I don't own the Loud House.

Well, here we are at chapter 8. This is the moment that we've all been waiting for! The invasion is about to begin but more importantly, something happens between Ace and Lori that was probably long awaited for. Writing this scene was one of the first ones that I thought of but had to wait to write. I actually had 3 different ways to write this chapter until I ultimately set on this one. I hope that you all enjoy it.

This is the only chapter this week. I do have some other chapters in the works, I have not forgotten about them. I just didn't have the time to finish them. I'll post again in two weeks so look forward to that.

Stupor Heroics: Invasion

Chapter 8

Lori was flying through the base as she made her way towards the briefing room. The base was no longer a training facility for new heroes. It now functioned under its true purpose, to house the response teams for the alien invasion. Lori was among a select few that would be sent in to deal with the strongest of the Empire's forces. She was still a Hero, she still went on patrol, and she still helped newer heroes from time to time. But Lori had also spent most of her time on the base alongside Lynn and Ace, training for this day.

As she neared the briefing room, Lori's thoughts went back to the previous week when she had confessed her feelings for Ace. It hadn't gone as planned...

::Flashback::

Lori was panting as she finished her sparring session with Ace. While she was powerful enough just using her powers, Lori also trained in hand to hand combat just in case she ever found herself being left powerless. And Ace was her constant sparring partner.

This evening, she had actually managed to land 3 blows on him earning 6 points but he still beat her easily enough. She just wasn't as experienced as he was when it came to fighting. Even using her powers, she struggled to make him submit.

"Good work, Lori. You've definitely improved since you first started training with me." Ace praised her. He was wiping his face with a towel and yes, he still had on his mask. Lori had still not seen what he looked like underneath that.

"T-Thanks..." She said as she regained her breath. She enjoyed sparring with him because he knew just how hard to push her to get her to improve. Unlike Lynn, who just tossed her around like a ragdoll when she managed to get the upper hand. Lori was still the stronger of the two sisters but even she had to admit that the gap was closing between them with each passing year.

Ace looked her up and down and he stared at her face, making Lori blush a bit. She watched as he reached up and cupped her chin. For a moment, she thought that he was about to kiss her. But those thoughts were quickly dashed as he turned her right cheek towards him. He let out a whistle.

"It's been a while since I last hit you hard enough to leave a bruise." He said with a chuckle.

Lori rolled her eyes. Thanks to her energy manipulation, Lori was able to place a nearly razor thin protective layer over her skin and clothes that prevented most minor damage. Ace hadn't actually been able to leave any damage on her aside from her pride in months.

"You just got lucky, Ace." Lori said with a playful grin.

"Luck had nothing to do with it. I just kicked your ass." Ace shot back and she could hear the grin in his voice.

"Oh yea?" She asked.

Then without warning, she used a bit of her power to tackle him to the ground. They rolled around a bit before she found herself pinned underneath him. They were both breathing a little hard and Lori's gaze was locked onto Ace's. For a moment, neither made a move and Lori could feel his heart beating rapidly in his chest. Maybe it was the way his heart beat like hers, maybe it was the fact that she had been madly in love with him for the last 3 years. Maybe, just maybe, Lori was just tired of not addressing her feelings. But whatever the reason had been, Lori made a move that she knew she never would have made if she had just been thinking clearly.

Lori leaned in and much to both of their surprise, her lips landed on his. Then Lori was kissing, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him into her. Ace had been too stunned to react but when he felt her tongue in his mouth, he snapped out of it. He pulled away from her and broke the kiss, his face burning with shame. His actions seemed to snap Lori out of it because she quickly sat up and scooted a couple of yards away from him.

"I'm sorry, Ace! I swear, I didn't mean for that to happen!" Lori said quickly, her face bright red from embarrassment and guilt.

But Ace couldn't speak. How could he? There were no words to describe how he felt at that moment. He felt an intense hatred towards himself that had been building for years now.

"Ace? Please talk to me...I'm sorry...please don't hate me..." Lori said, her voice cracking and breaking towards the end. It was the sound of her crying that snapped him out of it.

Ace turned towards her and stared at her for a moment, taking her appearance in. Lori was seated a few yards away from him, her face tear stricken. She was looking up at him, her expression guilty and remorseful but he could also see something else. Something that he tried desperately to ignore.

"I don't hate you..." Was all he could say before leaving the room.

And once he was gone, Lori fully broke down at having ruined the relationship that she had with him. And she knew that she was the only one to blame since he never made a move towards her. So Lori wept and wept and continued to do so for the next couple of days.

::End of Flashback::

That had been a week ago and Ace had been avoiding her ever since, not that Lori tried very hard to find him. Lori knew that she had messed up big time, especially since he had confided in her that he was still mourning his dead wives and family. The guilt that she felt had been eating away at her from the inside and she began to feel something that she hadn't felt in a long time, depressed. Not since she had been separated from her little brother had Lori felt like this and now she couldn't help but feel like that again. Losing Ace felt very similar to losing Lincoln, something that Lori should have questioned but didn't. After all, the heart wants what the heart wants, as they say.

But now with the warning alarms sounding off Lori would have to face him whether she was ready or not. With a final turn, Lori raced down the corridor and burst through the doors. She wasn't surprised to see that everyone else was running around as well. It was the day that they had all been waiting for. Lynn was already there and she was talking to one of the logistics crew, no doubt trying to be placed in the front line. That had been something else that Lori had been miffed about as well. For some reason Ace had placed her and Lynn in the response team for the second wave.

Lori was arguably one of their heaviest hitters and if anyone should have been on the front lines it should have been her with Lynn right beside her. But due to the way things had ended last time, Lori had been unwilling to confront Ace about it. Now she would have to since she wouldn't have a choice, she was not going to wait while people needed saving.

Ace walked in behind her and to her surprise, he didn't acknowledge her. He walked past her as if she wasn't even there and made his way towards the center of the room. The room was large with several monitors set up around the room and a single large table in the center that held a hologram projection device on top, Lisa's invention of course. He cleared his throat and all activity ceased in an instant.

"It's time." He began gravely. "For the last five years we've been training up and coming heroes and preparing for this day. The day that the world will face its greatest threat. I won't sugar coat this, the odds aren't in our favor. We're facing an unknown enemy that comes from beyond our solar system. We don't know if we can win this fight."

The whole room was quiet and they all hung onto his every word. Lori could see the grim face on all of those within, even Lynn looked like their chances weren't good. But then Ace held his head a little higher and continued.

"But we do know one thing." He said, his voice a little louder. "And that's that if these alien assholes think that the human race is going to just lie down and take it then they got another thing coming! We've been tried and tested since the dawn of time and mankind has triumphed again and again!" He raised his hand up in the air above him and made a fist. "We won't ever give up no matter what!"

"Yea!" Someone shouted, Lori suspected that it was Lynn, and everyone else joined in at once.

"So let them come! We'll plant our feet and grit our teeth and when they hit us with their hardest punch, we'll give it back to them tenfold!" Ace shouted, pumping his fist once in the air.

Once more the room erupted into a roar of defiance, the grim atmosphere disappearing from the room. Lori felt like she could take on the alien force herself from his speech. And in that moment, she couldn't help but think of her brother, Lincoln. Ace had the same silver tongue that her little brother had and he too could also inspire those who listened to him.

"So now we get the word out, send it to every corner in the world. Within the hour, the enemy will come. Within one hour, we show these alien bastards just how strong the human spirit really is!"

After another cheer, the room resumed its former activity and Lori rushed over to where Lynn was still arguing about her deployment.

"...mistake! I should be on the frontlines!" Lynn said hotly. The sporty Loud had grown up a lot over the last five years. Lynn was now taller than Lori and her physique had grown as well. Lynn looked like an olympian who ate olympians for breakfast.

"I'm sorry, Lynn, but you're on the reserve team." Betty said sternly. The older woman was part of the logistics team and she was also the lead coordinator of who went where. As Lori appreached, she turned towards her and asked. "Can you please explain to her that she can't go yet?"

Lori stopped. She suddenly felt awkward rushing up to Betty. The older woman would expect Lori to side with her but in reality Lori wanted to side with Lynn.

"Lori, you know that both of us should be on the front lines!" Lynn protested, turning towards her as well.

Now caught between the two, Lori could only inwardly groan. "I...agree with Lynn..." She said slowly but as Betty's frown deepened, Lori quickly added. "But orders are orders and we're supposed to go with the second team."

Lori could see the disappointment in her sister's eyes but she didn't protest any further. She turned sharply around and walked away from them. Betty sighed before saying thanks to Lori and taking her own leave. Left on her own, Lori was surprised when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Startled, Lori spun around and swung her fist towards the person behind her and she was surprised when she felt a hand catch her by the wrist and stop her cold. She blinked, her cheeks quickly rising in heat from embarrassment and by who held her. Ace was standing behind her, his hand still clutching hers, and he was looking at her with what she assumed was a serious look on his face.

"S-Sorry, you kind of startled me..." Lori said meekly. This was the first time that they had talked in a week and she almost killed him. Then she looked towards her hand and noticed that Ace had stopped her punch. She gawked at him. "How did you do that?"

"Painfully." Ace answered as he released her wrist and shook out his whole arm. It was then that she noticed that Ace's form had been braced into the floor and his boots had somehow anchored themselves into the floor. She could see three little claws on each side of his boots detached themselves from the floor and then retracted into the boot. "We need to talk." He added before turning to leave.

Without a word, Lori followed him and her mind went wild with what could possibly happen next. She wondered if they were going to talk about the kiss. She inwardly gasped! Could he be confronting her for kissing him? Would he be angry with her? Would he fire her from being a hero? These thoughts and more plagued Lori's mind as she followed Ace into his room, which she didn't realize until they were already there. When she did notice, her face turned red.

'Oh my god, he wants to fuck!' Inner Lori screamed in her head as her eyes locked onto his bed.

Lori's breath got caught in her chest. She wasn't ready for such a big step! Well, she was, she had been for a while now but she couldn't possibly do it yet! They hadn't even gone on a date yet! She barely even knew what he looked like!

"Lori, are you okay?" Ace asked from somewhere nearby.

Lori spun around towards the sound of his voice and she blurted. "I'm a virgin!"

The silence that followed could have rivaled an ancient graveyard. Ace simply stared at her with his unreadable masked expression and Lori was wishing that the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

Lori was beyond mortified. She desperately wished that she had Carol's power at that moment so that she could turn back time and redo the whole encounter. But a tiny voice in her head that sounded like Lisa reminded her that it wouldn't erase Ace's memory.

Time seemed to drag on ever so slowly as Lori continued to stare into Ace's red visor on his mask. A snail could have run a marathon in the time that had transpired between the two of them and Lori worried that her torment would never end. It was as if God were punishing her for something that she did in her life.

Finally, Ace twitched and both of them released a breath that they didn't know they were holding. Lori noticed that Ace had also been caught in a similar state by the beads of sweat on his forehead.

"Um...okay...?" Ace slowly began. Even though Lori couldn't see it, she knew he had raised his brow at her in a questioning way. "That's not why I brought you here..."

"I-It's not?" Lori couldn't help but ask. She didn't mean to ask it but her mouth was running ahead of her mind. And a part of her was slightly disappointed as well that it wasn't.

"No." Ace shook his head. "I wanted to explain why you and Lynn aren't going with the first wave."

This caught Lori's attention. She straightened up and looked at him straight in the eyes, well, mask. "Does it have to do with the future?"

Ace nodded. "You and Lynn didn't survive the attack in my time." He admitted. Lori frowned but she didn't interrupt him. "I know that I should trust the two of you to make your own choices and allow you to fight but I can't."

"Why not?" Lori asked him. She could see the conflict within the older man. He was struggling with something and Lori couldn't help but think that it might be personal for him. After all, he had come back in time to save people from his fam-

Lori gasped. It suddenly all clicked for her and she knew what Ace's big secret was. And by the resigned look in Ace's mask (she had gotten good at reading him over the years) Lori knew that she was right. She finally knew who he was and why she was so drawn to him.

For a moment, neither said a word. As much as Lori had thought about this moment, about finally discovering his secret, she never once thought that it would be this. The truth which had plagued her for so long had finally been revealed and it had been the last thing that Lori had ever expected. And she didn't have the words to speak.

Ace sighed and went to sit on his desk chair. "I take it you finally figured it out, huh?"

Lori opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Instead warm tears began to form in her eyes as she realized the full extent of Ace's tragic past. The reason he had pushed her so hard to be a hero was because he wanted her to survive. But it went far more than that, Lori finally understood. He pushed her because he loved her and he had lost her so many years before.

"I can't tell you what it's meant to me to finally have you back after all this time..." He continued. "To have all of you back...but I could never tell you who I was. Well, I couldn't tell most of you."

"W-Who else knows?" Lori found herself asking in a soft cracking voice.

"Lisa figured it out after a week." Ace said with a small laugh. "She's truly a genius."

"It took her a week?" Lori asked, surprised.

"No, she suspected on day one but she didn't know for sure until she confronted me about it." Ace told her. "Obviously, I had her swear to secrecy since the fate of the world was at stake. She's the one who's been doing the repairs on my body."

"You said that the nanotech had an auto repair program." Lori said, recalling that he had explained to her why he healed quickly.

"It does. But it had been damaged during the last battle before I was sent to the past." Ace explained. "Lisa fixed it for me but it took her a while."

Silence overtook them once more and Lori just stared at him. She had a million questions to ask him but instead, she did something that she had been waiting to do for almost five years. She slowly walked over to him, her steps practically silent on the hardwood floor. Her hands trembled as she reached for his face and to her surprise, Ace made no move to stop her. Lori placed her hands on either side of the mask and for the first time ever, it felt loose.

It took her a few seconds but it felt like an eternity for Lori but she removed his mask for the first time. The mask slid off of Ace's head, first revealing his chin. Lori noticed that he had a scar that went across the bottom that he must've gotten while attempting to dodge a knife. His mouth was next and that too was marred by a scar that ran across his lips in a diagonal up towards the left side of his face. As his nose was revealed, Lori saw that the scar on his lips was one of three that ran up the side of his face from a claw strike with a line running up his nose towards his forehead and his cheeks to the side of his head. And when Lori saw his eyes, she knew without a shadow of a doubt who Ace really was.

"Lincoln..."

Lori couldn't believe it. Her little brother from a terrible future was sitting before her, his once vibrant blue eyes now weathered with tragedy and time that didn't belong. Lori couldn't help it, she placed her hands on the side of his face, pressed her forehead against his wrinkled one, and wept for her brother.

She felt Ace wrap his arms around her and hold her as she cried. She wept for his loss, for his pain, for the knowledge that her future self had not been able to protect him, and Lori wept because she had failed him.

"Lori..." Ace began but was stopped when Lori shushed him.

"Lincoln...please don't say anything." Lori pleaded with him. "Please...just shut up..."

It was too much for her to bear and Lori needed more time to process it all. It took her a while before she was able to compose herself again. But once she had, Lori did something that she had only done once before. She leaned in and kissed him once more. Only this time it was a chaste kiss, one meant to convey her love and sorrow for him. She wanted him to feel her love for him and be comforted by that love.

"Oh Lincoln...what has the future done to you?" Lori asked, though she didn't really expect an answer.

"Lori, I'm sorry I never told you." Ace began again. "There were so many times that I wanted to tell you. I almost did more times than I could count. But I couldn't jeopardize everything just to keep you safe."

"How did my future self die?" Lori asked. It had been a question that she had always wanted to know but never dared ask because the truth honestly terrified her. But now that she knew who Ace was, she wasn't as scared as before. Whether her brother had managed to change the future or not didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was that she had been given the chance to get to know him once again. The time that they spent together was more precious to her than anything in the world.

"I don't know." Ace told her honestly. "I was in a shelter when the invasion happened. Mom and dad took us to a public bunker where we waited for the Heroes of the world to defend us. We knew that you, Lynn, and Leni had been sent to fight in L.A. but that was the last we ever heard of you. All of the heroes sent there had died."

They were quiet for several moments, neither willing to be the one to break the silence. For Lori, she had been piecing together all of the pieces of Ace's past and it was all finally making sense to her. She had a feeling that she knew who some of Ace's wives were.

"Shadow was Lucy, huh?" Lori asked him.

Ace nodded. "Yes."

Another moment of silence followed before Lori asked. "Did you ever love me like you did her?"

"Yes." Ace's answer was firm and it left no room for doubt. Lori's heart skipped a beat as a sudden warmth spread throughout her chest. "Losing you before I ever got to tell you nearly destroyed me. Getting revenge on Brainiac was the only thing that kept me going through the slave camps."

"If your Lori was anything like me then she definitely knew how you felt." She told him, pressing her forehead against his once again. "A girl just knows, you know?"

They stayed like that for a bit before Ace broke the silence.

"Lori...I can't send you to Los Angeles. I can't lose you again." He confessed.

Lori just shook her head, not removing herself from him. "You can never lose me, Lincoln." She placed a hand over his chest. "I'll always be right here. My heart is and always was yours from the moment I first held you in my arms."

Ace just stayed silent.

"But I can't stay here while my friends go out to die." Lori said, pulling away from him. She looked him in the eyes, seeing his fear and urgency to protect her. "I'm one of the strongest heroes in the world and I can't be hiding when the world needs me most."

"But you could die..." Ace began but stopped when Lori wrapped her arms around him.

"You trained me to be a hero, Lincoln. I can't just shirk my duty to the people who need protecting just because I might die. That's true every time that I wear my hero suit." Lori told him. "I love you more than words will ever be able to describe. But I am going out there, Linc, and I would rather you come watch my back then go alone."

For several moments, Ace didn't say a thing. He just stared down at the floor and Lori was worried that he would say no. Her mind had been made up and she was going to go and fight in the first wave regardless of what Ace said. But she didn't want to hurt him in the process. Ace had already been through enough and she didn't want to add to it.

Just when Lori was about to give up on getting Ace's blessing, Ace spoke up. "I'll go with you."

And just like that, Lori's face broke into a wide smile. She pulled him into another tight hug before she passionately kissed him once more. When she pulled back, she said. "I needed that for luck." She told him with a wink.

End of chapter.