Elemental Mayhems

Elemental Mayhems Chapter 1

The town of Royal Woods, Michigan. It's hardly one of the first points to catch anyones eye when looking at a map of the state. Just your typical suburban and rural township away from the larger cities. It has neighborhoods, shops, restaurants, a school district, farms, a local amusement park, and plenty of other places where its citizens go to take their minds off the pressures and challenges of their daily lives. It may not look like it, but life here could be anything but boring, at least to its residents. If you looked hard enough, there was plenty of excitement to be found here.

No one knew that better than the Loud family. Over at a two story house located on 1216 Franklin Avenue, just as the mail was being delivered, The front door was opened by an 11-year old boy with white hair wearing an orange polo shirt. This was Lincoln Loud, the middle child of the household and the only boy among 10 sisters. A well meaning and optimistic kid, he was someone who knew how to enjoy the simple things in life. This included this months comic book issues, which he excitedly ran out to go grab from the mail. Taking them out, he held them close to his face and smelled them like freshly bloomed flowers. Still had that new comic book smell.

Lincoln walked back to the house looking over this months bounty. "Ace Savvy, Ace Savvy Unlimited, Excitement Comics: Starring Ace Savvy, Ace Savvy Classic, All-New Ace-Savvy, Ace Savvy of Australia, The Death of Ace Savvy, The Return of Ace Savvy, Ace Savvy 4022, Ace Savvy Vs. Ace Savvy 4022, Ace Savvy Noir, and the latest issue of Imagine If..., "Imagine if Ace Savvy was President of the United States"!"

"Sweet!" Lincoln said to the readers, "Another speculative alternate universe story. I'm not sure why these appeal to me so much, I guess seeing these characters in situations you wouldn't see in the canon stories is always just such an interesting read. Can't wait to see what happens in this one!"

"Luan!" shouted the voice of his 17-year-old and eldest sister Lori, "I literally need you to quit fooling around and help me with the stove!"

Lincoln decided he may as well go and see what they were up to in there.

"Mom and Dad had to go attend a jury summons," Lincoln explained, "so, once again, Lori's in charge."

Lincoln walked in and saw Lori over at the kitchen counter looking at her phone for cooking instructions. The tall blonde was more or less your stereotypical teenager, but with some anger issues, and the occasional chronic flatulence. The way mom tells it, her pelvis bone grew kind of weird, so it sometimes presses against her intestine. Anytime you saw her, you could count on her staring at her phone, in the car, at dinner, during movie night, under her sheets after midnight, even in the bathroom. Lincoln often wondered if this was OCD, or some sort of social anxiety, but he' wasn't going to try his luck and ask her. Typically she's obsessively texting her long-distance boyfriend, Bobby Santiago. Usually, when she doesn't hear back from him in the timespan of about a half-hour, that's when it's best to keep your distance from her. It reminded Lincoln of that movie with Glenn Close.

Also in the kitchen he found his 14-year-old sister, Luan.

"But Lori, my hands are full."

"You're hands are not full, just take your hand out of that stupid dummy."

Luan was the house prankster. An aspiring stand-up comedian and clown, she already had her own business "FunnyBusiness.com". And to think, Mom and Dad still want her to go to college. She was known to get too carried away with her pranks, particularly during April Fools Day, when even Lori is terrified of her. Often accompanying her was her ventriloquist dummy, Mr. Coconuts, which as Lincoln was told, used to used as a therapy tool before her therapist gave up.

"Well," Lori said in a frustrated tone, "Someone needs to watch the buns being toasted while I'm boiling the hot dogs"

"Hot dogs?" A voice called out from the backyard, and six-year-old Lana walked in, covered in mud and dirt, "I wanted spaghetti!"

Lana was something of an aspiring hillbilly. A dirt lover who only ever took baths when held down and forced to. The smell she often permeated was so bad that one time it ended up setting off the water sprinklers in her school. She was a skilled plumber for her age, which was good since she was responsible for the majority of the toilet clogging's in the house, being the compulsive eater that she was, eating out of the trash and exhibiting other kinds of dog-like behavior. She was also an avid animal lover and owned many pets, most of which were strays she found out and about. She had brought home snakes, spiders, frogs, pigs, baboons, possums, lizards, and in one unfortunate case a homeless man. She even named her tapeworm Bendy. It was just a year ago that her pediatrician was finally able to confidently confirm that she was in fact human.

Lori rolled her eyes, "I wouldn't even need to be making dinner like this if SOMEONE hadn't used our pizza money to buy a bouchée of flowers for HERSELF."

Lori's words were directed over at Lola, Lana's twin.

"Finding a good batch like this was the easy part," Lola said, "Now I just need to get someone to throw it up onto the stage after I finish my routine tomorrow."

Lola was the polar opposite of her twin. Probably the most stereotypical "girl" in the family. Her greatest loves were partaking in beauty pageants, tea parties, and Lola Loud. There were two sides to her, the sweet and enduring girl that everyone wanted to be, and then there was the self-obsessed, narcissistic, angry and manipulative version of her. Basically, she exhibited at least 4 out of 15 signs of being a sociopath. But at least she cleaned up after herself.

"Lincoln," Lori said, "Go tell Luna to get down here and help me."

"Alright."

Lincoln walked upstairs with his comics in hand, up to the upstairs hallway where he and his sisters resided, the epicenter of all the chaos in the household. Upon making the last step, he saw his 13-year-old sister, Lynn Jr., named after their father, standing outside the bathroom door, impatiently knocking.

Another tomboy in the family, Lynn Jr. was the resident athlete. There wasn't a single sport in which she hadn't participated in some form, aside from Aztec Dodgeball. She was never one to shy away from boasting about herself and her accomplishments and self-perceived strength, not to mention she took any game she participated in DEATHLY seriously, and always had one goal, win at all costs. She even subjected herself to rigorous mental conditioning in order to win "The Game", which was itself what caused her to lose "The Game".




"Dang it..." Lincoln cursed.




She was so laser focused on the game at hand, that she wouldn't allow herself or any of her teammates to use the bathroom until they had won, which after this one time one of her teammates got hit in the stomach by a soccer ball, led to the game being put on hold so they could clean the field. Her personal hygiene wasn't quite as bad as Lana's, but it was pretty bad. She also took pleasure in teasing her other siblings, reminding them who the "alpha" was in this house. Lincoln and some of his other sisters agreed that this behavior was fueled by insecurity.

"Leni!" She yelled at the door, "Hurry up in there! Pretty soon I'm gonna start leaking!"

Behind the door, in the bathroom, the second eldest sister, 16-year-old Leni was in the shower.

"You are!?! You should go see Lana! She's good at fixing the pipes!" Leni said back in earnest.

Lynn responded by simply facepalming.

Leni was... well... they didn't really consider her to be "dumb". She was just kind of slow. This had been clear to the family ever since they took her to the doctor when she was a year old and they did the knee-knock reflex test, and her leg didn't respond until about a week later, when dad was feeing her in her high chair and she ended up kneeling him in the crotch. Basically she was considered "on the spectrum". It wasn't easy, but her family was able to help her develop into a well adjusted teenage girl who could take decent care of herself, even holding a job at the local department store, although she still seem to pass her driving tests. That being said, she still had some childish quirks, like her irrational fear of spiders. Despite this, she had a talent and love for fashion dressmaking, typically wearing her sunglasses over her head.

"I'm coming back in 15 minutes!" Lynn said, "and you better be out of there when I do!"

With that, Lynn marched back to her room, while Lincoln shrugged it off and went over to his.

Having only one bathroom was a source of a great deal of contention in this household. At one point they did manage to raise enough money to have a second bathroom installed, but there was a misunderstanding with the contractor, and a toilet, sink, and shower got installed in Lincoln's room. At first he was happy to have his own toilet in his room, but then his sisters frequently came in to use it, and that became a whole situation.

Lynn went back into her room, and went over to her metal weights to distract herself from her full bladder. As she laid herself down, she looked over towards a child sized coffin

"Lucy, you've been in there for hours," Lynn said while lifting her weights, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you really were dead."

Only silence came from the still coffin.

"L-Lucy?" Lynn asked, getting a little nervous now, "Quit messing with me..."

Surely she couldn't really be-

"What?" Said a monotone voice from the opposite side of her, scaring her and causing her to almost drop her weights on herself. The 8-year-old goth girl just looked down with her typical look of utter indifference.

"Lucy! What the heck!?!" Lynn shouted angrily, "where did you come from!?!"

"*sigh* I was in the vents," Lucy responded, heading back to her coffin, "Trying to walk off my writers block. Still can't think of a good word that rhymes with 'Autopsy'. So I was asking a friend for advice."

"What friend?"

"If you heard his real name, you'd lose your mind," Lucy said, crawling back into her casket.

From the moment she was born, Lucy was drawn to the dark and macabre. The cynical self-proclaimed vampire was obsessed with death and the supernatural, and was even part of a group called "The Morticians Club", not to be confused with the doomsday cult of the same name. Her passion was writing dark and chilling poetry, crawling around in the vents, as well as planning out funerals. In fact, for her parents last anniversary, she got them their own cemetery plot, which of course made them a bit uncomfortable. Actually, there wasn't a single person in the entire house who wasn't at least a little bit afraid of her, as she was known to pop up at random and terrify her siblings. She also liked to perform supernatural rituals, and claimed that she could communicate with the ghost of her great-grandmother Harriet. Other pastimes included watching The Vampires of Melancholia, one of the characters of which, Edwin, she had a serious crush on, and, when no one else was around, reading Princess Pony. Her eyes were always hidden behind her black bangs, and supposedly has never been seen by any mortal soul.

Lucy closed the lid on her coffin and just laid in there enjoying the pitch black darkness, where she was always most comfortable.

Before heading to his room, Lincoln opened the door to Luan and Luna's room, only to be immediately blasted off his feet by loud music. Inside, his 16-year old sister Luna was shredding her electric guitar with a set of amplifiers that some might consider "military grade". Lincoln picked himself back onto his feet and went in.

There was no one in the house who lived up to the namesake "Loud" then Luna. Anytime you walked into the rock and roll loving tomboy's room, you could count on her listening to her music on her MP3 player so loud that the headphones did very little, or jamming on her electric guitar. She also had a band, which she performed in with her girlfriend Sam Sharp. Ever since she started this whole "punk phase", she would sometimes speak in a British accent, in order to emulate her idol, Mick Swagger. Luckily, to the relief of her parents, the doctors determined that this wasn't a sign of split-personality disorder. She was the sister that Lincoln probably had the closest relationship with, and she considered herself to be his guardian.

"LUNA!!!" Lincoln shouted against the blaring noise.

Luna stopped playing and shut off her amps.

"Sup dude?"

"Lori needs you."

"Ugh... Of course she does..." She gets up and puts her guitar away, "She always has to be the one in charge, and yet she always needs someones help with something."

"Heh, yeah. I wonder how long after she leaves for college it'll be until mom gets a call from her about some credit card bill."

Sam went toward the door, with a painted rock in her hand.

"What's that?"

"Oh this? It's from Sam, me and her each painted a rock and exchanged it with each other."

"Egh... Sorry I asked," Lincoln retorted, not particularly caring for all that romantic sort of stuff.

"Don't you and Ronnie Anne have any sort of special sort of thing with just the two of you?"

"WOAH! OKAY! HANG ON! She's not my girlfriend!"

"I didn't say girlfriend."

"Well, as I've said before, It's not like that. She was my bully through most of 5th grade, but we're friends now. I mean... of course... she had to leave for the city JUST AS we started having a more positive relationship." Lincoln said, looking visibly frustrated.

"Uh huh. Well, I'll let you know when dinner's ready," she smiled, before heading downstairs.

Lincoln simply rolled his eyes and continued to his room, but not before being startled by some lights and electrical sounds coming from the other room.

"Blast it! Yet another molecular rupture."

Lincoln looked over at the door, then back at the reader.

"I don't wanna look, but I have to."

Lincoln opened the door to his youngest siblings room. In it, over at the desk, he saw his 4-year-old sister Lisa, in her typical green sweater and glasses, looking over scientific machinery that looks like it came from a science fiction movie, as well as some less-than-safe materials.

From the moment she was born, Lisa displayed intelligence WAY beyond her years, or even the years of the rest of the family combined. In fact, she had already received a Nobel prize, 9 PhDs and 4 doctorates. And then after the doctors delivered her, she received and additional 8 PhDs, 5 doctorates, 7 Night School GEDS, multiple college scholarships, and one Australian arrest warrant for an unspecified incident. She spoke in a lisp, and while not immediately noticeable, she had several different mutations from her various experiments of dubious legality, including an extra toe. Speaking of her experiments, she always seemed to be working on or inventing something, often resulting in, let's just say explosive of these inventions was her baby sister's ultra-absorbent diaper, capable of 500 times the normal absorption rate, and works on just about anything, no matter how disgusting.

At the other end of the room, 15-month-old Lily was sitting around in her crib playing around with a flashlight, currently wearing said diaper. "Light light!"

The youngest member of the family, Lily was what you would come to expect from a baby girl. Giddy and happy, not toilet trained, and speaking in babbles, with a few words here and there, like "Poo-Poo". She also had a habit of taking off her diaper and waddling around in the buff, something Lincoln did as a baby as well.

"Lisa," Lincoln said, "What the heck are you doing?"

"Working on something which may change life on earth as we know it. Atomic Transmutation. Come younger sibling."

Lincoln looked over to take a look at what she was working on, while Lisa ran a simulation on her computer screen.

"It stands to reason that if one could alter the atomic structure of molecules within matter, one could alter its physical make-up. For example, if you could change H20, or water, to C10H20-C15-H28, or oil. It could solve the gas crisis!"





Clyde referring to the book, "The Big Book of Pseudoscience."