The boy left the bedroom, and soon noticed that his sisters weren't around in the hallway. So he went downstairs, and saw that they were at the living room, looking through the front window to see Lisa leave with the parents on their car. Once he saw this, he tried to sneak his way back to his room, and try to forget this ever happened.
"Lincoln, come here."
Those words, spoken by Lori, were enough to get the boy to stop and hesitantly walk downstairs and to the living room, where he got looks from all his sisters. However, while some of them looked angry, like Lola and Lynn, the others either looked confused, like Lana and Luan, or worried, like Leni and Luna.
"Sit down."
The boy obliged at Lori's command, and the rest of the sisters sat down as well, before Luna asked:
"What happened between you and Lisa, dude?"
"Yeah, she just, like, told us that you both spoke and left in a hurry," Leni clasped her hands. "I thought you were going to convince her to either stay or tell us why she's not going to, like, tutor us anymore or something."
"That's the thing: I tried to talk to her about it," Lincoln sighed. "But Lisa's too smart: She figured out that even if I promised her to keep it a secret, you guys would just make me tell you eventually, so she packed her stuff and left without giving me anything, not even a hint."
"Well, what do we do now?" Lana asked, turning her eyes to Lincoln. "You got any plans, Lincoln?"
"I'm not sure, girls, maybe we should just leave Lisa alone?" Lincoln suggested, earning angered looks from the girls. "I know you want answers, but with how Lisa spoke to me a while ago, I get the feeling she's upset about something, and... I don't know, I just get the feeling that if we try to dig deeper into this thing, it'll only get worse."
"So what? We're just literally going to stand here and do nothing?!" Lori snapped, standing up. "Lisa just told us to our faces that she's not going to tutor us as often as she used to, all to spend some more time with a friend of hers, without even explaining it in a way we could understand?!"
"To be fair, that could have been our fault-" Luan said, trying to be positive about the situation.
"Luan, she used several big words I don't think mom or dad even know about!" Lori sternly pointed out, before pounding her fists. "If she's not even going to bother to explain herself, then we're not even going to bother to leave her alone either! I say we go to the vanzilla, or whatever car's left in the house, and go to confront her at her friend's house!"
"L-Lori, hold it right there!" Lincoln shouted, getting her attention. "Look, I want answers as much as you girls, but don't you think your idea's a bit too... much?"
"Okay, how about Lincoln, like, goes instead?" Leni suggested. "After all, he's the only one of us who's okay with Lisa not tutoring us as often anymore, so he wouldn't, like, hold that grudge against her."
A momento of silence passed, with the sisters looking at Leni with incredulous looks, with the silence being shattered when Lynn grabbed Lincoln by the neck of the shirt and snapped:
"You see the kind of stuff that'll happen if Lisa tutors us less?! People like Leni may end up spitting out decent ideas, which is not the natural order of things!"
The jock turned to the fashionista. "No offense, Leni."
"Like, what's being offended?" the girl asked, tilting her head to the right.
"Natural order or not, Leni's right, Lincoln's literally the best choice to go talk to Lisa," Lori remarked, folding her arms. "If anybody else did it, we'd probably mess it up somehow and give away our intentions, but Lincoln can keep it hidden, and earn Lisa's attention quite easily!"
"I still think it's better to just leave Lisa alone and try to get used to her not tutoring us as often anymore," Lincoln suggested, earning looks from his other sisters. "We just need to put some effort into it, and we'll be okay with it in no time at all!"
"Sorry, Lincoln, but some of us just can't take the chance," Lola answered. "How else am I going to learn how to read?!"
"I could teach you," Lana said.
Lola remained in silence for a moment, then added, "How else am I going to learn how to read, without potentially being tricked by my teacher?!"
"You're going to go see Lisa at her friend's house and that's final!" Lori snapped at Lincoln. "Now come on, everybody, let's go to that house...wherever it is."
Sometime later...
Lincoln and his remaining sisters stopped close to a Green, two-floor house, with Leni being the only one who didn't look too exhausted or exasperated. Then again, Leni being Leni, she probably wouldn't know what those things were anyway.
"Do you think this is, like, Lisa's friend's house?" Leni asked, tilting her head to the left.
"You've asked that at every house we've been to for the last hour or so," Lori complained. "If this turns out to be another literally dead-end, we might as well call it a day and go back home."
Lincoln rolled his eyes. "Wow, that's the first logical thing you've said this day."
"Haha, good one, Lincoln!" Luan winked and gave her brother a thumbs up.
The siblings took a quick look inside, and saw Lisa and Darcy sitting on the couch, watching television together. Upon seeing this, the sisters all hid in a bush nearby and Lincoln walked to the door. He knocked the door three times, and after a couple seconds, Lisa opened the door with a wide smile.
"Hello, Lisa," Lincoln nervously greeted.
A couple seconds passed with Lisa's smile slowly turning into an angry frown once she realized who she was looking at. And of course, she tried to slam the door shut, but Lincoln managed to grab the door just before it closed and kept Lisa from fully closing it.
Who knew an 11 year old boy could overpower a 4 year old girl so easily?!
"Lisa, listen, I know you may think that I'm here by order of our sisters, and I am, but I need to talk with you!" Lincoln exclaimed, trying to get through Lisa's stoic exterior. "It's important!"
"And the visit to Darcy's house is important to me, but it's not like any of you care!" Lisa retorted, slowly overpowering her brother. "All you want me is to waste hours of my precious time tutoring you like I've always done!"
Lincoln, however, quickly got the upper hand. "You never voiced your complaints about that before!"
"Because the first rule of tutoring, is to never say anything that will fall on deaf ears!" the prodigy snapped. "And if there's one thing I've learned during all those tutoring sessions, is that our sisters have the deafest ears I've ever seen! Now leave me alone!"
Unfortunately, the shouting between the siblings didn't go unnoticed, as it wasn't long before a certain someone showed up. This certain someone was none other than the Loud matriarch, Rita Loud.
"Lisa, why are you shouting? I could hear it from the-" then she noticed her only son. "Lincoln Loud, what are you doing here?!"
"Um, it's not what you think, mom!" Lincoln replied, scratching the back of his head. "My sisters needed to find out why Lisa couldn't tutor them as often as she did anymore-"
"And they couldn't even be bothered to ask her themselves?" Rita scanned her surroundings. "Where the heck are your sisters?!"
"Hiding in the bush over there."
The girls came out of the bush, and Rita narrowed her eyes as she hissed:
"Well, until you understand that you can't have your brother do your dirty work for you, all of you are grounded, now go back home!" the Loud matriarch snapped. "And you, Lincoln, go back home too, and if you even think about doing your sister's dirty work again, then all of you will be grounded with no chocolate, ice cream, or any dessert for an entire month!"
The Louds gasped in shock and horror, even Lisa!
"Mom, that's literally completely irrational!" Lori exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips.
"Oh right, because sending your brother to get the answers you were seeking, while following him through the bushes, during an event that was important to Lisa to boot, instead of doing the more sensible thing and wait until Lisa came back home to ask her clearly shows you know how being rational works," the woman growled before cracking her knuckles. "Go back home right this instant, or I'm putting on play my previous threat immediately!"
With her words having been made clear, Lincoln and the other sisters walked back home with saddened looks on their eyes, with Lisa and Rita standing outside just long enough to see them leave.
"Well, at least you tried, Lincoln," Luan remarked, trying to sound positive.
"Yeah, but he didn't try hard enough!" Lola snapped. "All he had to do was get Lisa's attention and get an explanation, but-"
"But we thought Lisa was too stupid to know any better," Luna retorted, getting everybody's attention. "After he tried and failed to get answers from her back in the house, we should've known it wouldn't work a second time."
Meanwhile, back inside Darcy's house...
"I'm sorry you had to see that, sweetheart," Rita said as she guided Lisa back to the couch. "But I simply had to stand my ground, or else your siblings wouldn't get it."
"They're that stubborn, aren't they?" Lisa frowned.
"Absolutely. In fact, they're possibly even worse," Rita sighed. "And the worst part of it is, I think they got it from my side of the family. My relatives have a very bad habit of being incredibly stubborn when it came to their ideas, or obtaining any answer they desired. So, I had to learn from my mother how to stand my ground and show I was the boss, otherwise... it wouldn't have worked."
Lisa sat on the couch, and noticing how Darcy was distracted by the show, she took the chance to whisper to her mother:
"Mother, can you teach me how to stand my ground? I got some things to tell my siblings."
