Alrighty everyone, listen up! If you want to OWN a piece of Arnold for real life, buy Viacom voting shares, which is VIA. VIAB has no votes, but is a still a share of the company that owns Hey Arnold. It's like buying mere hairs off the kid's head, but just glory in knowing that YOU own a piece of the company that owns all the legal copyrights to your favorite show, Hey Arnold! And remember, always vote for more Hey Arnold!
In the virtual world of the internet, Arnold was taking time off to visit the communal "break room" he shared with his fellow characters from the Hey Arnold series. He poked his head inside the mellow-orange door that was its entry point from whatever fanfic he happened to be doing, and looked for Helga, or maybe his best friend, Gerald. But all was quiet. Perhaps his friends were still rampaging around the fanfiction universe?
Arnold slammed the door behind him. It was polite to do so so that the next person using the door might "teleport" in, although in a pinch, they might do exactly that by innate ability, poofing into the place they desired to be like smoking gunpowder. Being virtual reality kind of had that effect on one. And the fanfiction universe was a fun world sometimes for other reasons.
"Knock, knock!" A knock on the door resounded, and the door swung open without Arnold needing to open it. Gerald strutted out of the door and as he did so, Arnold took note of a round-shaped dial hung over the door frame. That had never been there before. Arnold pointed it out to his friend.
"Uh, Gerald? Do you know what that thing is?" Arnold asked politely, but slightly fearful. All sorts of bizarre and sometimes unpleasant surprises might wait for one in the fanfic universe.
"Oh!" Gerald said, turning to view the dial. "Oh that! Helga had it installed for her forays into AU. It also gates easily into a wide variety of settings! See?" Gerald dialed the dial to a sunny yellow, then opened the door wide for Arnold to see inside the door. Multi-colored beach umbrellas and sunny, yellow sand had appeared on the other side of the door.
"Yellow is for the beach! And green!" Gerald shut the door and reset the dial again. "Is for a leafy jungle! See!"
"Um-hum," Arnold nodded with understanding over the sound of rain dripping off rainforest canopy. "That does sound kinda neat."
"Yeah, those places are!" Gerald spoke with disdain. "But this setting!" The boy dropped his voice low for dramatic emphasis. Then he spun the dial around until its needle point settled on a setting of deepest jet-black with the word 'terror' scribbled in red ink across the surface. Gerald dropped his voice yet lower. "Is for Alternative Universe! Or Alternative Realities! Or Cross-Overs, even!" Gerald finished his menacing speech by spreading his fingers out wide and tingling them like spider's legs. Arnold gulped.
"And what are those?"
"Well!" Gerald said, his usual pluckiness returning. "Let's go in and see!" Gerald swung wide the door set on the doom setting and pushed Arnold in along with him. "Let's go visit Helga, man!" He said with a disturbingly wide smile.
On the other side of the doorframe, Arnold and Gerald tromped into a formless landscape of gray. The ground sloped downwards like a movie theatre floor with their exit growing sorrowfully away from as they walked further in. Musical notations with eyeballs scurried by Arnold, followed by Tinkerbell. Tom and Jerry raced by. Out of the grayscale, colors began to appear. Nothingness shifted into dunes of sand and split into three paths. Gerald pointed them down one of the three paths and they walked on until, like the advent of technicolor in the Wizard of Oz, they arrived at a beautiful and vibrant coast. Waves spitted and sprayed against the granite rock island they had inexplicably come to.
"Say, Lila, babe?," Gerald called out in a manner of friendly greeting. "Have you seen Helga anywhere hereabouts?" Arnold gasped. There, on the edge of the rocky island was Lila, sporting a Mermaid tail. Hair damp and soggy on her shoulders, she wore clamshells on her upper half and flicked the tip off her very fishy tail almost flirtingly, to the perfect match of her fluttering eyelashes.
"Why… no! I haven't!" Lila said, fluttering her eyelashes some more. "Although I'm ever so certain she's over there drowning Eugene! She's going for a more traditional mermaid theme."
"Help!" Eugene blurgled as his head surfaced above water. Helga had appeared above the water surface as well. Unlike Lila's, her tail was a vibrant shade of rosy pink instead of green. She let loose of Eugene. Then, lifting her arms high and leveraging her tail, she did a dolphin leap straight out of water, high up into the air, then crashed down again into the ocean with a mighty splash. When she reappeared at the water's surface again, it was very near to the coast where Arnold and Gerald were standing.
"Hey boys. How's it shaking?" Helga asked, waving her wobbly tail at them. Then she pulled herself up out of the water to sit on a wave-smoothed rock on the chilly coast. It was too much for teen rating. Both Arnold and Gerald clapped their hands over their eyes, although Arnold's resolve waned and he peeped out between two of the fingers.
"Oooh! Nothing but seaweed!" Gerald lamented, still cupping his hands over his eyes. "I'm sticking with the G-rated style of mermaid, thanks!"
"Hmph!" Helga sniffed. "If you don't like nudes, don't go to a nudist beach! Anyway, why are you all here? I was busy doing a fanfic request. A classic rendition of mermaids making life miserable for Greek sailors. That sort of thing. Want to help? They wanted Arnold to play the part of Ulysses. We can get some rope and tie him to a mast. And not stay perfectly in-plot," Helga said with a wicked cackle.
"Um, no thank you," Arnold uttered. He leaned further away from Helga even if she sat on a rock a few feet lower on the coast shore than himself. "Gerald was just showing me this place for the first time. You know. Not-in-Canon-Fanfiction."
"Oooh!" Helga exclaimed with joy. "I get it! Yeah, there's a whole backlog of requests for poor 'ol you! This could be the greatest day of your life! Or the worst! Come on Arnold, there's a lot to show you!" Helga clicked her fingers together and with a shimmer of pink smoke, she reverted back to her usual form with legs and a little pink school dress. "Come on, come on, we don't got all day!" she hollered.
"Were to first?" asked Gerald, all business as Helga stamped past him.
"Hm, how about Alternative Reality first?" Helga asked as she squinted and scratched her chin. "See?" She took a pinch of dust from her pocket and tossed it into the air. It shimmered and the world around them stretched, then took on tones of gray and black interior decor. Arnold looked down at himself."
"Ah, I'm wearing brown trousers. And I grew a few feet."
"More like a few years!" Helga grinned, holding a hand mirror from a mascara case eye level. "I like the moose." Helga herself was now sporting a red, knee-high nightclub dress with high-heel shoes.
"Nice suit!" Gerald admired himself. "And a tie with a solid gold clip! Um, hum, hum!" Gerald uttered in satisfaction.
"What are we doing here?" inquired Arnold between slanted eyes. Helga handed him a script.
"See? It's an Alternative Reality fanfiction. That means it's still in Hillwood and everything, but in this reality you and I dated then broke up during high school. I went to clothing design school with Rhonda and Nadine and you married Lila. But Lila cheated on you and died in a tragic accident when a hedgehog ran across the street. So now you are picking up your life by meeting a reluctant-resistant-older me at a restaurant with Gerald as the go-between. We both play it cool, but then we meet at a coffee shop later that same evening, both restless and wandering the late-night streets, and so we both go crazy-wild and book a room at a low-class hotel and have wild sex for five chapters until you decide to quit your job in Chicago and join me at my apartment across the country."
"Are you sure this fanfic's really supposed to be about us?" Arnold asked, flipping the pages.
"Sure as shootin'! The key principle is that you try to stay in character, even if you act a little more mature and confused. Grownups afraid of making choices they might regret- that sort of thing. But there's a stack of fanfics like this one broader that the Encylopedia Brittanica back home. You can take a gander at any 'ol time."
"This one is a script you might like!" Gerald displayed yet another fanfic script to Arnold. All three beloved characters puffed back to their younger, miniature selves so fast there was air between their feet and the ground for an instant. "Look, see here! You've just moved to Hillwood from some other city! You and Helga meet at a race competition! And when she suffers a minor accident, you nurse her at her bedside, fall in love, and vow to beat your arch rival at racing. Sniff! Makes me cry everytime!" Gerald wiped a tear from his eye but quickly recovered to say, "or we could do a story about me! We need more stories about me! Write more stories about Gerald, people!" Gerald glared at the heavens above as if expecting fanfic scripts to flutter down from on high. Helga and Arnold shared a concerned look for their furious friend.
"Yeah, sure Gerald! Whatever you say!" spoke up Arnold. "I'll have Sid draft up a few! But anyway, if that's what Alternative Reality means, what is Alternative Universe?"
"Oh! That's where things get all crazy wild!" Gerald grinned. He got out a little finger clicker- the ones that make a noise to train dogs with. But his had a different purpose. It was a remote control.
"See!" Gerald snapped the device dangling off his keychain with a swagger. "We're all space aliens! See! We're all talking animals in a Brazilian rainforest! See! We're all doing a spoof of Tarzan! You look a little scrawny without your shirt on to be Tarzan, Arnold! Might need to work out a little more!"
"Ahem!" Arnold glowered before snatching Gerald's keychain away from him. He clicked the clicker and channel surfed the realities until Helga snatched the keychain back from Arnold and lobbed it at Gerald.
"No, no! Don't do that," she snapped. "You might… oh, no, too late! You've triggered a major Cross-Over! Look alive boys! Run for it!"
Helga picked up her skirt so that her knees were free and skipped off into the distance. A lot of Star Wars storm troopers showed up and began to laser everything until being taken on by some capable cowboys riding cavalry mounts. Hidden behind an overturned popcorn wagon, Arnold squinted at some Ninja Turtles, then slowly sank back out of sight to creep away. As he and Gerald both endeavored to sneak, unseen, away from the brawlers, he was stopped by a wizard.
"Hello! I'm Professor Dumbledore!" the man said. "Would you like to come to school to be a wizard?"
"Ah, I'm happy living in a non-magical academy, thank you!" muttered Arnold, inching away.
"Aghhh!" Gerald gasped. "Pirate zombies! And 007 cop-offs!"
"Never mind that!" Arnold gasped as he and Gerald jogged away from everyone. "We need to get away from here!"
"Come with me! We'll help you!" a pink My-Little-Pony shouted out from above. She flew down on fluttering wings, along with another pegasus in a shade of cornflower blue.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah! They will, will, will!" Yogi Bear nodded as he rode by on a hornless, flightless, yellow My-Little-Pony with daisies on its sides.
"Okay, we'll do it then!" Gerald decided for the two of them. He hopped up onto the pink My-Little-Pony with cotton candy painted on its flank. "Fly us outta here!"
Arnold boarded the blue pegasus pony and off they flew, high up into the sky. The ponies whirled about the sky to take in the multiple conflicts below.
"Uh-uh!" Gerald uttered. "Too many kids shows going on all at once! And mixed with the grownup shows, it's bad news!" Gerald shivered. "Kids Next Door versus the Predator? Pollyanna hanging out with the Terminator? Although today would be a good day to check out Star Trek!" Gerald pointed out a ship hovering above the surface of the planet. The ponies flew up to it and were teleported in. Soon, the ponies, as well as Gerald and Arnold all stood on the command deck sporting some Data-style glasses.
"Cool shades, man!" Gerald complimented.
"Thanks!" the blue-colored My-Little-Pony answered in a gruff, masculine tone. Both Arnold and Gerald took off their shades to study their companion further. The My-Little-Pony was actually My-Little-Stallion.
"Uh, who knew?" Arnold commented. Arnold and Gerald hung around the Star Trek ships for bit, whirling around in the chairs and testing out all the buttons, before teleporting back down to the surface of the planet. The ponies, still wearing Star-Trek shades, came with them. "Do think everyone will go back to their own fanfiction universes soon?" Arnold fret.
"It might take a while longer!" Gerald guessed. He pointed a finger toward the glowing the skyline. "Look!"
"YEA-HA!" Rhonda said riding He-Man's Battle Cat. Curly, dressed in an evil Warlock's robe, dangled by his clothing from Battle-Cat's maw. "I LOVE Fanfiction!" Rhonda exclaimed, joy radiating from her face as she rode side-saddle out of the sunset.
"Hm, where to now?" Gerald inquired as the My-Little-Ponies left them.
"Hm," Arnold thought as he glanced around. He and Gerald had wandered into a village full of mushroom houses.
"This looks like a nice place to hide!" Arnold mused. They shrank down to Smurf size and explored one of the cottages. A few of the Smurfs came out of their own houses to regard the the blueless boys with curiosity, but did not approach. Helga, dressed up an awful lot like Smurfette, did, though. She had shrunk down to the Smurf-size, too!
"Ah, so there you boys all are! No a bad place, huh? Smurfette's got a good thing going here! But let's all go back to Hillwood so that we can see what damage has been done to it!" Helga flung open a door to one of the cottages, and the three of them mysteriously walked out of the entrance to their school, P.S.118. Godzilla was roaring in the distance, while a giant Kraken clung to the top of Big Barney, the clock tower.
"NEVER go fanfic surfing again, Arnold!" Helga soured. She glared.
"Sorry!" the boy held up his hands in defeat. "I won't! I promise!" Helga rolled her eyes.
"Well, let's all go back to the break room to read scripts. Nothing that makes any sense is going to get done here."
So the three of them made their way to the conference room. Eugene was there already, drinking what coffee he hadn't spilled on himself. He gave Arnold a thumbs up. Arnold returned the gesture, then found a large green file folder drawer labeled, "Alternative Reality." He opened up the drawer and grabbed a small stack of scripts. Most of the P.S.118 class, including Rhonda and a slightly chewed Curly, also showed up, to drink soda, eat snacks, or paw through the mountain of scripts. At long last, Arnold set a few down in a separate pile.
"So, Gerald," he said softly. "I would definitely be interested in doing that race car fanfiction, you know the one where you and me build a car together and Helga is the sweetheart who cheers me on to defeat my racing rival! I also found a detective fanfic that has a lot of parts for you, Gerald. And Helga," Arnold said holding up another one of the fanfic for her to look at. There was a twinkle in his eye. "I found another just for us!" Helga peered down at the script he had scooted between the two of them. Her own eyes glimmered.
"A beautiful way to branch out, handsome!" Helga exclaimed, but softly. "I'm game for something new. But are you sure about this?" Helga took up the script to study it closer.
"Hm, well the fanfiction universe is as big as the human imagination." Arnold uttered nervously. "So, yeah! We might as well as make use of the opportunity."
"To go anywhere or do anything!" Helga nodded with delight. "Just so long as you know, Arnold, I'll be stalking you to the end of the human imagination and back again!"
"I wouldn't have it any other way!" Arnold grinned. Eugene came around and poured them both a fresh cup of coffee before they both bent their heads down to study the script of the fanfic they had chosen to do next. The end.