Chapter Text
Stephanie woke up to the sun shining on her face and bird chirping away at her window.
She quickly got out of bed to start her day, of course making her bed before heading to the bathroom to brush her teeth. After finishing her whole morning routine she ran through the house, dashing past her uncle that has in the kitchen.
“Wow, hold up there missy!”
Stephanie already had her hand on the doorknob when her uncle called out to her, she turned around to see him behind the island in the kitchen arms crossed and an amused smile on his face.
“you wouldn’t want to leave without having the most important meal of the day, would you now?”
Stefanie just smiles “of course not!”
When she got outside all the other kid were all huddled up next to the cement fence trying to look over it.
“what are you guys doing? “ she asked only to get shushed by the group.
“Shut it pinkie,you're going to blow our cover!” Trixie said hunched next to the fence, Stephanie quickly covered her mouth after whispering an apology and slowly made her way to crouch next to pixel.
“what are we looking at?” saying it as low as she could “ A car just arrive in town.” Pixel didn’t even bother to look at her, being too fixated on the car parked on the other side of the street, Stephanie turn to him with a discontent face “that’s it?” it was just a car there where car everywhere in town, what made this one so special?
“It's not the car pinkie,” said Trixie, as she got between Pixel and Stephanie “ it's who's inside it.” Trixie gave her a sharp smile. Stephanie’s eyes widen “ Who is it!?” she asked to loud and got shushed by the rest of the group, making her apologise once again, “who is it?” she whispered to Trixie “hmm well…” she trailed off and turned to pixel looking for an answer, “we don’t really know yet. “ this gained another questioning look from Stephanie.
“That’s why we have to investigate who's this new entity that has infiltrated our peaceful town.” Stingy join their conversation, gaining Stephanie's attention, it was true not many cars came into town from the city and most of the time they were trucks that brought produce and things like that, but the car parked in front of them look like one of those sports cars that the boys liked. “All we know is that they haven’t gotten out of there since they entered town” added pixel taking out some binoculars out of a bag and putting them on, “ I wonder if they're locked in there?”
“That can't be, Sportacus would have come already if that was the case,” Stephanie said as she pulled and eye of the binocular from pixel so she could also see through it, “Are you sure there's even a person in there?”
All the kids stared at the car, looking for any sign of life inside of it. A couple of minutes passed and nothing. This was getting boring.
“What are you kid looking at?”
Everyone gave a startled yelp before turning around to the older man, “Did I park wrong or something?” the man got between the kid crouching slightly and looked over to where the car was parked, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand and squinting at it, “ or maybe you were spying on me?” he straighten up and gave the kids a taunting look before putting both his hands on his hips.
The man was tall, just as tall as sportacus maybe even taller but not by much, he had longish copper hair that covered his ear that matched his eyes and wore a white blouse and tight pants that were separated by something that looked like a pirate’s sash. Stephanie’s eyes slowly made their way back up to his face, his body was a young man in his 20’s but the small wrinkles under his eyes made him look older.
When the man tilted his head at her, she realizes she had been staring for far too long “I-i’m sorry!” she looked at her feet as she felt her face heating up.
“Don’t worry about it kiddo,” the man laughed. “ I was just messing around with ya!” he patted Stephanie on the head just like sportacus did, it made her feel a little bit less embarrassed.
When the other saw that the man wasn’t mad they all started bombarding him with questions, “ Did you come from the city?”, “Can I have your car?”, “ Why are you in lazytown?”, “Can you take me for a ride?” and many others until Stephanie asked her question.
“What’s your name?”
The man looked taken aback by her question but just rubbed the back of his neck not looking at Stephanie anymore and gave a nervous chuckle, “ That might be a little hard to answer, actually.” He turned to face the kids once again, “How about you all just call me 9” he gave them an award winning smile and a wink.
The kid turn to each other before saying in unison “9?”
9 just smiles like it was the most normal thing in the world to be named after a number, “ We can't call you that, it isn't even a name!” trixie said what everyone else was thinking “yeah, That’s a number” stingy added, both feeling mocked, 9 pated trixie on her head “of course it is. why would I tell you to call me that if it wasn’t.” trixie puffed up her cheeks looking quite angry “ it’s not!” she said, leading over to the older man who looked at her teasingly.
“is so.”
“it’s not!”
“is so.”
As the two of them fought over the validity of the man’s name the rest of the group viewed it entertained, adding to the argument and even joining sides, all except Stephanie that has putting puzzle pieces together in her head before coming to a realization and slipping away to head towards the mail box.
Up in the clouds, inside of his ship sportacus has just finished doing some morning exercises and was refreshing himself with some water. The day had been calm, no one had gotten in trouble all morning and even if it was a great thing, it still left sportacus a bit anxious, he paces around his ship before deciding to do a handstand to get his blood flowings brain and maybe even calming this nerves, but just as he was getting into position a letter popped out of the mail shoot and fell to the ground.He quickly ran over to pick it over and opened the cylinder casing.
He could tell it was a letter from Stephanie from the pink tinted paper but to his surprise, all the letter said was “please come down. I need to ask you something.” Maybe there was an actual reason he couldn’t calm down if Stephanie thought it was necessary to make him come down then it must be important.
He yells at the airship computer to open the door and has down as quickly as he could pedal.
Stephanie could see her friends from the mailbox, they seem to be getting along with the mysterious man, he didn't really look like a bad person but something was bothering her but all she could do has to wait for sportacus to relieve her worry.
“Robbie?!”
Stephanie was startled how loud the group had yelled, and ran to them wondering of something had happened.
When Stephanie got there the man was crouching to meet to eye level with the rest, “yeah, black hair, gray eyes,” he rubbed his chin and closed his eyes looking like he was trying to turn the gears In his head “he was about your size 18 years ago.” The group has him a judging look and the man returned a nervous smile.
“Are talking about Robbie rotten?” ziggy asked before returning to suck on his lollipop, the man gave him an unamused expression. “Robbie rotten?” he said flatly and look at the rest of the children. ”kids, I'm going to have to ask you a favor.”
“what is it?” pixel asked, “and what do get out of it?” trixie added with a mischievous smile curling up on her lips.
As the man opened his mouth to answer he was interrupted by a mechanical sound emanating from the other side of the playground.
The group turned to the source of the noise that was Robbie's periscope was slowly making its way back down, they all look at it for a few seconds before the man sprinted towards it and grabbed it, stopping it from moving any lower.
“Robbie, my boy! Are you hiding from me? Even though I came all this way just for you? How cruel!” the man said it in the fakest hurt tone any of the kids had heard before, he even put his hand on his forehead to add to the effect as the periscope tried to slip back into its hole but was unable to escape the man's grip. “why don’t you come up here and say hi?” he slipped the top of the periscope and spoke into it “or would you rather me going down there and getting you myself?” the man teased, then all that could heard was a grunt and some clatter coming from the tube with that, the man smiled satisfied and backed away only to realize he was surrounded by the kids.
The group had gotten closer to the whole scene, all of them being kinda weirded out by their interaction. “ he’ll be out in a second.” He said smiling at the confused bunch that stood next to him.the man looked as proud as a peacock for making Robbie come out with little resistance if he was even going to come out.
The kids were about to begin to ask questions until ziggy yelled out “ Sportacus!” and ran over to the hero.
Sportacus stood still, away from the group, giving them a blank look. When ziggy finally reach him and hugged his leg all he did was pat this head and give him a small smile before turning back to where the other kid were huddled put next to a certain individual that was looking at him with a calm smile, when the blond boy let go of his leg Sportacus walked over to the group making his way to the taller man and standing directly in front the taller man.
“Why are you here?”