AN: Don't mind me, just plodding along with this.

"Yo, Lisa!" Lynn called out, peering around the younger girl's lab as she searched for the wayward scientist. "I'm taking one of your glowing sodas, alright?"

As if to demonstrate, she held up a canister that was indeed glowing. It also had a label that said things like "WARNING", and "DANGER", and "DO NOT CONSUME" in large, bold print.

"Must be a new design," She muttered to herself as she fumbled with the mechanism that held the lid in place. "Ah ha!"

"Bottoms up!" Lynn proclaimed as she triumphantly hoisted her beverage in the air, which would have given onlookers an excellent view of the part of the can's label which prominently displayed the words, "MAY CAUSE DEATH". Then she threw back her head and guzzled down the entirety of the glowing liquid in a single shot.

"Mmm," Lynn murmured as she drained the last drop, then crushed the industrial-grade canister against her forehead. "Tasty."

Moments passed as Lynn patted her toned stomach, and let out a loud, extremely satisfied sounding belch.

"Welp," She began. "Guess I'd better get back to it."

She spun on one foot directing herself towards the exit, but before she could continue, she stopped in place, as her entire body began to tremble.

"What the—" She murmured, as she held up one trembling hand for inspection, but whatever thought she'd intended to articulate was abruptly cut off…

CLANG

...as her head smashed into the reinforced metallic ceiling of the lab.

"Yeowch!" She shouted, reeling from the impact. "Son of a…!"

The curse died in her throat as she gaped, wide-eyed at the ceiling which was now only millimeters away from her face. Casting her gaze around, she saw that the once spacious lab as now filled to the brim with grade-A sports star, her arms and legs pressing against the walls and floor, wedging her tightly into place, and her already snug clothing shredded to such an extent that it barely afforded her the slightest degree of modesty. And then, her body began to tremble anew…

"Uh oh…" Lynn muttered as her body began to expand once more.

"And that's what happened," Lisa said, pausing the security feed moments before a now panicked Lynn would go crashing through the walls of her impromptu prison. "Which, I'll remind you, is exactly why I moved my operations out here to my bunker. To prevent this exact sort of thing from happening!"

"To be fair," Lincoln opined. "Mom's been telling you to separate your glowing sodas from your dangerous chemicals for years."

"And that was the first thing I did upon moving," Lisa grumbled, gesturing with one arm. Following with his eyes, Lincoln could see that she had directed him to what was very clearly a refrigerator, which had a large sign on the front that read, "Glowing Sodas, Not Dangerous Chemicals. Take One."

"...Don't mind if I do," Lincoln said, striding over to the fridge and yanking it open. "Oooh! Red!"

"So that's the long and short of it," Lisa continued as Lincoln fished a soda out of the fridge and began gleefully slurping it down. "Lynn didn't heroically volunteer for anything, she just meddled with my experiments. Again. But obviously, that wouldn't achieve the narrative that the government needed the public to buy, so they fudged the details a skosh.

"Makes sense," Lincoln said as he moved back to join her. "The people needed a hero, and Lynn was a good fit for it. The question, of course, is what even was that stuff to begin with? And what are the odds Lynn would join the mile-high club around the same time as Luna and Sam?"

"I think you mean the 50-foot high club," Lisa replied. "But that aside...I have a suspicion that those events are more connected than you think."

Motioning for Lincoln to follow her, Lisa moved to a nearby computer station and brought up an image of the canister Lynn had drank from.

"The substance responsible for Lynn's transformation is something I've been working on at the government's behest. I call it 'Titan Serum', and the goal, as you've undoubtedly inferred by this point, was to create something that would imbue a human with the ability to fight a kaiju on equal terms."

"By making them bigger and stronger," Lincoln said, as he nodded along. "Sounds pretty cool...on paper, at least."

"It sounds ludicrous," Lisa corrected him, scoffing. "You can't just make someone bigger, there are so many hurdles that would need to be overcome as far as...biology and physics and what have you. It was, no pun intended, a very tall order to fill."

"But...you did it," Lincoln replied. "Lynn's as big as a house, and then some. And she kicked that monster's butt pretty handily. Sounds to me like the project was a success."

Lisa let out a frustrated sigh and began cleaning her glasses with her lab coat, a longstanding habit she tended to indulge in when she was agitated.

"The only reason I agreed to take on the project was because...it genuinely seemed like our best hope at the time," Said Lisa. "Which I in no way meant as a compliment. Research and Development has been in a frantic race to churn out stronger guns, faster planes, and more durable tanks, but it was very obviously a losing battle. They were having difficulties keeping pace with the creatures we were facing at the time, to a point where surpassing them wasn't even a serious consideration, we were too busy simply trying to stay afloat. Geon was proof positive of a conclusion we'd all come to a long time ago, that we weren't going to win this through conventional means. We weren't expecting things to escalate quite so dramatically in the span of a single skirmish, but it was inevitable that we were going to end up in that situation eventually. But for Lynn bungling her way into being my first successful Titan, it's likely that there would not have been a Royal Woods for you to return to."

"Well...accident or not, the important thing is that it worked, right?" Lincoln asked. "Lynn's a hero. You're a hero for making her that way. And now she's got Sam and Luna to back her up. Granted, they didn't exactly sign on for that, so I dunno how that's going to pan out in the long term. But right now, at least, it sounds like things are looking up. Right?"

"...Yes, about our other sister," Lisa said, turning to face Lincoln. "I'm glad you brought her up. Isn't it amazing that both Sam and Luna underwent their own, remarkably similar transformations?"

"It is. But it sounds so...ominous when you put it like that." Lincoln muttered, wincing.

"Good, because it was supposed to," Lisa deadpanned. "I spoke to both girls about their experiences while I was conducting their medical examinations. My takeaway was that the culprits were a group of 'bad science dudes', in our elder sister's parlance, who abducted the three of you after your cruise ship suffered its'...accident. I'm curious if there's anything you can add to their accounts."

"Not...a whole lot…"

"Status report," Spoke a muffled voice, barely audible over the pounding in his head. Which combined with the pulsating ache that was emanating from the base of his skull were likely the only things keeping him as conscious as he was.

"We've done a sweep of the passengers and crew," said a second voice. "These three scanned green."

A sigh. "Nowhere near as many as the higher-ups were hoping for. But, realistically, more than we probably would have found. It'll have to do. Take them, then scuttle the ship."

"Yes ma'am."

"And fully sedate them before transporting them, we don't want to take any chances. Use the good stuff, it'll probably be the last good night's sleep they'll ever get…"

"That's all I can remember from the accident," Lincoln admitted. "Everything went black after that, and the next thing I knew I was floating in this big tube. Lots of people in lab coats screaming and running around. The roof straight up gets torn off and suddenly Luna's looking down into the room, huge and angrier than I've ever seen her. From what the girls told me, they'd been awake for a much longer period of time, and they were injected with all kinds of weird stuff. Whatever was in the most recent batch caused them to change the way they did, and they took advantage of that and smashed up the place. We salvaged what we could and then did our best to survive in the jungle until Lynn found us."

"That corroborates what the girls told me. Unfortunately…" Lisa murmured. Before Lincoln could ask her to elaborate, the scientist began typing commands into her keyboard with one hand and gestured to the monitor with the other.

"This here is Lynn's DNA following her transformation," She said as a series of...very complicated-looking images appeared on the screen before overlapping each other to form a single image. "It's not a one-for-one representation, obviously. The computer is, for lack of a better term, showing you the 'highlights', distilling the data down to the most important parts. Which for our purposes are these…"

She indicated a section of the structure which was darker, and noticeably thicker than the rest. Upon being shown that, Lincoln realized that the structure as a whole was rife with similar patches.

"Huh," He said, blinking in surprise. "What are those?"

"That's...a little above your clearance level," Lisa replied, in a manner that was very obviously evasive. "For our purposes, it is enough for you to know that they do not exist in normal, unaltered humans. Now here are images I've compiled from DNA samples I've taken from Luna and Sam."

A few more keystrokes and two more images appeared alongside the first.

"They look…pretty identical," Lincoln said, surprised, as he reached out and gestured at the images. "They've even got those same thingies."

"Precisely," Lisa replied with an approving nod. "And what does that suggest?"

"That Sam and Luna…" Lincoln began, slowly, before his eyes widened in realization. "Are also—"

"Titans," Lisa interjected. "None of this was a coincidence. The girls' transformations are the result of my Titan Serum. And since I didn't administer it to them, the only logical conclusion is that someone else has acquired my formula."

"That's...pretty heavy, Lees," Lincoln said as he processed his sister's words. "Are you sure about that?"

"Positive," She immediately replied. "Even ignoring the statistical impossibility that someone else could create a serum from scratch that so perfectly mimics the effects of my own, which, in the parlance of our eldest sibling, is literally impossible. Those sequences I indicated earlier are the theoretical results of certain...proprietary materials I included in the latest revision of the formula."

"And you can't tell me what those are either," Lincoln deadpanned, earning a nod from his sister. Then, something occurred to him. "Wait, theoretical?"

"The serum was nowhere near ready for human testing," Lisa explained. "So I didn't have any hard data before Lynn and the other girls were exposed to it, and the fact that all three of them have seemingly gained the benefits of the serum with no obvious defects is, itself, a miracle. But these results are within my projections for the latest version. Still…"

She sighed and shook her head.

"The fact that someone was willing to administer such a dangerously incomplete serum to unwilling test subjects is just as disturbing as the fact that someone got their hands on my formula at all, let alone the latest revision."

"Well...the problem might have resolved itself," Lincoln suggested. "Luna said she wasn't fully in control of herself during the...uh, rampage, but the girls did a pretty thorough job of smashing up that facility."

"How thorough?"

"Well…"

Panic flooded through Lincoln as his gargantuan sister effortlessly scooped up the containment tube he was still trapped within with one hand, and held it up to her face, squinting and sniffing at it in suspicion. So it came as no small relief when, finally, her dour expression was replaced by a delighted smile.

"Lin-kon!" She shouted as she hugged the tube to her chest, her words noticeably thicker than normal, and slightly slurred. "Foun yous!"

Before he could even try to respond, uncertain that his voice could penetrate the thick glass that imprisoned him, Luna let out a surprised growl as two powerfully muscled arms encircled her waist.

"Babe!" Sam shouted, equal parts happily and lustily, much to Lincoln's renewed alarm. "Want now!"

"Not now!" Luna giggled, trying unsuccessfully to push the other girl off her as she held up Lincoln's tube. "Found—!"

"Yes now!" Sam barked, as her head darted forward and ensnared Luna's lips with her own. Moments later, the two titanic women toppled over, and the earth began to shake as their cries and passions continued to heighten.

...and through it all, what remained most surprising was that Luna never let go of that tube…

"Lincoln!"

The young man jerked in surprise as his sister's voice sliced through his reverie, bringing him back to the present day.

"Are you alright?" She asked, looking genuinely concerned. "You've been pausing for an unnaturally long amount of time."

"R-right," He said, letting out an embarrassed cough. "Anyway, the girls were...p-pretty thorough. And anyone who got out of that mess would have had to also get through the jungle. Which would be pretty rough if you didn't have a pair of giant, super-strong girls helping you through it.

"...Perhaps," Lisa admitted, still not sounding convinced.

"Anyway," Lincoln continued, desperately hoping to shift the conversation somewhere a little less...that. "What are you going to be doing with your serum now?"

"Are you volunteering as a test subject?" Lisa asked, only slightly condescendingly. "Perhaps realizing, among other things, that in your situation, having a bone structure resilient enough to survive our sisters'...affections, would be tremendously beneficial?"

He hadn't been. Though, when she put it like that…

"I jest, of course," Lisa added, thoroughly dashing that line of thought. "I have no intention of administering any more of the serum in the near future. I didn't even want to use it on Lynn for...numerous reasons, the least of which being that we still don't know what long-term effects might develop, and now instead of one test subject I didn't want, I have three. For the moment, Lynn will have to suffice for the project's goals."

"Sounds reasonable. Lynn certainly seems on board with that outcome."

"Indeed," The scientist let out a small snort of laughter. "Perhaps a bit too much…"

She climbed to her feet and sidled up alongside Lincoln, which he realized was her prompting him to pull her into a hug.

"Thank you for talking to me, big brother," She said as he complied with her unspoken request. "I appreciate that it wasn't the most...pleasant conversation, but it needed to be done. And aside from that...it was just nice to be able to spend some time with you again."

"Happy to help, Lees," He replied, resting his head atop her own as he held her close.

THOOM

...and then the ground began to quake.

"What in the name of Einstein is that?" Lisa asked, glowering at the now-shaking bunker. "It can't be an attack, the alarm would have gone off…"

"Ooooh," Lincoln let out an embarrassed hiss as he caught sight of the time. "That's for me. I...kind of have a...date?"

The glower Lisa directed his way seemed to speak volumes.

"I know I assigned Lynn to train Luna today," She said slowly. "Which means both of them should still be occupied for at least a few more hours."

"That...sounds about right."

Lincoln flinched as Lisa's expression turned whithering. Without saying anything, she extracted herself from his grasp and crossed over to the ladder that led outside the bunker, punching in the code that unsealed the entrance. Uncertain how he should respond, if at all, Lincoln settled for walking over to the ladder and preparing to make his exit.

"...I will prepare a medical bed for you," She said, as he began to make his ascent. "Just in case."

Lincoln let out a relieved sigh and shot his sister a grateful smile. "Thanks, Lisa,"

"Don't mention it," She said, as she gestured for him to keep moving. "Which I mean quite literally. Do not. Say. A word."

"...Fair enough."