I've always loved Groundhog Day fics (despite only recently watching a bit of the movie before getting bored and doing something else) and I've always wanted to write one. Somehow this idea came up.
Phineas blinked.
And blinked again.
No, he was still floating in a very strange place (he couldn't exactly describe it, it was rather like trying to explain the taste of the way the Mona Lisa sounds) and there was still an overweight rodent in front of him.
"Hello?" He asked experimentally, his voice ricocheting into fragments of lights which then took on the appearance of a tiny little set of silverware, with tiny little flowers painted on and everything. Phineas wasn't sure why a tea party set for crickets was needed, but nonetheless he was happy that he had provided it should the situation ever arise.
"Hello." The rodent replied, tasting morose. Or at least the word certainly did. Phineas laughed nervously, and somewhere in the distance but also within centimeters of his face tiny little silver bells were rung noiselessly, a cymbal banged, noisily, and several crows cackled, noiselessly. This last thing might have been something to worry about, as the birds were very large and sitting, stacked, on Phineas's head, and they did not appear happy about this or their lack of voices, but luckily they vanished a few instants later. Or maybe a few millennium. Time seemed a bit fuzzy and hard to straighten out all of a sudden. Perhaps once they got space roped up into something approaching a below par quadrupegion time would begin to reluctantly untie its knots and start merely curving into impossible shapes, starting time loops, and crossing timelines.
He tried again, hoping it would go better the second time. "What's wrong?" A red and white bear starting chewing on his (that is, the bear's, not Phineas's or the rodent's, though we can see where the confusion might arise from) shoe and then, without any explanation at all, comically exploded, leaving Phineas comically charred. He was rather used to both the lack of explanation and the comical explosions that left him comically charred, so he paid the odd phenomena little thought.
"You are!" The thing screamed. Strangely enough, nothing happened. Phineas theorized that maybe if you were really loud, weird things didn't happen when you talked.
"Huh? I am?" He screamed at the top of his lungs. One of which, he could now see clearly, as he had happened to look down through his chest, had just popped like a balloon stuck with a sharp pin. He appeared to managing quite well without it, however, so Phineas didn't worry too much about it. Apparently screaming didn't help.
"Yes! See, I was trying to – well, uh, there's this old show called Groundhog's Day and – "
At this point Phineas surmised the creature he was talking to was a groundhog. He was, in the most loosest form of the word, technically kind of correct. It was a groundhog at this moment. Sort of. A little bit.
Let's just go back to trying to talk about how the taste of the way the Mona Lisa sounds, shall we? It would be much easier than attempting to explain the thing that was kind of sort of maybe but just because (s)he was on holiday a groundhog. It was a minor godlet who often got bored. Her (we shall be using feminine pronouns because... well, why not? Good a reason as any, though perhaps a bit careworn.) current favorite game was Groundhog's Day.
Time Travel was also in this twist (for the fabric of time gets so knotted the god(esses)(lets) simply call it whatever they feel like it was, and twist was appropriate often enough that most god(esses)(lets) used it even when it wasn't appropriate.) and technically Groundhog's day was a mere offshoot of Time Travel, but a very popular one. Even humans occasionally mucked about with the idea!
The godlet continued. "See, it's this game where you put your favorite char – I mean, randomly picked people from totally random worlds and they, uh, kind of live that day a bunch." The groundhog-shaped godlet giggled, which ended up being a weird snorty growl thing that then sprouted a miniature express train, complete with live people screaming their heads off. There seemed to be a lot of that recently. "Only problem is the groundhog body; you have to use one while the day loops." She said, wrinkled her nose, "But it'll do. Anyway, they're supposed to relive the day, even if they die and stuff, until they live the day to it's fullest! Like, fill it to the very tip top, the peak, the pinnacle! The soaring, lofty goal which we all strive towards, all long to one day – "
"Excuse me, but what does this all have to do with me?" Phineas interrupted. Politely. He was generally a polite boy, except for when he was clueless about the rules he was breaking, which was often.
The groundhog/godlet – Groundlet? Godhog? …yes, the first one would do. The groundlet burst into tears. Phineas bobbed leisurely on the waves, just barely held afloat by the Statue of Liberty.
"Yes?" He prompted, creating an earthquake by getting a few rocks to roll. The electrified start was exciting, when the rocks fell straight through him was another thing entirely, but after that they simply hit rock bottom.
"You! You already live every day to its fullest, so you escaped on the first day, so I don't get to have any fuuuuun." At this the groundlet burst into renewed tears. Phineas noted idly that some groundhogs could cry quite a lot.
Phineas was not what you might call the most sensitive person in the world. In fact he was one of the least sensitive and most oblivious boys on the planet, but occasionally miracles do happen and this was one of those occasions. The frown literally slipping off the face holding it might have helped.
"Wait!" He said, grinned hopefully with teeth turned into precious jewels and stones. "I didn't – uhm – "
Phineas frantically went over the big list of things he hadn't done yet that he wanted to do. He'd been so busy during this entire – twist? That sounded right for some reason – that he hadn't had a chance to think of a thing more to add to the seven thousand three hundred and eighty nine things already on the list; he'd have to work extra hard later.
"Yesterday I didn't drink warm milk to lull me asleep! How can I have lived the day to its fullest without doing that!"
Phineas smiled at the groundlet, precious teeth mysteriously vanished. In fact, he now appeared to be standing in a plain white room.
"What happened?" He asked, and suddenly realized that the low drumming hum he had been hearing was actually someone talking too fast to be heard.
"Oh yes of course how did I miss that I'm so stupid obviously – I mean, are you sure? Couldn't you just do that tomorrow?" The groundlet's voice was hopeful but uncertain.
"Well – I mean, no, of course not! This absolutely has to get done today!" Phineas declared.
"Well, alright. If you insist!" As bunnies sprang into existence, Phineas dwindled into nothingness. Compared to the last twist or so, it was a rather pleasant experience.
~-!-~
Phineas woke up two minutes before the alarm clock, as opposed to his usual one. "Ferb! Ferb! Guess what!" He yelled, bounding over to his no longer sleeping brother. "Apparently I'm living the same day over and over! Oh, this is so cool! Summar can last forever and I can do something different every day and know exactly what everyone else is going to do and – this is so awesome!"
Ferb blinked.
Phineas continued. "But... if I do something different than you and all our friends will miss out on all but one day. That wouldn't be fair at all! But it wouldn't be fun for me to do the same things over and over again! We already did the rollercoaster twice, I would get bored! But if I break the loops, the groundhog thing will be so disappointed – well, maybe just one day? Or maybe I could get you guys into the loop too, so none of us missed anything or got bored! But how would I do that?"
Ferb shrugged, taking the news perfectly in stride. It wasn't as if this sort of thing didn't happen all the time. Most of the time they caused it, true, but you got used to your life making no sense eventually.
"Maybe we could build a memory machine so you guys could remember! We could try it! But what if you guys don't have the memories at all? I could give you my memories somehow! But they would be from my perspective, it wouldn't be the same as actually living the days. Oh, Ferb, I just don't know what to do!"
Ferb shrugged once again. Phineas was the idea guy; Ferb just built things. He was sure Phineas would figure something out eventually.
"Ooh, Ferb! Guess what! I know what everyone else is going to do today!" Phineas giggled.
Ferb got as close as he ever did to smiling.
~-!-~
Phineas tried a few things – that day, they built a memory restorer, and he shared his memory of the previous today, in which there had been a rampaging cookie monster. They then had fun sharing dreams right up until they got stuck in one of Candace's involving Jeremy. Quite a bit of Jeremy. And, for some reason, a talking zebra who addressed them. It really was strange how often they ended up stranded in some part of Candace. Ferb also made a few modifications and tried to bring back his own memory of the previous today, but the machine failed for the first time, well, ever.
The next today, he tried to do exactly the same thing, just to see what would happen. He was terminally bored and vowed never to do that again.
He spent the next today entirely in solemn prayer, asking that his best friends and brother be included in this looping day. This resulted in perhaps more terminal boredom than the previous today and it didn't work, so he decided not to try again.
The next, he did something completely different without telling anyone, and afterward felt horrible that his friends hadn't gotten to experience all the days he had. He considered testing his luck, perhaps doing something completely out of character just for the fun of it, but decided not to. What if the loop somehow ended just then, and he was stuck with whatever happened? And even if it didn't, if he did something bad he would know he'd done something bad and that would be bad.
After that, he decided that he had had enough and while this was fun and all, he'd lived the same day almost a week and that had to be enough, right? You could do tons of things in a week! He simply lived, that day, and just before bed he drank a glass of warm milk. When he woke up, it was tomorrow. Phineas smiled happily and told Ferb all about the amazing day he'd had.