Lincoln the E-Boy:
"And thanks to cut3buns96 for the three hundred blue stars!" 'Lumu' batted 'her' eyelids at the camera. "You're my hero.
And so are all the rest of you guys, but it's getting preeetttyyy late here, so I'm gonna have to let you guys go- ta! Ta and bye! Bye!"
'Lumu' held her smile for a moment longer, then the little red light on the camera switched off and Lincoln sighed in relief.
"Ahhh… it's good money, but man if e-girling isn't hard work!"
Apparently, people just really liked seeing a cute 'girl' play games on the internet. But not too well though, seeing Lumu fail at assorted simple games with over-the-top tantrums got the stars flowing in from the audience like nothing else.
"Still though…"
He reached over to scroll through his total donations;
"Wow!" He whistled as he counted up how many stars 'Lumu' had skilfully extracted from 'her' adoring audience in a mere few hours. "That's a lot of comics!"
WHAM!
Lincoln's door burst in as it had so often done before; at the foot of an impatient sister. In this case it was the booted one of an uncharacteristically red-cheeked and scowling Luna, whose expression only twisted further in rage as she spotted the chagrined, bewigged boy in a suspicious dress.
"I KNEW IT!"
"Okay Luna, what did you 'know'? And why are we here?" Lori closed the door behind her, the lock 'clicking' to engage.
"And why is Stincoln in dress?" Lynn tilted her head as she eyed up the nervous brother in the middle of the room. "Again."
The five elder sisters had been dragged to an impromptu 'emergency meeting' after Luna's rare shout of rage had drawn Lori's attention. Now they sat arranged on Loir and Leni's beds with Lincoln standing between them, waiting for judgment with the 'uh-oh' of a scheme gone south.
They were all familiar with it.
Less so with the getup he was in.
"Lincoln's been e-girling!" Luna splayed her hands at the accused. "It's been his best kept secret, but he's Their Internet Girl!"
There were a few murmurs of doubt, but…
Even taking aside that it was a sister's word presumably against Lincoln's (he'd had the sense not to speak up just yet) and of course they were going to take it over their frequently fibbing family member- Lincoln had masqueraded as girls before- as them in fact. Add in the ridiculous getup he was wearing; namely a wig, dress and makeup suspiciously (but not quite litigiously) similar to the outfit donned by Luna's 'Lulu' persona- and it was quite clear that he was up to something.
"All right!" Lori held up a hand that silenced the room and turned her attention to Lincoln. "Do you want to enlighten us Twerp?"
"Well…" Lincoln hesitated for a moment, but whatever yarn he might've spun was stopped in its tracks by Lori's 'give me an excuse' glare. "A few weeks ago, I was talking with the guys about how we really wanted to get that ultra-rare Ace Savvy Number Thirty One that's on auction-"
"You did this for a comic?" Lori's derision was only outdone by her dull lack of surprise.
"It's the uncensored version from nineteen eighty nine!" Lincoln insisted to the room, "the one with red blood-"
"Whatever," Lori motioned with her hand for him to 'get on with it'. "Get to the part where… 'this' started."
"Okay," Lincoln hastily returned to his story; "anyway, the original comic's really valuable now, so there was no way I was going to get it with my pocket money and stuff. So, I started thinking-"
"Oh boy." Lynn sighed, "you never learn do you Stincoln?"
"Hey-"
"Keep going Twerp." Lori's stern voice drew the conversation back on track. "And get to the point."
"Right, right." Lincoln nodded. "I thought about some of the stuff I've done before for money, but most places don't hire kids my age and Flip tries to pay in counterfeit money anyway. But then Rusty mentioned his 'girlfriend', and Stella told us all it was just a girl he gives money to on the internet."
"I knew that kid had simp written all over him!" Luan chortled.
"What kind of girl takes that kind of money from an elementary schooler?" Luna wondered.
"Lincoln, apparently." Lori shook her head, ignoring the sharp look from the boy in question. "And how did you get to that point anyway?"
"Well… after Stella roasted Rusty, I got to thinking some more. A lot of those girls who do that kind of stuff online get a lot of money- but not guys." Lincoln recalled with visible annoyance.
"So what, you thought you'd just dress up like a girl and the money would start rolling in?" Lori sighed.
"Um, yeah." Lincoln shrugged. "It worked, didn't it?"
…
"Okay that's great and all Bruv, but how come you're dressed up like me!?" Luna demanded, "I was gettin' all kinds of weird looks at school- even Sam thought I might be camgirling or something. One heck of a surprise to me- but a little less when she showed me a clip of 'Lumu' and I spotted those teeth of yours!"
"Well, I had to disguise myself didn't I!?" Lincoln insisted, "and when I tried making up some new persona or something I was just one new face in the crowd- there's a lot of e-girls!"
"So, you just went and pinched my Lulu costume to coast off my clout!?"
"It's not Lulu!" Lincoln straightened up so they could see the slightly more purple themed Lulu costume he had on. "It's 'Lumu'; A legally distinct and monetizable persona and brand who may or may not have been inspired by Lulu."
…
"Dude…" Luna's hands trembled with disbelief. "You just recoloured the wig."
"Actually, I also got Leni to cut the dress down to my size and add a little purple trim." Lincoln grasped the skirt to raise up the coloured rim.
"I thought it looked totally gorgeous!" Leni cheerfully exclaimed, oblivious to the resigned expressions of the rest of the girls.
"I also kind of needed to anyway because according to the copywrite guy I spoke to-"
"Oh for-" Luna facepalmed. "It's not about you stealin' my Jam man, 'Lulu's' stuff was on the company I was with anyway- it's the whole 'dress up as my sister for money' thing, people think I'm doing… 'stuff' online!"
"Oh…" Lincoln paused and thought. "I guess I didn't think that part through…"
"Of course, you didn't," Lori sighed, then knelt down. "Okay Twerp; have you got your comic already?"
"Oh, yeah!" Lincoln nodded with a grin. "It. Was. Epic, me and Clyde were in bidding war with some other guy, and we thought we wouldn't make it-"
"Okay, whatever- you don't need to keep E-girling as Luna anymore, right? So back to your stream or whatever and tell them you're done."
"But-"
"You're done Twerp," Lori's eyes promised pretzelfication if he spoke out of line once more, and the chastened boy just made an affirmative grumble. Lori stood up and raised her shoe to her doorframe, "right; problem solved, meeting-"
"Hold the phone Bruv!" Luna halted Lori's motion, wheels clearly turning in her mind; "you said you started 'a few weeks ago', right?"
"Uh… yeah?" Lincoln nodded.
"But those kind'a comics are mad expensive!" Luna exclaimed, "what kind of money were you making?"
Suddenly all eyes in the room zipped from whatever distraction they had occupied themselves with, to Lincoln's colourful form.
"Ummm…." A bead of sweat formed on Lincoln's temple, "w-why do you ask?"
Because in the Loud House, money- any amount of money was serious business.
And if there was a way to get some of that money, there was no one who knew any of the Louds that would bet against them pulling any number of underhanded, dangerous and outright illegal activities to get it.
For Lincoln, his latest 'activity' was of course monetising his skills with sister impersonation to a wide audience. Because if the Louds were willing to beat each other into jam over a nickel, then dressing up in a legally distinct version of his sister's pop-star persona and streaming to an audience of thousands for a few more of those nickels was just a few steps down that road.
And to be fair-
He was getting way more than just a 'few more' nickels.
For the sisters however, they had a simpler method.
"All right Twerp, showtime in five minutes!" Lori pulled out a pen from behind her ear and scribbled down some notes. "Is Loiri ready for her debut or not!?"
Namely stealing repurposing any semi-viable scheme their brother came up with for their own gain.
"S-she'll be fine!" Lincoln gasped through his door, "b-but do these shorts have to be this tight?"
Lori rolled her eyes and shoved her way into his room, uncaring as usual about any notion of privacy when it came to her sole brother. She spotted the blonde-wigged boy with ease, and grabbed the pair of khaki short-shorts currently stuck around his upper thighs- and forced them up his hips with one hearty shove.
"Ulp!" Lincoln went momentarily cross-eyed. "My bits!"
"You'll live." Lori ignored his whinging with practiced ease. "So 'Loiri', you're ready to 'wow' right?"
'Loiri', the latest expansion to 'Lumu' suddenly expansive family (that somehow were never on screen with each other) glowered up from underneath her blonde, curly bangs. "Sure."
"Great, I'll see you in an hour then!" Lori turned to leave, "make a good first impression, okay?"
If Loiri responded, Lori failed to hear it was she pointedly closed the door behind her and braced herself to enter the 'managers' office'.
Also known as her and Leni's room.
Normally the only times anyone else would be allowed in would be if their parents made a rare trip upstairs, or if they had one of their sibling meetings. The last few days however had featured the full set of elder sisters all sharing her normally private (disregarding Leni) sanctum during this exact timeframe.
All about the room, print out graphs were lay where they'd been discarded, containing information like view-time, total audience number, engagement and donation rate. Each of the charts were in turn labelled in a specific colour ranging from purple, yellow, red, seafoam green and soon blue. The other sisters were already gathered around their laptops.
Luan, being the only one with current business experience, was wearing currently pouring over a spreadsheet. Leni was drawing up some new designs, while Luna and Lynn were on moderator duty.
"All right girls," Lori sat down to her own laptop. "How's the hype for Loiri going?"
"Not bad," Luna tapped something. "Not as good as Lunya's, probably 'cause she doesn't have the prankster-cat theme to sell her first."
"Well, she's meant to be the normal one," Luan shrugged. "We've gotta have a straight man so Linc's gonna have to sell her on persona alone."
"He's done fine for the rest of 'em, he'll do fine here." Lynn seemed unbothered, though considering 'Lynsely' had been a smash hit for the 'tomboy' crowd, it was like she had anything worry about either.
"Sure," Lori shook away her own worries, "but speaking about Lincoln selling things…"
"Oh! Right-" Luan turned her laptop around so the rest of the room could see. "From the looks of things 'Lumu' is still far and away the most popular, but even assuming an eighty-percent drop from premier, the others are so far on track to a solid audience-"
"And how much money have we made!?" Lynn interrupted, "c'mon Dude you know why we're here!"
Luan rolled her eyes, and pointed at a red-tinted column which ended in Lynn's (modest) eighty-percent cut of 'Lynsely's' income.
After taxes and stuff of course.
"Nice…" Lynn cackled as she rubbed her hands together. "Mama's getting' new boots tonight!"
"Oohhh," Leni frowned, "as you sure we should be doing this? I mean, Linky looked so disappointed when he had to wear the short-shorts and now it looks like we're extorturing him!"
"Leni…" Lori put a reassuring hand on Leni's shoulder. "We have to, Lincoln was already doing this remember- now he has us to take care of things. To manage it for him, if he didn't have supervision, we'd have to tell Mom and Dad, and Lincoln didn't want that, right?"
"Yeah…"
"And managers need to get paid, right?"
"Right…" Leni contemplated this. "… But isn't this what Fiona said Pinks do?"
…
"Uh…" Luan looked up, "I think she means 'Pimps' right- oh…." A sudden realisation crossed her face.
"Yes, that's right!" Leni was gleeful at remembering a hard word. "We're Linky's Pimps now!"
A/N:
Thanks to Nuuo for Beta reading.
