Chapter 8
Here he was, the very last place he wanted to be right now:
The front porch of his house.
Lincoln trembled in fear, his face dripping with sweat. Behind him, at the end of the walkway, stood the three people he was beginning to see as a second "family" of sorts. He looked back, and they all gave him encouraging smiles.
"Go on, kid. You can do it!" said Gil, flashing Lincoln a thumbs-up with all four of his hands. Lincoln turned back and gulped. Squeezing both eyes shut, he shakily raised a fist to the door and knocked. A few seconds went by with no answer, and he opened his eyes in confusion. He knocked again, harder. Still no answer. His confusion taking the place of his fear, he tapped his foot impatiently.
"What, uh...what's happening right now?" Ken asked, also confused.
"I don't know," Lincoln replied. "With so many people crammed into one house, it usually doesn't take this long to answer the door."
Finally, the door was opened by Rita. She looked down slightly, spotted Lincoln, and smiled. Lincoln nervously smiled back. Still smiling, Rita stepped back slightly, seemingly letting Lincoln in. Lincoln breathed out in relief and stepped forward to cross the threshold.
Rita slammed the door in his face. Literally.
"Lincoln! Are you alright?" Blanca cried out, rushing forward as the boy in question toppled over from the force of the blow. Thankfully, the only physical injury he had was the bruise forming on his forehead. Mentally, though...
Lincoln teared up and whispered, "It's true. Th-they really don't want me anymore!" Blanca hugged him to her chest as he started to cry, urging Ken and Gil to do something with her eyes as she did. The two young men turned to each other.
"So...whose turn is it this time?" Ken asked Gil.
"I don't remember. Let's play for it," Gil replied. The two played a single round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Ken won and confidently strode toward the door.
Pounding his fist against it, he hollered, "Lynn and Rita Loud! I demand entrance to your home in the name of the Plumbers!" Lynn Sr. opened one of the upstairs windows and stuck his head out.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he called down. Ken growled angrily.
"Are you deaf?! OPEN THE DOOR, YOU SON OF A-"
"Chill out, bro," Gil cut Ken off before he could call Lynn Sr. a very unflattering name. "I told you, that never works. Let me handle this!" Gil cracked all four sets of knuckles and walked up to the door. Drawing back his top pair of arms, he punched the door with both fists and knocked it down. Ducking under the frame that was too low for his stature, he stepped inside. Immediately, all four of his eyebrows shot up.
Lynn Sr. was hog-tied on the floor, and three of the girls were in the process of tying Rita to the armchair.
"Uh, should I be concerned about this?" Gil asked.
"Not really. Just bring Lincoln inside," Luna replied. Gil and the others gave Lincoln time to compose himself before escorting him inside the house, with Gil putting the door back inside the frame to close it behind them. With an angry glare, Luna forcefully turned Rita's face toward herself. "Okay, Mom, Lincoln deserves to know the truth. Tell him the same story you told us last night. Now!"
"Ugh, fine! But only because I have no other choice," Rita begrudgingly relented. "It all started twelve years ago..."
...
"I literally cannot believe this, Rochelle," Rita said accusingly. "In the position you're in, getting pregnant from a one-night-stand with a total stranger is the last thing you need right now! You're lucky that all that happened was you getting pregnant! I can think of a million and one worse things that could have happened!"
"Why are you yelling at me like this? I thought you were my best friend!" Rochelle sobbed, the trio of positive pregnancy tests falling out of her hand as she dropped to her knees. It had been almost a month since she'd woken up alone in Kevin's motel room, Kevin having vanished without a trace sometime during the night. Now, in the middle of her brutal divorce from her cheating husband, she had just come to the realization that she'd missed her time of the month.
"I stopped being your best friend when you decided to marry that dirtbag, despite me extensively warning you not to! Now that choice is coming back to bite you!"
Since Rochelle had never had a child before, Rita begrudgingly helped her through the pregnancy, living with her temporarily to do so and criticizing her life's choices every step of the way. Rita's constant tongue-lashings cut so deep that Rochelle would cry herself to sleep almost every night for nine months straight. It was slightly after midnight that Rochelle went into labor, and Rita waited alone in the waiting room of the hospital after riding in the same ambulance she had called for Rochelle. Lynn Sr. joined her after a while, and they waited almost until dawn. Finally, the doctor came out.
"The baby is just fine, but your friend unfortunately passed away. I've never seen anything like it. It was like she just...lost the will to live. In fact, she passed so suddenly that we had to deliver the baby through emergency surgery," the doctor explained the situation. To their surprise, Rita didn't feel a single ounce of sadness over Rochelle's passing.
Rita and Lynn looked down at the frail, slightly under-developed white-haired baby boy as he slumbered peacefully in his incubator, discussing the next course of action amongst themselves. Seeing that Rochelle's ex-husband was in jail for possession of illegal drugs and Rochelle had no living relatives in the area, Lynn and Rita would be stuck with raising the child themselves.
"Girls, meet your new brother, Lincoln," Rita introduced disinterestedly upon bringing the child home from the hospital. To her absolute dismay, all five of her daughters instantly fell in love with him.
...
Back in the present, Lincoln was floored. His face slowly shifted to fury.
"That's it?! That's your excuse?! If you obviously didn't want me, then why did you keep having kids at all?!" he demanded.
"Oh, we wanted more kids. We just didn't want any boys!" Rita spat. Blanca's eyes narrowed, and the claws on her hands extended an extra two inches with a soft snick! Rita continued, "Boys are messy, dirty, smelly, and impossible to control. With girls, we knew we wouldn't have those problems. We thought if we raised you alongside them, you wouldn't have any of those masculine traits. Turns out we were wrong. You are never leaving this house again, young man! Not until Lisa finds a way to turn you into the girl I wanted you to be!"
It was then that Blanca roared and tried to pounce on Rita. All four of her limbs flailed as Gil wrapped all of his arms around her to hold her back. All the while, she was snarling and spitting like an angry cat.
"Ken, buddy, I'm gonna need your help with this one!" Gil said in a panicked tone, briefly removing his lower left arm to grab the doorknob and pull the door back down. Ken followed him outside to try and calm down his girlfriend.
"I will not heed your ridiculous request, Mother," Lisa firmly stated. "For one thing, you are asking me to defile my own brother, whom I still view as family despite not being a blood relative. For another, I pride myself as being above such a frivolous notion as gender reassignment." A look of utter disgust crossed Lisa's face as the latter two words left her mouth, like she'd just eaten something bitter. "Why someone would willingly resort to self-mutilation to become a member of the opposite sex is beyond even my understanding. Regardless, while we all know that I am not above experimenting on members of my family, none of my experiments ever have or ever will harm them to the extent that you are suggesting."
"I couldn't have said it better myself, Lisa," Lori commended her. "Leni, Luna, take Lincoln upstairs and help him gather his belongings. I have a feeling that he won't be coming back here for quite a while." The two girls nodded and escorted Lincoln up the stairs between them. When they were gone, Lori turned to glare harshly at her parents. "As for you...if you don't want to go to jail for child abuse and neglect, there's gonna be a new status quo in this house..."
Upstairs in Lincoln's former bedroom, Leni and Luna were helping Lincoln pack up the essentials. The two girls were stuffing all of his clothes into a suitcase and a duffel bag, while Lincoln filled a cardboard box with his electronics (laptop, phone, and handheld video games) and collection of comic books, both vintage and new. Predictably, his phone, left behind when he ran away, had blown up with texts and voicemails from Clyde and the rest of his friends (but mostly Clyde).
"So...the black-haired man in the story," Lincoln suddenly piped up. "Who is he? I mean, obviously he's my real dad, but-"
"We don't know, Lincoln," Luna answered. "Mom had never seen him before, and she never found out his name."
"Oh. I guess it doesn't really matter. Gil ordered a Galvan-made DNA test for me, so I'll find out who he is sooner or later, anyway. He thinks my dad might have been an Osmosian, and that's how I can absorb matter and energy."
"Ah. That, uh...that would explain quite a bit, actually," said Luna.
...
Ken and Gil came back into the house looking fairly battered, but not nearly as bad as Rita might have been if Gil hadn't intervened. Blanca was still bitter about what Rita said, but was back in control of her temper. With Gil carrying what Lincoln couldn't, they left The Loud House with Lincoln in tow and went home.
That night, Ken was lying awake in his bed while Gil was on his phone.
"Gil, I can't stop thinking about Mrs. Loud's story. About her friend meeting a black-haired stranger at a bar," Ken confessed. He looked over at Gil's bed. "I think this might be the lead I was looking fo- are you seriously watching that weird superhero cartoon right now?"
"What? Lincoln got me hooked on it! I gotta find out what happens next!" Gil, who was indeed watching The High-Stakes Adventures of Ace Savvy, defended himself. "Anyway, you were saying?"
"I think Mrs. Loud's story might be the lead I've been looking for," Ken continued his original train of thought. "She described a black-haired man with a scar on his chin, right? Guess who matches that description." Gil's eyes widened.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking...then that means Lincoln and I could be...!"
Another cliffhanger! Stay tuned, because the next chapter is the big DNA reveal!