A/N: Before anything, I wanna make this clear. Not a fan of this show when it was new. I didn't get it. The only episode I watched as a kid was on a morning during the spring break when I was seven and there was nothing else on. The episode was "Monkey Business" and I was like "Whoa. Morbid." But I've recently watched the show and a character in my head started yelling "Let me talk to Hells!" So Helga "Hells" Pataki, watch out, there's a new badass coming!

This is probably the first OC fanfiction of this style written in this archive, so please, do try it. I'm aware there's a lot of background to start with, but it'll get better, although some chapters be shorter. And now for one last thing before you start reading:

Nicole: SideshowJazz1 does not own Hey Arnold, or anything else you recognize. She, does own me, so try to get her to make me prettier! I don't want to be a Mary-Sue, but at least they get to look good!

Well, hi there. I suppose you want to hear my story, huh? Well, of course, you clicked on this, so of course you would want to know my story. Unless your crazy best friend forced you into it, or something. At least my crazy best friend never does that.

OK, let me start by saying that I am not a cartoon geek, or a cartoon junkie. I used to watch the Nickelodeon channelas a little kid, OK? Honestly, which kid didn't? I grew up on stuff like Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats, that kind of thing. Of course, when I was at primary school, Cartoon Network started up and I watched a few Hanna- Barbera shows, and those Cartoon Cartoons, but those shows were a bit tame, really. The Saturday morning cartoons of my life were boring too, although if nothing else was on, I'd watch Recess.

But that was in the past. I stopped watching those cartoons by the time I was ten. I continued to watch a bit of Nickelodeon until I was about twelve. I stopped watching most of those regularly after that, and turned to local soaps, my favourite kind of TV. But if I was feeling down or school was giving me trouble, I'd go into my stash of recorded shows and find the one show that I still liked off the channel. That show was Craig Barrett's Hey Arnold, the show about that kid who lives with his grandparents and is just so good and moral all the time.

DON'T YOU DARE PRESS THE BACK KEY! I know it sounds boring to start off, but I should explain. Damn, I'm getting it mixed up, aren't I? OK, I'll talk about the show in a minute. Let me start by saying "Hi, I'm Nicole. Nicole Kidston. Nicole Emma Kidston. And yes, I do know that it sounds like Nicole Kidman, so don't bother pointing it out." I can't act to save my life. Well, that's not true. I can act to save my life and save a lie, but you'd be more likely to win a dance competition with a bear cub than get me on a stage.

I'm sixteen years old, and I have mouse hair which is straight. It's limp, and it gets greasy easily. My eyes are brown, nearly grey. I'm way too tall and thin – honestly, I have hardly any figure – and I mostly wear bright halter tops and light blue jeans. Don't try getting me in a skirt, but dresses are OK. I mostly wear my hair loose, but I occasionally wear it in a low ponytail. I have a couple of really good friends, Maria and Sophie.

It just struck me that I should have been saying that "I was", or that "I had". This used to be my life. I'll be sure to tell you when I get to the bit where I'm sitting here, typing up this story. Anyway, Hey Arnold! As I said, the titular character is perfect. Everyone likes him, he always tries to do the right thing, and even the queen bee thinks he's cool enough to hang around with. All the main kids are in fourth grade, and each episode usually centres around one of them. In quite a few, it's Arnold who tells them how to solve their problem or get them to own up to some moral problem – like Phoebe pretending to be injured for longer than usual so her best friend will continue to wait on her hand and foot, or imitations of other students offending said students, stuff like that. It was the only show I still watched when I was a teenager.

Yeah, I'm not a teenager any more. I'm not twenty or older. I'll explain later.

Anyway, what I always liked about this show were the characters. Some better than others. I didn't mind Arnold, although he was a bit boring. Most of the boys were just OK. I liked Gerald and them, but the only one I got any laughs from (or had any interest in) was Curly, and he didn't count. It was the girls that took my attention I did grind my teeth a bit with Rhonda, the fashion queen who thought she was better than everyone else, and Lila, Miss Perfect, to use a description from the show. When she was the new girl, she was the new fashion queen and the brainiac. Speaking of the brainiac, that was Phoebe, a shy Japanese-American girl and one of the characters I really liked. But I did have the problem that she let her best friend walk all over her – the aforementioned prolonged injury was because Phoebe felt like a slave.

Which brings me to Helga Pataki, who is Phoebe's best friend, and possibly the most well-done character in the show. She's definitely really weird, though. In public, she's always yelling or shoving people out of her way. At home, she barely gets noticed by her parents. I swear, her mom's an alcoholic and her dad mostly calls her by her older sister's name – Olga, who is usually away at university. But when Olga's home, she gets all the attention. Once, she even signed up for a programme to be a sister to an only child – Lila – instead of being a sister to her real "baby sister". But like I said, Helga is weird. It's not the fact that she's yelling at people, shoving them, calling them names and all that. The weird thing is...she's stalking Arnold all the time. She has an obsessive, strange, creepy crush on him. In at least half the episodes, she sees him, and she usually takes out her locket with a picture of him and monologues. Sometimes she's saying mean things out of Arnold's earshot, then she takes out the locket and says "And yet...I love him."

Hang on, I haven't gotten to the strange part yet. HEY, STOP TRYING TO GO BACK! I'M NOT DONE YET!

OK, firstly, Helga is never nice to Arnold. She's always yelling at him more than anyone else, picking on him, calling him names – mostly "Football Head" on account of his face shape – and all that.

And no, that's not the strange part either. So half the time, Helga's stalking Arnold and monologuing about how much she loves him, and the other half, she's calling him names and being mean. The thing is, she has a shrine in her wardrobe of Arnold. It varies from episode to episode, but once it was a sculpture of Arnold made out of his used gum. She also writes poetry about Arnold, which isn't too bad. There was that one which started "Arnold, my love, my sultry pre-teen, why must I hold you only whilst I dream?" There were bad ones, like the one that began "Arnold, you idiot". But I still like her. She's my favourite character, and she almost feels real, like a friend or something. My head recently convinced me to nickname her "Hells", since her name is really awful, and even she would admit that she's a HELL of a crazy girl. Eliminate the crazy, and her nickname is the crown to her tough-girl bossy I'm-better-than-everyone-else-and-I-hate-you-all image she tries so hard to keep. Sometimes I wonder why she thinks she needs to. Some people hate her, and others fear her. She'd get further if she was always like Lila.

OK, background over. You can sigh in relief...now. Let's get to the real story.

So it was early May, around the time of exams. I was at home, studying. Well, I was actually pretending to study. Mom and Dad never bothered to check if I was studying, so as long as I didn't make any noise, they wouldn't bother with me. The studying was really getting to me, and my antidote to feeling down was, as always, the only cartoon I still watched. So I stuck some headphones on and clicked into YouTube.

I started off just watching "Beaned", an episode when Helga gets hit on the head and has amnesia. Once she recovers the next morning, she finds out that Arnold, feeling responsible for the ball hitting her, walked her home and got her up to her room to rest, then waited in her house to tell her parents when they got home. So she pretends to have amnesia for the whole day just so Arnold will continue to do stuff for her.

After that, I watched a few music videos, both AMVs (animated music videos) and official ones. My favourite singer is Katy Perry, although (and if you ever meet my friends, DON'T repeat this) I still listen to Avril Lavigne, Taylor Swift, ABBA, the Beatles, and even Britney Spears!

Then I got to the Thanksgiving episode. At that point, I remembered that I was meant to study, and that was when it happened, as the opening theme played.

I should explain that my laptop is second hand, so when the screen broke into pixels, I wasn't too surprised. What did shock me was when I touched the screen, my fingertips blurred into pixels as well. I would've gone to get Mom, since she's a senior Tech Angel and could fix things within literal seconds, but the rest of me became pixelated as well. For the first time in my life, I was truly scared. The theme continued to play, and the room spun as Helga's exclamation of "Move it, Football Head!" rang in my ears.

The last thing I heard before a fade to black was a chant of "Hey, Arnold!"

So there you have it! And no, guys, Nicole's staying a tall skinny mouse-haired girl. But do please review, I don't want to screw up!