Loud New World:
Upon the streets of New Royal Woods, many feet thumped a beat. Crowds of blondes, brunettes and stark white-haired men, women and children covered every inch of pathway as they milled about their lives- barely noticing the rampant pushing and shoving that resulted in mass daily hospitalisations as the adults rampaged to their occupations.
Some were builders and tradespersons who cackled in anticipation for a hard day's work building up a good layer of grime. Others were elegant models, weaving through the mob with deft skill and grace from their precise and toned limbs. Scattered through them were boisterous red-shirted bouncers, police and sportspeople keeping (or disrupting as they preferred) the fragile peace that came of so many competing extroverts.
They were but a few of the striking archetypes that made up the mass, nigh invisible writers and creatives, charmingly dim but goodhearted carpenters and fashionistas, musicians and painters and more bumbled along. Pressing before everyone else though were the were bossy bureaucrats and managers shrilly demanding into their phones that their coffee be ready by the time they got into the office, for they had to make sure 'this shit show' ran properly.
It might have seemed harsh, but any Lori had a hard job as the managers of society.
But to be fair, they had been prepared for it for all their lives- as was everyone else once which ancestor they took after became clear and they assumed their personality-defined caste.
Far above the ordered chaos, more beings that would have seemed human if not for their mutant wings flitted about the skyscrapers dotting the horizon; but these buildings were nothing like what a citizen of the previous centuries would have recognised. The great towers of steel and glass were long gone, replaced by great man-made mountains of white plaster and roofing tiles, more like a residential home from long past stretched up than the efficient concrete castles of that defined the twentieth century cityscape.
Their great walls were pierced by semi-smudged windows affixed so that one could peak within if they were so inclined, and from the few that were cracked open a variety of sounds burst through.
Some music here. Some comedy show there. A small army of siblings fighting over nothing in the building just next door. Further into the sky a light green smog passed for cloud cover, eternally emitted by the upper floors of the complexes by makeshift labs each populated by some variety of self proclaimed 'wunderkind' seeking to stand out from the multitude of their peers practically within spitting (or simple shouting if they were so inclined) distance from another.
And what a competition it was to stand out in a world filled with such genius, for one in eleven was born with a wit and intellect that could have changed the world in another time-. But not this one, for as a once man had once said;
"When everyone's special; no one is."
Thus it was that each new cutting edge invention was promptly overshadowed by the next, and whatever clever innovation was made in one field was quickly countered in another- resulting a net stagnation as a million projects demanded resources and no one could claim superiority for long enough to be funded properly.
This was the America of Loud Year 206; a slightly green tinted world where a great urban forest of towers grew from coast to coast, filled with hordes of citizens each assigned to a caste to define their careers, life plan and personas until they day they died. Far, into the east which had once housed the pre-Loud city of Washington DC the Council of Eleven reigned and squabbled as their elected forebearers had done in what once been called the Capitol Building, known now as The Big House.
Those eleven, each seated to the ruling council by right of being the most exemplary example of their caste- the ones who fit most closely to that ancestor who had once played in the 'sanctified' rooms of 1216 Franklin avenue all those years ago. There was a Lincoln, there was a Leni, there was a nigh perfect recreation of those first generation of siblings who sat where once the House of Representatives had made law, as they did now.
Each one had once been one of the masses below, but when the previous 'Lisa' or 'Lana' retired (or vanished due to Loud shenanigans) one of their fellow caste members was selected based upon similarity to the ancestor their caste was named after and promptly pulled out of whichever job they had filled before to become the new 'Lisa' or 'Lana', and would be known by that name until it was their turn to disappear into wherever Louds went when a Lisa's inventions went awry.
No that it really mattered. By convention the speaker of the house was an easily influenced and overwhelmed Leni, and so in turn the proceedings within the once honoured (if you believed there ever was such a time) chamber resembled less the legislative body it purported to be and more a fight pit with a few less rules than a Lynn's wrestling cage.
Though to be fair; there were a few Parliaments in the beforetimes with similar method of conducting lawmaking.
But it was all largely irrelavent. The true power remained in the New Loud House, the reconstructed remains of the White House. Long since shattered after World War Loud by some unknown assailant (the common theories ranged from everything from the enemy, to the Blarney Corporation after the government outlawed subminimal advertising to children again, to the Brits just wanting to see if they could do it twice despite being American allies), the building had been rebuilt in the same style as the rest of America; a 1216 Franklin street flavoured version of what it should have been.
The power within of course resided with a Lori, The Lori in fact. Rumour had it that she was not merely a descendant, but the very original sustained through the first Lisa's superscience and whenever she was 'replaced' the new Lori was just a body double to be trotted out for appearances, or maybe even suffered a brain-scooping to give the first Lori new life.
Either way, everything in the new world ran through her office, and nothing escaped her grasp.
Not the antics of the common castes below.
Not the 'secret schemes' by the Lolas and the Lincolns plotting to get ahead in whatever corner of the country they deemed theirs.
Not even the 'wunderkinds' nigh magical science could challenge her rule, for the Lisas were only dangerous if they weren't distracted in one-upping each other and kept tame with threats of pulled funding.
Countless eyes watched their daily motions, and the beats of batlike wings above reminded any would be malcontents of The System that the Eldritchian Enforcers that were the Lulus awaited their next playmate.
There was no escape.
Not for the denizens below.
Not for the scientists above.
Not even for Lori herself, as no 'Lincoln', 'Luna', or any other of the council had been able to corral the madness of a world so Loud.
But far from the New Loud House, so distant that it was nearly Canada's problem, there was hope still left yet alive. The block was all but abandoned, one of many in this part of the country that was simply unprofitable to even demolish to refuse the land. Every tower was afflicted with crumbling concrete and exposed metal beams- and there was nary an intact window or door to be seen.
All save for one.
A single dusty pane which fitted into the bottom of a cracked wall of yet another residential skyscraper, but this one was a mess even by the lax standards of the new world. For while the savages that made up the population happily made their way through life with a mix of duct tape, prayer and improvised handyman/womanship- this building had been the victim of a lab accident that had all but gutted the interior, forcing its abandonment decades ago.
But the basement was still salvageable if only for the most desperate, and it was there that one of those most desperate people stared out through the window with a bitter curl to her lip, and shoved the thing closed again.
"No one in sight!" The tall ginger girl declared a bit too loudly, then hopped down from her crate. "I think we're safe-"
"Careful!" A darker skinned boy from deeper into the basement whispered. "Be careful, if the inbreds hear you-"
"Sorry, I'm just nervous," she sighed, then stalked over. "… Are they ready?"
The boy nodded, holding up a pair of ancient 'watches', but the design made it clear that they were far more than the long obsolete timepieces one might assume from their shape. They were clunky things with blinking lights, and far bulkier than even the ancient watches from the first Great War, and some chargers from before the last one linked them to the power socket. "Yep, batteries are nearly full now. We got lucky- I'm pretty sure this was the last place in the country with the old power system, we'd have to try the border if…"
The girl shuddered, and the boy silenced himself. The border with Canada would surely be closed, even if their non-Loud features, and the rest of the world was very determined to limit the spread of Loud genes any further.
He couldn't blame them for using lethal force.
"It doesn't matter now," he affirmed to himself, as the final light on the watches turned green for both, he pulled the century-old chargers out and clipped his 'timepiece' on before holding out the girl hers. "Come on, I've already got the times in."
The girl hesitated. "… Are we sure about this Harold? What if something goes wrong?"
"Come on Peri, what's worse than this?" Harold waved an arm to indicate the room, and the world around them. "There's nothing but Loud everywhere you go-"
"But what if we end up erasing ourselves?" Peri eased back, "or make a paradox?"
"These things have safeguards in 'em," Harold insisted. "As long as we don't off our own ancestors, the timeline will fit us an and take care of the paradox!"
"But they were made by the first Lisa!" Peri regarded the timepiece with trepidation. "She's the one who-"
CRASH!
The two froze as numerous feet beat above them.
"They must've tracked us through the mains," Harold suddenly snapped the other timepiece upon his sister's arm and flipped open a security panel to expose a button. "We have to go at the same time or we could get desynced- so go on my signal!"
Peri swallowed, them flipped her own panel open, the blinking 'watch' displayed a date, sometime near the start of the twenty-first century of the old calendar. "… In case something goes wrong-"
CRASH!
The door and the chair they'd used to brace it smashed open as the multi-mouthed form of Lulu barged through it was paper, behind her a Lynn marched stuck her head through. "All right you little brats, what's with the power purloining-"
Her eyes locked onto the siblings' watches. "Shit." She spat, then snapped to the Lulu, "GET 'EM BEFORE-"
"Now!" Harold pressed his button, and Peri thrust her finger down to do the same- activating both timepieces within a second of each other.
The Lulu raced forward- the Lynn close behind, but neither reached the last McBrides before they vanished into the past.
A/N:
Thanks to Nuuo for a Beta-read
