Lynn: "I love Karate"
Lana: "I love Kera-tey"
Lola: "I love Money ay"
Lucy: "I hate all of you."
The young, naïve and vulnerable Lucy Loud was not prepared for her brother's sudden departure from her already hard to cope with life.
On the surface incredibly unflappable and unyielding to any emotion be it positive or negative, Lucy was among the first to completely and utterly snap without their only brother.
A great fortune teller, she prided herself in claiming to be during long road trips or waits in the mall lobby when she had nothing better to do but deal out her set of ornate tarot cards to take great pleasure in the various scares she incited with her proposed ability to see the future.
But all her fortune telling couldn't have predicted something as catastrophic as the tragic event that proved too much for even an aficionado to the dark and morbid to withstand without sniffing quietly in her sleep every night so that her much more energetic roommate Lynn couldn't help but hear.
Lucy was never one to appear very enthusiastic about even the brightest joys life had to offer, nor one to reveal much hurt or regret not even anger when events didn't transpire the way she'd have preferred them to. A dedicated mortician and sucker for dark and serious gothic literature who preferred quiet and empty space where she could focus on her work in peace, contemplating what the afterlife after this one had to offer.
It was not unusual for Lucy to smile very rarely so that every time she did, Lynn senior quickly hollered for anyone nearby to fetch the camera.
The blank and empty vision which Lucy regarded the world around her with was nothing her sisters hadn't been acquainted with either.
But the loss of their one shared brother had somehow managed to take Lucy's already rock-bottom capacity to positively emote from bad to greatly worse.
The cold and glassy eyes that once Lucy's sisters never really minded now seemed so much more striking and frightening to even look at from a distance.
The room seemed to drop several degrees in temperature and the family swore that their limbs were seizing up with almost stone like stiffness every time the new and changed Lucy came into the room even if only to do something as innocuous as ask for a glass of sugar.
Aside from the fact there was still the faintest colour on the young poet's pale cheeks and that her eyes were still open albeit with little light in them, the family could have sworn that it was the ghost of their long gone sister who had returned as a chilling reminder of their failures rather than an actual person.
It wasn't an unknown or new fact to the Loud family that Lucy was the one who liked dark and creepy things. It was however new that she had become frightening to even stand close to.
She wasn't the possessive and territorial Lori who demanded that everyone but Leni stay out of her room or be turned into a human pretzel.
She wasn't the extremely unstable and often untrustworthy joker Luan whose pranks on April fools day took any hint of likeability that she could have built up over the year well away.
And she certainly wasn't anywhere near as quick-tempered Lola who was well known for pitching a fit when even she was denied even the smallest thing.
Before Lincoln had vanished never to be found or seen again, Lucy could easily have been considered one of the more pleasant family members to talk to, even confide in.
Even if she did at times seem a little trapped in her own dark world for her own good, everyone had their harmless little fantasies surely?
These days, Lucy Loud barely spoke even when you factored in how quiet and hushed up her sisters had grown over the time Lincoln left them for a reason they dared not speak about or explain, but each member in the Loud family knew well.
Luan played fun and harmless pranks which she made certain would cause the goth not the slightest bit of pain unlike her previous much less restrained ones, and told the absolute best jokes that the comedian in her fifteen years of studying comedy had painstakingly managed to master.
And Lucy's hapless frown did not so much as twitch.
Luna played the happiest songs she could think of and in the most cheerful and optimistic voice that in her own depression she could muster up.
First she used her guitar, then a violin and when those instruments had no impact on her little sister's blank stare, she resorted to every last piece of musical equipment that she had manged to salvage with the little budget a big family could spare her.
Xylophone, drums, and then even a clarinet that Luna had long stopped using since she switched from classic to rock music were just a few of the things that the brown haired musician nearly broke apart trying to impress her rapidly deteriorating black haired little sister just the slightest amount.
With trembling hands and a shaking body, Lucy gave a small and unenthusiastic few claps.
Then without another sound she left Luna's room as quietly as she had entered it.
It didn't take someone with as many fancy degrees as Lisa for Luna to realize that those few claps meant absolutely nothing and that the best musician in the world couldn't put Lucy's grief to rest.
At school, Lucy's grades strangely didn't plummet the same way some of her sisters did after Lincoln left the scene.
She continued to pass reasonably well with very passable if not great marks.
She had always been a quiet girl even before this incident and so no one at school at least noticed any noticeable changes in her behaviour.
It was one rainy night when Lucy silent as usual stepped into the living room that she felt the eyes of all the family upon her harder than she was used to, that she realized that her time was up.
She felt the sharp and unerring gaze of who were supposed to be her loving sisters and parents as a rabbit saw a pack of rabid wolves about to pounce.
They hadn't spoken yet, clearly eager for her to be the one to break the ice for once.
She turned to beg her big brother for his reassurance only to once again remember that he was no longer with her. It was then that a new emotion blazed within the usually unflappable goth as she turned once more to face what was meant to be the loving and supportive family she was meant to be able to turn to when days like this came, days where she felt nothing worked and she wanted nothing but to retreat and take shelter far from here.
She didn't need to speak, scream or make any noise to get her point across.
The lightning speed at which she proceeded to bolt for the door despite the pouring rain and sounds of loud thunder outside said more than a library of books could.
"Lucy, come back." Her roommate Lynn was first to call as she tried to sprint after her to no avail.
"Don't leave. We can work this out".
Lucy continued however to run further out into the rain, notwithstanding how the cold and filthy water drenched her to the bone.
Lucy didn't want to work anything out since the time for working things out was long gone.
The dark haired girl continued to run until she found an alley where she finally allowed herself to stop running, slinking into a pile of bin bags.
She had seen enough horror movies to know that this was the place where anyone who would be looking for her would search last.
The rain continued to soak into her now incredibly dampened form but she had by now become numb to it and so she cared not.
On the contrary the rain would make it harder for anyone to find her so well hidden here.
About an hour passed and as the rain began to clear, she heard footsteps and people's voices in the distance.
Resisting the urge to step out from this pile of rotting detritus as disgusting as even a gravedigger like her found it to be, she continued to stay down as the row of uniformed men came by and saw no sign of her before finally walking away.
Deliberately, Lucy waited until the sounds of their footsteps had completely died away for several uninterrupted seconds before very gingerly creeping from her hiding place.
She was filthy, stinking and extremely cold but she knew what had to be done.
Start a new life among strangers where her family would not think to come looking for her.
A life that her missing big brother would approve of if he were still here.
A ghost of a smile crept on to Lucy's pale face as she brushed herself down and began to head down the path out of town she knew was least taken.
Her time to leave the house and fend for herself had come a little early, but in some ways maybe that wasn't so bad.
Death was after all, the first step in rebirth.
She would prove that she depressed, dark and introverted goth, but a useful one.
That even someone with as little confidence as her was worth something.
But she wasn't Lucy Loud. Not anymore.
Lucy Loud in her mind had died the day Lincoln left.
Eyeing the nearest bin to her, she caught a glimpse of what appeared as a dark outfit of some sort peeking out from the opening in the lid of the bin.
She opened it to find, in a relatively dry and undamaged condition since the bin was almost empty, an outfit.
A tightly fitting, sharp black shirt decorated by a sharper yellow symbol with a matching set of trousers and a black mask that covered the eyes.
The sharp symbol, the silhouette of a bat.
Lucy didn't care that it might well have been in a condition so unsanitary that even Lana would hesitate to touch that, let alone wear it.
She didn't care that it was probably worth no more than half a dollar even on the day whoever threw it here brought it.
Or that Halloween was still two whole seasons away.
To Lucy, it was none other than a symbol from fate itself.
An omen that set her future and destiny in solid stone.
A sign guiding her forward to the inevitable.
She took it out, gave it a brief wipe and changed into it before throwing her old clothes into the bin and covering the lid of the bin with a set of bags after tightly closing it.
She and her old friend darkness, merged together at long last.
No longer just her hobby, but now her way of life, darkness had consumed the last vestiges of what little light she had not yet parted with.
She was an embodiment, a living avatar and not just a disciple of the night any longer.
Its sword and its shield, its missionary in a foreign field.
Each step seemed to speed her up more and more as she dashed from the city with a speed that would bring her sister Lynn to tears of envy.
It was time to cover the world in shadow and bring about a never ending night which even the morning sun itself couldn't vanquish.
And she knew exactly where her quest begun.
The New York Police Department was beyond happy to heap laurels of praise and affection upon their newest and youngest member whose age they cared not a whit about when she came and in a quiet but no less startling yet friendly voice, asked to join.
"Aren't you a little young to think about volunteering for such a dangerous and difficult job" the recruitment officer had asked, visibly quailing before the sight of the sharply dressed young lady in the dark costume who in turn regarded him with an icy stare that seemed to sear into his very soul.
"Yes. Yes I am." Was the nonchalant reply. "But hire me anyway."
"Are you crazy. Fighting crime in this hellhole of a place is dangerous enough for us grown-ups as it is. We can't just let a little kid like you out there, it simply isn't safe."
"I'm not afraid of dying." The girl crisply replied, her voice as void of emotion as when the conversation began. "And before you tell me otherwise. No one is too young to die."
"Well er, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we still can't hire you. Company policy and all that. So er, go home kid please." The grown man was beginning to lose the last vestiges of his confidence and he wanted this talk to be over as quickly as possible before the unexplained fear flooding his system bit by bit overwhelmed him entirely.
"Well first of all, I don't have a home sir so I can't really just go home. Second of all, what if I work for less. If you just let me go, I'll just starve anyway so its not as if you're helping me in anyway by not letting me join. And isn't there a law somewhere that says that child labour is legal if you give me good enough conditions and its of my free will and consent. So I reiterate my earlier request one more time, please give me a position and let me show you what I can do. If you want me to go, I'll go but Sigh, it doesn't mean I won't be conducting my own work to crack down on crime. Just keep that in mind before you make your final decision."
The goth girls confidence in stark contrast to the tall policeman, had not waned in the slightest at the officer's warnings.
The officer had no choice but to feel admiration for this outlandish little girl by this point.
All his warnings about the unpleasantness and dangerousness of the job as well as the obvious fact that she was underage and too young to just think about throwing her life away like this were doing nothing to blunt her passion as an inner fire seemed to blaze within her stronger and stronger by the minute even as they spoke.
"What's a nice kid like you even doing in a place like this?" the man incredulously asked after a while. "Why do you even want this dead end, stupid and life threatening job that pays so badly and works you to the bone so hard?"
He was happy when it took the girl a little while to ponder his question. His smile was soon knocked off his face and replaced by one of complete shock and awe when the carefully deliberated answer came in a surprisingly emotional voice choked with deep sincerity and empathic honesty.
"Well. Before I die (as I know I and everyone around me no doubt eventually will) I want to give something back to the world. Something that isn't selfish and completely for myself and something that shows that even a stupid and selfish person like me does kind of have a heart.
I just want… to prove to myself that I did more than just exist. More than just waste my life worrying about dying to even live it properly or appreciate it.
Its, what my brother. It's what my brother would have wanted if he was here with me now.
It would be my brother's parting wish. It would be my family's parting wish."
The man was flabbergasted. Completely at a loss for words.
Could this daunting figure dressed almost in complete black in that sinister ass suit which he wasn't sure was a formal outfit or a silly Halloween costume that a certain troubled mind was too apathetic to change out off, be another Mother Theresa.
The next Mohandas Gandhi?
Had Martin Luther King come back from the dead and disguised himself as a little girl and was the fetish for a costume with so much black a hidden metaphor for something?
"I want to die so that others can live. I want to die so that others can be happy even if I can't. And I know that the chance that I will ever be properly happy now is very slim.
So please sir, reconsider your decision. It would mean a lot to me and my brother."
She had him cornered. She had all but beaten the idea that if he turned down this generous offer which was impossible for all but the most callous or most stupid of idiots to turn down, he would be awakening a whole pack of savage and rabid sleeping dogs.
And if the old saying his daddy always used to say to him which had always served him well in his career up until now held any grain of truth, then it was never a good idea to wake the sleeping dogs.
The girl hadn't come to beg for a job after finding herself out of pocket or out of boredom.
He wasn't the one with anything to offer her or anything she particularly wanted or needed.
She had come instead to give him a choice between two types of justice.
Two solutions for a problem that would never be solved otherwise.
To put it simply, whether he accepted or refuted the clearly very depressed goth who had so far not moved from where she stood since the conversation began, decided whether the feared Light Yagami or the saintly L would be the one running the crime fighting team for at least the city.
And that was no decision.
"Wait here a minute please." Requested the man as he shakily walked towards a door behind the counter that the girl stood behind.
Today was a good day for the city to finally start to rebuild itself from the pitiful set of ruins it had become.
The new member of the NYPD decided that the part of the state known only as "New Gotham" would be a good place for her to begin her campaign against crime.
And that a rundown apartment in a dark alleyway with no running water, no electricity and no central heating would be the perfect place for her to live.
Even with her reduced pay compared to the rest of the force, her new abode took only miniscule amounts from her salary and this was part of its appeal for her.
Lights and other unnecessary luxuries like a Television never meant much to a dark-loving goth anyway.
It was not necessary to describe how her first mission as well as the others that ensued seemed to go swimmingly well.
The one detail worth mentioning was that by the time the young heroine had been a state trooper for only two months, criminals from around the city left every light in their house on when they went to sleep and many even brought a nightlight so that the nightlight industry had become almost as profitable as the tobacco and alcohol industry almost overnight.
Some criminals didn't go to sleep at all and opted to stay awake all night, chugging down their weight in caffeine and energy drinks while hugging a teddy bear with their eyes closed and praying.
Soon it would become very easy to distinguish many goats from the sheep simply by looking at whether or not they had baggy eyes and uncontrollable yawning fits every few minutes.
Lucy Loud never used her true name when introducing herself lest her family take it in their heads to come looking for her too soon before her righteous mission had progressed.
She instead took the title "Cassandra Lucienne Cain".
A name whose first part meant kindness and newfound love of life.
Whose second part reminded her that a part of her reputation would be forever tarnished as a result of her past mistakes and that it was important that she keep a close eye on herself if she didn't want to go back to being the person of poor character she once was.
And whose third part did little but add some sass and style to an otherwise overly serious and nerdy name which sounded like something even the most educated and wealthy family wouldn't name their daughter.
The new title that the state would soon gift to their newfound guardian, came partly from how she usually stuck to the shadows when pursuing her targets and only came into the light when no other option presented herself.
It came mostly from the shiny emblem on her unusual costume that she had not changed from since her first day on the job and how when she arrived at a place, a lot of the animals especially bats fled away from the place at top speed screeching frantically.
Criminals who the young enforcer quickly caught and threw in prison, shared tales of how long before their kidnapper came for them, the room seemed to drop several degrees in temperature
and they were each gripped by an unexplained fear which caused their muscles to tense up and sweat to come dripping uncontrollably from their brow.
They'd say that it was always from the shadows of the room that she struck, the places that the lights hadn't covered.
They'd look around to see why these strange feelings were coming over them but see nothing and no one.
Not even the sound of anything but their own pained breath would be heard until they finally dared a look behind them to find it was already too late to fight or run or do anything other than accept their fate.
The only eggs the thief who planned to steal the Faberge egg would be getting for a long time would be hard boiled ones , and the only bars the son who killed his father to inherit his vast fortune would be seeing anytime soon would be made of iron.
Cassandra's eyes disarmed any attempt at deception, as many prisoners found out when they had tried to bluff their way out of being captured.
"You've got the wrong man" they would no doubt have liked to say but that baleful stare snatched their voices before they could even begin to try and lie.
Some criminals tried to fight back but often found that long before they could draw their own gun, Cassandra had already drawn hers out.
Never mind how difficult it was to even move a muscle to reach for a weapon when fear was flooding through your body long before the threat was even imminent.
It wasn't even the gun being pointed at them that scared the evildoers into almost complete submission but rather that the apparition who would soon appear before them was no ordinary person.
An angel in devil's clothing was the kindest way many of the city hero's new admirers would often describe her.
A being who had crawled out of the place deep underground which must not be named or spoken about, returned to earth when none of the angels who lived in the clouds gave a damn enough to help in their place.
It wasn't long before a lucrative set of new doors opened for many previously impoverished and starving miscreants who now lived in a very peaceful and happy state which would soon go on to be described as "one of the safest places on earth".
A comic series which would show no signs of seasonal rot or waning popularity even by the time it entered its six hundred and sixty sixth, 1000 paged book entry in its eleventh series would rise to critical acclaim as being one of the only anime's that earned so much money that the creators could afford to draw it in full colour. Perhaps the first of its kind.
Cinema's which were previously empty and in dire risk of closing with every day were now packed so full that even a top of the range website designed to accommodate the extra customers had its server often go down because of how many tickets were getting ordered.
The seats were crammed so full that many people had to stand and even when the prices were tripled or even quadrupled, no customers were lost.
What made each film so spectacular was that the viewers could shed tears of joy at the knowledge that what they saw was no longer a drawing put to the screen, a figment of some artist's imagination which while fun to watch was sadly not real.
No, they now watched a genuine set of documentaries about a real and genuine figure who might be lurking in the darkness of the room, watching them even as they watched the film about her.
The girl who had long given up the name "Lucy Loud" began to change in several ways.
She smiled more, cut her hair to show a pair of radiant blue eyes which were as blue as the midday sky in summer and of shining brilliance.
Changed her outfit from black to very dark purple to become more "Super kid friendly".
Was happier to stand on the pavement when not on duty to answer the questions her newfound admirers heaped upon her.
And was happily and gratefully able to nod when the sculptors asked to adorn the museum, the city square and later the mall and just about every location one could care to name with a statue of their saviour.
It wasn't that Lucy had become more vain or selfish that she was happy to accept these gifts.
But rather she had learned that people did these things for her because they wanted to as her friends.
That friendship was an important part of life that should be embraced and not repulsed and that no one could live by themselves without accepting that they needed to help and in turn be helped forward by others.
Lincoln had tried to teach her these things, but she had been too vain and haughty back then to ever listen.
She had not only refused help and companionship with others back then, but worse still refused to help others.
And by doing that, she had played her own part small as it was in ousting her only brother.
Not that the offerings she accepted didn't do any good for the common people either.
A lot of royalties raised as a result of all the great works made after the now very happy goth girl came into her hands and rather than hoard them to herself, she decided to give it away.
She bought no mansion, no butler, no fancy gadgets save the standard issue flash bangs and pistol the police department gave her and very occasionally a grapple gun bought at the lowest price possible.
No expensive car either. A second hand, plain passenger van with no radio or air conditioning did the job just fine.
She wasn't that kind of "hero". Nor would Lincoln approve if he saw her with those things.
Instead, Arkham Asylum gradually became Arkham Paradise as it was repurposed and proper doctors who actually knew what the heck they were doing were hired to replace the improper ones who usually didn't even have a bachelors degree.
Arkham Elementary and Arkham Academy, even Arkham Kindergarten and daycare soon rose up next to a now much more pleasant to look at main edifice.
Taxes were lowered to encourage more trading and without the constant threat of as many criminals, new trade routes were established towards the neighbouring cities and
"New Gotham" became a place actually worth spending a weekend at.
And a certain green haired man realizing that even he wasn't undefeatable by any means, decided wisely to leave the increasingly utopian city alone and flee.
Not to plan his next scheme but to the beach where one his last safe houses remained where he'd spend the foreseeable future at least with most of his days asleep, occasionally licking ice cream.
Even he needed a break from raising hell every now and again.
A certain other Millionaire wasn't so submissive however.
He didn't like this new stranger who was beating him to every job so that in the evenings he was left with nothing to do and certainly no fans to chase him around.
He didn't like that he now had to fire his butler and sell much of his properties as money that was supposed to go to him, was going to those insignificant puny weaklings much further down the pyramid he had been sitting atop for so long now.
Partly because a picture of this new girl now sold for so much that most of his workers after failing to demand a raise from him, left his office to work for one of the new "Much fairer and much nicer" businesses where they actually treated their employees "Fairly" like "Worthwhile people".
He was gnashing his teeth angrier and angrier.
He was bored to death in his now much smaller house.
And finally one day, his patience reached its end and donning his own dark suit he stormed out to the streets inflamed with pure jealousy and rage which would have made even a Lynn Loud who had lost her softball game and called her brother bad luck seem reasonable in comparison.
"I have your friend. If you have any sense of common human decency and want to see her again, you'll show up at this address when the zeroes line up on the twenty-four-hour clock tonight, sharp.
Do not bring anyone with you if you know what's good for you.
Remember, I am watching you, you evil little pile of scum
(Below was messily scrawled the address in question, even less legible than the rest of the writing)".
Read the note that a constable showed to the former Lucy when her new friend was not found at work or anywhere that morning despite a thorough search.
Lucy nodded gratefully and asked to be left alone so she could reflect upon this clue in peace.
Good friend Kara had only become known to her for a few weeks but with how well they seemed to complement each other, it didn't much matter.
A cheerful and bubbly blonde who grew up a single child apartment in a big city which her friend named quite aptly as "Metropolis", she reminded Lucy a lot of Luan and Leni with a good bit of Luna thrown in too. Fortunately almost no semblance of sporty Lynn unless you counted her above average fitness.
Lucy could understand why the scoundrel who instigated this ploy would pick her of all people to prey upon.
She had after all despite her short entry into the police department, become a supporting character in Lucy "Cassandra's" show and comics.
And since the day that she came to the city to volunteer her services, she had made it clear that it was Lucy that inspired her to this otherwise dead end, poor paying and highly risky job.
It was as if some of her siblings had come back to Lucy just when she thought life couldn't be better for her and she'd been overjoyed to find that Kara wasn't at all impartial to a good bit of poetry and classic literature.
Someone wanted to take all that away though.
Someone wanted the old Lucy Loud back.
The one who liked no one and was not well liked in return.
The one who spent her days wasting valuable time waiting for an early death forgetting that the present was just as important as the past and future.
"I'm going to show up at the appointed time by myself." Lucy told her colleagues.
"Don't follow me"
A firm glare told her fellow workers that she would not take no for an answer and that she was going by herself whether they liked it or not.
And they knew better than to argue when "Cassandra" was the reason why the city was doing as good as it was.
"I'm not afraid of death." Lucy said to herself like a mantra as she arrived at the place stated by the letter. A tall and well-lit apartment in a nice part of the city with clean streets and nice trees growing on the sidewalk.
"To the well-organized mind, death is just another great adventure."
There was no receptionist in the big and immaculate lobby Lucy duly noted as she pressed the button for the lift to summon it.
A homely place with nice sofa's and expensive looking tiling for walls, the architect certainly did have taste.
Whoever wrote that letter was probably expecting her to shy away to the safety of her home.
Of course Lucy was clever enough to realize that this was probably a trap made to outright kill her.
But she'd had enough running away for one lifetime. She'd run away once and for good reason, but not this time.
She had failed her family before, and she'd not fail her new friend who she now saw as in all but blood and genetics, her newest sister.
What would she find when the elevator made it to the top floor where the letter told her to go to.
What would she see when the big iron doors slid open.
And was she too late to save her friend already so that this rescue mission became a matter of vengeance and retribution instead.
Her last thought as the elevator finally slowed down to a stop and the doors slowly began to open was that she hoped that her brother was happy and okay, wherever he ended up going to in the end.
And that if she were to see him again at this moment and in this place, he'd be slightly more proud of her than he would have been if they'd met back at their family home back in royal woods before either of them had fled the place.
So another Loud sister has gone and changed herself for the better with Lincoln out of the picture.
But what became of the other sisters?
Review with your opinions and how you think this entire story will pan out?