27. Chapter 27 - Luan Arc

BANG!

The loud explosion gave Luan a nervous start. She turned around and saw that it was a streetlight that had just exploded behind her, the grounded glass giving off a dying orange glow. It was a reminder that this wasn't a good neighborhood, especially at this hour, and under any other circumstances Luan would never even think to be here.

But she had to be. She had a job to do.

She walked along the cracked sidewalk, her footsteps made more noticeable by the crunching sounds of the leaves underneath her boots. A cold and whining breeze rolled through the street, chilling Luan to the bone. She shivered, and hugged her black coat tighter.

"Can't wait to get inside," she thought aloud.

Luckily, her destination was the next house over. It was a large, imposing building, but even the darkness of night couldn't hide its disrepair. Tiles were slipping, cracks crawled the sides, the windows were opaque with dust, and the fresh corpse of a squirrel was laid out nicely on the steps to the front door.

Luan tried to ignore it as she knocked on the blue wood. Some chips of peeling paint fell off with every strike.

There was a quick rush to the door, and a man opened it for her. He was a large man, but with a disproportional figure, made worse by his ill-fitting clothing. His skin was sallow and the bags underneath his eyes betrayed deep tiredness and fatigue. Still, he mustered a friendly smile.

"You're the Exorcist?" he asked, his voice deeper than Luan would've expected.

She nodded. "I am."

He sighed in relief. "Thank God. You arrived at a good time. It's making noises right now."

"Figures. It's nighttime, and getting close to the Witching Hour."

"The Witching Hour?"

Luan nodded. "We don't know why, but for some reason this is the time of night when they become more powerful. Or should I say...more spirited?"

She waited for a laugh, or even a chuckle, but when it became clear she wasn't getting one, she sighed and stepped into the house.

The house was exactly what she expected from a haunted house; the interior was as untidy and ruined as the exterior. Holes in the wall, old furniture, and a carpet with visible stains from previous spills. This was an old place, a place with forgotten history, morphed by time and decay.

Prime real estate for ghosts.

And she could hear the ghost too. A stomping and wailing came from upstairs, so loud that the house shook slightly. Luan didn't waste any time in going to the staircase and ascending to the third floor, and from there ascending by wooden ladder into the attic.

The attic was, as Luan saw when she poked her head into it, bathing in an eerie, ethereal glow. The color of the glow felt both bright and dim, both familiar and alien. It was hard for Luan to put a word to, and she doubted even someone like Leni could. If she needed a slapdash description, it would be like an aquatic greenish silver with hints of platinum yellow. Not a very natural color, but then again, she was dealing with something supernatural.

At the center of it all was what seemed like a shimmering, immaterial orb. It was shaking, vibrating, and just as Luan set foot on the creaking wood of the attic floor, it let out a howling banshee moan, and began moving. Luan assumed a defensive position, reaching into her coat for holy water, but then paused when the orb didn't seem to make any sudden moves in her direction.

"Oh good," she said. "You're not one of those hostile ghosts."

At the sound of the word ghost, the ghost let out another moan. But this one sounded different. It sounded confused.

Luan put the holy water back in her pocket and went over to the spirit. She'd seen this before, and she knew how to deal with it.

"Yeah, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but you're a ghost," she said softly. "You're dead, you're not alive."

This was met with another confused groan, this one a bit more alarmed.

"Alright, Archetype time." Luan rubbed her hands together, until a little yellow aura enveloped them. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and touched the orb.

Images flashed through her mind. A young boy, with freckles and straw hair, running through a tidier version of this house. A teenager submitting an application to a man in military garb. That same teenager, now with shaved head, running across a beach that she somehow knew was in Europe. A young man dying as German bullets ripped through his body.

"I see." She sighed sadly as her hands fell loosely to her side. "You grew up here. This was your home. You lied about your age so you could fight in WW2. And then you died."

A ghost made a strange sound that she knew was a protest.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but you're in the wrong place. The war has been over for a long time. There's a different family living here now, and you're disturbing them. You need to move on."

The ghost made no noise, but again, Luan knew what it was feeling. It was wondering if she was right. Luan decided now would be a good time to push it in the right direction. She raised her arms and placed her hands on either side of the specter, and began whispering, muttering, reciting under her breath.

When she opened her eyes, the ghost and its otherworldly glow were gone.

She went back downstairs, where she found her host and his family huddled together. At a quick count, Luan saw that he and his wife had seven kids together, all of varying ages. It almost brought a smirk to her mouth. My family is bigger than your family, nyah nyah.

"Is...is it gone?" the man asked.

Luan nodded. "It was the ghost," she said, "of someone who used to live here, a long time ago."

"But why did they come back to haunt us?"

"It wasn't that they were haunting you, it's just that...well, you know how we all give off aura. Sometimes that aura gets strongly attached to things, like a wedding ring or a childhood home. That aura keeps the connection with the soul, and sometimes souls get confused when they die and they get drawn back to whatever has the aura infused with it."

"I...see."

"This is an old house, so that explains it," stated Luan, looking around. "You'll probably want to clean this place up if you want to avoid something like this again. Maybe get someone to bless this place."

"I don't know if we can afford that," the man said.

Luan looked upon them sympathetically. Her brow furrowed as an idea came to her, and she debated whether she should or not.

Oh what the hell, they need it more than you do.

"Here," she said, tossing the holy water to them. One of the older boys caught it and gave it to his father. He looked at her, confused, and Luan smirked. "Holy water. Normally I'm supposed to encourage you to buy this stuff from our website, but you can have this. Just don't tell my superiors that I gave you this H2OMG. Haha, geddit?"

No one laughed.

Luan frowned. "You still have to pay your regular fee," she growled.

"Of course. But truly, thank you for this. Thank you so much."

And there it was; that relief-filled thanks that came with a job well done. A family now safe from worrying about further hauntings. For Luan, this was the best part of the job.

Actually, it was the only part of the job she didn't absolutely hate…

"Fifteen minutes left!"

The teacher's announcement only served to make Lincoln more nervous. He looked down at his test and began rapidly tapping the bottom of his pencil against his lip. He could feel his eyes dilating as they gazed down at the many unanswered questions in front of him. He knew that the best strategy for test-taking was skipping all the questions you didn't know and answering everything you could, but what should someone do if they don't know half the questions in front of them?

He looked around, wondering if anyone was in the same place as him. If they were, they didn't show it. Even Stella seemed oddly solemn as her pen made its marks on the page.

Lincoln groaned. I really should've remembered I had a test before I went off to fight Husks with Luna and Sam. But honestly, this is such a stupid time for a test, what have we even learned to be tested on?!

Thankfully, his suffering was ended prematurely with a knock on the door.

Without waiting for an answer, his sister Lisa opened the door and allowed herself in. She promptly brought her fist to her mouth and cleared her throat. "Agnes, I'm here to request that Lincoln Loud be excused to return home with me at this very instant."

Lincoln raised his eyebrow. Lisa was asking him to cut school? This was unusual, to say the least.

Agnes Johnson didn't seem very amused. "Your brother is taking a test right now, Lisa."

Lisa, unfazed, walked over to Lincoln's desk. Before anyone could stop her, she grabbed his pencil and swiftly answered every question he didn't do.

"For the record," said Lisa, going back to the front of the class with the test in one hand and her brother in the other, "you put far too many 'all of the above' options. That's poor test design. But regardless, the test is finished, may we leave now?"

The older woman just rolled her eyes. "Fine, go. Lincoln, you're excused."

"Thank you for your cooperation." Then, to Lincoln: "Come on, let's go. It's important."

"What even is it?" he asked.

Lisa answered two hours later, after extensive and invasive tests on Lincoln's body and aura.

"I'm revising my hypothesis," she explained, "about what I believe your Archetype is and what it can do. Based on the evidence and testimony I was given, it seemed like that was in order."

"Okay," said Lincoln, rubbing his sore arm. "Can you tell me what it is?"

"Nope!" chirped Lisa. "As I'm still sure that my current theory might not be true, I have no intention to share it with anyone for fear of looking wrong again."

"That's a bit...insecure," said Lincoln honestly. "You know it's not a bad thing to be wrong. Scientists are wrong about things all the time. Doesn't make people think less of them."

"Lesser scientists might be happy admitting their faulty thinking and logic, but I will not do so, thank you very much."

It was moments like that that reminded Lincoln that no matter how smart she was, Lisa was still a precocious child who hated not being 100% right all the time.

Smiling, he patted her on the head as he made his way out. She pouted, but didn't make any attempt to swat his hand away.

But after leaving her room and closing the door behind him, his smile slid off his face, a ponderous look taking its place. He looked down at his open hands like they had the answers written on them. He was learning more and more about his Archetype every day thanks to practice (practice he was forced into under pressure, he might note), but in the end it still wasn't enough to really answer the big question of Why? He knew some of his abilities, but he didn't know why they worked as they did. He knew his powers only worked with other people, but he didn't know why they would work with Luna but not, say, Stella.

He looked back at Lisa's closed door, imagined what she could be doing behind it. Could she really figure it out like she thought she could. Lincoln had nothing but trust in his little sister's big brain, but…

"Hey Lincoln."

The sudden appearance of Lucy behind him made him jump and squeal. "Lucy!" he shouted. "Seriously, you're going to give someone a heart attack one day."

Lucy ignored him. "Can you help me with something?"

"Uh, sure."

She raised a brittle, yellowing page in front of her. "I'm writing a new poem, and I need your rhetorical gift once again for a troublesome phrase that doesn't wish to be rhymed easily. It is a courtly and proud line, that must make me work for it—"

"Okay, okay, I get it. But sure, fine. What's the line?"

Lucy cleared her throat.

"And in his moonlit chambers, the smooth-skinned sister-wives waited/Their albino bull's footsteps echoed closer, and they..."

There she stopped, and looked up to him. "And this is where I got stuck."

"Lucy, is...is that supposed to be about me?"

"Don't be silly, Lincoln, of course it's not," she said. Unconvincingly.

"So this poem about an albino with a harem of sister-wives isn't meant to be about me?"

"You're not albino, and you aren't married to me or our sisters...yet."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Lincoln snatched the poem from her, and read more of it himself.

"So I noticed something."

"Hmm?"

"One of the sister-wives is described as having 'obsidian hair' and 'porcelain skin', and she's described as the albino's favorite."

Lucy cocked her head to the side. "I fail to see your point."

Lincoln sighed. He handed the poem back to her in resignation. "I don't think I can help you."

"Oh well. At the very least, you provide a valuable muse."

"Muse? Lucy, what do you mus—"

He turned his head, and she was already gone.

Again, Lincoln sighed. "She's so weird."

Well, it didn't matter. What did matter now was that he was hungry. He decided to go to the kitchen for a snack, and while he was debating whether he would prefer something salty or sweet, he almost didn't see Luan sitting at the table.

"Hey Luan."

It seemed Luan was so focused on the paper in her hands that she didn't even notice Lincoln walking in. When he spoke, she looked up startled and shoved the paper away. "Oh, hey Lincoln," she said, and Lincoln couldn't help but notice that his normally-jovial sister sounded...well, a bit sad.

"Luan, are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, you've said two things to me so far, and neither was a joke."

Luan rolled her eyes. She looked around for something to make a joke about, ultimately picking and holding up a banana and apple. "Why did the apple fall in love with the banana?" she asked.

"I don't know. Why?"

"Because she found him a-peeling."

Even for Luan, that joke was lifeless, and it just made Lincoln more concerned.

"Luan, really, what's wrong?"

His older sister sighed; she figured there was no point in denying it. She held up the page she had hidden before, handing it off to Lincoln. He took it and read it. "An open mic thing?" Lincoln said. "I didn't even know they had fliers for open mics in a small place like Royal Woods."

"Well they do, and here's the thing: I really want to go and test out some of my new material but...well, the timing is really bad. I got a job then, and so I can't go."

"Oh...I see. I'm sorry, Luan."

She huffed an annoyed groan. "It's always been like this, ever since those stupid balls told me I'm an Exorcist. All these dumb exorcisms just keep getting in the way of me doing what I actually want! I wanted to do comedy and acting when I was a kid, but now all I can do is go to people's houses and smack around ghosts. It's not fair! Everyone else got something that was good for them. Leni now gets to wear fancy clothes, Luna goes around singing, Lynn can do fighting and martial arts...but do I get something for me? No, I just get this job that I hate."

Lincoln listened to his sister rant, and when she finished, he sighed and gently touched her shoulder reassuringly. She smiled slightly, and patted his comforting hand. "I guess you understand what I'm going through better than anyone else," she said. "Your Archetype hasn't given you an easy time either."

"No, it hasn't," said Lincoln with a weak chuckle.

That was when Luan's eyes flashed. "That's it!" she suddenly cried, jumping out of her seat like a jackrabbit. She grabbed Lincoln by the shoulders and leaned in a little too closely for his comfort. "Lincoln, I figured it out. Your Archetype!"

"I d-don't think I follow."

"That Genre Shift thing you do. That thing that made you El Kabong while you were with Sam and Luna!"

"Okay, first of all El Ka-who? Second, you know about that?"

"Of course I do. Sam told me. She would not shut up about how cool you looked smashing Husk heads."

Lincoln blushed, then shook it off. "So what do you even want me to do?"

"You haven't put two and two together already? Here's what I'm proposing: you do that Genre Shift thing with me right now, turn into an Exorcist or something similar like that, and then you can do the job for me while I go to this open mic!"

Lincoln was about to protest her plan, but two things stopped him: the first was his lingering curiosity from before, returned in stronger form. He couldn't help but wonder whether he could induce a Genre Shift with Luan, what that would look like, and could he do it here and now? The previous times he did it, his life depended on him actually doing it. Could he possibly do it in casual settings?

The second thing that convinced him was how desperate and pleading Luan's eyes were.

He took a deep breath, trying to get a feel for his aura. "You know what? Let's do it."

"Really?!"

He nodded. "Yeah, really."

He really, really hoped he actually could.

He tried to do what he did last time; he rubbed his palms together and tried to get a feel for Luan's energy, Luan's aura. He wasn't super sure on how to do it, but he wasn't an amateur anymore. He had done it before, and he could follow in those steps now. So he did, focusing intently and tried to will his essence into touching hers, embracing hers, intertwining with hers…

When it did, he felt something like a pleasant shock run through him.

"Genre Shift."

His transformation began, and Luan looked on in awe. She watched as her brother's clothes changed from his usual polo and jeans into a dark and leathery outfit, which was then encompassed by a long trench-coat. A black hat appeared on top of his head, and on his belt sprung little vials and silver bullets. Even his body changed, as Luan could swear that his cheeks and chin sprouted platinum stubble.

When it was all done, Lincoln opened his eyes and looked down at his new apparel. He looked surprised, as he was.

"Huh, didn't think that would actually work."