Hello! Whether you're reading this because you know me already or because you've just stumbled across this story in the TAWOG section, I hope you enjoy this story.
It began like most disasters: while browsing Elmore Plus in the school library.
"Dude, how did Masami get an ear piercing?" Darwin asked, while scrolling down his feed and happening across the picture of their classmate. "She doesn't have ears!"
"Or a solid body," Gumball added without looking up, despite Darwin sitting only at the adjacent computer. "They must be fake."
They scrolled in silence for a few moments, duly adding thumbs up and comments where they felt them necessary, as if carrying out a working duty in overseeing their timelines. It was a rare form of sustained diligence and concentration for the two kids, the likes of which they never showed for their schoolwork.
And it was during this time that it appeared.
"Oh hey, it's one of those quizzes. 'Confirm who is your perfect girlfriend'," Gumball read the innocuous tagline. "Pf, that'll obviously come out as Penny for me."
"Yeah, I got it too," Darwin noted, pulling it up on his screen as well. "Do you think we should take the quiz for the fun of- oh you've already started."
Gumball had already started clicking his way through the 50-question quiz. Darwin started too. He wasn't sure how questions about his favourite type of cereal would tell him about his girlfriend but he kept an open mind and answered honestly.
The blue feline finished first and submitted all his answers. The quiz then computed painfully slowly, to Gumball's chagrin, but eventually the calculated profile of Gumball's ideal girlfriend popped up. Gumball rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation as he prepared to read what would undoubtedly be a flowery description of his beloved Penny.
"Alright, here goes. 'Your perfect girlfriend is someone you know well, with whom you have been through several adventures'," he read, with a grin widening with every word. "Oh, that's so true!" His heart swelled with a resurgence of love for the girl who would no doubt be his future wife, if his 28 point plan would come to fruition. He was already planning to save this profile to present to Penny at their wedding.
"'She has no feet and is transparent,'" the description continued. "Man, that's so true," Gumball commented, smile faltering slightly. "How Penny has no feet and is see-through in her… emotions…"
His brow then furrowed on reading the rest of the bio. "'And she's a ghost who's currently going out with someone in your family'? Dude, this is Carrie!"
Darwin was too busy to be furious at his brother for the supposed betrayal, because his quiz results had just loaded too. And his supposed girlfriend's profile also made him more agitated with every noun. "'Your perfect girlfriend is a shapeshifter who you kissed in a dream and who broke out of her shell with help from someone else in your family'? Oh, come on!"
Gumball read and re-read the profiles in stunned disbelief. The descriptions were accompanied by drawings in a cutesy anime style rather than pictures of the girls themselves, but they only served to distance this from a coincidence. Gumball's had an emo look with a white shirt and black eyeliner. The quiz gave Darwin's girl a dress in Penny's yellow, and a hairband with little antlers sticking up.
Gumball could tell this was trouble. The older brother breathed out to compose himself before doing anything rash. "Ok, ok. It's clear there's something weird going here. But hey, our girlfriends don't need to know. We can take this to our graves."
"Yeah, yeah…" Darwin sighed. Gumball laid a paw on his brother and the young fish calmed down. Then his eyes fell on the screen again, and he screamed. "Aaaaaah! Dude, I posted it to my wall!"
Gumball's eyes snapped to his brother's screen. "What? How could you do something so- oh man I did it too! The years of conditioning took over my fingers!"
Darwin started hyperventilating but again, Gumball took another breath to compose himself. "It's ok, it's ok! We can just delete the posts."
With a fearful shaking arm, Darwin pointed at the screen. Somehow, in the space of seconds, all of their friends, and friend's friends, and friend's friend's FarmerVille plants, had all given them a thumbs up. The quizzes were their most thumbed up posts ever.
Gumball's finger hesitated tantalisingly over the left click to delete the post, but he could not bring himself to do it, as if some invisible hand was pulling his finger away. A small but dominant part of his brain refused to allow the throwaway of all that online kudos.
He let out a shrill laugh, the laugh of someone who wanted to be cool with things, but was in fact on the edge of completely breaking down. "W-Well, hey, it's just a dumb quiz, right?" he said, with a pained, forced smile. "It's not like it can have any effect on real life, right?"
Darwin looked up. "Gumball," he said slowly. "Why would you set a flag like that?"
"Oh, curseword."
On cue, the library door burst open to reveal Penny and Carrie. Normally, the Wattersons would be delighted to see their respective girlfriends, but their eyes showed nothing but fear for the worst upon seeing the girls' lovestruck expressions.
The girls marched in an almost mesmerized state towards the brothers, who sat frozen to their seats. And their worst fears were confirmed when Penny wrapped her arms around a terrified Darwin.
"Oh, Darwin, I've always loved your cute, wholesome innocence," she gushed, nuzzling against his cheek. "Nothing like your lazy, crazy brother at all!"
Darwin tried to wriggle out of Penny's arms, but her grip was too tight. An involuntary, wail escaped from his mouth, and the sound continued like an alarm siren. Gumball was petrified by the sight of this, eyes wide open, with all the colour draining from his face, then his body, before the colour pooled out from his feet into a puddle of liquid on the floor. He was now entirely white, his features outlined in black.
Carrie floated to him. Her arms were considerably shorter than Penny's so didn't embrace him, but she still stroked Gumball's frozen shoulder affectionately. "Oh, white looks so good on you," she said flatteringly. "I'm so glad you revealed your true feelings by posting that quiz. I'm sure you don't consider me as 'just one more emo freak', like Darwin there."
There was a trance-like look in the eyes of both girls now as they moved in for a kiss on the inverted boyfriends. Darwin's scream reached a crescendo. He finally wriggled free and grabbed Gumball by the hand, dragging him away out of the library.
Darwin ran away aimlessly, dragging a whited out Gumball along, scarcely daring to look behind him. Eventually, he and his brother burst into an empty classroom and collapsed. Darwin was breathing heavily, his evolved gills working flat out to replenish his body with oxygen. He glanced sideways at his still petrified brother. Poor dude always did the 'madly in love' thing a little more.
Once Darwin regained some strength in his arms, he started slapping Gumball's cheeks lightly. Eventually a raw blue colour started to return, and the cat returned groggily to his senses.
"Oh man, that was horrible," he groaned, clutching his head. "We have got to fix this before 'Penwin' becomes…"
The cat shuddered, and the colour started pooling at his feet again. Darwin gave him a few more much appreciated slaps.
"But how do we stop this?" Darwin wheezed. "We don't even know who is responsible. Was it Sarah somehow?"
"No, she doesn't ship Penwin," Gumball recalled. "Remember? She ships…"
This time, they both shuddered, remembering Sarah's definition of 'brotherly love'.
"Then it must just be…"
And the two came to the same conclusion. It must have been the personification of chaos and evil in Elmore. Their prior nemesis. They glanced at each other and exclaimed:
"The Internet!"
"You!"
Darwin stepped gingerly into Internet's room, carefully stepping past a discarded pizza box and several empty bottles of Mountain Brew. He wondered why someone who sat in a room all day would need so many energy drinks. Gumball entered with none of the same care, storming in all guns blazing.
"We've got business with you, Internet!"
"Oh, Gumball and Darwin," Internet said pleasantly. "Did you know I've updated my privacy policy?"
An alluring smell wafted temporarily through the air, cutting through the musty smell of the room. Darwin's nose followed the source to a tray of biscuits.
"Cookies?" Internet offered.
Darwin reached excitedly for one but Gumball slapped his fin away disapprovingly. The fish's face fell, but Gumball didn't notice as he started his tirade.
"Listen, Internet, you don't fool me with this nice guy attitude," the kitten seethed. "I remember what you're really like. You must have put together those quizzes on purpose."
"Hey hey, you got me all wrong," Internet said. "I admit I have that side of me but I'm not always like that."
Gumball was thrown. On a closer look, Internet's expressions were softer and more apologetic. His face was a gentle blue, instead of the sharp green he had on their last visit.
"I mean, yes, I sent those quiz results, but that was what some of my users submitted! I was just the messenger!"
"W-Well, obviously I belong with Penny, anyone who would read that kind of stuff sickens me," Gumball said, folding his arms defensively. "You can't just stick two people together and expect them to like each other or for their relationship to work."
Darwin opened his mouth to ask about Sarah, and her shipping habits, but decided not to interrupt. That girl had special permission from them… just about.
"I know, right? You and Penny, and you and Carrie -" Internet nodded in Darwin's direction - "are so cute together. I've followed all your adventures and I love the ones around your pairings."
"A-Alright, so we really are on the same page," Gumball admitted, won over by the Internet having a passion for the same thing as him: his relationship with Penny.
Darwin was slightly disturbed by the fact that Internet was apparently watching them so often. Now there was a heavy thought. But, one problem at a time. "So can you delete the quizzes?"
"I can't take the pictures down, you know that," Internet said dejectedly, causing the two kids' faces to fall into a guilt-inducing malaise. "B-But hey! I can block the users from sending you any more, and I can try to drown out the quizzes with cute Carwin and Gummenny pictures."
"It's 'Penball'," Gumball corrected.
"Really? That doesn't quite hit the ear right for me."
"Then there's one thing I don't get…" Darwin interjected, puzzled. "why was Carrie hypnotised into like-liking Gumball, and vice versa?"
"Oh, I, er, guess you didn't see?" Internet stifled an awkward chuckle. He tapped a few keys on his monitor to bring up the Elmore plus feed. He scrolled for a second, looking for something. Then, tentatively, he turned the screen a few degrees for Gumball and Darwin to see.
It was a picture of the terrible scene, the moment when Penny and Carrie had leaned in for the kiss just hours ago. Gumball and Darwin saw their own faces from the outside perspective, Darwin mortified, Gumball white as a sheet. Below the photo was a caption.
Pranking our wonderful silly boyfriends!
#Carwin #Penball #PhotosByMasami #IShotofoppedCarrieIntoThePic
Darwin stared, digesting the meaning. The girls had just been pretending. There was no real danger after all. They had been hurt and scared out of their minds for nothing. There were other photos in the gallery too and they confirmed nothing was truly out of the ordinary.
"Wow…" Gumball managed, after several long moments. "That is so… funny!"
Gumball's eyes widened with love, and he laughed as if oblivious to the fact that he was the butt of this particular joke. "Oh, Penny, what a beautiful prank. You get more amazing all the time," he gushed, as Darwin had to shield himself from the literal rainbows spraying from him. "Every day I find new reasons to love you!"
Darwin chuckled weakly. He was glad that Carrie was still his, but he didn't quite see the same funny side as his brother did. That photo on Elmore plus already had 700 thumbs up, and it was kind of difficult to take being he was on the receiving end.
The old dial-up sound of Internet's mother echoed up the wall. The boys couldn't understand the sounds, but (un)fortunately they could see and read the subtitles.
'Timmy! Are you talking with your furry friends again?'
Internet's eyes widened.
"Wait, what's a 'furry'?" Darwin asked innocently.
"Trust me, you don't want to know," Internet said darkly, turning away from them.
"Hey, you can't stop us from looking something up," Gumball said. "Disable safe search!"
Internet's staunch resistance was no match for Pester Formation #12, a technique designed by the boys to get their mom to tell them birthday gifts in advance.
"Fine," Internet said, sighing in resignation, as the boys whooped in anticipation. "Look in that safe..."
"Well, I'm scarred for life," Gumball said matter-of-factly, staring at the roof of his bed.
The Wattersons were back home. True to his word, Internet had posted scores of beautiful artworks of their canonical loves to drown out the fixed quiz results. On any other day Gumball would be making posters of much of it, Darwin shyly taking a Carwin picture and cherishing it. But now, the brothers were in no position to appreciate any of that.
"I think that's enough Internet for one lifetime," Darwin said.
But the computer then pinged and, like a magnet pulling in unwitting balls of iron, the two brothers were sucked back in front of the screen.
From outside the room, Anais could hear cheering and whooping. This was very worrying, given she knew what had happened to them earlier on - everybody did by this point. Usually this kind of incident lasted at least half a week before they got back to normal before the next episode (in their lives).
She knocked tentatively on the door and walked in, only to immediately stop in her tracks. Her brothers' arms were flailing wildly and in pure joy as if they had been gifted their freedom from a life in chains, their day's troubles so quickly forgotten.
"You know you guys have detention tomorrow for skipping out on school for half the day, right?" she reminded them.
"That doesn't matter," Gumball said excitedly, eyes not deviating from the screen. "Teasers for the new episodes of Sun Vs the Porsches of Evil have been leaked!"
Anais covered her ears as best as possible as Darwin squealed in joy. She recognised the characters in the TV show from one of her brothers' favourite popular cartoons, Sun Vs for short. The show saw the titular character and magical princess Sun defend her automobile empire from an evil legion of enemy car dealers. She battled together with her best friend, mechanic, and eventually boyfriend, Timmy. It was surprisingly decent, if a little heavy on cheesy driving puns.
Darwin pointed frenetically towards the screen as a particular scene played out. It was, from what Anais could tell, meant to be a romantic moment between Sun and her boyfriend, wherein she delicately wiped motor oil from the battered boy's forehead. "Oh, man. TimmSun is still canon! I still ship Sun with that French guy, Renaút, so hard!"
"Pf, no way," Gumball snorted. "My money is still on her getting together with David Watters. WatterSun for life!"
"What? They've never even interacted on screen!"
"Well I think they'd be cute together anyway."
Anais's head began to seriously hurt. This conversation was difficult to follow, what with the lack of self-awareness her older brothers were demonstrating. Honestly, she was going to get brain damage from the stupidity one day. "Guys!" she shouted, interrupting their revelry. "Isn't it hypocritical to ship her with other people when she already has a boyfriend?"
Gumball chortled, his smile widening into the smug grin that came for savouring the moment when he could correct his little genius sister about the workings of the world.
"You see, Anais, if the characters are fictional, does the shipping really matter?"
If you liked this and like Phineas and Ferb, try my other stuff. Until next time!