Things I will Risk For You c13

An owl hooted in a tree nearby as the full moon peeked through the foliage. Crickets sang and a wolf howled in the distance. Everything seemed peaceful, like any other midsummer night.

Ferb only wished he felt the same peacefulness as the world around him did. His heart was heavy, weighed down by sorrow. He felt like he was trapped in a cage he could no longer escape. He suspected this to be the memories of a past he was now forced to forget. The only encouragement he had was that he knew that eventually, he would be able to escape them and learn to move on.

But not Phineas. The red-head dragged his feet slowly through the grass and dead leaves on the forest floor, almost as though reluctant to go any further without his beloved platypus. Perry had always been an important part of his family—his biological father had rescued the pup shortly before Christmas and had brought him home for his son to have as a pet. Phineas had always taken care of Perry, as did Ferb once he became part of the family. Everything Phineas did, he had something platypus-related that went hand in hand.

Ferb knew how much Perry meant to Phineas. And he knew that, without a doubt, the loss he was feeling was nowhere near as horrible or as burdensome as the loss his stepbrother felt. Phineas had not even uttered a single syllable as they left… he did not even look at Ferb.

After several minutes of walking through the forest, Ferb let out a sigh and decided to break the silence. "It's somewhere up ahead," he said. "I think that watch you have has a tracker for the hover bike. We should also probably inform Carl about the… uh, mission." He looked at his brother over his shoulder. "Did you… want to drive it home this time?"

Phineas did not look up or speak. He simply shook his head.

Ferb watched him fall behind and then stopped in his tracks. Phineas did the same shortly afterwards. "Phineas," the green-haired teenager said softly.

Phineas remained silent for a moment longer before taking a sniff and raising a hand to his eyes and wiping away a few tears.

Ferb took pity on him and walked towards him. He placed a hand on his brother's shoulder as Phineas continued to slowly wipe away his tears. "Phin, come on," he whispered. "We should get home before Mum gets worried."

"I… don't want to go home without Perry," Phineas squeaked.

"I know you don't… neither do I. But there's nothing we can do… Perry doesn't remember who we are anymore."

"It's… it's just not fair… Why do we have to remember him but he can't remember us?"

Ferb stared at him silently before letting out a sigh and patting his brother's back. "I don't know, Phineas," he said softly. "But we shouldn't be thinking about that here. When we get home, we could—!"

POW!

Something razor sharp and hot sliced through Ferb's leather jacket and split his right shoulder open. He groaned loudly in pain and immediately placed his left hand over his shoulder. Phineas looked up hastily when his brother cried out and watched as Ferb pulled his hand back to reveal a streak of blood. "What the?" Ferb hissed behind his teeth as they both looked over their shoulders.

Men in dark suits ran towards them from Base 41, shouting loudly and holding up guns with small spotlights on them. All weapons were pointed in the boys' direction.

Phineas ducked out of the way as a bullet whizzed through the air overhead. Ferb missed another by a sliver and then broke into a sprint. "Come on!" he shouted at Phineas. "Run!"

They ran as quickly as they could through the thickets, leaping over logs and rocks and zigzagging between trees in the hopes of throwing their pursuers off. Phineas yelped when another bullet sailed past him and impacted a tree. "Ferb!" he exclaimed. "They're shooting at us! They're trying to kill us!"

"So much for the OWCA being the good guys," Ferb said behind a groan.

"Carl didn't tell us they shoot trespassers."

"They probably don't! That crazy big shot buffoon of a leader probably ordered them to do it on his own terms! Now stop thinking about them and just run, Phineas! I think we're losing them. They seem to be getting more and more distant."

They continued to zigzag through the forest nonetheless—bullets were still being fired at them and coming close to contact, which meant that the agents were still near enough to harm them.

Ferb recognized the area they were currently in. "We're almost where we hid the bike," he panted. "Almost there, Phin! Come on—!"

Another bullet being fired was heard; but the sound following that was completely new. Wood cracking and leaves rustling beneath something large sounded a few feet behind Ferb, along with the scream that followed. Ferb immediately skidded to a stop and dashed back towards the noise. "PHINEAS!"

Dead tree remains, logs and foliage were sticking up in different directions when he arrived to where he had heard his brother. Ferb came to a halt near the pit and peered into it while panting loudly. The wood only covered one side of the deep mud pit, leaving most walls bare with nothing but dirt—by the way the ground had crumbled, Ferb guessed that it was incredibly dry and dead in that area, causing the ground to crumble if anything heavy crossed over it.

Anything heavy… like a human.

"Phineas!" Ferb cried out, panic-struck. "Phineas, are you alright? Are you in there?"

There was a weak moan from inside the pit. Ferb hastily scanned the area with his eyes and noticed that a pile of mud was in fact, moving weakly. Finding a place where nothing sticking out would harm him, Ferb sat down on the ground and slid into the pit on his backside.

Phineas coughed, more or less to let his brother know where he was, and once Ferb had gotten on his knees in the thick and oozy mud, he reached out for his brother and attempted to pull him up into a sitting position. His right shoulder burned at the effort, causing him to recoil painfully and simply try to place Phineas' head a little higher out of the goo. "Did you get hit by a bullet?" Ferb asked worriedly.

Phineas shook his head. "No, it just missed me," he replied through a groan.

"Then what happened?"

"I was running and the ground just gave away. I fell in here and… and now I think I twisted my ankle. It hurts every time I move it. And my leg is sore too—!"

"Quiet!" Ferb interrupted him in a hasty tone, placing a hand over his brother's mouth. They both fell silent and listened as footsteps grew closer and closer. Dry leaves crackled beneath the weight of the people sent out to shoot them.

Ferb lowered himself into the mud when the footsteps suddenly ceased.

"Where did they go?" someone asked. "They were zigzagging through the bushes like rabbits."

"They wouldn't have gotten away already, would they?" a second wondered.

"If they did, we're in trouble," a third said seriously. "He wanted us to have them dead before dawn and not let them leave the base alive."

"Why does he suddenly want those two kids dead?"

"They know too much. And since Dr. Doofenshmirtz' amnesiainator has been tampered with, the only solution to shut their mouths permanently is to shoot them."

Ferb frowned. So that was why they were being hunted.

The footsteps started again and grew more and more distant. "Let's spread out and look further. We would have seen them by now, so they're probably somewhere farther up the road."

Ferb waited for everything around them to go silent before letting out a sigh and sitting up once more. He made a grimace and held his right shoulder, trying to ease the pain.

"Are you alright?" Phineas whispered, having noticed his brother grab his wound. "It looks bad."

"Looks can be deceiving," Ferb replied. "Though there's not much I can do here; it's too dark to see anything properly." He looked over at his brother, who was now scratched up and nearly covered from head to toe in mud. "Are you sure no bullet hit you?" he asked as he leaned over his brother and pushed away what mud he could.

"Well, it didn't feel as clean a cut as a bullet would have made, so yes, yes I'm sure," Phineas replied. "I mean, my right leg still hurts a lot, but…"

Ferb pushed some mud away from Phineas' right leg and noticed something dark mix in with the mud. He froze here and trailed a hand over the side of Phineas' leg, searching for a tear. When he had found one, he leaned closer to see and looked on in horror; a long cut, probably a product of falling against wood, trailed along the seam of Phineas' right jean leg from the thigh to the knee. Ferb was unable to tell if it was deep or not—he had a haunch that it was not—but from the mess of blood and mud, it looked worse than it possibly was.

Ferb's silent and worried look caught Phineas' attention. After a moment of hesitation, Phineas decided to turn his head and take a look at his leg to see what the matter was.

Ferb immediately stopped him from doing so and pushed his head back. "Don't look," he ordered, quite harshly.

"Why not?" Phineas asked.

"Just don't look."

"Why not?"

"Because I said so."

Phineas began to panic. "Is it that bad?!" he exclaimed.

"It probably looks worse than it is—!"

"Then why can't I look? It's my leg, for Pete's sake, Ferb! I need to see—!"

"No, you don't!" Ferb snapped, pushing Phineas' head back once more. "The moment you see it, you'll panic, so stop trying to look!" When Phineas did not reply back, Ferb's eyes softened, as did his voice. "Just trust me, okay? You don't need to look."

Phineas stared at him silently before finally nodding and setting his head back against a flat rock that was peeking through the mud. He looked up at the edge where Ferb had slid down. "So… what do we do now?" he asked as Ferb continued to wipe as much mud as he could off of his brother's body. "I won't be able to climb that with a twisted ankle, and you probably can't climb up with me and only one good arm… Have any ideas?"

"I was honestly hoping you would come up with something," Ferb replied as he cleaned off the mud on Phineas' sweater. "We could always call for help, but then Mother and Father would be wondering what we're doing all the way out here, looking for a platypus, and then they'd demand to know why I've got a bullet mark through my shoulder, and where we got the hover bike, and—!"

He stopped dead in his words as he placed his hands around Phineas' head in order to place it in a better position over the thick mud. He was silent for a moment longer before taking his hand and placing it against his best friend's forehead. "Phineas, are you getting a fever?" he asked.

Phineas looked up at Ferb's hand. "Uh, I dunno," he replied. "I feel fine."

"Are you sure? You're sweating and you're really hot."

"Well, I was just running from a bunch of secret agents who were trying to kill me. Why would I not be hot and sweaty?"

"We haven't been running that long. You feel as though you've been sitting in a sauna."

Phineas paused in order to think back before replying again: "Well, I did start feeling a bit of a stomach ache just before we were leaving," he said.

Ferb looked at his brother's stomach for a second before his eyes filled with revelation. "We did absolutely everything together on the way here save crossing that last trap," he whispered. "Phineas, do you think that smoke was… possibly… a gas of some sort?"

Phineas stared at him in confusion and then horror. "If it was, do you think it's… fatal?" he asked worriedly.

"I… don't think so," Ferb replied, "But it doesn't mean that it won't make you feel sick. You do have a sensitive stomach."

"Oh, greeeeaaaat. Too much foreign food and now poisonous gasses. Why was I not aware of this when I was a kid?" As Ferb pulled his hand away from his brother's forehead and sat down against the dirt wall to rest, Phineas looked at him. "So, back to the former issue… what should we do?"

Ferb looked at him for a moment before raising his eyes and staring up at the moon peeking through the treetops. "I don't know, Phineas," he whispered. "I just don't know."

*****