Lincoln felt something tickle his nose. It felt like Charles sniffing his nose in the morning. 'Am I dead?' he thought to himself. He experimentally moved all of his limbs; arms first, then legs. They were all responsive. It was deathly quiet; Lincoln could hear his own heartbeat. He pushed his face off the ground.
The floor was coated with an extremely fine, pale green dust, the same color as the smoke from the blast, which must have been what was irritating his nose. Lincoln tentatively scooped up a handful and smelled it. It smelled of sulfur and copper, just like the mist from the blast had.
Lincoln let the mist drop and carefully got to his feet. He was astonished. He'd been expecting his body to explode in pain the moment he moved a muscle, but he felt fine. Better than fine, like having woken up refreshed after a long, long day.
He looked over himself in wonder. "How the hell...?" he whispered to nobody in particular, trying to find a single injury on his body. His outfit was hopelessly ruined; his orange polo and jeans were both perforated and ripped, and both of his shoes were missing. Other than that and the green dust all over his body, Lincoln was fit as a fiddle.
Lincoln was no doctor, but he knew a fatal injury when he saw one. Or rather, felt one. The amount of pain he'd felt didn't come with survivable injuries. He should look like a corpse that had just been excavated from an archaeological dig, not a healthy 11-year-old boy.
As Lincoln looked around, his surroundings diverted his thoughts. Lincoln himself may have been unharmed, but the same could not be said for his family home. It was trashed. From his vantage point at the bottom of the stairs, Lincoln had a clear view of the living room and the patio, and what he saw didn't look pretty. The television had shattered, knocked straight back into the drywall behind it, punching a hole straight through.
The entertainment center had splintered, wooden fragments littering the area, along with dozens of plastic shards that Lincoln could only assume were the remains of their DVDs and video games. Lincoln's heart gave a particular wretch when he saw that his gaming system had seemingly exploded. The walls were marred by acidic scars where Lola's chemical mist must have scored the drywall, and the rug was ripped and hopelessly stained with that fine green powder.
The patio didn't look much better. The drywall was dissolved and melted just like the living room, and the windows had all blown out. The front door appeared to be the only construct that hadn't been completely overpowered by the blast.
It was scarred and colored a sickly green, but it was still solidly attached to the frame, and the doorknob still looked operable. Lincoln noticed that it was still light outside. It seemed he hadn't been out as long as he'd thought. Either that or he'd woken up the next day, in which case he was a lot more fucked up than he thought.
"LOUD!?" The furious shout of Mr. Grouse shattered the serene silence, causing Lincoln to jump, "Loud, get out here, I know you can hear me!" Lincoln raced outside. Mr. Grouse was in his usual position, head poked out of his upstairs window. "Mr. Grouse!"
The Loud Family neighbor's face was red with anger, "Loud, I was just trying to watch my show, when all of a sudden your house blows up like my old Pinto! Don't you know I'm already going deaf!?"
He fiddled with his hearing aid for a moment, "Next time you Louds try and destroy your own place, do it when my hearing aid's not turned all the way up!" He pointed at the Loud House, "And tell whoever cut the cheese in there to go see a doctor!"
Lincoln's brow furrowed, "Cut the cheese? what...?" He looked back at his house for a moment. "Nobody farted, Mr. Grouse; that was an explosion! You need to call 911!"
"Why on earth would I call the coppers for the hooligan who disturbed me from-"
"JUST DO IT!" Lincoln bellowed. He turned and ran back inside, not even bothering to check if Mr. Grouse complied with his demand.
Lincoln leaped over the doorstep and sped across the ruined patio. "Guys!" He screeched, moving for the staircase, "Guys, are you okay!?"
The steps hadn't fared well from the explosion, the wood cracked and chipped, and the handrail was gone entirely. Lincoln didn't care. He thundered up the steps, completely ignoring the angry creaking of the wood beneath him, arriving at the top at speed unrivaled by most Olympic sprinters. "Can anyone hear me!?"
"Lincoln...Lincoln, is that you?" The weak voice diverted Lincon's attention instantly toward Lola and Lana's room. "Lola?" He got to his feet and charged toward it, not even realizing that the entire sequence had taken less than a second. He was in the doorway in an instant.
Their room, like the rest of the house, was mangled almost beyond recognition. Both bedframes collapsed under the force of the explosion, their legs shattered, and the sheets dissolved and scored. All of Lola's pageant posters seemed to have been vaporized; Lincoln couldn't see a single trace of them. Lola's prized castle was a greenish, half-digested skeleton of its former self, toppled over and littered with holes. Beyond, Lola sat limply against the wall next to her overturned bed.
"Lola!" Lincoln dashed to her side immediately. "Lola, are you okay?! Does anything hurt?" He checked her over immediately, expecting to find her body carrying horrible chemical scars and burns. Once again, to his astonishment, he found nothing. Her clothes were torn and stained, and her hair resembled a bird's nest.
Lola herself, however, seemed more surprised and confused than in pain. She pointed across the room, "Lana," she muttered. Her voice was already regaining strength. She behaved as if she had just fallen off a bicycle, not gotten caught in a toxic chemical storm. Lincoln's worry over his sister's wellbeing started to morph into unease over the blast itself. First, he had come away with no injuries, and now Lola. Just what had Lisa's experiment done to them?
Lola pushed herself against the wall, attempting to stabilize herself to stand. Her brother gently grabbed her shoulders, "Whoa, Lola, just stay here. I'll check on Lana." He didn't wait for a response before he sped to the other side of the room. Lana was sitting up behind the remains of her bed.
Her hat had been disintegrated, leaving her messy blonde hair stuck in a raucous wave pattern. She was cupping her hands together, but they were empty from what Lincoln saw. She must have heard him come over, but she gave no indication of it, just staring silently at her hands.
He quickly scanned her body for injuries, but same as before came away with nothing. He was usually not on to look a gift horse in the mouth, particularly when that gift horse came in the form of him and his sister miraculously surviving what was essentially a bioweapon uninjured, but his mind turned it over regardless.
Lana, are you alright!" He asked. He said the question out of reflex, having already seen that her body was injury-free. Lana looked up at him. Her eyes shimmered with tears. "Scott..." she whimpered pathetically. Lincoln was caught off guard by the non-sequitur. "Scott? Huh? Lana, what are you talking about?"
"Her animal friend." Lincoln turned at the sound of Lola's voice. His little sister had pushed off of the ground and was shakily making her way towards them. Despite her awkward gait, she moved smoothly, like someone walking off a sleeping foot rather than a broken one. "Lola!" Lincoln sputtered in disbelief, "I said not to move! You could be injured!"
"Relax, Lincoln, I'm fine." Lola retorted, reaching him and her sister. She kneeled down next to Lana and wordlessly put a hand on her shoulder.
Lana held up her hands. They were covered in green dust and grime but otherwise unharmed. "I had him, right here in my hands. He's gone. I just rescued him, and now he's gone." Her voice cracked, "I was supposed to protect him, but I...I..." She dove headfirst into Lola's chest, sobbing uncontrollably. It was the most tender moment Lincoln had ever seen the twins have. He turned around to look at the door.
"I'm gonna go make sure everyone else is alright.", he said. Neither twin responded, just continuing their sobbing embrace. It didn't take long for Lincoln to find the rest of his sisters. Lynn had been trapped underneath a barbell she'd been lifting when the blast went off but had been able to lift it off herself. Lucy likewise had blown into the corner by the window but showed no injuries beyond being dirtied and shaken up. Luna, Luan, Lori, and Leni were all similar stories.
The only silver lining that could be found in the whole mess was just how impossibly lucky the Louds had gotten concerning their pets. Walt the canary had been sent to deliver a love letter for Bobbi (the third of the week), and Charles had been napping outside in his doghouse. Cliff, Gary, and Geo were at the vet while all of Lana's pets enjoyed the day playing in the mud in the backyard. To top it all off, their parents and Lily had been away at a prospective daycare center. As bad as their situation was, it could have been immeasurably worse.
The only animal who'd been in the house with them was Fangs, who had miraculously been blown straight out the window when the explosion had engulfed Lucy and Lynn's room. Lucy claimed that the spirits protected him, but Lincoln was pretty sure it was sheer dumb luck.
Lincoln had hoped that maybe even a tiny sliver of the house might have been untouched by the blast, but he was wrong. The entire upper floor was a mess, with chemical-scarred walls and destroyed furniture in every room. Lisa's and Lily's room got it the worst. Virtually everything inside had been vaporized. Only the bottom half of whatever Lisa's machine had been remained intact, and a giant hole had been blasted in the northern wall.
Still, in the midst of it all, not a single one of Lincoln's sisters, nor himself, had suffered any injury. Not a one. It made Lincoln nervous. The pain he felt yesterday was something not even the worst criminal should have to experience, as if a colony of ants was feasting on his innards. His sisters all confirmed the same experience, yet none of them gained even a single scratch. For some reason, none of his sisters shared his paranoia.
"Are we sure everyone's okay? I don't want us voting no on the hospital, only for someone to turn to dust when the sunlight hits them tomorrow. " Lori said tiredly, hands on her hips in a weak attempt to show some form of authority. The Loud siblings had gathered in the center of the upstairs hallway, assessing damages and trying to regroup.
Lana was still sniffling, but not the bawling mess she'd been before. Lola rubbed her back soothingly. Luan sat slumped against the wall on the floor, looking far bleaker than any comedian should ever be. Lincoln had learned that all of her puppets, including Mr. Coconuts, had been destroyed in the explosion. Luna looked more put together, standing with her arms crossed near the back of the group.
Like Luan, she had almost all her musical instruments and implements in the blast and was one of the only Loud siblings who looked more angry than sad. Leni stood slightly behind Lori, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Lincoln had seen that her closet, clothes, and prototype designs had all been destroyed.
Combined with the savage rips and holes in her green dress, Lincoln was actually convinced she was more upset about her appearance than by any risk of permanent harm she could have undergone.
Lynn stood near the center, just in front of Lincoln, her arms crossed like Luna. Lincoln could tell from the look in her eyes that her pose and expression were no act; she was mad. On some level, he was glad the incident wasn't so severe that it inflicted trauma on someone like Lynn. That would be a true nightmare.
The one that scared Lincoln the most was lucy. She had her copy of Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to tell in the dark copy clutched tightly to her chest, the only book of hers that had survived the explosion. Even then, the cover was stained green and peeling from the caustic fumes that enveloped it.
She looked bizarrely different; her normally ghost-white skin and gothic outfit coated in green dust and her typically flat, inky black hair kinked and matted. She looked like a completely different person. Not just externally either, Lincoln noted, watching her delicate tremble as they held her book. He made a mental note to check on her after all this was over.
Lori continued, "Lincoln already got Mr. Grouse to call the police, so they should be on their way."
"What about Mom and Dad?" Luan asked, her voice just as dismal as her appearance, "They still don't know, and all the phones in the house are ruined."
"Don't worry," Lori responded. "Once the cops see what happened here, they'll call them themselves, if they haven't already." She thought for a moment, "We should make ourselves useful in the meantime. Luna, Luan, Lynn, search the house, see if you can find anything that survived the blast. Family photos, heirlooms, anything."
She turned to look at Lana, her expression softening, "Lans, I know you're super upset right now. We all are. But do you think you can look over the house and see how bad the damage is? You'll be able to give the insurance people an estimate."
Lana was still sniffling next to Lola but looked up at her sister and nodded. Lori smiled warmly and walked over to ruffle her hair gently, "That's my girl." Lana smiled weakly. Lori once again went back into eldest-sibling mode, "And Lisa-" All the siblings froze simultaneously. Lisa. The one who had caused all this. How could they have forgotten about her?
Lynn growled like a hungry animal," That little- this was all her fault, wasn't it!" She kicked the wall, none of the siblings noticing how her foot effortlessly broke through the wall and split a two-by-four in half, "When I find her, I'm gonna put her in my heavy bag!"
"Yeah!" Luna spoke up for the first time, "That little shit practically cooked us alive! I'm gonna show her the ballroom blitz!" she exclaimed, punching her fist into her palm.
"Not before me!" Lana shot to her feet, "I rescued a cute little worm thing from her lab, and her stupid experiment incinerated him! I call first dibs!"
Lynn grinned. "The more, the merrier." She rubbed her knuckles, "Where is the little skidmark?"
"She's in my room." All eyes turned to Lincoln. He stood at the very back of the group, his eyes burning with tranquil fury. "She came to my room just before the blast. She should still be there.
No more words were needed. As one, the siblings stalked toward Lincoln's room at the end of the hall. The door had been blown clean off its hinges. Lincoln hadn't seen his room since the explosion. He had been prepared for the worst, but the carnage tugged at his heart all the same.
The entire was bleached and scarred from the explosion, just like the rest of the house, and the porthole over his dresser had been blown out. His dresser had been flung into the wall with enough force to punch open a wound in the wall and now lay on its side. The drawers were splayed across the floor, their contents burned and scored.
His bed had managed to stay upright, but the bedspread had been burned almost entirely to cinders, and the sheets were full of holes. Lincoln didn't have to look to know that the mattress must have been cooked as well.
As he looked over his room, he spotted something in the corner. He gasped, "Bun Bun!" He raced over to his favorite animal. His knees gave out beneath him, falling to the floor in sheer grief. "Bun Bun...no.", he whispered, gently picking up the remains of the doll as if it might turn to dust.
The doll was a wreck. His entire body had been irreparably stained, and his left leg and right arm were missing. His ears were partially ripped out by the seams, hanging limply down his back, and his eyes had melted into his fur, like two black tar stains on the beloved toy's face. Lincoln's whole body shook with rage.
"Where is she?" Lori's voice came from behind him. Lincoln said nothing, not even turning around. He simply pointed at the bed to his right. His sisters understood. Lynn strode forward, grabbing the bottom of one corner and flipping the entire thing over on its end. Even for Lynn, it was an extraordinary feat of strength. Luna's jaw actually dropped slightly. All the sisters gathered around her.
Underneath Lincoln's bed lay Lisa, flat on her back and seemingly unconscious. Her glasses were shattered, and her ordinarily well-pressed sweater and pants were mangled and torn. Lincoln saw the shattered remains of the Noise-B-Gone 2000's on either side of her head. 'They must not have given her as much protection as she thought,' Lincoln thought with dark satisfaction.
As they watched, she twitched and began to moan. "Let's piledrive this cunt!" Lynn cracked her knuckles and moved to grab her sister, but Lori shoved her aside. "Hey!" the athlete called indignantly, "I want a piece of her first!"
"Fuck that!" Luna's scratchy voice carried from behind her, "This little goblin destroyed my entire music set! She fuckin' ruined my chances of meeting Mick Swagger!" She pushed Lynn aside angrily. "She's mine!"
"Both of you shut up." It was Lori, her voice hard as steel. The sparring siblings looked over, seeing that Lisa was coming to. "Ugh...my experiment...Lincoln," she mumbled nonsensically. She reached up to grasp at nothing in particular. Lori grabbed her hand. "Lisa, can you hear me?" Her voice was eerily calm, like a scientist interviewing a volunteer. "Lori! is that you?" Lisa's eyes began to squint open, obviously trying to compensate for both the lack of glasses and the trauma.
"Yes. Are you okay?"
Lisa moved to sit up, "I think so. The experiment shouldn't have-" SLAP! The sharp sound of flesh on flesh echoed around the room. Lisa's eyes were wide, clearly awake now, rubbing an angry red mark on her cheek. Lori's face looked like a teapot about to shoot steam. "Do you have any fucking idea what you've just done?"
Lisa looked around dumbly, her gaze crossing the angry faces of her sisters and their dirtied appearance. She glanced around Lincoln's room, her eyes widening at the utter destruction, before finally landing on the boy himself. Her older brother stood in the corner. Something was dangling from his hand. Recognition dawned on her. "Bun Bun..." Lisa felt sick to her stomach. "Lincoln, please, I'm so sorry; I didn't mean for this to happen. I'll make it up to you. I'll-" Lis started to apologize but became silent as soon as she met her brother's eyes.
They were hard, grey and steely, filled with restrained rage and fury, the direct opposite of Lincoln's usual innocent and earnest gaze. His fists were balled so tightly that his knuckles were whitening. Lisa could tell it was taking all his willpower not to march over there and beat her into a coma. She felt her heart rate increase.
She turned back to her sisters, trying to formulate an apology, "Please, everyone, you can't know how sorry I am for this-"
"Sorry!? You're fucking sorry!? You will be, motherfucker!" Lynn roared, shoving Lori out the way. She shoved Lisa roughly up against the wall. The genius gagged from the force but did not resist. Lynn cocked her fist back for a punch, but Lori grabbed her by the elbow, "Get the fuck off me!" Lori hurled her younger sister back into the group, colliding with Luan and Leni.
"Guys, hold her back."
Luan and Leni didn't need to be told twice. They looped their arms around Luan's shoulders, pinning one arm each against her back. Lynn was bucking and twisting like a madwoman, "Let me go! I'm gonna rip off that little shit's legs and use them as toothpicks!"
Luna looked at the scene angrily, "What, is she wrong?" She asked, before gesturing at Lisa's limp form, now sitting up on the floor after having been dropped by Lynn, "Poindexter cooked us alive in a cloud of toxic Kool-Aid powder. You know how it felt, don't you? We all must have felt it." The brutal memory of the savage pain the explosion had wrought washed over the Loud children for a moment, their body language suddenly shrinking in on themselves.
"She's still our sister." All eyes turned to look at Leni. The fashionista looked on the verge of tears, no doubt because of the destruction of the loud House, but also hearing her siblings talk about each other so harshly. "Mom and dad will make sure she gets punished." She looked down for a moment. "I'm angry too, you know. I lost six months worth of designs and prototypes from that green stuff, but like, we have to focus on coming together."
Lynn blew her stack. "Are you insane!? 'Coming together'!? She nearly killed us and destroyed all of our most valuable possessions! The only two things that should be 'coming together' are my foot and her face!"
"Yeah!" Lola clenched her fist. "She destroyed my princess castle and ruined all my pageant dresses!"
"She murdered Scott!" Lana spoke up for the first time, moving in to stand next to Lola."
Lucy remained silent, simply clutching her book to her chest with shivering fingers. Luan, too, let the situation continue without her input, though it was clear from her expression that she was as distressed as Leni.
Luna looked around at her supporters before turning to Leni, "Four to one right now, bruh. It ain't looking good for you."
Leni looked sick before Lincoln stepped forward. "Four to two, Luna." Luna looked at him like he'd grown another head, 'You too, little bro?!" Luna jabbed pointedly at the ruins of Bun Bun. "But she totally fucked over Bun Bun! She destroyed your comics! She destroyed the house! How can you be okay with this!?"
Lincoln gritted his teeth, "I'm not fucking okay with it," he growled, all the sisters taken back by Lincoln's extremely uncharacteristic vulgarity, "and I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive Lisa for what she did." He turned to look at Lisa, normally so poised and indifferent, now slumped against the wall in fear and pain, eyeing him hopefully, "but we can't just rough her up. She's still family, and I know she'd never hurt us on purpose."
He turned back to look at Luna before tracking his gaze across the rest of his sisters, "And deep down, I know that you all know that. Mom and Dad are going to ground her until she's thirty. She'll get what's coming to her, just-", Lincoln paused, "it just won't be from us."
Lynn watched her brother with disbelief, "You can't be serious. She practically vaporizes the whole house and doesn't even get a punch in the face? Not even a knee in the gut?" She wasn't struggling in between Luan and Leni anymore, but she was clearly still seeing red. "At least box her ears or something, you hippie!"
"Yeah!" Lana agreed, "She killed Scott! She's a murderer!"
"She's a pageant dress assassin!" exclaimed Lola.
"She's a psycho killer!" Luna barked.
"Lisa was in the explosion too." Lincoln reminded them, "Everything we felt, she felt it too. I'd say that's fair." A thought occurred to him. "Besides," he continued, "Lisa's room was the center of the blast. Our rooms may have gotten trashed, but Lisa's stuff was vaporized. Everything we got, she took just as much or worse."
Lana grunted in frustration, "It's still not enough! Scott died because of her! I thought I rescued him, but I didn't count on her having a self-destruct button!"
"It's not all she's going to get," Lori said, looking sternly down at Lisa. "Mom and Dad will be home with the cops soon." Lori shook her head, "I'm not sticking around to see what they do to her when they get home."
Lisa's expression morphed into one of pure torment.
As it turned out, Lori was right. After Ritaandand Don Loud arrived home from Lily's daycare appointment, followed closely by police, fire, and rescue, the Loud siblings wasted no time relating to their parents what had transpired and the culprit responsible.
As Lincoln sat in the back of an ambulance, idly getting answering questions from a responder about the date and his name, he heard the shrieks and shouts of his parents as they gave Lisa the dressing down of a lifetime. After arriving, they had taken Lisa out back by the doghouse to reprimand in private.
The screams and yells that emanated from behind the house didn't sound like his parents; more like drill instructors. He couldn't make out any words, but the utter burning fury and apoplectic rage conveyed everything in way words couldn't. The boy almost found himself feeling sorry for the genius.
The EMT checking him over finished his routine, "It's extraordinary," he said, taking the stethoscope that he'd been applying to Lincoln off his chest and removing the earplugs. "Heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, all normal. You're healthy as a horse."
The EMT looked back at the brutalized Loud House, "You said there was an explosion?" Lincoln nodded. The man shook his head "Goddamn," he said disbelievingly, "You guys belong in the record books as the luckiest family who ever lived."
'I don't feel very lucky,' Lincoln thought to himself as he surveyed the scene, looking over the various emergency vehicles and the carnage Lisa's experiment had wrought upon his house.
Still, though, he agreed with the EMT on at least one point; the Loud family should definitely have come out with a few more scrapes and bruises than they had. Obviously, Lincoln was happy, ecstatic even, that that had not been the case. But it was impossible for anyone to survive an ordeal like the one he did and not wonder.
As the thought turned over in his head, Lisa finally emerged from behind the house. She looked like she'd been through a war, with tears in her eyes and the sagging gait of an inmate being marched to the electric chair. His parents followed close behind, stone-faced and obviously trying to retain some sense of calm.
Lincoln mulled over the question, how on earth had he and his sisters survived. He eyed the genius closely. Might as well know for sure.
As Lincoln's parents broke away to speak to some police officers, Lisa sat herself up against the side of the Loud House, obviously trying to make herself inconspicuous. Lincoln hopped down and approached her. She had her broken glasses back, though he didn't know what for. Maybe she just felt naked without them. Lisa noticed him before he could address her.
"Well, you were right, elder brother." Lisa mumbled, "Our parental units saw fit to ground me from any sort of experimentation for the next year, and I've been suspended from my teaching position at the local university."
Lincoln crossed his arms. It was definitely a severe punishment, but he had little sympathy to give at the moment. "I need to ask you a question."
"No, you and our siblings were not genetically altered by my experiment." She said smoothly.
Lincoln frowned, "How did you-"
"Oh please, someone was bound to ask it at some point. Psychology is not a field I study, but it only takes a few ounces of common sense." Lisa stood, brushing off her pants, her usual persona beginning to creep back.
"My experiment was on genetics, Lincoln, but they were specifically engineered induced pluripotent stem cells. To properly bond and modify an organism, the organism must possess some level of genetic modification itself. The pain you felt was the prototype stem cells I created, attempting to bond with your DNA and failing." Lisa pushed up her broken glasses, obviously driven by habit, "You and I, as well as the rest of our sibling units, are as normal as the day we were born. You have my word."
"Then how did we all turn out fine? Not one of us even has a scratch." Lincoln asked.
Lisa looked thoughtful for a moment, "Of that Lincoln, I cannot be certain. The number of factors that influence even the smallest events throughout the universe is astronomical and impossible to predict, even for a mind such as mine. I can assume it was what we in the scientific community call, 'a miracle.'"
"A miracle," Lincoln repeated. He had the slight hunch that Lisa might have been joking, but it was impossible to tell with her. Nevertheless, it was probably the best answer he was going to get out of her. However, as he turned away to return to the bustling scene of emergency personnel in front of his house, Lincoln couldn't shake the feeling of unease that stirred in his gut.
A/N
And here's chapter 2. Honestly, I got it done faster than I thought. Twice a month sounds like a good update rate to me, so expect that for right now.
I hope you like the shorter chapter length. I know that one of the things I hate most in a fanfic (or any literary work, really) is extremely long chapters, so I always try my best to avoid them. The problem, as I've found out almost immediately, is that I'm naturally a very wordy writer, so I have to clamp down on my natural tendencies when I write, which makes things go a little slower.
The whole "siblings confront Lisa" scene was the most difficult part of this chapter to write, largely because I felt that no matter how I wrote it, it would feel like the siblings were letting Lisa off easy. I mean, she practically kills all of them and destroys their home and most valuable possessions; how exactly are you supposed to forgive that person? This is the reason I had to put in all the pets improbably avoiding or surviving the explosion. If Lisa's experiment had killed or injured all of their pets, in addition to everything else, the Louds would have just beaten Lisa to death on the spot. Obviously, that wouldn't work for this fic, and since it seems pretty obvious that Leni and Lincoln are probably the most empathetic of the Loud siblings, it made sense for them to lead the charge in forgiving Lisa. I know I could have gone the "It's a cartoon so nobody was injured and nothing was destroyed" route, but I don't like storytelling without consequences or realism, so I dismissed that idea outright.
I also never had any intention of giving Lily powers, since a baby running around fighting crime is too ridiculous even for me, so I had to get her and the parents out of the house as well.
The other problem I had was determining the frequency and severity of cursing in this fic since this is the first chapter to feature it heavily. We know from the episode "Potty Mouth" that all of the Loud children, sans Lily, know curse words, but I didn't know how to incorporate them in a way that jives with each Loud sibling's character (for instance, Leni would be far less inclined to swear than Lynn), as well not cursing so much that it begins to sound childish and offensive, Like the Wolf of Wall Street. Given the situation they just went through, it makes more sense they'd be more inclined to swear at the moment, but I wanted to make sure it doesn't get carried away throughout the fic.
Lastly, I was originally going to make the shirt discussion between Lisa and lincoln at the end of the chapter a little longer, mainly centering around the science of Lisa's experiment, but I decided against it because it would have been tonal whiplash compared to the rest of the chapter, and would have unnecessarily lengthened the chapter. We'll get into the science behind the Loud's powers in a future chapter.
Well, that's about it. Read and review, you know the drill, and thanks to all those who favorited and followed.
TRIVIA
As most of you probably know, Luna references either the title or lyrics of famous songs in virtually every episode she's in at some point. In this chapter, her calling Lisa a "psycho killer" is a reference to the 1977 Talking Heads song of the same name.