Thicker than Water

This story is currently in progress.

Prologue
The place was in ruins. Everywhere the light shone, all that could be seen was destroyed furniture, splintered wood, crumbled sheetrock, broken glass, and torn fabric. But no survivors, not one. The person holding the flashlight, a preteen boy with a vivid-red military hair cut, a pointy nose, and large, dark blue eyes. He was wearing black, spy-like clothing and was heavily armed with high-tech gear.

“...Hello?” He called “Anyone here?”

He got no response. Then, behind him he heard footsteps. He spun around, reaching for the weapon strapped to his belt, but the boy the light fell upon posed him no threat.

“Any luck, Ferb?” the redhead asked.

Ferb shook his head. He was the same age as him, with similar clothing and gear. He had a large, square nose and grass-green hair, cut in the same fashion as his companion. The first boy, Phineas Flynn, turned around to continue his search.

Crunch!

Phineas looked down at what he’d stepped on. It was a framed picture, the glass spider-webbed with white cracks. He picked it up and examined it. It depicted a family of three, a father whose face could not be seen through the cracks, a dark-haired, muscular boy who appeared to be in his late teens, and a blond girl who looked no older than five. They all were smiling happily at the camera, the dad’s arm around the boy’s shoulders, the boy holding hands with the little girl. The picture must have been taken and framed recently. Beneath the damage done from the attack, the picture did not appear to be old.

After a few more minutes of searching, Phineas turned back to his companion

"The place is deserted." he concluded "Either they escaped, or we can add three more names to our casualties list. Let's get back to-"

He was cut short when he heard a tiny sound, like the whimper of an injured kitten. From his perch on the upturned sofa, Phineas shined his light into the corner where the noise had come from.

And there, cowering in the corner and clinging to a worn out teddy bear, was the only sign of life in the whole house.

It was the little girl from the photograph. But she was only just recognizable. She was completely coated in grime and bruises. Her little blue dress was so torn and ragged it could barely be called a dress anymore. And her huge, doe brown eyes were like captured rats: trapped and terrified, darting this way and that. Phineas leaped off the sofa, but she cringed away when he walked in her direction. She was shivering violently, her face bleach white behind her bruises.

“Hey kid, you alright?” Phineas asked.

She didn’t answer. She just stared at him as if he was a ghost.

“What happened here?” he asked, kneeling down to her height. “Do you know who did this?”

She just turned away from him, burying her face in the teddy bear, like she was worried Phineas was going to bite her.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Phineas said, more gentle this time “We’re gonna help you.”

She peered over the edge of her bear, seemed to think about it for a second, then looked up at him.

“What’s your name?” Phineas asked

She held up the teddy bears paw. Stitched on it in cursive were the word “Piper’s pal”

“You’re Piper?”

She nodded.

“I’m Phineas.” he said, offering a hand. She considered it, but didn’t shake it.

“Where are your parents?”

No answer.

“Piper, do you know where your parents are?”

Still no answer. Just then, Phineas felt a tap his shoulder. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Ferb, holding two objects. In one hand, he was holding the broken picture, in the other, he was holding the device that projected holograms of any and all of the resistance members. Phineas looked at the boy in the photo, then at the hologram in the machine. They were the same person.

“Piper, where’s your brother?” Phineas asked, guessing the boy’s identity.

Piper still didn’t speak, but her lip started quivering.

“Piper, this is important.” He held up the broken picture, as if to jog her memory. “Do you know what happened to your brother?”

She took the picture in her little hand, looked at it for a few moments, then hugged it against her chest and started crying.

“Piper, calm down...”

Phineas looked over his shoulder at Ferb.

“Lets bring her back to headquarters. She needs our help.”

Ferb had his hand on his chin, staring at an laser burn on the wall as if it was the most intriguing thing in the world. After a second or two, he spoke up.

“Phineas, I’ve had it. We can’t let him do this to another innocent civilian. We have only one choice left if we want to win this.”

Phineas’s eyes grew wide.

“Ferb, you remember what Candace said! We can’t execute that unless absolutely necessary.” “It is absolutely necessary. We’re out of options. We either carry out this plan, or get eliminated.”

Phineas paused, then sighed.

“Alright. Lets go back and ask for the OK from Candace.”

Chapter 1
The Call to Arms

In another time, another space, and another universe, a pair of very similar looking boys were doing quite the opposite: having the time of their lives. In fact, the boys were identical to the previously mentioned ones in every way, except they had longer, tousled hair, were wearing casual summer clothes, and were much less pale.

“Beat you to the park, Ferb!” Phineas taunted playfully. Ferb willingly took the challenge. The two stepbrothers were using pairs of technologically advanced shoes to bounce across the roofs and chimneys of every building in Danville, the city in which they lived. Now, one may consider that outrageously hazardous, but Ferb had taken into account any and all safety precautions. So, unless a man with a unibrow and a nerdy-looking guy with purple glasses were to pop up out of nowhere and knock them out with a stun ray, there was nothing for them to worry about. Unfortunately, that was precisely what happened, just as the two of them bounced over a purple building that was shaped vaguely like Ferb’s head.

“Owww...”

Phineas woke up in a dimly lit room. Oddly enough, he wasn’t bound, gagged and/or dangling over a pool of piranhas like anyone would expect him to be. Instead, he was propped up in a cushiony red chair in what appeared to be a conference room. Ferb, who still seemed to be asleep, was slumped in another chair next to him. In fact, there were about half a dozen other chairs in the room, all of them surrounding a large table.

“Ugh...Ferb, you okay?” Phineas asked, shaking him. Ferb snorted, wiped a string of drool from the corner of his mouth, and opened his eyes. He didn’t seem to recognize the room any more than Phineas did.

“Wow, now that is what I call an unexpected turn of events. You had safety precautions set on anything except for a... hey, is that Candace?!”

Now that their eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room, the recognized a figure sitting four chairs to the left of them. Candace, their older sister, looked like she had been brought in shortly after them. She was still out cold.

“Boy. I can only imagine what Jessie is up to right now...”

The last time they’d seen Jessie, she had been standing precariously on top of the fence, seeing how many sticks of sidewalk chalk she could balance on her nose. She was up to twenty-five, when their friend Buford opened the gate and shaken the gate just enough to topple the teetering stack of colors. This was soon followed by Jessie herself tumbling off, though her massive amount of thick green hair cushioned her fall.

“Buford, I was about to beat my high score!” she’d complained, untangling a stick of chalk from her curls. If it was anybody else talking, he’s have said “You never said that, dweeb!”.

But instead, he blushed and stammered “S-sorry, dude... Uh, dudette.” Normally, Buford was an expert at keeping his cool, bully-ish nature, but for some reason, he could never pull this off when Jessie was around. The conversation had probably continued from there, but that was all the boys got a chance to here before they took off in their bouncy shoes.

“Gee, I sure hope Jessie didn’t get in to trouble again. Try contacting her.” Ferb gave a thumbs up, then closed his eyes and concentrated. Being Jessie’s twin and having alien blood in his family, he was capable of telepathically communicating with her, though there were limits. Both of them were incapable of speaking to anybody except each other, and neither of them could speak if they were out of range.

''Jessie? Can you hear me?'' He asked.

Loud and clear, bro.

...What? Where are you? How come you can hear me so well?

I’m guessing it’s because you’re right behind this door.

''What door? ''

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of a door sliding open behind the boys. They turned around.

“‘Sup, guys?”

It was Jessie. Only, she wasn’t unconscious and being dragged by her captor as Phineas and Ferb had probably been. Instead, she just strolled into the room, munching casually on something from her pocket as if she’d done this every single day of her life.

“...How’d you get here?” Phineas asked as she sat down next to him.

“Took the elevator.”

“No, I mean, did some important-looking old person in a green suit knock you out too?”

“What? Nah, I just saw you getting dragged here by two guys in a hovercraft, so I figured it was probably best to tag along, just so you two wouldn’t get your necks broken.”

“Yeah, but...Jessie, what are you eating?” Her mouth full, she held up the half eaten object she’d just taken a bite out of. It was one of the sticks of chalk she’d been balancing on her nose a minute ago.

“Jessie...what do you think those are?”

“...Food.”

“It’s not.”

There was a pause, then Jessie continued munching, completely unfazed.

"Jessie, don't eat those." Phineas said in a deadpan voice.

"Buthver goothf!" she protested, spraying chewed chalk in his face. Phineas took that as Mouth-Full-ese for "But they're good!", and decided it was best not to argue. Right around then, the door opened once more to reveal the unibrowed man who had caputured them. He was carrying something limp over his shoulder, but froze when he saw the boys.

“Great googly moogly, they’re awake! Carl, zap ‘em again!”

“Uh, sir, since they’re all here, we might as well start the briefing.” said Carl, the other, nerdy looking captor.

“Oh, uh...right.” He plopped the object he was carrying in the chair next to Ferb, and everybody jumped when it groaned, sat up, and brushed its jet black hair out of its eyes. It wasn’t an object, it was a person.

“Isabella?”

“Phineas? Where are we?”

“I can honestly say that I don’t have even the most indefinite idea.”

“All shall be explained shortly,” said the man with the unibrow “But first we need to...Wait, wait, wait, hold on, what is she doing here?”

He was pointing at Jessie, who was licking chalk from her fingers.

“She followed us.” Phineas explained.

“Criminy, Carl, why didn’t you stop her?!”

“I’ve been outside, shooting people with ray guns all morning, sir, I don’t think I could’ve stopped her.”

“Then what happened to our security?!”

“Hacked it.” Jessie said “Took me about...” She counted for a second on her fingers, which took longer than usual since she only had two fingers and a thumb on each hand. “...48 and a half seconds. Might wanna consider updating that thing.”

Carl started to write that suggestion down on a notepad, but his boss elbowed him.

“Well, I suppose the mission could work with her aboard.” he said after thinking for a second.

Phineas perked up. “Mission?”

“Carl, you’ve re-programed the Amnesia-inator, correct?”

“Finished last night, sir.”

“Good!”

There was an awkward silence.

“Uh...Carl...”

“Wha?....Oh right!”

He dashed out of the room, then returned, shoving a large metal contraption.

“You there, girl with the green hair, might wanna step out of the way.”

Jessie obliged. It was of course then, when a giant ray-like machine was being pointed in her direction, that Candace woke up. “Ow, my hea-....Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat, is that thing?”

“Don’t worry, young lady,” Mr. Unibrow said as he and his intern began to press a set of buttons on the dashboard “Just hold still and you won’t feel anything.”

“Oh, how comforting. Seriously, what is that?! Where are we?! And why is Jessie eating childish art utensils?!”

Jessie’s eyes widened “I’m eating what?!”

Nobody got a chance to say anything more before Carl pressed a button, and the whole room was filled with a blinding white flash.

--

Phineas blinked.

“Oh hey, Major Monogram” He waved at the unibrowed man. “How’s it goin’?”

“It worked!” cheered Carl.

“Don’t get to cocky, Carl, we need to test them first.” said his boss. Everybody at the table was blinking and looking around, as if they suddenly recognized where they were.

“Phineas, where were you on this exact date last summer?” the Major asked.

“Ummm... Ferb is it Tuesday?”

Ferb nodded

“Yeah, we were in another dimension. Hiding from robots.”

Jessie almost choked on a piece of chalk.

“You what?”

“Correct.” said Major Monogram “Do you remember how you got there?”

“Yeah...we were trying to make a machine that could transport us to Pluto so we could try to re-promote it to planet status, but Ferb must’ve crossed a few wires because it took us there instead.”

Major Monogram looked at Carl, who gave him a thumbs up.

“Right. And...you don’t remember anything at all about a secret agent who just happened to be a platypus?” He stammered out the last sentence very quickly and nervously.

Phineas looked at Ferb, who shook his head.

“No.” Phineas said ”Though, as I recall, there was a platypus cyborg in that dimension.”

Major Monogram and Carl turned around to hide a celebration knuckle bump. Everything had gone precisely as planned.

“So...why did you bring us here?” Phineas asked.

“Yeah, and why did you have to knock us out and drag us in here like sacks of potatoes?” asked Isabella “You could have just asked us nicely.”

“Because...um...uh....that’s beside the point!” Monogram said. “You’re second dimension counterparts sent us a distress signal, saying that the need you to meet them there as soon as possible.”

“So we’re going back to the second dimension? Awesome!” said Phineas, jumping off his chair.

“Oh no!” Candace shouted “No, no, no, no, no, there is no way that I’m going back to that place with the lasers, and the robots and the big, hairy, brown whatchamacallit with the big teeth...”

“They also mentioned that it was a life-and-death situation for both their and our dimension.”

“...Fine.”

“Why? What’s going on?” Phineas asked. "I thought Dr, D turned back on his evil ways."

“I’m sorry, but could somebody please explain what we’re talking about here?!” Jessie butted in.

“Jess, we’ll tell you in a second. It’s a long story.” Phineas told his sister. “Sorry, Major M, Jessie here wasn’t with us the last time we went.”

“That is precisely why I did not want her to come with you.” Monogram sighed “Well, we don’t exactly have a choice now. Carl, fire up the old Otherdimensionator, and make it snappy. I’ve got to take my niece to choir practice in ten minutes.”

To be continued...