Vanessa was seriously beginning to get bored. A week of no updates about the whole Ferb situation meant that the whole drama had plummeted to the abysses of her mind. Its position in her attention span had eventually been usurped by things like how she almost accidentally killed Major Monogram at work.
(It was totally not her fault. Carl being promoted meant that she was the one doing things like grabbing lunch and getting coffee for the man, and how was she supposed to know he was allergic to dairy?!)
The only reason she remembered the forum site was, well, because she needed something to do in-between sighing, rolling her eyes, complaining to either Monty or Carl, and the occasional bit of work. So she managed to find the part of it dedicated to cool bands and foreign movies, and…
Well, that's not important. The important part was that, one afternoon, Vanessa spotted another topic under the Danville section that suddenly dragged her back into caring about the whole matter.
'Help: I'm [16F] absolutely freaking out trying to figure out if I like a boy [16] after like 8 years of liking his brother [also 16] can someone pretty please help?' posted by bow-buff
It all started early that morning, because Phineas Flynn was a madman.
He had dragged Baljeet and Buford and Candace into his backyard for a demonstration of the obvious pining that was happening between his brother and the bow-wearing girl across the street. The three of them were seated before his corkboard of photos, pins, and red string.
It took about two minutes for Candace to point out that all of Phineas' proof was just moments where the two of them were glancing at each other or standing beside each other. Phineas replied by bringing out the big guns.
"She wanted to hold hands with you but missed," Candace said bluntly, before Phineas threw another photo on the corkboard. "That's just a picture of them talking." Another photo. "Phineas, that's a squirrel in a bow with a pipe."
"Hey!" Phineas exclaimed, offended on his brother and friend's behalf.
"No, I see it," Buford said, before tossing another handful of popcorn in his mouth. Phineas looked at the photo. It was a cute squirrel using a pipe to crack open a nut.
"Oh," Phineas said sheepishly, before replacing it with a photo of Isabella kissing Ferb on the cheek.
"When did that happen?" Candace asked.
"Giant arcade. It was one of your yoga days," Buford answered.
"Ohhhh."
And that was when Baljeet just snapped.
He just stood up and tried to throw the corkboard. Instead, it just flipped over to its blank side, but Baljeet was too angry to notice.
"Phineas! I am begging you, please stop! A kiss on the cheek does not automatically mean romantic intention!"
That was about the time Ferb poked his head into the backyard, because normally the screaming in his backyard didn't start until later in the day.
"A kiss on the cheek is a normal way of expressing thanks after someone has saved your life! There is no need to assume it is romantic!" Baljeet screamed.
Ferb poked at his older sister's shoulder, then waved his hand at Buford and Baljeet, managing to ask both 'why are Buford and Baljeet in our backyard this early' and 'why is Baljeet screaming about this at Phineas' completely silently.
"It's just something really stupid, Ferb, don't worry about it," Candace answered as Phineas and Baljeet kept arguing.
That was when Buford noted that he was down to one piece of popcorn.
"If only I could make a copy of them or something! Then I'd never get down to the last piece!" Buford exclaimed.
Phineas stopped in the middle of a mathematical demonstration of how much eye contact was strictly platonic.
"If you could make a copy of…!" Phineas announced, before pressing a button on the corkboard's edge that made it fold up to the size of a stamp. He stuffed it into his pocket, before turning to his brother and saying, "Ferb, I know what we're going to do today!"
Ferb gave his brother a thumbs up, while Candace stood up.
"Alright, but keep it down. This is another one of my yoga days with Jenny, and I want to relax," Candace told them, before heading back inside for a quick nap.
But not before sticking her head back out the door and screaming, "RELAX, YOU HEAR ME?!" at them.
Phineas promised they would be quiet.
"The second you go weird places with this thing, I'm out," Buford warned Phineas. "We're talking no cloning, no romance, nuthin'."
"Agreed," Baljeet added.
"Romance?" Ferb asked.
"Nothing!" Baljeet exclaimed quickly.
By the time Isabella got there and said her line, they had managed to put together a working cloning gun, which, true to its name, was a gun-shaped device that made a copy of whatever it hit. Phineas demonstrated the concept with a dandelion in the yard, then pointed out the knob on its side.
"See, if you're trying to duplicate things like Buford's popcorn, it would be a pain to have to fire over and over and over again, so we added a knob that controls the output. Just give it a twist here, and…" Phineas paused to shoot the inside of Buford's popcorn bag, before a bunch of popcorn bags landed on the lawn. "Uh. Whoops."
"Whoopie, a bunch of bags! I always wanted a bunch of bags for Christmas," Buford said.
"Really?" Baljeet asked.
"Do I sound like I'm kidding?"
"Well. No-"
"Then start helping me pick them up. I gotta get them all home!"
"Uh, alright?" Phineas said.
"Why does the knob have a skull setting?" Isabella asked, because that was a concerning thing to see.
"Oh, because we have no idea what the side effects will be if you fire at that level of power," Phineas said. "We're thinking that things might start growing eyes."
"Or evil," Baljeet added as he handed Buford a bunch of popcorn bags.
"Yep, or evil. So, wanna duplicate some random things?" Phineas asked.
He got unanimous agreement, and the group managed to grab a whole bunch of things that needed cloning. During a musical montage, they made more cookies, more chocolates, and a lot more chips.
Their song ended with Isabella asking if she could use it on flowers.
"Flowers?" Phineas echoed.
"Yeah, I want to surprise my mom and all, since it's almost Mother's Day, you know…"
Except just then, Phineas' gaze went to his brother. And he realized that chocolates and flowers could be used for a certain other purpose…
"Oh no. He's doing it again," Buford said. "Buford is out."
And he took the popcorn bags and Baljeet with him.
They passed by Candace and Jenny on the way out, as the two of them were doing yoga in the garage. Since, well, Linda and Lawrence were watching TV in the living room, and there wasn't enough space in there for yoga and Pinhead Pierre.
Candace was not having much luck with the whole yoga thing, though. For one thing, the garage was pretty cluttered. There was one shelf with contents that were so precariously stacked, even the slightest movement could cause it to spill all over the floor, and Candace kept barely missing it whenever she inevitably wound up falling over. Because it turned out that Candace was pretty bad at balancing sometimes.
Another thing that was keeping her from doing well at yoga was that she was absolutely not focusing on the present moment.
"Just breathe in... and out…" Jenny instructed.
"Jenny, I think I heard a noise from the backyard."
"Candace."
"What if Perry knocked something over? Where is the little guy?!" she asked frantically. "I have to go check!"
"Perry is wherever Perry is," Jenny said. "He'll be back whenever he comes back."
"Yeah, he always comes back," Candace said slowly, trying to remember to breathe.
That lasted all of fifteen and a half seconds until she got distracted by a sound again.
Jenny decided to just give Candace earplugs and a blindfold, because gosh, Candace was so easily distracted.
Meanwhile, in a Doofenshmirtz Good Incorporated...
"Behold, the latest in good technology!" Doofenshmirtz exclaimed. "I call it the Three-inches-to-the-left-inator!"
Perry the Platypus stared at him flatly.
"What?" the scientist asked defensively. "It's a good idea! I woke up yesterday, moved the table in the living room a little to the left to dust behind the TV, but I forgot to move it back. Perry the Platypus, I've been stubbing my toes all morning! It's foolproof!"
Perry crossed his arms judgementally.
"Oh, I see. You fail to see how this Inator isn't evil. Well, I'll show you."
The platypus looked unimpressed, only for Doof to start aiming the thing. He pointed at some random house in the suburbs, for demonstration purposes.
"Say you've got an evil scientist that just won't stop being bad," he said, in a tone very reminiscient of used car salesmen. "Just point this baby at that evil scientist's house-"
Perry's eyes widened as the man actually started reaching for the button.
"-press the big button-"
Perry was waving his arms in a desperate attempt to stop the man, but no.
Doofenshmirtz just had to press the button.
A beam was sent across town, and he just kept talking.
"-and blam! Instant pain and suffering. A surefire discouragement from evil! It's foolproof!" he said, before noticing Perry glaring at him. "Wow. Tough customer."
Perry pointed at the Inator.
The brunette was very confused, until he realized that Perry was pointing very specifically at the still-smoking tip of the Inator.
"Oh. Ohhh… I just… accidentally fired it," he said lamely, before sighing. "This is going to go on my record, isn't it."
Perry winced in a very specific way that was common to many professions, the 'I'm really sorry about this but it's part of my job' wince.
"H-hey, why don't we just self-destruct this one and move on?" Doofenshmirtz offered. "Please? Pretty please?"
Perry sighed, before lifting one finger.
"Just this once?"
Perry nodded with a grin.
With happy tears in his eyes, Doofenshmirtz pressed the self-destruct button and took several large steps back.
"Thank you, Perry the Platypus!" he screamed as the platypus jumped off his building to jetpack back home.
The home that happened to be hit by the Three-inches-to-the-left-inator.
Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella were outside the house, and so weren't affected. And well, Linda and Lawrence were on the objects shifted. The only thing that happened there was that Lawrence shifted three inches to the left and wound up sitting extremely close to his wife, who took this as an attempt at cuddling and accepted it.
No, the real problem was that Candace was in the garage, with the very precarious shelf. And when shifted three inches to the left…
...just about everything stayed where it was, except for one book falling from the shelf.
Jenny watched distractedly as the book hit a paint can, making it roll towards the washing machine. It smacked into the machine, knocking over a laundry basket, which landed on a set of flip-flops. A marble resting in the left sandal's big toe imprint flew into the air as Candace stretched out her arms above her head, soaring through the space above the redhead's head, landing on a skateboard sitting on the edge of the worktable. The skateboard teetered over the edge, rolling towards Candace's feet slowly.
This was just when Candace once again tried to balance on one foot, only to immediately place her foot back down on the ground. Except, unbeknownst to her, she had placed her foot atop a skateboard.
"Wow, I'm worse at this than I thought…!" Candace said as she struggled to find her balance again, placing both her feet together on the skateboard.
"Uh, Candace?" Jenny said, concerned.
"I just gotta centre my core and try again-WOAHGAARUGH!?"
Candace was flailing about, trying to balance, which, unfortunately, was very similar to the motions required to skateboard.
And so, Candace accidentally rolled all the way down the driveway.
Jenny just stared as the sound of Candace's screams got further and further away.
"Hey, is everything okay here?" Phineas asked, walking into the garage with Ferb and Isabella.
"Uh, your sister just like, rolled down the street on a skateboard."
"Oh. That's not good," Phineas said. "Was it the orange striped one?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Oh, good, that one has airbags," Phineas said cheerily. "It should be fine as long as she doesn't activate the rocket boosters-"
He was cut off by a very loud sound that sounded a lot like a rocket launching.
"...you guys put rocket boosters on everything, don't you?" Isabella asked with a sigh.
"Well-"
Phineas was again cut off by the sound of rocket boosters, because Ferb had just grabbed his skateboard and went off after his sister.
"Oh! Ferb's going to save her!" Phineas exclaimed, suddenly having a big grin on his face. "You should also go after them, don't want to be too careful!"
"Um, what?" Isabella asked, as Phineas shoved the cloning gun into her hands, then hit a button on the garage wall. Mechanical hands emerged from the ceiling, strapping a helmet onto Isabella's head and replacing her sneakers with rocket-boosted roller skates.
"Have fun!" Phineas exclaimed, before pushing Isabella out of the garage. "Remember to shoot the cloning gun whenever you want!"
"PHINEAS THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA-"
But, of course, that was when her rocket boosters activated, sending her after Ferb and Candace at the speed of super-duper-lightning-sound-barrier-breaking-blink-of-an-alien-eye fast.
"They'll be fine as long as they don't die," Phineas said, before turning to Jenny. "Want any refreshments while you're here?"
"Ah, naw, I'm good," Jenny answered. "See you around, little dude."
Phineas waved her off with a smile.
"Hey, Jenny! I think I'm really getting this now!" Candace exclaimed, before doing some more deep breaths. "I'm breathing in and out and my core's all centred! I'm so in the present moment!"
That was when an accidental wiggle sent her flailing to recover her balance again.
"Woo, woo, I got it, I got it! I'm balancing myself! The world is just moving past me!"
Candace's victory cheer was drowned out by the wind. She was so happy that she was finally getting good at yoga that she didn't even notice that she wound up skateboarding through a busy road in traffic. Or that she suddenly hit a ramp (actually just a piece of wood positioned over a fire hydrant some other kids used for their skateboard adventures).
Candace did, however, notice that she was flying. Kinda.
"Wow! Now that I'm relaxing, it's like I'm flying through the air!" Candace exclaimed happily.
Ferb and Isabella were chasing after her, but they were still too far behind to help her.
Fortunately, Ferb had a very bad idea. One so bad that Isabella, if not for the time constraints involved, would have forced him to sign a waiver to do.
Instead, she asked, not for the first time, "Ferb, are you sure?"
Ferb nodded, and Isabella sighed reluctantly.
They had made a giant slingshot using the cloning gun, her Fireside Girl sash, and two street lamps on an empty street. And she was currently pulling Ferb back, so he could catch Candace and activate her skateboard's airbag functions so they wouldn't, like, die or anything.
Isabella, ignoring the little voice in her head that was telling her that this was all a bad idea, let go of the slingshot, launching Ferb into the air.
Good news: Ferb managed to catch Candace.
Bad news: Candace's skateboard (well, it belonged to Phineas, technically) smashed into the side of a bakery.
Which resulted in Ferb and Candace plummeting to their near-certain deaths.
Isabella, quite naturally, did not want her friends to die.
So she did the obvious thing, which was to activate her rocket skates again and rush towards them, pulling out the cloning gun as she went.
Thankfully, Danville was a weird place. A mattress store with a giant bed on the roof wasn't even out of place in town. Isabella saw that Ferb and Candace would land around that area, but there was no guarantee they would fall on the bed exactly…!
So Isabella pulled the knob back as far as it would go, and shot at the mattress.
Unfortunately, she missed, and the gun flew out of her hands. She heard the sound of an explosion behind her as she kept hurtling forward from her own momentum.
Fortunately, she managed to hit the bed's giant pillows instead of, like, a brick wall.
The street suddenly had a giant mountain of pillows. Ferb and his sister hit the pillows facefirst, tumbling down the massive pile of softness, with the pillows at the very bottom breaking their fall. Isabella let out a sigh of relief, before the roller skates sent her into a pillow too.
Distantly, she could hear Candace laughing, saying something like, "Jenny, yoga is amazing! I feel like I just landed in a giant pile of pillows…! I could just drift off right now…" before her words faded away into snoring.
Isabella felt the same way, what with all her adrenaline running out.
She would have honestly fallen asleep too, if not for Ferb prodding at her shoulder.
Isabella groaned as she forced herself to get up.
Seeing Ferb with his hair messed up while carrying his sleeping older sister on his back only reminded Isabella of how much danger they were all in.
She was two seconds away from yelling at him, from telling him to never do something so dangerous again what were you even thinking-
-when he held her face with one hand, pressed a kiss to her cheek, and she suddenly froze.
Ferb pressed a kiss to her other cheek too, pulling away with a, "Thank you. You saved me and my sister."
"U-uh…" Isabella replied eloquently, having forgotten all of what she was about to say. "No problem…? You know Fireside Girls, they're always eager to h-help!"
She mentally slapped herself for saying that. Really. She was citing her position as a Fireside Girl and not, you know, the fact that she had been friends with the Flynn-Fletchers since she was five?
Isabella regretted that the entire duration of the walk back to the Flynn-Fletcher household, which was weird, because Ferb usually didn't care about verbal missteps. The raven-haired girl didn't know why she was so nervous around him, and chalked it up to the kisses on her cheeks making her head weird.
(Really. It had to be that. Or the adrenaline making her heart race. Or, or… or… something, because…!)
Isabella had a sudden flip of her stomach, so she apologized to the brothers for exploding their cloning gun, returned the rocket skates and helmet, and went home. She all but barricaded herself in her room, pacing the length of her bedroom as she argued it out with herself.
"I mean, I had a crush on Phineas for years…! It's just… it's not that I like Ferb, I just… Phineas was so oblivious, and I got used to being disappointed… so having a guy give me a kiss on the cheek was a surprise!"
She gulped as she kept frantically walking.
"It's ridiculously easy to step over a bar that's on the floor. I mean… with…"
With Phineas, she had such grand fantasies that, even when the two of them were alone, in ostensibly romantic scenarios, like a picnic for the two of them, she wound up feeling disappointed and unsatisfied.
It wasn't even his fault! She was the one expecting him to suddenly become a centaur and run off with her. It was just unrealistic expectations on her part.
However, the fact that Ferb kissed her twice was true. Even if it was just her cheek.
Isabella sighed, before throwing herself on her bed.
"Feelings are so confusing," Isabella said to no one in particular.
(She was so confused, she had completely forgotten that she had done the same to him before with no romantic intention on her part.)
Her standards were so mangled by years of oblivious trampling on her heart that she legitimately could not tell whether the fluttering in her heart was genuine attraction or just surprise that a boy she had a positive relationship with had done something marginally romantic towards her, even by accident.
It wasn't helped by her suddenly remembering things like that time she held his hand by accident during the threat of two planets colliding and he reassured her everything would be alright, or that time they were all trapped on a deserted island and he heard her out with a handkerchief, or a week ago, when he heard her out again before cheering her up with a silly dance.
And Isabella felt stupid for only just realizing how quietly supportive Ferb was, how kind and empathetic he was, how he was so easy to confide in. It was like meeting him again for the first time and noticing all the things she never bothered caring about before, since she was always too busy looking at Phineas.
Ferb had been like that all along, and Isabella was only just now realizing it. And it was confusing her to the moon and back.
So she did what any confused teenager would do in her situation: she asked for advice.
Her friends (and her mom), however, were out of the question, because again, Isabella sorta forgot to tell them that she didn't like Phineas anymore. If by "forgot", you meant "deliberately forgot", because, again, awkward.
So instead, Isabella logged into her Danville forum account and asked the internet.
This was around the same time Vanessa tended to get bored at work, so Isabella's desperate cry for help was the first thing the O.W.C.A. intern saw when she checked the forums.
bow-buff: Okay, long story here. I've been friends with these two brothers since we were all kids.
For literal YEARS, I've had the BIGGEST crush on the younger brother, but… he's been oblivious the entire time. So eventually, I gave up without telling anyone.
But now, I think I might have feelings for his older brother? I'm realizing now that he's really thoughtful and kind and compassionate and he's sooo cool and I can't handle this! Please please please tell me what's going on with me!
Vanessa saw this, and her reaction was to crack her knuckles while giggling to herself in a way that would have made her father proud a few years ago.
duckymomoismyfriend: scream
punkprincess: don't do that. tell us more.
punkprincess: so we can help, of course.
And Isabella did, because she was a 'sharing-is-caring' type person.
She told the internet about the handholding (though she omitted the planets thing), and the handkerchief, and the constant listening he did, and how scared she was when she thought he was in danger, and how she was worried she was reading too much into this. She told them how she didn't want to just be rebounding or something, because he deserved so much better than that.
She even told them how Ferb was admired for being a cool silent genius type, but he was so much more kind and emphathetic than others realized, along with a sense of humour and teasing tongue and so much more...
RFOS: so you care a lot about him?
bow-buff: Yeah! Of course I do. Even if I'm not crushing on him, he's still one of my best friends! I don't want to make things weird!
Silverguitar: Sounds like a crush
flyfletchboy1: Seconded!
RFOS: agreed.
duckymomoismyfriend: yep
bow-buff: I. What?
punkprincess: is there anyone else who agrees that bow-buff is totally crushing? because…
The response was near-instantaneous.
QTKT: seventhed!
byoofthegoof: totally
Ace-stace: uh-huh.
Hollmark: yeah.
fetchengretchen: Absolutely.
Maddyady: lost count but +1 me!
millsfrills: Maddyady it's like, 12. 13 with me
sugarspice&everythingnice: 14!
crime-fighting-monobrow-dude: fifteen now
DR_coconut: wow. 16.
bow-buff: What.
Isabella had her jaw hanging open.
No, seriously, sixteen different people spotted her crush just from her forum post? And one of them was Buford? And another one of them was Phineas?
That had to be a joke.
A ping from her computer alerted her to another response.
Correction. Seventeen different people. And the most recent one was Baljeet.
Isabella wanted to argue with them, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she really couldn't argue with them. She did describe Ferb as a total dreamboat genius man.
(Oh sweetness she needed to edit that later.)
Isabella had no idea that, inside a secret agency far away, Vanessa Doofenshmirtz gasped as she suddenly came to a realization that would lead her to almost kill the poor bow-wearing girl. Super genius brothers, having a crush on one for years, the ages and genders matching up...
"Ferb…! The girl you're trying to set up with your brother has fallen for you…!" she whispered to herself, eyeing the username of flyfletchboy1. "You must not have realized it, because she liked him for so long, but…!"
"You okay there, Vanessa?" Monty asked, checking on his girlfriend as she started typing frantically.
"Doing something super important," Vanessa answered seriously.
"It's not work-related, is it?"
"Absolutely not."
"Ha, figured," Monty said. "Well, I'll see you after this super important thing has been resolved?"
Vanessa smirked as she agreed, before hitting send.
punkprincess: well, if you can't believe the internet, why don't you test it out yourself? you could always kiss him and see what happens ;)