Alright, before I begin, I'd like to make a brief announcement. I know I've been a bit sporadic with my updates, and so I'm going to try and hold to a two-week update schedule. Sorry if that's a bit long; like I said, I'm a very slow writer. I'll try and work faster than that, but don't hold your breath.
Anyways! Here's chapter six. Enjoy!
Baljeet-2's POV
I pushed Adyson's wheelchair in the door to the abandoned hotel, then closed the door behind me and took a well-deserved breath.
"Okay," I said. "I think we're safe."
"You sure we weren't followed?" Adyson asked nervously. I shook my head.
"And if we were, we'll find out soon enough."
"That's hardly encouraging."
I ignored her.
"What do we have?" I asked. We hadn't had time to do a real inventory of our equipment since we'd got out of the bunker. Adyson pulled her bag off her wheelchair armrest and looked through it.
"Some dehydrated food, my laser rifle, and a couple of books," she said. "You?"
I unslung my backpack and quickly looked through it.
"About the same," I said. "We are going to need some more supplies if we want to last more than a couple of days, but water will probably be more of a problem at first."
"Well, any food here probably went bad over the last two years," Adyson said. "There might be some preserved food here somewhere, but this doesn't really strike me as the kind of place that had a lot of that on hand."
I nodded. "What part of the new city are we closest to?"
Adyson checked her communicator, then slapped it several times as the GPS proved uncooperative. When she finally got it working, her eyebrows shot up in surprise, and she whispered something I couldn't make out under her breath.
"Well?"
She looked up, her face almost frozen in an expression of surprise.
"The Nobles District," she stuttered out.
"Wait- the Nobles District?" I asked skeptically. That couldn't be right. "The place where Doofenshmirtz's Ruling Families live?"
"No, the other Nobles District," she replied sarcastically. "The prison ghetto where Doofenshmirtz sends political prisoners he doesn't just execute right off the bat. What do you think?"
"Alright, alright! There is no need to get persnickety with me!"
She rolled her eyes. Suddenly, her face lit up, like an idea had just occured to her. "How did we get in there that one time?" she asked. "When we were trying to get some intelligence on where Doofenshmirtz had moved his main prison."
I thought back. I remembered that we'd done that right after Doofenshmirtz had come to power the second time, when a lot of our members were still imprisoned by Doofenshmirtz.
"... We disguised ourselves as servants," I said eventually, not really wanting to tell Adyson, but without any real experience lying. "Some of our less recognizable members snuck in during a big party and got away with reams of computer data without being noticed."
Adyson started to say something, but I held up a hand and cut her off.
"And before you get any ideas, we are not going to try that. I was passed over as an infiltrator for that mission for a good reason: my accent and my physicality are immediately obvious to anyone with an optic nerve and half a brain."
"We could disguise you!" she enthused. "You can fake a British accent well enough to cover your Indian. And besides, do you have a better idea for getting everyone else free?"
"Easy," I said. "We sit tight and survive until Isabella gets back with Phineas and Ferb."
"We have no idea how long that could take. For all we know, something might have happened to her and she can't get Phineas and Ferb."
"You know Isabella! That would not happen!"
"But what if it did?"
"It would not-"
"Indulge me."
I considered the scenario.
"For whom do you wish to hear the ramifications of this scenario for?" I asked. It seemed to take her a moment to decipher what I'd just said.
When she managed to do so, she said, "For us, please."
I didn't like voicing what I was thinking, but Adyson looked to be ready to harm me if I stayed quiet. "Well, if such an event were to transpire, and we were not to react to it, then there are two possibilities as to our ultimate fate. The first is that we would run out of supplies and starve. The second, and more likely, is that we would be tracked down by Doofenshmirtz and hauled off to wherever it is he is holding the rest of the Resistance."
Adyson looked smug at getting me to corroborate what she'd been saying.
"You said it yourself," she said in a tone going perfectly with her expression. "If we just sit around and wait for Isabella to come save us, then we're going to starve or be captured."
"That is not what I-"
She ignored my interjection.
"And what's more," she said. "Our friends are currently locked up in a Doofenshmirtz prison. As we speak, he is probably hideously torturing them, and may have already executed a few. If we wait too long to rescue them, they'll probably all be dead."
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"Come on," she begged me. "This is a hotel; somebody must have left a wig and some makeup in here somewhere. No one would recognize you!"
There was another silence.
I sighed. I knew when I was beaten.
"Alright," I said. "We'll do it."
She grinned. "Excellent," she replied. "Now let's go find some food."
Isabella-2's POV
I stuck my head out of the alcove I was sheltering in and took a quick look down the hallway. Staggered down the length of it were five turrets sticking out of the ceiling, and probably a couple more I couldn't see.
In less time than it took for the turrets to swivel in my direction, I leaned out and blasted one of them with my laser rifle. Just after I pulled back into my alcove, the turrets turned to where I had been and started firing.
A smirk crossed my face. They were fast, but I was faster. Then I took a look at the energy gauge on my laser rifle, and the smirk left. I got ammo for my rifle from looting NormBot energy cells. Since there weren't any NormBots here, I was starting to run low.
Phineas pulled a small metal ball from his pocket and threw it into the hallway. It beeped once, and then the turrets fell silent.
I cautiously stuck my head around the corner. Nothing shot at me.
"What was... That?" I asked Phineas. He smiled.
"Something me and Ferb put together," he said. "We call it a 'pulse grenade.' You can only use it once, but it disables all electronics around it."
"Nice."
I looked back down the hallway. It ended in a bank vault-style door, complete with the crank to open it.
"I think that's it," I said. "Past that door, there should be a storeroom with a lot of hidden technology, with the diamond cutter in there with it."
"Do you still have the molecule scrambler, Baljeet?" Phineas asked. Baljeet pulled the orb out of his backpack and handed it over. Phineas activated it. I felt that weird "atoms vibrating away" sensation again, and then it cleared.
I moved my hand to the wall. It went through. A thought suddenly struck me.
"If we're intangible, how is it we aren't getting pulled into the Earth?" I asked. Phineas took a moment to consider my question, and then answered "I dunno. Probably best not to question it."
I nodded. He had a good point.
The molecule scrambler wore off just after we passed through the door. I stopped as soon as we were through, and just stared.
Perry's POV
"They're in the storeroom!" Monogram yelled. "Carl, send in the agents! NOW!"
Isabella-2's POV
There wasn't a word in any language to describe a place like this. It was so absolutely filled with devices, I wouldn't have been able to see the walls if they didn't extend a good five hundred or so feet upwards. Even up there, the room was still filled with various junk, some hanging from the ceiling and others stacked all the way up. The place almost inspired a kind of reverence.
I whispered something to myself in Hebrew, a phrase I didn't know the meaning of myself, but that I'd sometimes heard my mother say. The others seemed to share my awe, considering that none of them were speaking and that Baljeet seemed to have fainted.
"I hope they have an indexing system," Phineas said.
"Everything just looks so haphazard, though," First Dimension me said. "It looks like all this stuff just got tossed in."
Baljeet, still lying on the floor, gave a low moan.
"Also, someone should probably wake him up."
Nobody seemed in a hurry to do so, or to do anything but stare.
Eventually, I managed to pull my gaze away and locked the door behind us.
"Alright, we need to get going," I said. "It's probably only a matter of time before more of those strangely anthropomorphic animals come back to try and take us down."
Reluctantly, the others stopped staring at the storeroom and looked back at me. Buford kicked Baljeet in the ribs, which seemed to bring him back to the world of the living. He stood up, wincing and holding his side.
"Alright," I said. "We're not going to find the diamond cutter if we don't find some sort of sorting method these people have. I'm willing to bet they have some computers with information on that. Baljeet?"
With a wince, he pulled a smallish, geiger-counter looking device from his backpack and held it up.
"I'm picking up something over... there," he said, pointing to somewhere along the near wall. We walked over and started looking the area over. Our efforts were rewarded soon enough, with a minimalistic computer terminal built into the wall. Baljeet walked over and started typing into it.
After about a minute, he asked "You are looking for the diamond cutter, correct? Not anything else? Because they seem to have a lot of really, really cool stuff in here."
I shook my head. He gave me a pleading look, which I ignored. He sighed and turned back to the computer.
"Alright," he said after a few minutes. "According to the computer, their sorting system uses a mix of the Latin and Greek alphabets and arabic numerals- our regular numbers. It says the diamond cutter is item number Beta-3-CB-50194."
"Nice work, Baljeet," I said. "Of course, having that long and complicated reference number doesn't do us much good if it doesn't give us any clue how find the diamond cutter!"
"I am working on it!" he said indignantly. "I don't think this system has been updated in the last thirty years, and it is almost incomprehensible. Try looking for some physical labels on the items."
Suddenly, a muffled "boom" came from the door we'd come in through. We all turned our heads at the sound.
"What was that?" Buford's voice almost seemed to tremble, which I'd never heard it do before.
"I think they're trying to blow the door," I said. I heard my voice tremble a bit too. "Baljeet?"
"This is a reference computer," he replied. "I can look, but I don't think this has access to the security system."
I muttered something unkind under my breath.
"Alright. Does anyone besides Baljeet have training in hand-to-hand combat?"
All of Isabella-1's Fireside Girls raised their hands. I mentally slapped myself. They were the Fireside Girls; of course they knew how to fight.
"Anyone else?" I asked. Then I looked around and realized Phineas was gone. "Wait, where's Phineas?"
Everyone looked around. No one seemed to know where he was. "Phineas?" Isabella-1 called out.
Suddenly, he poked his weirdly triangular head around the corner of a shelf. "Over here!" he called out breathlessly. "Check out what I found!"
He held up what looked like a bird-themed suit of armor."It's the Beak outfit from four summers ago!"
"The what?" I asked.
"Oh, I guess you wouldn't know about that," Phineas said. "Well, four years ago, me and Ferb designed a robotic suit to use on our extreme skate track to keep from dying. But we ended up becoming a superhero instead. I controlled the torso and Ferb took the legs."
"But you don't have Ferb here," I said. "Are you just going to use the top half?"
"Oh, no, the suit seems to have been modified. It's remote-controlled now. Watch!"
He pulled something that looked like a video game controller out of his pocket and pushed a button on it. The suit jumped out of his arms and sprung into an upright position. He wiggled one of the joysticks, and it started waving its arms.
"That is neat," I said. "What else can it do?"
"To my recollection, it can fly, has grappling hooks, and can lift about fifteen tons.. I'm not sure what other modifications these people made, though. How on Earth did they get it in the first place? We never did find it after we were done being the Beak."
Another loud "boom" came from the door.
"Crap," I said. "I think they're about to break through. Alright, I think we can take these animals one on one, but they're probably going to outnumber us. Phineas, can you set the... whatever you called that thing to auto-defense?"
"Does a resistor impede the flow of electric current?"
"... I'll take that as a yes. Alright, we need to find another computer, one that's more defensible. They'll probably spread out to try and take advantage of their numbers. How can we..."
My voice trailed off as I spotted a sign. I leaned in to read it.
"You don't say..." I whispered to myself, a smile on my face.
Perry's POV
About thirty seconds earlier
Perry was starting to have second thoughts about this.
Yes, he realized the need for security. Yes, he knew that anyone outside the agency gaining (or, in this case, regaining) knowledge of it would be a massive security breach. But this... he didn't know if he could fight his owners.
None of the other agents seemed to have any similar qualms... except Pinky. He always looked nervous, thanks to his constant vibrating, but he looked more nervous than usual now. Perry laid a hand on his shoulder and made his chattering noise.
No one had ever been able to explain exactly how animals, but not humans, were able to communicate with each other with the weird noises they made. Perry's chattering had said, more or less, "I know how you feel."
"As in, having to fight your owner?" Pinky asked with a bark.
"Yeah. Exactly."
"Do you have to fight two of them?"
Perry opened his mouth to reply, then realized that Pinky had a point. Ferb was off on a date with Vanessa, so he only had to fight Phineas. Pinky only had Isabella, but now there were two of her.
He leaned over and gave Pinky a reassuring pat on the back. He thought it was reassuring, anyways. He couldn't be sure.
With a blast, the two agents trying to blow open the door finally succeeded. When the smoke and assorted dust cleared, the door was gone, along with most of the surrounding wall. Agent B and agent G were the first in, followed shortly thereafter by all of the others. With reluctance, Perry put aside his inhibitions and charged in.
Then he stopped, and looked around. The other agents did the same.
The kids were gone!
Where are they? I'll never tell... At least not until the next chapter.
Many thanks to everyone for reviewing:
FanFicCriTicTheThird: Sorry if this one's a bit short too.
Sleeping Kangaroo: Well, I guess you do, but I don't think much critical happened in this one, either. Next one will, though (or maybe the one after that).
DetectiveLion: Thanks! So did I.
14AmyChan: Indeed.
fan-like-irving: I know, right? They could do so much for the agency.
Green-Finch24601: Uhhh... Acutally, that was a typo. It was supposed to be "Then Candace." But thanks!
Everyone else: PLEASE review!