Chapter 10

"Ferb needs our help!" Phineas shouted over his megaphone from his place standing on a cardboard box in their backyard. The crowd gathered beneath him consisted of the Fireside Girls and all of Phineas' friends, including others like Django and Irving. He had called everyone he could think of.

"Group 1, check the park again for signs of where he went," Phineas organized with a point. "And Group A, you spread around Danville and see if you can spot him anywhere."

The Fireside Girls gave a simultaneous salute, while everyone else showed agreeing nods and began to make their way out. Phineas hopped off his box, where he landed next to Isabella, Baljeet, and Buford.

"I sure hope this works, even though no one's seen what he looks like," Isabella worried.

"I told them what color his fur was," Phineas confirmed. "And even the part about it being green."

"But we have no pictures of him, Phineas," Baljeet remarked. "We can't make flyers."

"Anyone ever thought that maybe Ferb likes being a dog?" Buford mentioned. "What if he found a girl dog and they ran away together?"

"Buford," Baljeet started, skeptically. "We aren't in a movie with pixies and fairy godmothers. I highly doubt that happened."

"What? That's not what I meant, I wasn't implying that!" Buford defended quickly. "Is that where your mind goes first, Brain Boy?"

"IF Ferb wanted to stay a dog-which he told me himself he didn't-then he could have just asked me not to change him back. Ferb would never just run away," Phineas informed them. Then he reached into his pocket and gently pulled out the square box that he still kept at his side. He unlatched the lid and looked anxiously at the little pill inside.

"And I was extra careful to keep this really super safe for him. And now I don't even know where he is!" Phineas re-latched the lid and slid it back into his pocket. He looked upwards to the sky. "...If he doesn't get this before Monday at 7:30pm, he'll get sick and his serum won't work."

Isabella moved closer to him. "How sick, Phineas? Ferb will be okay even if we don't find him, right?"

"Yeah... but he would stay sick and be weak and tired and not-feeling-so-great for a while, a couple of weeks," Phineas responded softly. "And we wouldn't be able to give him another dose of the serum until he gets better."

"But he WILL get better?" Baljeet pushed. "Even if we don't find him now, we can change him back when we DO find him. It's not like he'll be a dog forever?"

"Na..." Phineas mumbled. "We'll get him back to human no problem..."

"You're still feeling down though, Phineas?" Isabella questioned gently. "Ferb will be okay no matter what happens, we just established that. Something else is bothering you, isn't it."

"I'm-I'm worried about what will happen to him if we wait too long to change him back," Phineas revealed. Buford responded with confusion.

"Why? Will he forget he's a human and start thinking he really is a dog or something?"

"Ferb is too smart to let that happen," Phineas replied. "He knows who he is, and changing his species isn't going to make him forget that. I'm worried about something totally different."

Isabella, Baljeet, and Buford cocked their heads in unison at him.

Phineas continued, "If this batch of serum doesn't work, Ferb's DNA would become resistant to it. A second batch wouldn't take 107 hours to settle, it would take closer to 300. Plus the month to take care of him until he gets better again. PLUS however long it actually takes to find him! It might be a few months before he's back to being himself."

"Does all that matter?" Buford asked. "He'll be a human again and that's all anybody cares about."

Phineas shook his head. "He'll be a human again, yeah. But dogs age faster than humans do. If Ferb lives and grows as a dog for say, three months, that would be the equivalent of aging 2.62 years as a human. If we turn him back then, he wouldn't be seventeen anymore. Ferb would come out being nineteen or twenty years old."

Stopping for a moment, Phineas shuddered. "He would be three years older than I am. He'd be closer in age to Candace than he would be to me. We wouldn't be the same-aged brothers anymore."

Caught up in his own thoughts, Phineas seemed to have forgotten about the people standing around him. He kept ranting on, "I bet if Ferb were twenty he'd be two or three inches taller, too. I'm already eight inches shorter than him! If he were any taller I probably wouldn't be able to talk to him way up there."

Breathing, Phineas wasn't finished. "And Ferb is so smart already, the school would bump him ahead a few grades. Then we would graduate separately and poor Ferb would have to go to college all alone! By the time I get there we would be three years apart in our classes and it would mess everything up.

"Not to mention the fact that his driver's license and birth certificate would still say he was born seventeen years ago in 1998. Poor guy would have a heck of a time responding when somebody asks him how old he is."

Then Phineas put on his best Ferb impression. "'Oh, I'm twenty but I was born seventeen years ago.' What would people say to that? I don't want Ferb to have to go through that for the rest of his life."

"That's why we're going to find him," Isabella stated directly. "We'll find him before all that happens, Phineas."

"I dunno," Baljeet pointed out. "Danville is a huge city. Can was really cover the whole town in just three days?"

Isabella elbowed him hard in the chest. Baljeet squealed and almost fell over.

"I hope so," Phineas responded. "Or else Ferb won't get a year older on February 9th anymore, like he's supposed to. He'd turn twenty-one next year on a new birthday and not even Ferb himself would know what day it's on."