It was a quiet day in Retroville. Well, not for long.
"NOOOOOOO!" Sheen let out a long cry into the peaceful land. Birds flew out of their trees for miles around. Only a few minutes later, he was pounding at the door of Jimmy's lab. "Jimmy! JIMMY! Let me in! THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!!"
"Sheen? What's wrong?" Jimmy looked a little sleepy as he let Sheen in.
"Is Retroville in mortal peril again?" Carl asked, showing a little interest.
"No! WORSE!"
"The world?" Carl almost fell out of his chair in fright.
"Wha... NO! Ultralord's been canceled. CANCELED!!"
"Oh." Jimmy said, and turned back to his work. Sheen went up to him and shook him by the shoulders.
"Are you listening to me Jimmy? CANCELED."
"Yeah, I heard you Sheen, but-"
"Ultralord. Canceled. Meaning Ultralord is gone forever!" Sheen broke down and fell to his knees.
"But," Jimmy continued. "It's been a long time coming. How many years has Ultralord been on?"
"Forever?" Sheen guessed.
"Eleven years, Sheen." Jimmy informed him expertly. "Older than us. And it's not like it's the most popular children's program on TV. It's time for Ultralord to move aside and make room for new and better programming."
"Boring, boring, WHO CARES! Ultralord is canceled, and we're going to go get him back! We won't let this happen without a fight. Right?"
"Just let it go Sheen. There are still five-hundred episodes that you can watch on reruns on cable. Not to mention your DVD collection." Jimmy said.
"What?" Sheen blinked in disbelief.
"Yep, you should pick your battles wisely. And this isn't really a battle worth fighting."
Sheen clenched his fists angrily, and shouted at Jimmy. "I don't believe you Jimmy! Not worth fighting? I ask you this, if Ultralord isn't worth fighting for, then WHAT IS? Just tell me that!"
"Freedom, social liberties, safety of the world..."
Sheen sighed as his attention span shorted out and turned to Carl. "Come on Carl. We can leave this TRAITOR to his TRAITOROUS things while we go and get Ultralord back on the air!"
"Um, Sheen..." Carl began timidly. "I kind of agree with Jimmy on this. Ultralord is a great show and all, but there are a lot of episodes already, and plus, it's just a TV show."
"Just a TV show? Just a TV show?!" Sheen repeated while tearing around angrily. Jimmy was reaching for the button to activate a force field around him and Carl, when Sheen turned around and stared at them. "Fine! You can both just be traitors! Ultralord has always been there for others when they've needed him, and now I'm going to be there for him!"
Jimmy and Carl sighed in relief as Sheen let himself out.
"How many hours are you going to sit there moping?" Cindy asked Sheen. She and Libby had gone across the street to talk to Sheen, who had been sitting on the curb in front of Jimmy's house for hours.
"I don't know."
"Well figure it out so we can leave and then come back when it's over." Cindy said.
"Come on Sheen, it can't be that bad." Libby put her hand on his shoulder to show support.
"But it is, it is!" Sheen started sobbing. "Ultralord is gone and never coming back! NEVER! Did you guys hear about it?"
"Kind of hard not to hear about it with you over here screaming for hours." Cindy rolled her eyes.
"I just don't know what to do. How can I save Ultralord?"
Cindy was about to spurt out a hurtful remark, but Libby stopped her. "Cindy, we should be nice. Ultralord is his life. This is major for him." she whispered.
"Maybe we should tell him to get a life."
"No! Be a little nicer."
"WHY?! OH WHY OH WHY DO THE GOOD DIE YOUNG?" Sheen shouted in pain.
"There he goes again. I am getting rid of him. Now." Cindy turned towards Sheen with a dangerous spark in her eyes.
"Uh... Cindy..." Libby said cautiously.
"Oh Sheen..." Cindy said, sounding strangely sweet.
"What?" Sheen asked.
"If I tell you what you can do to help Ultralord, will you go away NOW?"
"Sure, I guess."
"Good! Here's what you can do. Go start an online petition to save him."
"Hey. That's a great idea!" Sheen stood up, energized once more.
"Yeah. Then spend all your free time in chat rooms and signing guestbooks to bother, I mean get other people to sign it." Cindy continued.
"Okay. I'm going to go do that now." Sheen agreed, and then walked away.
"Now don't forget not to leave your computer until Ultralord is saved." Cindy said loudly after Sheen.
"Right! I won't! I'll do it for Ultralord!" Sheen now took off running towards his house.
"That'll keep him busy for a while." Cindy smiled.
"If he keeps at it, forever." Libby agreed.
"Come... Save... Ultralord... See my... Website...." Sheen said aloud what he was typing. It was day fifteen of his mission to save Ultralord. So far his petition had twenty signatures. Seven of them were him pretending to be other people.
As Sheen scrolled his message, an IM popped up. "Dude, are you in here everyday?" the message read.
"Ye..s.." Sheen replied.
"If you like Ultralord so much, why don't you go watch it instead of bothering us?" the anonymous internet user typed back.
"Already seen.. every.. E.P." Sheen said as he typed.
"Then why don't you go read some fanfiction or something?"
"What's that?" Sheen typed back and smashed the enter key.
"You don't know? Stories fans write. Go read some at fanfiction.net. Or find another show to obsess over. God, you're such a loser." the IM pinged back.
"Hey!" Sheen shouted. He spent the next hour arguing that what he was doing was a very noble cause, nothing at all like what a loser would do. After the person he was IMing with either signed off or blocked him, one of the two, he was a little curious about fanfiction, and did visit this fanfiction.net. After a few minutes of searching, as Ultralord had an anime, cartoon, live action tv show, movie, game, AND comic to his name, he found the section.
"Wow!" Sheen said aloud. "Three thousand Ultralord stories? Three thousand Ultralord stories I've never seen before? How could I have missed this?" Sheen eyes sparkled as he clicked on the link, and his mouth spread into a large grin. "This is SO COOL!" Sheen had forgotten about his 'mission', at least for now, as he went over the stories. He read a story which was good, but the plot had barely begun with the one page first chapter.
Sheen's grin twitched a little, but he went back to the main section of Ultralord, and looked for a longer fanfic. On the second page he found one. It was rather exciting story about Ultralord fighting an evil Ultralord, and thought it was pretty good until Ultralord randomly had a little brother called Megalord who the story ended up being about. "Ultralord doesn't have a brother!" Sheen shouted in disgust. "If they watched the show they'd know that! This is a disgrace.. 'How is it possible that I have a brother?' " Sheen read some dialogue from the story aloud in monotone. "I don't care why!" Sheen shouted.
He quickly clicked the back button to find another story. This time he picked one that was pretty funny, even thought it had a few spelling mistakes. Well, more than a few, but Sheen couldn't really spell either, so he didn't care, or notice much.
Sheen was about to click the back button to find another good fanfiction story, when he noticed a button at the bottom. Submit Review... Sheen clicked "go". A window popped up. Wow! He could say what he thought of the story, and it would show up and stuff! He grinned, then typed in his online alias, "Ultralord Fan", and then his e-mail. Now, what would he say for the "Review" part? It should be something thoughtful and meaningful that would make Sheen look like a professional reviewer, he thought.
Kool story!!! It rox!! GO ULTRALORD!!!1 Ultralord will role the world becaus he is so kool but wait he's not a supervilen he is a superhero so maybe he won't? he typed, and then stared at the review thoughtfully. The last part really had nothing to do with the story, but Sheen thought it made him look smart, so he left it. Anything else to say? Not really, so Sheen added a long paragraph on why they should save Ultralord and a link to his petition, then clicked "Submit Review".
The next fanfiction was about Ultralord meeting some girl. The girl sure talked a lot, Sheen thought. He quickly became bored with the story, and left a review that stated simply, "This stinks."
He read through more and more bad fanfiction, desperately searching for something good. As he clicked on yet another story, a window popped up. "I am over 18." it read.
"Um... Yeah..." Sheen absent-mindedly pressed the okay, and then began to read after the page loaded.
An hour later he stared at the screen in shock, done with the story. It had been so horrible, and yet he was unable to stop reading. Like it was some evil force that wouldn't let him go. That it, it was evil. Sheen crawled on the floor, and unplugged the computer, then sighed in relief. It was gone. But the horrible images still haunted his mind.
"Hey Carl." Jimmy nodded to Carl as he entered the classroom, ten whole minutes early.
"Hey Jimmy."
Jimmy turned and looked at Sheen's desk. Empty again. "Is Sheen absent again?" he threw up his hands in disgust.
"Um, Jimmy-" Carl began.
"This is the fifth time since Ultralord was canceled! I'm getting really sick of-"
"Jimmy, he's here." Carl interrupted, and pointed under Sheen's desk. Sheen was hiding under there, his face pale and unblinking, seeming almost like a zombie.
"Hey Sheen! Good to see you!" Jimmy said. He forced a smile for his poor friend.
"Yeah, hi Sheen, and, um, why are you under the desk?" Carl asked.
Sheen didn't move, but Jimmy thought he saw him blink. Maybe. He spoke, and then they knew he was alive. "Jimmy. Carl. I have been VIOLATED!"
"What happened?" Jimmy asked.
"I.. I... I'm not telling you." Sheen insisted. Jimmy and Carl looked at each other, each wondering what was wrong with their friend. "Can you guys get Cindy and Libby for me? I need to ask them a question.
"Um, okay." Jimmy found the girls in the hallway and approached them. "Hey, girls, Sheen's under his desk and wants to talk to you."
"And we care why?" Cindy said.
Libby giggled, but then pushed Cindy forward a little. "Let's just go see what he wants. The bell's about to ring, anyway."
"Wow, you're even more pathetic than before." Cindy commented once they reached Sheen's desk.
"Spare me!" Sheen shouted. "Get down here."
"No, the floor is dirty. You get up here if you want to talk to us." Cindy said.
"Fine! Just stay there! I want you to know I hate you both now. You're the ones that sent me to the internet. Home of everything in the world that is evil and wrong!" Sheen said.
Cindy and Libby both crouched down, trying not to touch the floor.
"What's wrong?" Libby asked.
"I bet you're both evil children sent from the internet world to-"
"Fine." Cindy interrupted impatiently. "We're evil. You hate us. I get it. I don't care. Now what do you want?"
"Do you guys.." Sheen began in a low voice. "Think maybe Ultralord is gay?"
"Yes." Cindy answered immediately.
"Why?" Libby asked.
"Because I said this fanfiction on fanfiction dot net and it was about Ultralord and and there was that one bad guy from that one episode and he tied Ultralord up and he was naked and he was-"
"Okay!" Libby quickly interrupted.
"Have you seen the episode? It's the one where-"
"We get it Sheen. Don't look so shocked. You're not the first idiot to accidently look at porn on the internet."
"Porn?" Sheen repeated.
"Yeah, it's just fictional, it can't hurt you." Libby assured.
"Fictional?" Sheen repeated again.
"Duh. Now it's not our fault that Ultralord is gay," Cindy explained slowly.
"Nope. We have nothing to do with that show." Libby added.
"And we didn't force you to go on the internet."
"Nobody did."
"So why don't you just get over it. The show was canceled."
"And the main character is gay."
"So just get over it. And leave us alone."
"Ultralord can't be gay! He's had several female love interests!"
Cindy and Libby both smirked. "Well, you read this on the internet, right?" Libby said.
"Yeah." Sheen confirmed.
"The internet is where the real truth comes out." Cindy said.
"Really?"
"Really." Cindy and Libby said in unison. The bell rang and they went to their seats giggling.
"Sheen, would you please sit in your chair, and not on the floor." Ms. Fowl squawked. The class laughed as Sheen pulled himself into his seat.
Then day continued as usual. Maybe not as usual, it was a relatively quiet day. But not for long.
"NO!!!!!" Sheen shouted, and jumped on his desk. "The world isn't safe anymore. There is nothing worth living for! EVERYTHING HAS GONE INSANE!!"
"I can think of one thing." Cindy glared at Sheen.
"Did you know Ultralord was canceled! Now there's nothing but FANFICTION! NOOO! It's crazy, I tell you! IT'S A SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE!" Sheen began ranting.
The men came not too much later, putting him in a straitjacket. He looked at his friends and classmates. There was such a mix of emotions. They seemed either worried, sad, angry or happy to see him go. As the people put him in a truck and carried him off to the padded room, Sheen could only say one thing.
"Ultralord..."
The End