Disclaimer
(Just so I won't get sued…)
All related characters and settings found below are strictly based on the TV series Hey Arnold! created by Craig Bartlett as seen on Nickelodeon. In addition, no copyright infringement of Tarzan created by Edgar Rice Burroughs as seen on The Disney Channel is intended by the references below.

4: The Arnold Rescue Teams

The eccentric Gertrude raised her fly swatter and took aim. "So… poachers took poor Kimba and locked him in a cage, did they?"

She knocked the swatter onto the fly that crawled all over the frame of her grandson's baby picture, leaving the pest lifeless. "Not if Jane has anything to say about it!"

Philip pushed the W.C. door open, allowing a certain odor to breed within the boardinghouse. "Another character again, Pookie?"

"What's it to ya, Tarzan?"

"Get off the car, kid."

Arnold did not flinch.

"I said get off the car! Don't make me hear an echo, Pataki!"

"I didn't tell you to repeat yourself."

"Getting wise with us, eh?" Vic drew out his shooter and pressed it against the sack.

Arnold saw but utter darkness, yet he was aware that the cold ring against his chest was the mouth of his captor's gun. He had a plan, and to execute it perfectly he had to put his life on the line for a short while. At any rate, he had already gone this far: covered for Helga and arrived at the lair of the hostages, whom he soon had to free.

Trying his best to keep the shape of the sack the same, as if he had not moved at all, Arnold bent his head slowly and bit the barrel of the gun. If Vic pulled the trigger at that very moment, he will have shot Arnold through the throat. But he did not, and Arnold was waiting for him to get lazy.

Fortunately for the captive, Morrie had already left the car. He could then manipulate Vic enough to successfully accomplish his ploy.

When Vic yawned, for one last time Arnold checked his own wrists if he could move them and, accepting that he could not, pushed his captor's gun away with his mouth.

"What the—?" There, Arnold's ruse worked! He had caught Vic off guard!

Lifting his tied legs, Arnold kicked his hefty opponent as hard as he could wherever he could.

"You dare attack me with yer whole puny body in ropes?" Spat Vic.

"Okay. Get this sack off me and it'll be a fair fight."

"Oh yeah?" The unassuming Vic pulled the sack off the boy and lifted him by the collar outside the car. Then he dropped him on the hard ground.

"Ha! You can't even stand up!"

But the first part of Arnold's master plan was pulled off triumphantly. When he fell to the ground, so did his hat. Whoever searches for him will definitely recognize that as his and, even if they would not search inside wherever he was going, they would find his cap somewhere near the vicinity.

If he could not escape by himself, then someone had to find his hat.

"I didn't think of that." Shrugged Arnold. "All right, you win. Put me in the sack again and take me away."

The sooner I get to the others, the better. I wonder who they are.

Again Vic did as Arnold told without himself knowing. "That's the way we like our Patakis: nice and submissive."

Then you've never met Big Bob. Or Helga! Arnold laughed—the cretin could not see him do so anyway—as he felt himself being carried upon his kidnapper's back. All of a sudden he felt a punch on his arm.

"Keep still, blondie. Copper a-comin'."

Committing to memory that he had to free the other captives, he obliged to the order. Within moments he overheard his captor and another man engaging in a tense dialogue.

"Just a sack of refined white sugar, Officer! Nothin' fishy goin' on here!"

So he passed me off as some sugar sack to the policeman on patrol! Maybe they did that to the other kids, too. Hasn't the cop noticed how many "sugar sacks" they have? Arnold blinked at the total dark that was all his eyes could see.

Officer Pudney, better known as the lone redhead lady cop of Hillwood City, set her steaming coffee cup down on her cluttered desk. "Sorry, kids. We've got too many cases in our hands already. Twelve in one week is no joke."

"Are you sayin' you're leaving this thirteenth case in our own young, defenseless hands?" Gerald peered at his own two. "That's illegal!"

"Too many cases! What're you gonna do about it?" Helga pounded the police desk with her fist, spilling the officer's coffee over her papers in the process. "Look, lady, we didn't come here to get shoved off by lazy windbags in uniform who sip from their coffee mugs and play darts all day!"

She motioned to the spent dartboard at one corner of the precinct.

Gerald nodded.

"I can't believe you'd let kids like us hound after gangsters who hound after kids like us! Y' know what that's called? Gross negligence! Didn't study that in police academy? Look it up! If you even know what a dictionary is!"

A split second later, Gerald and Helga groaned at the gruff policeman who towed them away by the backs of their collars and chucked them out of the doors of the police station.

"Man, this truly stinks!" Protested Gerald. "They're never gonna help us now that they've booted us to the street."

"Y' think?" retorted Helga. "Ah, who needs adults? Those a-dolts never pay attention to us anyway! We'll get Football Head back ourselves, even if we have to use our grubby, defenseless kid hands to do it!"

"Say Helga…"

"What, Tall-Hair Boy?"

"Why're you so determined to save Arnold? Far as I can remember—and that's far—you never liked him."

Helga harrumphed and sat down on the banister to the left of the stairs of the station. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"What's wrong wit' that?" He sat one step below her.

"Look, Geraldo! Football Head went missing while I was talkin' to 'im! I didn't notice he was gone 'til he was! If I had noticed, maybe he wouldn't have gone missing 'cause maybe I could've blown the kidnapper's brains out! The only hands that ought t' screw Football Head's cap are mine, not some kidnapper's!"

With a furtive smile, Gerald glanced at her and looked down. "I hate to say this, and to your face, but Arnold was right. You're not so bad."

"What's your point?"

"You are nice… you're just too shy to show it."

Helga's eyes widened in the time it takes to blink. She faced Arnold's best friend with a curious look. "He said that?"

Gerald waved his hands dismissively. "For a million times! He drives me NUTS just sayin' it! He always says it after you two work together on some project. Dunno whom he's trying to convince, me or himself. Look,"

He pointed at the two approaching boys.

"I see 'em. Lemon pudding and Mister Fudgy."

Stinky and Harold stopped before them, holding their knees and gasping for air. Helga and Gerald stood up.

"We just came from the substation in Vine Street," huffed Harold.

"They said they were busy, and then they kicked us out." Panted Stinky.

"Same here."

"Every forsaken precinct in this city sucks!" said Helga. "We could all get kidnapped and they wouldn't even care to bat an eyelash!"

"This really bites." Stinky shook his head. "I sure hope Arnold's okie-dokie, wherever he is."

"And stay there!"

"Till we bag a good deal with yer king father."

Arnold moaned as his stiff, bound body struck the floor with a thud. He heard the slamming and locking of a door, then two pairs of footsteps and laughter dying away.

To his surprise, he also heard—and recognized!—voices; three of them, surrounding him. But the voice that struck him most said, "I say, after three torturous days we have ourselves a new sack of sugar! A new addition to this hodgepodge of upper and lower class!"

He twitched on the floor, trying to loosen the ropes and the sack. "Somebody untie me! Unless you're bound too…"

One of the other kidnap victims pulled the sack off him. And in the moment he saw light, he also stumbled upon Rex Smythe-Higgins the Third.

"Rex! You too?"

Upon revealing Arnold, the haughty Higgins boy disgustedly held the sack with only his pointer and thumb until he tossed it away.

"Oh, it's only you, the grandson of the American, Steely Phil. You've got it wrong, Arnold. I should be asking you that same question."

"We're probably here for the same reason."

"Hey Arnold," the second familiar voice called from a lonely corner of the dungeon in which Arnold and his three fellow captives had to dwell. "Got chocolate?"

Still tied, Arnold twisted himself to see the second hostage in the cell…

"Chocolate Boy! What're you doing here?"

"Looking for chocolate, Arnold. Got any chocolate? I like chocolate."

"You see, that chocolate monster for a boy was not an intended hostage," Rex shook his head. "One of our kidnappers was just eating a chocolate treat he fancied so much that—"

"Yeah, chocolate!"

"Don't think I don't know." Smythe-Higgins turned his nose up at the scruffy kid who so rudely interrupted him. "As I was saying, this chap you call Chocolate Boy tagged along our captor until he arrived here. He hasn't gotten any chocolate, though."

Arnold heard Chocolate Boy sniff something. Someone, in truth, for she cried out, "How many times do I have to tell you, third grader? I don't eat chocolate and I don't have any chocolate with me! Besides, chocolate causes pimples. You should know that. Your face is just… full of them!"

Arnold stretched out his neck and beheld Ruth McDougal, the sixth grader of his past affections. She had on the same orange halter dress that she wore to their perfect-gone-wrong "date" that Valentine's Day. With her legs crossed, she filed her fingernails, not even taking the time out to see the likes of the newcomer.

"Ruth? Ruth McDougal? Here?"

Finally the sixth grader cast an uninterested glance at Arnold, and then continued filing her nails. "Do I know you?"

Arnold was not too partial with his memories of Ruth. "Y—Yeah. We both go to P.S. 118."

He left out his name and grade level for a private, needn't-be-said reason.

"Oh, a fourth grader. Alfred, is it?"

"Arnold." The boy looked away, shamed. "Why and how did they get you?"

Without looking at him once more, the girl shrugged. "I dunno."

Arnold sighed hopelessly. "Okay… Now that we know each other, isn't anyone gonna untie me?"

"Sorry. I'm busy." Ruth displayed to him her unfinished nails.

"I'll do it if you got chocolate." Offered Chocolate Boy.

"Give me one good reason to." Rex folded his arms across his chest.

"Rex!"

"Personally it's a memorable experience for me to look at you all tied up as you are now. I can't be assured you'll ever be in such a state again. All right, I shall free you. Just give me time to savor the moment."

And these are the hostages I wanted to rescue? Arnold bemoaned to himself. Hostages. Sure.

End of 4: The Arnold Rescue Teams

Yes, I'm well aware that he's Radish Boy now, but Chocolate still suits him better. Besides, a choc craving as diehard as his could come back, in spite of Arnold being his "therapist"…

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Witness Arnold and Helga's minds at work in chapter 5: Analyze.