AN: Turns out I had another one of these in me.
Lincoln took a deep breath as he focused upon his goal. He lived in a world where innumerable impossible feats were accomplished on a daily basis. Surely he, in spite of his mortality, could accomplish this one, singular deed. Thus motivated, he clenched his teeth, tightened his grip, and pulled, with every ounce of strength he could muster.
A minute later, his strength rapidly flagging, and his situation entirely unchanged, aside from the growing aching in his arms, he made a desperate attempt to rally and glared at his erstwhile, implacable foe. The pull-up bar.
"I'll just install it right here in my doorway." He remembered smugly thinking to himself when he'd first moved into the apartment. "Just a couple of pullups every time I walk through the door. It'll become part of my routine in no time, and then I won't even have to think about doing it!".
In truth, nothing of the sort had occurred. Lincoln had put off breaking in the bar for a few days, citing various moving relating responsibilities, school assignments, and plain old laziness as justification for doing so. When he'd finally decided to take it for a spin some indeterminate amount of procrastinating later, he'd realized just how difficult it was to lift his own body weight with his soft, noodly nerd arms, and quickly given up. The pull-up bar had remained there, completely unused except as a constant reminder of his own, physical ineptitude. Until today, that is. Today was the day that Lincoln had decided to conquer the bar.
At least, that had been the plan. Lincoln had grown since he'd first moved here, not so much physically, but mentally, and spiritually. He no longer lived in fear of the overly fantastical world outside his door. Admittedly, that was at least partially because reuniting with his sisters meant that his social circle now included two extremely powerful metahumans who were very invested in his well-being, but he'd been hoping that his confidence had come in some part from him growing as a person. And what better way to prove that, than to overcome a challenge that had previously thwarted him?
It...occurred to him, as he hung there, feet dangling in the air, arms too tired to make another attempt at performing a pull-up, but Lincoln himself too resentful of his own ineptitude to simply abandon the endeavor altogether, that a physical challenge might not be the best way to measure one's growth of character. Some might say that one thing often had little, if anything to do with the other. But this had seemed like a challenge he could do, at least while he had both feet firmly planted on the ground and wasn't drowning in his own sweat. So it was hard not to be at least a little frustrated that he had failed so spectacularly. Small mercy that Lynn hadn't been around to...see...him?
Lincoln's train of thought ground to a halt as his body slowly began to rise upward, something he would have been absolutely ecstatic over, had he not been very much aware that he had nothing to do with what was happening. So sore were his arms, in fact, that he was honestly doubtful he'd even be able to let go of the bar at this point, let alone accomplish a feat of physicality he'd been utterly hopeless at even before he'd wasted God knows how long tiring himself out. It was at this point, that he noticed the slender, white spandex-clad arms wrapped around his torso. Turning his head, he found himself staring into the smiling, tanned, freckled face of the other recent addition to his circle of friends.
"H-hey, Stella" he greeted the girl dumbly, his eyes crisscrossing as his fatigue-addled brain stumbled upon a severe irregularity in their positioning. Specifically, how she was lifting him when he had already been hanging off the ground, to begin with.
"How...?" He began, but the girl who was also his friend merely jerked her head downward. He obediently cast his gaze downward, and saw that Stella's naturally long and shapely legs were now considerably longer and leggier than usual, made all the more apparent by the skin-tight material clinging to them.
"Ah," He said as realization dawned upon him. With some small difficulty, wrenched his gaze back upward so that he was looking Stella in the eye once more, and silently gave thanks that she wasn't holding him from the front. "Polymorph...ing? Polymorphery? Is there a gerund, or a verb-noun or something that fits here?"
"No idea!" She laughed, giving him an affectionate squeeze, one that caused him to surreptitiously shift his pelvis as far away from the pretty girl holding him as possible. Sometimes it was very difficult, on like, a biological level, to be friends with someone with meta-level good looks, and while Stella seemed to feel that she came up short in some areas as a superhero, that was definitely not one of them.
"So, whatcha up to, Linc?" She asked. Had it been anyone else, standing there, holding him aloft mid-workout, he might have suspected at least some degree of mockery, but Stella, as always, wore her heart on her sleeve, and there was nothing but genuine curiosity in her expression.
"Oh...you know," He deadpanned. "Just hanging around."
"HA!" She laughed, giving him a gentle thump of appreciation on his chest. "I get it! That's a good one!"
"Thank you," He replied. He waited for her to remove her hand, or at least move it back to its original position, but several moments passed and it remained there, clasped over his heart.
"Hey, Stella?" He pushed on, chalking it up to just another example of Stella being herself. "Not that I don't appreciate the help, but...why are you here?"
"Oh!" Her eyes darted sideways, suddenly reluctant to make eye contact with him. "Well, I tried texting you, but I didn't hear back from you. Then I tried calling you. Then I rang the doorbell a few times, knocked on the door..."
Lincoln winced. "Sorry about that. I've been doing this for a while, and I guess I've been a little preoccupied. Think my phone's back over there somewhere." He jerked his head towards the living room demonstratively.
"No problem," She reassured him. "It all worked out in the end."
"Right." He nodded, somewhat uncertainly. "Which brings me to my follow-up question, how did you actually get in here?"
Lincoln's eyes widened in panic as the most obvious solution presented itself to him, and he frantically jerked his head around, trying to peer past the meta girl's head. Seeing that his front door was still wholly intact, he let out a small sigh of relief.
"Come on, Lincoln," Stella protested, seemingly intuiting his concern. "Give me some credit. I'm not just gonna smash your door down on a hunch."
Lincoln chuckled, feeling somewhat abashed. "Sorry Stella, I just thought—"
"Lynn said to try and avoid doing that unless I hear screaming. Then all bets are off."
"That's...actually a little better than what I was expecting." He admitted.
"Yep. Anyway, I decided to look around a bit first, and I saw you'd left the window open, so I just let myself in. And then I saved you!"
"From gravity," Lincoln snarked, deciding to play along. "Thank you, Polymer."
In spite of the fact that he was clearly joking, Stella still preened happily at the praise, an enormous smile erupting across her face. A smile that proved strangely infectious, as Lincoln quickly found himself smiling right back.
That was when Lincoln heard the telltale click of the lock sliding back in his front door. Which presented an interesting quandary, seeing as how he was here, on the other side of the apartment, and Stella was over here with him. Which could only mean...
"Uh, Stella?" Lincoln did his best to keep his voice level, but for all his efforts, his words still came out several octaves shriller than normal. "Maybe you should—" But his efforts were for naught, as the door swung wide open.
"I still don't understand why you have a key," Lori grumbled as she stepped into the apartment. To Lincoln's surprise, her costume contained several, tasteful tears on the sides that he was certain hadn't been there that morning.
"Because I live here, duh!" Lynn replied, rolling her eyes as she stooped down in order to fit through the doorway. Her costume was also looking a little worse for wear, with the highlight being a noticeable tear right above her breasts. It was a little difficult to tell from this distance, but he was also fairly certain that her ponytail was shorter than normal, her long chestnut mane halting abruptly in a blackened stump.
"No, you don't!" Lori retorted. "And that's another thing we need...to...discuss?"
The conversation trailed off as both girls came to a stop in the middle of Lincoln's living room, two pairs of confused and inquisitive eyes locked onto Lincoln, and the girl who was still wrapped around him.
"Uh..." He articulated, desperately trying to find words to describe their situation. "H-hey, guys! We were just—"
"This isn't what it looks like, Lynn!" Stella shouted, squeezing Lincoln even harder for some reason. "I'm just picking up your brother, I swear!"
The ensuing silence was deafening, an expression that Lincoln had often found puzzling, but one which felt fairly literal at this particular time. The omnipresent hum of the apartment building's ventilation, the chirping of the birds outside, even the hammering of his own heart in his chest, all of them immediately seemed to go silent in the wake of his sisters twin, equally nonplussed stares. Then, at least, Lori turned to Lynn, and let out a long, exasperated sigh.
"You see?" She grumbled irritably. "This is why I said we can't leave them alone together."
The day had wound on, the sun had gone down, and on any other day, Lori Loud would have been getting her fourth, fifth, or sixth wind, depending on how heroic circumstances had required her to be on that particular occasion.
"I...HATE! THIS STUPID! GAME!"
"Stella! Get the table away from her! I'll grab the cards!"
Instead, she was sitting here in her little brother's apartment. She was wearing actual clothes (an outfit functionally identical to the shorts and tank-top combo she favored as a teenager, but still), and instead of worrying about whatever the latest threat to the whole of humanity might be, she was merely observing, bemused, as her siblings and their mutual friend went about their usual business.
"Leave the cards, Lincoln! They're not worth it!"
"Are you kidding? Do you know how hard it is to get a new set of these right now? Just keep her away from the table, I literally can't afford to replace it!"
"RAAAAARG!"
It was...strange, just how wildly her life had changed in the span of a few weeks, but she couldn't say she minded. In most regards, her life had become considerably less exciting than when she was putting in 24-hour hero days (and 29 when the cosmic alignment was in place), but reconnecting with her siblings, spending time with people who saw her as Lori Loud, rather than Luminary, it gave her a sense of fulfillment that she'd long found lacking.
CRUNCH!
Though, there were definitely aspects of this new normal that resembled her childhood just a tad too much. But one took the good with the bad, and the fact that she was trying very hard not to smile at her sibling's antics suggested that she probably didn't mind this particular variety of localized chaos as much as she thought she did.
DING-DONG
"I'll get that," Lori announced, climbing up from her seat. "Stella, put the table down, I was going to buy Lincoln a sturdier one anyway. Lincoln, be careful, Lynn can't see you when you're climbing on her back like that. Lynn? If you put a scratch on Lincoln..." Her eyes narrowed and she clenched her fists, allowing just enough energy to flow into them that they began to spark menacingly. "I will break you!" She then spun around and made her way towards the door.
"Was that supposed to scare me?" Lynn called after her. "Bring it on, Lori! Come on, round twelve!" Then, in a much smaller voice, one barely perceptible to Lori, she added, "But...yeah, Linc, you should really be at least arm's length from me when I get like that."
"My arms, or your arms?"
"Both, just to be on the safe side."
Dorks, she thought to herself as she reached the doorway, shaking with barely repressed mirth. Now she just had to see what this was about.
Naturally, there was an ulterior motive to her decision to answer the door. While she realized she had overreached in her efforts to keep Lincoln safe, it was difficult to let go of those urges entirely. Lincoln was, and always would be her little brother, and now in addition to that he was...so, so much more to her. She had disbanded the surveillance team of course, tried to limit her fly-bys over Lincoln's apartment to a more reasonable amount, and strictly during work hours if it was at all possible, and generally, just made a general effort to back off and give him his space when they weren't actively hanging out together. Admittedly, now that they were dating, she was spending far more of her time at the apartment than away from it, which made that last point a little moot, but the point was that she was making an effort to let Lincoln live his own life. That he chose to spend a good amount of it with her, where she could be certain of his well-being, and with Lynn, who was only slightly less protective of him than she was, made that endeavor a lot easier to bear than it could have been. Still, one didn't change their habits overnight, and it made Lori feel significantly more secure in Lincoln's well-being when she could arrange things so that one of his three, significantly more durable house guests answered the door for him. After all, at this time of night, literally, anyone could be knocking on the door. A vampire, an uncharacteristically polite supervillain, a vampiric supervillain, a—
"Pizza delivery!" a hoarse voice called out as the door swung partially open.
—Or a pizza delivery...person? Lori's eyes narrowed as she appraised the new arrival. She was fairly certain the individual was female, though it was difficult to tell. They wore a heavy coat which obscured their figure, and a cap pulled low which did the same for their face. Even so, Lori's trained, crimefighter eyes were able to pick out small details. Tufts of blonde hair poked out from under the cap, suggesting they wore it longer than a typical male did, and a certain shapeliness to their hips that was visible even though the layered clothing. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, was the omnipresent niggling sensation she felt whenever her brother was within throwing distance of another woman.
"Got a delivery from Pizza Pasta for L. Loud" Said the newcomer, gesturing to the logo emblazoned across their breast. Somewhat unnecessarily, given that the stack of steaming, cardboard pizza boxes she was carrying bore the same logo. "Three Meat Fetishists with extra pepperoni."
Lori winced. "You guys really need to reconsider your naming scheme, but that does sound like Lynn's usual order." Unwilling to fully let go of her suspicions, she kept on hand on the doorknob, fully intent on slamming the door in the intruder's face if they didn't keep their distance, and tilted her head backwards.
"Hey, guys?" She called out, not taking her eyes off the door. "Someone order pizza? You guys know there are other kinds of takeout, right? I'm figuratively looking at you, Lynn."
The only response she received was an unintelligible mishmash of words, but she was able to make out a distinct, excited cry of "Pizza!" multiple times. Which didn't provide much information. Louds, as a rule, adored pizza, herself included, and she wasn't entirely certain that Lynn or Lincoln would ignore a wayward pizza box if they had to cross a bear trap to get to it.
"Look," She said, addressing the delivery person once more. "I'm pretty sure we didn't order this, so you should probably just—"
"It's already paid for." Said the interloper. "Look, lady, my responsibility ended the second you opened the door and I said 'pizza deliver'. These things are hot, and heavy, and I've got places to be. So I'm just gonna put these down here—" They bent down and dropped the stack of pizzas, not hard enough to make them tip over, but enough to make their annoyance known. "And walk away. You can do whatever you want with em."
True to their word, they spun on one heel, and marched back down the hallway.
"You're not getting a tip!" Lori called after them and immediately regretted doing so. She exchanged witty banter with super villains for a living, and that was the best she could do for an irate delivery person? It was beneath her.
Lori stood and watched as the pizza carrier got further and further away, eventually turning into the stairwell and vanishing from sight. She allowed several more heartbeats to pass before finally letting go of the breath she'd been holding onto the entire time. Then, and only then, did she turn her attention to the discarded pile of sauced bread.
"I guess...dinner's here?" She called out, crouching down and scooping up the pizza boxes. She cast one last look down the hallway, then, finally as satisfied as she was probably going to get, retreated back into the apartment, and closed the door behind her.
As the pizza girl exited the apartment building, she cast one last glance at the structure behind her and let out a quick sigh of relief, before doubling her pace, trying to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. She hadn't planned on Lori being the one to answer the door (it was Lincoln's apartment, wasn't it?), and the shock of coming face to face with a world-renown meta had left her equal parts dumbstruck and terrified. Turns out, when you take the scariest member of the family and give them superpowers, they only get scarier. Lucky for her that she was able to recover as well as she had.
She turned the corner, heading to the opposite side of the building from where Lincoln's apartment was situated. Only then did she finally feel comfortable enough to remove the ill-fitting hat from her head, releasing her cyan-streaked hair from its confines. She allowed herself a moment to bask in the cool night air, its briskness doing wonders to help settle her nerves. Then, without trying to draw too much attention to herself, she sidled up alongside a nondescript car parked against the curb, and sharply rapped three times on the roof with her fist. A moment later, the passenger side door opened, and after taking one last look around, specifically keeping an eye out for any particularly angry-looking streaks of light that might be rocketing their way, she slipped into the car and pulled the door shut behind her.
"How'd it go?" Asked the hooded individual in the diver's seat, not bothering with a greeting. Which, admittedly, would be somewhat pointless in these circumstances. She'd had a job to do and she did it.
"It went fine," Sam assured her. "Lori answered the door. Kind of threw me off my game, but I'm pretty sure she didn't recognize me."
"Lori's always had a knack for butting in where she isn't wanted." Her partner grumbled, shaking her head in annoyance. She cast a sidelong glance Sam's way. "Did you see him? Is he okay?"
"I did not, no." Sam replied, smiling wistfully. "Lori was in big sister mode. Didn't open the door more than she needed to, didn't budge an inch, I couldn't get a scrap of intel about the place. She's good, even she's off duty." She reached into her coat pocket, and produced a small device. "Too bad I'm better."
"Where'd you put the bug?" Her partner asked, pulling down her hood, revealing short brunette hair styled in a pixie cut.
"Third box in the stack," Sam reported, fiddling with the transmitter. "Assuming they don't get shuffled around, I figure it'll take them the longest to get to that one. And, by extension, they'll be keeping it close by that much longer."
"Smart and pretty," Luna murmured, pulling Sam close and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. "I really lucked out with you."
"We make our own luck, babe." Sam gently admonished her, before gently placing the transmitter on the dashboard. "There, it's transmitting. But all I could get on such short notice was cheap, dimestore garbage, so you're going to have to—"
"Yeah, yeah," Luna cut her off. "I'll take care of it."
Luna reached one hand out towards the transmitter and closed her eyes. Her fingers drew close together, as if she was gripping something, and with a slight grunt of exertion, she sharply turned her hand to the right.
Sam winced as the interior of the car was immediately flooded with the sound of static, the harsh, grating noise clashing uncomfortably in the enclosed space.
"Luna!" She yelped, clamping her hands over her ears, which provided exactly zero relief. "Hurry up!"
"Chill out," The other girl grumbled, twisting her hand back and forth as if fiddling with an invisible knob. "There's a lot of noise to sift through. But...I...think...!"
Suddenly, the noise abated, the static leveling out into small, droning background noise as other sounds came to the forefront. Plates clinking, fabric rustling, and then—
"Guys," A decidedly male voice punched through the relative silence of the car. "I'm pretty sure its safe to eat. Lynn's eaten almost an entire pie and she's fine."
"Lynn's also eaten a rusty pipe before. She's not the one I'm worried about."
Luna's shoulders sagged, and she sunk down into her seat. Sam would have written it off as mere exhaustion from the exertion of using her powers, but even in the dim lighting provided by the street lights, she could still make out the twin, shining streaks making their way down her girlfriend's cheeks.
"That's him, right?" She asked, looking at Sam in askance. "That's his voice, right?"
"Its him, hun," Sam reassured her, reaching around and giving Luna a comforting squeeze. "We've found him."
The two girls sat there in companionable silence, and listened. Louds, being themselves. Talking, laughing, arguing. Even as an outsider, Sam found it to be incredibly nostalgic, she could only guess what Luna was feeling, hearing the sounds of her childhood for the first time in nearly a decade. But eventually, it came time to move things forward.
"So," Sam said, breaking the silence. "The information we got was good after all. Now what are we going to do with it?" She discretely looked away as Luna began wiping her eyes, allowing the girl a moment to compose herself.
"We stick to the plan," Luna said at last, her voice firm, and resolute. "We've got his location. As far as we know, they don't know about us. Which means that as long as we're careful, we'll be able to keep tabs on them. Keep gathering intel. Find our opening."
"And then?" Sam prompted.
"Operation: Get Lincoln Away From My Sisters And Cover Our Tracks Well Enough So That They'll Never, Ever Find Us" Luna replied, her voice filled with the utmost sincerity.
Sam frowned thoughtfully. "What about...thinking of a shorter name for that operation?" To which Luna shrugged indifferently.
"Only if there's time."