26. Chapter 26

"I must admit, I'm somewhat taken aback," Lisa said, pursing her lips thoughtfully. "It's difficult to imagine you engaging in something as fanciful as playing superhero."

"You mean you have a hard time picturing me dressing up in a costume and acting like a superhero?" Lori asked, dryly.

"Point taken." Lisa conceded with a roll of her eyes. "But I know you take my meaning. For as long as I've been cognizant, this is the only Lori Loud I've ever known." Lisa gestured at the older girl demonstratively. "You're a respected and consummate professional. It's hard to rationalize the Lori I know with one who was willing to indulge in such whimsy."

"You'd be surprised." Lori chortled, sinking a little deeper into her seat as she warmed to the subject. "Like, you know how I used to have a secret identity?"

"Linky, it just doesn't make any sense." Lori deadpanned, shaking her head in exasperation.

"It makes perfect sense." Lincon protested. "If we're partners then we need to have a theme. We're like...playing cards! It's a thing!"

"But what kind of powers is a High Card even supposed to have!?"

"You let him name you?" Lisa asked, her voice dripping with incredulity.

"Names are hard," Lori replied, with a little shrug. "And it's not like I had any better ideas."

"Suprema."

Lori's face scrunched up in confusion. "Come again?"

"A prospective name I just came up with," Lisa replied matter-of-factly, scribbling onto her notepad. "There are a great many heroes whose powers are so narrow in scope that they are almost required to adhere to some sort of theme. Arachno-Gal, for example—"

"Bea really did pick the worst possible time to grow those extra arms." Lori mused. "Leni wouldn't come out of her room for weeks, and it literally took forever before I could convince her to start going next door again."

"Your problem, on the other hand," Lisa continued. "Is that you have an extremely diverse set of powers which don't inherently lend themselves to any particular theme. Thus, the obvious solution would have been to pick a name that highlights the vast scope of your powers. Something that makes you sound powerful, essentially. Which I have now done, in considerably less time than you had to prepare."

The temperature of Lori's expression cooled, just a bit. "I'll give you that it probably sounds obvious in hindsight. But at the time—"

"Miraclegirl. Or Woman, depending on your preference."

Lori's eyes narrowed. "At the time, I was dealing with—"

"Power Gal."

Lori suffered a full-body twitch of irritation. "Lisa—"

"Captain Marvelous." The scientist continued, flipping to the previous page of her notebook, and peering down at her notes. "Hyperia. Ms. Majestic. Wonder—"

"LISA!"

There was a beat of silence. "Super Lori." Said the younger girl, flipping her notebook to an empty page. "Now I'm done."

"Fine! You win, Lisa." Lori grumbled, throwing up her hands in mock surrender. "I don't have super naming."

"I had already deduced as much you suggested we name Lucy's new bat, 'Robin'," Lisa added with a wry smile. "But I always appreciate additional data."

"It's an industry joke." Lori huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Lincoln thought it was funny."

"Indeed." Lisa nodded, adjusting her glasses. "And from what you're telling me, he has also spent a decent portion of his existence wearing his underwear on the outside of his clothes."

"In his defense, that was a later revision to the costume. And as to your wisecrack about my superhero name—"

"I was just making an observation," Lisa interjected.

"You seem to be overlooking something pretty significant."

Lisa pursed her lips thoughtfully. "And that would be?"

"That I didn't get my powers all at once. Or... even most of them, really."

"Pick me up again, Lori!" Lincoln shouted excitedly, thrusting his arms out at his older sister and waving them excitedly.

Lori smiled at her younger sibling, weariness intermingling with bemusement. They'd been at this for a while. Lincoln had decided that after being exposed to cosmic radiation, Ace Savvy now had the power to fly. In a moment of impulsiveness, Lori had decided to indulge her brother's whims by picking him up and swinging him around a little, to simulate the act of flying. Lincoln had loved it, so much that he'd requested they do it again. And again. And again...

"Please Lori? Just one more time." Lori flinched as the puppy-dog eyes came out. She was still trying to figure out if Lincoln actually knew he was irresistible when he made that face, or if he just naturally made that expression when he wanted something badly enough. She sincerely hoped it was the latter. She literally couldn't say no to him when he looked at her like that, it just hurt her heart too much to see her little bro disappointed for even a second. And the thought of someone knowingly having that kind of hold on her was...just a smidge disconcerting.

"How about we let Leni take this one." She suggested, jerking her thumb at the girl in question. Leni immediately experienced what could only be described as a full-body smile, her entire demeanor brightening up as an enormous grin erupted upon her face.

"Uh..." Lincoln shot a guilty look Leni's say, seemingly considering his words very carefully. "It's not that I don't like playing with Leni—"

"Yay!"

"But when she plays the flying game with me," Lincoln continued, "We kind of tend to crash. A lot."

"Aw, come on Linky. It only happened one time!" Leni protested, holding up one hand. Lincoln coughed quietly and gestured to the outstretched appendage.

"Oh, right." Said Leni, her smile faltering a bit as she noticed she was holding up three fingers. "I guess it was that many."

"I still like playing with you, Leni." Lincoln insisted, running up and giving the older girl a hug. "Honest."

Leni's response was a squeal that pierced the air, and Lori's eardrums. The young fashionista swept Lincoln up off the ground and into her arms, cradling him against her chest and peppering the top of the now squirming boy's head with kisses. Lori allowed herself a moment to appreciate the sight of her siblings getting along so well.

"Alright, alright." She said, walking over to the pair and holding her arms out. "Hand over the Linky, Leni."

"Aw. Alright." Leni looked unhappy to be surrendering her cherished little brother, but she complied regardless, transferring the boy into Lori's arms without allowing him to touch the ground. She gave Lincoln one last peck on the cheek, then stepped back a few paces, giving the pair the room they needed.

"Don't suppose this counts?" Lori asked, only half-serious.

"Nope!" Lincoln's answer was accompanied by an emphatic and entirely too self-assured shake of his head. "We've gotta do it right!"

"Fine then." Lori chuckled as she got into position, crouching down and holding her little brother in front of her, similar to how one might throw a basketball underhand. "Ready for take-off, Linky?"

"Ready!" The boy shouted, punching the air with his tiny fist.

"Alright then. One...two...three!" What was supposed to happen at this point, was Lori would swing Lincoln into the air while she stood up. Once she had finished straightening up, she'd flip him into a horizontal position and proceed to run around the yard for as long as her arms would allow her to do so, Lincoln contributing to the process by making woosh-ing noises. On this occasion, however, a few different things happened.

The first was that as she was swinging Lincoln upward, Lori immediately felt herself begin to lose her grip on the younger boy. She fumbled, trying simultaneously to both arrests the swing while also reasserting her grip on her brother, when in hindsight, she probably should have just committed to one of the two actions.

The second thing that happened was, in spite of Lori's attempts, Lincoln did slip from her grasp. But, instead of falling to the ground, or briefly flopping up into the air and then falling to the ground, the boy went straight up. And up, and up...

"Eeeeee!" Lincoln's high-pitched voice faded as the boy soared ever higher, his tiny body quickly vanishing as the distance between him and his ground-bound sisters became too great.

"Wow." Said Leni, craning her neck skyward as she stepped closer to the now dumbfounded Lori. "Linky was right, you're way better at this game than I am."

"Ah." Lisa nodded her head. "Of course. I'd forgotten that you were apparently considerably less super at the time."

It seemed as if she had more to say, but she stopped herself, her brows furrowing in concentration.

"Hold on. I've heard this story, but I wasn't aware of the time frame. This happened before you could fly?"

"Yep." Lori nodded in agreement. "I got my strength first. Which...wasn't exactly the best power to have at the time.

"Then how, may I ask, did Lincoln survive the fall? I certainly wasn't around to fix him up, and I'm fairly certain Project Phoenix is the first of its kind. Certainly, the first of such endeavors to show any sort of results, at least..."

"Project what now?" Lori asked, blinking in confusion.

"Forget I mentioned it. And also, please explain how our brother managed to avoid becoming a greasy stain on our lawn."

"Right..." Lori trailed off as she considered the younger girl carefully. Finally, she shrugged indifferently, long used to Lisa being secretive about her experiments.

"Well," She continued. "Everything happened so fast, and I didn't exactly have time to consider my options. And I was the big sister, Lincoln was my responsibility. So I kind of just...followed my instincts."

"Meaning what?"

Lori let out an embarrassed cough. "Well, according to Leni, I...'jumped good'..."

"Loriiiiii!"

"Just...just hang onto me tightly, Linky! And don't look down!"

"I know you don't get to see it very often, Lori. But this is my confused face." Lise gestured to herself. "Please explain."

"I don't think I really knew what was going on. But I recognized that I threw Lincoln really hard, so, at the time, it kind of made sense to try, uh...jumping after him."

"You...jumped," Lisa repeated slowly.

"After him, yes. I angled him in the direction I'd thrown at him, gave myself a little running start, and...uh, jumped." Lori hopped in her seat demonstratively. "Thankfully, my legs were strong too, so I flew right after him."

"And you...caught him that way?" Lisa made no attempt to hide the disbelief in her voice.

"Yeah." Lori tittered nervously. "Near as I can figure, Lincoln ran out of momentum around the time I decided to jump after him. So he was coming down while I was still going up, and we basically managed to meet in the middle, more or less. He was scared out of his mind, but...truth be told, so was I."

"And how exactly did you get back down?"

Lori winced as the memory washed over her. "You know how we have that big patch of grass in the front yard? The one that looks completely different from all the other grass?"

"I'd always wondered about that, but yes."

"That's where I landed." Lori scratched the back of her head in embarrassment. "Thankfully, when I got stronger I also got tougher. I landed on my back, took as much of the impact as I could. Lincoln and I both walked away with just a couple of bruises each, but it ended up leaving a pretty big crater in the backyard. And we didn't have a lot of money back then. I mean, my Archetype had literally just manifested, and we weren't anywhere close to having the income that you, or Luna, or even Luan bring in now. So we had to make do with what little we had to fix the lawn."

"And so Lincoln was also the beneficiary of your first heroic act," Lisa murmured, writing furiously in her notebook. "Interesting. It seems like a pattern is emerging."

"Never really thought of it like that," Lori replied, frowning thoughtfully. "Anyway, getting powers was just my first step in becoming a hero. Now that I had them, I had to take the much more important second step."

"That being?"

Lori grimaced. "Finding a paying job."