two when you thought about it.

She couldn't remember when she'd gotten the prop, but it had been fairly reliable until then. Setting it down on her desk, she leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a few bracing seconds, then hunched back over it to take another look. Lifting the staff, she shuffled across the room and turned on the lamp on her beside table. Holding the prop just under the shade, the light shining directly down onto it, she carefully turned the staff this way and that, looking for any kind of seam in the construction.

Okay… The shell of the prop was obviously made as one big thing, that they then welded together, or whatever. That was less than convenient; all the best props had ways built in for the user to maintain it themselves.

Sigh, well… She rapped the tips of her fingers agains the wood in a rolling rhythm… Tossing the now useless staff into the trashcan beside the door, she crossed just behind it and stepped out into the hall. She needed a break, and besides, her stomach gurgled, she was pretty hungry too.

Note to self, look into making a collapsible staff.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she allowed gravity to do most of the work in going down them. It was more of a guided tumble than anything else. Her fingers, gripped on the railing, yanked back on her momentum at the bottom of the stairs.

She ignored Lucy and Lily, sitting on the couch watching something on the TV, and rounded the arch into the dining room, and through that into the kitchen.

"Yay!" Leni cheered from outside, clapping excitedly at something that Luan couldn't see.

"Hah!" Lynn's boisterous voice barked back, "You think that's impressive? Watch this."

Crossing to the fridge, Luan pictured what was happening in the back yard. The sharp 'pong' sound told her that Lynn was kicking one of her ball around, but that only narrowed it down to most things that Lynn might be doing. Though the fact that she was clearly showing off for Leni narrowed it down a bit more.

Pushing aside a carton of milk with the back of her hand, she reached in and pulled out a soda. It was a sunny day… She thought about going out to shake things up with Lynn, but she knew that she'd just fall flat… Heh… Needed a bit of work-shopping before she could unveil it to the public. Maybe get Leni in there somehow… She had an effervescent personality? True, but Luan wouldn't be satisfied until she could think of a cleverer way phrase it.

Mentally shrugging, she put the thought aside for the moment, while she gathered up the rest of her snack. Her feet carried her back and forth across the kitchen, snagging up a banana from the bunch, along with a small tub of peanut butter, before she found her way back through the arch and to the dining room table.

The can hissed when she popped the tab, and she tipped her head back to take a swig. The cooling liquid wet her dry throat, while the bubbles fizzed pleasantly on her tongue. Twisting the peal off the banana, she dipped it in the tub of peanut butter and took a bit while her mind wandered elsewhere.

She would have thought that the staff not having a way to open it was deliberate, like designed obsolescence or something, except that there were a lot of better prop staffs out there… Seemed like you were just loosing customers if you made your product worse than its competition. It could still be true, she mentally shrugged, taking a bit bite out of her banana. People weren't always smart…

There were people who bought nothing off the internet, essentially just giving their money away for free. Not to dismiss charity, but she felt like buying an air guitar for a hundred dollars was actually the opposite of that. Not to mention that, because of her act, she was actually intimately aware of dumb things that important figures throughout history had done… Maybe she could include something about that air guitar thing too… Or, not that specifically, because that was one of those stories that everybody knew, but something like that.

With the last of her banana, Luan gathered up as much of her left over peanut butter as she could and popped it into her mouth. The claggy peanut butter was perfectly balanced by the silky banana. When did she start thinking with words like "Claggy?" Mentally shrugging, she washed it down with the last of her soda.

Alright. Standing from the table, she cleaned it up. The banana peal found itself in the trash, the can thrown into the recycling beside it, while she put the tub into the top rack of the dishwasher. What was she going to do now? She could actually go out and play with Lynn and Leni, but she didn't think she was up for anything too active. She could watch TV with Lucy and Lily, but she didn't think she wanted to do anything too inactive either. That left reading a book, or… Actually, her thoughts trailed back to the stack of her brothers comics, she had yet to finish… Hmm…

Bobbing her head in thought, she drifted back through the dining room and into the living room. She paused, with her foot on the first step, when she heard the front door open behind her.

"Hey, guys." She twisted to see Lincoln coming in, a paper bag filled with stuff in his hands. "How's it going?"

"Hi, Lincoln." Luan blinked, casting a glance at Lily as their voices overlapped. "What's that stuff?" The younger Loud continued, unknowingly continuing to voice Luan's thoughts.

"Ah," He looked down at what he held. "I was running out of drawing supplied, so I got some while out with Clyde." Opening the bag, he rummaged around and pulled out a packet of colored pencils, and a shader.

"Really?!" Lily leapt from her spot on the couch and ran up to their brother, reaching up to pull the lip of the bag down so she could look inside. "Would you draw me?" She plead, peering up at him with big eyes. "I wanted to see myself as a superhero again."

"Heh," He chuckled. "Sure, let me just go grab my drawing pad."

"Hey," She snagged their attention for herself. "Wait for me here, when you're done getting your stuff, and I'll come too." She could still read while he was drawing their sister. And hey, this way she could ask him about his writing too.

My shirt is falling apart… Both sleeves have holes in the armpits. The back is riddled with them.

"Hey, Lincoln?' Luan rapped her knuckle against his door, mentally crossing her fingers for him to be up. "I know you went to the mall yesterday, but did you want to come with me today?" It was a little early for him, but she wanted to get him before any of their other sisters did.

"Mrrrph." Came his muffled reply, the sounds of springs shifting came from the other side of the door, as he rolled out of bed. The door swung open, and he stood there squinting tiredly at her. Taking a deep breath, he bent backwards and popped his spine, before slowly letting the air from his lungs. "Hello." He yawned, cracking his jaw.

"Wanna help me get some new magic supplies?" She'd set herself to making a new collapsible staff, but she needed to do some mechanical experimentation before she had a working product. In the mean time, she needed a new one before her next show. Sure, she had a back up, but relying exclusively on a back up was dumb.

Besides that… Was it possible to miss someone you saw every day?

"Sure." He blinked rapidly, before balling his fists and kneading the gunk from his eyes. It made him kind of adorable… His disheveled snowy hair fell like rumpled feathers around his smooth and sleepy face. The patch of freckles, that sat on each cheek, emphasizing the boyishness that still existed on his otherwise handsome features… That, combined with the stream of drool trailing down his chin, from the corner of his mouth… She'd never before had the urge to wipe up someone else's spit, but she kind of wanted to gather it up with her thumb. "Can you move?" He raised an eyebrow at her, and she snapped back to herself. "I kind of need to use the bathroom before we go."

"Oh, yeah, sorry." She stepped to the side and watched him as he walked past and down the hall. Crap, how long had she been watching him? Also, she wanted to gather his spit up with her thumb? What was wrong with her? She still did, bafflingly enough, but she also recognized that as very weird.

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Chapter notes:

Incidentally, most collapsible staffs are themselves a spring, held from expanding into a staff by a linchpin. It wouldn't be a hollow, tele-coping, tube with a spring inside. It's just that I couldn't think of an actual prop, so I made one up… There's probably a collapsible staff, made of solid hollow tubes, somewhere in the world.

Oh man, the further I go into the the… More I realize how much I underprepared… Or perhaps just prepared wrong. I'm working my way through this current cycle, and I'm not going to stop writing this until it's down, or I die on the job, but… Damn… Organizational things don't become an issue until things become too complicated. I keep notes on all my stories, and that's usually enough… This story is becoming complex enough that I need to seriously start organizing my notes more. For example, when I started writing this, I wrote a summary, for myself, of what every character was doing that day. I changed the summary between timelines obviously. However, I wrote the summary from oldest Loud child to youngest. Or, in other words, I said "This is what Lori's doing." "This is what Leni's doing." "This is what Luna's doing." Etcetera. The more the timelines drift apart, the more I'm realizing that I need to start writing down everything that happens in the day, in the order in which it happens. Seems obvious, in retrospect.