this is the same chapter that's been up for ages, i just swapped it with the newest one. so if you're confused, the new chapter is the one right before this, "heat of the moment". sorry about that!
Ferb Flynn-Fletcher Progress Report 001
Written by Agent Perry the Platypus
It has been over a week since Ferb's reanimation.
All systems seem to be performing well. Phineas regularly does maintenance and is always at work to improve what he has manufactured for this particular project. While in his presence I have heard talk of synthetic skin covers for the robotic limbs and an eventual replacement for the optic that will more closely resemble a normal human eye. With some time, perhaps within only a few days, Ferb should begin looking a bit more ordinary.
Ferb acts as he did before the accident without any real deviation aside from the occasional anxiety spell over what has been done to him, but I've had suspicions that he was prone to anxiety beforehand. He is fully aware of the inherent "wrongness" of his reanimation and often appears to consider the moral implications of such. This further implies his general lack of change, at least mentally, in comparison to who he was before his death occurred.
If there is any problem at all with the situation, it lies within Phineas, who has become somewhat unstable in the wake of the accident and seems to have lost track of his moral compass. To be fair, his morality was always somewhat questionable in certain circumstances, so the change is not entirely unexpected or surprising. Ferb's reanimation has had an objectively positive effect on Phineas's mental state and I am fully confident that he will return to normal within a reasonable amount of time. They have always depended upon one another and feed off of each other's emotions. Phineas will stabilize, and in doing so, will calm Ferb's anxiety, which will further Phineas's stabilization and so on. Until then I will make sure to keep Phineas on the right track as I have done for so many years.
Perhaps due to the reek of blood and decay that hasn't fully been dealt with as of yet, a feral bear broke into the back yard at the beginning of this week with obvious intent to kill. As I was within the presence of the boys and their friends, I could not attempt to communicate with the bear and instead had to resort to helping them fend it off. Ferb performed spectacularly during this battle and left the bear with plenty of wounds and broken bones, ultimately causing it to leave - but not before two of the previously mentioned friends were injured as well. Baljeet Tjinder and Buford van Stomm are still in the hospital to my knowledge and may not be let out for some time. Due to the current obligations on maintaining Ferb and the fractured familial bonds in the house, neither of the boys has visited their friends and thus I am currently unaware of their exact condition. I would like to request that the local bears be monitored more closely in the future, as well as any other non-agent predators.
My last contact with Dr. Doofenshmirtz remains the day of the funeral. I do not know if he is aware of Ferb or if he has any plans regarding Ferb. In my personal, but professional opinion, I do not believe that Dr. Doofenshmirtz will ever take any evil interest in the situation. He is highly proficient with robots as it is, and knowing him as well as I do, I believe the thought of reanimation of the dead would be found disturbing and/or disgusting by him. In any case, there has yet to be a plan of his we have not discovered and foiled in time, and I have my doubts that he has suddenly become more competent in both discretion and evil within the past month or so. No increased surveillance should be necessary, and because of the current situation and the cause of such I would request that I not be sent on missions to foil anything else he may come up with unless it is indeed related to Ferb, my family, or reanimation of the dead.
Worries regarding these circumstances should be kept to a minimum if at all possible. While death and desecration of the dead - if this can be called that - are sensitive subjects to humans, it is not so in the animal world. Everybody must be useful, alive or dead. Ferb's body went from being a corpse in the ground to being a fully-functional human being who has lost little, if any brainpower due to Phineas's considerable talents in the field of science. This is a thing to celebrate, not to fear, as I believe. I understand that this may take some time for all humans involved, whether it be for moral or spiritual reasons, but what has been done is done and we should embrace it. What has occurred within the confines of the Flynn-Fletcher back yard is something many might refer to as a "miracle." There is no need to interfere with it unless something goes horribly wrong, which I highly doubt given my observations so far.
I will continue said observations and submit weekly reports as requested. However, I am sure you will soon find this unnecessary and we will be able to go back to where we were prior to everything that has happened. I can assure you and all other O.W.C.A. personnel that I know these boys well enough to be positive this will all work out just fine.
- Agent P
Perry's Journal #13, Entry 302
It's been about a week since Phineas brought Ferb back.
I was excited, at first, and to be honest I still feel that way to some degree. My boy is back - the nightmares about that awful body bag and the scrap pile and the blood have become few and far between, and the replacements are generally much happier, if a bit morbid. All things considered it's like we can finally be a family again. The past month has been a living Hell.
Things aren't all so optimistic, though. How could they be? The only one of us ever able to bounce back from things anything like this has always been Phineas. He's definitely bounced back, too, but he lost a bit of his sanity along the way and I'm extremely worried. I don't know what I can do but hope that his mind clears with time. Besides him, though... Everyone handles it differently. Lawrence is the only one who seems truly HAPPY about it, besides Phineas, and he doesn't even seem to mind the supposed moral implications or whatever it is Monogram has been griping about.
Candace and Linda are the ones taking it the hardest. Linda especially, the way she cries when she sees Ferb and whispers about how afraid she is when he isn't nearby. She's become scared of her own shadow - as though she believes he may be behind her at any time like a viper ready to strike. And she didn't even see what he did to Baljeet and Buford. Candace did, though; she was the one who called 911. I still can't believe she hasn't ratted them out... It seems that her love for her brothers is more powerful than her urge to "bust" them. I think it may have always been that way... It's just hard to tell, the way those two things intersect. I guess this time she decided busting them WOULDN'T be for the best. She was right, in any case. If this somehow got public the way it is now...
This is a wreck. It's good, but it's bad, and my obligations to my boys are conflicting heavily with my obligations to the O.W.C.A. Ferb is a massive hazard the way he is, or has become, I'm not sure. Someone could die next time. What then? Would Phineas bring them back, too? I want to believe he would, but after seeing the blank way he watched Ferb attack their friends... I'm not so sure. I don't know if he cares enough to extend any of this to anyone but Ferb. For land's sake, he created a perfect blood substitute! Can you imagine the good that could do for the entire human race, if not the entire world? But that isn't how Phineas thinks, because it has nothing to do with Ferb. Ferb is his entire world now. Not that he wasn't before, but this is DIFFERENT. This is obsession like I've never seen before. He's shutting out the entire world, the world he's explored and catered to and LOVED, all for the sake of someone who doesn't even need that much focus. Ferb is functioning. Besides these... blackouts, or whatever they are, he's been fine. Same as ever.
Fuck
I can't write that as if I don't understand. I'm a hypocrite to pretend I don't get it. We LOST Ferb. He DIED. Phineas is focusing on him like this because he never wants it to happen again... and I'm doing the same thing. I'm lying to the O.W.C.A. and spending all my time at home, watching them, PROTECTING them. I can't lose either of my boys again. I can't. They're my everything. And there's nothing I won't do to make sure they're safe and sound and where they BELONG.
I have to keep my head on straight. I'm the voice of reason, aren't I? Or the chatter of reason, I suppose, but it still stands... I'm the calm one. The one who thinks on his feet. If I lose it there's no telling what sort of chaos will happen. Not to put so much importance on myself, but no one even REALIZES how much I keep things stitched tied together. None of them even KNOW the LENGTHS I go to to keep their worlds standing UPRIGHT
No. No anger. Calm. I have to remain calm.
Not that it matters, at least here. Who's ever going to read this chicken-scratch anyway? I've kept these journals hidden for over, what, fifteen years? Not that the first few years were anything like this. Like it would have even mattered if anyone saw those.
I wish I could go back
I just dug the first one out of the bin. It looks so old now. The papers are tattered, the binding is wrecked… I was endearingly serious, though. It's a good read.
"First day with host family. Two boys, one girl, Mom and Dad. They suspect nothing. My wall-eyed technique is impenetrable."
That was the first entry, or at least I THINK it was. It's definitely the first but my handwriting was so awful I could barely make it out. I'm pretty sure I misspelled impenetrable, but I can't tell exactly HOW. What a mess.
It's mostly describing the house and the family from there on out. I used to be afraid of mentioning anything directly O.W.C.A. related because I really thought my journal might be found and I'd be relocated and demoted within my first year. I wonder when that changed… probably by the second or third journal.
I've got the second now. I didn't know how to obtain a new one after I'd filled up the first, so I just found an empty one in Candace's bedroom and took it. She probably got it for her birthday, the poor girl. No doubt she fully expected I was the culprit behind its disappearance; I'd taken other items for different purposes and had usually been caught with them.
It's flowery and pink and the binding has held up better than the other one. The first entry is a heroic re-telling of the super-secret "obtain new journal" mission. Can't believe how I exaggerated everything. I sound like
There's a lot happening in this one. My body was maturing and I was being heavily trained for my real agent work, getting set up for my first nemesis. It was Heinz Dr. Doofenshmirtz, of course. And it always was, because I never thwarted him and that's why this all fucking happened permanently - I don't think many agents have done that. Hell, I don't personally know any that have. I mean, yeah, it happens - villains go to jail or die or repent - but it doesn't happen OFTEN. At least not in the O.W.C.A.
I wrote up a full personal report on my first mission. I'm sure most of it is just as exaggerated as the rest of this journal. I probably just bit his ankle and bent the prongs on the plug to whatever he built. There was a lot of annoyance and hate back then… not like that didn't continue, of course, because it did, for a long time. But it changed. WE changed.
I miss him. I hate this. I hate being so fucking angry. It was just as much my fault as his and I know it was, if I had let things go as they usually did Ferb never would have died and everything would be perfectly fine, my boys would be okay and I would be with Heinz right now
It's not really common in the animal world to engage in a bit of nostalgia. I really shouldn't pretend I'm a normal animal, though. As if I haven't gone over this during major stress in these journals before. I'm some kind of genetic freak. I don't regret most of it, but I don't… fit in. Anywhere. Except with him, because he gets it, somehow he GETS it I'm not an animal and I'm not a man. I'm a platypus with thumbs and a semi-human brain. And there's the lifespan thing the boys did, but coupled with what I've already got I'm thankful for it. The idea of dying before they even went to college was… frightening.
Everything is frightening now. The life I knew is hanging by a thread and it's fraying and twisting and I don't know how much longer I can keep up this pretense that everything will somehow be alright. This isn't like anything that's ever happened before. Even into their teenage years, Phineas and Ferb's inventions and adventures were full of innocence and child-like wonder. They continued going into space and under the sea and everything and everywhere in between, and they re-created classic toys and lived out entire careers within a day and just kept DREAMING. But this isn't a dream. It's a nightmare. And this is just the first week, just the beginning. This past month was the prologue and now it's the first chapter, and this is going to be a NOVEL. The images of hope and happiness and life on the back of our eyelids are fading away into blackness.
If there's one thing I've gained from being an animal, it's knowing about weird things like the weather and the way people are feeling.
There's a storm coming.