It was time to assemble “The Team.” Or so Adam thought. Everyone was AFK; it was all up to him now. His first goal was to get the site running again. As long as the moderators were there, Adam could concentrate on finding the lost words.
It took over a week of nose to the grind stone, back breaking, no nonsense investigation. Trolling through fanfic boards looking for just a hint of where the monster could be hiding. The horrors he’d seen may very well have scarred him for life. Nevertheless, he forged on.
Day after day, week after empty week he slaved, until he found it. It was just a rumor, but it was the best lead he could find. Arming himself with “The Classics”, Adam jumped in his Batmobile (a maroon four door Taurus)and sped toward the warehouse listed on the board.
With Freeman like skill, Adam used a crowbar to not only open the warehouse bay door, but to fight off the swarm of fanboys that were waiting.
Standing atop a pile of corpses, Adam called out to the monster. The ground shook and the air thickened, then everything went silent.
“So,” the voice echoed through the warehouse, “you’ve come for Them.”
Adam stood his ground, “You have no right to take them!” The power of Otaku surged through his body, “Those Words belong to everyone. The hours they gave up, the sweat they shed, the sleep they lost, just to create something that others can enjoy. Your Copy Pasta has no place in our community!”
A massive roar exploded. “What makes you so special that you can judge the worth of my stories?” The monster rose from the shadows in front of Adam. “You don’t think I worked as hard as the others? I’ll show you just how hard I worked!” The monster charged.
This time Adam was ready. Casting aside the crowbar, he retrieved his paper fan. Sparks flew as he struck at the monster. The blur that was the monster skidded to a halt just beyond Adam, a thin vermilion trail ran down the side of its face.
“You may have won this battle,” the monster laughed, “But the war is far from over.”
Before Adam had a chance to lay a final blow, the monster melted into the shadow. In its place was what was lost. The external hard drive sparkled like a golden prize from an end boss.
The words left behind by the monster rang in Adam’s ears as he returned the Fanwords to their rightful place. Section 9 was rebuilt, the site running mostly smoothly, but something was off. The flood of comments, of reports that while there were Fanwords, no one could even submit new ones.
To this day, Adam loses sleep in his tireless quest to regain the lost code of submission. All efforts to write new code have been futile, as everything seemed to disappear into html oblivion. Somewhere out there, the monster of Anonymous is still fighting his battle against good and proper fanfiction.
