CHAPTER 5
As the sun peeked up over the horizon of the Tri-State Area, in a two-story house in the suburbs of Danville, two teenagers and a platypus were all awake bright and early. They were beginning preparations for the harrowing adventure of the day, extremely different than the usual summer shenanigans. Especially since the disappearance of the main instigator of said adventures was the reason for the departure from their daily routines. Ferb, Isabella, and Perry had indeed all slept well and woke up physically refreshed, thanks to Heinz's enhanced melatonin tablets, and all felt guilty, for they knew it was likely Phineas hadn't slept nearly as well as they did. However, the three of them vindicated their decision by knowing Phineas would want them to be at top physical form in order to defeat the alternate Dr. Doofenshmirtz and rescue the teenage boy from his clutches.
A car horn lightly blew from the street below, signaling the arrival of Heinz and Nessa Doofenshmirtz to the inhabitants. Interestingly, they showed up in separate automobiles. Nessa drove up in the classic yellow sports car her father had given her after his aborted mid-life crisis only three days ago, but Heinz came in his old flatbed microbus he hadn't used in 10 years. He had retrofitted it again to provide a mount for -inators, and he was going to secure the Other Dimension-inator to the bed if they needed to move it outside the city to enter the second dimension. Ferb let the Doofenshmirtzes into the house and the quintet shared a quick and somber breakfast. Ferb, Isabella, and Perry were especially quiet, knowing the person who made all their lives so much livelier was absent. Without Phineas, the boy and the monotreme were just the quiet and unassuming members of the Flynn-Fletcher family whom few people noticed. Isabella had proven to herself, over the current summer, she could be defined without defaulting to her crush on Phineas, but a large part of her identity over the past 14 years had been shaped by her interactions with the oblivious redhead. He was the glue holding them all together, and they needed him back.
After finishing breakfast, they all headed through the main person-sized entrance in the big tree to Perry's lair. Heinz and Nessa went over to the computer and started trying to connect to O.W.C.A. and Commander Carl again. However, they were met with similar results as the last time, nothing but blank static on the communicator. Perry disappeared down into the maze of tangled wiring again to attempt to check once more if there was a physical connection missing. Meanwhile, Ferb and Isabella sat down on the floor, feeling out of place and somewhat helpless in the current situation, as they were the only ones without previous O.W.C.A. employment. The British teenager put one arm around the shoulders of the Mexican-Jewish teenager in a friendly, supportive embrace, and she turned to look at him. He just nodded to her. We'll get him back, was his unspoken message.
Isabella just nodded back to him, her mouth set in a firm, tight line. "I'm ready, Ferb. It's just…the last few days have been such a whirlwind emotionally for me. Three days ago, I was working my last shift at Nosh Ole, ready to head to Marshwood in the afternoon, and I hadn't even thought about Phineas…in that way, at least, for a long time. And then, when I was putting away my last paycheck from my mom, I dropped a picture of him from when he was younger from my wallet, and I just couldn't even fight the onslaught of emotions hitting me. I immediately slipped right back into my old memories and daydreams of Phineas, just like I was eight years old again."
She continued as Ferb listened sympathetically next to her. "This time it had felt even worse, you know? Because there was no "tomorrow" for which I could wait and come over again, to see what you guys were doing. So, I just had to see him one last time, and just wonder at what might have been. And of course, after what has happened in the two days since, I couldn't help but doubt myself yesterday, thinking 'Maybe our time in Marshwood was me seeing him one last time. Maybe this was what might have been.' Honestly, even last night I felt all of this was in a dream, and I'd wake up in the morning two days ago and Phineas would still be here, but clueless as ever and not my boyfriend. But it's real, and I'm not letting it end like this. I can't let this get me down."
Ferb nodded as she took a breath. "And I guess we should be thankful we got an evening and a day to spend together as boyfriend and girlfriend before he was…taken," Isabella continued her thought process. "Because this just means I'm going to fight much harder to get him back." She glanced back at Ferb, and then in the general direction of Perry. "He has the two people – and one platypus – who know him and love him the most in this world coming for him, and they won't be stopped."
"And I'm sure he knows this," Ferb spoke as she ended her speech. "He knows, and we know, we can get him."
Heinz let out a whoop as he found something in the computer. "Perry the Platypus, I think I figured out why we were having communication issues. There is a manual override set to block all communications to and from O.W.C.A.-monitored channels, which if I remember right can only be set up by agents. Would this possibly be connected to the 'cyborg panda' Vanessa mentioned had captured Phineas?"
From the wiring below, Perry emerged and chattered an affirmative as his eyes narrowed. "I'm assuming other me turned Peter the Panda into a Pandaborg then? Lovely. He was a darn good agent too. Not as good as you, Perry," Heinz added quickly. "But he was a good fighter, and he reacted well to stress. And now he's an evil cyborg, controlled by a version of me who is crazy enough to actually perform a kidnapping. He literally napped a kid, from his own backyard in the middle of the night."
Ferb stood, and everyone in the lair gathered around him. "So, we're going to be going up against evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz and his replacement deputy for the Platyborg," he started. "Which is why I recruited you two for this," and here he gestured to Heinz and Nessa. "We need any insight we can get on O.W.C.A. and the other Dr. Doofenshmirtz – you know what, let's just call him Doof for simplicity."
"And you can call me Heinz," their version commented. "You all are my friends here, and the doctorate is really just a piece of paper I bought online using my ex-wife's alimony checks anyway."
Ferb nodded. "Makes it easier, thanks. I'm going to end up asking you two a bunch of questions about this panda and his abilities in our dimension, so we can have a good idea of what he's capable of as a cyborg. For now, though, let's just see if we can get in touch with Commander Carl."
Perry chattered and set up a video call. For a while, there was no response, but finally a flustered Commander Carl appeared on screen. "Agent P, is everything OK with you?" he asked hurriedly, receiving a negative shake of the head in return from Perry. However, Commander Carl completely missed it, looking down at a piece of paper, likely to be a briefing on the current situation he was in. "Well, as I'm sure you know, L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. is being their annual nuisance, and we have every available active agent on scene. Are you able to come in and help too?"
Perry just shook his head again, frustrated at Commander Carl's lack of observation, and finally took out a picture of Phineas and then one of Doof from 10 years ago. He pantomimed the Doof picture grabbing the Phineas picture and disappearing. Commander Carl's eyebrows shot to the top of his face.
"Great googly moogly! I'm sorry, Agent P, but we really cannot spare any active agents right now. I'll have Irving the Intern call up any of the retired on-call agents to see if they can help – maybe the Agent P from the other-" He cut off quickly as he realized just who was standing behind Perry. His face turned to a frown. "Agent P, would you care to explain why you're breaking O.W.C.A. rules?"
Before Perry could do more than roll his eyes and before Ferb and Isabella could interject, Commander Carl looked up at the sky and slapped his face in realization. "Duh, of course, the host family emergency protocol. I'm sorry, Agent P. I'm pretty tired and my brain isn't functioning optimally due to having to focus on the L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. situation here. I can see how Major Monogram needed to be gruff constantly, he constantly had to deal with this stuff. Anyway, you should contact-"
A loud crash was heard in the background, and Commander Carl looked away in surprise. "I have to go, I'll let you know if the situation changes for the better here. Talk to Irving if you need anything."
The communication ended, and Perry turned back to the humans with another clearly frustrated look on his face. Ferb sighed, and Nessa shook her head and said, "Well, we have ourselves. I don't think Irving is going to be any help, if he's still who I remember him to be. And honestly, our group is probably enough. We have the knowledge and skill to pull this off, and I think we're as prepared as we're going to be."
Heinz looked over at the clock on the wall of Perry's lair, which read 6:55. "Well, it's gotten late enough in the day for us to try to contact the other versions of you kids one more time. If the portal is still blocked, we should head out of the city to try to get away from a centralized inter-dimensional block, if indeed it is what is causing the lack of connection. We'll need to head an hour or so east, towards the eastern seaboard, in order to escape the most likely area the block would cover."
They all headed back out of Perry's lair and up into the garage, where the Other Dimension-inator was still sitting from the previous night. Ferb pressed the button again, and once again nothing happened. Everyone in the group sighed. "Well, I guess it was to be expected," Isabella commented.
"So, we're going to have to move this out of the city, and then try to get back into town quietly and safely," Ferb said firmly.
Everyone but Perry picked up the -inator and loaded it onto Heinz's old flat-bed. Once it was safely secured, they packed up the few other supplies they needed and decided who was traveling with whom. Perry jumped into the cab of the microbus and the teenagers clambered into Nessa's car. Heinz started the ignition, hit the jingle button once for old times' sake (*Doofenshmirtz Flatbed Microbus!*) but frowned at how cheery it sounded, and pulled away from Maple Drive with a sigh.
Elsewhere, as the sun was also peeking over the horizon, Doof walked down into his basement and over to the sensory deprivation chamber, in which he had stored his…recalcitrant assistant the night before. He was hoping Phineas had responded relatively positively to the treatment, as it often could cause hallucinations, which he hoped would stimulate the boy's creative capacities again. However, Doof knew it could also cause issues with the boy's mental stability, and there was a fine line to toe.
Checking the thermal camera, he both chuckled and grimaced. He could see Phineas feebly rolling around on the floor, which told Doof he was straddling the line. Phineas could just be antsy and just want to do something, or he could have lost his mind and would be nigh-on useless except as a boyborg. Shaking his head, Doof unlocked the door and opened it, smirking when he realized Phineas couldn't tell the door was opened and continued to roll around on the ground. At least the actual deprivation is working.
He walked over to Phineas and stopped him with a foot, causing Phineas to freeze in surprise. Doof noted Phineas was still shaking slightly, although he couldn't discern if it was due to residual electrical shocks from the previous day or to surprise and fear. Doof preferred to think it was the latter, and smirked as he held himself back a little, relishing in being able to strike terror into people again.
Finally, he leaned down and picked up Phineas before standing him on his feet, albeit supporting him as the boy's legs were still very weak. Doof pulled off the earmuffs first, then the blindfold, giving Phineas back his senses of hearing and vision. Phineas jumped and blinked at the light he was seeing from the basement and cowered away from the noises of Tony Marzulo and Peter the Pandaborg restarting their work on his devices. Doof frowned when he saw Phineas's jaw and tongue working around the gag, either trying to remove it or just attempting to taste something. Still, he removed the gag from Phineas's mouth, and then untied his hands, but kept a firm grip on the boy's shoulder.
"Get in there, boy. No cage for you today, you couldn't even run away if you wanted to. Charlene will still be watching you, though, and I'm sure she'd love to continue shocking you if you don't behave."
Finally, Phineas breathed to himself. The night in sensory deprivation had not treated him well. Phineas was naturally an imaginative person, but he managed it by literally working through his imagination, designing and building things with his brother or alone, whenever he needed to do so. However, being kept in a place meant to stimulate his imagination while also simultaneously preventing him from acting upon it was more torturous than either he or his captors had expected.
Still blinking at the unaccustomed level of light he was now seeing, after spending an untold number of hours in complete darkness, Phineas slowly moved around the basement to the engineering paper and pencils provided by the Doofs. Every loud noise made by Tony and Peter the Pandaborg doing the manufacturing caused him to jump and his eyes to dart around wildly before setting on the source of the noise, and even the oily and grimy smell of the garage basement hit him much more strongly than it had the night before. I don't think I can take another night, Phineas realized as he jumped again when Tony dropped a wrench. It's too much on my nerves.
However, he still remembered what his main goal was at this point: he needed to figure out a way to stop the block on inter-dimensional travel the Doofs had set up. Phineas imagined Ferb and Perry absolutely freaking out as they couldn't cross over the dimensions, and then attempting to find a way to overpower the portal. But the scariest image to cross his mind, to him, was an emotionally shattered Isabella staring at her phone, with multiple unanswered texts and calls to him. Phineas was slightly comforted in thinking Ferb would've told her about his disappearance, but he still worried about it.
Shaking his head, Phineas surreptitiously surveyed the room as he tried to figure out a specific blueprint in his conscious mind, so as to not alert Charlene and be on the receiving end of another one of those debilitating electrical shocks. The power-draining device sat in the largest clear area of the basement, since the Doofs were obviously aware of its potential, but it also hindered the building capabilities of Tony and the Pandaborg, since they needed as large an area as possible. An idea formed in Phineas's mind, and he quickly covered it up by making some large and broad strokes on the blueprint paper. Charlene looked up briefly, but upon seeing nothing extraordinary happening and the boy behaving and their following orders, she returned to her Evil Fashion Monthly magazine.
Phineas waited until the two manufacturers picked out the next device to create, and then he wandered over to them to deliver his next set of blueprints. Here, he finally received the luck he had been missing the previous day; it was almost as if he had been hanging out with his old friend Milo too much, although he hadn't seen the Murphy's Law-cursed young man since he and Melissa had tied the knot. Phineas chuckled under his breath as he remembered the craziness the ceremony had entailed. Murphy's Law was definitely in full force during the wedding, but I don't think Milo or Melissa wanted it any other way. If anyone can handle it, it was the two of them.
Either way, the next invention the two had chosen to create had the largest single dimension of coverage, and while it was supposed to be taller than it was long or wide, it was also best built on its side. Therefore, because of its dimensions it would need the area currently occupied by the power-drainer.
"E-excuse me," Phineas spoke up timidly, and Tony and Peter the Pandaborg looked up warily. "I-it's probably best if you b-build this one on its s-side, because it's safer and e-easier to build on the ground and then p-push it to a standing position." Internally, Phineas cursed his still-shaking body causing his words to stutter a bit, and then he paid the price for his interruption. White-hot lances of pain streaked through his body, and he tasted metallic liquid in his mouth as he accidentally bit his tongue in his thrashing. Dimly, he realized this one was worse than the shocks from previous days, and an even smaller and deeper part of his brain recognized the irony in the Doofs punishing him by locking him in sensory deprivation for the night, but then overloading his senses by shocking him during the day. Phineas would have laughed, if he had control of his actions.
As suddenly as the pain started, it stopped, and Phineas returned to his senses to see Charlene towering over him, an unamused smirk on her face. Phineas only coughed as he weakly gasped for air.
"Naughty boy, thinking you could interfere with and sabotage the work they're doing. I'll just have to continue to shock the resistance out of you." However, as she started to walk back to the control panel to administer another shock, to everyone's surprise in the room, Tony Marzulo spoke up.
"Actually, Mrs. D, he was right. Looking at this print, it'll be easier and safer for us to build it the way he suggested. Even the relative danger added by swinging the device up after building it can easily be mitigated, whereas trying to build it in its final shape is much harder from the bottom up, or much less safe from the top down. He was actually being helpful, not obstructive or attempting to hinder us."
Charlene paused as she processed this information. She glanced at Peter the Pandaborg, who shrugged and nodded as he finished his analysis of the situation, then back at Phineas as the boy struggled to his feet again.
"W-why would I t-try to hurt th-them? I know th-this is w-what would happen, I-I'm obviously not s-stupid enough to want to t-test this." Phineas managed to stutter out, his body shaking twice as hard as before."A-and my head w-would be h-heating up if I w-was lying, you c-can tell it's n-not doing so."
Sending him a calculating look, Charlene finally nodded and returned to the control panel, where she pushed a couple of buttons and flipped a switch. She turned back to Phineas, who realized something through the haze of his mind. His head felt…freer than it had ever felt while he was their captive. He was still puzzling on it when Charlene spoke. "Well, since I accidentally punished you for helping, and it clearly had more of an affect this time on you, I'm granting you one hour of reprieve from the shocks and mental control. I can't hurt you again to the same level, or you won't be of any use to us again, so use this wisely. Rest for half an hour, and then see if you can work again afterwards."
Phineas just nodded, but still consciously tried not to think about the next step in his plan. When he had circumnavigated the room earlier, he had walked right by his targeted device and was able to palm the remote control for it, hiding it amongst the pile of unused blueprint papers in his workstation. He had designed the power-draining device to be nearly silent and not show any outwardly visible signs it was working, but he was still relying on his newfound luck of the day to hold.
Staggering over to his station and nearly collapsing on the ground, he just laid there for a few minutes, trying to portray an exhausted and weak boy. Finally, he stole a glance around the room. Charlene had disappeared, likely upstairs to report what had happened to Doof, and Tony and the Pandaborg were once again immersed in their building. His luck had continued to hold, because they had moved the power-drain device right over to the area where the shield generator was located. As slowly and casually as possible, Phineas stretched out his hand and snagged the remote, moving it back with him under the cover of the empty blueprint paper. Once he had it secured, he cautiously ran his hand over the remote control until he found the activation button. Phineas held his breath and pushed it.
If he hadn't been watching it, he wouldn't even have noticed anything. However, Phineas did see a small fan start to spin as the heat generated by the device was siphoned off into the air around them. However, the noise was suitably covered by the manufacturing happening on the other side of the room. After a few seconds, when nobody came running into the room to check on the shield device, Phineas released the breath he was holding. He looked at the clock, which read 7:00. I did what I could, Ferb. I hope you are able to come in now and rescue me, Phineas thought as he succumbed to a nap.
His sleep was deep and quiet, as his body and mind tried to recover from the punishment it had received earlier. However, it was thoroughly interrupted when an alarm started to blare through the basement. Phineas jumped as he awoke, his eyes again frantically searching for the source of the disturbance. Tony and Peter the Pandaborg immediately stopped their work; Tony headed towards the ladder leading upstairs and disappeared through the trapdoor, while Peter the Pandaborg walked over and gestured threateningly at Phineas to follow him, holding a shock baton in his hand.
Trying to get up, Phineas cried out as his legs gave way and he fell down to the ground again. Not a second later, he received another shock as the Pandaborg pressed the baton into him, causing him to fall limp. Peter the Pandaborg picked up the helpless redhead and carried him over to the sensory deprivation chamber. Although Phineas's body wouldn't respond to his brain, his eyes still worked. He darted his eyes around the room, looking for any way he could possibly escape, and noticed his phone still sitting in the same spot on the control panel where Charlene had left it the day before.
I need to get to the phone somehow, they probably don't know it's a teleporter, Phineas thought as Peter the Pandaborg roughly dropped him on the ground, tied his hands together, and placed the earmuffs, blindfold, and gag on him again. It's my ticket out of this wretched place, to a person who can get me out of this dimension.
Heinz and Nessa drove away from Danville out towards the eastern seaboard, in the opposite direction of the one Isabella had taken two days ago to get to Marshwood. Since it was a weekday, most of the traffic was headed into Danville, and except for a little bit of congestion in Jefferson County the drive was mostly smooth. All in all, it took the two drivers about 45 minutes to get far enough out of the city where a centralized portal block would theoretically no longer affect them.
Finally, Heinz pulled off the highway, with Nessa following him, and turned into the outermost eastern suburb of Danville. It was a halfway decent neighborhood, but with it being decently far from the main part of the city it was not as well maintained as areas closer in. Still, it gave off a nice, homely feeling, and Heinz could see himself retiring to a place like this in another decade or so.
Checking the calculations he and Ferb had made while still in Danville, Heinz called out to the other car, "This should be far enough if Doof is able to power the block with the same power source he used to power his portal. However, I can't imagine knowing what either of you boys are capable of, Ferb, but do you think he would have put Phineas to work making it harder to escape?"
Ferb shook his head. "If he's got enough energy to get to us, he won't need Phineas's help on anything. Besides, if we keep going further out, it'll take longer to get there." The unspoken I hope we'll get there in time went unsaid, but everyone there could feel the thought lingering in the air. In order to rid their minds of it, the quintet quickly moved to take the portal off the microbus.
They set up the portal so it faced Danville, and the group would be able to see the alternate dimension city. "OK, well, here goes nothing," Heinz said, and pressed the button on the remote control. This time, as expected, the bright glowing green portal opened up, but the vista on the other side was not the same as their side.
From what they could see, the outer suburb in which they were located was definitely not as well kept in the other dimension. Most of the houses in their dimension weren't even standing any more on the other side, and the few remaining upright were rundown and looked abandoned. There was only one nondescript, cookie-cutter type house looking like it was even structurally safe to enter, but it was plain to the group no one had called this area of town "home" for quite some time.
Ferb and Perry were about to step through when Isabella thought of something. "Wait, maybe we should place our portal in a semi-hidden location, so no one from our dimension messes with it while we're over there."
"Good idea, Isabella," Nessa complimented. Ferb and Perry backed away from the portal and nodded. Heinz closed the portal, and the group moved the device into a small copse of trees about a hundred feet away from the main road, hidden from the casual observer. Opening up the portal again, they confirmed the copse of trees still existed in the other dimension, easy to find again after getting Phineas.
"OK, are we ready?" Isabella asked the group. Perry chattered, Ferb shot her a thumbs-up, Nessa shrugged, and Heinz nodded. "Well, then let's get this show on the road. Time to get our Phineas back."
Perry was the first one through the portal, taking the point position on the strike team with his eyes alert for anything suspicious. Ferb and Isabella came next, with Ferb opening up the tracking app on his phone and Isabella also looking around for any signs of trouble. Finally, Heinz and Nessa took up the rear, both watching their flanks as they formed a triangle with Perry around the teenagers.
"Find Phineas" Ferb stated into his phone.
"There are two signatures of Phineas Flynn in the city. Would you like to go to one of them?" his phone replied back.
"Detail locations of Phineas," Ferb responded.
"One Phineas is currently located at Tri-State State University, in Marshwood, Tri-State Area, approximately three and a half hours west of here by car," Ferb's phone reported, and the group shook their heads.
"Probably this dimension's Phineas, must be getting a head start on his studies," Isabella said, then frowned slightly. "I must admit, it doesn't sound like Phineas, but then again their world is definitely much different. And at least he was able to choose the right university early enough," she sniffed, before chuckling lightly with her eyes watering. She quickly wiped them off and closed her mouth into a line.
Nessa spoke up. "And I guess Doof's block on the portal wouldn't really have mattered much, this dimension's Phineas has already left for college, so I imagine your doppelganger would have left as well, Ferb."
"Where is the other Phineas?" Ferb spoke into his phone, while nodding at Nessa and placing his hand on Isabella's arm in support.
"One moment…The signal is weak, something is jamming my beam," the phone returned. "I can only give you an imprecise location." A map popped up on the screen, and the group clustered around to look at it. A red dot appeared on the map, with a large circle drawn in green around it. "This is the closest estimate I can give to the location of Phineas Flynn, with a 95% likelihood of being within the green circle." Nobody responded to the phone, too shocked to comment. The dot was only a couple hundred feet from their location, on the other side of the one remaining functional-looking house in the suburb.
"Wait, so he's right there?" Isabella whisper-shouted, her eyes opening in a slight panic as she tried to control herself. HE'S RIGHT HERE! We can get him out of their clutches and out of this dimension in a snap!
"Looks like it," Heinz nodded. Ferb and Perry exchanged a series of questioning glances, before suddenly both of their faces cleared in realization. "OK, what did I just miss here?" Heinz asked the group in general, looking between the green-haired British teenager and the teal-furred Australian platypus.
Ferb turned to look at the group. "Doof isn't in power here. I'm not sure how he got enough energy to open a portal to our dimension, but he didn't take Phineas just for revenge." He shook his head as the others started to realize. "You were right, sir. He needed Phineas or me, presumably because he knew about our building skills and potential in design and engineering. Doof wants control of this Tri-State Area again, and he's going to attempt to retake it by using Phineas to design and build crazy contraptions to do so.
Heinz took over for Ferb here. "He's probably not strong enough to do it on his own, either, so the kidnapping of the Phineas from our dimension must have been a desperate last-ditch effort, which somehow he succeeded in doing. However, we can likely conclude he's expended a lot of resources with the kidnapping and hostage situation, so I bet he's put all his eggs in this basket, knowing we'd be coming to look for Phineas. If we can get him free, it's probably the end for Doof."
Isabella's eyes widened again, before narrowing in determination. "Well, then what are we waiting for? Let's go!" she exclaimed and took off out of the tree grove heading towards the house, disregarding the shouts from the rest of the group to stop and think over their insert strategy again.
However, as soon as Isabella put one foot over the property line, a loud klaxon started wailing from inside the house, causing her to stop in her tracks. She quickly backpedaled across the street and waited there as the rest of the group caught up to her, all wearing concerned looks on their faces.
"Well, I guess the element of surprise is gone," Nessa remarked, albeit not hurtfully. Isabella looked down, ashamed of her brazenness, but Nessa put her hand on the teenager's shoulder in support, causing Isabella to look back up at her. "Don't worry, I probably would've done the same thing if it were Ferb in there," she said kindly, looking into Isabella's eyes. The younger girl blushed and looked away, but gave a small "Thanks," in reply, and her shoulders straightened again.
"Well, since he now knows we're coming, I'd say we should go greet the man who dared to kidnap my brother," Ferb announced with a hard stare on his face, holding his fist into the center of the group.
"And my boyfriend," Isabella growled, although internally a part of her warmed at the ability to call Phineas her boyfriend. Time for Phineasland to be inverted, where I come in and swoop Phineas away. She put her hand next to Ferb's and gave it a light fist bump before resting it on top.
Perry chattered and stuck his fist in underneath Ferb's, and Heinz and Vanessa quickly followed suit. They all pumped their fists once, and then turned to head towards the now-silent house, as sometime during their conversation the alarm had been muted. However, before they could get there, Ferb pulled Isabella off to the side.
"Here, take this," he said, and shoved his phone into Isabella's hand. "Check to see if you can reach Phineas once we get inside, we'll draw Doof away from him. Once you grab him, just say 'Go to Portal.' I've programmed it to send a text to Nessa, and we'll fall back to you. The portal is set to close immediately once all five of us make it back across, so we'll have to all go through before he or his cyborg panda do."
Isabella cautiously took hold of Ferb's phone and examined it. "Are you sure about this?" she asked him.
"As sure as I can be," Ferb shrugged. "Outside of my family, you're the person I trust the most with Phineas, knowing how long you've carried feelings for him. Perry will likely be needed to fight off the Pandaborg. Heinz and Doof are too similar to be able to fight each other, and I don't want to put Nessa into the position of having to fight a facsimile of her father, so I'm going to be the one to take on Doof. This leaves you the high priority of getting Phineas, and I know you can do it." He smiled at her, and Isabella couldn't help but grin back as she lightly punched him in the shoulder.
"You keep getting more and more talkative as you get older, Ferb, and your speech and debate skills sure aren't getting rusty." She turned back to see Perry and the Doofenshmirtzes waiting patiently for them at the front gate, and the teenagers joined them. "Alright, let's blow this pop stand and go home."
The five of them slowly walked across the front lawn and opened the front door without knocking. The house still looked deserted, with cobwebs lying everywhere and drafts blowing through open windows and places where the wood of the house had warped or fallen to pieces. Isabella took another look at the scanner, still showing Phineas's best-guess location in a large circle. Suddenly, the circle narrowed, and a message popped up on screen. Thankfully, Ferb had muted the voice before they entered. Phineas Flynn located. He is in the basement of 9246 Adjacent Dr.
Isabella poked Ferb and gestured to the screen when he turned around. His eyes lit up and he whispered "Go, we'll cover for you."
However, no sooner had he done this than familiar high-pitched laughter emanated from the darkness permeating the house, followed by the voice of its owner, one which they had heard just minutes before, but also in a tone they had not heard for over 10 years. "Ah, it looks like our invited guests have finally arrived. Welcome, friends, to my humble abode. Please, make yourselves at home. Anyone like a drink?"