Chapter 6: Gridiron Grifter (Part 1)

Hey, Lee Ping here. Do you know what really sucks? Getting set up for the biggest prank in high school history on the first day of the new school year. Even though Luan (who I initially thought was the prime suspect) and I had nothing to do with it, Principal General Barrage gave us a full year of detention, and our parents have grounded us (though I'm pretty sure Luan got off lighter than I did). So that very same day, we snuck out to get proof of our innocence. Despite a slight snag, I found a camera with a picture on it of someone messing with my bag during the prank. If we find a match for this hand, I'll know who set us up. But that probably means another detention escapade…

– –09/11/2012– –

Another school day was upon Lee as he practically leaped out of his mother's SUV onto the schoolyard. The reason behind his jitteriness was his need to share his latest findings to Cam who was just spotted swaggering along the way.

"Yo, Cam!" Lee shouted as he shoved the phone in his swarthy friend's face. "I found this on the camera from the gym." The screen showed the photo in question of someone's hand inside Lee's backpack. "It shows that someone was messing with my bag during the prank."

Before Cam could respond, the two were suddenly interrupted by an approaching Holger who seemed to be rushing up to them while attempting to tie his shoes. He tripped, naturally, and nearly fell over before Lee caught him.

"Oh, my hero-hoekin," Holger swooned playfully, adding in near-flirtatious lip-smacking at his savior. In response, Lee dropped him in annoyance.

"Why the hurry, Holg?" the partial-redhead teenager asked while Holger righted himself.

"Holger no miss one minute of Super-Disco Popular Fun-Time Day!" the funny foreign student expressed extravagantly.

"Did I miss something on the call last night?" Lee directed this question to Cam.

"Oh yeah, you hung up early," Cam recalled. "See, it was something that Holg and I came up with last night, man. It means us ruling the school, based on your new epic prankster status, yo."

"Seriously?" Lee doubted incredulously. "I'm pretty sure that most people have already forgotten about it."

"I wouldn't be so sure, bro," Cam smiled as few more familiar arrivals came into view.

Out of the second Loud family vehicle came Luna and Luan rushing up to meet the boys; Leni was lagging due to her signature "raptor-walk".

"Dude!" Luna shouted. "You're not gonna believe this! Our band website is blowing up! We're getting hundreds of plays on our songs and getting demands to play the song that played during the prank."

"What?! For real?" Lee asked.

"That's not all," Luan added. "Funny Business Incorporated has gotten huge overnight! I'm getting tons of requests for entertainment gigs! Birthdays; bar mitzvahs; family reunions; you name it!"

"That's just in the regular vicinity, hermano," Cam informed the now slack-jawed Lee. "The whole internet is abuzz about the prank you two did. Uh, I mean 'allegedly did'." That little addition came in with Lee and Luan's shared glare directed at him.

"Ja, it's true," Holger piped up. "Even my cousin Dorwal in Gluecannaggin was vlogging about it." He then pulled up a video on his phone of someone that looked a spiky-haired version of Holger talking in a foreign tongue (only the mentions of Lee and Luan's names were understood by everyone else).

'If the news had reached that far,' Lee considered, 'then she might have heard of it too. I'll have to catch her up later.'

"Face it, you guys," Leni brought attention to herself. "This is totes the first day of our lives now!"

"Amen to that, chica!" Cam praised. "We've gotta ride this wave of popularity to the top!"

Within the halls of the school, the evenly split group of sisters by blood and brothers by choice were making their way to their respective homeroom; this was a relatively normal activity for them if not for a few strange moments.

The first encounter was when the Red Tatzelwurm burst out of a locker in front of the group.

"Oh, crap!" Lee panicked. "It wants revenge!"

"What?" Cam, Holger, and Leni asked amidst their shock.

Before the beast could attack, the buzzing sound of the new janitorial staff instead prompted the two-legged creature to scurry away from the approaching hazmat-suited squad.

"Guess we'll have to get used to sights like that," Luna murmured.

Another surprise was in store when a football suddenly landed in Holger's hands. Before he could register what was going on, he was immediately tackled to the ground by a living wall of meat in the form of a muscular teenager in a sports jacket and backward-worn cap.

The rest of the group couldn't even process the assault as the cheers came from the assailant's supporters, both of which were wearing tops of the same green with yellow highlights as the big attacker. Seeing the situation was fueled by misplaced testosterone, the Loud sisters backed away.

"Hey!" Lee scolded at the jerk jock that harmed his friend.

The bully in question rose to face the partial redhead with a sneer painted on his face. "Hey, yourself!" he retorted before tossing the football at Lee who didn't expect the move. As Lee's attempts to catch the ball kept it flopping in the air, he was caught off guard by the jock's tackle that sent him flying into the lockers.

Satisfied with his work, the jock strutted towards his teammates and the cheerleaders that gathered alongside their clique counterparts. "He intercepts and rushes it back for a touchdown," he declared like a sports announcer, "because he is awesome!" This was punctuated with the jock dunking the football onto the floor.

The Loud girls rushed back to the boys, Leni and Luna checking on Holger and Lee respectively.

"Dude, are you feeling alright?" Luna asked Lee as he was coming out of his daze.

"I'm fine," Lee assured her. "Sheesh, Steve seems to have bulked up even more since last year."

"Holger no realize that locomotives could get an education?" Holger mumbled, still stunned.

"Now, that's silly, Holgy," Leni corrected. "Only the trains on TV can learn lessons."

"I guess you could say that jock has gone through some intense train-ing? Hahahahahahaha! Get it?" came Luan's joke on the situation. After being met with groans from her crew, she continued: "But seriously, I'm going to avoid that clique like a plague, if only for my physical well-being."

"That said, you gotta give them credit," Cam interjected. "The Jocks might suck, but that clique knows how to roll, bro."

"It could've been worse," Luna mused. "Lynn could've skipped a grade and joined them already."

This earned a round of awkward laughter among the group, with the facts that they only have a year before the sporty Loud would become even more insufferable and that Lori would be the only one to avoid the inevitable ego bomb.

Out of the sight of both parties in the hall, a mysterious hand had crept through the band of jocks until it reached the backpack of Steve, the jock who caused the altercation. Moving swiftly, the hand grabbed a ragged towel that was protruding from one of the backpack's pockets before vanishing just as quickly. Little did anyone know how this moment of pickpocketing would greatly impact today's events.

While everyone else in homeroom was engrossed in the morning school news, Lee was mostly focused on the image on his laptop's image editing software: the sole lead he had to prove his and Luan's innocence. Sure, he heard the announcement for after-school football team tryouts (as if the celebratory howling of the few jocks he had for classmates would let him forget), but that only elicited a sigh from the partial redhead. This little investigation required his full attention, which is probably why he didn't expect the desk neighbor on his right to invade his personal space.

"Oh, so that's what the hand looks like; it seems a bit scrawny," Leni piped up, causing Lee to flinch.

"Leni!" Lee whisper-shouted, "Could you give me a little warning next time?"

"Oh, sorry, Lee," Leni apologized. "I just never got the chance to see it at last night's special sibling meeting."

"Let me guess; it was about the prank, Luan, and me," Lee assumed.

"How did you know?" the ditzy Loud asked in genuine surprise.

"Just a hunch," Lee stated.

As the two discussed details from that meeting, Holger noticed the classmate to his left was nibbling on a cereal bar. If Holger was considered lanky, the redhead boy was practically a small beanpole.

"Oh, Holger miss breakfast too," the sunglasses-wearing Scandinavian shared with his neighbor. In a show of camaraderie, Holger took out a chocolate-covered strawberry on a dipping fork from his fondue set and handed it to the boy.

Grateful for the offer, the boy received the snack and, in turn, gave Holger his bottle of water to add to the chocolate fondue. "Mmm, soupy!" Holger exclaimed as he poured in his new addition.

As that went on, the news took a turn from the try-outs mention with Tina bringing up the possibility that the same championship-winning team might keep their positions this year only for Chaz to hijack the broadcast as per usual.

"Speaking of football, Tina," the foppish newsboy took over, "star football player Steve Carb might have a run for his money when it comes to who's the most popular this year, according to the latest Chaz's Corner! popularity poll."

As he mentioned said poll, a bar graph appeared on the screen. The graphic included pictures of Steve (the jock bully that messed with Lee and Holger earlier), the tan blonde leader of the Glamazons clique, Lee, and Luan, each with a blue bar that crawled across the screen. According to the lengths of the bars, the order of popularity among the students was as follows in ascending order: the Glamazon leader, Steve, and a tie between Lee and Luan.

Had he not set his tunnel-vision on his laptop, Lee would have been surprised by how his social status has changed statistically. I don't get it, he thought frustratedly. What is it in this picture am I not seeing? Once again, this single-mindedness left him open for interruption close by in the form of his other desk neighbor.

Holger peaked over Lee's shoulder and seemed to spot something off with the picture immediately. "I spy with my guten-haffy-chai red, silvery thingy," he announced, placing his finger on the picture. Unfortunately, this same finger was also covered in chocolate which smudged the screen.

"Oh, oh!" the bespectacled blond exclaimed. "Holger's bad. Me clean." True to his word, Holger wiped away the mess… with a strawberry that he promptly ate after the deed.

With the screen now clear, Lee could now focus on the indicated area to see Holger's clue. "There is something there. Good eye, Holg." He then proceeded to run the image through a zoom function.

"That's amazing, Holgy!" Leni praised.

"Oh, stop," Holger waved off the compliment like it was no big deal.

As the image software worked its magic for the invested trio, the school news had shifted topics with Tina taking the helm.

"Anyway, in far more important news," the young newswoman reported, "it looks like last year's school thief is back and–" Of course, Tina couldn't finish her sentence before being interrupted by Chaz getting into her personal space.

"Here's what the investigators had to say," he remarked before cuing the guy behind the camera to play the intended clip, chuckling all the way.

The entire school was able to see a clip of Tina trying to get a word from the hazmat-suited cleaners that have been dispatched to the investigation. Since their speech is incomprehensible to the human ear, the cleaner being interviewed was not a wealth of information.

"Isn't that an award-winning example of hard-working journalism, folks?" Chaz mockingly praised. Tina in the meanwhile was covering her face in shame and aggravation with her script.

'Why do I suddenly feel the urge to comfort someone and beat someone else up?' Lee thought just before a ding came from his laptop. The image of the hand could finally be seen clearly, revealing a couple of new clues around the middle finger. "A championship football ring? And a red, disgusting scab," Lee analyzed. "Which means whoever messed with my bag –"

"Doesn't use silky lotion to make the smooth happy hands?" Holger theorized as he demonstrated with a bottle of lotion that had since replaced his fondue set.

"Ooh, could you share that, please?" Leni asked. "I forgot to moisturize my elbows."

"Yeah, that," Lee affirmed as he passed the bottle between his blond desk-mates. "But more importantly –" That was as far as he could get when his face suddenly hit by a spitball.

Most of the boys in the class, including the two Jocks present, all cheered "Field goal!" at the act.

As the soggy projectile slid off his visage, Lee only looked on with a scowl to convey just one word on his mind: "Seriously?".

At Ezekiel Mann Middle School, the students were all seated in the gym/auditorium for an impromptu assembly. Within the sprawl, Lincoln and Lynn managed to snag some seats next to each other while being flanked by some of their friends.

"I wonder what's so important that we need an assembly on the second day of school, Bonnie," Lincoln whispered to his best friend, a bespectacled black girl.

"Maybe they'll announce the school will be getting a budget increase in the department of the arts?" Bonnie speculated.

"Of course, you nerds would think that," Lynn mocked. "They're probably going to add a new sport to the program."

"I hope it's lacrosse!" shouted out the headband-wearing girl next to her.

"I'm pretty sure the P.E. teacher would have just emailed that to us," Bonnie countered as she pushed her glasses up.

"And I'm sure that if the music teacher would've just emailed us that they can afford the rights to that stupid, baby dinosaur song," retorted the headband girl.

"What do you have against Blarney's theme song, Robbie?" Bonnie asked, feeling insulted.

"It's a total rip-off of 'Yankee Doodle'," the now-named Robbie growled. "Not to mention that it's super annoying."

"I assure you that's just a mere hiccup in the vast discography the Blarney franchise has to offer," Bonnie debated. "Besides, that's only a fraction of the songs I'd want to perform for in the school's band."

"Since you're the bestie of my bestie's brother, I'm gonna level with you: don't expect to play licensed music here," Robbie warned.

"Calm down, guys," Lynn pleaded. "For all we know, this is could just be a normal assembly to tell us about the BATs."

"The 'Big Academic Tests'?" Lincoln thought aloud. "I don't think so. Something stinks, and it's surprisingly not you after a meatball sub bender."

"Hey, I deserved to treat myself after that championship win, Stinkoln!" Lynn barked.

The chatter ceased as the school's principal came up on stage; the lady resembled a Hollywood starlet from years gone by dressed in modern clothes. "Hello, students. It's me, Principal Kowalczyk, and I'm sure you're all wondering why you're here instead of homeroom."

"Ain't that the truth!?" shouted someone who was immediately shushed by the rest of the student body.

"Well, our sister school that most of our seniors will be attending, Alexander Nigma High, had a situation of on-site vandalism yesterday," Principal Kowalczyk continued. "The incident has caused both schools to reevaluate their current levels of security. In my opinion, it speaks volumes that two students were able to do set up something so reprehensible before A. Nigma High opened and unleash on the staff and faculty on the principal's first day."

Lynn and Lincoln could practically feel the number of glares their fellow students were giving them. Even with the foreknowledge that the Prank would socially impact that anyone associated with the accused, the two siblings and their friends squirmed at the unwanted attention upon them.

"Regardless, the city's school committee has decided that all campuses will undergo intermittent improvements to all security measures," Principal Kowalczyk continued. "The last things we need are any would-be copycats or other mischiefs. Speaking of, I think now is the best time to go over our guidelines of conduct; these will be enforced in order of severity." She then took out a several page-long document of the new rules; this was met by a series of groans from her captive audience. "Or, I could give you the taste of discipline by sentencing you all to detention this afternoon." A hush fell over the crowd. "I'm glad to see we're on the same page. Rule 1 –"

The students of Ottington Elementary had to endure a similar announcement from their considerably less charismatic, uptight Principal Kissinger. What was seemingly uncalled for was him singling out the Loud siblings (both past and present students) as repeat offenders of these newly implemented restrictions. This public shaming would be uncouth to most, though this was Principal Kissinger's airing out his grievances. Ever since the first set of Louds enrolled a decade ago, the man could never have a moment of peace due to their antics. In a way, he felt that the notoriety had finally caught up to them, even if one of his better alumni (that Ping fellow) had to go down with them. Unlike most people, he was among the fringe that believed Lee Ping was just a patsy in a Loud family scheme (he couldn't professionally voice this opinion on the intercom, of course).

Thanks to this, the Prank's presence loomed over the four Loud sisters as they were subject to various reactions from their peers. It wasn't until the start of their lunchtime that they could meet up in the halls to compare figurative notes.

"Sigh," Lucy groaned. "This is the first time I wished that I was still invisible by everyone. Even Mrs. Rosenblum was giving me the stink-eye in class."

"You think that's embarrassing?" Lola countered. "My pageant rivals were making jokes about how I'm more of a jester than a princess!"

"Eh, it's not all bad," Lana shrugged. "My mess-mates were so impressed on how gross the prank was, from what their older brothers and sisters told them, that we're all being praised as the Rank-Queens of Ottington."

"Of course, you'd see that as a plus," Lola gagged. "This is just like Lori said last night: they either love us or hate us for this."

"I must profess that this is the first time I've been beholden to the fact that my chronological colleagues were unable to grasp the severity of the situation," Lisa admitted. "As a result, my standing in the class has remained relatively unchanged."

"Lucky," Lucy and Lola spoke simultaneously, prompting them to look at each other in confusion.

"Anyway, it would be best that we sit together in the cafeteria," Lucy proposed. "If we're gonna bear the full brunt of this in there, it might as well as be as a family."

And with that, the four sisters each took a deep breath and opened the double-doors.

Back at A. Nigma High, the teenage Loud sisters have reconvened in the cafeteria; their thoughts were filled with the news that Leni shared.

"So, the hand in that picture belongs to one of the jocks?" Lori questioned.

"It's totes true," Leni confirmed. "No one else would be wearing a championship ring, even if it looked scrawny."

"So, what happened to Lee and Holger wasn't just them being jerks," Luan deducted. "If they were behind the prank, they might have redoubled their efforts to make our school life a living hell."

"I don't know about that," Luna thought aloud. "They could've messed with us to in the halls earlier."

"They probably didn't because that would make them look bad for bullying girls like that," Lori assumed before making a slight chuckle. "Never thought we'd be spared by sexism."

"Hey, chicas!" the familiar voice of Cam called out to them from soda dispenser with Holger and Lee. The girls took that as an invitation to join them.

"I take it that Leni caught you up?" Lee asked as he was filling his cup with his fizzy drink of preference before taking a swig.

"You mean how one of the jocks have set you up while the other is trying to kill you?" Luan summed up. "I think we all witnessed the second half."

"Si, that's just what happens whenever the natural order of cool in school is challenged," Cam educated.

"Still, they already got me in trouble," Lee complained. "Why would this guy bother being so petty to pour salt in the wound?" This was unintentionally punctuated by his ill-timed burp.

It didn't help that a certain large student just happened to walk into view, and his lunch was in the range of Lee's belch. "Did you just burp on my food?" Biffy growled.

Everyone but Lee and Luan started backing away while the latter two seemed to have relieved smirks.

"It's cool, guys; we're buds now," Lee assured before turning his attention to the resident bully. "Biff, whassup?"

Unfortunately for Lee, Biffy wasn't in the mood for fraternizing as he glowered at the partial redhead. "Do you have any idea how much bacteria leaves the mouth after a gaseous emission?" he rhetorically grilled. "It'd be more hygienic to eat off the floor!" Lee and Luan's smiles evaporated as Biffy's massive frame made an intimidating march towards the former.

"Looks like I'd better make like a river and run," Luan blurted out before abandoning Lee to his fate.

'Even knowing that she wasn't behind the prank, that still hurts,' Lee thought as he backed away from what he was certain to be the beatdown of his life. He would realize too late that a lunch line was formed behind him, and the next person was conveniently facing backward. Lee bumped into the unfortunate student, causing a domino effect of everyone behind him crashing into each other and being covered with the splattered remains of wasted meals and displaced food displays. 'Yeah, there's no way I'm not getting blamed for that,' Lee self-berated as he used his free hand to cover his face.

At the end of the messy trail stood Vice Principal Victoria who bore witness to the chaos and singled out the assumed culprit. "Biffy T. Goldstein," she reprimanded her usual suspect, "do we really have to go through this on a daily basis? Surely, you must know the drill by now."

"'Straight down to detention after school,'" Biffy quoted one of their many previous encounters. "Yes, Vice Principal Victoria." He left with a final glare at Lee.

After a short work visit from the strange cleaner crew, the area surrounding the cafeteria counters was back to normal, and the sundry septet had just collected their lunches. Their next bit of surprise was the sight of their fellow students looking at them intently from the dining tables; some were even waving at them.

"Well, how about that?" Lori observed. "All eyes are on us now, and not for something literally embarrassing."

"We can't just keep them waiting," Cam added. "They're desperate to see where the new kings and queens of the school will sit."

"Stay focused," Lee demanded. "We need to get to the popular kids' table so I can check the jocks' hands for scabs."

"Ugh," Luna gagged. "That's not something I want to do while eating."

"Says the girl who looks at her guitar callouses with pride," Luan teased, earning a jab from her musician sister.

"Lee, is not she is your girlfriend?" Holger suddenly brought up. True to the Norse boy's word, the pink-garbed Brandy had just entered the cafeteria.

"Wait, what?!" the three elder Loud sisters asked in shock, with Luna's outburst being a few octaves higher.

"You know what?" Luan piped up. "I think we'll leave this to the boys." She then proceeded to carefully move her stunned sisters away (she didn't want to spill her lunch before she spilled the beans after all).

"That's going to bite me in the butt, isn't it?" Lee asked himself.

"Leaping!" Brandy shouted as she approached him.

"It's 'Lee Ping,'" the teen in question corrected. "Two words: Lee and –"

"Mm-hm, whatever," Brandy brushed off. "You and I are, like, going to be the talk of the school: one half of the infamous prank duo and the lady by his side. People want to see us: you and me, together. Eating, talking, laughing, etc. Hello? Now?" This was a roundabout way for her to demand Lee to sit with her as a good boyfriend should.

'Might as well go along with it; at least I have an excuse to be there,' Lee inwardly sighed as he followed Brandy to her clique's table.

"OK, dude," Cam whispered to Holger. "Let's just sit down and blend in." The teen's mind was still set on the perks of popularity.

The patrons of the popular table had their inane conversation interrupted by Brandy's "Scooty, scoot, scoot", bringing attention to the redhead accompanying her that was vying for a seat. Unfortunately, they weren't as receptive.

"There's no way he's sitting at our table," Steve declared on behalf of the rest of the clique.

Luckily for her "boyfriend", Brandy didn't pay the quarterback any mind and just shoved Lee into a seat (right next to the said detractor for extra insult). "Don't mind him," she reassured her forced beau. "He's just upset that the school thief stole his stupid, stinky 'lucky' towel."

This bit of exposition struck Steve's nerves. "He's not stupid! He's my Bub-Bub!" he growled before his face contorted into a whimper. "And he's been in my family for generations!"

"Um, I know that this is an emotional moment for you," interrupted the Glamazon leader seated next to him, "But could you not cry on my sashimi?" This brought the rest of the table to laughter.

'OK, I know she didn't get that from this cafeteria,' Lee thought while distracted by the girl's plate before realizing that he had the optimal time to check the hands of the football teammates. Unfortunately for him, most of the jocks had their hands under the table or hidden between crossed arms in Steve's case. 'Can't the universe do me a favor just once?'

In a surprise move, Steve rose and pointed an accusatory finger at the perceived intruder. "You!" he bellowed. "I bet this was one of your little pranks to throw me off for tryouts! You and that freshman Loud."

"What?" Lee asked, shocked at the baseless accusation. "I didn't even know about your towel until I got here."

"Oh, so now you're denying it?" Steven pressed on. "You better take a hike, Ping, or we'll show you what we do with people who annoy us!" To illustrate his point, he directed a death glare at Cam and Holger who have yet to join the table. Not wanting to start anything, the duo made a swift retreat. This action brought a new target of the jocks' ire to come into view: the skinny redhead that sat next to Holger in homeroom.

"Yeah, like Ed the Waterboy!" shouted a Jock that was sporting a small mohawk. In that instant, he, Steve, and another jock sprung from their table and dogpiled on the hapless Ed. Lee cringed as the bullying escalated to the jocks giving Ed a hanging wedgie.

"You guys been working out?" Ed grunted. "You got that one cranked in good."

'Man, this must've happened so many times that he's gotten used to it,' Lee observed the sight with pity. 'Maybe if I bust the jock that did the prank, their ego would be struck hard enough to make them go easy on the guy.'

Luan had successfully guided her older sisters to a mostly secluded table a good distance away from the popular clique. "OK, I think we're far away enough for you to have your episodes," she informed them.

"OK, what the what was that about?!" Luna shouted.

"When and how did they get together?" Lori demanded. "This literally makes no sense."

"It kind of happened when Lee and I first ran off to the gym," Luan explained. "We couldn't get in, and that girl sort of ganged up on us and claimed Lee for herself."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Leni asked.

"I couldn't," the comedienne confessed. "She threatened me to shut my yap, and that was after she assumed we were already a couple." That caused Luna to twitch an eye. "Which I denied obviously."

"OK, then," Leni happily accepted the explanation.

"But Lee was free to spread the news, and we know he already told Holger," Lori deducted. "Why wouldn't he say anything to us? And for that matter, why didn't he reject her?"

"I don't know," Luan admitted. "The only thing we can do is ask him." She then focused on her sisterly roommate. "Luna, are you going to be OK?"

"I don't know, dude," the young rocker sighed. "I feel like I've been hit with a case of the Moody Blues." She then steeled herself. "What matters now is that we need to prove your innocence so things can back to normal." 'Even if it means nipping Lee's new relationship in the bud.'

"My bag! Someone stole my bag!"

All of the cafeteria conversations came to a screeching halt as they heard that cry, causing the occupants to look around at each other with confusion. This was short-lived as a new element made its presence known in the form of the school's cyborg principal bursting through the double-doored entrance.

"Ladies and degenerates," Principal Barrage sounded off while marching through the room. "This kind of tommy-gun-foolery might have been fine and dandelions blowing in the mid-summer breeze last year. But—" He cut off his rant as his cybernetic eye scanned the cafeteria and spotted two significant targets. "Well, la-dee-da. Do I detect a couple of convicts in my cafeteria?"

The ex-military man marched over to his first mark, Lee. "Tell me, sunshine on a stick," he demanded of the redhead youth, getting right in his face, "what is the major malfunction preventing you from understanding that every free moment of your life is to be spent in detention?"

"Um, what about lunch?" Lee asked, partially hoping that would convince the man. 'I mean, what responsible faculty would deny a student of lunch?'

Unfortunately for Lee, Barrage's answer consisted of slapping the boy's lunch onto his shirt and saying "It's on you."

'Well played,' Lee inwardly sighed as he got up and followed the hulking general.

"Now, how about we reunite you with your partner-in-crime, shall we?" Barrage asked rhetorically as the two walked over to the table that stationed the Loud sisters, who all paled at the sight. "Well, look at our resident comedian; loitering with her kinfolk without a care in this humdrum world." As he did with Lee before, he aligned his face directly in front of Luan's. "What in your teeny-weeny mind has convinced you that your free time is to be spent outside of the detention room?"

"I don't know, Gene-roll Barrage," Luan quipped in hopes that the situation would be lighter. "Crumb to think of it, I'm sure that lunch would be an exception, right?"

"Yeah, I already tried that," Lee pointed out, using his hands to address his soiled shirt. "It didn't work." That's when his eyes met Luna's; the prevalent emotion that could be conveyed from the girl's luminous orbs was intense chagrin, presumably for him. This lasted a few seconds before she brought her head down to the table, covered by her arms.

"Young lady, I'm not a fan of having my buttons pushed," Barrage growled. "And no, that's not referring to my mechanical parts. Now, allow me to escort the pair of you to where you belong."

"Yes, sir," Luan sighed defeatedly as she got up and followed the cyborg and her fellow detentionaire out of the cafeteria. 'Man, Drill Sergeant Chrome-Dome is really making it difficult to for me to not rib on him,' she thought, lamenting her pun-restricted predicament.

"This is totes unfair," Leni bemoaned.

"I know," Lori agreed. "Even that bully only had detention for literally just after school." She then turned to Luna, who was still down in the dumps. "Do you want Luan's serving as seconds? It could help ease the pain like comfort food."

Luna just mumbled in the negative.

"Oh, I'm down for comida extra!" came Cam's voice as he and Holger approached the table.

This earned them a glare from Lori.

"Uh, what did we miss?" Cam asked awkwardly.

Within the dimly lit detention room, Lee and Luan had shared a few moments of silence before the latter spake.

"So, you didn't waste much time telling your 'bros' about your new relationship status," Luan revealed.

"Could you blame me?" Lee sighed. "I had to destress to someone, plus it's not like I could share this with your sisters."

"Yeah, because letting them find that out in a candid way was obviously the better option," Luan shot back sarcastically. "Why didn't you just break it off with the girl?"

"As if I could get a chance," Lee countered. "The last time I talked to Brandy before lunch was when she confronted us yesterday."

"Fine, I'll give you that," Luan conceded. "But you are going to end things with her, right?"

"Why are you so insistent on this?" Lee wondered.

"Well, uh… you two don't seem to be that good of a match. If anything, the whole relationship could burn down," Luan explained. 'Can't just blurt out Luna's crush to him.'

"Yeah, you have a point," Lee admitted. "I could already see myself with a few certain people besides her anyway." 'Though it's kind of hard to choose just one.'

"Anyone that I might know?" Luan teased.

As if to spare him of further embarrassment, Lee's phone made a notification noise, alerting him to a new message. "Looks like we'll have to finish this later." After taking a glance at the screen that caused his pupils to expand, Lee hurriedly moved to a seat near the back of the room. "Private conversation; you know how it is," he explained.

Before Luan could question the odd behavior, her phone got a message of its own. 'Lori doesn't miss a beet, even during lunch,' she quipped to herself after seeing her eldest sister's name in the notification. She then proceeded to text her back:

Lori: So, what did you find out?
Luan: Well, it's not that he didn't want to call the thing off with the Brandy-girl. He just never got the chance.
Lori: I see. For now, their "relationship" is just for show. I'll be sure to tell Luna that she doesn't have anything to worry about.
Luan: Yeah, about that… =\
Lori: What?
Luan: Lee might've mentioned that he could see himself with a few other people other than Brandy.
Lori: :‑| Did he now?
Luan: He could just be messing with me on that point, but you never know.
Lori: Uh, this is literally frustrating. Let's just accept that the Brandy situation as "to be dissolved".

At the back of the room, Lee was engaged in a joint text with his two brothers-from-other-mothers:

Cam: Bro, you've gotten into some hot water now.
Holger: Holger is being confused. Is Lee becoming a soup?
Cam: That's not what I meant, Holg. Lee, the Loud hermanas aren't liking your new girlfriend. Well, that and the fact that you've got a girlfriend.
Lee: I kinda figured given that Luan was interrogating me on their behalf a few moments ago.
Cam: So, what are you gonna do?
Holger: Oh! Will you be doing the breaking up with Brandy of Silvers?
Lee: That's gonna have to wait until I find a free moment here, which doesn't seem likely if our new principal has anything to say about it.
Lee: Let's focus on some less awkward. Could you do me a solid and help me find the scab-hand among the jocks during afternoon classes?
Holger: Holger will do!
Cam: Sure, man. But there are only so many of them in our year, so we might not get everyone. What about the rest?
Lee: We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Thanks, guys.

The partial redhead shut his phone's screen off with a relieved sigh. 'Let's hope I can get the perp before the end of the day.'

"So…" Luan alerted her cell-mate, "Anything you'd like to share?"

"Just recruiting the boys to help find the jock that set us up," he answered half-truthfully. "You?"

"Just some sister-to-sister talk," Luan responded in kind. "You know how it is?"

"Ha. Yeah…" Lee confirmed, slightly reminiscing about all the times that the Loud sisters would leave him high and dry for some conversation that he couldn't be privy.

"Something just came to me," Luan thought aloud. "How are we going to keep track of the players to narrow down Mr. Scab?"

"Good question," Lee mused. As if to answer, both of their phones rang with a sudden email ping, drawing the owners to check. "Uh, did you just get an email from Lisa?"

"Yeah," Luan confirmed. "We should probably open it now." And so they did:

From: OttingtonUniversity
To: RedRebelLee Anigmahigh; LaughOutLoud Anigmahigh
Subject: Useful Tool

Greetings both biological and non-relative sibling units,

I've attached an application that might be able to aid you in today's investigation if you so choose. Please feel free to share it with your compatriots as any updates will be synchronized with all users.

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Lee hastily installed the app and was greeted by an interactive chart containing the A. Nigma Tatzelwurms team of 2011-2012 that was organized with faces, names, jersey numbers, and scab checkboxes (assumedly there to eliminate those from the list).

"Wow!" Lee exclaimed. "This is amazing!" He then took a moment to think before opening his mouth again. "Wait a minute. How did she figure out exactly what we needed?"

Another email arrived from the genius Loud with only the following sentence: "Don't question it; just be grateful."

"Well, that shut me up," the partial redhead remarked. "Might as well send it to the rest of the gang." And with that, he forwarded Lisa's email to the rest of their little crew.

Unbeknownst to the members of the email chain, the message was intercepted by two parties with vastly different goals.

'Well, this is a surprise,' thought a certain Shadowy Figure upon reading the email. 'First, that lone skateboard in the hall yesterday, and now this email being sent from someone at my alma mater.' They sighed with a chuckle. 'This would've been so much easier for those kids if they just served their sentence.'

"Interesting piece of work," Agent Chrono-Flower commented as she observed the coding in the attached app. "The little genius integrated a special type of spyware into this app that would go undetected in operating systems in this era. Oh, what have we here." At that point, she came across an annotation within the code directed to whoever managed to crack the spyware.

"'If you are reading this, then you are an associate of my backers as only they could provide the technology capable of decrypting this program. If possible, I'd like to discuss the matter of the five youths that were present within my neighborhood the prior week. Under the assumption that they're fellow operatives, I need them to have as little presence as possible while my elder female sibling unit and my older nearby resident orchestrate their plans,'" the agent read aloud with a frown. 'Those kids really underestimated how smart Lisa was back in the day – well, technically "now" anyway. Regardless, she needs a response before her paranoia hinders both our projects.'

Thus, Agent Chrono-Flower crafted a detailed letter to the young genius to inform her of the reasons why her five wards should be considered a non-issue in the grand scheme.

The school day had come to close as the hall was full of students making their way to either their homes or after-school activities. It was in this small reprieve when Lee and Cam were able to exchange info.

"Sorry, bro," Cam apologized, "Couldn't get any good views of the Jocks in my classes."

"Well, you had better luck than me," Lee admitted. "I didn't have any of them in the afternoon. When you truly need someone, they're nowhere to be seen."

"Don't worry, ese," Cam reassured. "You can continue the gross scab search tomorrow."

"Yeah, here's a funny thing about the skin's recovery process," Lee exposited, "scabs can heal rather quickly. By tomorrow, it could be gone."

"True, but if he's a picker, it could be there for a while," Cam countered.

"If I hadn't had to babysit Lana before, that would have grossed me out a lot more," Lee gagged.

"At least you don't have to live with her," came the voice belonging to the eldest Loud daughter as she and her younger sisters arrived behind the duo. "I take it that you still haven't found our perp?"

"No, Lori, we haven't," Lee lamented. "At this rate, our only lead will be gone without a trace." He then caught eyes with Luna once more before they both turned away, each using their right hand to awkwardly rub the other arm. 'I desperately need to clear this up.'

'I thought I would be ready to face Lee,' Luna thought. 'but this is too much, too fast. Please save me from '

"Wait, what's Holger doing over there?" Leni brought up, drawing the group's eyes towards the scene about to unfold.

Holger approached two of the jocks (Steve and the one with the low mohawk) in his usual happy-go-lucky demeanor. "Holger wish many lucks and gutenhagen on your football rehearsals," he wished to them, extending a hand out for a high-five.

The mohawk-jock gave him the desired handclasp, which allowed Holger to grab the hand to get a good look at the area around his ringed finger. "Ha!" the mohawk jock growled when he overpowered Holger and slammed him into a locker. "It's called 'tryouts', freak!" On that note, he and Steve walked off to the school's sports field.

"No scab," Holger bemoaned as Lee, Cam, and the Louds arrived on the scene.

"Well, at least some of us is getting some actual work done. Nice work, Holg," Lee congratulated while taking out his phone. With Lisa's chart app running, he selected a checkmark to the corresponding jock. "That clears Trevor from our list; only 21 left to go. If only there was some way to get the rest before tomorrow…"

"Wait a minute," Luan expressed a spark of brilliance. "The tryouts! If we can get someone on our end to join in, we can get a kick-off on the real prankster and score a touchdown on this mystery!"

"Eh, not your best material," Luna critiqued.

"It's not like I came up with that fumble…" the usually punny Loud mumbled.

"Either way, it's a solid plan," Lee commended. "It's just a matter of who among us can do this."

"Sorry, but I'll have to decline," Lori excused. "It's my turn to pick up the rest of our siblings from school."

"Eh, familia comes first after all, so that's fair," Cam agreed. "It's not like you'd stand a chance out there anyway."

"What was that, Martinez?" Lori scolded with venom at the shorter boy.

"Nothing," Cam choked as though the fear of God was instilled into him.

"I guess I could hang out on the sidelines to snoop around when the players take a break," Luna brought up. "But I doubt I could realistically play the field."

"How about Cam and Holgy?" Leni suggested. At the point, Lee and the Loud sisters turned their heads into the aforementioned teens' direction.

"Hey, I object being forced into this!" Cam objected. "Tell her, Holg. Holg?" That's when he realized that the Scandinavian youth wasn't next to him.

The group didn't have to wait long for Holger to return to them in a flashy way: springing out of his locker dressed up in a blue-yellow football uniform, which not only wasn't the team's colors but was designed for international football. "You are having Holger's aid for this search!" he proclaimed.

The rest of the group stared with simultaneous eye twitching.

"Well, that's one," Lee affirmed. "Cam?"

"I'm telling you, Holmes!" Cam argued. "That's not going to happen…" His voice trailed off as he followed Lee's suddenly outstretched hand to a sight that changed his mind: a trio of the school's all-female cheerleaders who just happened to walk past them. "On second thought, I'm on board," he chipperly agreed.

"When all else fails, you can count on that 'Latin libido' to turn the tide," Lee whispered to Luan.

"Since when have you gotten into the manipulation game?" Luan probed hushedly.

"It's worked for you girls for years, so why not?" Lee responded to her before turning to the rest of the group.

"Well, looks like you've got things settled," Lori summed up. "You can fill in Leni and me later." With that said, the group split up to their different destinations: Lee & Luan to the detention room; Cam, Holger, & Luna to the football field, and Lori & Leni to the student parking lot.

'With any luck,' the two detentionaires thought. 'The true perp will be found, and we can finally get our lives back.' Unfortunately, the pair failed to recognize what wise people say about "best laid plans".

Thanks again to mon-ra for being my beta-reader and friend.