Phineas Flynn

London, England

June 12

Phineas walked down the steps still rubbing his eyes. He yawned. He had not slept well the previous night. He wasn't entirely sure why, as he didn't remember having any nightmares, and nothing had been bothering him the day before.

He'd come down the steps and was walking past the front door when the yawn froze dead in his mouth. He turned to the side to look at the boxes sitting by the door that someone must have brought in. He wasn't tired anymore.

"It's here!" he called, rushing forward towards the packages.

"Oh, hello Phineas." came a new voice from behind him. "Are those for you?"

Phineas turned with a smile. "Hey, Mr. Fletcher." he said. "Yeah, we're making a giant artificial winter in the park today!" he paused, realizing for the first time that he had never asked permission. "Is that okay?"

"Well, I suppose as long as you're careful." he said, rubbing his chin. "Ferb builds things all the time, so I'm more or less used to it at this point."

"Awesome! Uh…by the way, have you seen Ferb?"

"I think he's still in bed." said Mr. Fletcher. "He'll be up sooner or later. I'm going to make french toast." He walked off the kitchen.

Phineas sighed. "Waiting." he groaned. "Well, I guess I should tell Gretchen that we're doing S'Winter today."

But something else made him pause. "I…never got her phone number."

But he did know their teacher's numbers, since it was required everyone taking the trip knew them. So Phineas pulled out his phone and asked Mr. Hart via text message what address Gretchen was staying at, and that they wanted to invite her to something.

A couple minutes later he had the address.

When Mr. Fletcher was sprinkling powdered sugar on the second batch of french toast and Phineas had already eaten about four pieces, Ferb and Isabella both walked into the room, still yawning.

Phineas laughed. "Hey, sleepyheads! You get enough rest there?"

Isabella mumbled something incoherent.

Phineas gave an overdramatic, purposely drawn-out sigh. "Well then I guess S'Winter is put off for another day."

Ferb and Isabella both whirled towards him. "What?" Isabella asked in excitement.

Phineas pointed back towards the front door. "Parts arrived today."

Both seemed very awake now. "Awesome!" Isabella called. "Where are we gonna do it?"

"Probably Hyde Park." Ferb said, noticing the french toast and taking three pieces (Mr. Fletcher made really good french toast). "It's nearby, and certainly big enough."

"But is the capsule big enough to cover the whole park?" Phineas pointed out.

"I've got a spatial bender that I made a few years ago up in my room." said Ferb. "It can cheat the laws of physics a bit."

"We've got to let Gretchen know we're doing it today. I got the address of where she's staying from one of the teachers." Phineas said.

Isabella nodded, and then she noticed the french toast for the first time and reached out and took a couple pieces. When she'd put syrup on and taken a bite she turned to Mr. Fletcher. "These are really good." she said with a smile.

"Why, thank you." he replied. "They are my favorite thing to make."

"And my favorite thing to eat." Ferb said with a grin.

And with that said, the conversation dissolved into topics of what they were going to do for the day. Mr. Fletcher had work, so he wouldn't be joining them at the park, but he said he looked forward to hearing all about it.

And when he did leave for work, Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella all went into the other room to check and make sure they had all the parts they needed (they did), and then set off to where Gretchen was staying.

When they got there, Isabella went up and knocked on the door.

It was answered by Katie. Said person narrowed her eyes when she spotted the visitors. "What are you doing here?" she snapped.

"We're here to see Gretchen." Isabella said, almost smugly.

"Well, I'm sure she doesn't want to see you." Katie replied.

"I got this, Katie." came Gretchen's voice. Katie rolled her eyes and disappeared inside, and Gretchen came out and shut the door behind her.

"You guys doing it today?" she asked.

Phineas nodded. "Hyde Park, ASAP."

"I'll be there." she was about to go inside when she paused. "Oh, here." She handed her phone to Isabella. "Put your number in. That way you can avoid future run-ins with Katie."

"Thanks." Isabella said, doing just that. "See you later."

When the door closed, Phineas turned to Ferb. "What's up, Ferbmister?"

Ferb rolled his eyes at the nickname, but then turned his curious gaze back to the house. "Just trying to figure her out." he mused.

"Yeah, I don't know what her deal is all of a sudden." Isabella said. "She's never been this friendly with us before, but then again, she's never really insulted us either."

"She's a lukewarm person." Phineas said with a shrug. "Maybe it's the whole fact that we're across the ocean and there's not as much of a reputation to maintain."

"Reputation?" Isabella asked. "What reputation?"

Phineas shrugged. "I dunno. Everyone's got a reputation, don't they?" He gestured between the three of them, pointing at himself, then Izzy, then Ferb. "Screw-up, Weirdo, Freak. That's not who we are, it's just who everyone thinks we are. Maybe the difference between us and Gretchen is we don't bother to keep up our reputations."

Isabella blinked, and then smiled. "That's pretty insightful for a screw-up."

"Hey, I just said I'm not my reputation."

Isabella laughed as the three of them walked away.

Gretchen arrived in the middle of the building of the capsule. And she seemed pretty eager to help, as she immediately asked what she could do.

Ferb gave her a part of the capsule no one was currently working on, and everyone went back to their own section, with Ferb checking the sections over when everyone finished and Phineas pointing out where they needed to set things up to get the best sledding hill areas and snowball fight areas.

When the whole capsule was set up, Ferb turned on the spacial bender, and although there was no visible change in any form of the word, the capsule now covered the entire park.

Gretchen grabbed her forehead. "I think my brain just broke."

"It can take a while to get used to spacial benders." Ferb admitted.

"Alright!" Phineas called, noticing people in the park starting to realize something new was happening. "Let's hand out some winter gear!"

Ferb whipped up a quick megaphone with which Phineas let everyone know what was happening, and then everyone (although they looked disbelieving) walked forward and grabbed some winter supplies. He supposed they figured that since there was now a giant capsule over the park that something must have been going on.

"You guys ready?" Phineas asked, holding a large, 4-person sled under his arm. He was standing near the snow-cone-machine-turned-snow-machine.

"Let's do it!" called Isabella, grinning.

"Do it soon." Gretchen complained, although she was still smiling. "I'm going to get heat stroke in this coat."

Ferb gave him a thumbs up.

Phineas turned and flipped the machine on, and it began to rumble. He stepped back in surprise. "Uh, is it supposed to do that?" he asked Ferb nervously. Usually, when his machines rumbled, it wasn't a good sign.

But Ferb just grinned. "Yep."

Then, as they watched, the machine shot out an enormous artificial snowball into the sky. People screamed. It hit the top of the capsule with a satisfying thwack and then spilled out everywhere.

When Phineas looked around again, snow was covering the ground. His nose was already red from cold, and he could see his breath. There were frozen over lakes for ice skating, large flat areas for cross-country skiing, and even some artificial sledding hills. Phineas grinned, turning on the megaphone one more time and announced:

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to S'Winter!"

Ferb Fletcher

June 12

Hyde Park, London

After their twelfth sled down the hill, Ferb announced he was going to go try some cross country skiing, and that Gretchen was coming.

"What? Why am I coming?" Gretchen asked.

"Because you are." Ferb said, and after they were out of shot, he elaborated: "And I think the two of them want some time alone."

"Oh." said Gretchen. "Okay, yeah."

When they got there and while they were putting on skis, Ferb turned to Gretchen again. "So, what's your deal, anyway?"

"What do you mean?" Gretchen asked, just before she fell over onto her butt. She groaned. "Sorry. I've never really gone skiing before."

"It's not that hard. I can teach you." Ferb said. "And I mean the way you act towards Phineas and Isabella. You act like you want to be friends with them, but you're also embarrassed to be seen with them."

Gretchen sighed. "I'm…I'm not okay with how everyone treats them. It goes directly against Fireside Girl policies to judge someone before you get to know them. I-I know it sounds like a first grader wrote that rule, but I still stand by it. Besides, the two have them have done some pretty amazing things, and…I kinda want in."

"But…" Ferb probed.

Gretchen sighed. "But the Fireside Girls are my friends. I don't really have any other ones. Pretty much everyone else in the school likes me, sure, but more in a 'fan' sense or a casual sense. I just…I don't know if I could deal with everyone in school hating me because I'm friends with them."

Ferb said nothing for minute. Finally, he simply said: "Hmm" quietly.

"You think that's despicable." Gretchen groaned.

"I don't." Ferb assured her. "Honest. I've just had people like that in my life before."

"People like me?" Gretchen asked in surprise.

Ferb gave her a pitying look. "Half-friends."

Gretchen looked down.

"Well." Ferb cleared his throat, bringing the conversation to an end. "Come on then. Let me teach you how to ski."

They did so for the next half hour. Gretchen surprisingly got very good very quickly, and by the time Phineas and Isabella came to find them, she was almost better than Ferb himself.

"Aw, man!" she called. "Is downhill skiing this easy?"

"Depends." Ferb said with a shrug. "It's different."

"Hey, there you guys are!" came Phineas' voice. Gretchen and Ferb both turned to see him and Isabella approaching, both wearing and carrying sets of ice skates. "We were gonna go skating. "You guys wanna come?"

"Sure." Ferb said. "Are those for us?"

"We kinda had to guess your size since the skates were already almost gone." said Isabella. "Gretchen, I got you a five." she handed them to her. "And Ferb, Phineas got you a 6.5."

"I just kinda grabbed the biggest ones they had." Phineas said. "I figured since, you know, you're so tall…"

"Yeah, that works." Ferb said, taking the skates from Phineas.

The four of them found a frozen over lake and remained there for quite a while. Ferb had lost track of how much time had passed since the start of S'Winter, but when he glanced up and saw the sun had begun to set and it was well on it's way to being nighttime, he brought up taking S'Winter down soon, and Phineas, though he looked disappointed, agreed.

Phineas took out the megaphone and let everyone know they would be taking S'Winter down because it was time to go home. There were some grumbles of complaint and sighs of disappointment, but mostly it was happy smiles and thanks for a fantastic day.

Ferb was deactivating the machine when someone pulled on his coat. He turned around to see a little girl beaming at him. "Thank you for S'Winter, Mister. You're amazing!"

Ferb chuckled. "You're welcome." he said. The girl's mother came forward and also thanked him, saying they'd had a lot of fun and hoped they were going to do other things like this during the summer. The little girl waved as the two of them walked off. "Bye, Mr. Amazing Builder Person!"

Ferb didn't stop smiling for a while after that.

After the three of them said goodbye to Gretchen they headed back towards home, and more importantly, supper-they had missed lunch.

Such a fact did not sit well with Phineas, since he had found out that dinner (or lunch, whatever you called it) was the "big" meal in England.

"Oh, for pete's sake, Phin!" Isabella finally burst out. "You're going to give me a headache! If you're that hungry just eat something extra when we get there!"

Phineas grumbled something.

"What did you say?" Ferb asked.

"Nothing, that was my stomach!" Phineas exclaimed. "See?!"

Isabella groaned, and Ferb chuckled.

However, when they got back Phineas seemed to almost forget about his hunger, as there was instead a long explanation on what the three of them had done that day, with Phineas, Isabella, and Ferb all telling equal parts of the story.

But suddenly, Phineas stopped talking entirely. It took a couple minutes to notice, but when Ferb did glance over he saw Phineas' tell-tale look that meant his gears were spinning at top speed. So Ferb simply went back to supper and let him be.

Then Phineas turned to Ferb. "Hey, when's the summer solstice?"

Ferb blinked in surprise. "June 21. Why?"

"Be right back." Phineas hopped up and left the table, leaving everyone else there.

"And he's off." Ferb said with a farewell nod towards Phineas' retreating outline.

"Does that happen often?" Ferb's father asked.

"Oh, yeah, all the time." Isabella said. "Hey-you know, I actually am really hungry. Is there some way I could get seconds?"

After supper they found Phineas sitting on the couch scribbling away madly in his sketchbook.

"Phin?" Isabella asked in confusion. "What are you doing?"

Phineas glanced up and saw them, then grinned. "Check it out!" he called happily, turning his sketchbook to face them. On the newest page was a design called the 'Sun-Beater 3000.'

"Is that an airplane?" Isabella asked.

"Yeah." Phineas said with an excited nod. "Designed to go around the whole world in one day-um, June 21-and make the summer solstice even longer!"

"Hey, that's a really good idea." Ferb said walking forward to pick up the sketchbook. "If you add the extra 24 hours you would get following the sun to the 15 you would've had originally, that's a 39 hour day."

"Yeah!" Phineas said excitedly, for this seemed to have been exactly what he was thinking. "And we would end up right back in London at the end of the 39 hours, so we wouldn't have to worry about finding our way back."

"Well that sounds fantastic. Let's do it." Ferb said happily.

Phineas blinked. "Huh?"

"Let's do it." Ferb repeated.

"Oh, um…" Phineas hesitated. "I wasn't actually intending to do it. It was just an idea. Too many things could go wrong on this for my taste."

"Oh, come on, you can't draw up something like that just to let it sit in a sketchbook." Ferb exclaimed. "We could do it. The solstice is coming up, right? In a week and a half or so. Let's build this thing."

Phineas still looked unsure. "I don't know…"

It was Isabella who came up with the real solution. "What about we give it a test run? Like, we could build in an autopilot or something, and send it on a shorter route without any passengers."

"Sandbags." Phineas interrupted at a blink-and-you'll-miss-it pace.

Ferb gave him a look that was part surprise, part confusion.

But Isabella just picked up right where she'd left off. "Right. Sandbags. And then if it makes it okay, we'd be all good."

Phineas considered this for a second, and then grinned. "Yeah, okay. Let's do it." he said. "But I have to warn you, if there are problems with the test we'll have to put it off for another day."

"Naturally." Ferb said, starting to smile himself. "So we're all in?"

"All in!" Isabella called, putting her hand in the space in the middle of the three of them.

Ferb and Phineas both shared a simultaneous roll-of-the-eyes and put their hands in as well. They all threw their hands into the air, and just like that it was settled.