23. Chapter 23

AN: Little later than usual, but life tends to happen when it would be the least convenient. Nearly done with this arc now.

Whitescorpion: Thank you. That's how I prefer to write Sunacoln, but its nice to know other people enjoy it.

Izaya Orihara 101101: Thanks, hehe. It wasn't by design, but writing Aces Wild made me inordinately fond of this particular trio, and writing them like this is now my guilty pleasure.

copet: That was a source of inspiration, yes. Lori hasn't come because of a combination of them being so far out, and Lincoln's prepared statement pleasing her so much that it put her into a deep sleep. I'm not gonna write the Ben 10 thing myself, hehe, I was just saying that's how I would tweak the other guy's idea, just to make it so the girls could play a larger role in the story. As my stories probably show, I tend to prefer stories where you have multiple people with super powers and/or combat abilities, rather than when you just have the one person who can fight and a supporting cast that just cheers him on. So basically, later Ben 10 over early Ben 10, essentially.

dogbertcarroll: There's a joke about the skin flute in here somewhere, but I'm not going to be the one to make it. Aloud.

Chaosneobreakage: Luna was frozen in shock the whole time, and Sam was too busy driving to be an active participant, so there wouldn't be much input from either of them. Plus, recapping the story at this point would have just padded out the chapter even more.

Jeff: Yeah, about that...

Nobody245: Luna had plenty of time to angst over her romantic feelings in Aces Wild, it doesn't need to be rehashed. Plus, here she grew up with a supportive and loving girlfriend who was totally onboard with the prospect of making herself a Samwich.

STR2D3PO: Nope, she's just enthusiastic and outspoken. And knows her way around Sharp instruments...

TigerJacob: In a better story, Lincoln would be the kind of kryptonite which splits Lori into two identical Loris, Lori Blue and Lori Red, and ends up being fought over by both of them, but here he's just the metaphorical kind, sad to say. Lack of Samwich puns is probably my fault, but that also requires Sam to be the meat, and Lincoln played that role here. Battle Idols are just mine an Auto's attempt to give a name to something that I don't think really has a name. But we're also drawing inspiration from different things on this one, so it's a bit of an amalgamation.

"I'm...sorry." Said Lincoln, sounding to his ears about as dumb as he felt. "I've seen a lot of weird stuff and I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around this. You guys play music."

"And battle." Sam casually replied as she observed Luna's fight. The blonde's fingers nimbly danced up and down her instrument, matching the tempo of Luna's violent swings with remarkable precision.

"But you guys sing songs."

"And battle, Lincoln." Sam turned to the boy one eyebrow raised upward. Lincoln was impressed that despite no longer looking at Luna, Sam's musical accompaniment continued to match Luna's movements point for point. "What is it that mystifies you so?"

"I suppose...I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the core concept." Lincoln confessed, letting out a low whistle as Luna nimbly hopped atop one Husk, pulverizing its skull with a stomp of her boot. Then, before it could begin to dissolve, she leapt off, twirling through the air with her axe outstretched and tore through another group of the creatures as she landed lightly on her feet.

"Is the Harem King questioning the internal logic of someone else's archetype?" The older girl's playful smirk took the sting out of her words, but the point was well made.

"Fair enough." Lincoln conceded. "But it feels weird to just be finding this out now."

"Lincoln, we got our start by winning the Battle of the Bands. Just what do you think we did there?"

"Play music!" Lincoln insisted.

"And—"

"Battle! Yes! I get it." Lincoln shook his head in annoyance. "I didn't realize it was literally that, and I couldn't go because it was a school night. Wait, so the reason you and Luna didn't come home that night—?"

"Was because they had to rush us to the hospital afterwords." Sam replied, cutting him off with a sharp chuckle. "There was blood everywhere, it was pretty nuts."

"You guys got hurt that badly?"

"Didn't say it was our—Lincoln, down!" The boy's heart leapt up into his throat as the usually jovial girl's gaze turned steely, her voice suddenly all business. The shift was so abrupt that Lincoln acted without thinking, flinging himself to the ground without a second thought. As he tumbled downward, he glimpsed a metallic flash—

Uwooooo

As well as the Husk that had somehow crept up behind him. A Husk which now had Sam's outstretched fist buried in its chest. As the monster began to dissolve, Sam withdrew her hand, revealing a long, slender sword clutched in her grip, the instrument of the creature's demise, presumably. With a casual flick of the blade to dislodge some errant ash, the blonde gave the weapon a twirl and then guided it towards the guitar still held in her other hand. With practiced ease she slid the length of the blade down into the fret board, joining the two items with a satisfying clink. The sword, he realized, was stored inside the guitar, the headstock serving as the blade's hilt when it was in use.

"You have...a guitar sword." Lincoln uttered dumbly, pointing at the item in question.

"Technically it's a guitar sheathe." Sam corrected him, walking past Lincoln and settling into a fighting stance. One hand holding the base at her side in a reverse grip, and the other placed atop the stock, ready to draw her blade at a moments notice. "And before you start giving me guff over it, we really need to start backing into the club.

"What do you say that?" Lincoln asked

Uwooooo

...immediately regretting that he'd tempted fate, as several more Husks stumbled into view.

"Ah." He said, completely unnecessarily. "That's why."

"Where did they come from?" Lincoln asked, nervously glancing around. Much to his dismay, more of the horrors continued to shamble forth from the dilapidated buildings surrounding them, and it wasn't long before they had a second horde in the making on their hands.

"They're attracted to our music." Sam replied, frowning in concentration.

"What!?"

"Yeah. You've seen our concert videos." The closest Husk stepped within reach and immediately burst into ash. Had Lincoln not been staring directly at the blonde, he likely would have chalked it up to spontaneous combustion. As it was, however, his eyes were just barely able to follow the girl's movements as she drew her blade, sheered the creature in twain, and returned it to its sheath in one single, impossibly fast movement.

"Wait! The part of the show where a bunch of Husks charge the stage and you guys fight them off is real?"

"Of course."

"I thought it was a...a gimmick or something! You guys don't even stop playing!"

Sam snorted in amusement as a trio of Husks stumbled into towards her, surrounding the girl in something that vaguely resembled a formation. Sam exploded into motion, a deadly dance of steel and violence as she tore her foes apart with quick, precise strokes of her blade, standing in stark contrast to the brutal savagery of Luna's blows. As she returned to her ready stance only moments later, each Husk twitched violently before falling apart; pieces of their desiccated forms unceremoniously falling to the ground before bursting apart.

"It's sort of a hazard of the job." Sam calmly replied, as if literally tearing apart a group of Husks in the blink of an eye was an every day occurrence. "And we make it work for us. We usually perform in well patrolled, high population areas anyway, and we arrange the venue so that anything that gets lured in will be funneled into a controlled path well away from the audience." She let out a melodic giggle. "Luna takes it as a personal challenge to arrange our special effects to form a sort of killing field, tries to see how many she can blow up before they can reach the stage. It keeps the numbers nice and manageable, and the fans get a kick out of it, so everyone wins."

"That..." Lincoln trailed off as memories of Luna's various pyrotechnics experiments flashed through his mind. "...sounds exactly like her."

"Lu likes her explosions." Sam murmured, sighing happily. Then her expression grew troubled. "Normally we don't attract anywhere near as many of these things when we come out here. The city must be diverting those patrols somewhere else, for some reason."

"Uh...yeah." Lincoln uttered, wincing as he realized the increased patrols in the city were likely the reason for their predicament. You had to siphon the time and manpower for those patrol from somewhere else, and diverting resources from patrolling the long-abandoned city outskirts would seem like an obvious solution.

"In any case..." Sam began

Snicker-snack! Two more Husks down.

"We should really get ourselves to a more defensible position." She concluded, sheathing her sword once more and shoeing Lincoln towards the nightclub. "Hopefully Luna's having better luck in there than we are out here."

"Luna, I am very disappointed in you!" Sam shouted ramming her blade into one Husk while she swung the bass in her other hand at another interloper. The throng had grown so thick that she'd been forced to repurpose the sheathe into an off-hand weapon, both hands working in concert to decimate the Husks around her. Unfortunately, her admittedly impressive ability to kill the things was dwarfed by the sheer numbers they were dealing with.

"Me?" Luna growled, bashing the face of one Husk with the stock of her guitar, then whirling around and cleaving through it and all of its fellows who were unfortunate enough to be within range of her axe blades. "I told you to hang back and keep Lincoln safe. Why did you bring more of these stupid things in here!?"

"It got...complicated." Sam's eyes nervously darted side to side as she continued to ambidextrously slaughter her all too numerous foes. "It's nobody's fault, really."

"But it is mine, apparently."

"I'm glad you understand the situation."

"I'll understand you!" Luna spat. She flipped her weapon around, now wielding it like an instrument of music, rather than an instrument of war. "Lincoln! Cover your ears!"

He obeyed without question. The night had been surreal enough as it was, and he trusted Luna to know what she was doing. It turned out to be the right decision.

Luna raised one hand high above her head, pointing straight upward. Then she brought it down, hard, straight across the guitar body, her fingers falling upon the strings like dainty meteorites.

BWAAAAAAM

Even with his hands clutched tightly over his ears, Lincoln still winced. From her guitar erupted no mere sound, but a physical force, resonating outward with the same tenacity she showed in her fighting. And the results were instantaneous.

As one, every Husk in their immediate vicinity exploded with such force with such force that the resultant ash stayed airborne for a time, coating the area with a thick, noxious cloud. It was simultaneously among the most awesome and disgusting things he'd ever seen.

"Bleh blah blam." Said Luna. Oh right, he still had his ears covered.

"W-what was that?" Lincoln asked, gingerly removing his hands from his ears. A high pitched whining still permeated the air.

"That thing I did, it's called a Power Chord." She repeated, giving her guitar a fond pat. "Figured you were gonna ask. It'll be a while before I can belt out another one, but it bought us some breathing room. And now..."

Luna looked around, presumably taking stock of their situation. There wasn't much to see. The nightclub interior had already been a warzone when he and Sam had been forced to retreat inside. Now, after Luna's literal outburst, the disarray had increased tenfold, tables and chairs scattered about if not outright shattered by the wailing of her guitar.

"The stage." She said, pointing to the far end of the club. "Lets get over there."

"Why?"

"Because its raised off the ground, which'll prevent Husks from just marching right onto it." Sam answered. "The easiest way for them to get to us will be the stairs on either end, which will be a lot easier for Luna and I to cover if we don't have to worry about being surrounded. But we should probably hurry, because—"

Uwooooo

Right on cue. Lincoln was starting to loathe that noise.

"Because until a few moments ago, this club was standing room only." Luna added, grimly taking her weapon in hand once more. "But it looks like a few more seats opened up."

"This is awesome and terrifying!" Sam cried out and she filleted her umpteenth foe for the night. Unfortunately, There were many more willing to take their place.

The trio had relocated per Luna's orders. As she'd predicted, the Husks single minded nature had forced them to funnel around the stage to the stairs on the left and right ends. The girls had positioned themselves accordingly, one covering each side, leaving center stage to Lincoln. He was fully aware that "cover the center" was code for "stay out of trouble", but that was fine by him. It wasn't like he had anything meaningful to contribute to the fight at the moment, better to stay out of the girls respective ways.

In one sense, the situation had vastly improved. By limiting the creatures avenues of attack, Sam and Luna were able to defend themselves far more effectively. But on the other hand...

"Keep your mind on the fight, Sam!" Luna barked, decapitating another interloper. While her voice sounded confident enough, the way she held her guitar limply at her side bespoke a different story. Her strength was flagging, and in all likelihood Sam wasn't in much better condition. The Husks were simply too numerous, and the girls stamina was finite. At this rate, it wouldn't be long before they were too weak to keep up the fight.

"Just hang on a little longer, Linc." Sam called to him, noticeably panting as she eviscerated the next few Husks in line. "We've got this!"

Yeah, about that...

Husks were creatures that were slaves to their instincts. When they sense prey, they pursued that prey. This was normally a boon, since that single-mindedness usually made them predictable. Here, as the girls had correctly surmised, the stage they were currently making their stand on forced the Husks to funnel around the sides where they could be slaughtered at the idols' leisure (relatively speaking). They weren't all patiently waiting in line to be carved up, however. Those who'd been stuck at the front of the stage due to the sheer size of the crowd paid heed to their instincts and attempted to take the shortest, available path to the humans. This didn't prove successful at first, as Husks simply didn't possess the higher brain functions that would allow them to operate their decrepit bodies in a way that would, which left them to flail helplessly against a barrier which would have been only a minor inconvenience for something with a modicum of intelligence.

But happenstance can be a fickle thing. Where a more intelligent creature may have been deterred by their lack of success, and eventually given up, Husks were not burdened by the concept of failure. The continued to press against the stage, repeated failures meaning nothing to them, because they literally didn't know how to give up. A hundred failures, or even a thousand failures meant nothing when a creature had all the time in the world to keep trying. And all they needed was that single, solitary success, to turn things around.

Lincoln didn't know what had caused it. Maybe the throng of Husks had pressed so tightly against their fellows up front, that they'd inadvertently given them the leverage they'd needed. Maybe one of those frantically flailing Husks, by pure serendipity, had managed to maneuver their limbs in such a way as to propel themselves upward, just that scant bit that was necessary to overcome the obstacle that was the moderately raised stage. Whatever the reason, three Husks had managed to find themselves a handhold, and were slowly making their way over the stage.

"Luna!" Lincoln called out. "Sam?!" Unfortunately, the girls were busy. Whether it was from the fatigue, or the general din of battle, neither of them acknowledged his plea. The Husks were gaining ground, the closest one very nearly over the edge now, clawing in his direction as if it knew its victory was at hand. And Lincoln, in every sense of the phrase that mattered, was alone.

Fear and anxiety gripped Lincoln's heart. Luna and Sam needed his help, that much was certain even before this frightening new development—

Uwooooo!

—Which, nevertheless, was absolutely a concern! But the fact of the matter was that the girls simply weren't capable of dealing with Soulless on this scale, and Lincoln Loud was not the person who could provide them the help they needed! But maybe he could do something about that...

Still he hesitated. At this time, Lincoln's success rate with Genre Shift was exactly 50%. It had worked out pretty spectacularly with Leni (seriously, he needed to get a copy of that video for himself...), but on the other hand it had been a spectacular failure when he'd tried again with Stella. And it terrified him that if he tried again, now, it might be a repeat of that terrible, terrible failure. That this would forever cement his role as such, his only success being a one-time, abject fluke...

It was at this point that the closest Husk finally launched itself over the side of the stage. It regained its footing and reared itself upward, arms outstretched as if in triumph.

And it was at that moment that Lincoln realized that if he tried and failed at this point, he very likely wouldn't live long enough to regret it. Which was terrifying, but also strangely comforting in a weird way. He wondered if this was what it was like to be Lucy.

"Right then." He muttered to himself, rubbing his palms together and throwing his arms out. Completely unnecessarily, he was almost certain, but it felt right. "Let's try this again!"

Lincoln reached out with his senses, just as he had before, and just as before...nothing happened. Not immediately. The boy's heart began to palpitate, his breathing becoming strained as the creature began shambling closer, and while Lincoln had no doubt that he could evade a single Husk, it's fellows were nearly onto the stage themselves. Three Husks would prove considerably more challenging. But even then, there was no guarantee that they wouldn't just go after the girls. Luna and Sam. Their situation was desperate enough, and that one tip of the scale could be enough to end it all in the most permanent way. He couldn't let that happen. He wouldn't let that happen.

Something...clicked, inside Lincoln's brain, and then...he could feel. Finally.

Two Archetypes, both as a like as they were different. Sun and moon, yin and yang, Day and...later that day. Individually they weren't as strong as Leni's had been, his second oldest sister was such a reservoir of power that taking what little he'd needed from her was just a drop in the bucket. At this point, with their strengths spent as they were, it worried Lincoln that borrowing even that much from either girl would doom them. But because they were so similar...maybe it was possible to split the difference. Just a bit.

Uwooooo

And with that, Lincoln was out of options. The lead Husk was nearly upon him, it was now or never. Lincoln forced the connection, feeling the energy surge between him and his two partners this time, and after one final moment of hesitation...he pulled, taking the power into himself.

"Genre Shift!" He growled, holding steadfast as the creature charged towards him. He felt vindicated as the power surged through him, changing him, making him something better. Something that could hopefully fight!

The transformation was fast, but not fast enough, and the distance between him and the Husk was rapidly disappearing, far too quickly for his liking. Then he felt it it, something forming in his hand. He dared not take his eyes off his foe. The Husk was nearly upon him, and looking away now would likely result in his doom. Whatever he was holding, it felt solid. It felt hard. Under these circumstances, that was all he'd needed. Gripping the object in both hand, Lincoln settled into a batter's stance and swung at the creature as hard as he could.

KABONG!

And as he stood there, mouth agape at the sight of the newly materialized, shiny, black, skull-adorned guitar body that was now lodged in the creatures head...all Lincoln could focus on was how ridiculous that sound effect had been.