"Fireside Diaries"
Story Written by Freedom Fighter
Time to pick up where we left off! Part two of the first "Fireside Diaries" double-entry. Hopefully it's not the only one?
Disclaimer: The characters of 'Phineas and Ferb' belong to Disney.
"Give it to me straight, Gretchen! What's our new outlook?"
It was the day after Troop 46231 had their spot at the Superduper Mega Superstore swiped from them by Troop 28933. Gretchen and Adyson were in Isabella's backyard by the pool, trying to adjust their sales plan to not include the largest parking lot in the tri-state area.
"We will surely take a hit from not having the SMS," Gretchen told them, showing off a few charts, "but the good news is that we're now moving into the first delivery phase of the month. More than three-fifths of our sales last year were secondary and second-hand sales done during delivery. We may have to go hard-sell, but our preliminary goal of $12,000 is doable."
"So going without the SMS doesn't hurt us?" Isabella asked, pushing for more firm confirmation.
"No. But the SMS DOES help Troop 28933's numbers. I don't have all the required data yet, but I postulate that them using the SMS as their sales hub could push their sales numbers over $12,000, almost assuredly sealing their spot as a Top 3 selling troop in the region, instead of us."
Adyson was not pleased with that response, though, and she let Isabella know about it.
"So we just let them win? Nice leadership, oh fearless leader!"
"I told you, Ady! I've got everything under control!"
Note to self. NEVER say you've got everything under control! Nine times out of ten, you don't.
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Entry #380-2 [FSD108] - Cupcake Wars, Part 2 (09.01.11)
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Two days later...
Isabella was skating in the suburbs. But not happily. She had a concerned look on her face as she skidded to a stop in front of a house that resembled hers, although it was a quarter of mile away from her actual abode. Milly and Katie were there, with a little red wagon loaded full with boxes of cupcakes. And again, like two days ago, she saw them dusty and with some small rips in their uniforms.
"I really should stop sticking you two together," commented Isabella, making a note to change delivery pairings later.
"It's not my fault!" exclaimed Katie. "Milly keeps holding up the boxes like this!"
Katie demonstrated by picking up a box and holding it up with the cupcakes facing outwards. Milly responded by snatching the box away from her.
"You have no right to talk!" grumbled Milly.
"Girls, GIRLS!" Isabella stepped in. "This is NOT how Fireside Girls are supposed to act!"
"Sorry," both of them apologized, bowing their heads in shame.
"Now... one of you please tell me what's actually going on!"
"Something wrong, Isabella?"
Isabella perked up, and then turned around to see Elizabeth standing there, with a smirk on her face. But she was not alone, as she also had the glasses-wearing, dark-haired, dark-skinned girl with her from the other day, as well as a short, jock-ish light-skinned brunette.
"Your girls got a slow start this morning," Elizabeth remarked, "so I had my girls Lauren and Abigail make the deliveries for them."
"Those are OUR customers!" Isabella exclaimed. "And... how did you know..."
"Your form-filling skills left a lot to be desired."
She help up a copy of a few of Isabella's troop's order forms. And these were not only missing the troop number on them, but the troop leader's signature as well.
"You can't do that!"
"It's like they say at school, girl... no name, no credit! Now, if you'll excuse me, my girls and I have $350 of new orders to call in."
With that, Elizabeth and her girls walked away. Isabella was now seething in anger. Troop 28933 was starting to get on her nerves.
But things would get worse for Troop 46231, as Elizabeth and her troop began tapping into the area's tourist population, as well as the high-spenders in the more expensive parts of the area.
Troop 28933 started taking away our real estate, appealing to both those who were giving away money and those who had money to give.
Isabella and Gretchen observed from afar as they saw Elizabeth pitch Fireside Girls cupcakes as a beloved natural resource - one little white lie that succeeded in hooking none-the-wiser customers.
They had the numbers, the resources, and the drive to out-hustle us to the big sales.
Isabella was with Adyson, and the two girls were in disguise - dressed in mustaches and trench coats - as Elizabeth's troop, 12 core members strong, canvassed all six corners of the busiest intersection in Danville... Little Shibuya, which resembled its Japanese equivalent. They were both amazed, as they had never been able to cover that much area at once.
And they even started getting to our most die-hard customers!
Elizabeth and Lauren were seen handing five boxes of cupcakes to Doctor Doofenshmirtz, who paid them in return. Once the transaction was done, the girls walked off... and Isabella and Milly popped up out of a nearby plant in the hallway. Milly was saddened seeing someone else delivering cupcakes to one of her favorite customers, while Isabella looked as if she was starting to see the writing on the wall...
Isabella looked up at the progress chart on the wall. Her troop's goal was $12,000, but it was now the last day of the month, and they were only about halfway there.
Before I knew it, it was the last day of the Cupcake Drive. And Elizabeth and her girls had met their goal, while we were well short.
Isabella sighed in defeat, before walking to her nearby desk and looking down at the only order form turned in by her troop that morning. And it only had three orders on it. She sighed again, then glanced up at the photo of Eliza M. Feyersied, founder of the Fireside Girls, on the wall.
"I guess there's only one thing left to do..." Isabella said sadly.
She took her orange beret off of her head, stared at it for about a minute, then whipped out her cell phone to make some calls...
Isabella skated up to the entrance of the Superduper Mega Superstore. As expected, she not only saw the core members of her troop waiting for her, but Elizabeth, Lauren, and Abigail as well.
"About time!" Elizabeth grumbled. "Me and my girls want to get home before dinner!"
"Don't worry," Isabella told them as she took her helmet off. "This won't take long."
"What's going on, Chief?" Gretchen asked, unsure of why Isabella had called them all there.
Isabella turned towards Elizabeth. Then, to everyone's surprise, she pulled off her patch sash, folded it up, and presented it to her rival.
"What's this?"
"This is me surrendering, Elizabeth," replied Isabella. "You caught me by surprise and outsold my troop several times over. And... I couldn't think of a way to counter you."
She then turned to Gretchen and the others.
"I failed you, girls. Things just snowballed out of control, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. Leaders aren't supposed to buckle under pressure. And yet, I did just that. That's why..."
She took a deep breath, and then said...
"...I'm quitting the Fireside Girls."
A collective gasp could be heard from the group, followed by shouts and cries of 'No!' and 'You can't!' Isabella ignored their pleas and turned around to offer her sash to Elizabeth once more.
"I know you wanted me gone after what happened after last year's Jamboree. So, congrats, and... you're getting what you want."
"Wow," gasped Elizabeth, stunned beyond belief. "I... I wasn't expecting this to come so easily. Even though my troop annihilated yours..."
Adyson grabbed Isabella and pulled her back.
"What are you doing? You can't quit!"
"Sorry, Adyson. But my mind's made up."
"Fine! You leave me no choice!"
Adyson took a deep breath, then said something she thought she would never say to Isabella's face.
"You ARE the perfect Fireside Girl! You're the glue that holds us all together! All of us would be lost without you! Especially me! I... I don't know what I'd do with my life if I didn't have someone as wonderful and genuine to idolize like you! You know the only reason I antagonize you a lot is because I want to push you to the top! You're special now, but you can still be even more! I may be class president, but I think you can be our country's first female president! That's how much I look up to you and believe in you! If you quit now, there will be no one around to push me to be a better person! I mean, look at everyone else in our troop! You think they can push me? No offense, girls."
"None taken!" the others said in reply.
Adyson grabbed Isabella by the arms, knelt before her, and looked up at her leader.
"What I'm trying to say, Izzy, is... there's no way I can lead this troop anywhere near as well as you! Please, I'm begging you... don't quit!"
Isabella felt a few tears trickle out of her eyes. She had never seen Adyson be so passionate about anything or anyone. Not until now.
"Are you gonna give me your sash or not?" interrupted Elizabeth, anxious to hit the road.
"THERE THEY ARE!"
Suddenly, an angry mob descended upon the group. And they had their sights set on Elizabeth and her girls.
"WE WANT OUR CUPCAKES!" the mob yelled. "WHERE'S OUR CUPCAKES?"
The trio found themselves surrounded, and Isabella and her troop were on the outside looking in, unsure of what was going on.
"I ordered a dozen watermelon cupcakes from you last week," a woman in her 40s shouted, "and I still haven't gotten them!"
Elizabeth turned to her subordinates, who each pulled out a two-inch binder filled with order forms, and they began searching through it to find the status of her order. After a minute, Abigail answered...
"Her... her order's not in here!"
"What?" Elizabeth questioned. "How? I remember her face, I took her order myself!"
"I bought two dozen chocolate ones ten days ago," a balding man in his 60s shouted.
Suddenly, a deluge of cries assaulted the girls from all directions, all of customers who had ordered from them, mostly from Elizabeth herself, anywhere from one to three-and-a-half weeks ago, and were all still cupcake-less.
"I remember!" Elizabeth recalled. "There were several days we had so many orders I did not know what to do with them, so I put them in ye old storage container!"
"Chief," pointed out Lauren. "That is a waste receptacle. That also happens to be empty."
Elizabeth's eyes went wide as she ran over and stuck her head into it.
"No! This was a storage container yesterday, I swear by the Queen's life, it was!"
"These girls don't know what they're doing!" shouted a man in his 20s. "Let's give our money to the girls we know we can trust and should've never abandoned in the first place!"
"YEAH!" agreed the mob.
The mob turned their sights on Troop 46231, and in seconds, they had surrounded Adyson and the girls, all shouting their orders over each other, pretty much making it impossible to hear anybody clearly. Isabella looked at Elizabeth, still in disbelief over making such a careless and egregious error, then over at Adyson, who was struggling to control the crowd and the rest of the troop. Isabella looked down at her sash, and then, after a few seconds, slipped it back on.
"Looks like you didn't win after all," Isabella said to Elizabeth. "I guess there's no substitute for experience! And, girl, that's something I'll always have more of than you! That, and great friends!"
Isabella then turned and ran into the crowd. She pulled out a megaphone and started shouting in it.
"OKAY, EVERYONE, GET INTO THREE ORDERLY LINES!"
As the crowd began to self-organize themselves, with the help of Gretchen and the others, Isabella walked over to Adyson, who presented her with a fresh stack of unfilled order forms.
"Good to see you sticking around," Adyson said with gratitude.
"You know you're hopeless without me," Isabella smiled coyly.
Adyson stuck her tongue out, and Isabella giggled in response.
So we spent several hours that night filling it orders, and calling them all in before the midnight deadline. With the help of the local Fireside Girls Cupcake Factory, we got out more than half of the outstanding deliveries within 24 hours, and filled the entire pallet of orders within three days. When all was said and done, combined with all of our earlier orders, we had racked up more than $15,000 in sales! We ended up not only placing in the Top 3 in the region... we were #1!
As a result, we got a trip to this year's Fireside Girls Jamboree free of charge. But that's still a few weeks away. For now, I was more content on rewarding my girls with something simpler... dinner at a sit-down restaurant, on me!
As for Elizabeth and the other members of Troop 28933, I have a feeling that although this is the last time they try to step on our turf, this won't be the last time we see them.
For now, though, I'll just worry about where to hang our new '#1 Cupcake Sellers, This Side of the Mississippi' banner.
End Entry
End Season One
Author's Notes:
And that's a wrap on Season One! What? What do you mean? Well, if you haven't figured it out by now... there will be a second season of "Fireside Diaries!" Don't have a length or expected premiere date yet, but I have a few ideas already bubbling in my brain!
That being said, if you love the series so far and there's something (or someone) you want to see, now's the time to tell me! I'm taking ideas and suggestions for Season Two, and if I use yours, I'll make sure to credit you appropriately.
I will also be linking to a poll on my profile page this Monday that covers all of the stories I've done this year. There will be a place in that poll to leave suggestions there as well, if you wish to remain anonymous.
Thanks for reading, please be kind and review, and be on the lookout for more "Phineas and Ferb" stories soon, both with and without the Fireside Girls!
- Freedom Fighter