The Loud House, Royal Woods, Michigan, Saturday, 6:55 A.M. For the 11 siblings that lived upstairs, Saturday meant a chance to sleep through most of the morning and catch up on whatever sleep they lost during the school week. But for the middle child, Lincoln Loud, he hadn't slept all night. For the past 9 hours he had been sitting at his desk, staring at a laptop, with one of the many energy drinks he stashed away under his bed before everyone else went to bed, leaving his room only to use the bathroom. He felt exhausted, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was all a mess from him running his hands through it. But if he timed this just right, it would all be worth it.
"Why am I putting myself through all this?" Lincoln said to the audience, "two words: ACTION CON! Just the biggest comic convention in the state! Right now I'm in the waiting room for the free raffle for tickets, which go up at exactly 7:00 A.M."
Lincoln had his eye trained on both the screen and the several different clocks he had on his desk, ready to slam that refresh button the instant the hour hand hit 7.
"I'm taking no chances, so I've been doing everything I could think of to keep myself awake, reading comics, doing jumping jacks, listening to music, I even have a bucket full of ice water in the corner of the room in case I really begIn to nod off. I can't fall asleep, not yet, not until I've gotten what I come for. It also helps that since I drank so many energy drinks that my bladder has been frequently keeping me awake."
"I'm not alone in this endeavor either. On video call from his own house, staying up with me through the night was my best friend Clyde" Lincoln explained, looking over at the feed of Clyde in his house," Throughout the whole night, in a plan weeks in the making, we've kept other awake and ran drills for exactly what to do at the big moment."
"Oh! Lincoln," Clyde said, "You should them about Povin Rudninsky"
"Oh Right! Well, Povin Rudninsky is just the author of the biggest indie comic hit ever, "Lash and Claw"" He showed a copy of the graphic novel to the viewers," A race of alien invaders attack the earth in prehistoric times, so a group of heroes from the future broadcast their consciousness back in time into the bodies of dinosaurs in order to fight them. We're almost certain he'll be there signing copies of his book, We both got our copies ready and everything. I'm even keeping it in a vacuum packed bag so that nothing happens to it before the con"
"Some might call this overkill, but you would be stunned at how fast tickets for this event sell out."
7:59
"Okay," Lincoln said, with bags under his bloodshot eyes, and a determined smile, "This is it…"
"My mouse is on the refresh button!" Clyde reported, "T-Minus 45 seconds!"
"Mouse at the ready!" Lincoln responded, holding his mouse in his hands to ensure that the cursor didn't slide off "Refresh".
30 Seconds to go.
At this point, the stress and anxiety was starting to get to Clyde, and he started breathing in his trusty bag.
"Keep it together buddy! We're almost at the end" Lincoln assured his friend.
15 Seconds to go
By now, Lincoln's heart was beating five times its normal speed. If he were to have a heart attack right now, he probably wouldn't even call anyone until he was sure his and Clyde's spots were secure.
Here it comes.
Five
Four
Three
Tw- and suddenly the screen, as well as the entire room went dark.
"What the-!?"
All across Royal Woods, the power in every building, plug-in device, and light cut out. A town-wide black out.
"No no no no no no no no!" Lincoln panicked, frantically pressing the power button on the computer, "Not now!"
In the moment, shaking the computer, the 11 year old boy's mind scrambled. He looked over at the time, 9 seconds past 7. He was running out of time! He had to get back on! His head whipped around the room desperate for a solution. Maybe he could use Lori's phone to get back on. No. Even in the unlikely event that she did let him use her phone, it would take too long to get onto the convention site, log on, and get back into the waiting room.
The tickets have already been on sale for 45 seconds now! His breaths were becoming shorter and the walls seemed to be closing in on him. If only he had one of Clyde's bags.
Maybe if he was really quick he could make a break for the basement, find the breaker, and hope that it can restore power. If he ran 3 steps at a time without slipping and hitting his head unconscious, it would take maybe 20 seconds. But he's lost too much time already! And with a city wide blackout, it wouldn't help much anyway.
A minute and a half had passed and now the room was starting to spin. Don't they have an electric generator? If nothing else works, maybe that could.
But before he could finish his thought, the room suddenly illuminated again and the computer started back up. YES! His mind instantly went from spiraling into hysteria to being laser focused on the screen.
"Come on… Start!"
Once the computer had rebooted the windows he had open previously came back on, including his video chat with Clyde.
It had now been 2 and a half minutes since tickets went up
"Lincoln! Can you hear me!? The computer… The house… everything went dead!"
"Are you back on the page!?" Lincoln shouted desperately, having already pushed the refresh button.
"Yeah! It's loading now."
Once the page was loaded, Clyde's face sank into a look of woeful defeat. That confirmed that he was seeing the same exact words that Lincoln was seeing.
Tickets for Action Con are sold out.
See you next year :)
"Nnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
The yells were so loud, that it reached Lori and Leni's room, where Leni simply responded by subconsciously hitting the snooze button on her clock with her blindfolds still on, then going straight back to bed.
"Thank goodness it's the weekend…" she smiled.
The following Monday on the schoolyard, the two best friends just sat on the swings together with glum looks on their faces. Lincoln's mood hadn't improved much over the weekend, even when they had pizza for dinner. At one point, Lucy even asked him if he needed one of her spare coffins to lay in. He simply told her to ask him again tomorrow. He was getting pretty tired of everyone in the house trying to cheer him up. He was annoyed when his sisters teased him, but it turns out it's worse when they pity him.
"Okay," Clyde said, "Maybe we couldn't get tickets from the raffle, but there's always the chance someone might be putting theirs up for sale."
"First off, I'm pretty sure that's illegal, and second, the chances of something like that coming up are about as likely as my dad finishing that exercise tape."
"Come on Lincoln, you can't just give up. You're The Man with the Plan, remember?"
"Oh I have a plan Clyde, I'm going to walk into Lori's room while she's on the phone and just wait for her to mangle me..."
"Lincoln… I hate seeing you like this."
"Egh… I'm sorry… Just knowing that this convention is in 5 months, and we're not going all because I didn't have a contingency plan for a blackout makes me feel like, well, like Luna did when Mick Swagger got arrested for punching that guy at the Grammys."
"I feel you… we were gonna meet Rudninsky."
"Ugh… Thanks for reminding me…"
"You know," Clyde spoke, "It's crazy to think that less than a year ago, he was a complete nobody, just another struggling artist. But then his book came out last November, and now he's being invited to all these conventions."
Just as Clyde finished that sentence, a spark went off in Lincoln's head, and he shot up out of his depressed slump. Rudninsky was going to have a spot at the artists booth signing copies of his book, because it gained such a huge following. If he could do it, why couldn't they?
"Clyde! That's it!"
"What's it?"
"We still have a chance to go to the con! We just need to make a comic of our own! A comic that will become popular enough that WE will get a spot of our own at the artists booth!"
"Oh my gosh!" Clyde jumped out of his swing, "Lincoln, you're a genius!"
"No Clyde, you said it yourself, i'm The Man with the Plan! And 'Operation: Publish Best Selling Comic Book in Four to Five Months Give or Take' is a go!"
"Yes!" Clyde shouted, high fiving Lincon, "PBSCBIFTFMGOT!"
The following Friday, after school, Lincoln and Clyde convened in Lincolns room, making sure to keep the door shut. They were on a mission, and there could be no distractions, especially in this house.
"Alright," Lincoln announced, getting out his drawing board, "The first bullpen meeting for Clincon McLoud Comics is now in session! For the record I wanted to call it KABOOM Comics, but the Kaboom fireworks factory is very litigious"
The two friends huddled at the board and Lincoln began drawing.
"Whatever we come up with has to be able to know its audience, but still be able to find wide appeal. It should be interesting, but still simple enough that there are plenty of storyline possibilities. The comic market has become saturated, as evidenced by comic sales in recent years, so our comic has to be unique, take chances that other comics haven't. Some of the best comic book authors put a great deal of their personality and passion into their stories. Now, the superheroes of yesterday represented idealized American heroes, but since the 60's, comics have embraced the idea of giving heroes very human and sometimes debilitating flaws, as well as a difficult personal life, which is only made more difficult by their powers and responsibilities."
As Lincoln was speaking, Clyde was writing all this down in his notes, "Wide appeal, human flaws, got it!"
"Clyde, you don't need to be taking notes, it's all written up on the board."
Clyde nodded and put his notebook away.
"Now, our first step is to create the character/characters. From there, we can build the world they live in, the mythology around them, and form the plotlines out of it."
"Man, this is so exciting! I'm finally going to have my name on a book that isn't a therapist's report!"
"Oh, we're just getting started."
Lincoln and Clyde layed out several pieces of paper, some drawing utensils, and Lincoln's drawing tablet on the floor, and then both sat down.
"Now then," Lincoln said, "Let's get started!"
Three hours had passed, and by this pont, the entire room was littered with scrapped papers, each one containing one or more rough sketches, but among them, not one single good idea. Sprawled out and lost among the floor with them were the boys, hair a mess and with a look of pained frustration.
"Okay, how about this," Lincoln said, writing on a fresh piece of paper, "A man with time traveling powers who uses it to solve crimes."
"Why doesn't he just go back in time and stop the crime from happening?"
"..." Lincoln scowled in frustration and crumpled up the paper. "Ah who are we kidding…" said Lincoln, "We just can't seem to be able to think of anything original… At least not in time for the cut-off."
Just then, they jumped after hearing a loud yelling from the other end of the hall.
"LANA!" Lori shouted.
Curious, the two boys looked outside the door into the large upstairs hallway, where Lori was kicking Lana out of her room, As well as tossing out a gross looking object with her.
"And take that piece of turd with you!"
"Technically," Lana replied, "it's an egg sack".
This made Lori look even more disgusted.
"I don't care what it is, If I find another one of them in my drawers again, you'll have to flee to Thailand to get away from me!"
After her older sister shut the door, Lana left for her and her twin Lola's room to sit on the egg sack to keep it warm. The two boys simply looked at eachother and shut the door.
"Wow..." Clyde said, "Did you see how furious she was."
"You don't have to tell me, I could practically see the smoke coming from her hair."
"Smoke? For a minute there, I thought she was going to burst into flames."
Lincoln just chuckled a bit, sitting back down on the floor. The idea of Lori as some sort of fiery demon was pretty hilarious to him. Thinking a bit, he picked up a black piece of paper and one of his pens. At first, he simply drew a crude doodle of fire and explosions, both with Lori's angry face on it, making the two of them crack up on the floor. But their minds didn't stop there, and the more they experimented with the idea, the more focused and excited they became, and the more detailed their sketches became.
After a few minutes, the two sat back and took a look at their most detailed rendering, depicting Lori, in a humanoid shape, except her entire body was made of fire, which she was also shooting from her hands, with a confident and brave smile on her face.
"Clyde… I think we may be on to something…"
Soon enough, Lincoln and his friend got to work on giving this same kind of illustrative treatment to the rest of Lincoln's sisters, as well as Lincoln himself. In time, they had managed to basically turn each of the siblings into super powered beings, each being made up of and having the powers of a different natural element.
In addition to Lori, Leni became water, Luna was rock, Luan was Ice, Lynn Jr. was metal, Lucy was darkness, Lana was dirt, Lola was plants, Lisa was electricity, Lily was Light, and Lincoln himself was air.
The two looked on at their latest piece, featuring all the siblings together in an epic battle pose. They considered it perhaps their greatest work ever.
"Clyde, I think this is the beginning of something awesome!"
"Lincoln, this is perfect!"
Lincoln looked over their work on these Loud Elementals, and just like that, one last important detail popped into his head.
"Not just yet."
Taking the paper, he wrote one more thing down at the corner of the page.
"The L-ementals"
"Oh, I see what you did there!" Clyde said.
The Loud House and associated characters belong to Nickelodeon and Chris Savino
The L-Ementals Co-Created by AxelGripp, Bry-Guy-1996, Syfyman2xxx, and Khialat
Liquid Leni Created by Khialat and juribelit