A/N: I'm just resubmitting this to let everyone who's got this on alert that there is now a sequel up! "Pixel's Fix" Chapter one is here: /s/6442246/1/

Robbie Rotten took one last look at the surface world with his periscope. The children were playing, the jumping blue kangaroo was with them, and all was right again. Only better, as the brats now had to learn to be careful and how to get themselves out of minor scrapes because Sportacus only got called to serious emergencies. Not that this mattered to Robbie.

A strange feeling came over him at that thought- relief? Was he relieved that everything worked out in the end? That his self-proclaimed nemesis was still here?

Well, he certainly wasn't going to let those nice feelings bother him. His lair was now soundproof. It was perfect, even if he did still find a bit of glitter here and there. It was wonderful.

The villain stretched out in his comfy chair with a content sigh. Silence. Finally. It was pure bliss.

His nose twitched and stormy grey eyes opened grumpily. Had the pipes always creaked so loudly?

He stood up and walked to his workbench. Had his footsteps always echoed so much?

No matter, he would just get himself busy inventing. Now that he didn't have to worry about trying to get rid of Sportacus or being distracted, he would be able to get back to inventing wonderfully evil things. He picked up his hammer, poised to start a fantastic machine. He raised the hammer over his head, and paused. He put it down on the table gently.

Robbie frowned at his tools. Something was missing.

The man went to the kitchen and got out his best slice of cake. Yes, that would have to be it. He settled back into his chair cheerfully, savoring the first bite. And the second. And the third… wasn't quite so nice. The fourth was okay. The fifth he only ate out of a feeling of obligation.

The villain set his fork down. That wasn't it.

An evil grin crept across his lips and he rubbed his hands together gleefully.

"It's disguise time!" he shouted, leaping out of his chair with a particularly evil laugh.

"Pixel!" Stephanie shouted with a laugh as the young technophile brought out his latest gadget to help him play. "You don't need a special gadget just to play baseball!"

Pixel grinned, "No- but this will make it even better! It's a bat that can hit the ball for you!" he said gleefully, holding it up so the kids could see, "this," he pointed at something, "tracks the baseball and locks onto its trajectory! Then this," he pointed to the handle of the bat, "swivels to hit it!" The boy genius held it proudly.

Stephanie shook her head, "But doesn't that take all the fun out of the game?"

"I just thought…" he said awkwardly, clearly not understanding the question. For him inventing was the fun. Getting to see his ideas in action was way more fun than just swinging a back and hitting a ball. But he knew his friends enjoyed it, so he tried his best to fit in. Of course, it didn't work very well.

"Just let him play with it," Trixie insisted, rolling her eyes. "It's the only way he'll ever be able to hit the ball! Now are we gonna play or are we gonna sit around and talk all day?"

The kids agreed with that, and all got to their positions with a laugh. It was a bit difficult to play a proper game of baseball with only 5 people, but they managed. Pixel licked his lip as he stepped up to bat. He was sure he could do this, he had triple checked his calculations. He swung the bat up and tried to ignore the glint in Trixie's eye as she threw the ball.

Pixel closed his eyes and swung, the bat doing most of the work. And in a second he heard an all-too unfamiliar Crack!. He opened his eyes- he'd done it! The bat worked! It'd made contact!

"Don't just stand there, Pixel!" Stephanie shouted to him, "Run!"

"Oh, right!" he said to himself, tossing the bat to the side and making his way to first- second- third base. He hesitated at third, Trixie was just catching the ball that Stingy had thrown to her. Oh well, he didn't want a home run anyways. It was enough that it had worked.

"That was amazing, Pixel!" Ziggy said, looking at his own bat uncertainly as he stepped up to the plate.

"You can do it, Ziggy!" Stephanie told him warmly, readjusting her catcher's mask.

Before Trixie got a chance to throw the ball, Sportacus came flipping over. "Hey kids! What's up?"

The children looked up eagerly, "We're playing baseball!" Ziggy replied happily, holding up his bat as evidence. "Do you want to join us?"

"Yeah! You could play outfield. I'm sure we'll need you to catch the ball with as far as Ziggy will hit it," Stephanie said with a grin and a wink, and the younger boy puffed out his chest with pride.

Sportacus chuckled, he couldn't help but be impressed at how well Stephanie was able to organize all the children like that. Although he certainly helped with getting it so that no one was lazy in Lazytown, he had to admit that he probably wouldn't have been able to do it without Stephanie.

"I think I can do that," he said, taking his place with a series of flips that left the children in awe for a few moments.

"Alright, Ziggy, you ready?" Trixie shouted, eager to get on with the game. After everyone got back into the game, she lobbed the ball to the young boy.

With all the determination a hyper young boy could muster, Ziggy swung the bat and the ball- dodged. It hit the ground gently a few feet away. Everyone stared at it for a few moments; Trixie picked it up and examined the ball. It was just a normal ball. Ziggy did the same, with Stephanie looking over his shoulder to do the same.

"It looks normal to me," Stephanie told the others.

"That was weird," Stingy said with a frown, and everyone nodded. It must have just been a fluke. In the outfield, Sportacus frowned as well, but let the children handle it as best as they could.

Ziggy got into position and gripped the bat. Trixie wound up and gave it her best pitch. Ziggy swung—and again the ball dodged. As soon as the bat came within a foot of it, the ball simply swerved to the side and fell to the ground.

"What's going on?" Trixie shouted angrily. She stormed over to Ziggy and snatched the bat out of his hand, looking it over. There was nothing out of the ordinary with it. The kids turned their attention to Sportacus, who bit his lip. He had no idea what was going on either- but the children expected him, as an adult and a hero, to know everything.

"I think that's obvious!" a strange voice replied. Everyone looked up to see a tall man in a pinstriped business suit and sunglasses walking their way. He was carrying a briefcase and, as far as the children could tell, looked like a fairly important person.

"Who are you?" Stingy was the first to ask.

"I am Fly-Ball Bob, the Sports Equipment Expert." The children all looked impressed by this, Sportacus simply smiled and raised an eyebrow.

"Then can you tell us what's wrong with our ball?" Trixie asked hopefully, holding the ball up to him.

He chuckled at this, "My dear child- there's nothing wrong with your ball!" he insisted, "The problem is that electro-magnetic current is causing eddies in the continuum which prevent the bat from being able to hit the ball!"

The children had no idea what this meant, but it sounded important. But at the sound of electro-magnetic, they all turned their attention to Pixel and his electronic bat. The boy shrunk back slightly,

"Pixel! Did your bat do this?" Stingy asked angrily.

"Of course not!" Fly-Ball Bob insisted before they could get any further with the accusations. "This would be caused by something much more powerful than that little toy."

"Then what's causing it?" Ziggy asked uncertainly.

Fly-Ball Bob opened his briefcase and carried out a complicated blue gadget with buttons and antennae and a strange screen with a gauge of some sort on it, the needle currently resting at the bottom. "With this!" the man said proudly, holding it out for the kids to see. They stared at it with wide eyes, wondering what it was for. Sportacus watched from the background, bouncing slightly on his feet, his hand on his face as if he were deep in thought. In reality, he was hiding a slight smile as he watched the happenings.

"What's that?" Pixel asked, more curious than the others about technology.

"The Electro-Finder 3000," he replied solemnly. "This will find the source of the problem."

With that, the man flipped a few switches and turned a few buttons and the machine started up with a whirr, the needle flying wildly for a few moments before it settled down. The machine continued uttering a soft, gradual "beep… beep… beep" sound. Everyone watched silently as Fly-Ball Bob walked around, pointing the device around. Just to satisfy the children, he pointed it at the technophile's electronic bat and nothing happened. Pixel smiled to himself, as if he had been doubting it. He didn't really expect Stingy to apologize, but he did wish the boy would.

Then he continued walking around, seeming to be random in his search. Nothing changed until he started moving towards Sportacus. As the beeping sped up, the elf's eyebrows raised slightly as all the kids' eyes widened.

Fly-Ball Bob hmmed to himself for a bit, moving the machine away and back. The beeping sped up every time it got near Sportacus, and the man gave him a fixed look.

"But it can't be Sportacus!" Stephanie cried, "He hasn't caused anything like this before…"

The man frowned at that, scratching his head and looking at his machine as if he was trying to figure it out. "My machine is never wrong," he assured the children, shaking his head. "Has anything changed recently?" he asked, continuing to move the gadget. As the beeping increased as it got over Sportacus's crystal, the children shared a quiet glance. No one really wanted to say it, but they all knew what was the cause.

"Well," Stephanie said quietly, "One thing has changed…"

Of course, no one had wanted to be the one to say it- but they couldn't help but wonder if it was Sportacus's crystal. Fly-Ball Bob's device certainly indicated it had. And after a few tries of hitting a ball, throwing a basket, and kicking a goal with him around and not- it seemed that his presence was definitely causing it. The hero took it as well as he took most things- he'd already established that he would try as many times as it took to fix his crystal.

But no one really wanted that. The amount of time spent without Sportacus to play with had been bad enough. So the children all just shifted nervously and shared troubled glances as they tried to decide what to do now. At this time they had learned better than to leave such decisions up to the adults, who had made a mess of it last time.

"I'm sure we can come up with a solution," Sportacus assured them all with a grin. It was about as close as the elf ever got to a sly grin- which wasn't particularly close at all, so no one noticed. He glanced at Fly-Ball Bob, "How far away does my crystal have to be for it to stop being a problem?"

The man adjusted his tie and studied his instrument for a few moments, twisting a few dials and raising his eyebrows in surprise before making a few more adjustments and frowning. The children watched the display breathlessly, eating it up. "Well, with such high readings it's really hard to say," he said after he was done.

The children shared another glance, this one nervous. "But it's just the crystal, right? Not Sportacus?" Ziggy asked hopefully, "Couldn't he take it off… maybe put it on the side somewhere and play with us then?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea Ziggy," Sportacus told him gently, "What if someone needed help and I didn't know because my crystal was somewhere else?"

Ziggy's face fell, the blonde boy hadn't thought of that. Keeping a hero away from his way to tell when someone needs him wasn't a very good plan at all. Stephanie placed a hand on his shoulder, "Don't worry, Ziggy. We'll think of something. There's always a way."

Trixie let out an exhasperated sigh, "Well- enough sitting around and feeling sorry about it- let's figure out how to fix this!" If they weren't going to play ball, she wanted to find something else to do. The children nodded, said goodbye to Sportacus with assurances that they'd think of something soon, and ran off. Pixel was the last to go, and the boy hesitated, looking at the two adults nervously as he gingerly picked up his bat.

"It… really wasn't my bat doing this, right?" he asked Fly-Ball Bob quietly. Robbie's stomach lurched at this.

He had never minded Pixel, the boy was the quietest and shared Robbie's passion for inventing. He couldn't help but sympathize with the way the boy must be feeling after his friends' were so quick to accuse his invention of this problem. Part of him wanted to find some way to support this boy and encourage him.

"Of course not- the electromagnetic currents produced by that bat couldn't possibly have any effect," he said firmly, and the boy nodded slowly. He frowned at the bat, his eyebrows furrowed as he thought about this.

"I… guess I should go try to help them," Pixel said quietly, his grip tightening on the bat as he smiled up at Sportacus.

"I'm sure you'll be a great help to them," the slightly-above-average hero assured him with a grin. The boy walked off a bit slowly, heading to his house rather than in the direction the other children had gone, and Sportacus's smile faded.

He wasn't sure how to help Pixel now that the boy knew not to stay up all night inventing or stay inside all day, he wasn't even sure if he should help him. Pixel was one of the oldest children and was starting to drift away from the other children who he had little in common with aside from living in the same town.

Sportacus wasn't the role model Pixel needed- Pixel needed a role model who could encourage his interest in inventing.

'Someone like Robbie,' the elf mused, turning to face the man still standing near him with a wry smile. "So, "Fly-Ball Bob", this is an odd scheme for you."

The man briefly considered objecting, trying to assert that this wasn't just an act, but it would be a waste of his time and he knew it. He bristled slightly, crossing his arms, "I don't know what you mean- eventually you'll give up trying to 'fix' your crystal and leave, it's a brilliant plan."

Sportacus chuckled, "Alright, Robbie, if you say so. Of course, if I can find any proof that you've done anything wrong… I do have a responsibility to Lazytown."

"You won't," he said grumpily, picking up the briefcase from where he dropped it and stalking off.

"Robbie," the elf called, flipping after the villain to stop him from getting farther. The tall men stopped with a 'harrumph'.

"What?" he snapped irritably, still annoyed at how flippy the sports elf was. Really, it would have been fine if he had just ran over like a normal person.

"Do you think…" he started, licking his lips nervously, "That Pixel might be able to invent something to fix this?"

The grumpy frown slowly fell off of the villain's face at that question. Understanding flashed over his face for a moment as he realized exactly what Sportacus was asking him for. He quickly replaced it with a detached shrug, "I really don't know… It is possible… maybe if he were to check the equipment he could find some way to fix what was happening."

The two stood for a few moments after that. Sportacus knew by now that Robbie would not accept his thanks, and might even change his mind if it were offered.

"Of course- if he were to, I'd just have to come up with some other scheme to get rid of you," Robbie reminded him stubbornly.

"It wouldn't be Lazytown if you weren't, Robbie," the elf assured him with a smile. Of course, he'd have to stop whatever plans Robbie came up with, and if he were to do anything really villainous he'd have to address that. But that was just part of what made Lazytown Lazytown, and Sportacus wouldn't change a thing about it.

I hadn't seen the episode "Sportacus Saves the Toys" when writing this. I didn't mean to make the plot quite so similar, although it is still a bit different. But it's not like Robbie ever learns his lesson, anyways.

I'm not very good at endings- which I think is obvious- so I'm sorry this took so long. I kind of want to do a sort of sequel to this, maybe a oneshot, so that might happen at some point. Thank everyone who favorited and commented on this story! Your support means so much to me and I hope the ending is satisfying.