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Isabella Garcia-Shapiro was used to unusual situations. She’d been friends with Phineas and Ferb long enough to have seen some very odd things, and the myriad of non-standard Fireside Girl patches ensured that even without the brothers, she’d have run into at least a few things that most people wouldn’t have ever really considered possible.
But as she knelt on the street, frowning after Mrs. Feyersied, who’d just run away shrieking something about pharmacists, she had to admit that this was one of the weirder things she’d encountered.
Sure enough, though, she saw a large volume of pharmacists milling about on the street. She didn’t know what was going on, but for Mrs. Feyersied to react like that, something must be very wrong.
She whirled back around, using the movement to push herself to her feet as she tried to find the boys so they could figure out what was going on and what to do. But as she frantically scanned the street, she didn’t see her friends.
She scoffed incredulously and pursed her lips, rolling her eyes.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered, turning back to the approaching pharmacists.
As she watched, she noted that the if the pharmacists touched someone, the person they touched would then turn into a pharmacist as well. She also noted that whenever it happened, there seemed to be some sort of electrostatic charge that passed to the person who then turned into a pharmacist.
She hummed, glancing around until she found a small alley to duck into. As she watched, more and more people got turned into pharmacists.
Obviously, something weird was going on.
She pulled out her phone, praying the Internet was still up. To her relief, it was, and she quickly pulled up an article on the weird goings-on.
The article claimed the contagion had started at Mayor Doofenshmirtz’s dedication ceremony for the new water tower in downtown Danville, when a random ray from the sky had hit him in the middle of his speech. She shrugged, figuring that was as good a place to start as any, and carefully slipped out of the alley, using the chaos to slip through undetected.
~~~
A few minutes later, Isabella stood on the stage Mayor Doofenshmirtz had been using, frowning at her surroundings.
She’d noted that her rubberization had totally faded, and she figured that though she may have been protected from the infection before since rubber was not a conductor of electricity, now she was likely defenseless, so if she got touched, she’d be completely out of luck.
Not for the first time, she grumbled under her breath about being left behind by the boys. As she turned away from the podium, she noted a strange silhouette-like impression on the wall, presumably from whatever ray had hit the mayor and turned him into the first mindless, repulsive pharmacist.
She frowned, mentally calculating the angle at which the ray would have had to come from in order to leave the impression it had left.
“If he’s six foot two…” she muttered under her breath, tracing angles in the air as she thought. She pointed her finger, and looked at the building she’d managed to identify as the probable source of the contagion.
It was purple, and oddly shaped, almost like Ferb’s head, she thought. A green sign at the top of the building proclaimed that it was Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc.
She made a face, wondering what on earth the building had to do with Mayor Doofenshmirtz, if anything, but before she could wonder about it too much, she noticed that a few of the pharmacists were straying a little too close for comfort, and she snuck off the stage.
She ducked behind a trash can, pondering her next move. She could make her way to Phineas’s house and see if they’d gotten the rubberization ray back up and functioning…
Right as she finished that thought, she flinched as a loud pop sounded, and watched in annoyance as the power went out.
“So much for the ray,” she muttered to herself before she glanced around quickly, slightly worried. To her relief, none of the pharmacists seemed to have noticed her.
She shook her head, deciding her time would be better spent going to Fireside Girls headquarters.
After all, she thought to herself as she looked both ways before she started towards the log cabin, the Fireside Girls were probably worried about her, and the boys hadn’t even waited for her before they had taken off to go God only knew where.
~~~
Isabella had a few close calls, but she made it to the secret entrance to Fireside Girls headquarters without being turned into a pharmacist.
She crawled through the tunnel, barely daring to breathe-if the pharmacists had managed to find this tunnel, there would be no chance of escape before she was touched.
To her relief, she made it to the end of the tunnel without encountering anyone else. She paused at the end of the tunnel, listening to make sure that headquarters hadn’t been breached.
“If anyone can do it, Isabella can,” she heard Phineas say, but to her mild surprise, she realized that the only thing she felt about his declaration of belief in her was annoyance.
“It doesn't matter anyway!” Buford cried. “Sooner or later, they're gonna figure out we're in here, and then they're gonna come in here! They're gonna come in here and they're gonna come in here and they're gonna—”
Isabella heard one of the girls slap Buford and she couldn’t help but smile. Gretchen’s voice sounded next.
“ Lock it down, soldier! No one is gonna get in here, you hear me?!”
There was a brief pause, and then Buford said, “I am so in love with her right now.”
“ Okay, I'm running out of ideas,” Phineas said, a hint of despair in his voice. “I don't know where she could be.”
She reached up to open the trapdoor, but it was jammed with something, so she had to pound on it a few times. She smirked to herself as she heard gasps from the people inside, but her amusement faded back to annoyance as she managed to get the trapdoor open.
“I’m right here,” she said grumpily, and she felt a little satisfaction as she watched everyone’s expressions melt into relief and happiness.
“Isabella!” Phineas cried, walking towards her as she scrambled out of the tunnel and closed the trapdoor. “I’m so sorry we lost track of you.”
Isabella knew that if the circumstances were normal, she’d have totally swooned over Phineas looking at her like that and approaching her with his arms open like he wanted a hug, but as she gave him a level look, she realized that she was still too annoyed and grumpy to appreciate his expression of affection.
“There’s no time,” she said, brushing past him with no more than a hand on his shoulder to intercept his hug. “We have a job to do.”
Isabella heard the Fireside Girls let out a collective, amused “ooh!” at that, and she rolled her eyes, but this time fondly. She knew they’d be talking about her snubbing him for a while.
“We may be the only non-pharmacists left in Danville,” she said, and the Fireside Girls frowned, amusement fading quickly. “I think I figured out where this started. And if we could get there, we might be able to figure out how it started and reverse it.”
“Wait,” Phineas frowned. “How did you find out where it started?”
“Well,” Isabella said, grabbing a marker, “I’m glad you asked.”
~~~