42. Chapter 42

AN: Finally got this done. I had originally conceived this story arc about a year or so, give or take, but was never able to get around to writing it. It was partly because my collaborator on this story changed unexpectedly, but aside from that I also just couldn't really find a good place for it to go. So it feels nice to finally be able to wrap this arc up. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed it too.

As per usual, I will now be taking a little break from Archetypal so I can work on other things, and Hero will be stepping in to take the story through its next, proper story arc. Which should be good, because its subject matter is something that's near and dear to him. So look forward to that.

"I take it Flip's little find, was more than he could handle," Lisa observed with a shake of her head. "Seems like every would-be treasure hunter gets it into their head to try striking it rich in the Outskirts at one point or another. There's a reason no attempts have been made to resettle that area, even today. There are far worse things than Husks lurking out there."

"Yep. That's why mom was so livid when she found out Sam and Luna had taken Lincoln for a joyride out there," Lori replied, nodding in agreement. "Apparently Flip had been at this for a while, and it's how he was able to keep his business so profitable. He was careful at first, small salvage teams doing shallow digs in old residential areas. Easy to evac from if things got hairy, and the aim was usually stuff that could be stripped down for easy transport and then reassembled into something he could sell once they were safely home. The 'camper', was him getting greedy. Or at least, greedier than usual, anyway."

"From the way you've described it, I can see why he'd have been tempted." Lisa mused. "A large sealed structure, meaning it'd be highly likely that whatever was inside had gone untouched since the departure of its original inhabitants. There could have been anything inside. Weapons, valuable data, maybe even artifacts."

"Could have been." The blonde shrugged. "From what I remember, it looked like it was some kind of mobile lab. Possibly military, the thing looked like someone had spent a pretty penny to make it as sturdy as possible. A person tries that hard to keep people out of something, it's kind of inevitable that they'll just get encouraged to try harder."

"What was inside?"

Lori sighed. "Husks. Just a few, nothing at all like what happened at the mall, but it was enough."

"It always is," The scientist tsked. "The crowd was likely made of bystanders and, at best, non-combat archetypes. A few Husks get loose and find themselves some victims before enough people realize what's wrong. The trauma from the deaths creates new Husks, and at that point it spirals into a full-on outbreak."

"Pretty much. Flip's team cracked the thing open and everything went to hell almost immediately. Not a great turn for my first real job."

"And yet," Lisa interjected, "I can't help but notice that your cantankerous former employer remains alive and well. Albeit, making a much less successful living selling frozen treats and other confectionaries to impressionable children. Your work, I presume? Is this the part where you found your courage and heroically turned the tide?"

"It...was...not."

For several minutes the sisters sat in silence. Lisa remained poised to record whatever new information was forthcoming, but Lori simply sat there, her eyes downcast.

"Would you care to elaborate?" Said the scientist, gesturing towards the heroine.

"I didn't fight," She said, her expression pained. "Once I figured out what was going on, I turned and...I ran."

Lori let out a self-deprecating laugh. "It was actually pretty easy. What, with the superpowers and all."

Again, the room fell silent.

"That sounds...uncharacteristic of you," Said Lisa, trying to sound diplomatic. "Given your age, and inexperience—"

"It wasn't just that," Lori interjected. "I mean, yes, I was...scared. I was young, I had zero combat training. Heck, I hadn't even been in a real fight up till that point. I didn't take that job to be a hero, I was just supposed to be the girl who lifted heavy things. And..."

She sighed, shaking her head. "And I'd been in an Outbreak before. Pretty much everyone goes through that at one point or another. I'd never been in the thick of it, thankfully, we were always able to get to a shelter before things got too crazy. But I knew how bad it could get. And I knew that I wasn't going to make a difference all by myself."

Lori's lips flattened into a thin line, her gaze hardening as she recalled the events of that day. "More importantly, my little sister and brother were on that car lot, waiting for me to come back to them. I knew they weren't going to abandon me without being dragged away, kicking and screaming, and I knew I couldn't count on anyone to take care of them for me. So when the choice came down to them, or anyone else, I chose them."

"If you could...do it again, would you?"

"In a heartbeat," Lori replied. "I hate that I had to make the choice at all, but I know that I would have always chosen them, no matter the circumstances."

"...Fair enough," Lisa shrugged. "Thankfully, I've never had to make such a decision. But, I can't say for certain that I'd have done any differently. Did you have a plan?"

"Not much of one," The older girl admitted. "It was easy enough to scoop up Leni and Lincoln and make a run for it, but it was a big car lot. I didn't know if I could get them out safely. I didn't even know if I could carry them safely. But I remembered there was a storage room, of sorts, nearby. I figured we might be able to turn into a makeshift shelter, especially with me doing the heavy lifting...

"Lori!" Lincoln yelped as the eldest Loud sibling pushed her way into the storage room. Managing the doorknob without breaking the door down had been a bit of a challenge, seeing as she'd had a sibling tucked under each arm, and Lincoln in particular was wriggling all over the place. Eventually, however, she'd managed to finagle the doorknob just enough that she was able to slip inside with her precious cargo.

It wasn't much, the room was made for storage, not comfort, but it seemed like it would work for their current circumstances. There were things to sit on, including most of a couch, and the only access point she could see was the single doorway they'd just come through. Most importantly, there were plenty of things she could use to secure said doorway.

"Lori!" Lincoln repeated as she gently placed him and Leni upon the ground, and then set about finding the biggest, heaviest objects she could get her hands on.

"What's going on?" Her brother asked. "You came back and just...dragged us in here! What's the deal?"

"There's no deal," She said quickly, slinging a large, metal shelving unit over her shoulder, and plopping it down in front of the door. "Everything's fine."

"No, it's not!" Lincoln shouted, stamping his foot in frustration. "You're building a barricade! And you're not even doing a good job! Remember what Pop Pop told us? You can't just stack stuff up, or it'll fall over!"

"You've...got a point," Lori admitted, as the table she'd planted against the shelving unit began sliding down to the ground almost immediately, forcing her to grab it and attempt to steady it. "It's a shame I don't have like, Super Barricade Building powers, or something, right?"

As jokes went, it barely qualified, but it still worried Lori when she received zero response from either sibling. She busied herself with the table, twisting it to and fro, trying to find a position where it would actually stand up properly. Just as she was considering simply taking its legs and tying them around the shelving unit, she felt a tiny palm, gently press against the small of her back.

"Lori," Lincoln said, softly, pleading with her. "What's happening out there? Why are we hiding?"

Lori stiffened at her brother's touch. Uncertain what she could say, what she should, say, she glanced over her shoulder, and almost immediately regretted it. Her brother looked worried. Her brother, mercifully, had never been in a situation like this. He didn't recognize the signs, didn't have any context for what was going on. He only knew that something had his sister worried. And Lincoln, as usual, almost certainly just wanted to know what was happening so he could try and fix it. That was the kind of person he was. Leni, on the other hand well...Leni was a lot smarter than people gave her credit for. The expression on her face made it plain as day that she'd pieced together what was going on. And she looked terrified.

Leni stepped forward and placed one hand on Lincoln's shoulder, microscopic tremors shaking the younger girl's arm as she dd so.

"It's bad out there, isn't it?" She asked softly, already knowing the answer.

"...Yeah," Lori said, at last, turning to face her siblings. "It's bad. We've got Husks on the lot. I got away before things got too hairy but...this isn't a high-class business. Flip doesn't keep a crack security team on staff or anything, it's all Bystanders and Non-coms. The Outbreak's probably in full swing by now.

Lori's ears perked up as she heard the all too familiar sound of shambling, scuffling footsteps on the other side of the door. Without trying to draw too much attention to herself, she inched backward and leaned against her makeshift barricade, preparing to brace herself against it if need be.

Lincoln paled as realization set in, his face very quickly looking more in sync with his snow-white hair. The boy had been blessed enough to have been shielded from this particular aspect of their reality for this long, but he wasn't completely ignorant as to the gravity of the situation. People talked, and stories made their rounds. And for a kid like Lincoln, who so admired the heroes that laid down their lives in service of protecting other people, it would have been inevitable that he'd learn at least something of the monsters those heroes battled.

It was one of life's little cruelties, that a boy so obsessed with heroes would find himself so desperately in need of one when none were to be found.

"S-so..." Lincoln swallowed, his voice quavering with fear, "What do we do now?"

Rolling her neck, as if stretching, so as to not make her intentions so obvious, Lori craned her head and tried to peer through the crack between the door and its frame, trying to get an idea of what the situation was like outside. Naturally, it was too narrow to get a proper view, but just as Lori was about to give up, the light poking through the crack briefly vanished as a shadow darted past. The eldest Loud sibling managed to hold in the cry of alarm that threatened to erupt from her throat, but she couldn't stop her hands from clenching into white-knuckled fists.

"We're just going to sit tight here, little bro," She said, trying to keep her voice level. "The city has ways of detecting Outbreaks. As long as we stay calm...and quiet, we should be fine until they call in the heroes to save us."

Lincoln's face scrunched up in confusion.

"But Lori, you're a hero."

She flinched as the memory of her turning tail and running flashed in front of her eyes.

"I'm not a real hero, Linc," She corrected him. "That's just my Archetype. I don't...fight bad guys or anything. I just...lift stuff."

Lincoln's confusion visibly deepened.

"Of course, you're a hero, Lori." He said, with an innocence that only comes with youth, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You've saved tons of people."

WHUMP

Lori let out a panicked gasp as something impacted against the door. The sound was so faint, that she barely heard it herself, but she very distinctly felt her makeshift barricade shift as something pressed against it. From the unchanged expressions on her sibling's faces, she concluded that they were still none the wiser. For now, at least.

"W-what are you talking about?" She asked, lowering her voice. "I haven't had my powers that long. And this is my first hero job, remember?"

"Remember when we were picking up Luna from music lessons, and we found her with that mean kid who broke her guitar?"

"Uhh..." Lori was taken aback, both by the abrupt change in subject matter and from the reference to an incident she could barely remember. To her surprise, Leni's lips quirked upward into a small smile.

"I remember," Said her younger sister. "Lori grabbed the guitar and told that kid that she'd make him eat it if he didn't say he was sorry to Luna."

Lori felt her face heat up as a very vivid memory of her pushing that kid down and jabbing Luna's guitar in his face manifested in her mind. Riiiiight. That was suddenly sounding a lot more familiar.

"And remember when Lynn broke her leg jumping out of that tree at the park?" Lincoln continued.

Lori winced. That one, she remembered.

"She'd said something about needing to learn to fall right", Lori muttered, shaking her head. "Typical Lynn."

"And you picked her up and carried her back home so we could take her to the doctor! And that time you took me to the superhero convention? Those boys cornered me in the bathroom and tore my cape, but you heard me calling for help and—"

"Human pretzels, all three of them," Lori replied, chuckling in spite of herself. "That was way harder to do back then too."

"See?" Lincoln held out his hands expectantly as if his point had been made. However...

"Lincoln, that was just kid stuff," Lori corrected him, exasperated. "Anybody could have done that."

"But you're the one who did!" To Lori's surprise, Lincoln reached out and took her by the hands.

"You've always been a hero, Lori," He continued. "Our hero. And now you can be their hero too! You can save everybody! You just need to believe in yourself!"

It was...utterly ridiculous. Here she was, being lectured by her little brother. A literal child. And objectively speaking, every single word that he was saying was complete nonsense. Lori wanted to pull free from his grasp. To yell at him, to make him understand that the world just didn't work that way. And yet, she couldn't bring herself to actually do it. Lincoln was so...sincere, so confident in his appraisal of her. It was so...humbling, baffling, and...weirdly sweet...

"How..do you know?" She asked, looking her brother straight in the eye. "How can you be so sure I won't screw this up?"

Lincoln frowned in concentration, and Lori suddenly found herself very aware of her heart hammering in her chest. Individual moments stretching into small eternities as her brother seemingly considered the question. And then, a strange, comforting warmth, as Lincoln seemingly came to a conclusion, and smiled that big, wonderful smile of his.

"Because you're my big sister," He said, "And you can do anything!"

And then time...happened. A series of events flowing into each other so rapidly that her mind could barely parse one from the other.

Lori remembered Lincoln's fingers searing against her flesh, like ten tiny embers clutching her in their grip. She remembered Leni's frightened gasp, the shrieking of metal buckling into itself as her barricade was torn asunder. She remembered whirling around, white-hot fury coursing through her as she prepared to defend her family. She remembered her eyes burning, screaming for some kind of release, which she would have been more than happy to provide, if she only knew how. And then...blackness. The world as she knew it, simply ceasing to be.

And then, much like a rubber band that has been stretched too far, everything simply...snapped back into place.

Lori blinked furiously, colored spots randomly flashing before her. She desperately wanted to rub her eyes, in hopes of soothing the uncomfortable itching sensation that had engulfed them. But she was too busy gaping, slack-jawed, at the sight before her. The door, the doorway, and a decent chunk of that side of the building were simply...gone, nothing left but ashes. And on the far, far edges of the site of impact, twisted bits of metal and plastic, and god knows what else, blackened and simmering.

"Lori!"

She turned instinctively to the sound of her brother's voice, even as her brain was still trying to process the sudden deletion of a good chunk of the building they'd been hiding in...except, Lincoln was nowhere to be found.

"Lori!"

Two voices this time, coming from...beneath her?

Lori looked down. Not unusual in and of itself, seeing as how she was the oldest, and tallest of her siblings. But as she met the awe-struck gazes of her siblings, she finally managed to piece together a key detail that had escaped her until just this second.

Her feet were nowhere close to the ground.

"Your first flight," Lisa observed. "So that's when your powers fully manifested?"

"More or less," Lori shrugged. "Aside from those weird, super-specific ones I get every now and then. I felt like every setting on me was cranked up to the max, like I could run to the moon, punch it in half and then juggle the pieces.

"And all it took was an easily preventable outbreak." The scientist shook her head, frustrated. "Still, I trust you were able to make a difference after that?"

"I did what I could." Lori's expression darkened. "I couldn't save everyone, of course. Things were...too far gone by that point. But the response teams wouldn't make it for a little while longer so...yeah, I'd like to think that by being there I was able to make a difference."

Lori straightened in her seat, craning her neck as she listened for something beyond the means of mortal ears. "Speaking of which..."

"You're needed, I take it?" Lisa asked rhetorically, already waving her hand dismissively. "Go. I think I have more than enough to work with."

The older girl spared the scientist a grateful glance, before abruptly vanishing, the only evidence of her presence being the strong gust of wind that now raged throughout Lisa's lab.

Getting up from her seat, Lisa crossed the room and peeked out the window, gazing upward at the sky. Sure enough, a familiar streak of red, white, and gold, rocketed through the air, and off towards the city proper. Her brother had a tendency to be inclined to what some people might call, unfathomable optimism. And perplexingly, almost exclusively towards everyone but himself. And yet, in this instance, she found herself very much in agreement with his assessment. Lori was meant to be a hero. It wasn't a matter of Archetype, but rather one of temperament. The eldest Loud sibling had the metaphorical heart of a hero, as well as the lungs, muscles, and other assorted figurative odds and ends. All she'd needed was the right opportunity to prove that. Not just to society at large, but to herself. Though, it certainly seemed like she might have had a little assistance in that regard...

"Computer," She spoke aloud, "Begin audio log."

"Recording", announced the cold mechanical voice of her assistant AI.

"Thank you, Todd," She said, absentmindedly. She picked up her notebook and began jotting down her thoughts, reciting them aloud for the sake of properly preserving her mindset for future analysis.

"Lori, Comma, Data, Comma, Origins," She said, "Second session. This incident regarding an Outbreak at a car lot previously owned by Phillip "'Flip' Phillipini bears looking into, if for no other reason than to verify certain details of Lori's recollection of events. That aside, however, I believe Lori's story contains sufficient data to support my hypothesis."

She paused, nibbling on the back of her pen as she considered her words. Finally, she resumed her recordation.

"Contrary to what we have all believed until now, Lincoln's powers did not first manifest after his indexing, but rather long before. In fact, Lori's story suggests that the first, observable manifestation of his abilities was actually during the events of her story, which resulted in Lori becoming the first of what would come to be many exceptional Archetypes from our family. While further study is needed, the conclusion seems obvious; that Lincoln has inadvertently been altering and empowering our Archetypes all along. A passive, and seemingly permanent variation of the phenomenon he displayed when he temporarily strengthened Lori's abilities during her fight with Whitney. A discovery that would almost certainly have terrible repercussions were such knowledge ever to leave the confines of this lab. However, as remarkable as this quality of Lincoln's is, the fact that this appears to be a function of his Archetype, has lead me right back to the question which prompted this investigation int the first place."

"What is the purpose of this Harem King?"