Woo-wee, it's been awhile. Sorry, life's been taking its toll on me lately, but I have found the time to put this together, so I'm grateful!
Review responses:
Dreadwing216: Precisely. Mwahaha.
Phineas A: Really? So have I! What is happening here?
Guest: Hm... You had me for a minute there! Anyway, I can assure you that I planned the events of this chapter before your review, which as you'll see makes you really good at predicting things. I use that back-and-forth style in this story to indicate something very important to the plot, i.e. Perfeneas' and Isealia's perfection deteriorating at the end of Chap. 12, and I'm glad someone picked up on that. Also, I know it's been like a month, but I specifically remember eating a chocolate-chip cookie when I got that review. Timing, huh? Yeah... I remember the randomest things...
On the Blastoise-Charizard front, I was mostly talking about competitive battling last time. Admittedly, I've only just gotten really into the metagame mid-Gen V, so I can't say for sure which would work better in that atmosphere. Again, in-game, sure, the water starters are convenient for Surf, Waterfall, etc., but Charizard has access to Fly (unless you're playing Red/Blue). I could go much further into the subject, but this isn't really the time nor place for it. (And I wonder how many people actually know what we're talking about...) It's just a matter of preference, really.
[Other] Guest: This is not over. As you can probably tell.
Obviously I need to be more unpredictable. Let's begin anyhow, shall we?
Phineas looked up, opening his eyes with the caution of an ameteur loin tamer. He was still in his room, but his buckles were removed; he was lying on his side on the carpet, instead of on the table. The boy got up, scanning the room for another person. His behavior felt unnatural somehow, as if something had been added to it. Something... Dirty? Tough? What was this sensation? It tormented him. He grabbed locks of his fiery red hair, frustrated at its obscurity.
Why was he doing this? What did he have to gain by causing pain to himself? Was this what it meant to not be... Perfect?
Phineas closed his eyes, trying to sort everything out. Today was Wednesday, July the second. He had always known the exact date and time.
Yesterday - Tuesday, the first day of July - had marked his turning ten years and seven months old. He remembered being brought to a certain facility to compete against someone else who was perfect, then being taken from it by someone unexpected... Ferb and Graciela, it was those two! The first had revealed his status as Phineas's brother, and... Wasn't there someone else there, who also confirmed they were his family?
Phineas shook his head. The name Victoria came to mind, but that couldn't be the one. It started with a V, he knew that much. Veronica? Valerie? No...
He dismissed it, choosing instead to wrack his brain for what came next. Ferb had played a role, and his family...
No; they were his family now too. Candace, Ferb, Ferb's father (What did his name start with?), his own mother...
His mother! How could he forget meeting Linda? And the promise he made to her about always staying perfect?
Yeah, you blew that, bozo.
Phineas stopped in simultaneous shock and disgust. Where did that come from? He had not heard it aloud, yet the sentence had to have come from somewhere. the speaker was somehow voiceless; he could not for the life of him discern the individual sound pattern that could identify who had spoken. Perhaps, this was what 'thinking' felt like.
Phineas's brain capacity was so astoundingly high that his mind was always processing whatever his senses had supplied it, in addition to everything else he had ever learned or experienced. This breakthrough in human cerebration allowed him to instantly access any specific piece of information demanded by the situation. Therefore, thinking individual thoughts in word form seemed excessive and ultimately unnecessary. (This alone created skepticism galore of the fact that Doofenshmirtz actually was one of the DNA donors that led to his creation. If that man ever had a viable thought, it probably came to him in the form of a rambly inner monologue.) If anything, free thought had the potential to soil Perfeneas's mind, reasoned those behind his creation; it would fill him with human desires and possibly flawed logic. It had to go.
All this considered, Perfeneas had never formulated a 'thought' before. Or at least not one similar to those he had read or heard about. He inferred exactly what they were and how they sounded and the purpose they served with the highest accuracy, but actually experiencing them was extremely unfamiliar territory.
Of all things that surprised him about doing so, however, what stood out the most was the diction. Apparently, his thoughts needed a lesson on manners, and as soon as physically possible. Besides, no one had used the word 'bozo' in eons.
He did blow it though, and he knew it. The scar it had left on him was emotional and physical - he brought a hand up to the area where his neck met his shoulders, and felt the spot where the needle was injected. It was a good thing he had Isealia, his shoulder to cry on, his confident and comforter.
Phineas's face lit up at the very thought of her name. Isealia was still out there somewhere. Unlike him; he was taken away, and had lost his perfection. The memory of the procedure alone was enough to bring back one of those new feelings, the one known as fear.
Wait again! Was he not supposed to forget all that he had done in the past day? That was what the serum was supposed to do, on top of some 'improvements', whatever those were supposed to be. He figured those would make themselves apparent in due time.
The reason behind the serum's failure came to him immediately; his photographic and audiographic memory prevented amnesia or memory loss of any kind.
Did that mean that he still had at least some of the qualities that made him perfect before? It was possible. After all, if he had lost every trace of what was found in his perfect state, he would be quite literally the worst person in the world.
And what was this burning feeling?
He had heard of heat before, but like thought, he had never been able to fully experience it. Everything generated heat, of course - everything except that which read zero degrees on the Kelvin scale, or absolute zero, but that was impossible under natural conditions - so technically speaking, he had been constantly exposed to it throughout his entire life. He had just never felt it for himself. Likewise, even in the harshest of winter days shovelling the driveways and sidewalks of the Tri-State Area, cold was also foreign to his sense of touch. Why was simple: feeling temperature changes would only hinder his motivation to work in the extremes. His body responded to the changes by itself - he perspired when hot, and shivered when cold - but only felt the numbing nothingness on top of his perfectly sharp sense of touch.
Phineas began counting the new revelations he had gained the ability to experience. Now he finally was able to feel the molecules of which his body was composed, vibrating rapidly, almost humming in their new freedom, and his clothes sticking to his skin. Heat - if that was what this was - was exhilarating! Everything in the room seemed to be so bright and possess so much energy. He could finally feel the movement of the world around him and what had made it so great to just... Exist. The hot air was clear and dry as he took it in, refreshing his senses and finally making him feel like he was home. If this was what being imperfect meant, he almost would not mind getting used to that world.
Still... This air... Its dryness, though once smile-inducing, was frighteningly familiar. It felt entirely and exactly like...
Oh, no.
No, the room he was in was not his at all. Slowly, the boy's gaze climbed a particular wall, following it until it reached the ceiling. He focused on his senses, willing them to retain some of their sharpness they possessed during perfection, and if it did not work he would never had noticed.
The dimensions in this room were almost identical to those of his own. However, the longer two sides of the rectangle were extended an extra inch.
Also, the walls were holographic.
The youth steeled his face, cautiously approached the wall, raised his left hand...
...And shoved it right through. The image flickered a moment before vanishing completely, revealing the hundreds of empty bleachers behind it.
"Congratulations, Perfeneas," came a Drusselstinian accent from the testing room's control center. "You've passed the first trial."
Mentally, Ferb listed everything that had gone wrong in the past few days.
Getting to Isealia and taking her safely to Perfeneas had gone smoothly enough, but that was where his fortune ended. In retrospect, he felt the enormous clarity with which their sonnet had indicated the wisdom of the decision he did not make, to stop interfering the second the poem ended. Now, their perfection was extinguished, he, Perry, Graciela, and likely Irving were out of their jobs, and there was no idea at all in his mind where the experiments could be.
There was also the small matter of the object of his infatuation being his sister.
His sister.
Who, in a matter of only three years at this point, would be eighteen and, in all likeliness, ready to make her leave Danville for college - as if his crush wasn't illegal enough! How could he have been so weak, have made such an error? And yet, with each look he stole of her, with each resounding thought of her name, a little bit of Ferb smiled inside. She made him happy.
Part of Ferb insisted it was best to forget about the whole thing, but another began to wonder if he was onto something. If he could somehow get into contact with Vanessa, she could probably find Doofenshmirtz - and at this point, finding Doofenshmirtz was one step closer to finding Phineas. Her aid in the situation would be extremely helpful, considering her physical strength and athletic skill, which he knew far surpassed his own, ignoring the brutal age difference. Or perhaps that was just his bias talking...
Ferb's attention was diverted by a gentle tug on his pant leg. he looked down to spot Perry, who pointed to the edge of the park. As if reading his mind, the person on the jet-black motorbike at the location indicated was none other than Vanessa Doofenshmirtz herself, awaiting his arrival.
The best half-step-brother ever…
Looks like he had some thinking to do.
The teen's smile upon his arrival was so gentle, so sympathetic. For one dreadful moment he wondered why she had even bothered with him in the first place, but her next sentence reminded him exactly why:
"Come on," she invited with that beautiful voice, "We've got a brother to find."
It had been an eventful half hour. Isabella had successfully figured out and proved that she was not actually in her room, but the testing facility that she was taken from only the day before. That was how she had seemingly gotten to Mexico so fast. Knowing the danger of taking the test now, the majority of her mind was focused on the next escape plan rather than the task at hand. If her supervisors were perfect, they may have noticed this, but their imperfection blinded them from hers.
Trial after trial passed, Isabella's slipups and mistakes being primarily microscopic. After a while, an idea formed: she was not perfect anymore, so why not blow the test and allow Perfeneas to become the victor? She did not even have to fail that badly; a solitary stumble during the mile run would do, or a mispronunciation in her foreign language fluencies. French was newest to her, so if she made the error believable...
Isabella turned, alert, as the walls changed once again, this time placing her in a simulated mountainous terrain. On the plane where she stood were shallow lakes of decent size, with occasional rock features protruding out of them. Said features were circular, about five to six feet in diameter, she determined, and flat on top (only about a foot of them were actually visible), producing multiple platforms across which she was undoubtedly expected to jump.
Isabella leapt a good five feet out of her skin when a large pillar of simulated lightning crashed down in front of her, landing in the holographic water. Four or five other lightning bolts also struck the water's surface, illuminating the shallow basin and electrifying it. If one stepped anywhere into the lake while this was happening, they would also get electrocuted, due to water's ability to conduct electricity.
This could be Isabella's chance to put Phineas ahead; gracefulness, she noticed, was one of the first things to go after she lost perfection. Timing every move just right, she took a short running start and nearly flew onto the first rock platform.
Her train of thought concerning throwing the test hit a couple of bumps and then screeched off the tracks completely. She could not be held responsible for the failure of everyone behind her, who put so much effort into her existence. She was made to be perfect, and felt as though she owed the win to everyone in her country for that. She could not let them down, no matter what was happening in her life at the moment. Besides, what would Perfeneas think? If she messed up once, he would surely learn, and then he would learn of her imperfection. She could make a case that she was doing it to save the lives of people, but still - unless Phineas got the same idea, rendering both experiments failed and war anyway - he would figure it out. It was as if there was no right answer - and she dreaded the feeling.
Swiftly, Isabella turned again and continued jumping from platform to platform, landing lightly on her toes as thunder waves occasionally jolted her out of her senses.
The girl rounded a corner created by a large protrusion of the rocks in the face of the mountain, spotting the objective: a small yellow flag, pointy and triangular in shape. So triangular... She mused, And so acute...
Another blast of electricity snapped the experiment out of her thoughts, causing the surrounding water to crackle and sizzle just as it did. The image of her possible failure briefly flashed across her mind, but she pushed the picture away as quickly as she could. Was she perfect? No. But Isabella was still strong. Nothing could deter her from any goal. She was able, confident, and always ready, no matter what the challenge was. Isabella had seen lightning before (just last night, in fact) and it had never done her wrong in the past, so what was to fear now? She would rise above this.
And nothing could bring her down!
Isabella leapt again. Something in the back of her mind reminded her that lives were at stake, and she could save them. She could throw it. It was just a little simulation, right? Would providing the countries with a victor not prevent this outbreak of war? Whatever the case, if Perfeneas ended up winning, it would be because Isabella chose to let him. She would be sure of it.
Another jolt, another jump, and another change of heart. She could easily save the many lives on the line, but with what consequences? If she lost on purpose, Perfeneas would win. America would win. And what was wrong with that? For some reason, Isabella was more than hesitant to let anyone but herself see victory. She blamed her newly acquired competitive drive. Human error had always fascinated Isealia, and now that she had it for herself, she looked forward to exploring its true nature.
She jumped yet another time. Perfeneas was surely still perfect; therefore, the title should naturally go to him and his country.
...Unless...
What had made her lose her perfection in the first place? Was it just that she had run out of time? Was it her meeting and interaction with the other successful experiment? Either way, it was possible that Phineas was also-
No. Isabella could not even bring herself to consider it possible. Even if something had happened to him, she would never know the difference. He would always be perfect to her.
One last jump, and she would make it. The yellow flag was just out of reach, and with another push, it could be hers.
Now or never. Mid-jump, she made the decision. She would prove her mettle and grab victory in the form of the flag. She would-
Why was her foot wet?
The youth gasped and looked down in horror as she noticed her left shoe breaking the surface of the water, causing it to undulate beautifully. Her reflection was as disturbed as the face it portrayed. Quickly, she returned her sight to the finish, but the yellow flag was nowhere to be found.
"Stop the test," one of the instructors declared, and the walls, ceiling, and floor reverted back to their natural state. "That's enough."
That darn human error!