Isabella
The whole car was silent, its inhabitants staring uncomprehendingly at the flaming spectacle before them. Eventually, Phineas turned in his seat and started backing the car down the road.
"Probably best if we aren't spotted," he explained.
As they pulled back along the rutted dirt road, the hills began to obscure their view of the fire and government vehicles, until only the rising smoke was visible. Once they were sure to be out of view, Phineas backed the car into the foliage until only the front end was sticking out.
The air of the silence had changed- from a stunned and watchful awe into a more contemplative quiet, like a collective catching of breath. Baljeet was the first to break it, with "Well, that was informative."
"What do you mean?" Buford asked. "All I saw was a crater and some government people."
"Exactly!" Baljeet replied. "The crater and the trail left by whatever made it narrows down the field of candidates significantly. We know it must be something space-borne, since nothing else would have been able to go unnoticed. It's almost certainly not a weapons test, since nearly all space-based weapons platforms fire straight down, and so would not have left a linear trail like the one we saw. We know that it must be unexpected as well, since it wouldn't otherwise be met with such panic. And, of course, we know that it must be dangerous, since they have gone to such pains to keep even the local police away from the location."
Predictably, Buford disputed Baljeet, and the two began a heated debate. Everyone else in the car was quickly pulled in, and as Isabella began to tune them, a flash of light in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned, rolled down the window and stuck her head out the window for a better look.
After a moment of observation, Isabella reached down, picked up the offending object and pulled it into the car.
"Hey, guys!" she shouted, bringing the rest of the car back into silence. She held out the strange sample and asked "Any idea what this is?"
It looked like a piece of metal, maybe six inches square, its edges cut to exacting precision. One side bore a U.S. Air Force etching, but its most remarkable feature was what was missing- about a quarter of it. One corner of the panel seemed to have been simply eaten away, with bubbly scorch marks marking the edge of the missing region.
"I think it's some kind of aerospace alloy," she said as she passed it over. "And that looks like an acid burn in the corner, but I'm not sure."
Phineas looked it over, his brow beginning to furrow, then handed it backwards to Ferb.
"That's what it looks like to me," he agreed. "What do you think?"
Now it was Ferb's turn to turn the mystery metal over in his hands, a hint of trepidation creasing his normally sanguine British features. Eventually, he looked up and nodded his assent.
The car was silent as Ferb passed the sample to the other denizens of the backseat. Buford, surprisingly, didn't try to pull it away from Baljeet- like the rest of them, he seemed to be too busy staring at it.
"What kind of meteorite would have acid in it?" Phineas asked nobody in particular.
No one in the car seemed to have a good answer, until Ferb said "I think perhaps some fieldwork is in order."
"In pairs!" Isabella interjected. Then her face flushed and she quietly added "Because, you know, the buddy system."
The group split quickly. Phineas and Isabella went together, of course, as did Buford and Baljeet, leaving Ferb and Gretchen together. Phineas and Isabella had decided to head up to the crest of the hill, where Phineas would try to get a good look at the government agents below and Isabella would try to listen in on them on a military shortwave radio Ferb had had in his satchel.
Now Phineas was standing next to her, surveying the scene below with light-amplification goggles, while she sat behind a tree fiddling with the radio controls. The nearest people were probably the government agents near the bottom of the hill. They were more alone than Isabella could ever remember them being.
A voice in the back of her head whispered tell him. She pushed it away. They were doing important secrety things now- she would get a better chance if she waited. Mortal danger, or a convenient explosion to throw him on top of her.
She would have her chance. She just had to wait.
"Hey, Izzy," Phineas said, suddenly bringing her back to reality. "Could you look at something for me?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure," she replied. "You found something?"
"I'm not sure," he said. "Look at that van right next to the crater."
She stood as he passed her the binoculars, taking the opportunity to move a little closer to him.
The truck Phineas had pointed out looked both out of place and perfectly at home- at home because it was the most stereotypical unmarked government van Isabella had ever seen, and out of place because it was in the middle of the woods, surrounded by ATV's and jeeps- vehicles that could actually go off-road. She was hard-pressed to say exactly how it had gotten itself out here.
But then she noticed something far more unnerving: acid burns on the closed back doors, just like the one on the mystery metal she'd found.
Then the truck rocked to the side.
The movement was so slight that at first Isabella wasn't sure she'd seen it. She put down the binoculars, blinked once, and pulled them back up.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then something inside the truck slammed itself against the side, so hard that she could hear the impact from who knew how far away. One side of the truck lifted off the ground and hung there for a moment before it came down with a crash.
"Oh, geez, what was that?" Phineas asked, but she barely heard him.
Whatever it was in the truck tried the other side. There was another pair of crashing noises as the side of the truck lifted off of and fell back to the ground.
Now she heard panicked shouts. She let the binoculars fall again and saw what looked like every military or government person on the hill running towards the truck.
One of them, a soldier in full combat fatigues, opened the back door a hair, stuck in the barrel of an assault rifle, and fired a burst into the truck. A fraction of a second after he slammed the door shut again, the thing in the truck smashed itself against it. The soldier shouted something indistinct, and two more people with rifles opened the truck's front doors and fired through them.
After that, the truck gave one more weak shake, and then seemed to stop. Now others started running up to the truck, scientist-looking people in lab coats. One of the soldiers started yelling at them, and one of the scientists started yelling back.
As the recriminations below grew heated, Phineas turned to Isabella, his face pale.
"What the hell was that?" he whispered.
Isabella shook her head, feeling as shell-shocked as Phineas looked.
"I don't know," she replied. "I feel like I'm in a bad 50's sci-fi movie, except I don't have a car."
Phineas chuckled.
"I guess that makes us the couple who find the space-monster," he said, his tone artificially nonchalant. Then he shivered and sat down, holding himself in a fetal position.
Take the initiative, Isabella heard Gretchen's voice saying. There was only a moment of indecision on her part before she sat down beside him and put her arms around him. She felt a bit of her own fear melt away at the touch, and she held him closer.
Phineas froze. For a moment, he seemed as unsure as she was.
Then he hugged her back and pulled her even closer.
She could feel him shaking against her at first. But as she held him tighter, she felt him growing still, until the only motion was the steady in-out of their breathing, like his fear was melting away with hers.
Phineas's arms were like a cocoon around her. As she felt the warmth flowing into her, she briefly felt like just staying in them forever.
But then she heard the little Gretchen-voice of reason again, and she realized that the it was right.
She pulled a little bit away from Phineas, keeping her arms wrapped around him. She took a final deep breath. She opened her mouth-
And then her world was shattered by a sudden, distinctly British scream.
Ferb
A few moments earlier
The forest was dark, but Ferb didn't like using light-amplification goggles. He liked to be able to see colors besides green.
His flashlight traced a dim circle of light across the forest floor. Fallen leaves and twigs crunched beneath his feet, and somewhere behind him he could hear Gretchen tromping along as well.
From somewhere over the crest of the hill he could hear shouted conversation and running engines. He tuned it out. Watching the government agents was Phineas and Isabella's job. He and Gretchen were supposed to be looking for physical evidence of whatever had happened- more things like the acid-burned metal Isabella had discovered. He idly wondered how Phineas and Isabella were doing, but his thoughts wandered there for barely a moment before they were drawn back to the forest.
A branch, still green and leafy, lay on the ground at his feet. At the break, where there should have been splintered wood, the branch almost seemed to have melted.
His gaze took a slow circle around the fallen branch. To the left of it was a trail of what looked like wet mulch, leading to what looked like the edge of the treeline. He followed it, coming out in a roughly circular clearing. The trail ended close to the other side of the clearing.
He followed the trail to the end and trained his flashlight on the object. In the shaking light, it almost seemed to be quivering- had he scared more easily, he might have almost thought it was moving.
It looked like a tiny lump of red jello, with a thin covering of dirt and leaves from the forest floor. What little of its natural color that wasn't obscured was opaque, like clouded glass, and seemed almost to pulse faintly.
At that moment, Ferb's curiosity overcame his better judgement. He picked up a nearby stick and stuck it into the little red blob.
Its consistency seemed to match its appearance- that of jello. The stick went in with a slight sucking noise, and when Ferb tried to pull it out again the mysterious object just came with it. He scowled minutely, held the stick upright and gave a good shake.
The lump held on stubbornly, then began to slide down the stick once the motion had stopped. Before Ferb could drop it, it slid down to his fingers, then sucked itself over the rest of his hand.
Then the burning started.
If you're still reading this, you should be like these awesome people and review!
Web2theweb1: I actually already have a bunch of beta readers. But thanks for the offer!
Yarthayaj'knaushtavdhladleklwa: Because the metric system is WAY better than Imperial.
Sleeping Kangaroo: Thanks! And also thanks for the edits.
asdf: I actually just picked the Camaro because I thought it was a neat car- I really don't read as much fanfiction as I would like, and I actually haven't read any of the PnF Industries stories.