Author's Note: Sorry to keep you waiting. The reason for the such delay because I was in reluctant to use this one particular character I created as the head of the antagonists. I hope that you would welcome this particular character with open arms because I can't think of anyone in the Hey Arnold canon that would fit into this particular character. I really want this fanfic to be so much like the show, that's my vision of it. But... oh, man... Anyway, I'm in a process of re-proofreading the previous chapters so I could make corrections on the errors pointed by you guys. On the side note, one of these days, when I'm quite confident with my web publishing skills, and I have more time on my hands, I'll make a website with comics based on my fanfics. :)
Legal junk: I don't own Hey Arnold, but Nickelodeon does and Mr. Craig Bartlett created it. But this fic belongs to me. Clear? Good.
Chapter 10: Main Screen Turn On. It's You!!
"How did you managed to get our frequency?!" Bridget demanded an answer as she gazed at the person with her eyes narrowed in resentment.
"Well, you know me babe…" the thinly built, light tanned, black colored hair person replied suavely, "Lets just say I know you a lot more than you know me… I mean, c'mon. Aren't you glad you finally get to see me again? Say, how 'bout you and me go out and have ourselves a fresh cup of coffee, huh? We have lots of catching up to do you know…" the person made a boring flirt.
"Well, thanks, but no thanks, Mikey."
"I hate it when you call me that! Why don't you call me Michael, like everybody else?!" he sneered fumingly.
"Sure, whatever, Mikey." Bridget replied mockingly, smiling. By now the readers asked themselves, "Mikey who? He's not in any Hey Arnold episodes… could it be Mikey the Weasel?"
"Don't call me that!!" he whined angrily.
The elevator dinged, and the door opened. The newly graduated agents came out and hastily went straight over to Bridget.
"Hey Bridge, what's the emergency? Why did you leave us down there?" Helga asked for an answer, as the girls behind her were too, expecting an explanation from her.
She ignored the new graduates, as this particular thing with Michael was on her top priority right now. "What do you want, Mikey?" Bridget demanded, straight to the point, in realization that procrastinating with idle chat is very unnecessary.
"Bridge?" Helga asked back. Noticing that she wouldn't entertain them, Helga shook her head and looked at the monitor screen. They could only recognize two of them excluding Michael, especially that one particular person to his right.
"It can't be you…" Rhonda said.
"Oh my goodness…" Lila said in perplexity.
"Whoa…" Nadine could only say.
"This is impossible…" Phoebe spoke disbelievingly.
"Oh no… oh my God…" Helga said incredulously.
Behind Michael, it was a person they recognized the most, the person who went to the same elementary school with them. He was the person whom they saw very often at the playground. He was the well-known loan shark in PS. 118. It was… Gino, Big Gino, who was now in his early teens, a bit younger than the girls, and still wearing those very expensive Armani suits, though his family members wouldn't call him 'Big' due to his short stature.
"What I want? Hmm…" he replied, stroking his chin. "Hey... I see you've recruited new bunch of hapless pathetic underlings that you call 'agents' to obey your every whim, Bridge." Michael noticed them, smirking, trying to avert the conversation between him and Bridget away. "By the way, I'd like all of you to meet my new assistant." He said, pointing to his left. The girls knew her, and Phoebe knew her very, very well. It was the Pet Shop Girl wearing a yellow jumpsuit, holding a katana sword firmly behind her.
"Oh no… can it be her?" Phoebe thought gravely.
Nadine interjected, but her question was being directed to Gino, "Gino? I can't believe it, what the heck are you doing there?!" Nadine asked demandingly to him as she pointed a finger at him.
Gino cleared his throat, and replied, "Well, you see my dearest, me and my brother are—"
Michael quickly turned his head to him and shouted, "Didn't I tell you to SHUT UP?!" to him furiously. Gino jumped slightly, and stared at his big brother with his fearful eyes. He took a big huge gulp, lowered his head slowly in terror of his brother and decided to keep his mouth shut for the rest of the conversation. He wouldn't dare to defy his brother. His irate glare then gradually became a soft grin, as Michael look at his little brother and said softly to him, "That's a good sport." He then turned forward back to face Bridget and her band of vigilantes. "Sorry 'bout that, my lil' brother tends to interject when I'm having a conversation. Very rude. Hope you'll forgive him." he 'apologized' as he tapped the cigar over the ashtray. "Now where were we…?"
"Ah, yes." He puffed a smoke out, "Regarding our not-so-warm relationship with you guys. As you all may have know, my, or should I say, my father's organization and yours go wayyyy-way-way-way-way-way back together as mortal enemies. You've disrupted and destroyed our organization eight years ago Bridget, but now, I've regrouped most of my old gang and recruited some new ones, restore the old operations back, and I with it will have my revenge on your stupid, pitiful spy organization and that asinine bitch Olga Pataki!!" he shouted threateningly as he stood up to show dominance. He did not know amongst the people in the control room, Olga's younger sibling was there, listening to his every word. Helga went pale when she heard that, in shock and couldn't say anything about it. Phoebe then quickly tried to comfort her be placing her hands on her shoulders. "By the way, where is she?" Michael said, noticing Olga wasn't there among them.
"Leave Olga out of this!" Bridget retorted. "She's retired years ago and she's in no way involved with us right now!"
"Yes, quite." He replied calmly, sitting down back. "As always, you're very defensive about your mentor, aren't you? Well, with that I can safely say this is an unexpected, surprising twist of events. So the leader who busted my father many years ago has already retired and now, I have no one to lay down my revenge. But don't worry Bridget, I still have you and your stupid organization for me to meddle with. Ah, what the hell, I'm not the kind of person who follows the rules, anyway. Retired or not, Olga will get what she deserves." He ended it with a devilish smirk as he put the cigar down and extinguish it.
"Don't you even dare, you bastard…" Bridget replied angrily.
"Guess what? I think I'm going to!" he then laughed maniacally. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot," he stopped laughing and it gradually becoming a soft chuckle, "These coming weeks, I'm planning of doing a series of very evil deeds in this city, you know… to strengthen my organization back, financially speaking." He informed as he rubbed his hands in evil glee.
"What? You're gonna rob banks?" Bridget said back, lowering a half of her eyebrow.
"What?!" he shoot up from his seat, "what the… how do you know my plan?!" he shouted demandingly.
Bridget shrugged, "Uh… I dunno, I just made a guess. I mean, you did give away a hint at the end of your sentence: 'financially speaking'. I mean, can't it be more obvious?"
"ARRGHH!!" he shouted as he banged the table with both of his fists. "WHY do I always tell my evil schemes out loud to everybody?!" he shouted out loud as he shook his fists in anger.
Everyone back at the control room just blinked at him in disbelief, "Jeez, what a hothead…" Rhonda thought.
Michael then calmed himself, by motioning his hand outward as he thought of words to cool himself, such as, "Cool, just be cool…" Feeling that he was much better now, he sat back and gave them a soft smile, and said to them all, "In that case, I dare you to stop us. But I must warn you that we've become more powerful than you imagined, and never underestimate us." He then took a glance at his watch. "Oh man, just look at the time, my meeting's going to start in a couple of seconds. Catch ya later. It's a shame our relationship didn't go as well as I thought it would be." And with that, he disappeared from the screen, leaving nothing but static and noise. Wren then switched the screen off as they looked at each other in stunned silence.
Bridget rubbed her forehead as if she was attempting to nurse her headache, closing her eyes, "Status report," she asked the operators she assigned earlier to monitor the conversation.
"Can't find the location, milady." Candice replied to her, "They seemed to use an encrypted version of our frequency."
"Conversation recorded," Jessie informed, "five minutes and thirty-four seconds in total milady."
"No hidden messages and codes detected," Aishya said. "She's right, milady. I've double checked it, and zilch." Michelle agreed. "But we can't assume it's completely clean. We need to go through with it again."
"Thanks…" Bridget said softly to all of them, sighing deeply. "You guys did a great job."
"I… I do not understand." Phoebe said in perplexity, "why did he call us? I mean, we ended up having the benefits of knowing his plans…"
"Bad guy cliché, Pheebs." Nadine responded, "Haven't you watch the movies? The bad guys always give the good guys some hints about his plans first before they go on doing it."
"If this was a movie, or a fanfic or something, I'd blame the bad writing." Rhonda added.
"I don't know about that, but knowing him, we'd better watch our back, because he's very cunning." Bridget said to all of them.
"Is there something that we should know about him, Bridget?" Lila asked her.
"Yeah… and I want to know the thing between him and Olga as well." Helga asked her, rather unconventional since she never really cared about her sister much.
Bridget stared at Helga, and she knew she couldn't talk her way out of it. She sighed nervously, contemplating for a while as she gazed her feet and rubbed her arm, and said to Helga and the rest of the girls, "Let's go to the common room. I'll tell you everything that I know about him."
---
"Okay," she sighed, as all of them took a seat, "Let me tell you a story about Olga, Michael and our organization prior to your membership and our affairs with Michael's family." Bridget said to all of them, as they paid attention to her.
"A couple of months after Olga became the chief, this person, Michael, started to wreak havoc in the city. Businesses and banks were robbed, houses were broken into, and people were assaulted. This was all because of his fault, since he wanted to prove to his father that he was competent enough be the heir to their family business. We, without the knowledge of the police, contributed a lot of our effort to vanquish them and we did."
"Wait a minute, family business?" Nadine asked her.
"His father used to be the head of one of the mob families in this city, but not very influential though." Bridget divulged to them, which made them hard to swallow the fact. "But due to our sabotage and effort… his plan backfired. Not only have the cops gained insurmountable amount of evidences to convict him, but even his father as well. The twist was, his dad was sentenced 20 years in prison while he… could get away with just five."
A most shocking revelation from her. The girls could only stare at her in great disbelief.
"We would've never thought that we could go that far. It was never on our intention to go after his dad. We just let the cops handle the mobs, while we go after Michael and his gang."
"Why?" Helga asked.
"Because he and his gang involved themselves in petty street crimes. We specialized in apprehending these kinds of criminals, so what he did is just like an invitation to us."
"And what about Big Gino? Why was he there?" Phoebe asked her.
"Big Gino? Gino who?" Bridget asked back.
"You know, that guy was standing behind him, the one who was wearing that Armani suit." Rhonda explained.
"I don't know. He said that he was his brother, maybe he is. Though, I have heard rumors that Michael went on a rampage like that because his father picked someone else to be the heir of the family."
"Maybe Gino was picked to be the heir." Lila hypothesized.
"Nonsense!" Rhonda disagreed, "Judging from the timeline of the events, I would assume that Gino was too young to be appointed as the successor of the family."
"But please consider some of the facts to support Lila's theory, Rhonda." Phoebe tried to make a constructive counter-argument, "When you see Gino, why is he always being flanked by two bodyguards on each of his side? One could assume his father wouldn't want him to get hurt or worse due to his importance to the family."
"Who cares about Gino and his stupid brother!" Helga snapped at them, "What about Olga?! I want to know why and I want to know right now!!" she shouted as she banged her fist onto the coffee table.
All of them gazed at her for a while, being surprised that Helga actually was concerned about her sister. Bridget nodded softly, contemplating for words to explain to her, and finally she replied, "Most likely he wants to take revenge because she was the one who put him in the slammer. I don't know what method he would choose, but I know for sure it won't be a pleasant one."
Judging from the look of her face, Helga began to worry about Olga's well being in the future.
"And there's something I should tell you, Helga… At first, I… really, really don't to say this, but under these circumstances, I have to divulge it. Your sister… used to be Michael's girlfriend."
"WHAT?!" the girls shouted in unison. Helga was the loudest one amongst them.
"After they learned that they were on the different side of the fence, they quickly cut off their relationship and became enemies. So I think this threat has to do with Michael's disdain of Olga as well."
"Oh man…" Helga sighed, shaking her head softly, "This is so unreal it's not even funny." She replied gravely as she stared at the floor, playing with her thumbs.
"I'm sorry Helga… but it has to be let out eventually." Bridget replied sullenly, and Helga nodded weakly in understand. Phoebe offered comfort to Helga, and she accepted it, embracing her. "Should… should I … tell Olga about this?" Helga asked her.
She couldn't find a suitable answer to reply, but, "It's up to you…" was her answer.
Phoebe wanted to asked her about the Pet Shop Girl, but she thought to herself it would be the best to keep it to herself right now as the situation didn't really call for it.
"So… what are we going to do now?" Lila asked to Bridget, after she glanced at Phoebe and Helga.
"We go on high alert, orange level." She informed. "I will station agents at all major bank outlets in the city and I will notify our informants to keep a sharp eye on certain places incase if anything should happen."
"What will become of you?" Nadine asked her, "What about your retirement?"
"It looks like I can't retire now, can I? With Michael's back on the loose this organization needs someone who has dealt with this type of situation before and has a lot of experience regarding it more than ever. I won't give my position up to someone who has little experience in handling these kinds of things. If I were to give up my position right now I feel I'm not being a responsible leader. I have to stay until this situation has been rectified out."
The girls gazed at her in amazement. It was hard to find a leader like her these days with such high of a caliber.
"Nevertheless, you are no longer the potentials in training. You are one of us – a part of a great sisterhood." She continued, smiling softly. "Well girls, I think I have told you enough, so I think you all should head to the Assignment Office to see who you got partnered with and what's your first assignment as new agents." The new agents then nodded weakly, got up and went out from the room, leaving Bridget alone.
"Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in…" she thought sullenly, as she clasps her hands over her face in weary frustration.
---
"Night ladies," a middle height, thinly built, pale looking brunette haired Goth girl said to them, "I am El, your Assignment Officer." The glasses wearing girl introduced, sitting behind a desk, with a computer in front of her.
Rhonda moved her head close to Nadine as she looked at El, "Whoa… I would've never thought I'd see a Goth chick in this place." Rhonda whispered softly to her best friend.
"I heard that," El replied. "Ya know, I would've never thought I'd see a prissy, stuck up Princess in this place too." Everybody was chuckling softly, except for Rhonda, who glared at her.
"'Sides, this gig beats the crap job I had at the mall. Plus I get to kick people's ass." She informed, typing something on the keyboard. "All right, give me your names so I can put them in this crappy dinosaur." She asked, referring to the aging computer she was using. Each and every one of the girls gave their names out to her.
"Phoebe Hyerdahl, Helga Pataki, Rhonda 'Princess' Lloyd, Lila Sawyer and… I didn't catch your name. What's your name again?" she asked Nadine. Nadine then gave her name to her.
"Strange…" El replied, eyes narrows while looking at the monitor, "They didn't put your last name into the database… Those goddam lazy asses in the Human Resource Department… I swear one of these days I'm going to kill 'em all and—" she abruptly stopped, looking at the girls, who was staring at her back in horrified stun. El coughed, and said:
"Uh, metaphorical exaggeration, of course…" she said sheepishly and continued typing. After she finished, she then pressed Ctrl P and a list of names were printed, each with assignments given and whom they got partnered with. El then ripped the papers off each by each by their corresponding names. She licked her thumb to wet it, and flipped through the papers to double check them.
"Pheebs, because I'm being so generous today, I decided that you should be assigned to the Communications Room, since you're good with computers and stuff," she said, giving the paper slip containing her name and the job position to her. "Make sure you show the slip to the supervising officer." She added, and Phoebe nodded softly.
"Nadine and Lila, both of you are partnered together. Your first mission is to carry out a stakeout at a bank near the Lincoln subway station. Good luck." Again she said, giving the paper slip to both of them. "And here's your standard issue communicator." She gave them a small device that could fit in a grasp of a hand, wrapped in plastic. "You attach the communicator box on your utility belt like so…" she instructed, "put the earpiece jack right here, and you're ready to go."
"And…" she let out a wicked chuckle, "Rhonda and Helga…"
"No! No way!" they both blurted out in unison, objecting ruthlessly to the idea of them getting partnered together.
"Well, boo-hoo. " she cried mockingly, "You both are partnered together and your mission is to monitor some strange activity happening at Madison Street. Live with it."
"I can't get partnered with this idiot!" Helga tried to reason, pointing at Rhonda.
"I want reconsideration!! There is no way this thing will work, and I certainly do not want to be this assface's partner!" Rhonda gave her explanation, which weren't concrete and justifiable.
"Hmm… ooh… ahh…" El faked a thought, "Well, tough luck. The universe doesn't revolve around you guys, you know."
"Nadine!" Rhonda called her whiningly, "Help me out here!"
But Nadine could only smile back at her back and said, "You kids have a good time now!" she waved to her as she and Lila walk away from them. Lila who was walking with her could only chortle softly as she placed a hand on her mouth to cover it up from them.
"Phoebe…" Helga said through her clenched teeth, "don't you dare bail on me now!"
"Oh… look at the time," she replied, looking at her wristwatch, smiling softly, "I'm already late for my post. I'm sorry Helga, but perhaps we should talk about this some other time?" and Helga answered it with a jaw drop, practically in disbelief of her friend. Phoebe then joined Nadine and Lila as the walked out and then gone away from their view, and a loud laughter was heard.
"And here are your communicators." She shoved the devices over the table to them. "Well, just don't stand there staring at me incredulously! Get out of here before I put you two in janitorial duty!"
No, it's not Mikey the Weasel. The reason why I choose Michael as the villain of this fic because I think he would be the most suitable candidate for a hotheaded annoying character. I chose the name Michael based on my favorite character in The Godfather movie. I wanted to call him Santino (Sonny) though, but it doesn't have a nice ring to it and they both already share the same traits. But I will limit his appearance in this fic because focal point is directed towards Gino rather than his brother. I also have considered Frankie G. as well because he kinda looks like Gino, he's a bad guy, but I couldn't because he doesn't suit the character I wanted, not to mention he's in custody. His characteristics include persuasive and suave and certainly won't fit. I hope you'll understand. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this addition to the fic and on the next chapter, there will be an action sequence involving Helga and Rhonda "working" together. Thanks for reading and please, please leave a review!