Chapter IV: Power Hour, Part 2
Some time later...
"Alright Lincoln, we get it. You were right about me having a superpower, so could you stop smiling?"
"No way Lynn, this is far too awesome!"
The Louds had gone to the living room to discuss the situation that they found themselves in, now that three of their siblings had revealed that they had powers. Lynn, Lucy and Luan were being as quiet as they could be as their sisters and brother tried to make sense of what had happened not too long ago. Lynn's body had cooled down and Lucy's glyphs had disappeared, but Luan was flickering between touchable and untouchable like a broken lightbulb. Instead of sitting on the couch like the jock and the goth, the prankster was standing up. She didn't want to suddenly fuse with anything if her body decided to become whole again.
"You alright mate?" Luna worriedly asked her sister and roommate, noticing how her new powers were fluxing rapidly.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I feel like I have an awful tummy ache though," Luan said as she rubbed her stomach.
"That's probably from the stress, dude," Luna reasoned, "Nothing like turning into something out a comic book to rattle your nerves."
"I guess so," Luan said, but still that tight ball in her gut wouldn't go away, like someone had dropped a gallon of hot juice in her. She certainly didn't feel that stressed out even with her body changing so strangely. All she had to eat for breakfast this morning was a frozen bagel and some orange juice, so it wasn't something she ate. Maybe it was from her strange powers. Intangibility would certainly have some odd effects on someone's bodily functions.
"I can't believe it, my sisters have superpowers!" Lincoln giddily fourth-walled, a big goofy smile on his face, "Though I wonder just how they managed to get them."
"So does anyone have any ideas on how we get our sisters back to normal?" Lori asked, but nobody had any answers, shaking their heads at her, "Great. This is literally just great. I've got one sister on fire, another that's turning into an actual magician, and one that can't stop friggin' flickering!"
"I'd prefer the term enchantress," Lucy quietly said, but was drowned out almost immediately.
"I can't help it!" Luan cried out to her defense, "Ever since I got this stomachache it hasn't gone away!"
"Maybe you just need to throw up," Lana responded, and suddenly let out a tiny gasp, "Maybe that's how I'll get my powers! Luan, if you puke, gimme your vomit so I can drink it and become a superhero!"
"That's the nastiest thing I've heard all week," Lola gagged. Just the thought about Lana slurping up her sister's puke nearly made the princess gag.
"But it could work!"
"Nobody is drinking anybody's vomit, Lana!" Lori said to shut her sister up. Normally she wouldn't be so harsh but she was beyond stressed at this point. It was her job to keep her siblings in line and make sure the house stayed in one piece before their parents came home. Three of her little sisters suddenly growing superpowers was not on the menu for today. She planned on hanging with the girls later, not safeguarding their home from potential disaster.
"Lisa," Lori turned to the one person who could have a clue on what was going on, "could you find out what might be going on with Lynn, Lucy and Luan?"
"Perhaps, eldest sibling," Lisa reasoned, scratching the bottom of her chin as she gave it thought, "I have done previous experiments regarding a certain level of abnormal human abilities, but this is certainly not of my doing. This level of mutation is beyond me, as astounding as that sounds."
"So this isn't your fault?" Lynn pressed, certain that the little scientist was behind it.
Alas, she was in the wrong.
"Didn't I just stress that whatever your body is doing is something not even I myself am capable of creating?" Lisa responded, a little peeved that she would of course be blamed by her sisters for their newfound powers. Sure she had a reputation for experimenting, but she still had a heart buried inside of her. "I digress. We must get to the bottom of this phenomenon before our parental units arrive."
"Agreed. So, what do we do?"
"First I'll need a sample to identify what is causing our sibling's strange abilities," Lisa whipped out a rather large syringe with an equally large needle from her supply bag, something that made the family blanch at the sight of it. For starters Lynn was never a fan of shots ever since she was a baby and Lucy only desired the feeling of fangs puncturing her flesh, not cruel metal. "Oh relax you ignoramuses, this won't hurt you at all."
"That's a pretty big needle there, Lisa. Are trying to extract blood from humans or dinosaurs?" Lincoln said, pointing at the shimmering piece of steel.
"Perhaps both if the time ever arrives in the future," Lisa shrugged off Lincoln's comment and made her way over to the two super-siblings on the couch, "Now I suggest you remain calm at all times so I don't miss."
"U-Um," Lynn stammered, eyes shrunk to pinpricks. A hot bead of sweat trickled down her temple as she watched Lisa aim the large chrome needle at the largest blood vein that her arm offered. "You're positive you know what you're doing?"
"Lynn, I promise I would never dream of intentionally harming you." Lisa assuredly said.
"O-Okay, but just make you don't miss, alright?" Lynn said again.
"I won't unless you stop shaking," Lisa responded, trying to get Lynn's arm to be still.
"Are you sure you need a needle that big?" Lynn quickly asked right before Lisa was about to inject. The little scientist was about to say something but was beaten by Lore putting her hands on Lynn's shoulders.
"Lynn, we literally don't have time for this! Be a big girl and take the damn shot!" Lori said to the sporty girl, already fed up with her sister's nonsense. Her shout was loud enough, pun intended, to completely subdue her sister's fears. Nothing like a frustrated howl of rage to make her sibling listen. Lynn slowly stretched out her hand and exposed the soft, vulnerable vein on her arm for Lisa. She turned away, biting her lip as Lisa rubbed a wad of wet cotton on her target spot and proceeded with the injection. A quick pinch and the needle had found the vessel, quickly filling up with her blood.
Thankfully whatever ability Lynn had didn't affect the syringe at all. Her blood however was revealed to have a brighter shade of red. Lynn noticed it, and so did Lisa, but they didn't say anything about it. They'd find out whatever was going on soon enough.
"That should do it," Lisa carefully withdrew the syringe from her sister's arm, "See? Was that so harmful?"
"No," Lynn responded, rubbing the tiny red circle where the needle went into her arm. While Lynn was calming her wound Lisa detached the filled bottle of orange-red blood into a foam-laden silver case, one that looked right out of a science fiction movie. Everyone suspected that their blood hadn't been the first thing put in that little thing.
Lucy went next, while not as resistant as Lynn was, everyone could tell that she wasn't having a fun time. Lucy's blood had no oddities, something that the goth was truly relieved about. She carefully put Lucy's blood right next to Lynn's. With Lucy's blood drawn and ready for inspection, Lisa focused her attention onto the third and final sibling with the untouchable body.
"Hey Luan? You're not looking so good."
Lisa turned around to see that Lola's observation was quite indeed correct. In the moments that she had done her business with Lynn and Lucy, Luan's powers had started to fluctuate in even stranger means. Like a television with static on its screen, Luan's body was seemingly going completely haywire. One moment there were lines zig-zagging at diagonal angles, the next it was pulsing rings, and it didn't stop there.
Luan herself looked like she had decided to go twelve rounds on DairyLand's Milk Shaker. The comedian was barely holding herself together, eyes half-lidded and mouth parted open. A soft gurgling noise emanated from Luan's translucent body.
"Oh man Luan, you look you're about to vomit," Lana said, and remembered something she wanted to ask, "By the way, can I still drink it?"
"Ugh," Luan groaned, sounding about as awful as she looked, "Guys? I don't feel so hot."
The moment Luan finished talking she let out a short wet burp. She quickly put her hands on her mouth to stop whatever was coming up from coming out. Whatever her body was rejecting was not sitting down quietly. Not one to tempt her fate, Luan ran upstairs as fast as she could to get to the toilet. Her family followed suite, worried about their prankster sister suddenly getting sick. Once they reached the top of the stairs the door to the bathroom slammed shut.
"Luan? Are you okay?" Leni knocked on the door, and was greeted with the sounds of Luan upchucking something nasty into the toilet, "Huh. I didn't quite catch that."
"Leni, it's obvious whatever strange power that Luan has received has also directly impacted her health," Lisa explained as Luan continued to hurl.
"Maybe Luan's body is trying to get rid of her superpower," Lincoln guessed, "Or maybe even trying to stabilize it." Lori raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"By puking it out?" Lori said back, "That is-"
"Cool!"
"Gross!"
Lori looked down at the twins and said back, "Yeah, that."
"It might make sense granted our situation at hand," Lisa agreed to Lincoln's proposal, "Perhaps Luan's body is having an allergic reaction towards her intangibility, and is now trying to expel it from her systems, or as Lincoln stated attempting to regain control of it, in a rather unconventional method."
"HUUUUURK!"
"A rather grotesque unconventional method, if I may say so," Lisa added on as Luan unleashed yet another puke volley. It seemed to be the last one as well since the bathroom fell silent afterwards. Seemed like it was over. None of the family made a move to check if Luan was feeling better until Lana spoke up.
"Well, time to get my superpower," Lana said as she marched on to the bathroom door and knocked on it, "Yo Luan, you good in there? Please don't tell me you flushed it down, I want my power-vomit drink!"
Slowly the door opened to reveal Luan standing there, along with the fact that her body had stopped acting strange. The Loud siblings were certainly surprised with that little tidbit. The trickster was wiping away from gunk from her lip with a towel, and while she looked a bit messy it was apparent that whatever she just puked out certainly made her feel better.
"Woo boy that was nasty. I didn't know I could puke that much," Luan said, noticing that her body had stopped going into a flux, "Hey, wouldn't you know? My body's calmed down." Luan poked her stomach to make sure nothing would happen, and saw that her finger easily pushed in her skin and bounced back out.
"Yeah, but can you make yourself intangible again?" Lincoln asked.
"Make myself what-now?" Luan tilted her head. She wasn't too deep into superpower lore and only knew a generic handful, so Lincoln might as well have been using Lisa-talk with her. "Is that what my power's called? What does it do?"
"Well first you gotta activate it somehow," Lincoln said as he stepped forward, "Usually, people's powers are often linked to emotions or memories. Do what Lynn and Lucy did."
"Alright Link, I'll give it a try," Luan readied herself by standing up straight and mentally focused on what she loved, the things she had been doing for years. She thought of pranks, jokes, stand-up comedy, stuff that she used to spread laughter and made her feel great. To the other sisters and her brother it looked like she was trying to squeeze out a stuck fart, her face contorted with puffed cheeks and furrowed brow. After a couple seconds of attempting to conjure up something similar to what her sister's did, Luan opened her eyes and saw that nothing had happened.
So she tried it again, this time a little harder. Luan could feel something inside her, like a glowing star getting brighter and brighter. She grit her teeth and squeezed her buttocks to try and force out whatever that sensation was building up in her body.
"Um, Luan?" Luna took a step forward, watching as Luan tried to make something happen, "Are you sure you're doing this-"
No sooner had Luna tried to put her hand on her sister's shoulder to calm her down did Luan finally reach her goal. One moment she was there...
VWORP!
...and then she wasn't.
The rocker blinked. She and the rest of her family weren't quite sure what she'd just witnessed. Her roommate had vanished in a flicker of banana-yellow light.
"Whoa."
Not even a second after it happened they all turned around to see none other than Luan standing there on the opposite side of the hallway, little beads of tangent light flickering around her. Soon the lights surrounding her died out, leaving the confused Loud who could only guess just what had happened to her just then. The comedian made sure that she was all here and not lost, touching her face and chest. Her family was in the same boat, even Lucy and Lynn were astounded by what they had just seen, and they still had their powers.
"What just happened?" Luan asked.
"You just teleported!" Lincoln jubilantly responded. Once again that swell of excitement was growing inside of him as he answered his newly-powered sister. "That must be your real power, Luan! You can teleport!"
"Wait, I can?" She said, and then envisioned herself right in the midst of the group in front of her. And sure enough in a warp of yellow light she was right there. "Holy schmoley, I can! This is so cool! Wow, based on your reactions I guess you can all say that I can't tell-a-part you guys, ha ha ha-YEOWCH! Lisa!"
"That was for tossing another of your less-than quality puns," Lisa said as she extracted her sister's blood and pulled the needle from Luan's arm, "Now if you all excuse me, I'll be in my room to study this phenomena. In the meantime I suggest to my superpowered siblings that you start to maintain your newfound abilities more carefully. I doubt anyone is prepared to see what is happening to us, especially our parental units, heavens forbid."
"Lisa's right," Lori pounded a fist in her open hand, "There's no way we can literally let anyone find out about this, especially mom and dad. Lucy, Lynn, try not to annoy each other until Lisa finds out what's going on. Luan, just... walk if you can."
"Gotcha."
"'Kay."
"No problemo, sis!"
...
Some time had passed since then, and slowly the Loud house returned to its normal nature. Lisa was currently in her room looking over the blood samples from Lynn, Lucy and Luan. The overhead lights had been turned off, leaving most of the room in the dark besides the sole desk lamp at Lisa's lab. Lily, the youngest of the Loud family, was standing up watching her scientist sister peer through the lens of an enormous microscope and occasionally write down a sentence or two on her notepad. The baby didn't understand what was going on now but she could feel the intense urgency coming from Lisa.
"Poo poo?" The baby asked, trying to get Lisa's attention. She'd been asleep when the revelations came out, and had no clue of what had happened to her sisters.
"Ah, I see you're awake my younger sister. It just so happens that there is indeed a slight family emergency," Lisa said, turning around to face the one-year old, "It appears that some of our sisters have been gifted, or possibly cursed, with unnatural superhuman abilities, things that would usually be found in comic books, not real life."
Lily tilted her head and didn't say anything else, opting to simply watch her older sibling. Taking it as a sign to continue the scientist went back to studying the samples as she pushed a small glass slide with a drop of Lucy's blood on the stage to get a deeper look at the secrets that may be inside. Lisa considered herself to be a woman of science and logic and had herself constantly pushed the boundaries of what was and wasn't possible with her exceptional intelligence. The tests, products and devices that she had constantly created was a testament to that. If there was anyone in the Loud house that could figure out what was really happening it would be her.
Lisa was surprised when she peered through the lens and saw that there were nothing unusual with the goth's blood. Just the usual dark red cells floating in the miasma. That was certainly normal. She had clearly remembered seeing the strange glyphs that Lucy was able to create on her palms. Lisa scribbled down some notes on the notepad on her right.
LUCY - No visible mutations in blood sample. Cells remain unaffected by abilities. Magic?
As silly as it sounded it was the only explanation that Lisa could find.
"Onto the next."
She pulled out Lucy's slide and swapped it for Lynn's. This time there was a definite sign of something strange. It wasn't just that her blood was now a brighter color, her cells were acting differently. From what she could see the cells themselves were covered in glowing orange-yellow splotches, like they were spattered with magma.
LYNN - Visible mutations located on blood cells. Color change and heat conductors? Must run further experiments.
Finally onto Luan. At first Lisa didn't notice anything, until several of the cells under the microscope lens started to glow yellow and then fade out, each one at different instances. That was about it. If she was honest, Lisa was expecting something far stranger for Luan, considering she could bend space-time into personal wormholes.
LUAN - Light emanating from individual cells. Byproduct perhaps? Previous intangibility might be a clue.
Lisa set down her pencil and began to think. She was stumped, caught in a rut for an explanation. Investigating her sister's blood only heightened more questions for the scientist. What could be causing these mutations? It seemed that Luan's powers only left a slight aftereffect with her blood, while Lynn's seemed to be the source and Lucy's remained untouched. It was more confusing than what she had hoped for. Perhaps she didn't look deep enough.
A sudden rush overcame Lisa as she realized she was looking in the wrong spot. She shot up, wondering how she didn't see it sooner.
"Of course!" She said to herself, "DNA! Our genetic code must have an answer!"
Lisa peered back into Luan's blood with her microscope, amplifying the magnification to hopefully find a clue.
"Oh my," Lisa muttered. Instead of DNA, she'd found something else entirely. In Luan's cells lay an extra organ. What did Lincoln call it? Oh yes.
A metagene.
Lisa sampled Lynn and Lucy's and found the same exact result. Each of her sisters had grown a newfound cellular organ in their bodies. Lisa couldn't believe her eyes on what she was seeing. And then she realized something else. In her rush to see if her sisters had also developed a metagene, Lisa had grabbed the slides from her desk and looked at them with her own eyes, but could still see the cells within. Not since she'd found the metagene in Luan's cells had she used her microscope. She blinked, and her entire field of vision turned deep blue. She let out a surprised shriek, dropping the slide on the floor. She reached to pick it up and noticed that her hands were glowing.
No, they weren't glowing as Lisa quickly found out. She was seeing her body's infrared temperature, her stubby fingers coated in oranges and yellows. She calmed herself down as she investigated what was happening to her.
"Have I developed thermal vision?"
She blinked again, and this time she saw bone.
"X-ray too?" Lisa said, rubbing her eyes and wishing that it would return to normal. When she opened, she was both relieved and startled that her vision had come back to visible colors, but also that she herself had grown a superpower like her three sisters.
"If I am able to suddenly gain superpowers like my siblings," Lisa said, starting a hypothesis for her and the rest of the Loud house, "who's to say that my other siblings have not also become infected with this wave of mutation? Will we all receive superhuman abilities?"
All of a sudden it slowly dawned on her. These powers that she and her sisters had suddenly grown were spontaneous. Lisa herself had done blood work on her sisters many times before when it came to stuff such as illnesses and vaccines. Not once did she see this glowing white organ, and human bodies don't just decide to have superheated blood, spawn magic, see radiation or bend space-time in a single day. As she gave more thought to it, Lisa realized that there might be a much darker answer to their problems.
...
"Leni, have you seen my blouse?" Lori asked as she rummaged through her closet. Time was short and she needed to look as good as possible for her night out with her friends. Granted there were some maddening issues at home such as her siblings suddenly getting superpowers, but for now the house had calmed down. She wouldn't be out for long, just to mingle with her friends for an hour or so and get ready for the rest of the school week.
School. Lori gave it a sad thought. How would her sisters deal with their powers outside their family if Lisa couldn't find a cure? They'd be shunned, outcasts in some of the most important years of their lives. It wasn't fair.
"I think I left it over on my bed," Leni said as she brushed her hair, making sure to do exactly fifty strokes to get her consistency right.
"Thank you Leni." Lori stepped out and saw that there was indeed her blouse and a custom-designed mid-riff dress next to it. She put her blouse over her undergarments, and decided to give that dress some attention. Where had it come from?
"Hey Leni, is this dress yours?" She held up the dress to her fashionista sister.
"Yep! I made it myself. It's totes stylish, right? I made it for Lynn to help her feel better." Leni said. Lori couldn't lie, the dress was eloquently designed as expected from Leni's craft. But that color was familiar. She then noticed a huge chunk of Leni's dark pink blanket had been cut out from the corner, almost like she'd sliced it clean off. And the dress in her hands was the same color. It didn't take Lori long enough to know what happened.
"Did you literally use one of your blankets to make this?" Lori asked, wondering how Leni was actually able to create something this finely made from a simple blanket. "How?"
"Oh that was easy, watch!" Leni said as she stood up and made her way over to her blanket. Imagine Lori's sheer shock when Leni's hands were suddenly coated in a seafoam green light, pulsating in cartoon-like waves as a segmented rectangular chunk of her blanket popped right out and hovered in the air, surrounded in that light coming out of the fashionista's palms. And then the most incredible thing happened. The piece that Leni was 'holding' began to unravel itself. Every strand of fiber, cloth and linen disentangled and unformed themselves into a mass of pink and white floating in the air right in front of both Leni and Lori's eyes.
And then it began to reform itself again. The bits and pieces that once hung in the light-coated air slowly began to weave themselves back together, but this time into something else. What was once a piece of Leni's blanket slowly became a finely-stitched skirt with pink and white stripes running in horizontal patterns. The light began to die down as the freshly-woven skirt drifted into Leni's waiting hands like a leaf in the wind.
"And viola!" Leni said, holding up her new custom skirt, "Check it out! It so matches Lynn's new dress, right Lori? Lori?"
Whump!
"OH-EM-GOSH! Guys, come quick! I think I just killed Lori!"