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 and George of the Jungle, both as seen on The Disney Channel,is intended by the references below.

9: Of Loincloths and Wrecking Balls

Arnold raced for Helga and fetched her by the hand away from the range of fire just as Morrie aimed for her and shot.

Arnold and Helga bent and kneeled behind the toppled table, unintentionally facing each other. Helga glanced around and, spotting no foes, said in a hushed tone, "Have you lost it, Arnold? You could've gotten yourself killed!"

"You could've too, Helga!"

"I don't mean that, Football Head! That! Getting abducted! Taking my place! You could've said you're not a Pataki right from the start!"

Flustered, Arnold looked down to evade Helga's eyes. He saw both his and her hands, pressed to the ground close by each other—in fact, almost touching.

Leveling his sublime grass green eyes with her flaming azure ones, Arnold touched Helga's fingers with his own for a fleeting moment.

"I didn't want you hurt, Helga. Sorry."

Upon sensing contact, Helga glimpsed at her hand and grunted. Yet deep inside of her, she bathed in the tranquil pools of his eyes and took pleasure in his undivided attention.

Oh, Arnold! No petty act of kindness can ever come to par with the Good Samaritan sacrifice you have done for me this day! You more than deserve my appreciation, my love. Dearest Arnold! I shall compensate for this day, no matter what it takes, for all my life!

Arnold blinked and stared at his spaced out classmate. "Helga?"

Upon hearing Arnold's voice, Helga snapped back to reality. "Oh yeah? Well, you don't know how much you 'hurt' me when y' thought I wouldn't be able to save myself in case I got kidnapped! That's pretty much what you thought when you decided to be 'Big Bob's son'!"

"No, I didn't think of that at all! I didn't want you kidnapped! I didn't want them to hurt you!"

Helga delighted in Arnold's affectionate words, yet she masked her bliss in its brusque counterpart: disappointment.

"But I'm here in trigger-happy city now, aren't I? Face it, Arnuldo. Your plan to replace me bites."

A big UGH was written all over Arnold's face. "Well, it would've worked if you hadn't come here yourself!"

Suddenly the kidnappers carried the table off and left the two hostages out in the clear. "Think you pesky kids can hide from us?"

Morrie and Vic laughed and aimed their shooters at Helga and Arnold. "Join the rest of your little friends! And their stupid spider!"

"Which didn't scare us!"

Arnold sighed and put his hands in the air as Vic buried the barrel of the pistol against his back and led him to where his other classmates were caged.

Helga, ignoring the weapon pointed at her own back, whirled to reason with Morrie. "C'mon, give us kids a break! You didn't even kidnap us!"

"Yeah, but we got you now, don't we?"

The kids in the detention cell joined Helga's protest:

"Free the animals! Free us animals!"

"But we came here on our own!"

"Free the animals! Free us animals!"

"Yeah! You didn't catch us!"

"Free the a—"

"Knock it off, Curly!"

"That's not my problem now, is it?" Morrie eyed the real Pataki. "Look, little lady! We failed our kidnap-for-ransom mission on the fourth graders of P.S. 118 real badly! We couldn't find that Lorenzo kid or that Wellington-Boyd one—"

"Lloyd." Chuckled Helga. "How can you track someone down if y' didn't even get 'er name right? By the way, did you even try looking for Lorenzo in his enormous mansion in the heart of his own gargantuan Spanish estate in the only first-class subdivision in town? Just checking."

Morrie shook his head. "Whatever! And you, Pataki, were the last on our list. You were stupid enough to come to us, and now we're not letting you go!"

"All right! Keep her! But what about us?" From inside the detention cell, Sid motioned to all his companions. "We just got dragged in here!"

The other fourth graders muttered their agreement.

Helga thrust them a menacing dagger look. "Hey! Hey hey hey hey hey! What're you talkin' about? You were all in this jig! You morons wanted to 'see Ar-nulld again', even it if meant getting stuck in this rotten chicken coop of a kidnapping syndicate headquarters!"

Arnold smiled to himself. I don't have to worry about the guys never wanting to see me again, even if they say they do. And Helga's the same way.

"Don't blame us! They used to store frozen poultry in here!"

"You idiot! Y' didn't have to tell 'em that!" Yelled Morrie. He turned to Sid as he stuck his gun against Helga.

"That just proves you kids were stupider to have come with her! And to rescue the stupidest kid of all!" He looked at the Pataki pretender.

Arnold refused to enter the cell, so Vic hoisted him up by his shirttails and was about to chuck him in with the others when everyone heard a shriek.

"UNHAND THAT BLONDIE, YOU TEN-TON, THICK-SKULLED THUG!"

"Huh?" When Vic whirled his head, an old lady in a loincloth swung on a long rope towards him and kissed his mouth with her bare feet, clouting him out cold.

"That's for holding Kimba the wrong way! You should hold him by the back only when you want him to burp!"

"Grandma!" Exclaimed Arnold in surprise as he got up and dusted himself.

His classmates cheered and whooped "WE'RE SAVED!" as Gertie let go of the rope and landed on her own two feet next to the cell door. "That's Grandma Jane to you, Kimba!"

"Grandma!" Arnold threw his arms around her. "I mean Grandma Jane! Where's Grandpa… George?"

"Nope, I'm Tarzan! And look at me swing!" Hollered Phil as he hung from another rope and booted Morrie. Helga stepped aside as Morrie fell face-first onto the floor, knocked out as well.

"No kidding! Look at me swing! Get it?" Arnold's grandpa elbowed the air as he clutched his rope tight. "And I can't figure out how to get off this thing either."

Arnold's classmates clustered around him and his grandmother in relief.

"Saved by your grandparents, again! You're one lucky kid, Arnold." Said Gerald.

"Yeah. I know."

The two of them exchanged smiles and performed their special thumb-shake.

"By the way, man," Gerald clapped his best friend's back and toned down his voice. "Y' know what 'pusillanimous' means?"

Arnold's eyelids fell halfway down his eyes knowingly. "Helga said that, didn't she?"

"Uh-huh. Who else could've?"

Arnold cupped his hand into Gerald's ear. "I read it someplace, but I can't tell where. Don't worry, we'll look it up later."

"Sure thing, buddy. Later."

Arnold shrugged and glanced around. He found his grandfather swinging right towards a… "Grandpa! Watch out!"

Everyone winced and whirled to find Arnold's grandpa pasted to the wall.

"A tree would've been less painful," groaned Grandpa.

"The stupidest kid of all was right! You're not Tarzan, you're George!"

Morrie's knees wobbled as he stood and pointed his pistol at Arnold, his grandma, and his classmates. Most of them gasped upon seeing him conscious.

Grandpa Phil peeled himself off the wall and wagged a threatening finger at the man. "Oh, I'm Tarzan all right," he waited for the giddy Morrie to point the gun at him instead of the kids. "'Cause when I'm angry, I have the strength of one wrecking ball!"

He punched the wall.

Nothing happened.

Everyone blinked.

"I SAID, I have the strength of one wrecking ball!"

And Grandpa punched the wall again.

To everyone's astonishment (except Phil and Gertie's, but especially Morrie's), the wall came crumbling down.

As his classmates mumbled among themselves, Arnold dove past the collapsed wall to the real wrecking ball behind it. He found Ernie Potts' crane, with Ernie himself at the wheel and Mr. Hyunh sitting beside him.

In his elation, Arnold cupped his hands around his mouth and called out to them. "ERNIE! MR. HYUNH! HERE!"

The two Sunset Arms boarders spotted him and waved. "Hey kid!" Ernie pulled the lever. "Glad to see you're okay!"

"Yeah!"

"Hey—Arnold!" The Vietnamese boarder stood up and waved both his hands. "Grandpa said—you were kidnapped! But now—you all right!"

"Never better, Mr. Hyunh!"

"See? Told you I got the strength of one wrecking ball!" Grandpa flexed the slight muscle in his arm. "Never get me angry by calling my grandson 'the stupidest kid of all' twice in a row. I can tolerate it only once."

Arnold rolled his eyes and sighed.

"He-he!" Phil laughed, casually wrung his grandson's neck around his arm and scuffed the boy's hair. "Take it as a compliment, Short Man! Sure, you were stupid for letting yourself get kidnapped, but you were brave too—in a stupid way!"

Arnold sighed again as he released himself from his grandfather's clutches. He rubbed his neck gingerly. "Cut it out, Grandpa! That hurts a little."

The gangling Morrie directed his gun from Arnold to his grandparents to his classmates. "Just 'cause you've torn down the headquarters doesn't mean it's over!"

Helga walked up to him, spanked the gun out of his hands, and leered at him. "Oh, it's over all right."

She pointed beyond the toppled wall.

All of them had a look see outside. "YAY!" The fourth graders leapt for joy as a rescue helicopter gradually descended upon them.

"Hey Arnold! Chocolate!" From behind the round glass window of the copter, Chocolate Boy grinned impishly and waved a bag bursting at the seams. Arnold gave him a thumbs-up.

The copter rotors sliced the air as Officer Pudney spoke through a loudspeaker. "Come up with your hands up!"

End of 9: Of Loincloths and Wrecking Balls

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It's payback time for Helga in chapter 10: Helga's Sacrifice.