Title: Pride of Lazytown (Part Three)
Author: PT Malvik

Rating: PG13
Summary: A Sports Day disaster leads to strange revelations and some unlikely heroes.

0o0o0o

Robbie cringed away from the looming figure towering over him. "What do you want?" he whined. Not that he intended for it to come out as a whine. Robbie prided himself on being just as tall, just as impressive a figure as this muscle-bound goon Sportakook -- it just never seemed to work out that way.

Sportacus wasn't amused. Not this time. "I want you to tell me to my face that you had nothing to do with what happened to Stephanie on Sports Day," Sportacus said, his lips pressed into a grim line. "I want to hear it directly from you."

"I had nothing to do with whatever happened to the pink-haired girl, whoever she is," Robbie said carelessly, even as a drop of nervous sweat rolled down his back.

"Her name is Stephanie and she was seriously injured!" Sportacus' eyes flashed angrily. "Robbie, I pride myself on being very patient with you. Iwant to think the best of you no matter how you act to the contrary. I don't care what you try and do to me, but when someone I care about gets harmed ..."

Robbie gave him a sidelong glance. He looked troubled. "How badly was she hurt?"

"Her ankle is broken. She'll be in a cast for six weeks."

"That's not good." Robbie rose, rubbing his chin.

"No, it's not. So, are you telling me the truth? Did you have anything to do with this?"

"Would you believe me if I said I didn't?" Robbie challenged him. "You and those hyperactive children seem to hold a very low opinion of my integrity, as your presence here clearly indicates."

"Can you blame us?" Sportacus turned away and threw his hands up in frustration. "Honestly, Robbie, you're impossible." He suddenly whirled around, shaking a finger pointedly at Robbie. "But if Stephanie's accident was your doing, then you've gone too far this time. And I swear to you, I'm not going to turn the other cheek again. You don't want me as a real enemy, I'm warning you."

Robbie regarded him for some long -- tense -- moments Finally: "I had nothing to do with the little girl getting hurt," he said gravely. "In fact ... you may not believe this, but I'm just as angry as you about the situation, albeit for a different reason."

Confused, Sportacus cocked his head to one side. "What other reason could there be?"

"The reason, Sportabefuddled," Robbie sniped back, rolling his eyes dramatically. "Is that if anyone is going to be bad in Lazytown, that someone is going to be ME. I do all my own work, if you haven't noticed. And I don't appreciate being upstaged by a gang of angry midgets from some other pathetic town." His voice lowered, as if he were embarrassed. "Besides, I'm not into maiming little children. Just ... outsmarting them."

This caused Sportacus to pause. He examined Robbie with a critical eye. "So ... you're saying that you didn't have anything to do with this? Didn't pay off the other team to sideline ours?"

Robbie laughed loudly. "Pay them? Why should I pay anyone to do what I can do myself? Absolutely not. What a monumental waste of money that would be." He leaned in toward Sportacus with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. "In fact, if you ever want to teach the little brats a lesson, I'm the man for you."

"No ..." Sportacus began, until a thought slowly dawned over him. He looked at Robbie, then thought about poor Stephanie and how disillusioned and angry she'd seemed after her fall. Something hopeful inside of her had faded, become cynical and here might be a golden opportunity to turn that all around. But only if ...

"All right, Robbie," Sportacus finally said. "Maybe you have something there. Perhaps they do need to learn a lesson."

Robbie's long face brightened. "I've got just the thing. First, we go into their town, bringing giant buckets of spoiled milk with us ..."

Sportacus shook his head. "Nope. That's not the kind of lesson we're going to teach them."

"Why not?" Robbie pouted. "Waking up smelling like rotten cheese? That's a great lesson."

"What we are going to do, my slothful friend," said Sportacus, draping an arm around Robbie's skinny shoulder, "... is challenge them to another soccer game. And YOU are going to be on our team."

"WHAT?" cried Robbie. He began to splutter. "No ... no, absolutely NOT."

"Or, you can just have your Crown of Badness taken away by, how did you put it again? Oh, yes, a gang of angry interloping midgets from some other pathetic town." Sportacus shrugged carelessly. "It's your choice, Robbie."

"You call that a CHOICE?" Robbie cried, horrified. Robbie Rotten did a lot of things, but playing a game? On a field? A game that required hours of running? That was something he was dead set against -- physically, morally, philosophically and every other "ally" that could apply.

Typical of him, Sportacus seemed monumentally unconcerned about Robbie's ironclad principles. "It's your reputation at stake, not mine. I can only speak for myself, but if I were a villain, and my town was being overrun with wanna-be bad guys ..."

Robbie's lips curled back. Sportakook, darn him, had a point. "All right," he ground out through grit teeth. "I'll join this ... game ... of yours. But only to teach them a lesson that you can't mess with Robbie Rotten."

"And what a fine lesson that will be for them to learn," replied Sportacus, smiling broadly. With a quick series of arm motions, he was off, somersaulting out of the lair and into the Lazytown night. "Goodnight, Robbie. I'll be back and together, we'll make our plans!"

With a deep sigh, Robbie fell back into his fur lounging chair. How the heck did he agree to not only engage in physical activity, but being in the game on the same side as his mortal enemy, Sportasneak?

"Foiled again," he grumbled, before digging in and trying to catch a new batch of forty winks.

0o0o0o

The next morning Stephanie woke up to her friends standing around her bed, staring at her with intent concern. Rising up on one elbow, she chuckled groggily. "Hey, guys. What's up?"

"Are you ... alive?" Ziggy asked in a shaky voice.

"Of course she's alive, you fool," Pixel snapped. Shaking his head, he handed Stephanie a wrapped box with a large tag reading "Get Well Soon!" on it. "Here's something to keep you busy while stuck in bed."

With a pained grimace, Stephanie pushed herself into a sitting position. Accepted the box excitedly and ripped it open to find a brand new video game inside. "Cool," she exclaimed, but then remembered. "I don't have a Playstation or anything. I won't be able to play it."

"Tut, tut, not a problem," Pixel replied, turning around and pulling out another box from behind his back. Inside of it was a video game player and joystick, obviously constructed from parts of other machines, probably by Pixel himself. "It's not an XBox or anything, but I think it'll work pretty well."

"Wow!" Stephanie said, a smile curving her lips. "Thanks so much! This is awesome."

"We got you some stuff too," said Trixie, nudging Stingy forward.

"Yes, for you to look at because it's min ..." His voice trailed away as the glares around him grew hot. "I mean, here you go, Stephanie. Get well soon."

Inside the gift bag Stephanie found a new diary (pink fake leather, with pink pages to match), a brand new fuchisa gel pen and a huge pile of Hershey's kisses, all wrapped in pink foil. Stephanie had to bite back the tears. "Thanks guys, I love everything."

"You're welcome," said Trixie, shoving herself onto the bed, at Stephanie's side. "Now gimme that pen. We have to sign your cast." She snatched the writing instrument from the bag and tapped it thoughtfully against her lower lip. "What should I write?"

"How about "When We Told You To Break A Leg Out There, We Didn't Mean It," Pixel chuckled.

Ziggy snorted loudly between lollipop licks. "Or, 'Stop Falling Down on the Job'."

"I'm going to write 'Mine' on it," Stingy said under his breath, but loud enough for everyone to hear him.

"You're welcome to it," Stephanie sighed, as Trixie leaned over and signed just her name with a flourish, right over the bottom of Stephanie's toes, at the point the cast ended. "Although I don't think you'd like it very much."

"Does it hurt?" Stingy asked, wincing.

"The cast doesn't hurt, although it's hot and itchy," Stephanie shrugged. "The ankle hurt really, really bad yesterday, but I guess ... " She paused to swallow past the lump in her throat. "I guess what hurts more is that someone would do something like this for no good reason. I knew Robbie was bad ..."

Her friends' eyes grew as big as saucers. Trixie gaped at her. "Do you think that Robbie Rotten did this?"

Idly, Stephanie played with the controls her new video game player. She didn't know what to think, really, but inside, she knew that Robbie was more likely a suspect than anyone else she could imagine. The other team couldn't have just been that mean on their own, could they have? No, Robbie was definitely to blame -- he just had to be. "I'm pretty sure he did," she said, although the conviction in her voice wasn't all that strong.

That didn't seem to matter to her shocked ... and furious ... friends. "Ooooh, when I get my hands on him," Trixie threatened, smacking her fist into the opposite palm. "I'll ... I'll ... derottenize him!

"Derottenize him?" Stingy wondered, but then nodded his head in agreement. "That sounds good to me." Slightly confused, he looked around. "Uh, exactly how do we do that?"

Red-faced with fury, Ziggy whacked his lollipop into his other hand, where it remained stuck. While trying to dislodge it, he said: "First we find him. Then we ... we ..."

"We grab him," Trixie interjected.

"And then we shake him," Pixel finished, his hands around the imaginary throat of one Robbie Rotten. "Really, really hard, until all the rottenness falls out of him."

Triumphantly, Trixie crossed her arms over her chest. "And that's how we'll derottenize him."

Stephanie blinked. "Ah, well, maybe you should just leave him be. I mean, I'm not ..." Hesitantly.

But none of them were listening to her. They were hyped up, fueled by righteous anger for their friend and the other pound of Hershey's kisses they didn't give to Stephanie. Grumbling and whacking random things off of Stephanie's shelves, they marched from the room, lead by Trixie -- The Drill Sergeant.

"Who we gonna Derottenize?" she chanted in true Marine fashion.

"Robbie Rotten!" they chanted back as they marched.

"Who's gettin' two black eyes?"

"Robbie Rotten!"

"Uh, guys ... "Stephanie called after them, but it was too late. They were already out the front door, marching straight to Robbie's house. Troubled, she bit her lip and played nervously with the pink wrapped candy that littered her bed. "I guess it's not really a big deal. He deserves it," she decided, before unwrapping a piece of chocolate and popping it in her mouth.

But as she chewed ... she wondered what exactly was going to happen.

And if she was right about Robbie deserving everything he was going to get.

0o0o0o

to be continued