Welcome to my first-ever Hey Arnold! fanfic. Hope you may enjoy it. And I am open to suggestions from you.
Lightning strikes and thunder clashes, signaling for a rainstorm to pour down on Hillwood. While that may incur instant class suspensions, as the storm was forecasted to be a Category 1 hurricane, P.S. 118 is not safe from the storm's wrath. Or at least, Arnold's class.
Speaking of which, when the rest of the classes were dismissed, Arnold's class still remains in their classroom. Everyone is anxiously waiting for Mr. Simmons to arrive to dismiss them. Each has his or her own gimmick while waiting: Arnold is staring at the blackboard scribbles, Gerald is rolling his pencil back and forth, Helga is conversing with Phoebe, Harold is struggling to wait while clenching his fists, Stinky is flipping through a picture book, Sid is rocking his chair while he relaxes his legs to his desk, Rhonda tries to tolerate the annoying noises while her face is buried to the desk, Eugene is humming "Singin' in the Rain", Nadine is staring in the rain and Curly is scribbling.
Leaks start to drop from the ceiling, reminding them of a time that they got stranded in school while it flooded outside. Though, Arnold is confident that history will not repeat itself, and it will not flood.
However, that does not stop the impatience of the students.
"Will you stop that?!" Rhonda scolds Eugene from his happy humming.
"What? I'm just trying to pass time," Eugene says.
"So do we!" Harold shouts, prompting the class to burst into chaos of arguments. As the class president, Gerald tries to calm everyone down, but he gets into an instant argument with Helga Pataki. Arnold tries to fend off the situation, to no avail as well.
Suddenly, someone is knocking on the door, to which Arnold instantly answers. He opens to see Principal Wartz on the other side.
"Principal?" he utters.
"Arnold, what's the ruckus in there?" the principal asks.
Before he could answer, Arnold dodges an incoming crumpled paper, which was thrown to his position. "Homeroom chaos…while waiting for Mr. Simmons."
"Simmons hasn't dismissed you?" Wartz replies, "My goodness, he was probably finishing your grades…at this moment in time, when it storming outside."
"So does this mean we're dismissed?"
"Nonsense. You need the formal permission from your homeroom teacher. Call him at once. And please tell your classmates to calm down. And…get home safe." With that, Wartz rushes away from the school and hurries to catch a cab all the way home.
Taking initiative, Arnold steps on the desk and signals a cowbell for everyone to calm down and pay attention. "Guys! Guys! I know you want to get out of here. I do too. But we must call Mr. Simmons have us be dismissed."
"Arnold's right! We better drag Simmons here, or we're doomed!" Harold halfheartedly encourages his classmates, prompting them to cheer for him.
"Yeah, and exactly where exactly can we find Mr. Simmons?" Gerald asks, which Harold gets taken abak, and his motivation dies instantly, along his classmates'.
"He told us 'he would be handling paper work in a jiffy'," Phoebe implies.
"Right, and how long was that 'jiffy' gonna be?!" Helga berates her.
"Alright we get it!" Arnold responds, "Look, if we need to get home at once, we need to find Simmons right now. And now."
"Was it even necessary, football head, for us to call him, just for us to get outta here?!" Helga berates Arnold. "We can just skedaddle our way outta here, because of the storm!"
Just as Helga shouts, one lightning strikes, making thunder clasp in another second.
Though Helga makes a point of exiting the school premises as necessary as now, given the circumstance, Gerald realizes the point of authority from the homeroom teacher. With that, he convinces the class, "Okay guys, Mr. Simmons is part of this family. We need him to get us home now."
"Yeah, but how we gonna find him?" Sid asks.
Another lightning and thunder strike, causing for the electricity to blackout in the school. The classroom lights blink and turn off for a while, until they light back again.
"We need to find him," Gerald convinces the others, to which they agree. But as the former opens the door, the whole class sees the hallways covered in darkness. At that revelation, they retreat back. "Okay, who wants to volunteer?"
Then, each of them rejects Gerald's proposition.
Arnold, on the other, grabs a fishbowl filled with marbles and suggests, "Okay, let's be fair and let's draw lots. The one who gets red marble must find Mr. Simmons. Are we good?"
"This is inconceivable. Why should we strive to this very effort?" Rhonda objects.
"Rhonda, he's your teacher," Arnold stresses.
Offered with no choice, Rhonda reluctantly picks a marble. And the rest follows without revealing what color they picked.
"Ready?" Arnold asks. "Alright, let's see what we have."
And as the entire class opens their hands, it is revealed that Eugene picked the red marble.
Though hesitant, Eugene is willing to search for their homeroom teacher. "Okay, I guess it's me who takes the bait. I'll go."
Feeling sorry for his recurring injuries, Arnold takes a dive for his friend. "No Eugene, I'll do it for you."
"Oh just let him go, football head!" Helga objects.
"Oh, so you're taking authority now?" Arnold argues to her.
Then the class resumes their argument. It continues to escalate until it goes out of control.
However, seeing the scale of their wedges to each other, Gerald steps up and proclaims, "Okay guys! We're going nowhere when we argue like animals. I'll look for Simmons."
"Gerald, maybe we can all discuss this causally," Arnold insists.
"What other choice have we, Arnold?" Gerald asks him.
"None," Rhonda utters for him.
"Well, here goes nothing." As Gerald opens the door, he is instantly greeted by the dark hallways that they knew how it would turn out but never expect real terror. He then mutters to Arnold, "Hey Arnold, remember that time when we went down the sewers to retrieve your grandpa's gold watch?"
"Yeah?" he responds.
"Well, got the same feeling," Gerald expresses his fright.
"It's just the school hallway."
"You're right. Just the school hallway." With a deep breath and a gulp on his throat, Gerald proceeds to find for their teacher. He tells his classmates, "Just right in there, guys! I'll find for Mr. Simmons as soon as I can."
"Good luck!" Phoebe wishes him, to Gerald's delight.
After the class president has left the classroom, the chaos dies down in the classroom.
"What do we oughta do now?" Stinky asks.
Eugene humbly suggests, "Well, as what my old preschool teacher told me, she said that we should take time to sing along in a time of trouble…"
But Helga threatens him, "Sing one more time, and I swear you'll be in big trouble!" In response, Eugene cowers in fear and agrees to her terms.
"Well, any of us have any ideas?" Sid pronounces.
Just after that, he hears a screeching noise coming from the windows. Sid looks behind to see Curly trying to pierce through the classroom window with his pencil.
"Curly, what are you doing?" Arnold asks.
"Making a hole to get us out," he answers, "Do you know that in espionage movies, spies do this to infiltrate villain secret lairs?"
"Are you even a spy?" Rhonda confronts him. But as Curly is about to answer, she shuts him. "Not that spy. Gross. You're humiliating yourself."
To add to the insult, another lightning strikes, scaring Curly.
"Okay, we're all desperate. But let's just wait for Gerald, or let the storm pass. Then we'll be fine," Arnold guarantees, added with a shrug on his shoulder.
"Are you sure, Arnold?" Harold whimpers.
"I…I don't know. But I know we are safe here," Arnold assures.
Unluckily, the storm intensifies and water begins to leak to Arnold's head. He, along with rest of the class, looks above for the whereabouts of the leak. Though it is little in amount, the class can hear tremors coming from the ceiling. They get louder and louder and louder…until a gush of water bursts out from the ceiling tiles and splashes to Arnold. With the help from the class, Arnold tries to place the tile back, to no avail.
"I thought our classroom is flood-proof," Nadine implies.
Phoebe concludes, "Me too. But I might deduce that the rapid escalation of rainwater levels might have caused substantial overflow in our school's drainage system that…"
"That what, Phoebe?" Arnold continues.
"…we might be facing another situation of déjà vu," she finishes.
However, Phoebe's complex deduction puzzles the rest.
"I barely understand what you said," Sid comments.
"We are about to get flooded again!" Phoebe reiterates, stirring another panic in the class.
But Arnold takes control of the situation as he stands atop of the teacher's table. "Guys! We're not doing anything when we panic. We need to evacuate somewhere else in the school. Fast!"
"How about in the student lounge?" Rhonda suggests.
"We have a student lounge?" Sid questions her.
"Just follow me!" And with that, as the flood gets heavier in the classroom, the group rushes out of it and follows Rhonda to the so-called "student lounge" on the upper floors.