Magical Girl Pretty Helga
By MuseX3 --Melete-Mneme-Aoede--
Disclaimer: I don't own Hey Arnold! though I do have TiVo and the Nicktoon channel so I can record the episodes that they show at 4 in the morning. Why they play it then, I have no idea.
Authors note: This is my first HA! Fic but I think I've read plenty of other ones. This story was actually inspired by 'Pink Thunder of PS118' by Zukone, kind of. That story got my thinking, besides needing to go back to kendo club, about an anime/ HA! Cross over that wouldn't actually need an anime – in a sense, if HA! was an anime. Enjoy.
Chapter 1: Release
The sun was shinning, birds singing their tiny hearts out, and one little girl watched it all from her bedroom window. She scowled. "Why does it have to be such a beautiful morning outside?" She grumbled as a small bird landed next to her on the window sill and chirped merrily. The girl turned her head sharply and gave the creature such a glare that it jumped backwards with thin legs off the sill and almost forgot how to fly. "Yeah, you better run!" The girl shouted after the bird. Why she was yelling at a poor, defenseless bird could be anybody's guess but the other feathered music-makers in the area quickly took flight. The girl huffed and slammed her window closed. She had almost forgotten the reason that she opened the window in the first place. Almost.
A cry from downstairs was quickly followed by the lights shutting off. Shouts erupted from under the girl's feet along the lines of "Idiot", "my coffee", and "blown fuse." Now she remembered.
The girl pulled on her backpack and opened the window once again. Slowly, she climbed backwards out the opening, her foot wiggling around, searching for the fire escape ladder. Once firmly footed, as well as one can be on an iron rod held up with a few choice bolts could be, the girl slid her window closed and proceeded down the ladder. She had to jump the last five feet to the ground and landed less than gracefully in the alleyway. The girl stood up quickly and shook her head to recover. She glanced at the watch on her wrist and frowned yet again. "Great, I broke it." She hurried off to the bus stop but to no avail. The bus was already in the stream of mild traffic and didn't look to be re-stopping to pick up this one passenger. Clenching a fist as well as her teeth the girl started running towards her school.
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She found the hallway empty and threw her hands in the air out of frustration. She had run the entire way to school and was still tardy. Too tired to stomp out her anger, the girl simply walked to her classroom and flung open the door. The teacher jumped slightly at the noise but quickly recovered and smiled.
"How good of you to join us, Helga," Mr. Simmons greeted the girl. "We were just about to give up hope on you." The girl rolled her eyes as the teacher continued. "Care to tell us why you were late?"
"Power went out and couldn't tell what time it was," She huffed the partial truth while making her way to the back row to sit in her usual seat. She stopped in the middle of the aisle and looked at the full row. Her eyes fell on Phoebe who simply shrugged apologetically. Groaning, Helga turned around and plopped into the only open seat – front row, in front of Arnold. She was worn out and was thankful for the rest.
"Um, Helga?" the boy behind to her began.
"What?" Helga spat coldly.
"You… you're still wearing your backpack." Arnold pointed out innocently. Helga leaned forward and threw the bag to the floor. She was wondering what that thing poking her in the back was.
"Alright class," Mr. Simmons said happily while clasping his hands together, "I hope you all remembered to finish your 'special' homework assignments. Please pass them to the front and I'll collect them." Students fumbled around in bags and folders and pulled out the bookwork. It had been a fairly large assignment and Mr. Simmons had given them three days to finish it.
Arnold took the papers from behind him and placed his own on the stack. He gave the pile a little tap to straighten it out and held it out for Helga to take. The student in front of him didn't notice and reached for the bag she had tossed not to long ago. "Helga." He said, waving the papers slightly.
"Hold your horses, football-head!" Helga retorted and pulled her backpack into her lap. She froze, remaining completely still for a moment before frantically rummaging a hand inside the open pack. "Criminy!" She growled and threw her bag again. She grabbed her head so fiercely that her nails dug into her scalp.
"Is something the matter, Helga?" Mr. Simmons asked. The class eyed the girl in front carefully. "Do you forget to bring your homework today?"
Helga snorted and released her head. "Something like that," She slumped back hard into her chair, nudging Arnold's desk slightly in the process.
"Oh, well, you can still turn it in for partial credit tomorrow," Mr. Simmons smiled sympathetically and took the pile of assignments. Class proceeded with its normal 'special' excitement, meaning, of course, that half the students weren't paying attention. Some had their books out, pretending to be following along and turning a page whenever the chorus of flipping was heard, but most just sat at their desks with boredom written clearly on their face. Soon, perhaps from the constant wishing of the students, the recess bell rang.
Phoebe had been asked to play four-square with Gerald and several other kids. She was hesitant at first, since the offer hadn't been extended to her friend sitting beside her, but Helga shook her head and nudged the Asian girl forward. "Go ahead, Pheebs," Helga said while waving her hand. "I don't feel like doing anything anyways." So, Phoebe left to go play with the other kids. At last alone, Helga lay back on the concrete steps and looked at the clear sky. Her eyes narrowed slowly into a scowl and she frowned. "Stupid…"she mumbled and closed her eyes, the scowl still in place.
Across the blacktop, Arnold had just gotten kicked out of the server square for hitting a line and made his way to the back of the line as everyone rotated positions. He looked over at the school and frowned slightly at Helga being all alone. He had heard what she said to Phoebe, engorging her to go off and play. He wondered if she really didn't want to play. The others were busy bouncing the ball back and forth again and didn't notice him jog over to the bully.
"Hey Helga," He greeted once he was close enough and was rewarded with a glare.
"What do you want, football-head?" She sighed, not bothering to sit up and returned her gaze to the happy weather.
"Well, I wanted to know if you wanted to play four-square with us..." Once again, a glare met his eyes and he shrunk back slightly.
Helga struggled to keep her glare, but it softened and she turned away. "No, that's alright Arnold," she sighed, a frown still on her face.
"Well, okay," Arnold replied as he headed back to the game, "if you're sure."
Normally, Helga would have gone into a poetic rant about her loving, caring, Arnold, but she didn't quite feel like it today. She turned her head and found Brainy looking at her next to the steps expectantly. "What?" Helga snapped bitterly. The boy let out a depressed, wheezing sigh and walked away – incomplete from the lack of poetry and back-handing.
The students filed back into class reluctantly and glanced at the assignment on the board. "Poetry? Again!" Rhonda scoffed. "Practically everyday the same thing; we write poems and Mr. Simmons only reads from 'Anonymous'." She plopped down in her seat quickly and gracefully as she continued her ranting. "I'm beginning to think that he is Anonymous and uses us as poem beta-readers or something." A few kids nodded in agreement – Mr. Simmons sure did love poetry.
Students slid out sheets of paper and waited for the suggested topic – funny how Anonymous never wrote the suggested topic. "Today, since it is so beautiful outside, I thought it would be special to write about nature." The students sighed and scratched their heads in thought. The teacher looked around the room with a smile but stopped on Helga.
The girl looked up and gave a half-hearted smirk. "I don't have any paper or junk like that with me so I guess I can't do the assignment, right?"
"Nonsense!" Mr. Simmons said cheerfully, too cheerfully, and handed the young blonde a sheet of lined paper and a pen. "You really should remember to bring all of your school supplies." Helga gave a small, irritated nod and rolled her eyes. A poem on nature?
Helga sighed and set her borrowed pen to paper. She wrote a line, then scribbled it out and tried again but that line proved to be unacceptable as well. By the fourth scribble on her paper, Helga was about to give up – she just couldn't write today. Her eyes skimmed the paper and she blinked. Several letters could be read clearly from the black cross-hatching. The girl shrugged and wrote out each letter in order; who knew; maybe it would provide some poetic inspiration. She looked at the odd word and mumbled it to herself, "Erisnuktor…" Her eyes glazed a little and her head drooped. Shaking her head slightly, inspiration hit Helga like a freight train as she scratched word after word onto the paper. She wasn't stopping to think about the next line, just wrote letter after letter like someone was dictating to her.
She finished and set the pen down just as Mr. Simmons called out,"Times up." Some kids groaned while others struggled to find a finishing rhyme. "Would anyone like to share theirs?" He looked around the room and smiled widely. "Go ahead, Helga."
Helga rolled her eyes, she never volunteered and she definitely didn't this time. She did a double take and starred at her arm in disbelief at its position in the air. She didn't remember doing that. Her blue eyes darted around the room at the expectant faces of her peers and teacher. She growled slightly and stood up. "This is called, 'Release'." She paused for a moment; she hadn't titled it yet…
"'Fear, Panic, break the bonds!
Come out again at last.
Bring the Night one-thousand strong;
Your goal again us vast.
Chaos sleeps, but not for long,
Ring Her waking bell.
Leave that place, you have been wronged,
And make this World a hell.'"
Helga blinked and looked closely at her paper. That was what it said alright, but it was so… not her! Even when she took that 'out-of-love' potion her poems weren't THIS weird. She looked up from her paper at the teacher and the other students. Helga scowled. "I hate nature and didn't feel much like stringing together some lame poem about the stupid façade the world puts up, okay?" She plopped down in her chair once again and studied her poem. Why were so many words capitalized?
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Dark clouds rolled over the sky and blocked out the sun. Helga smiled in triumph at the bleak display from the top of the steps – finally, the day matched her mood! She felt a wetness on her head, then another on her shoulder. More droplets tumbled downwards and stung her skin – it was raining now. "About time the world dropped that happy mask," she mumbled as she headed off for home.
Helga reached a corner and checked for traffic before stepping off the curb into the wet street. A horn blared repeatedly in her ears when she was only halfway across. The girl looked up with only enough time to dive out of the path of a spinning car which missed her but slammed heavily into a parked car. Helga scrambled to the sidewalk and looked around – that car had come out of nowhere! The driver shook his head and tried to open his door only to find it pinned against the non-occupied car so he climbed over and got out the passenger side. He seemed alright.
Helga let out a shaky breath as she continued down the sidewalk cautiously. She passed two more accidents and had been splashed by four cars by the time she reached her house. Having forgotten her house key, the blonde dragged a trash can to the base of the fire escape ladder and climbed on top of it. Her hands gripped the slippery metal rung and she hauled herself up for the next rung, then the next, then anything! Helga lost her grip and slid off the ladder, crashing into the trashcan and spilling garbage into the wet alley. The world spun around her as she lay in the trash and her focus slipped in and out.
Then she saw something very odd that she could not recognize. It was a person – kind of – with swirling black flesh with streaks of white and blue. Its hands were long and its head pointed back like a fin. The knees went backwards, giving it an evil chicken look. The figure perked up its head and looked down at Helga with piercing, white, glowing eyes. Helga jerked upright and everything cleared. The figure was gone. She looked around desperately but couldn't find anyone, or anything, that resembled what she saw.
She shook her head and dismissed it – she had hit her head after all, why wouldn't she be seeing things? Helga scrapped most of the garbage back into the can and slammed the lid on. She was still mad about that morning. It occurred to her then that both of her parents' cars were gone so she would be home alone. "Good," she sneered and kicked something. Her eyes widened in recognition as the soaked object slammed into the brick wall. "So that's where my homework went…" Helga grabbed what she could find of her school supplies and walked in the unlocked front door. "Probably Miriam that left last," she reasoned as she headed to the bathroom to blow-dry her text books.
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A/N: I wanted to keep going, but this is getting kind of long. Chapter 2 is coming soon though – I work on my fanfics during lunch break at work (wink). Chapter 2 will get into the Magical Girl aspect, trust me, it will be fun.