ATTENTION NEWCOMERS: Although it is not really necessary to read my former P&F fanfic, there is vital fact you need to know. Ferb ends up keeping his memories from ATSD, but no one else does.
To all fans of my other fic, thank you so much for making it my most reviewed story to date! Sorry this took so long, but it took a while to come up with an idea that I liked. And now, without further ado, I present the long-awaited (at least I hope it was) sequel to Man of Action.
Disclaimer: Curse you, Dan and Swampy for not giving me the rights to Phineas and Ferb!
Having been rudely interrupted from a good night's sleep, Ferb reluctantly cracked open his eyes. He looked to the right; the clock read 3:16 AM. He looked to the left; his brother Phineas slept peacefully on.
It wasn't until he looked down that he found the culprit of his fitful rest. Their platypus, Perry, was no longer reclining at his side.
The two boys and the pet followed a very exact sleep schedule each night. For the sake of fairness, Perry would begin in Phineas' bed and move to Ferb's at precisely the middle of the night. They've been doing this so long that even in their sleep the slightest deviation would not go unnoticed. Such as tonight.
Careful so as not to wake his brother, Ferb slipped out of his covers and made his way downstairs. He had a hunch on where his pet might be.
After arriving in the kitchen, Ferb poured two glasses of milk and was even bold enough to swipe a few treats from the cookie jar. Then he began the game he always played with himself whenever he went to see Perry.
The boy strained his ears to the limit, trying to find the tiniest beeping noise imaginable. Once he detected it, he followed the sound back to the refrigerator, into one of the drawers, all the way to a single tangerine. Ferb held the fruit to his ear. Yep, the beeps were definitely coming from there. After peeling the tangerine, he paused for the briefest moment before taking a bite.
He tasted one layer of the sweet fruit, but beyond that his teeth began scraping against metal. Ferb pulled away and found a big red button right where his mouth had just been, and upon pushing it, the fruit door shot out to create just enough room for an eleven-year-old with a unnaturally large head to fit in.
Ferb stuffed the cookies in his pocket, and taking caution to not spill the milk he climbed into the drawer. The moment he did so, the drawer pulled back in, turned itself vertical inside the fridge, and began moving down as fast as lightning.
Each day Ferb played this game, and each day he found a new entrance. Sometimes it'll be in closets, under rocks, even down the shower drain. But by far the best was the very first one he had discovered.
He recalled how one day he had heard a faint noise coming from his pocket. How he took out Perry's collar tag and let it lead him towards a mirror hanging above the couch. How he uncovered it to reveal a hole that sucked him into some sort of secret lair. How the computer there instructed him to insert the tag into a shaped key hole. How doing so unlocked all the pictures Perry had taken on that day. And how all the missing memories instantly rushed back to Ferb's head.
The drawer/elevator came to a halt in the very room Ferb had just been reminiscing about. He waited a moment to allow the milk, which had escaped during the descent, to return to its proper place. Oh, gravity. What a silly thing so seemingly necessary for reality, yet so simple to remove.
He was so busy inwardly chuckling to himself about Newton's foolish scientific laws that he nearly bumped into a bespectacled teen mopping the floor.
Nearly falling into the bucket of dirtied water, Carl straightened up with wide eyes aimed at the intruder, who in turn stared right back. After many tense minutes, the intern couldn't take it anymore.
"Okay, you win," he said in defeat. "I guess you've had plenty of practice to get good at a staring contest. So how have you been holding up, Ferb?"
Ferb and Perry had needed a third party to help keep their secret, particularly from Monogram, and with his knowledge on technology and the major's work schedule Carl had turned out to be the guy. The college student had readily agreed, excited to finally have one up on his no-nonsense boss.
Ferb gave a shrug in reply to the question, then offered his fairly recent friend a cookie.
"Oh, no thanks," Carl answered. "I'm allergic to glutton. And wheat. And raisins."
With a dejected sigh, he returned the mop and bucket to his cleaning cart. "Monogram's home in bed, so make yourself at home." He checked his watch. "Perry went on a late-night mission, but he should be back right about..."
Just then the door opened and the platypus himself front-flipped into the lair, his usual theme song playing in the background.
"...now. Perfect timing as always, Agent P." Carl began rolling the cart away. "See you guys tomorrow."
Once the intern had wheeled out of sight, Ferb turned his full attention onto his platypus. Perry's tail dragged along the floor as he sat beside Ferb and removed his hat. Now he was no longer an employee of a company, but just a regular, worn out pet.
Without a word (as usual), Ferb slid a glass of milk and a cookie to the platypus. As Perry munched quietly on his treat, Ferb waited patiently for him to tell of Doofenshmirtz's latest shenanigans.
But it wasn't until after licking the crumby remains of the cookie from his fingers and downing the last drop of milk that Perry at last pulled the hidden camera from his fedora and plugged it into the computer.
The screen went fuzzy momentarily, but soon on to show the leering face of a man with a hooked nose and a lab coat.
"Ah, Perry the Platypus," he addressed. "Your arrival was quite extraordinary. And by extraordinary I mean... oh, you know how it goes."
So Ferb leaned back and enjoyed his favorite program. As Perry sat trapped in a legwarmer- Ferb decided not to ask- Doofenshmirtz told his scarring back-story on how he was never permitted to wish on stars because his father believed he wouldn't amount to much either way ("Let's not debate on the accuracy of his prediction," Doofenshmirtz said quickly). Then he explained his plan to shoot down every star out of the sky in the entire Tri-state Area, in order to be the only one to have all his dreams come true. But before it can be put into action, Perry escapes from his trap and chaos ensues.
As he watches, Ferb began to pay less attention to the evil scientist being beaten to a pulp onscreen and more on the redhead fast asleep two stories above.
Even for someone who rarely spoke, keeping a secret this big had been near impossible to do. What made it especially hard was that up to this point, there had been no secrets between the two brothers. But now every time Phineas went "Hey, where's Perry?", Ferb could no longer answer honestly.
Phineas, being Phineas, always buys his lies without question. But this didn't make telling them any easier.
"Dad, what in the world are you doing at this hour?"
Perry and Doofenshmirtz paused in the midst of their battle as a teenager decked out in skull pajamas and a black bathrobe entered the picture.
There it was again. The flowers. The pink background. The corny music. All these things occur as soon as Ferb lays eyes on Vanessa Doofenshmirtz.
Maybe staying quiet about all this wasn't such a bad thing after all.
"Don't mind us, honey," Doofenshmirtz said as he attempted to twist the secret agent's arm around his back. "Perry the Platypus and I are just having a... minor disagreement."
Vanessa rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and I'm just mildly peeved at getting woken up at 2:30 in the morning. Just keep it down, okay?"
The moment the girl turned and closed the door behind her, the two nemeses picked up right where they left off. After quite a bit more roughing around, Perry ended up escaping on his hang glider as the Shootstarsoutofthesky-inator blows up and Doofenshmirtz cries "Curse you, Perry the Platypus!"
At the video's conclusion, Ferb disconnected the camera and silently handed it back to the platypus. On most days the two have a "conversation" about the events of the mission, but there really wasn't much to say. Just your average day in the life of Perry.
The semi-aquatic mammal seemed to have been cheered by the midnight snack, but the way he was rubbing his eyes told Ferb that what he needed most now was some some sleep. They began the long trek to the elevator, but the drowsy Perry began teetering so dangerously that Ferb ended up simply picking his pet up and walking him the rest of the way.
By the time they made it to their bedroom, the platypus was just about asleep. He gently placed Perry onto his bed, and moving around to the other side slung an arm around him, as he always did in bed.
But his eyes still remained wide open, staring at Phineas as he continued to doze without a trouble in the world.
It killed him to not be able to tell, but it was for the best. He knew Phineas would rather be kept in the dark than risk losing their beloved Perry.
But when Ferb's gaze drifted to the aforementioned pet, it suddenly occurred to him that he wouldn't be an agent forever. He had already been in the business for nearly five years, and on account of the platypus' limited lifespan it would only be a matter of time before he retired. Maybe then, when Doofenshmirtz was no longer a threat, when they were no longer bound by the obligations of the OWCA, it would be safe for Phineas to know the truth.
But for now, Ferb would have to settle for this.
"Perry's a secret agent, Phin," the Man of Few Words whispered. "You can't know right now, but someday you will. Then the three of us will have adventures bigger than you've ever dreamed of."
A light snore was the only reply he received from his brother, but that was all he needed. Ferb settled himself back in bed and proceeded to join Phineas and Perry in the land of dreams, the one place at the moment where they could all truly be together.