Reviewer Response:

The JAM aka Numbuh i: Y'know… not quite what I had in mind… but I love it and now it is what I have in mind… maybe without the beard though.

Kryten: I mean… Papa might have more kids that no one talks about… and I think Ollie got married and had kids too… he just realized some things about himself after the fact.

Anonymous Latino: Yep… even when Bob gets it right, he still doesn't quite get it right…

No, Ollie was carrying Papa out of the woods. I think I wasn't quite clear on that… darn it.

starwater09: Yep, he's kind of a douche like that.

EncytheSkunk: Huh… I watched that show but I don't remember that episode. That would be the good way of pitting your kids against one another… Papa didn't go that route.

Y'know… I intended to have one of those 'it wasn't real but maybe it was' HA! endings, but I think I wrote myself into a corner with that… I'll do a deconstruction of it instead…

Note: I guess I wasn't quite clear in the last chapter because I got the same comment a lot from people thinking they had left Papa behind… they did not, Ollie threw him over his shoulder… but then I guess I didn't say he carried him out with them. He did. Sorry for the confusion.

Remember how I sort of personified Big Bob's Beepers into the son Bob never had? Well imagine if his 'son' had a little… 'coming out' party so to speak…

Chapter 14: BBB

It had been a long uninteresting journey out of the woods, back to the hummer and an even longer and less interesting drive back to Hillwood for the Patakis. It had been so thoroughly long and uninteresting that any writer with any sense wouldn't bother covering what had happened. Helga decided this was for the best.

Now she just sat glaring straight ahead into space, not wishing to journal about her experience, write her manifesto, talk to anyone, or do anything. She had only one goal in mind and she didn't care to share it with anyone in the car.

Bob and Ollie had been gabbing on the whole car ride home, reminiscing and catching up with one another with Papa still sound asleep in the back. Apparently sleeping disorders ran in the family too, Helga had to note, and she hoped in the future any of that nonsense would have to still be junk food induced for her.

As the hummer approached the family home and beeper emporium, Bob took a heavy inhale, and then breathed out in relief.

"Well, it was a long, crazy and mostly pointless journey, but I think we all really discovered ourselves and it sure feels to be- WHAT IN THE HECK IS THAT!?"

Bob slammed his foot down on the brake and brought the car to a screeching halt. The sudden stop sent Helga's head slamming into the seat in front of her, and then ricocheting back against her headrest.

"Ow!" she grunted.

This all finally roused Papa from his slumber and he awoke with a start.

"… elders!" he shouted, finally finishing the sentence he'd started several hours ago, before passing out in exhaustion.

"Jeez, Bobby…" Ollie groaned, "What's what?"

"My store!" Bob bellowed, "It's…"

Ollie, Helga and Papa turned their heads and beheld the gigantic throng gathered outside of the emporium. Had he been living in a cartoon, Bob's jaw might have dropped to the floor, hit the accelerator and sent the Hummer plowing into the crowds of people outside of his store, but fortunately he lived in real life so no such thing happened. After the 'Beeper Princess' ad campaign launched a few weeks earlier, the Patakis had seen an initial surge in business at their grand reopening, but the crowds had dwindled since then. This crowd dwarfed even that first big crowd and it looked as if half the city was gathered outside of the emporium now.
"Busy…" Bob uttered in dull surprise, "Seriously, don't these losers have anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon?"

After honking their way through the crowds Bob pulled into a parking space that had been marked with a decorative sign in red with gold letters reading 'Royal Family Parking Only."

"Oo, Bobby… Papa wasn't kidding." Ollie said, "Got yourself a space fit for a king and everything."

"That's new on me…" Bob remarked somewhat drolly.

As the four of them got out of the car, Bob looked up and saw that the words 'Big Bob's Beepers' had been replaced with a neon purple light reading 'BBB' and without his knowledge or consent. Knee-jerk anger to change or anything unexpected had been Bob's modus operandi for most of his life, but the events of this weekend or possibly had either left him a changed man or he felt too overwhelmed by the bustling beeper store to muster enough energy to get angry.

After the four of them exited the vehicle and fought their way through the crowds, they made it inside the back entrance. Bob rushed to the showroom to find Miriam frantically but adeptly running the register and dealing with patrons.

"Miriam?" Bob asked, "What the Hell Michigan happened here?"

"Hi B," Miriam said without turning to face him, "Good trip? Find Bigfoot?"

"Uh…" Bob stammered, "Not exactly… we found an even bigger myth, my big brother Ollie."

Ollie twinkled his fingers in Miriam's direction and smiled broadly, as Papa just glanced around rapidly, looking as if he could have a heart attack at any moment.

"Uh huh, great honey." Miriam said, barely acknowledging them, caught up in what she was doing, "We can talk about your trip later, we're a little busy right now."

"I can see that, I have eyes…" Bob grumbled, "But wait… what's with the new sign? And what did you do to get all this-"

"Aw, B, we can talk about all that later, right now we've got customers to deal with and that's my number one priority over-"

Helga suddenly tugged on her mother's arm and brought her down to ear level with her. She then whispered something into Miriam's ear, causing the woman's eyes to go wide.

"Oh… oh!" Miriam nodded her head in understanding, "Oh my gosh… wow… um, B? Here, take over for me…"

"What?" Bob scratched his head, "You just said the customers were your number one priority…"

"Uh huh, but it's still your business… technically." Miriam snickered awkwardly, "So now they're your number one priority. Right now Helga needs a little help with, uh…"

"What? I can handle the girl, Miriam." Bob stated, "You were right. The trip brought us closer together, and I can-"

"B? You're gonna have to trust me on this one… you don't wanna be this close with her." Miriam insisted, as she led Helga away towards the employees only door, "I'll take care of this… you take over here and help Suzie ring these people up."

"What?" Bob scratched his head, "What's going on with-"

"Excuse me," Suzie Kokoshka gently pushed past Bob and took over one of the other registers, speaking to one of the customers she asked, "Here, was this the one you wanted?"

She held up a new phone case which caught Bob's eye. It stood out from any of the other phone cases he'd had in stock before the weekend, this one appeared to be custom designed, covered in a distinctive floral pattern. As he looked around he started to notice that some artistic license had been taken with all of the phone cases in sight, ranging in artistic styles. And that was to say nothing about the store's new decor, which Bob was just now beginning to take in. The placed had definitely been revamped, to put it mildly.

"Gosh, Baby Brother…" Ollie marveled, "I mean… I love it, don't get me wrong I just figured you'd have decorated this place to look a little more… rugged? Robust? I didn't think we had this much in common… seriously, it looks like Barbie threw up all over the place…"

From every advertisement and slogan spelled out in bright neon lights around them, to the fresh coat of bright pink paint all around, Bob barely recognized his own store. He'd always thought of Big Bob's Beepers, now apparently rebranded as 'BBB' as the son he'd never had, and now it had entered into a new phase of its life. One that risked facing its father's disapproval… and Bob therefore felt sympathy with it.

"This is… this is insane…" Bob uttered, not angrily but completely aghast. He surveyed the room, it wasn't just the hipster crowd trying to obtain beepers anymore, but just about every demographic the already diverse city had to offer.

"How did word get around so fast about this?" he asked in bewilderment.

"I can spread gossip like a wildfire in July. Same goes for advertising now." a younger voice appeared. Bob turned and saw a tall girl with a black bob haircut standing behind the register. She was rapidly typing on two different phones in either hand, and Bob recognized her as one of Helga's schoolmates.

"This is working out simply splendiferously." Rhonda sighed, sounding , "That stupid commercial we filmed is so bad it's blowing up the internet… now everyone wants to check this place out, out of morbid curiously if nothing else."

"She hired you, too?" Bob asked. "Yeesh… I'm gonna have to actually start paying that Arnold kid for his ideas pretty soon…"
"Please." Rhonda dismissed him with a wave of her hand, "I'm too rich to work for money, I just do it as a hobby. And all this? That was your wife's idea, not Arnold's. I just boost this place's reach, and get a nice big increase in followers for myself, while garnering a reputation for renovating old artifacts like this store. Voila! Mrs. Pataki unleashes her creative side on the store, and I unleash it on the world."

In spite of the backhanded compliments… or just flat-out insults from Rhonda, Bob felt a strange feeling of euphoria started to creep in. Suddenly he shut that feeling down and he shook his head

"This is… this is all wrong… it's… I mean, it's selling, clearly… but what about… this store is mine! It's my whole identity! It's…"

"Gosh, Baby Brother, I didn't expect your place to be so hip… so current… so…"

Bob looked at his brother who was smiling knowingly, which was impressive given that they'd been estranged for twenty some years before today.

"I dunno…" Bob sighed, "It just seems like a little too much…"

"Aw, Bobby." Ollie said with a smile, "We can live in the past, and keep chasing Bigfoots and all… or we can live for now. The future's a lot easier to handle if you just live in the present."

Bob looked at his father, who still looked disapproving as ever, and suddenly Bob felt himself instantly embrace this new direction Miriam had steered their proverbial ship in… mostly because his father didn't like it, which might have not been quite the right reason to embrace it, but still.

"I…" Bob took one last gulp of what remained of his pride and then said with great relief, "I love it…"

"Bah…" Papa waved his hand dismissively and then disappeared into the backroom, likely going to pack his things.

Bob glanced around at the new bedazzled Big Bob's Beepers (now THERE was a name that might've potential…) and shrugged. It might not have been his style, but clearly it was selling. At the end of the day that was what mattered most to any consummate businessman.

The next morning, before opening time and before Helga had to get to school, the Pataki family all gathered at the curb where Bob was loading his father's bags into a cab. Only Ollie was absent, insisting on needing another hour of 'beauty sleep' before he was good for anything. Miriam was still going over the figures from the weekend's sale and looking more than pleased with the results.

"If things keep going like this we should be able to buy our house back before long." Miriam said. "You three should get away for the weekend together more often."

"No!" Bob, Helga and Papa all bellowed together.

"All right, all right… just a thought…" Miriam sighed.

"Well, thanks for the visit Pop, but I guess all good things have to end, right?" Bob said, his tone dripping with irony.

Papa Pataki just huffed in disagreement.

"I just don't understand what I did so wrong with you and your brother," he sighed, "Not sticking to your ways and letting all this change happen is just not how Patakis do things."

"I'm a Pataki," Miriam cut in, "And since I'm stuck with that, I'm making the best of it."

Bob shrugged in slight embarrassment.

"There, see?" Bob muttered, "We can all adapt with he times."

"I still say that makes you a very small man indeed." Papa chided.

"Aw, nothing about this man is small…" Miriam said with a twinkle in her eye as she wrapped an arm around him, "Well… mostly…" she put in.

Bob grinned sheepishly as Helga just looked at the two of them in slight confusion.

"I'm going back to basics and reinventing myself one day at a time." Bob declared, "And you? You're going back to Hell… Michigan."

Papa shook his head disapprovingly one last time and sighed.

"Oh and, Pop?" Bob added, "I LOVE you."

"Ugh, no affection! We've discussed this!" Papa recoiled, and then without another word he boarded the taxi. Bob, Miriam and Helga waved him off but he didn't even deign them with a smile. As the taxi screeched away into the busy morning city street, Papa, the self proclaimed 'Big Pataki' disappeared from their lives.

"Well that nipped my curiosity about any more extended family members right in the bud." Helga muttered.

"Ah, they're not all bad… I mean just look at your uncle." Bob said, "Kind of a tea cozy, but still… somehow he's the manliest man I'll ever know."

"I better go set up before we open." Miriam said.

She kissed Bob on the cheek and then headed inside, leaving him alone with his daughter. She had her backpack on and looked eager to get to school.

"Helga?" Bob asked.

"Dad?" Helga responded.

"Sorry, sorry, I meant Olga." Bob erroneously corrected himself, "Listen, I uh… I wanted to talk with you but you spent all night in the bathroom and all, so I just wanted to say that I-"

"Are gonna talk about this?" Helga asked.

"Talk about what?" Bob asked back.

"That I'm the Big Pataki now?" she said, "Or did you forget that you more or less made me the new family patriarch."

"Huh? That ? Well, it was… more of a symbolic gesture really…" Bob said, squirming slightly.

"Uh huh, sure. Got it. So I'm in charge now." Helga grinned deviously.

"Well hold on here, that title's just a symbol of the past that we're trying to-"

"Yep, I'm in charge now. I call the shots." Helga continued, sounding more and more megalomaniacal by the second, "I drew up the first draft of my manifesto last night and-"

"Listen girl! I'm trying to have a touching father daughter moment with you! Criminey!" Bob shouted.

Bob realized as well as Helga did that he was doing a grade F job of that as usual, but Helga seemed to appreciate the effort just enough to stop sassing him for a minute.

"Listen, I just… I don't wanna screw this up any more than I already did and try not to raise you like Papa raised me." Bob said, "You're still a kid and you're growing up more and more every day and…"
"Oh, you have no idea…" Helga muttered.

"… and some day when you're old and gray I want you to be able to look back on the good times with your old man…" Bob said sentimentally, "Or at least all the good times we could still have."

Helga sighed, and then she awkwardly nodded. He really couldn't have picked a worse time in her life, the age when all children come to see their parents as evil incarnate for a few years, but Helga had suffered enough neglect not to be able to appreciate what her father was saying.

"Dad…" she sighed, "I… I hate you."

Bob's eyes went wide and he came over looking very hurt for a split second.

"I hate you… but I also love you. A lot." she said, "And if I've learned anything from dating Arnold it's… well, maybe those two emotions aren't so mutually exclusive… in fact I'd say a lot of the time they're almost the same thing…"

"You're confusing me again, girl…" Bob said, trying to piece her logic together.

"I know." she sighed, and then against her better judgement she hugged her father.

Bob was still a little fuzzy on her whole hate/love distinction but he hugged her back and smiled.

"Listen, little missy. I know Olga set a pretty high bar and I wanted you to rise up to that but… well, maybe we can just start over and I can get to really know you."

Helga couldn't hold back her tiny little smile that reflexively formed on her face, but then she resumed scowling.
"Whatever floats your boat… dad…"

"Hey! Great Idea! Next weekend I'll take you fishing!" Bob said, "You and me can build ourselves a canoe from scratch and we'll spend the whole weekend togeth-"

"No…" Helga shook her head.

"Alright, alright…" Bob agreed that was too much, "But still, you and me? Now that your mom is running the store, you and me have all the time in the world to catch up on the last twelve years I missed out- hey! Twelve! I even remembered how old you are this time! This self-reinvention is going great!"

Bob never could stop refrain from congratulating himself on everything, even in his newfound 'humbled' state, and he couldn't have picked a worse time to choose to become an active part of his daughter's life.

"Dad?" Helga said carefully, "I don't want you to think I don't appreciate the attention, but I'm kinda-"

"I know, I know, you've wanted me to be more involved with you you're whole life and it's overwhelming!" Bob said in pure joy.
"That's not what I-"

"You and me can spend every waking moment together… outside of school and all."
"Bob?"

"I mean, don't you wanna at least reminisce about this weekend and-"
"No." Helga said sharply.

"Wonder if you know, 'Hey… maybe Bigfoot was real all along, maybe not… '" Bob continued.

"No." Helga said again.

"Hey, Helga!" came the voice of Arnold from up the street.

"Hey, Arnold!" Bob shouted in a friendly voice, which unnerved both Arnold and Helga. "There's my little guy!"

"Um… hi Mr. Pataki-" Arnold said cautiously.

"Ah come on, come on, we're all on a first name basis here." Bob said, "Call me Bob. She does."

"I uh…" Arnold reacted in genuine bafflement.

"Arnold?" Helga almost swooned but then resumed scowling, "Um… about time, football head! Sheesh! We're gonna be late for school, c'mon! Let's go already!"

"All right, all right, we can bond more later." Bob said, "You two go to school. Learn all you can. And then when you get back we're gonna spend every waking moment together until I make you the happiest daughter any father ever had!"

Helga grabbed Arnold by the hand and dragged him along forcefully. Once they had vanished from Big Bob's sight, Arnold broke the somewhat awkward silence.

"So… did you find Sasquatch?" Arnold asked eagerly.

"Yep." Helga said, "We just inexplicably forgot how to work a camera just like everyone else who finds him. He's definitely out there."

Arnold knew her well enough to see through the sarcasm, but he continued on in his curiosity.
"Wow… well, whatever happened out there must have been incredible." Arnold said, "You're dad seems like-"

"Arnold?" Helga interrupted, "You love me, yes?"

"Um, yeah." Arnold said, with an eager puppy dog expression rising on his face.

"And you'd do anything to make me happy, right?" she asked.

"Well, sure." he said, "I mean… within reason-"

"Good." Helga cut him off and sighed heavily, "Because I went through some real life-changing stuff this weekend… some stuff that put everything in perspective and is making me rethink everything I… oh heck. Arnold?" Helga sighed sadly, "I'm going to start punching you now… and… well… I may never stop…"

Arnold just looked at her in confusion, unable to tell if she was serious or not. Helga raised her fist in the air and closed her eyes, imagining in her mind if she existed on a TV series that the credits would now roll.

THE END

Deleted scene:

As Papa is leaving, Harvey the mailman comes by and Bob pulls him into a half hug and yells, "Oh, hey? Pop? This is Harvey! He's my BLACK friend!" Papa then basically has a heart attack as the cab is leaving. I decided that was a little too much

All the supernatural HA! episodes end with a rational explanation followed by a… or was it? moment. I couldn't quite make that work here because I really wanted it to end with Helga saying her last line, so imagine a post credits scene I guess…

Lame Epilogue:

Meanwhile, somewhere in the North American woods, Chadwick and Mark at last stumbled onto a familiar face.

"My friends…" Zeus the zookeeper said.

"Dad…" Chadwick asked.

"My boy, I think you are at last in touch enough with mother nature to again be worthy of the title: Assistant Zookeeper Trainee."

"Um… great…" Chadwick sighed.
"What about me?" Mark asked, "My show just got canceled… can I be a trainee, too?"

"Sure, why not?" Zeus said.

"What!?" Chadwick wailed, "How come he didn't have to go through all this crap you put me-"

"My boy, this mound of dough with hair does not contain my glorious blood flowing through him, as you do." Zeus said to his boy, "He does not have to overcome nepotism, and so yes, he is now your assistant assistant trainee."

"Great." Mark sighed with relief, "I'm just glad to have a real job for a change…"

"Yes…" Zeus sighed, "Perhaps we will never know if nature has indeed hidden her great hairy secret out in these untamed woods… we mere humans must be content to care for the ones she chooses to show us…"

"Huh?" Mark asked.
"He talks like that…" Chadwick murmured. "And I do too, now and then…"

"So… do you guys think Bigfoot is real?" Mark asked.

"What? No." Zeus shook his head, "This? This is all some sort of metaphysical metaphorical bonding with mother nature exercise. Seriously. Even I don't think Bigfoot is real…" He huffed in a strangely serious tone for him. "There are more people out here dressing up like Bigfoot than there are actual Bigfoots… now, how do we get out of these glorious woods?"

"You don't know either!?" Chadwick gasped.

"Me? I'm a city guy, what would I-" Zeus stopped as a large, hairy arm reached out from behind a tree and pointed eastward.

"Ah, thank you, person clearly dressed up as Bigfoot and not Bigfoot." Zeus said. "Come! Let us escape to the city!"

PHEW. This all started with the simple lame idea of Helga and Big Bob go on a Bigfoot hunt (Yes. That came first) and spiraled into one of the more complex, deconstructive stories I've attempted so far. I hope it worked. Let me know what you think and thank you for reading to the end!

Next: A request from HA!Fanforever called 'Wedding or Not.' A story in which Miles and Stella have to deal with the damage that their jungle adventure did to them, and the effect it's having on Arnold and might have to renew their wedding vows. Also Helga and Arnold are struggling with their relationship and... ah, heck, it'll be better than this description.