-Chapter One-
Never Trust the Brochure!
As soon as Ferb was on the other side of the gates, he went on his way to the school. Once he was halfway through, Ferb abruptly stopped and looked at his watch. 8:24, it read, which meant he came about ten minutes earlier than the expected arrival time which Lawrence had set. He decided to use this time to take in his surroundings and do some looking around.
From what he could tell, there were three buildings in the area: one which he presumed was the main building, another directly behind it that he assumed to be the dormitory, and the last building quite far away from the dormitory and the school which, to Ferb, looked fairly suspicious. And by fairly, he meant highly.
The walls of the suspicious building were concrete, and it appeared to have been around for many decades. The walls had cracks, the red paint was starting to peel away at the doors, and the window sills were no longer fully intact. But when he looked closely, Ferb noticed that one window at the corner of the building had absolutely nothing. No glass, no frame, just a rectangular hole.
The other windows weren't in much better shape, either. They were all made of a rusty metal under a thin layer of white paint. Only a few parts of the paint remained, showing much of the unattractive rust.
Ferb started wondering why one of the "best schools in the state" would have such a poorly-conditioned building.
Unlike the suspicious building off to the side, the dormitory and main school building both looked spectacularly spotless. The walls were made of sturdy bricks of a dark beige hue, and the windows near the roofs were large, arched ones that resembled those of a castle or a cathedral.
In front of the main building was a detailed stone porch, and the marble path back to the gates. Another path crossed over it, making a cross.
The path to the left of the main walkway went straight to the dormitory. The path to the right of the main trail led straight to the suspicious building.
"Well, I guess I should get going. Wouldn't want to be late for the first day." He started walking again.
When Ferb went through those front doors, the first thing he noticed was the sudden change in volume. Outside, you could only hear the wind blowing through the trees and the birds chirping. Inside, you could hear only the sounds of students laughing, talking and yelling. A majority of the people there were probably at least in their second years here, judging by the school uniforms they had on.
The Danville Hall Academy uniform consisted of a navy blue blazer, a light blue button-down shirt, a black tie, a carnelian sweater vest, and depending on what your gender was, a pair of black pants for boys and a black skirt that went just above the knee for girls.
Most of the students were scattered about in the hall Ferb was in, talking amongst themselves as he walked past them. But then, while he was walking, Ferb suddenly felt a strange sense that someone was watching him from behind.
He quickly turned his head to see that he was right; a uniformed girl with dark hair who looked slightly younger than him had her eyes briefly meet with his, causing her to immediately turn her head back to her group of friends, looking downwards and blushing of embarrassment. Ferb raised an eyebrow and turned his head back. "First day of school and I already have an admirer. A rather cute one, I'd say. Impressive, Ferb." He grinned at that thought as he walked away.
"Ooh, crushing on someone already, Isabella?"
Isabella lifted her head up to her teasing blonde friend, Katie, and replied in a surprised tone, "W-what? No! I just... It-" Little did she know that her face was even redder than before, which must have been why all of her friends started giggling, much to her discomfort. "It's just... that I can't help but remember..." The girls, one by one, put on genuinely serious faces to listen to what Isabella had to say. "That all the new comers; even that guy with the green hair, really don't know at all of what's coming for them... and what might happen to them! Doesn't knowing that fact scare you guys at all...?"
In the meantime, Ferb was confused about what to do, now that he was inside. He started looking around for a while, until his eyes wandered over to a banner that read, "WELCOME NEWCOMERS!" in thick, blue paint. Under the banner was a table with two young adults at the chairs: one boy who had neat, blond hair and one girl with long, orange hair that curved outwards around the ends.
Ferb walked over to the table and noticed that the blond boy was holding a clipboard. On the clipboard were a bundle of papers with lists of names of people he didn't recognize. Ferb presumed that they were just the names of new students like him.
"Hey there, new student! I'm Jeremy! Don't think we've seen you before! What's your name?" asked the boy with the clipboard.
"Ferb. Ferb Fletcher."
"Alright, now how do you spell that, Ferb?"
"F-E-R... It's right there," Ferb replied, pointing at a name on the list.
"Ah. There you are!" Jeremy took his blue pen off of his ear and quickly put a check mark beside Ferb's name. "Now that your name's been checked, feel free to look around until Candace here..." he stopped and pointed at the redhead sitting beside him. "Says to go to the auditorium which is right behind us." Ferb looked over Jeremy's shoulder at a double-door with a plate reading, "Auditorium".
He nodded at Jeremy and started walking in the opposite direction. "Now, what should I do? I could try and find that girl from before and... no, that would be rather awkward... Well, I guess I could just walk around and do nothing until Candace calls all of us over." So he did just that. That was, until-
"WAH!"
THUD!
Ferb felt a strong pain in his skull and found himself lying on the ground. He steadily got up and saw another boy on the ground picking up a 'Wet Floor' sign and laughed nervously. "Ha ha... I guess I shoulda' seen that coming, huh?" the boy said to Ferb. Before he even knew it, the boy who slipped had already gotten up and was now standing in front of him. "Sorry 'bout that," he took his hand out, wanting to help Ferb up. Ferb took the offer and stood up with ease. "My name's Phineas! What's yours?" Phineas questioned as Ferb was tidying himself up.
"Ferb. Ferb Fletcher." He then noticed that like himself, Phineas wasn't in a uniform.
"Nice to meet you, Ferb!" They shook hands.
"You guys okay?" Phineas looked over Ferb's shoulder and Ferb turned his head to where the voice came from. His eyes widened a bit when, in fact, the voice belonged to none other than the girl who had been looking at him before.
Phineas responded first. "Yeah, we're okay! I'm new here, so I didn't know where to go, so I started running around and ended up slipping and bumped into Ferb, and... then you showed up, heh. My name's Phineas, by the way, and this is Ferb. What's yours?"
She hesitated a bit, but eventually answered, "Isabella Garcia-Shapiro. Nice to meet you, Phineas and Ferb!" Then, suddenly, she giggled. "Phineas and Ferb. I like the sound of that!"
"Yeah!" the redhead agreed completely. "Really rolls off the tongue, huh, Ferb?"
Ferb grunted and nodded his head in consent. "Indeed it does," he thought.
Unknown to Ferb and Isabella, Phineas was actually ten-times happier than then the two of them combined. He already had thoughts about how the three of them would live to be a happy trio of friends. "Like we could be partners in crime, even brothers! Maybe Isabella could join in too and together we could be-"
Before Phineas got to finish his thought, he was interrupted by the feedback coming from what sounded like a megaphone. "All newcomers, please head your way to the auditorium immediately to meet the headmaster, please. That's all newcomers to the auditorium. Thank you."
"I guess that's you guys. Bye, Ferb! Bye, Phineas!" Isabella waved at them as they left. They waved back, Phineas letting out a rushed "See ya!" as they did. Once they had disappeared within the crowd of many other newcomers, her facial expression changed from cheerful to worried. "Good luck, Phineas and Ferb... you're gonna need it."
In the auditorium, Phineas and Ferb took their seats in the middle row. As soon as everyone was seated, a man in a lab coat walked out from the red, velvet curtains and came up to the front of the stage. Some feedback came out of the microphone that was there, due to the man lightly tapping on the windscreen. A few students even started to cover their ears because of the repetitive noise.
"Testing, testing! Is this thing on?" The slouching man's voice was surprisingly very high-pitched. Ferb also noticed that he had a bit of a German-like accent. The man turned around to his right and a barely audible voice came from behind the curtain. "Oh, it is? Okay, then."
The entire auditorium went silent.
Then, absolutely out of nowhere, the lab coated man spread his arms out in the open air and shouted like he didn't even need his voice to be amplified in the first place. "HELLO, ALL NEW COMERS, AND WELCOME TO DANVILLE HALL ACADEMY! Or shall I say..."
He quickly pulled a remote of some sort out of one of his pocket and dramatically pushed the big red button on it. Almost in an instant, row by row, four mechanical arms sprouted out of everyone's chairs and tied themselves together with the people in their seats. This prevented them from moving basically anything but their heads and necks. Some people, including Phineas, were confused on what was going on. More were panicking. Ferb stayed silent.
The man in the lab coat started to finish his sentence. "YOUR PRISON! Norm, send in the agents!" By then, almost everybody started panicking.
DEUSH!
DEUSH!
DEUSH!
Much to everybody's surprise, and to Phineas's fascination, "Norm" was not a man, let alone a human. He was very much a robot. A ten-foot robot that would have otherwise just looked like an abnormally large man if it hadn't been for all the bolts and nails and whatnot. That, and the fact that his mouth would stay a toothy smile even as he talked.
"Your wish is my command, Dr. D!" Norm saluted him. His immediate response received a rather shocked reaction from the new-comers. All except Phineas and Ferb were screaming at the top of their lungs. A few even yelled out some very obvious statements.
"IT'S A ROBOT!"
"IT TALKS!"
"WE'RE STATING THE OBVIOUS!"
Seeming as though he didn't hear any of them, Norm took a remote-like object identical to the one Dr. D had out of his jacket pocket and pushed the red button. All of a sudden, countless domestic animals in fedoras burst out of every possible opening in the room and started picking up all the students' luggage, running away with it through the openings from whence they came.
"Hey, what are you think you're doing!" Phineas hollered out to the animal trying to pick up his suitcase. He was a bit angry and confused that a fedora-wearing platypus was stealing his luggage. The platypus stopped and glared at Phineas. It made an angry chattering sound and suddenly jumped up on Phineas's lap, its beak almost touching Phineas's nose. "O-okay! Fine! D-do whatever you w-want!" Content with the redhead's reaction, the platypus jumped off and took off with Phineas's things.
Meanwhile, Ferb watched the panda run away with his luggage and stuff his suitcase into the vent to take with it. He calmly turned his face forward to the cackling Dr. D. "This was definitely not in the brochure."
Once there was not a single fedora-wearing animal left in the room, Norm looked downwards to Dr. D. Dr. D looked back, nodding once at him. Norm, still holding the remote from before, pushed the button again and rather than hundreds of fedora-wearing animals coming into the room, this time, it was ominous purple smoke.
The smoke started to rapidly fill the room, and the last thing Ferb remembered about that event was that he suddenly felt very, very tired.
-End of Chapter One-
