Sigh. "It all started with a little white lie and got way outta control." Lincoln sat back. "Now no one will shut up about it."

Dr. Lopez scribbled curvy words unto sick-yellow paper. Her voice felt smooth and motherly to his ears, "I know this may be difficult for you, but would you be able to recount the events?"

With a tilt forward of his head, Lincoln steepled his fingers and said, "You're not going to tell the police, are you?" With a hint of panic, he added, "W-we already resolved it. It's over. I don't want them split up."

"Lincoln, Lincoln," started Dr. Lopez as she set her hand over his. "If you're comfortable with your family now, I won't do anything you don't want me to. I just need to have a full understanding of what happened." And that smile on her face, the way it pulled into her dimples, Lincoln felt she had to be an experienced mother. Perhaps a better one than his own.

He smiled, content in the moment, and sat back again. "Well, um… Like I said, it all started with a little white lie. I just wanted some time to myself is all." He shifted his body and looked out the window. Dr. Lopez pulled open the blinds. "Just the week before that, I wanted my sisters to come to my magic show. It was gonna be so cool, there was going to be rabbits and doves! Aw man, I totally wanted them to see it. Especially Luan! I thought she'd love it."

"But they couldn't find the time?"

Lincoln sighed and hit his head against the chair. "Worse. They didn't even want to come. Well, some of them didn't. I knew ahead of time Lisa, Lucy, and Leni straight up couldn't go, but like I said, I hoped that Luan would." With his fists deep against his cheeks, Lincoln said, "But noo~ooo! That was too dorky." He huffed.

Dr. Lopez wrote this down and asked, "Luan thought it was dorky?"

"Well… no. She just said, "Sorry Linky, but I have other plans." And some stupid pun. I don't even remember what she said, just that it was something about how 'CLAW-strophobic'— Scoots' cat, that's it. She was paid to pet sit Scoots' cat while she was at bingo."

The therapist raised an eye. From under her breath came, "Since when did cats need petsitting…?" and so she wrote.

With a hearty chuckle, Lincoln shrugged and said, "I didn't even know Sue allowed pets in that place. I know the Sun and Moonshine home does, but… that place's weird, so…" He cleared his throat. "Anyway, no, it was Lola who called it dorky. She said, and I quote—" For this, Lincoln put on his sassiest impression, popping his hips after every sentence and throwing out his hand. "Ugh! Lincoln, I can't be seen at some dorky magic show! My reputation's at stake."

Dr. Lopez knew not to question that scowl. Instead, she said, "So, to follow up with what you said earlier, your sisters want you to attend all their activities—"

"—but never wanted to come to mine, right. Well, wanted. Can't complain that they saw the light. Too late, maybe, but better late than never."

"Right, right."

Again, he sighed. "Better late than never…"

And so he spoke of those two blastedly hot days. Of his sister chart, of the first lie, of his joy at having his own time alone to read comics in his undies, of the escalating chaos, of being forced to sleep outside— and here is where he interrupted himself.

"I just wanted to say, um… I know, I know what you said, abuse and all that. But I feel I should fess up here too."

"Oh really?" Dr. Lopez's brow lifted as she stopped writing and swiveled her chair to fully face him. "What do you have to confess?"

"That, well… it was kinda sorta my fault for starting that whole mess. Again! I know! I know! It doesn't excuse what happened or anything, but… I guess I just wish I told them how I really felt."

A click of a pen was the exclamation mark preceding the doctor's words: "From the sounds of it, they might not have listened."

To this, Lincoln had no response.

"In cases like this, the family often requires a greater shock to realize the harm they've caused or the toxic environment they've fostered. If you ran away because you wanted alone time, do you really think the people around you would have sympathized with you as much?"

"Well… no, but… Yeah, you're right. I guess I might've dodged trying to scream at twelve brick walls. Plus, Lynn, my sister Lynn, threatened to beat me up with a softball bat if I didn't come to her game."

Dr. Lopez looked up. "Jesus… Wow. That's definitely abusive behavior. In fact, that's not even abusive behavior I typically find with girls. Most of the time, female abusers tend to be psychologically-oriented."

"Yeah, and that's kinda why I'm proud of her for doing what she did. I'm not going to sugarcoat it or anything or say she didn't have to go that far. I say she did. She really, really needed help." He coughed. "I was going to say, 'That's just Lynn for ya,' but if that's what you expect a person to do, then they're not a nice person, are they?"

Dr. Lopez shook her head. "How long has she been threatening you like this?"

"Believe it or not, only in the past year, ever since she started middle school. She used to be sweet. I'm trying to think of times she was ever so hurtful to me before then, and I just can't think of any."

"Is there any reason she might've developed such toxic behavior?"

The boy pressed his finger against his chin. "I dunno. She's never told me anything, so I guess puberty hit her badly."

Again, he coughed, this time deliberately, and said, "So, um… they did come around and realize that I wasn't bad luck. They even said I was good luck! But only when I wore Lynn's team's mascot outfit."

"Why would they attribute good luck to the outfit?"

Lincoln shrugged. "They're goofy like that. And I mean that in a totally non-abusive way. It's one of the reasons why I still love 'em and couldn't stay with Clyde's family forever. I guess I just like that sorta goofiness. As long as it doesn't get out of hand, and they sure know I'll be on their tails about it if it ever does. Ahem. My family does love me, even if they have some weird ways of showing it."

Dr. Lopez bit the edge of her pen and asked, "So when you say they thought you were good luck when you wore the outfit…"

Lincoln nodded, and Dr. Lopez's mouth dropped. "Yup. They did. Two whole weeks." He lifted both hands, his fingers making two "Vs" and mouthed, "Two…"

"Lincoln, I'm sorry, but that sounds like a dangerous environment to live in. Are you sure you don't want me to contact the authorities?"

"No, no. I already told them."

"Told who?"

"The authorities. You know, like the new police chief, Sheriff Marshall Majors?"

"You did?"

"Mm-hmm. And my family knows too. See, the thing is, I decided I wouldn't get Mr. Grouse to back me up, so because they had no physical evidence of what happened, they couldn't actually do anything about it. But they did tell me that if I ever felt like I was in a dangerous situation, just call them. That all happened after I ran away."

"You ran away?" The more he spoke, the more curves of worry grew on the therapist's face.

"Yeah. Don't worry, I didn't go far. I decided to crash at my friend's house. You know him, he's Clyde McBride!"

This eroded the worry and brought sparkles into Dr. Lopez's eyes. "Oh, of course! I do know him."

"Yep. Sometimes, he's a better sibling than my actual siblings. The best kid ever!"

With a big smile, the doctor said, "He's one of my star clients. I feel that, if I have another few months with him, I might be able to get him to overcome his infatuation with your oldest sister."

Lincoln's smile inverted. "Don't bother. Clyde broke it off himself."

"Did he…" The way she spoke, Lincoln could not help but wonder if perhaps there was a tinge of disappointment that there was undoubtedly hundreds of dollars-worth of therapy lost, but he figured Dr. Lopez wasn't so cynical.

"Yeah. After I told him, word mysteriously got out around the town, and everyone thrashed my family."

She gasped. "Are they alright?"

"No, no, no, no, no, I mean socially. I was mad, but I wasn't "kick my family's butts" mad or anything. I just wanted them to understand how much they hurt me. Then and in the past. Because…" Here, Lincoln pulled at his pants and looked away. "I was… I was close to running away for good. At some points, I wondered if I should've just disowned my family completely and not look back because…" Here, the first tear fell, and Dr. Lopez handed him a handkerchief. "Because it felt sometimes like they didn't really love me. They just loved what I did for them…"

He blew his nose and rubbed his face.

"Oh, Lincoln…"

He sniffled. "I was so angry that I vowed to never forgive them, no matter what they did. They kept coming to me, begging for forgiveness, but I told them to fuck off."

Dr. Lopez gasped and quickly wrote that down. "I understand."

"I said that to every one of them who tried. Because how could I know they weren't going to just do the same thing to me again? How could I know they didn't just want me back so they could keep using me?" He slammed his fist against the wormwood arm rest and said, "I thought, 'You guys aren't sorry that you hurt me. You're just sorry you got caught.'" He looked up, his lip quivering… and then breaking into a small smile. "After I saw how much heck the town was putting them through and how they lost all their friends and stuff, I realized that I didn't hate them or anything. I felt bad for them. I guess I got caught up in thinking about all the good times we had together and all the times we really did stick together."

"Did Child Protective Services not investigate the home at that time?"

"They did. But the court just made my parents attend parenting classes. They didn't separate the family or anything. I still don't know why, but… I'm glad they didn't."

He threw his head back and took a great big breath.

"Lincoln, if you need a moment—"

He lifted his hand. "I'm fine." And he went on, "Actually, I gotta thank Luna for getting me to come around. A lot of people thought she was 'my guardian' or something like that. I still don't know where people got that idea from. We were close, but never that close, and even if we were, I don't think I'd…" He shuffled his hands around the back of his neck and gulped. "I don't think I'd be able to forgive someone who betrayed me that badly." He looked down and then back up. "You know?"

She nodded.

"Still, she was there for me one day. I didn't push her away or anything. I wasn't mad anymore. I didn't really want to see her or any of them really, but… well, she just came up to me and asked me how I was doing. And it felt nice that one of them actually cared. And then she said to me something that I guess I couldn't believe…"

The doctor leaned in, her curiosity pulling her towards the boy. "And what was that?"

He sighed. "You don't have to forgive us if you don't want to. I'm not going to force you. It's your choice, little bro."

Dr. Lopez jumped— Lincoln clapped his hands so loud that even patients in another room jumped.

"That was it! That was all I was asking for! For them to give me my space. For them to let me make my own decisions and support whatever I chose! When I met with the other members of my family, they were all the same way. They said the same thing, that if I didn't want to forgive them, I didn't have to, and if I didn't want to move back in with them, they'd support me wherever I chose to live. And I guess that broke down the walls between us…"

Dr. Lopez clasped her hands together. "Lincoln…"

"Yes?"

"That's amazing!"

The boy blinked and looked to both sides. "Uhhhh, what is?"

"For an abusive person or people to so thoroughly recognize their wrongdoing and give their victim the impetus of action and a safe space to engage in it. Do you realize how rare that is? It's unfortunately one of the least common outcomes of abuse situations." She stood. "I was skeptical, and I'm still not totally convinced that they don't represent a level of danger, but you convinced me that your family aren't as toxic as I first thought."

"Wow!" His own face lit up. "Is it really that rare?"

"I wouldn't say it's the rarest outcome, but in most cases, abusers only ever look out for their own benefit to a situation and try to manipulate the situation to profit from it. Your family clearly did not expect to benefit from your decision. It sounds like you were right: your family does love you. A family that doesn't love you would never let you have that choice. They'd still try to keep that choice firmly in their own space."

A warmth blossomed inside Lincoln that brought all the tears out of his eyes. He stood and embraced Dr. Lopez, and they hugged and dance-hugged. For the first time in two months, he actually unconditionally wanted to see his family again. Most of them.

Soon they had to break their hug, and Lincoln threw himself back, his hands behind his head. "I guess Lynn's kinda the proof of that too," he said after a minute of silence. "You know, I'm not gonna lie, I was... kinda cool with some of my sister's reactions to them losing all their friends. It's just schaden... skaden... whatever that word Lisa uses." He snapped his fingers into a finger gun when it came to him, "Schadenfreude, that's it."

With a few good scratches, Dr. Lopez recorded this and asked, "Do you regret such harsh feelings?"

"I mean, I knew shouldn't feel that way, because they're my sisters. But come on, I'm their brother, and they threw me out like trash because I was 'bad luck.' Just jeez... So no. I really don't. I said what I said to them, and there's no taking it back. Even if they hated me, who cares? At least they understood what I said wasn't wrong."

"Again," said the doctor with a ginger smile, "If they genuinely recognized their wrongdoing and took steps to address their failings, then perhaps they aren't as bad of siblings as you thought."

"Maybe! My only problem with them is that they have this nasty habit of not really learning their lesson, so eh. Remains to be seen, I guess."

"That indeed. I hope I didn't get make you think that you're finished the process of reconciliation."

"Oh, no, no, no. Definitely not."

"So, all apologies if it sounds like I'm changing the subject slightly, but did anything else happen? I'm still trying to fill in the blanks."

"Oh, well, one of my friends, this girl named Ronnie Anne, used to bully me. I guess I worked things out with her. She tried beating up my sister Lynn, see? But the problem is that, Lynn is Lynn. I'm pretty sure she could take on a full grown man, so it didn't go so well from Ronnie Anne. But from what I heard, Lynn still got beaten up. I don't know how to feel about that. On that note, I saw the town humiliate my family, and while that was cathartic to see, some part of me felt disgusted."

"Because they're still your family?"

"Well they are, but it's not just that." He looked outside again and said coldly, "This whole town is a big booger on the map of Michigan. Like heck if way more than half the people shouting down my sisters and parents aren't just as big idiots in their own world." He looked back to her with a sneer and snarled, " Shine a spotlight on all their failings and I bet they wouldn't be so quick to be so mean."

He sighed and looked down. "You know… I am kinda worried for them. Some of the town, especially the people my folks annoyed or wronged before, don't want to move on and all but ostracized 'em. Honestly, during the worst of it, if it wasn't for Flip, I'm not even sure my family could buy food in town."

"Oh, Flip? You mean the Flippee guy?"

"Yyyyep. Which is crazy because Flip was willing to sell out my family for my allowance money in case I needed someone other than Mr. Grouse to testify in court." He fiddled his thumbs. "You know, in case it ever came to that."

"Why didn't it?"

With a small smile on the side of his face, Lincoln gave his answer: "Because at the end of the day, I realized that deep down, I do still love my family." He made eye contact with Dr. Lopez and smiled further. "You know? Like, I get why they are the way they are and I just think that really, they needed help, not to be punished. Mistakes were made, but that's what they were: mistakes. And when I returned to my family, I saw that they understood that too."

"Even Lynn?"

"ESPECIALLY Lynn. I still don't know what happened to her, but she was in a wheelchair!"

"O-oh my goodness," said Dr. Lopez, quickly writing that one down. "And you said you don't know? You said earlier that she was attacked. Couldn't that have been it? That seems serious."

"No! She just grins and tells me, 'Don't worry about it, Lincoln.' It makes me kinda concerned."

"It's very concerning. I can't say I at all sympathize with Lynn's actions, but I do fear she may have been maliciously attacked by someone else. For all her faults, I can't applaud physical assault of a child."

"You and me both. Plus, she is also seeing a therapist. Like, for behavioral stuff."

"Wow, really!"

"Yeah. Best of all, she's the one who asked to see him. It wasn't our parents who made her go. A Dr. Fine if you know him."

Gasp went Dr. Lopez. "Why, yes, I do. Dr. Michael Fine. He's actually a friend of mine."

"Aw cool! I can tell her that then. But yeah, Lynn, she threw away everything for my sake. I'm not saying I truly forgave her or anything, but it's clear she's willing, ahem, to go the full nine yards for me." Cringe went his whole body. Somewhere out there, there was an obnoxious laugh and a Get it? But wasn't that what he liked about Luan? Her everpresent cheerfulness.

The lady dotted a sentence and inhaled. "So it sounds like you're finally patching things up with your family." She then leaned forward. "One question: have they changed their behaviors towards you?"

"All of them changed. And not all for the better, but as long as it's good for me, I'm fine with it."

"How so?"

"Well, my parents became more, eh… what's the word, 'authoritarian,' but they're letting me get away with a lot more now. And I like it! But it's unfair to my sisters, I can't lie. I can't wait to exploit this newfound appreciation, but I swear I didn't want the tables to be turned. You know… just even." He laughed sheepishly. "I hope that's not selfish of me."

"Lincoln, every kid dreams of their parents having their back. Considering everything you've been through, if it makes you feel good, go for it."

"Heh heh! Yeah. Not even three weeks of it and I'm already drunk on power, heh heh." He set his head back against the chair's rest and said, "My big sister, Lori? A complete and total pushover now."

"Lori is your oldest sister, the one Clyde is obsessed with, right?"

"Yyyup. I heard she took the Bad Luck incident super hard, like totes personal and stuff. And again, I like being able to do whatever I want without hearing her, ahem, BITCH at me." He pressed his fingers against his naughty mouth and said, "Oop. Sorry."

"It's fine. Let it all out."

"I'm gonna ride that gravy train all the way to Dairy Land." With a big sniffle and exhale, he relaxed. His smile turned down. "But it does kinda make me feel bad for her too because she's definitely trying, and everyone around her isn't giving her an easy time." Lincoln sat up. "I put my whole family through Hell, got to see them break down trying to get me back, and they pulled through and came together when I offered them a second chance. Because as the saying goes: once a Loud, always a Loud."

"A second chance... That's very brave of you."

Lincoln admitted, "I wish I worded it that way to them. I said 'I forgive you guys,' when I really should've said, 'I'll give you guys a second chance.'"

"Not everyone gets a second chance, and in some ways, your sisters probably don't even deserve one. That's how many people feel."

"Yeah, well guess what, people. Lincoln Loud? Ain't one 'a you. I'm me!" He stood up, fists on his hips, and cheered himself.

He sighed.

"Well… The reason I really wanted to come in today wasn't because of my mom and dad or Lori or Lynn." He sat back down, gulped, and sighed again, feeling so nervous that he yawned. "I wish I could say I forgave them all. It's been a while since I came back, but I guess I just…" He shook his head. "There's…"

"You can say it, Linc. What's troubling you?"

The anxiety pulled at his face, forcing a false smile to grow. "Um… This is going to sound stupid, but… what if I said that I forgave my entire family… kinda… I kinda forgave my entire family, or gave them a second chance or whatever… except for one person?"

"Just one?"

"Y-yeah…"

Beguilement swirled about in Dr. Lopez's mind. It couldn't be Lynn, could it? "May I ask who?"

He breathed in sharply and said, "M-my little sister, Lucy."

She wrote this down, frowning. "And why do you feel you can't forgive Lucy?"

He bit his lip and struggled to speak, but when he did, he said, "I... It sounds stupid, I know, but... I stuck my neck out for her not long ago and took the fall for something I shouldn't have, and I've always been there for her whenever she felt alone or ignored. Among other things. A lot of other things that matter. And when she wasn't there for me, I just... I just felt so betrayed. You know? After all that, after all I've done for her, this is how she repays me? I guess... I guess... I guess I kinda expected it from my other sisters, but not her. We used to be so close. When I was younger, like around Lisa's age— she's four by the way— and I didn't know any better, I used to say that she was like my twin, kinda like Lola and Lana. I was too young to really get what made twins different, but that's how I thought about her."

"I understand." Each word felt heavier and heavier, and in seeing her handwriting, she thought to ask, "But didn't you already forgive her? With the rest I mean."

He swallowed and said, "Um… I mean, I said I forgave them, didn't I? Um… Well, I… I only really said that to some of them. I still haven't gotten to a few of them yet. And she wasn't one of them. A-actually, if I had to be honest, I've been ignoring her for the past three weeks."

"And how does she feel about that?"

"Not great. She's—" Lincoln licked his lips. "Lucy's used to being ignored, so I mean I think she's not feeling great about everything that's happened. It's just that the more I think about it, the angrier I get with her.

"I want to forgive Lynn because I know she's been through a hard time and I guess I get that she didn't know when to quit. But she's the one who's been keeping away from me, because she wanted to give me my space. And I can appreciate that, so when she's feeling better, I'll tell her that she's earned a second chance from me, and may even earn forgiveness if she keeps at it.

"But I can't forgive Lucy. If I did, I feel like I'd just be telling her that it's okay to walk all over me and spit in my face and expect nothing in return."

After a moment, Dr. Lopez morosely asked, "Did you expect anything in return?"

"I mean... It's weird, right? I'm not saying I wanted her to give me anything specifically. Just... I just wanted her to have my back. Like how I had hers. Because big brothers look out for their little sisters. But I guess..." He gulped and said the next part quietly, "I guess I don't see her as my little sister anymore."

"Oh Lincoln, I'm not going to tell you how to feel. Your feelings are your own."

"I didn't want it to come to this. I really didn't. I've been tossing and turning about it too, and it doesn't feel right in my head. I keep trying to find reasons for stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Just… stuff. But I mean against my other sisters. It feels so wrong to single out just one of them, like I'm doing it on purpose. And Lucy isn't really one of the troublemakers of the house either, so I know it's going to sound bizarre. But..." He toughened up. "I have to say it. To her. To them."

"And what do you have to say? You can tell me."

He softened. "Sorry, I can't tell you. But look, she had her chance, and she blew it."

"So you already gave her a second chance before?"

Lincoln twiddled his thumbs. "Not exactly. It's just different. Like, the way the chance she had worked between us meant that I guess she was never going to be able to get a second chance. Not from me."

"And what do you think your family is going to say about that?"

He flapped his hand and said, "Oh, I know they won't like it. They're going to try to talk me out of it. And like I said, it's going to feel so awkward singling out a single one of my sisters." Again he toughened up. "Well you know what? My parents said they'd never kick any of us out... and then they kicked me out because they thought I was 'bad luck.' If they can kick their only son out because of BAD LUCK, they can handle me not ever forgiving one of their precious daughters. And if they can't, then I guess they didn't want me around to begin with."

Author's Note: Welcome to No Such Luck Aftermath Fic #46,853. As promised, this is the fanfic that has replaced Rotten Apple in more ways than one. I'll explain what happened to Rotten Apple and even my general thoughts on this particular project in a later author's note because right now, I have a lot I wanna say.

This is going to be a beefy authorial note, so bear with me. Consider it a "Reason You Suck" speech to the collective of NSL fanfiction, including this one.

First and foremost, I'm not writing this as any form of "closure" for No Such Luck. I literally don't give a crap about NSL. It's a bad episode, and what happened in it was messed up and unfunny, but that's about as far as I tend to go with it. This fic is not meant to provide a "more realistic" outcome for the episode or anything like that. The "most realistic" outcome of any NSL story is quite literally "Lincoln forgives his family and everything goes back to normal," but if "reality ensues" is your game, then we've gotten loads of good ones that do it about as well as you can do it already. But that by itself strikes at the core of the issue.

As someone who tends to mock NSL fics, let me make something nice and clear: NSL fics have been done to death, and they will continue to be done to death. The reason why is because people got angry at the episode and want closure out of it, and felt denied that closure by Nickelodeon's trash-ass writing team and producers. But closure is a bogus word. The canon of this story is not the canon of What is a Person Worth or Losing Him or A Loud In Eden's Gate or Gal Pals or Long Lost Loud or Reversal of Fortune or any of the myriad of AO3, FFN, and Wattpad NSL fics or the many NSL RPs that often spiral out of control in DeviantArt and YouTube comment threads. Just because this story happens doesn't mean it happens. The cold, hard, and ugly fact is that No Such Luck happened, it was horribly mishandled, and it canonically closed out with Lincoln getting his stuff back and forgiving his family off screen. No amount of fanfiction will ever change that fact. Like, if there was a maximum amount of evers, this is five of them. No matter how much you agree with the events and outcome of a particular story, it will never change what is. The ugly truth is that the only canonical "aftermath" to No Such Luck is "Frog Wild." If you don't like that Lincoln forgives his family, you can always read a NSL fic where he doesn't. If you don't like that the town doesn't get revenge on the Louds, lord knows there's a lot of stories based entirely around that premise. If you don't like seeing your favorite Loud sister be punished, you can almost always find one where she avoids the worst fires of retribution. The existence of one fic doesn't invalidate the existence of others because what NSL fanfics tend to be are closure for the writer and the reader. It's how they cope with one of the duddest of dud episodes in modern mainstream animation history.

Take this story. If you're reading this bottom note, you either skipped the chapter (naughty naughty!) or you have already figured out that this is going to be a Lucy-centric story. I'm not going to mince words or sugarcoat anything: the darkest Loud is not going to have a good time in this fic. At all. Admittedly none of the Louds do, but I've set Lucy apart for this one to undergo a literal series of unfortunate events. If you don't like seeing Lucy face intense misfortune, guess what: there's a bunch of NSL fanfics where she literally is set apart as "one of the good ones" alongside Lily, Leni, and/or Luna and, outside some minor scolding, doesn't get punished at all because in the canon of those stories, she's a good girl who meant no harm or saw through her sister's BS or gets forgiven by Lincoln ultra-easily. Whether you buy that or not is irrelevant to the cold unyielding fact those stories exist just as this one does as do others where she is nothing more than another face in the collective crowd of the damned and unforgiven. Your feelings for characters in this story are independent from your feelings of a character in another. You can go from potentially crying "Poor Lucy!" in this fic to shouting "Fuck Lucy!" in another because that's the reality of fanfiction. (Or maybe you cry "Fuck Lucy!" in both because you just don't like her. Your feelings are your own!)

That said, writers and readers still do want closure, and that's why we keep getting NSL fanfics and will undoubtedly keep getting them until the heat death of the universe. When we get artificial intelligence neural networks that can generate whole cartoons and comics, we will finally get those animated follow-ups people crave. I for one can't wait to see the AI-generated cartoon version of What is a Person Worth? But that's still several years off.

The point of this note is to cover my ass over why I'm making a NSL fic after explicitly stating I never would. It's simply because I came up with a horribly unfun story I wanted to tell that worked best as a NSL fic.

There's a reason that the NSL portion of this NSL fic got brushed off as a therapy session in the prologue. We've literally seen it all before. You've read them. I've read them. We've all read them. We know what happens.

Let's instead have fun with the AFTER-aftermath as it plays out here. If this is in any way a realistic look at how No Such Luck could've ended up, then the only thing I have to say is That's awful, I apologize for writing this.

Let's go!