Supernova: In the Hands of a Hero
Chapter 1: Stepbrothers Reunited At Last
As everyone knows, there is no sound in space.
To Phineas, a crew member aboard the rebel ship Freedom, that was a rather sobering thought.
Although, to call the little hunk of metal drifting through space a 'ship' was a bit of an overstatement. The self-sustaining piece of space junk barely had enough basic functions to keep from simply disappearing all together.
The life support took almost all the power, and besides the self-cleaning feature (which had come built in), what little other functions it had weren't guaranteed to work. The intercom system would short out if used for more than five minutes, the semi-operative food replicator would sometimes spurt out inedible goo, and the glitchy elevator more often than not would return passengers to the previous floor rather than the one selected.
The control room wasn't in the best condition either, but with the exception of the landing pad, it was the nicest place on board.
Phineas sat in the command chair, the only one awake, and barely at that, floating in between consciousnesses aimlessly, much like the ship itself.
There was a small enough crew that it only required one person to stay awake and keep watch, but of all the uninteresting jobs on board, this was the worst.
The most eventful thing that had ever happened on watch was when Isabella woke up the entire crew because they were headed for an asteroid that, had they collided with it, would have torn them apart.
At the moment, all was quiet. Well, relatively quiet, anyway.
The rockets, although on standby, still sputtered and coughed, the chair squeaked every time he moved so much as a finger, and the power depletion alarm kept sounding, the longer they drifted the louder it got as they lost more and more power.
Despite the minor hullabaloo occurring around him, however, it was the foreign whirring sound that startled him fully awake.
Blinking his eyes blearily, Phineas pressed a button on the top of the chair's arm. The big monitor blinked, flashed, and flickered on uneasily, almost as if it too had been asleep. The image was fuzzy, blurry, and full of static, the wires that hooked it up frayed and split.
Even in the distorted images, one thing was clear: there was an unscheduled docking occurring in the landing pad.
Sighing, grumbling almost, he got to his feet and shuffled over to where the elevator was. When the doors closed around him, he selected the button to take him down to the landing pad.
Unfortunately, as was its habit, he arrived not at the landing pad, but at the third deck, where his sleeping quarters were. Rolling his eyes, he pressed the button again, and this time arrived at his destination.
Phineas' sleepy eyes widened when he saw the small jumper that had landed. The sleek space cruiser style was unmistakable. Only a member of the elite fleet would man a vessel like that. Whoever was about to step out of that jumper was the enemy.
A relatively tall man stepped out of the vessel, and once he'd set foot on the landing pad room floor, he unlocked and pulled the helmet off his head.
Shocked, a single word escaped Phineas' lips. "Ferb?"
The two step-brothers hadn't seen each other in years.
When Ferb had chosen to join the elite fleet, Phineas had found the rebel forces and found that group home instead. So sides were chosen. Lines were drawn. Then lines were crossed. Eventually the lines were erased, and the piece of paper crumpled up and thrown away. Phineas never expected to see Ferb again. Ferb never expected to see Phineas again either. That was how it had been. This very moment changed everything, though.
"It's good to see that you're well, Phineas." The green-haired young man came up to stand beside him, smiling slightly.
"F-Ferb, what're you doing here? This isn't…a mission for the elite fleet, is it? You're not here to infiltrate us, are you?"
He shook his head. "I just wanted to see you. I've missed you, Phineas."
Phineas smiled back at him. "I've missed you too."
The doors to the elevator opened to reveal a rather sleepy Isabella. "Phineas," she mumbled, "what's going on?" When she stumbled over to where they stood, her eyes grew wide. She wasn't sleepy anymore. "Phineas, take him to the brig."
"But Isabella—!"
"I said take him to the brig, Phineas! Don't make me pull rank on you!"
"She's got a higher rank than you?" Ferb chuckled softly.
Phineas only sighed. "Don't remind me…"
"It's alright, Phineas." Ferb said with a sigh, knowing what was really bothering him.
"You can still come to see him periodically." Isabella told the redhead reassuringly. "It's not as if you'll be closed off from him completely. We're only doing this until we've decided what to do with him."
It was due to that reassurance that Phineas visited his step-brother more than twice a day.
When Ferb discovered how bad the ship's condition really was, he immediately got to work.
By pulling the panels out of the walls, he began to rewire the ship, section by section. This was why Phineas had the opportunity to ask Isabella, "Ferb needs a pair of paperclips and a ballpoint pen."
"Well," Isabella started, "I guess I don't see the harm in that. They can keep him busy until the Captain decides what to do with him."
She handed them to him and he smiled, thanking her as he called over his shoulder, "Thanks, Isabella. These'll come in handy when Ferb rewires the sublight engines."
"Oh, that's good. Wait. What—?!" She exclaimed, but he was already gone.