Lincoln learns the hard way 1

    The short straw in the Loud family lotto stank of soiled diapers.
Lincoln was the unlucky sibling chosen by chance to take Lily on walks out to the park this week.
The clear skies allowed the bright sun to beat down upon Lincoln's bare brow, a hint of jealously crept into him as he pushed a rather nice, if old baby carriage towards the public park.
Lily was babbling happily underneath the shade of the stroller's covering. Lincoln's eyes came down from the path in front of them as he grabbed one of the two water bottles he had brought for the trip. He popped the top off and started chugging the tepid liquid down, but quickly cursed himself as he realized he had absent-mindedly emptied the first bottle in one go.
Lincoln grumbled to himself at the waste of a precious resource. He knew that no excuse short of a genuine medical emergency would excuse him taking Lily home early. The older brother peered down into the stroller and a small smile grew on his face as his eyes met Lily's. He held no ill will against the baby, as she didn't really have a say in the matter either.

    Lincoln's shirt sported two large stains of sweat under his arms, but his heart swelled as the stroller turned a corner and the two Loud kids saw the lush green fields of the park.
What interested Lincoln much more, however, were the wooden picnic tables situated perfectly underneath large oak trees.
Lily giggled happily as the stroller sped up, bumping up and down as Lincoln pushed it onto the grass in an attempt to beeline towards an ideal resting spot.
Lincoln collapsed, pushing the stroller forward slightly with his weight as the bright sun was blocked by the thick green of the tree's leaves.
The young boy took a few minutes to catch his breath, his nose catching the wonderful smells of the fresh earth next to his face. Eventually Lincoln picked himself up, and rubbed the dirt off of his side before going around to the front of the stroller to gently lift Lily out of her seat before setting her on the grass.
The baby only took a few steps before she slowly lower herself onto her hands and knees, in order to more comfortably navigate the cool and unfamiliar environment around her.

    Lincoln unpacked the contents of the stroller and set them out onto the ground, he made sure to stop every few moments to check that Lily was still safe, nearby and not overheating in the sun.
The first thing he knew he needed was the baby drink stuff. Lincoln's mother had given him a small, sealed container of white powder he was supposed to add to the second bottle of water and give that to Lily sparingly. Lincoln slowly popped the lid off of the tupperware and tried his best to pour it into the thin mouth of the bottle. He shrugged as some scattered to the dirt around him, Lincoln doubted his mother had ever expected him to get it all in anyway.
The young boy put the lid back on the water bottle and started shaking it, but dropped it in a panic as he saw Lily had crawled beyond the boundary of the shade.
In a few steps that almost qualified as leaps, Lincoln came up behind his baby sister and swept her off the ground. The sudden movement surprised the tiny girl and she began to scream and cry.
Lincoln turned on his heel and set Lily back in her stroller. This did not abate the waterworks in the slightest, but Lincoln knew how hard it could be to calm the baby down.
He used every trick in the book. Soft blankets to rattles to soothing voices, nothing seemed to be able to stop Lily's tears.
Lincoln started to become genuinely frustrated when she also refused to drink from the bottle.  The boy needed a break from the baby girl and he took it by walking away, out into the sunlight. He took a moment to scan the park, worried that the child crying was bothering anyone else, but it didn't seem like anyone was close enough to hear Lily loudly. Eventually his attention turned to the very spot Lily had been sitting in, and Lincoln realized what she had wanted.

    The crying and tears were replaced by the much more agreeable noises of a baby giggling. Lily was utterly fascinated with the Ladybird Lincoln had set upon her tiny hand. It's little legs tickled her arm as it aimlessly wandered over it's new “ground”. Lincoln watched his sister with a great sense of satisfaction inside him. All of his other sisters had problems that took so much more out of him to resolve. Lily was still young enough that it was easy to make her happy, if he just paid attention.

    His attention being so focused on the baby in the stroller, unfortunately, meant that the world beyond it was unknown to him. “Oh my god, is that your baby?!” An unfamiliar, feminine voice practically screamed at him from behind, causing his entire body to fly off the ground in a panic. Lincoln's heart felt like it was going to explode out from him as he turned around, wide eyed and shivering. His vision was dominated by two young women, one had her hand over her mouth and a look of worry in her eyes, while the other gave her friend a knowing, chastising look. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn't mean to...” “Imply the kid was a dad?” The second girl cut her friends apology off with a rather shocking statement. Lincoln was caught in an awkward time in his life where he understood just enough about what the teenage girl said to be confused by it, but not enough to be horrified.
In the final moments of an adrenaline fuelled rush, Lincoln was able to burn the image of these beautiful women into his underdeveloped brain. The closest girl had shoulder length raven hair, and wonderfully green eyes. The one hanging back further away rocked a copper fade that would be right at home amongst Luna's crowd. Both were in outfits that seemed made for exercise, with flappy little skirts almost obscuring the shorts hugging their thighs.
“She's my....little sister, her name's Lily.” Lincoln stammered out, stepping aside so the onlookers could meet the baby. The first girl seemed incredibly into the whole thing, and even went so far as to offer the curious Lily a finger to shake with her tiny baby hands.
“Hi Lily! My name is Emma. Oh gosh is that a little bug on her shirt?” The enthusiastic girl cooed, while the second teenager hung back and addressed the chaperoning young boy instead. “I'm Zoe, sorry about my friend.” Zoe took a sideways glance at Emma before bending over, putting her face close enough to the boys ear to make him blush before whispering. “She's a little baby crazy.”

    Lincoln could never have imagined this day going the way it did. The teenaged girls attention flipped between showering affection on Lily as she giggled and wandered amongst the trio, and fawning over Lincoln as he grew redder, not from the heat but from some strange emotion these girls fostered in him.
The clothes they wore were light and airy, which made sense considering the weather but did nothing to slow the beating of the poor boys heart.
It wasn't even just their looks that ensnared Lincoln. He had grown up around enough girls to be familiar with what a perfume should smell like, but these two had something different going on. It was like someone had brought a basket of fruit into a locker room. But as time passed and the girls (Emma especially) bumped against his shoulders or petted his hair affectionately, the fruit smell became stronger and stronger. Lincoln eventually had to make sure Lily drank down the last of her formula. As he held the baby, and the two friends chattered quietly, Lincoln jumped in surprise as his watch beeped at him. He set Lily down and shut off the alarm before awkwardly turning to the teenage girls.
“Uhm, I've got to get Lily home now...have a good day?” Lincoln was unsure of how to end this little rendezvous, or if he ever wanted it to end. Zoe seemed understanding and began to wipe dirt off of her clothes. While her more reasonable friend was busy, Emma made a final advance upon the young boy. One hand wrapped around his neck and shoulder while the other fiddled with the stroller.
“I'll be back here around now tomorrow, you don't have to bring the baby.” The whisper crashed through Lincoln's head like thunder, and a punctuating giggle from the young woman echoed between his ears all the way home.

    Mom was satisfied that Lily seemed happy and healthy when Lincoln brought her home, but the specifics word she used were lost on the boy.
He passed through the rest of the day in a deaf daze, unaware and uncaring of anything his family members said to him. Even his walkie talkie to Clyde could not take precedence over the last words Emma gave him before the end of that turn of fate.
The only thing that kept his sisters from becoming worried at their brothers lack of response to their various stimuli was the crooked smile that never left his face, only twitching as some muscles needed rest and others took over.

    Amongst the Loud Family, household meetings were a common affair.
What happened far less often were family meetings that excluded members of the family. Usually the younger sisters, Lincoln or the Loud parents were the ones left out of the loop of the older sister cabal.
So when the five eldest sisters convened for a meeting, assuming it had been one of them who called it, they were shocked to find Lisa waiting for them, with a sleeping Lily in her arms.
“Itsch far pascht my bedtime, so I would like to make thisch as quick asch possible.” Lisa began, commanding the attention of her older sisters.
“While nothing about our brothers current schtatus seemed urgent, something about him scheemed off, so I-” “I've never seen him smile like that! He's like that creepy movie cat!” Leni cried out, interrupting her sister and calling all eyes to her. “I've never seen any boy act like that...” Lynn mused aloud, as Leni had opened the floor to a free-for-all. Lori's eyes rolled at the naivety of her younger sisters, and couldn't stop herself from making a snide remark. “No, I doubt you would have.” Lynn turned to her oldest sister angrily, and the two began to bicker before Luna handed out slaps to return them to reality. “Lisa, go.” the punk gave her smartest sibling the attention of the room again before sitting down.

    “So I examined the schtroller and it's contents, and found this hidden in a zipper pocket.” Lisa held up a scrip of paper to the crowd of Louds, on it was clearly a phone number.
“Thisch handwriting doesn't match up with any of ours.” Lisa slapped the phone number down for the sisters to read. Lori passed it to Leni, who passed it to her younger sister and so on, but none of them recognized it beyond being a local area code number.
“I've already taken the liberty of checking records for the number. It belongs to one 'Emma Howler'. Lori, I believe you two are stchoolmates?” Lisa directed her attention at the eldest Loud, who almost screamed in fury before her sisters could slap their hands over her mouth to muffle the rage. “Howler! Emma Howler was creeping on MY BROTHER?!” Lori reduced her fury to a hiss, but none of the other sisters recognized the name. Lori could not let her anger subside as she explained the source of this hostility. “Emma Howler is a literal pervert. Bobby told me about this one time last year where she apparently was dating one of his friends, but they broke up after he caught her with his little brother IN THE BATHROOM.” Lori's emotions were quickly mirrored by the other sisters collected here. No one had ever bothered to teach Lincoln about the danger of strangers in this specific regard. The idea that Lincoln had come in such close contact with a dark fact of life turned the stomachs of almost everyone in the room. Lisa was unaware of any specific details about Emma Howler, but the fact that she had not come up in any criminal databases said something.

    “Before anyone does schomething regrettable-” Lisa made this statement almost directly to Lynn, who had already produced a goaley mask and baseball bat. Lynn gingerly dropped the weapon and allowed her sister to continue. “thisch doesn't prove anything happened. Furthermore, basched upon Lincoln's current attitude...it may not be as simple as confronting this Emma woman.” Lisa let out a sigh, as she had to ask a very difficult question.
“Do we even want to tell Lincoln about...the danger?”

    This left the room silent. The Loud sisters all assumed Lincoln was as aware about safety risk in the open world as any boy his age...but to a boy his age, a 'sexual predator' was a gross thirty year old man in a van. What would happen to him if he knew that cute teenage girls could be as much as a threat to him? He was surrounded by teenage girls! Of course he would assume they were harmless! Luan was the first to speak up. “I don't wanna tell him. It's just too...I don't know, R rated?” the comedian shrugged her shoulders, unable to find anything funny about the situation unfolding. “Bullshit, he has a right to know. He doesn't spend his every waking moment next to one of us, he needs to be able to defend himself.” Luna countered. From her perspective, things like this were a much more common problem than the others seemed to think they are. Luna had dealt with similar situations more than once, but being aware of risks had gotten her through them safely.
Leni and Lori couldn't find words. The sweet sixteen year old found herself terrified at the prospect of Lincoln being taught that girls were something to be feared. He had always been so friendly and open, to ask him to close that away from people felt like a crime.
Meanwhile, Lori felt like this was somehow her fault. Never mind warning Lincoln about the more insidious aspects of life, she had known about this girl for a while now, and could have said something to at least keep him away from this singular threat.
Lynn was the last to speak up, as she picked her bat back up and pointed it at the ceiling like an avalonian blade of legend. “Well maybe we should stick closer to him! He's pretty open about when and why he ever goes out, wouldn't be hard to have someone tag along whenever he's not going somewhere with Clyde or whoever.”

    Thus a plan was hatched. Lisa prepared the older sisters a graph charting out both pre-scheduled and estimated outings Lincoln takes throughout a normal week, and the girls divided up bodyguard time between the five of them. As the schedule was slowly filled with blocks designated to one sister or another, Luna piped up, “Wait, if we're going to be with him basically any time he goes out on his own, how's he ever going to find a sweetheart?” “He'll still have school without us.” Lori reminded her younger sister, though she did raise a good point. Was being smothered by his siblings really the ideal solution to this?

    Lincoln woke up the next day smothered by his siblings. Lola and Lana had forced his bedroom door open and were jumping up and down on his body, little legs knocking the wind out of him and forcing him to action.
“Lincoln! Cliff isn't eating!” Lana cried as the family cat swung back and forth in her little arms. “Lola fed him gross stuff and now he won't eat his cat food!” “My biscuits were fine! He's adjusted to a more refined palette is all!” Lola cried out in retaliation against the blame being laid at her feet.
Lincoln sighed as he pulled himself out of bed, but before we threw his blanket away, he suddenly drew it closer and shouted at his little sisters, something uncharacteristic for him. “Out! Get out! I'll deal with this in a minute!” Lola and Lana were spooked at the raised voice, and jumped off the bed to make for the door, closing it behind him. Lincoln grumbled, ashamed at his morning wood. He quickly redressed and attempted to tuck the erection away before coming out of his room and apologizing.