Poptart Notes: You may have noticed I've been gone a while. Have you noticed? Then shame on you. Shame on you for being such a…notice-er.

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Chapter Four: Archie

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The rest played out much as you'd expect it to. The little nerd-duo's mother flew right over to the Flynn-Fletchers' in a panicking way, then proceeding to practically tear her boys out of there. Albert, however, did manage to rip away for one second to tell Candace that he really wished the panic would die down.

It was really a strange thing when it actually happened a month later.

Several more robberies occurred throughout Danville and the surrounding counties over the next thirty days, and so, it gained a certain frequency. People started to decide, then—it didn't matter. Slowly but surely, things returned to their normal state, and children were soon enough back to their daily activities of clogging the parks and sidewalks and department stores. Phineas and Ferb themselves were a bit more cautious—on their first day adjusting back to a kind of schedule, their creation was not much bigger than the oak out back. Irving was beginning to return his focus to idolizing the pair, but he always tried to stay as close to the house, whenever there was one, as possible; he also started refusing to go beyond the backyard.

Albert was himself, having displayed too little of a personality thus far to change. He was only really worried about Irving, and he seemed to be doing fine, minus his slight paranoia contracted by the incident. Nonetheless, all these happenings helped him determine that the world would indeed be ending soon—if even Danville could cease caring about the crime-rate like the rest of the nation's cities, it had to be.

Since crime had been scattered out more in the surrounding county for the last week, Grace also felt more comfortable with sending her older son out to do things for her, regardless of whether he even wanted to do it, and he never did. Something about waiting in a checkout line made him feel restless and moronic. Either way, he was presently doing exactly that. He was currently contemplating the possibility of bashing the heads of everybody ahead of him in order to get in front when a familiar voice reached him—"Oh, your mom likes the generic coffee?"

Albert yanked the bag away from Candace.

"Well, it costs less." He looked around the store briefly, trying to decide how to put what he wanted to say. "So…" He drew out the word. "Everybody's doing okay, huh?"

"We still do care a little bit." Candace's reply came almost immediately. "Just not to the point where we're all willing to run in circles like headless chickens." Albert was half-stunned.

"How did you figure out what I was thinking?" He demanded. Candace shrugged.

"You're an open book, I guess." She replied. "A pasty-white open book with a strange sort of mullet comb-over."

"This takes several hours and much effort to do, just so you know." Albert started defensively, pointing at his 'do. "Secondly…it's weird."

"Anybody with eyes can see that about you." Candace gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"I'm not talking about my hair!" He exclaimed before she could say anything else. "It's the…the lack of panic or acknowledgement." Candace raised a brow.

"I specifically remember you having to literally push your mom away just so you could tell me that you wish people would stop caring."

"Well, yes, I suppose that I did." Albert shifted his weight onto one leg uncomfortably. "I didn't think that…uh…I guess I just got used to it."

"Aww, you miss the hysteria in your boring life!" Candace cooed with more than a hint of sarcasm. Albert, in turn, fought back an amused grin.

"True though that may be, it just feels misplaced. Like…" He paused, snapping his fingers a bit and trying to come up with the right phrase. "Like…foreshadowing!" Candace rolled her eyes.

"Spoken like a true nerd." She sighed.

"Yes, yes it was."

/

The only real hysteria of the daytime was trying to keep his patience whilst dealing with the most incompetent clerk in the history of Danville. Albert trudged home alone, and just to give injury and insult at once, the cloud banks broke right in the middle of his plodding, making it so that he would have to return home waterlogged. The rain hadn't been forecasted.

To add some more insult to his already offended injury, the door was bizarrely locked when Albert actually reached the stupid thing. After three minutes of mental swearing, fiddling with the handle, and mulling over the idea of knocking it in, he finally became aware of the fact that there was an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. Albert stared at the large white sedan for a few seconds. He couldn't even guess who owned the thing. At a loss, he finally resorted to ringing the doorbell like a—ugh— normal person.

Albert could hear some small chatter going on from behind the door even before it was opened. When the locks finally clicked and his mother allowed him in, he didn't even give so much as a "hey" as he briskly stepped in, whipping off his soggy jacket at laying it over the coat rack. He dropped his grocery bag on the floor near Grace ("I love you too, Al.") and made his way into the kitchen. Sitting at the counter before him was a man he didn't recognize in the slightest.

The man, dressed in the beige suit of a business man and sipping coffee from a mug, seemed to be the same age as his mother. He had a full head of light brown hair, slicked back as well as it could be, and rather jubilant, smiling blue eyes. He heard Albert as he clopped on in, turning to see the boy confused and staring at him from the entryway. Despite the suspicious looks he earned from Albert, the man stood up, grinning, and walked up to the boy.

"Well, now!" The man declared. His voice was a clear and pleasant tenor. "Ms. McAllister, may I ask who this fine boy is?" Albert's mother came back into the kitchen at the man's call, smiling and giggling.

"This is my older son, Albert." She explained, placing a hand on his shoulder as she introduced him. She then spoke to her son, "Albert, this is our landlord, Clint Archdale. I happened to run into him today at the Farmer's Market before the rain started, and I brought him back for some coffee."

Albert's facial expression in reply to this was pure "WHY?" If he was going to actually ask questions, however, he had no time to do so, as new Archdale had suddenly grabbed his hand in a firm grip and was currently pumping his arm up and down.

"Well! A nice young man he seems to be!" He declared. "You can't possibly be trying to tell me he's yours, can you?"

At this point, Albert's mother had to place a hand in front of her mouth to contain her laughter. Albert, himself, decided to take the hurried-politeness approach, in order to get out and up to Irving more quickly—did he know anything about this?

"Yes, this is my mother, and therefore, I am her son." He stated frankly. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. If you'll excuse me for now, I'm going up to my room."

On that note, Albert turned on heel and rushed up the stairs. Even as he did so, he could hear his mother's giggling becoming more frequent and uncontrolled as he advanced. And when he reached the top step, he could hear her saying "Oh, Archie, stop it!"

Albert held back his urge to gag.