Sorry about the delay on this chapter, I've had a lot of homework and I came down with writers block a couple of times during the writing process.

But I'm sure you didn't come here to listen to me complain about my life! Here, at last, is the long awaited Third Chapter! (not really, it's only been, like, a week)

Isabella's POV

Ferb was not himself.

First of all, Ferb looked nervous. Even though he'd become a lot more expressive in the last few years, his expression still mostly stayed in that blank almost-smile we'd become used to.

Secondly, he wasn't the kind of person to constantly obsess over his appearance like he was doing now. He must have asked Phineas if his tie was straight fifteen times in as many minutes.

Wait a second... Third, why was he wearing a tie in the first place? I'd never seen him wearing anything besides his purple coveralls and off-white button-up shirt. Now he was wearing a tie and... Dress pants?

Fourth, Phineas had completely clammed up about it. Usually, when something seemed to be wrong with someone, Phineas was the one who built something crazy to make them feel better. Now, whenever anyone asked him about what was going on with Ferb, he just smiled.

And fifth... Was he wearing cologne?

I shrugged and turned my attention back to the Space Adventures movie that we had playing. We'd probably find out sooner or later.

Besides, I had more pressing concerns right now, mainly Phineas. Despite the years of failed attempts I had gone through, I was still trying to get him to notice me. After all this time, I didn't hold out high hopes.

Why didn't he notice me? He was so perceptive otherwise; he always knew the right thing to say to someone to cheer them up. But when it came to noticing and acknowledging my feelings for him, he was a real idiot.

The logical thing to do, of course, would be to just come out and tell him. Seeing as I'd been going through this same dilemma for years, however, I think you can guess that it's never that simple.

Probably most important issue is that I'm never logical when it comes to Phineas. Normally, I'm the amazing leader of the Fireside Girls, smart and strong. Unfortunately, when I'm around him, it's hard for me to even hear what anyone else is saying when I'm around him, let alone think of multi-word responses. His unfortunate ability to make me completely zone out has gotten my troop and I into more than one scrape over the years.

And, of course, even though the odds of Phineas rejecting me if I came out and told him were small, there was still that "almost" to worry about. If I thought there was any possibility of him rejecting me, then there was no way I could tell him.

I was snapped out of my reverie by the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. I frowned at the noise. Linda and Lawrence were at an antiques show in Chicago and weren't due back for another five days, and Candace was planning her wedding with Jeremy. Everyone else seemed engrossed in the Space Adventures movie we were watching, so I got up to answer.

The doorbell rang before I reached the door. "All right, all right, I'm coming," I muttered to myself. When I did open the door, I saw a girl about Candace's age, or maybe a year or two older, with long, flowing, black hair, and dressed completely in black leather. She looked a little bit like a female biker who'd joined Special Ops.

"Do I know you?" I asked.

She seemed a bit surprised at my reaction. "Didn't Ferb tell you I was coming?" she replied, sounding confused.

Ferb? What did he have to do with this girl? And did this have something to do with why he had been acting so weird. Now I was confused. "You know Ferb?" I asked.

She smiled a bit at my reaction.

"Apparently he didn't," she said. "I'm Vanessa. I'm Ferb's date tonight."

Wait, what?

Did she just say what I thought she just said?

A date... With Ferb.

Since when does Ferb go on dates?

"You have... A date... With Ferb?"

"Yes. Is that a problem?"

"No, no," I said, my voice almost contradicting what I was saying. "I'm just a little... Surprised."

Astounded, more like. Absolutely, massively, jaw-droppingly astounded. I had a million questions for this "Vanessa," but before I could grill her further, Ferb burst in.

"Oh-hey-there-Vanessa-nice-to-see-you-I'm-ready-to-go-I've-been-ready-for-the-last-couple-of-hours-now-really-nice-to-see-you-I'm-Ferb-but-I-guess-you-already-knew-that-I'm-ready-did-I-mention-that?"

Well... If nothing else, I suppose this explained why Ferb had been acting so unusual lately. I opened my mouth to start questioning Vanessa, and I was interrupted again by Phineas coming into the entryway.

"Oh, you're here!" he said happily.

"You knew about her?" I asked, and then mentally chided myself. Of course Phineas knew! I don't think he and Ferb were capable of keeping secrets from each other.

"Of course I knew," Phineas replied (I knew it! I thought to myself). "Ferb told me about her ages ago. He just asked me to keep it a secret."

"Why?"

"Well, what would your reaction be if Ferb came out and told you that he was dating a twenty year-old college student?"

I thought about his question for a moment. He had a good point. I won't say I would have laughed- I'm not that mean, but I would have been... Skeptical, to say the least.

"How long has Ferb known..." I briefly struggled to remember the girl's name. "... Vanessa?"

"About... Four years now, I think?" He looked back at Ferb for confirmation. He nodded. "Yeah, four years now. He saw her at the counter of Blueprint Heaven that summer, and she kept implausibly turning up at our inventions, but he took another three years to tell her he liked her."

"... Huh." I looked back at Ferb, who averted his eyes a little bit. "Alright, then. Have fun on your date."

"You heard her, Ferb," Vanessa told him. She held out her arm and, blushing, Ferb took it. They walked out the door, closing it behind them, and then I heard the sound of a pair of car doors closing, and that of a car pulling out of the driveway.

"That was weird," I said. Of course, 'weird' didn't even begin to cover it.

We went back downstairs to the movie. I'd just gotten settled into my seat on the couch (which was still warm) I heard another car pulling into the driveway. The doorbell rang a second later. Phineas got up to answer it this time.

I heard the door open, and then a gasp, in a voice that sounded like... No. It couldn't be.

I got up to check anyways. Everybody else seemed too engrossed in the movie to notice me. I tiptoed quietly up to the entryway, poked my head around the wall, and couldn't believe what I saw.

Standing there, with her arms wrapped around Phineas, was me.

Isabella-2's POV

I'd never thought I would see Phineas again. It was such a shock to just open the door and see his oddly triangular head there. Of course, judging by the look on his face, seeing me was a bit of a shock to him, too.

Then Isabella-1 burst in, and seeing herself hugging Phineas was probably more than a little traumatic for her.

I broke away from Phineas and chuckled nervously. He just looked at me like someone had hit him in the head with a brick, and First Dimension me just looked extraordinarily confused.

"I think I have some explaining to do here..." I said. Isabella-1 just nodded, her eyes wide open and blinking every couple of seconds.

"Yes, yes you do," she responded in a whisper.

Phineas looked between the two of us, stammering, and (understandably) seeming to be quite confused. Then, of course, Buford, apparently having heard us talking, came in and started doing the same. Pretty soon, everyone in our group of friends (except Ferb, strangely) was just standing there, staring at us.

I'd gone over this moment in my head so many times before. We'd been planning this for months, but none of us had really decided the best way to handle it. Ultimately, we'd just decided that we had enough problems with this mission already, and that we would just have to worry about it when we got to that point.

I started to open my mouth to explain, but Phineas interrupted me before I could begin. "You look familiar," he said.

"You do realize that she's me, right, Phineas?" asked Isabella-1, looking at Phineas incredulously.

"No, no, not that," he replied. "It's like... I have this feeling that I've seen her before. Or at least, someone who looks like you, but isn't you."

"You have! That's why I'm here!" I burst out. I couldn't believe it. It looked like the Amnesia-inator hadn't been completely thorough, at least on Phineas. "Oh, god, I can't believe one of you remembers."

"Woah, woah, woah," said Buford. "What is it that Phineas remembers?"

I took a deep breath.

"This is gonna take awhile," I said. "You might want to sit down."

As soon as we were all comfortably situated in the living room, I began to explain.

Roughly an hour of exposition later

"... And then we arrested Doofenshmirtz, and we never heard from you again." I stopped briefly to take a breath.

"I am skeptical," Baljeet cut in.

"What?" I asked.

"I am skeptical," he repeated. "You come here, spin us a ridiculous tale of an alternate Danville where Phineas and Ferb save the Tri-State Area from an army of evil robots, and expect us to believe you solely because of the fact that you look exactly like Isabella?"

Everyone else stared at him, while I remembered his innate talent for making people want to hit him.

"What?" he asked. "We cannot know with certainty that she is not merely wearing an extremely well-made disguise."

"But she looks exactly like Isabella," Phineas responded. "No disguise that wasn't made by me and Ferb is that good."

Everyone else chorused their agreement. Baljeet scowled and muttered something I couldn't make out to himself.

Phineas turned to me and said "Sorry about that. But, actually, I was wondering something myself."

I nodded. "Go ahead."

"If you weren't with us when we had our memories erased, how did you know that they were erased in the first place?"

"Well, afterwards, we realized that our own memories of what had happened were sketchy and missing in places. Baljeet did a few calculations on the nature of inter-dimensional travel, and he found out that there's some kind of link between each person and the version of them in the other dimension. Essentially, whenever someone happens to someone, then something similar happens to their counterpart, but not quite as severe, and it works much better for psychological effects than for physical ones. And, course, since very few of us actually helped you guys defeat Doofenshmirtz, none of us really knows much of anything that happened then. Most of what I just told you, we learned from second-hand accounts.

"Anyways, after we threw Doofenshmirtz into prison, we started trying to rebuild the Tri-State Area. We'd had our work cut out for us; he barely left anything from before his rule standing. Everything went smoothly for a while..."

When I stopped to take a quick breath, I felt everyone's anticipation rise.

"Then some of the prison guards we'd assigned to keep Doofenshmirtz secure started acting strangely. They'd wander out when they were supposed to be watching him or miss their shift by a few hours. We'd reprimanded them, and even replaced a couple, but the problems kept getting worse.

"Finally, me, the Fireside Girls, and Phineas and Ferb decided to see what was going on for ourselves. Everything seemed to be in place when we got there, but when we started to search the cell, Doofenshmirtz gave some kind of signal to the guards, and they started attacking us.

"I don't know where he got the parts for it, or how he managed to get it together without someone noticing, but somehow, he built a portable Mind Control-inator and used it on the guards months earlier. We'd picked them mostly for their physical abilities, so it wasn't too hard for them to force us back into Doofenshmirtz's cell. He just left us there afterwards; I guess he had bigger things to deal with then. We managed to break out of it after a couple of hours, but by the time we had, Doofenshmirtz had reactivated some NormBots we hadn't found, and was retaking the city. We knew right off the bat that fighting him with his army of NormBots was a lost cause, so we withdrew to a bunker the military built before Doofenshmirtz came to power, and we've been hiding out there ever since."

I paused a moment. These memories still held pain for me, even after two years.

"We... Didn't all make it through that night," I said. Even though everyone was already silent, they suddenly seemed to be even more so.

I looked down at the floor and took a slow breath before continuing. "A lot of us suffered severe injuries during our escape. One of the NormBots hit Adyson with a laser- not even a direct hit, just a glancing blow. But it incinerated half of her spinal cord, and now she's confined to a wheelchair. And Phineas..."

I felt tears welling up in my eyes.

"We were trying to get rid of some NormBots by going through the old library. Somehow, he fell behind us and we didn't notice until everyone else had made it through."

The tears were coming on harder now, and my speech was punctuated with sobs.

"The building was already on fire when we'd started in, and it was an inferno by the time we made it out. We never saw him again."

I had to stop there, since I couldn't speak through the tears that were now streaming down my cheeks, and the sobs in my throat blocked anything I might have wanted to say. Nobody else in the room seemed to know what to do, except First Dimension me. She just put her arms around me and held them there until my sobs died down.

She, out of everyone present, was uniquely equipped to understand what I was feeling. Sure, everyone else besides Phineas knew about my crush on him, but I've always thought that some of what we experience, we can never really convey to anyone else; some things have to be experienced to understand. Sure, everyone else knew about my crush on Phineas, but she'd felt it.

I reached out and hugged her back until I stopped crying.

When I did, I pulled away and wiped the tears off of my face.

"You... You were saying?" my First Dimension counterpart asked. I sniffed and resumed my story.

"Well, we managed to hide out in the bunker for about two years. Then, while we were scavenging an old base Doofenshmirtz had abandoned, we found plans and prototypes for an Other Dimension-inator. Apparently, he'd put the best scientists he could find on it, and he'd executed them when they couldn't deliver."

I smiled a little bit, and then choked back another sob.

"But they didn't have Baljeet. He took what they did, and he built us a portal to your dimension in a couple of months. Unfortunately, it could only send one person through, before it would burn out. We decided that Phineas was the only one who could figure out how to beat Doofenshmirtz, and since our Phineas..."

The tears started welling up in my eyes again.

"... Well, we decided that we needed to find another Phineas. So, we sent me through, and... Here I am."

"Let me get this straight," Phineas said. "You're saying that four years ago, me and Ferb somehow traveled to an alternate dimension, liberated it from the rule of an evil dictator, and then somehow had our memories of the entire incident erased?"

I nodded. "That's about the gist of it, yeah."

The room was silent again.

"Alright," Phineas finally said.

"What?" I asked. It couldn't be that simple.

"Sure," he repeated. "This "Doofenshmirtz character sounds like he needs to be taken down a peg, and I want to help with that. We'll need a way to get back to this dimension, first of all."

"Before that," I said, reaching into my bag. "We need to get your memories back." I pulled a rolled up sheet of blue paper out of the bag and held it out to Phineas. He took it and read the title out loud.

"De-Amnesia-inator," he read. He looked up and asked "Is this how we're going to get our memories back?"

I nodded.

"I can't really read most of the schematics, or the circuit diagrams, but I figured you'd be able to." He examined the blueprints more closely and started mouthing something to himself.

"Yeah," he said after a while. "I think we have most of the parts we'll need for this here, or we can get them at the electronics store. But it also requires a sphere of diamond exactly sixty millimeters wide. I don't think we have one of those."

I reached into my bag again, this time withdrawing a misshapen hunk of clearish crystal.

"Baljeet found this in what used to be a jewelry store. But when those plans say exactly, they mean down to the atom. This is about sixty millimeters, but it needs to rounded."

Phineas took the diamond and looked it over. The overhead lights refracted through it, casting a muted rainbow across the floors and walls.

"I see," he said. "Do you know where we can get it rounded? Could we just take it to a jewelry store and have them grind it or something?"

I shook my head.

"An ordinary jewelry store is nowhere near precise enough," I said. "There's only one place in the Tri-State Area that can cut gems to that precision."

"And where might that be?"

"Well, when we were scavenging in the ruins, we found some mentions of a secret government organization, one that we think has the facilities to do something like this."

I paused for dramatic effect.

"Have you ever heard of the O.W.C.A.?"

Perry's POV

Perry hadn't thought his day could get any worse. The lead Monogram had sent him on had, for once, turned out to be a dud, Doofenshmirtz probably hated him for not showing up today, and his rocket car had ran out of fuel when he was halfway home, and he'd had to walk the rest of the way.

And now, not only had Isabella-2 somehow showed up on his doorstep, but now she was in the midst of getting his family (alright, just Phineas) and their friends to help her break into the O.W.C.A.?

At least she didn't know his secret identity, through some staggeringly improbable series of coincidences. There was a piece of good news. Perry never had been one to focus on the positive aspects of a situation, though. He'd always wanted to look at it practically, and get a good idea of what he could do about it.

He activated his wrist communicator and turned down the volume. The face of Major Monogram sprang onto the tiny screen.

"What is it, Agent P?" he asked. Perry turned the watch face to the living room, and, more importantly, Isabella-2. When he turned it back to himself, he saw that Major Monogram was more frightened than he had ever seen him.

"Great googly-moogly..." he whispered to himself, almost reverently. "Has she revealed your secret identity to your family?"

Perry shook his head. Monogram nodded to himself. He suddenly seemed distracted and distant.

"I... Yes... Alright, do you have any idea what her plan is?"

Over the years, since Perry's inability to speak had proved a liability on numerous occasions, he and Monogram had developed a form of sign language that allowed them to communicate with each other. When he was done describing Isabella-2's plan to raid the O.W.C.A. headquarters to get the equipment to cut their diamond, Monogram swore, the first time that Perry could remember him doing so.

"This is not good, Agent P," he said when he was finished. "I need you to get back here immediately to help us prepare for this. There's no way we can allow them to get a functional De-Amnesia-inator; restoring their memory would compromise the security of the agency. We're just going to have capture them, wipe their memories again, and come up with some plausible explanation for there being two Isabellas."

Perry saluted, and then began a dash for his lair. On some level, he felt terrible at having to do this to his family again, but he knew that if Monogram said it had to be done, it had to be done.

He jumped in his automatically refueled rocket car and flew out, heading for the O.W.C.A. headquarters.

Whew, all that writing has tired me out, so I'm gonna go play on my computer.

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