I'm back with Chapter 4 of Actor. I would like to thank the commenters for their support, it really encourages me to keep going. However, I would like to say to the commenter that recommended The 'Cest kids' to never again recommend Flag 1991. I've read his content, its the most sick and twisted literature I have ever read. Beyond that, enjoy Actor, Chapter 4: The First Act!

Disclaimer: I do not own The Loud House.

Luan sat for what seemed to be an eternity in the passenger seat, holding the gun in her hand. It felt surprisingly light. Wanting to see if this was an actual gun and not a fake, Luan ejected the magazine.

It was real. Inside the magazine were ten 9 millimeter rounds. Luan checked to see if the safety was on. She thought of what to do. She could leave the gun where she found it, Chunk would never know. She could forget this whole thing had happened. But. But such an opportunity would never happen again.

Hastily looking around to make sure that no one was looking, she stuck the gun in her pocket, grabbed the box of guitar picks and left the van.

She walked back to the garage on what could only be described as auto-pilot as thousands of thoughts ran through Luan's head. She had stolen a gun! An honest to god gun! A thing that killed people! A thing that kills people. A thing that kills people she used it on.

Luan had reached the garage still following this train of thought. She nudged the door open with the toe of her foot. Luna was waiting inside for her replacement pick while the rest of the band was talking in the back, most likely about Mick Swagger.

Luna reached into the box and pulled out a pick. "Thanks Dude," Luna said.

"Your welcome," Luan replied in a distracted tone, her eyes not meeting Lunas. Luan left the box of picks on a table on the side of the garage and turned around to leave. As Luan exited, Luna noticed something silver poking out of her pocket.

"Eh," she just said and shrugged. She turned to grab her guitar and to start practicing again. It was probably just a hand zapper or some other prank.

Luan had rushed straight to her room, not saying hello to anybody. Once she got to her room she took a stool and propped it against the door handle. She took out a spare sheet from the closet and placed it in front of the vent to keep Lucy from looking inside the room if she was lurking about. Then she closed the blinds, giving the room absolute privacy.

Luan turned back to the bed, where she collapsed on it, lying face up at the bunk. She was thinking of what she was going to do. Her biggest concern at the moment was keeping the gun a secret. Being in a family as big as hers, one had to go to extreme lengths to conceal information from the others. One slip up and it would all be over.

But that won't happen. She had moved through the house too fast for anyone to discern what was in her pocket, even if it had been uncovered. After that, there were her cameras. Only she had footage of them, but to be safe, it would be best not to carry the gun anywhere in the house. Then thinking about cameras, Luan considered Lisa. Lisa monitoring their bathroom habits had been a one time thing, but Luan made a mental note to check the room for hidden cameras frequently.

Then after that, there was Lucy and Luna. Lucy could spy on the room through the vent, and covering it up, as Luan was doing now, would undoubtedly raise suspicion. And Luna, being her roommate, could search the room while Luan was not there. Luan's eyes darted across the room, looking for somewhere, anywhere, that Luna would not check.

Her eyes fell on a box peeking out of the open closet. Moving towards it, she saw it was her box for practical jokes and pranks that in some way crossed a line with the family. "Danger," it read, "Over the top pranks inside." Knowing her family had a healthy fear of what lay inside the box, Luan was sure that no one would willingly come close to it. Perfect.

Now that her immediate concern of hiding the gun had been dealt with, Luan took the time to admire the gun. She slid her hand into her pocket and grabbed the gun. She pulled it out slowly, not noticing the safety had been disengaged when it had snagged on the rim of the pocket. She held it in front of her, with the side of it facing her. It was the color of charcoal, with a coarse plastic body and smooth hammer covering the top. She held it out in front of her, as if about to fire. As if subconsciously, her finger squeezed of its own accord.

BANG!

Luan yelped and dropped the gun onto the carpeted floor, making a muffled Whumpf. Firing the gun in an enclosed space had half-deafened her.

"Oh Fuck," she whispered to herself. Scrambling for the gun, she re-engaged the safety and chucked it under her bed. She then lunged to the door, throwing the stool out of the way and opened the door. In the hallway was Lincoln, Lola, Lana and Lori, who was holding her phone in one hand and covering it in the other.

"What the heck was that?" asked Lincoln.

"I was posting something on my channel while playing it and accidentally maxed the volume," Luan quickly said.

"Well, turn it down," Lori snapped. "I'm literally calling Bobby."

Satisfied by this explanation, the others went back to whatever they had been doing before. Luan stepped back and slammed the door shut. "Holy shit, that was too close," she thought to herself.

Looking up at the wall she saw where the bullet had landed. I had made an impact hole the size of a dime. Way too noticeable. She looked around the room for something to cover it up. She found a photo frame, a picture of herself and Luna having a puppet show. Luan was about one at the time, and Luna two. Luan was using a sock puppet with a smiley face on while Luna had a puppet that looked like Mick Swagger. Luan moved the photo across the room and over the bullet hole.

She then took the gun and placed it carefully at the bottom of the prank box, then placed the prank box at the back of the closet. She took off the sheet covering and opened the blinds. Confidant that the room had looked the same as before, Luan sat back down on her bed and let out a deep sigh of relief.

Lincoln was walking through the hallway, making his way downstairs to check out the new Ace Savvy cards he had bought. He was almost to the stairs when Luan suddenly walked out of her room. She paused when she saw Lincoln and asked, "Hey Lincoln, how are you

doing?"

Lincoln noticed her voice had an awkward, shaky quality to it, the kind she would get when excited or nervous.

"I'm doing nice. I was about to go downstairs and play with these new cards."

"Can I play?" asked Luan. Lincoln almost imperceptibly narrowed his eyes. Luan, or any of his other sisters for that matter, never usually asked if they could get involved in what he was doing, especially with such enthusiasm. This most likely meant that she wanted something in return.

Playing along, Lincoln agreed. They walked to the dining room and took opposing seats at the table. Lincoln took the pack out of the plastic wrapping and took the deck of cards out.

"What card game should we play?"

"Uh, how about Tonk?" Luan answered.

"Yeah, that's a good game to play." Lincoln replied. He removed the two jokers and shuffled the deck. He placed the deck in front of Luan to cut. Luan just stared into space, not noticing the cards in front of her.

"Uh, Luan?" Lincoln prompted. "You need to cut the deck."

Luan snapped out of it, grabbing the top part of the deck and taking it off, placing it to the left of the other half.

"Sorry about that, I was just thinking." Luan said.

Lincoln was now suspicious. Something was definitely bothering Luan. He would find out, after the game was over. He placed the top half below the bottom and dealt out five cards to himself and Luan.

He had gotten an ace of spades, with Ace Savvy on it of course, a 3 and 9 of clubs and 6 and 9 of hearts. A good hand to start with.

As they played Lincoln noticed that the cards in Luan's hands were shaking slightly and she had yet to crack a joke about anything. She was acting the way she had when they broke that vase Mom and Dad had gotten for their wedding. "But it was most likely because of a bad day at school," Lincoln thought. After all, it's not as if she did anything wrong.

At this point Lincoln had discarded a suit of 3's and Luan had discarded a straight of king, queen and joker clubs. They were now picking and discarding, trying to get the lowest cards. Lincoln had just discarded a 9 of hearts and had replaced it with a 4 of spades.

Confidant that he had beaten Luan, he called, "Down," and threw his cards face up on the table. Luan did likewise and revealed a pair of aces. Ding Dang it. He started to pick up the cards and place them back in a deck to be put away while at the same time watching Luan's face. She was still distracted, not acknowledging her win.

Thinking now was the time to ask what was going on, he asked, "Luan, is there something wrong?"

"No, nothings wrong," Luan quickly answered.

"Well, you've been distracted by something since you asked me to play. I know that something is wrong."

Luan's eyes darted around the room, never meeting Lincoln's eyes, looking like a cornered animal. Then her eyes lit up a little and she looked him in the eye.

"I was just thinking about this famous actor, Julia Dreyfus. Did you know she's coming to Royal Woods next week?"

"Uh, no, I didn't," Lincoln said.

"Well, she's very admired at the Theatre Club. I hear that she's going to play the part of Ace Savvy's love interest in the Ace Savvy movie."

Lincoln perked up at this. If this actor was going to play such a part in the Ace Savvy movie, he had to meet her.

"Wow, really?" Lincoln asked, with very noticeable excitement. "When is she coming?"

"She's coming on Wednesday and leaves on Friday." Luan answered.

Lincoln grabbed the deck of cards from the table and ran up to his room. He grabbed his purple and green walkie talkie. He pressed the call button and said, "Hey Clyde, you there?"

After a short wait, Clyde said, "Yeah, I'm here. What's up?"

"You'll never guess what I just heard about…"

Luan was eating her meatball sandwich. She was reflecting on how the day went. She could do this in peace, as Lynn was drawing the attention of the entire family by cramming sandwich after sandwich into her mouth.

"You would think she had literally never eaten before," Lori said in disgust.

"Nah, I think it's cool," Lana said. "It's like watching an alligator go to town."

"Well, she can do whatever as long as it's away from me." Lola interjected.

Lynn was encouraged by this banter and added another sandwich into her mouth.

"Dear sister," Lisa began, "It's come to my attention that the volume of your mouth is not large enough to adequately process the quantity of nutrients that you are consuming at this rate." She said in her condescending lisp.

"What the heck does that mean Brain Box?" Lynn asked as she took another bite.

"It means you are going to bite off more than you can chew."

As if brought about by Lisa's words, Lynn started to choke. Lucy slapped her on the back and a half chewed meatball flew across the table and into Leni's hair.

"Spider!" Leni screamed, her hands pulling her hair out of order trying to get the meatball out. The table roared with laughter, Luan even joining in. This was a nice distraction from what she had been thinking about,

She had been thinkin about how Lincoln had read her as easily as he had read his comics, knowing something was off. Mentioning the Ace Savvy movie had been a life saver, but she wouldn't get that lucky with her sisters, especially Luna. Once they thought something was wrong, it would only be a matter of time before they started looking around. She had to act as if nothing was wrong.

The key word here was act. She was suddenly grateful for being in the Theatre Club for another reason than getting closer to Benny. To act was to pretend to be something you're not, and in this case, she had to act as if she wasn't hiding a firearm. She had to cover her signs of nervousness by actively acting as her usual self. This could be done from memorizing herself on recorded videos she had.

Putting her plate in the dishwasher, she walked out of the dining room to get to her room, when Lisa suddenly appeared in front of her.

"Fourth eldest sibling," Lisa started, "I would like to speak with you."

"Okay Lisa."

"I was running a new device of my own design, to provide accurate readings of types of metallic compounds in the house, and in what quantities. Earlier at precisely 7:15 Ante Meridian I had it create a list of metallic compounds. Later, at 4:00 Post Meridian, I had it create another list to test accuracy. The new list had exactly 855 more grams of metal than before, the metals being steel, lead and copper. I wished to ask if you had any knowledge on if these substances are in the house."

Luan, not sure where this was going, just answered, "I wouldn't know anything about that."

Lisa shrugged. "Well, then, my machine must have a flaw in its design. I must rectify the error." At this, she turned and walked up the stairs.

Luan followed her and then turned off to her room. She had gotten to her closet and was changing into her nightwear when she understood what Lisa had been going on about.

" The new list had exactly 855 more grams of metal than before,"

Luan froze up. She knew, Lisa knew. She didn't know what the metal was or that Luan had done it, but she knew there was something in the house that there shouldn't be. That metallic mass detector Lisa had been telling Lily about at breakfast, she should've known!

Luan began to calm herself. Lisa didn't have all the facts. She would think someone else had brought the metal into the house. Then there was the fact that Luan had a gun. Lisa had no logical way to come to this conclusion, and all Luan had to do was keep logical reasons of her being suspect from happening.

Now calmed down, Luan took out vhs recordings from the closet and loaded them into her computer. She now watched her recorded self, memorizing the way she walked, how she talked, the way her face normally looked. She needed to memorize how she should act, to put on an act to convince everyone that nothing was off about her.

When Luan was confident she had memorized how to act, she shut off her computer and put the vhs tapes back where they belonged. She then walked over to the bunk bed and crawled inside her bed. She pulled up the covers and turned her head so that her face was looking at the wall.

She was about to doze off when Luna entered the room. She too changed into her nightwear and was walking to the bunk bed. She climbed on her bed when she said, "Wasn't that picture over there before?"

Luan's eyes snapped open. She moved a hand to cover her mouth and nose, not wanting to make a sound. It was over, it was all over, she would check the picture and find the bullet hole.

"Eh," Luna said and pulled the covers over herself. Luan gave a sigh of relief that Luna took as a snore

I'll be back soon with Chapter 5. Because of my first year of high school beginning, the writing process may become longer, though there will be no reduction in quality. Be back soon!