A/N: Oh yeah. I'm goin' there, people, and there's nothing you can do to stop me! ;)

Lynn sighed, giving up after checking under her bed for the thirty-second time since waking up on what would've been a pleasant Saturday. She'd just have to face facts; her earbuds were long gone. She could've sworn she had them right on her drawer, underneath her green baseball cap. So, how could a pair of earbuds just grow legs and decide to leave on sabbatical in the middle of the night?

She didn't know and quite frankly, she didn't care. All she knew was that she needed those earbuds. How else was she supposed to listen to her music while she pounded the punching bag out back? What else but her music could push her to go the extra mile as she strained against the weight of her 30lb dumbbells? Sure, it wasn't as if she had to use them, but nothing drove her to go the extra mile quite like pumping her galvanizing beats straight through her ear canals, spurring latent zest that even she didn't know she was capable of.

She groaned again, flinging herself onto her bed as her inability to find her precious earbuds weighed on her mind, a heavy fog that clouded her vision into a tunnel focus towards one, solitary course: her earbuds. Again, she needed those earbuds. She had to…no.

A smile formed as she lifted her face off her pillow. She didn't need those earbuds, per se. She just needed a pair.

And she knew just where to get one.

"Yo, Linc, you in there?! I need a favor from you!"

Lynn frowned at the lack of a reply after waiting patiently for a full fifteen seconds. Prior to shouting, she had knocked on his door several times and that had proven to be just as unsuccessful. Lincoln was never this slow to answer the door, especially with her. As far as Lynn could tell, either Lincoln had gone deaf (probably from listening to music to loudly with his earbuds) or…

"Huh. Guess he's not in his room," Lynn decided after realizing that Lincoln would never be as irresponsible as the former suggestion implied. "He's probably nerdin' it out with Clyde at his house. Oh well, I guess that means that I'll have to borrow his earbuds and bring 'em back later."

As her fingers curled around the doorknob, she could practically hear the nagging voice of her brother lecturing her about not entering his bedroom without getting his permission first. She brought it to heel by mentally firing back that he needed to stop crying like a baby over a "breach of privacy" and that she'd be gone before he knew it.

Once she opened the door, she moseyed in without further deliberation and made her way to his bed. What better place to start than under his pillow?

She mumbled under her breath, as she blindly combed, "Earbuds, earbuds, earbu-" She paused when her fingers gripped the familiar fabric of an elastic waistband and she pulled her hand away in disgust, knowing what her fingers had found. "Ah, come on!" Touching her little brother's tighty-whities was not a pleasant experience. Once this was over, she was taking at least two showers.

Next came the underside of the bed, but her three minute-expedition proved just as fruitless.

On the desk? Just some pencils and a few sketches of some dorky-looking guy in spandex.

By his books? Other than a woeful lack of any sports almanacs or athlete biographies, there was nothing of note to be discovered.

Underneath his heap of dirty clothes under his desk? She wasn't about to revisit that icky feeling of weaving her fingers through her brother's nasty underwear, so that was out of the question entirely.

She sat on his chair, leaning back as her thoughts were racing to exhume some nook or cranny that she hadn't accounted for. Was there some sort of secret, "anti-sister" compartment that he had installed that she wasn't considering? Something akin to a bookshelf that flipped around if one removed a certain book? Maybe a safe that locked away all his "treasures?" Or perhaps, he…

She slapped her forehead in self-reprimand when her fanciful thoughts finally stopped denying her of the next plausible place to look. "Duh. The drawer."

Pulling it open, she used her eyes to scan through the contents rather than rummaging through with her hands.

"Comic book, comic book, pencils, comic book, candy wrapper, comic book, action figure, comic book…" She sighed and gave her head a condescending shake. "Geez, Lincoln, pick up a sports magazine every once and a while, would you?"

She let out a groan when the drawer, her last bid, bore another disappointing outcome. But, just as she was about to close the drawer, the far-left corner caught her eye when she spotted what looked like a crumpled-up piece of paper nestled between a pencil case and a stack of collectible trading cards.

"What's that?"

The right-minded approach would've been to simply shut the drawer, forgetting about the paper entirely.

So, of course, Lynn chose to be obtrusive as she grabbed the paper and held it up to her face as she unraveled it.

"Maybe it's a list of all the girls he's crushing on," Lynn said as she smoothed out as many of the wrinkles as she possible could. She laughed to herself at the thought of her little brother having such a list.

Her chuckling ceased when her eyes scanned over the first word. What followed was a trek of self-denial as each subsequent word painted a portrait; a dreaded image that chilled her blood and knocked her for a loop by the time she had finished reading the note.

By now, her heart hammered painfully against her chest and her jaw was clenched as her lips were drawn in a thin line that slightly quivered.

Despite knowing that she wasn't dreaming, she read it again. When she did, she suddenly remembered where she was and what she was doing. Guilt flooded through her as she hopped off the chair like a scolded dog, crumpled up the note in her fist, and fled the scene.

She didn't know where Lori, Luan, Lola, and Lisa were, but she needed to find them. Fast.

Lori asked her questions without looking up from his cellphone. There wasn't much about the basement to look at anyway. "Alright, Lynn, what's going on? Why'd you want us down here?"

Lynn, who was in the middle of the room, was rebuffed before she could answer.

"And just us, might I add?" Lisa asked from her seat on the bottom step. "The circumstances of your request don't make much sense at face value."

A creepy grin spread across her face, a sight that only Luan was unfortunate enough to notice. "Unless, of course, you've all conceded to the authority of my genius and wish to solemnly pledge your minds and bodies to my experiments with nary a complaint."

"In your dreams, Lis," Luan said. "There's no way I'd ever ask for that. Science and I, we just don't have a lot of chemistry." A hearty laugh and a "Get it?" followed her pun, which everyone else groaned at.

Lori finished up her text conversation with Becky in favor of turning her phone off and finally regarding her surroundings for more than just a quick, passing glance. Her eyes immediately fell to Lola, who was lackadaisically sitting on the washing machine, swinging her legs around without a care in the world.

"Lola, is there a reason why you're sitting on the washing machine?" Lori asked.

Lola's brows furrowed. "Well duh, Lori. You think I wanna get my dress all dirty from standing on this nasty basement floor?"

Lori didn't see any reason for her to act like a dirty floor was some horrible fate that was imposed on her by happenstance. She had control of her destiny, but she chose to be lazy about preventing anything that would've made her uncomfortable.

She marched over to Lola and stared her down, making a conscious effort to use her full stature for intimidation. "Well, maybe it wouldn't be so dirty if you swept it as clean as Mom and Dad wanted you to yesterday."

She glowered harder when it didn't work.

"Well, maybe if you understood that manual labor is beneath me, you'd have done it instead!" Lola shot back, rising to her feet and baring her gaped teeth.

"Well, maybe if you weren't such a sniveling brat, I might've considered it!"

"Well, maybe if yoooooooou weren't such a-"

"Is this argument necessary?" Lisa asked dryly.

The hot-headed blondes turned to her and shouted, simultaneously, "Shut it, Lisa!"

Lynn didn't need a cue to know when it was time to get herself involved before everyone forgot the reason why they needed to be here in the first place.

"Hey, come on, guys! Focus! This is important!" she shouted.

Lori and Lola exchanged harrumphs and turned away from each other. Lynn grumbled something about annoying sisters getting in the way of progress before she procured that horrid note from her pocket, uncrumpled it, and held it up for everyone to see.

"Take a look at what I found in Lincoln's room," she began. "It's a-"

"Wait." Lynn paused as Luan's remark, and a tonally scathing one at that, caught her off guard. "What were you doing in Lincoln's room? He's not even here."

Lynn rolled her eyes. If Thought-Linc wasn't dressing her down, then here was Luan, getting her squirt flower in a bunch over nothing.

Well, okay, it wasn't nothing, per se, but gosh darn it, this meeting wasn't about her! Get on track, Luan!

"I just wanted to borrow some earbuds from him, and I-"

"Without his permission?" Lola remarked. "Wow, that's not rude at all."

Lynn could almost feel her ears pop from all the steam pouring out. "Look, that's not important right now! What's important is that-"

"It literally is important, Lynn," Lori chimed in. "You can't just go into someone's room, rummage through their stuff, and then take their things without permission. Not cool."

That was the straw that broke the camel's back. If Lynn was going to be in the eye of this intervention, she refused to contend with hypocrisy.

She waltzed up to Lori, sizing her up as she held her ground in a firm, arm-folded stance when she closed the distance. "Oh, and I'm sure Leni just let you borrow her clothes when you were trying to woo Clyde?!"

"I-I…well, I…u-um," Pink bloomed across Lori's cheeks, a sight that conflicted with the seriousness of her signature snarl. "T-that was a time of desperation, okay?! Totally not the same thing!"

"I dunno," Luan said, observing the scene with a smirk. "Sounds like the same thing to me."

Lori nearly got whiplash as she turned to face the ponytailed comic. "Oh, who asked you?!"

"Who asked you to be a hypocritical jerk?!" Luan responded, her cheeky smile dissolving as anger rose in her voice.

"Oh yeah?! Who asked you to replace my shampoo with mayonnaise this morning?!"

"It was just a little joke! Learn to take one!"

"I can, but only when they're funny! You might wanna try it sometime!"

They continued to throw barbs at one another, neither of them gaining much traction as their shouting match promised to go on for several hours. Lynn's intervention, which included trying to shout over them to make them stop, only resulted in the cacophony of shouts becoming more jumbled and audible.

Looking on in contempt, Lisa walked over to Lola and gestured for her to cover her ears. When she did so, she took out some earplugs from her pockets, along with an air horn. Fitting her earplugs in place, she shook the can, and pressed down on the nozzle button, eliciting a thundering shriek that caused her three eldest sisters to drop the conversation in favor of nearly jumping out of their skin, grimacing in pain, plugging their ears with their fingers, and giving Lisa a death glare. The noise stopped as soon as Lisa figured that they had had enough.

"Isn't it sad when the youngest of the group is the one who has to restore order?" Lisa said, removing her ear plugs and stuffing them away. She kept the air horn out in case she was required to use it again. "Now then, can we proceed with this impromptu meeting before we derail any further?"

Though her ears were still ringing, Lynn was grateful for Lisa's intervention. Now, she could get hopefully get on with what they all needed to be aware of.

"I found something in Lincoln's drawer," she said and gave the note to Lori. "Read it."

"Yeah, I was going to, genius," Lori said, still seething from everything that had happened in the past four minutes.

Lynn watched Lori's face carefully as she glanced over the wrinkled paper. It didn't take long for her peeved features began to peel apart, one fraction at a time. By the time it had been ten seconds, it was hard to imagine that this was the same Lori that she had been yelling at mere moments ago.

Confusion. Surprise. Hurt. Perhaps, even shame. Any one of those emotions would've fit the bill in Lynn's mind, but maybe it was better to say that Lori felt all four of those things at once. She knew she did when she first read it.

By now, Lisa and Luan were by Lori's side, wondering what was taking Lori so long to just say what was on the paper.

"Well?" Lola demanded impatiently. "What does it say?" She couldn't see Lori's expression to understand her soberness.

Lori nodded mechanically. "Nice Sisters: Leni, Luna, Lucy, Lana, Lily…" Lola's snappiness gave way to a concerned look. The words were daunting, but Lori's tone, teetering between bewilderment and despair, was haunting. "Mean Sisters: Lori, Luan, Lynn, Lola, Lisa."

After reading off the last name, the basement fell silent, save for the errant noise coming from the boiler and the soft whirring from the washing machine. The stony quiet of the room allowed for introspection that neither sister thought that they needed.

"Wow," Luan said, vocalizing her inner thoughts. "Is that what Lincoln really thinks about us?"

"Of course, he does," Lynn muttered. "It was in his drawer, after all."

Just then, Lynn heard what she could only describe as sniffling; the sort that preluded mournful sobbing. Knowing where it was coming from, Lynn turned around to see Lola doing just as she thought. Lola was known to be a big time drama queen, so seeing her genuinely breaking down was never an enjoyable experience.

"Lola, are you alright?" Lynn asked.

Upon noticing that everyone was looking at her, Lola scrunched up her face in a frown and wiped away at her tear-streaked face. "Of course, I am! Why should I care about some dumb, poopy list?!"

The indignant tone proved to be contagious, snapping Lori out of her melancholy to blurt out an objection of her own as heatedly as Lola.

"And how exactly am I a 'mean sister'?!" Lori fumed. "I'm literally the most patient sister ever!"

"Lori, you give us approximately three minutes and fifteen seconds to get to Vanzilla before you leave us behind to get to school by our own means.," Lisa countered. "That's quite antonymous with the word 'patient'."

Lori looked down to give the scientist a hard, icy glare. "Hey, just because I don't let you guys take me for granted doesn't make me 'mean'. As the oldest, you just gotta put your foot down and lay down the law sometimes."

"And by 'sometimes', I guess you mean 'all the time', right?" Luan retorted, clearly having sore feelings over their verbal spat.

Lori found favor in rolling her eyes instead of snapping back with more rage. "Oh, don't you start with me, shampoo swapper. It's because people like you don't give me a break that I'm 'mean' to begin with, and thanks to that, Lincoln thinks I deserve to be lumped in with the rest of you jerks."

"'Rest of us jerks', huh?!" Lynn shouted.

Sensing that more bedlam would be breaking out, Lola leapt off the washing machine (paying no mind to where she stepped), snatched the air horn out of Lisa's hand, and pressed down on the nozzle after she had made sure to at least cover up one of her ears with her free hand. Once more, the loud, grating noise halted everyone in their tracks as they hurriedly covered their ears and groaned until Lola ceased the noise.

"Enough already! We're not getting anywhere like this!" Lola cried.

Before she could react in time, Luan approached her and snatched the air horn away.

"Seriously, give us a warning before you blast that thing!" she snapped.

"Yeah, no wonder Lincoln thinks you're a 'mean sister'," Lori said without thinking.

She gasped and immediately clamped a hand over her mouth, her cruel words replaying over and over again in her head on a loop. Where the heck did that come from? And more importantly, what sick, twisted part of her had the gall to believe that she deserved it?

Lola was even more stymied than that. Her voice was reduced to a mere whisper, shakily fighting to get words out. "Yeah, well, I…I-I…uh…"

Lori's heart tore in two when she saw tears pricking against her gentle, blue eyes. "I-I'm not a 'mean sister', okay?" she managed to force out of her strained, choked throat. "Just because I'm not a perfect angel doesn't mean I'm a devil."

Against her better judgment, Luan walked up to Lola and squeezed her tightly in a hug. She beat Lori to the punch, you thought better of trying to make such contact after causing her little sister so much pain.

"Sorry, Lola," Lori said, hanging her head in shame while rubbing the back of her neck. "I shouldn't have gone that far."

She looked up and noticed that everyone's moods were brought down. Whether it was by her tasteless remark alone or if the combination of both that and the list was responsible wasn't clear, but what was clear was that she wasn't above making her sisters feel like they were worth her love, whatever that was worth to them.

"Look, guys, I think we all need to understand something important here, alright?" She waited for all eyes to be focused on her, but she gladly accepted the fact that they seemed to acknowledge her nonetheless. "While, yes, you guys can get on my nerves sometimes, I would literally deny every single chance I'd get to replace any of you for anyone else. I love you all with all my heart and I'm really sorry if I don't always act that way."

Then, she dared to ask, "And I'm sure you guys feel the same way, right?"

Her lungs expelled tense breath when they all nodded. She nearly teared up herself. She really did have the best siblings ever.

"It's just too bad Lincoln doesn't feel the same way about us," Lola said sadly.

"What're you talking about?" Luan assured as she stroked Lola's head. "Lincoln doesn't have a bad bone in his body against any of us. He loves us."

"Maybe," Lisa replied, "but would it be out of the question to assume that he loved his 'nice sisters' more than us?"

Luan faltered before she could adamantly deny Lisa's logic. After all, now that she thought about, "mean" might as well have meant "bad". There's no way that Lincoln would think of something that was "bad" as favorably as something that was "good", right? It only made sense.

"I…I guess not," she admitted.

Lisa took the lull that followed as an opportunity to speak on the matter herself.

"As much as I'm adamant about avoiding human emotions, I can't deny that his labeling of me, of us, rather stings. But, as science has proven, there's no problem that can't be overcome."

"So, what're you suggesting?" Lynn asked, unsure of where Lisa was going. "We brainwash him into thinking that we're 'nice sisters' or something?"

"That would've been something that the old Lisa would've resorted to, yes," Lisa said. "But, as one who wishes to be a 'nice sister', I'm thinking that we simply refrain from any behavior that would inspire such a callous designation to begin with."

A smile graced Lola's face. Although she didn't have a clue what words like "designation" or "callous" meant, she was still literate enough in "Lisa speak" to know what she was proposing.

"So, in order for us to be 'nice sisters', basically, we just have to act nicer to Lincoln?" Lola asked.

Lisa shook her head. "It's not just about 'acting nicer' in a general sense," she explained. "We must also be sure that Lincoln isn't reminded of our 'mean sister' personas. That means that anything that could trigger a scornful response must be done away with for good."

Luan hummed thoughtfully. "I mean, I guess it's worth a shot. I don't think I'm a 'mean sister'-"

"And neither do any of us," Lori interjected.

"Thanks," Luan said after flashing her a smile. "Anyway, even though I don't think I'm mean, it wouldn't hurt to be a better sister. If it means that Lincoln thinks we're just as good as the others, I don't see why we all can't be nicer."

The idea brightened everyone's spirits, a complete reversal of the gloomy atmosphere that hovered over their heads like a storm cloud. They had a chance to both redeem themselves and make themselves just as endearing as their other sisters.

And they were going to make sure to make a statement.

"Yeah!" Lola exclaimed, raising a fist high. "Let's show Lincoln how nice we can be!"

"We won't stop being nice, not even after our niceness is gushing out of his ears!" Lynn declared with gusto.

Lori, though enthusiastic about proving herself, quelled the fervor with a precaution. "Okay, but we can't tell Lincoln what we're up to, alright? I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we want him to see us as 'nice sisters' on his own. It won't mean anything if he doesn't realize how good we can be by himself."

A chorus of acquiescing remarks, agreeing to keep their pact in the dark, left her with only one thing to ask. "So, who's ready to be a 'nice sister'?"

A/N: Now, I know what you're probably thinking: "Weavillain, why would you give yourself another story to deal with when you have other unfinished projects to contend with?"

Well, first of all, it's not my fault I'm fighting with the "Fanfic Hydra"; deal with one story and two more idea pops up in its place.

Second, all of the dialogue for this story is already finished, meaning that it's only a matter of writing in the transitions and scene descriptions. Therefore, there shouldn't be any reason why I can't have this story finished by November at the very latest. My goal is October, by the way, so you won't have to worry about waiting for a gazillion years for this story to be completed.

And by the way, this changes nothing about "Worth the Weight". I still plan on posting the final two chapters by the end of the month, so that story isn't going to be put on hold in favor of this one.