Phineas Flynn

London, England

June 15

The parts had gotten there that morning. Unfortunately, they also had another "community service" thing that day. They were supposed to have one every couple weeks, so it had been expected, but it was still annoying.

They had managed to gather up all the parts they would need to build the plane and shrink them, then put them in a bag. The plan was to build and test the plane during lunch.

This could only end well.

It wasn't that Phineas wasn't excited to do this, it sounded like a lot of fun. But it had been a really long time since he'd invented in front of anyone but Izzy. Well, there were Ferb and Gretchen, but he had done it with them, and that was a little different.

When they got there, everyone else was already painting the wall of a building, which everyone was doing with varying levels of vandalism.

After explaining why they were a little late, they set the bag of shrunken parts off to the side for later.

Then they each grabbed a paint smock and brush and moved over to paint the wall.

The morning passed pretty uneventfully, without even much talking. At least, there wasn't much talking between Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella. The Fireside Girls were all in one big group, most likely trying to catch up on every single detail they were missing about each other's lives. Buford was painting next to Baljeet, shoving him and making his brush jerk around every couple seconds. Most of the british tour guides were standing in their own group, bar Ferb.

About two hours into painting Izzy nudged him. "Are you gonna paint the wall now?" she asked.

"Huh?" Phineas asked. He glanced back to the wall and realized he had been painting miniature blueprints in white paint. "Oh." he said. He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed.

Isabella laughed and shook her head. "That's my Phin."

After that Phineas had gone on to actually painting the wall. They had done this for another hour and a half or so before the teachers finally took pity on them and told them to go eat. Phineas had been eating much larger lunches than usual lately, which made both Ferb and Isabella laugh.

Today though, all three of them had packed a tiny lunch that they could eat in the span of ten minutes…which they did. Ferb grabbed the bag, they all went off to the side from everyone else, and then they got to work on the plane.

It started with compiling most of the material into a base of metal (and some glass) and setting up the outside of the plane. In Phineas' opinion, this was the most exhausting part, but also the easiest. They quickly gained stares from students and teachers, which Phineas tried to ignore, as neither Isabella or Ferb seemed to be bothered by them.

Phineas was working on one of the wings when he realized Buford was standing behind him. He shot a look over his shoulder that hopefully looked a lot more confident then he felt. "Can I help you?" he asked, surprised at how smoothly his voice came out.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Buford snarled.

"Well, I would have thought that would be obvious. We're building an airplane." He dodged Buford's attempt to grab his foot and shimmied to a different part of the wing that he couldn't reach. Then he turned around and continued working. It took a couple minutes of Buford attempting to reach him and muttering curses for him to go away.

When he finally did, Phineas' shoulders relaxed from tension he hadn't known was there. It had been a really long time since he'd invented in front of these people. The last time he'd invented in front of anyone before S'Winter (and that had been complete strangers he was not likely to see again) was…

Phineas shoved the thought out of his mind before it could enter. That had been years ago. He wasn't going to let it ruin today, and they were doing it right this time. The sandbags had been the first thing he packed.

When Phineas finished working on the wing, he moved closer to the main section of the plane, where Ferb was attaching the top. "You need help with that?" he asked. Ferb shook his head, and then ducked inside the seating section of the plane to work on the wiring. So instead, Phineas went to help Isabella with the tail. He seemed to have picked a good place to help, because as he got back there the whole thing slid to the right, and Isabella groaned.

"Need some help?" Phineas said with a smile. He dragged the tail back over and held it in place.

Isabella sighed in relief. "Thank you." She went back to tightening one of the screws, and then shot a glance up at him. "Are you doing okay?" She sounded concerned.

Phineas knew immediately what she was getting at. He gave it a moment's thought, and nodded. "Yeah." he said quietly. "I think so. It's just…new. Again."

Isabella nodded in understanding.

When the plane was finally finished, the three of them gathered around it. Phineas put the sandbags inside, and they got ready to send it off on its test run.

"So it should get back around the time we have to leave, right?" Isabella asked.

"That's the plan." Ferb said. "Give or take 5-10 seconds."

"Well alright. Let's do this thing." Phineas said, grinning. He held up the remote. "We're all good?"

"We're all good." Ferb said.

"Come on, if you don't hurry up we're gonna have to start painting again and we'll miss our chance." Isabella said.

Phineas took a deep breath, less for reassurance and more for dramatic hesitation, and then hit the button to send off the plane.

They all watched it fly off into the distance, hopefully to be back from it's London fly-around a couple hours from now.

Then from behind them came: "Are you fucking kidding me?" in a dangerously angry voice.

Ferb Fletcher

June 15

Hyde Park, London

All three of them turned around to see everyone else standing there-except for the teachers, who were off in their own world as usual during lunch.

Ferb bit his lip. Something was telling him this was going to be bad.

Buford was the one who had spoken. "You seriously have the nerve?!" Buford was focusing 100% of his attention on Phineas, who was backing up in nervousness. Ferb saw a little bit of the Phineas from the last time Buford had yelled at him making a reappearance.

"Buford!" Isabella snapped, stepping forwards. "Do you have a problem?"

"Yeah, and it's him." Buford spat at her. "He could hurt somebody doing shit like this. Did he never learn his lesson?!"

"Hey, what gives you the right?" Ferb asked, crossing his arms.

Buford shot him a look, then burst out laughing. "Oh my god. He never told you what he did, did he?"

"Buford." came a still-unfamiliar voice. It took Ferb a second to place it. It was Baljeet. "I do not think you should-"

"Can it!" Buford snapped at him. And while Buford turned his attention to Baljeet, Katie came forward instead.

"Honestly, I'm not surprised." she admitted.

"Katie." Gretchen said, and there was a tone to her voice Ferb hadn't heard before.

But Katie didn't seem to hear her. She still had her attention on Ferb. "You don't wonder what his deal is? Why he's so freaked out by something he likes to do?!"

"Katie." Gretchen said, her voice raising.

"It's 'cause when he was younger, he almost killed someone!"

There was a smack, and a leftover ringing. It was Katie. Gretchen had slapped her.

Part of Ferb wanted to call them liars, but Phineas' behavior since he'd met him said otherwise. So instead he took comfort in the fact that even if Phineas had almost killed someone, it most certainly had not been intentional. There was no way.

Ferb was still staring at Gretchen, who looked about ready to murder Katie, when he heard Isabella's voice. "Phineas?"

Ferb turned around. Isabella was still standing where he'd seen her last, but Phineas was gone.

And Ferb had a feeling where he might be.

It seemed Isabella had come to the same conclusion, because she turned at him. "Go talk to him."

Ferb blinked. "Me?"

"You can help more right now."

Ferb hesitated, but then nodded and ran off. He felt bad leaving Isabella with the aftermath of what had just happened, but he felt she could handle herself.

It took Ferb approximately 15 minutes to reach Big Ben. When he got there and got inside, around him was a projected image of a suburban backyard, behind a yellow-and-brown house.

Phineas' home, he presumed.

He climbed the inner workings of the clock without much trouble, and found Phineas in the same place they had built the device he was using to project his house. He looked smaller than Ferb had ever seen him before, with his knees pulled into his chest and his arms wrapped around his knees and his head inside his arms. The fact that he appeared to be sitting under an enormous tree did not help.

"Phineas?" Ferb asked hesitantly, not wanting to startle him.

"The Danville Rollercoaster." Phineas said.

Ferb blinked. "What?"

"The Danville Rollercoaster." Phineas said a little louder, maybe thinking Ferb hadn't heard him. He still would not look at him. "That's what Katie meant."

Ferb hesitated for a second, then walked over at sat next to Phineas. "What happened." he asked, his tone making it more a statement than a question.

Phineas let out an enormous sigh. He looked up and around him at the projection of the backyard. "I used to have more than one friend." he said, and Ferb waited for him to explain.

Phineas took a deep breath, and launched into a story.


When I was about 8 or so, this kid named Django moved to the Tri-State Area, and he started hanging out with me and Isabella. We all had a lot of fun together, even though Django was friends with Buford too, and we were worried he might have to "pick." But actually, after a while, it went the other way around, and Buford came over once or twice. It was looking like we might become a larger friend group. Things…well, things were looking up.

But then one day, when I was ten, I decided to build a rollercoaster. It was gonna be amazing. There was gonna be rubber snakes, and peanut butter and corkscrews…I had it all planned out, and we were all really excited.

We only built the one car, because there were only four of us, and we sent it on a test run first to see if the cart would get back in one piece, and it did. But…we sent it around empty. I was kicking myself for the longest time for not using sandbags or something. And uh…yeah, that's why we used them in the plane.

Anyway, it came around fine, but Isabella was still freaking out a bit. So Django said he would go by himself, to prove it to her. But something about the extra weight, or maybe it was that the cart wasn't balanced, I don't know…. The chain lift stopped working partway up the first hill-which was like, 3 miles high. The cart fell off the track. Django only fell about 50 feet, but he was pretty badly injured. He ended up paralyzed from the waist down.

His parents were furious. They sued us for…I think it was like, his hospital bill. Which I would have been willing to pay anyway. I would've like, sold everything I owned and more!

Sorry. Anyway, that's how my mom found out I could invent, and why Candace stopped trying to get me in trouble for it…because that's what Candace's goal was before. She was really upset that mom didn't know. Honestly, I didn't even know my mom didn't know, but mom was pretty shocked when she found out, to say the least.

Buford was really upset with me. Django had been pretty much his only friend, and he blamed me that he got hurt. I mean, I did build the thing after all. That's the reason he hates my inventing so much. I'm sure you noticed that goes beyond…well, normal "hate" levels.

Isabella was fantastic. She always seemed to know what to say to me and when. We had already been dating, but we started spending a lot more time together after that. I don't know what I would've done if she hadn't been there.

We actually ended up winning the court case because Django qualified as a "volunteer" or something. But after all that, I swore off big projects forever and junk. And I don't think I've even looked at a rollercoaster since.

So…there you go. That's the whole story.


Ferb was silent for a while after that. Phineas didn't say anything either. Finally, Ferb stood. Phineas glanced up at him, and Ferb reached into his pocket to finger the screwdriver that he kept there, which he'd specially designed to fit his hand perfectly.

"Okay." he said softly. "I think I know what to do."