Chapter 1: Chapter One
Chapter Text
Every minute is a mile, dear
Check to check, year to year
My heart is neither there nor here
It’s somewhere out on the open road
Hoping that it might find
One small break or a piece of time
You press pause, I’ll press rewind
The past will find its way
It was a gorgeous, sunny Tuesday morning in Danville, California – the town neighboring Hill Valley. The weather was perfect enough for one Hill Valley resident to skateboard in. Her name was Martha McFly, known mostly as “Marty” to her friends. This 17-year-old redhead was always spotted around town in her signature “Class-5” down vest, its reddish-orange color meshing with her long hair draped over, along with her denim jacket, skintight blue jeans, and faded white Nike shoes.
As soon as the sun goes down
Silence is the only sound
That echoes around the world
Marty had her wireless earbuds in as she rode into the neighborhood that bordered Hill Valley and Danville. Some assumed she was deaf as she passed along the sidewalk and nearly bumped into them. The buds were well-hidden beneath her long fiery locks. All she could hear was the tune of Grand Am playing from her Spotify playlist.
All that I ever do is wait for love to come through
All that I ever do is wait for love to come through
The specific house she headed for was the Flynn-Fletcher residence – the very home of her two best friends, Phineas and Ferb. Stepbrothers who came from a blended family, Phineas and Ferb were always up to some sort of wacky and creative invention they created in their backyard. Marty had known them ever since she babysat for them one night when their big sister (Phineas’s biological sister), Candace, was unavailable.
I’m fanning the invisible fire
With the static of a telephone wire
A believer in a house of liars
Tell me everything I need to hear
The best years have yet to arrive
The bright lights won’t pass me by
The worst things have a reason why
May I sleep easy
It was crazy to think these were the same two boys that had somehow been hired as technical support for the Ghostbusters in New York. Candace claimed they invented some sort of transporter pod, but Marty never saw it…and neither had their mother, for that matter. But, unlike Linda, Marty had reason to believe they did invent such a thing.
As soon as the sun goes down
Silence is the only sound
That echoes inside my heart
All that I ever do is wait for love to come through
All that I ever do is wait for love to come through
When she finally arrived at the Flynn-Fletcher’s fenced-in backyard, Marty saw that it was void of any activity. She popped her earbuds out and called, “Hello? Phineas! Ferb! You guys around?” To humor herself, she even asked, “Where’s Perry?”
Alas, neither of the boy geniuses were there.
What was there, however, was something Marty should’ve noticed the moment she stepped foot on the Flynn-Fletcher property: two super giant loudspeakers.
“Holy shit!” she exclaimed upon seeing them. “I wonder what these are for.”
It was clear the giant loudspeakers were another invention of Phineas and Ferb’s. No electronic store would ever sell ones as big as those. They practically towered over the boys’ house!
Marty couldn’t fathom the exact reason Phineas and Ferb made a super deluxe version of such electronic components, other than to help out with their audition for the “Battle of the Bands” at Hill Valley High. It was happening at the school that same morning, which was one of the primary reasons for Marty’s visit. There was only an hour to kill for rehearsal, but that was not possible without her bandmates.
Of course, this visit wouldn’t be in vain.
As Marty stood there alone on the Flynn-Fletchers’ backyard, something caught her hazel-tinted eyes, reflecting off the ruby lenses of her sunglasses.
An electric guitar.
It rested at the base of Phineas and Ferb’s favorite tree, lounging exactly where Phineas would’ve been at the time.
Just because P and F aren’t here to rehearse doesn’t mean I can’t, Marty internally rationalized as she went to the tree and picked up the guitar. After strapping it onto herself, she went to the amplifier, plugged in the guitar, and turned the volume and overdrive knobs to their max levels. She could feel the reverberating hum from the loudspeakers vibrate the ground beneath her feet and even her teeth.
With her guitar pick raised high above her head, she declared in one voice, “Ready to rock!”
“It’s huge, Stacy! If you look out your window right now, you’d probably see it!”
Candace lied down on the living room sofa, beaming with excitement as she spoke with her best friend, Stacy Hirano, over the phone. “There’s no way the boys are gonna hide it when Mom gets home,” she said with glee. “They are so busted this time!”
“Well, you’re right about me seeing it from my window,” Stacy said. “But, as far as your Mom seeing it, I highly doubt that.”
“What do you mean? Of course, she’s gonna see it! Did I mention it’s huge?!”
“Think, Candace. The mysterious force?”
“I put that whole thing to rest like a week ago, Stacy. Besides, there’s no force on this earth that can ever—”
BOOM!
Candace panicked once she felt her entire house shake. She was also surprised to hear Stacy ask her at that exact time, “Is that an earthquake?!”
“You feel it, too?!” Candace remarked right before she heard a loud thump come over the glass screen door behind the sofa. The earthquake subsided as she turned to see what made the noise. What she first thought to be a bird that smacked against the glass turned out to be a girl just a couple of years older than her with hair even redder and longer than hers. Her dress sense, on the other hand, was nowhere as classy as Candace’s.
As soon as Candace realized who this girl was, she frowned and said, “What’s she doing here?”
She hadn’t intended for her inquiry to be broadcasted over the phone to Stacy, who was prompted to ask, “She who?”
“Marty McFly,” Candace told her. “She’s in our backyard.”
“What’s Marty McFly doing in your backyard?” Stacy asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out,” Candace vowed. “Talk later, Stacy.” She hung up her phone and stepped out onto the backyard terrace that her uninvited guest was sprawled over. Standing over the dazed Marty, she brashly blurted out, “What’re you doing here, McFly?!”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Marty sarcastically groaned.
At the corner of her eye, Candace noticed an empty space from where Phineas and Ferb’s giant loudspeakers should’ve been. She was shocked to see nothing else but piles of ashes in their place, scattering in the wind until there was nothing left.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Candace bellowed in her frustration, which she quickly directed over to Marty. “What did you do?!”
“I cranked that sucker up to eleven and played the power chord to end all power chords,” Marty answered with a smirk. “P&F really know how to build one helluva amplifier. It just sucks that one’s a little unstable.”
“A little?!” Candace yelled. “The whole thing’s turned to ash! How is that even possible?!”
Marty shrugged. “I dunno. Something to do with the vibrations, I guess? If P&F were here, they’d have a better explanation. Where are they anyway?”
“Don’t change the subject, McFly! I had the perfect bust laid out on our backyard before you came and literally blew it for me!”
Marty snickered. “Candace, you’re so unbelievable. You’d bust Phineas and Ferb for solving world hunger.”
“If it’s bust-able, I’d still find a way. And you still haven’t told me why you’re in our backyard.”
“I was hoping the guys and I would have a little time to rehearse before our ‘Battle of the Bands’ audition within an hour.”
“Don’t auditions start at 8:30?”
“Yeah…so? It’s only 7:25. I got plenty of time.”
Candace mockingly knocked on Marty’s head. “Hello? Anybody home? It’s not 7:25, McFly. It’s 8:25. You’re a whole hour behind.”
Hearing this, Marty’s face sunk with dread. She reached into her left jeans pocket to take out her phone and check to see if Candace was right. Sure enough, it was 8:25. How Marty mistook the time was a mystery to her – she merely chalked it up to carelessness. With little time to spare, she removed the electric guitar from her body and handed it over to Candace, who held it like it was contaminated.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked Marty, who was already away from the Flynn-Fletchers’ backyard, skateboarding back to Hill Valley.
Just because she was late didn’t mean that she couldn’t listen to more tunes along the way. Plugging her earbuds back in, she chose just the right song in her rush for time: “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd.
I’ve been tryna call
I’ve been on my own for long enough
Maybe you can show me how to love, maybe
I’m going through withdrawals
You don’t even have to do too much
You can turn me on with just a touch, baby
I look around and
Sin City’s cold and empty (Oh)
No one’s around to judge me (Oh)
I can’t see clearly when you’re gon-on-one
I said, ooh, I’m blinded by the lights
No, I can’t sleep until I feel your touch
I said, ooh, I’m drowning in the night
Oh, when I’m like this, you’re the one I trust
Hey, hey, hey!
As catchy as the beat was, it wasn’t enough for Marty to get where she needed to be as fast as she wanted. She took a risk and tried a maneuver that once nearly got her arrested by the cops. To do it, she needed just the right vehicle: a pickup truck. Luckily, there was a blue 2013 GMC Sierra passing along and heading in the same direction as her. She merged off the sidewalk and into the street, grasping onto the rear of the black pickup. Now she was moving at the same speed as the pickup, shaving off a few minutes or so with this risky maneuver. All she had to do was hold onto the truck, and all the driver had to do was head towards the school.
I’m running out of time
‘Cause I can see the sun light up the sky
So I hit the road in overdrive, baby, oh
The city’s cold and empty (Oh)
No one’s around to judge me (Oh)
I can’t see clearly when you’re gon-on-one
I said, ooh, I’m blinded by the lights
No, I can’t sleep until I feel your touch
I said, ooh, I’m drowning in the night
Oh, when I’m like this, you’re the one I trust
The moment Marty and the Sierra pickup were through Courthouse Square, the central point of downtown Hill Valley, she checked her phone again for the time. It was 8:30 on the dot and she was just five minutes from the school. Had she only skateboarded the entire way, it would’ve taken her a whole twenty minutes.
Unfortunately, her driver friend diverged from their main destination, forcing her to detach from the rear of his pickup and skateboard the rest of the way. She still had five minutes to make it to the school, probably even less with all the shortcuts she knew in and out of the town.
I’m just calling back to let you know (back to let you know)
I could never say it on the phone (say it on the phone)
Will never let you go this time (Ooh)
I said, ooh, I’m blinded by the lights
No, I can’t sleep until I feel your touch
Hey, hey, hey!
Hey, hey, hey!
Marty managed to get to Hill Valley High at exactly 8:36 – only six minutes late. She skidded to a halt near the front steps of the school. Hill Valley High had seen better days in the sixty years it stood. In spite of some graffiti on the lower half exterior and a paint job that was on its last knees, it still looked decent enough.
It wouldn’t have been possible without men like Mr. Martin, the school’s top custodian. Marty saw him sitting there on the steps, drinking his morning coffee, which he had a slight struggle to keep steady in his grips. It was evident he suffered from Parkinson’s, more than enough reason for him to retire. But he was a strong-willed man, able to carry on his custodial duties in spite of his condition.
“You’re late, kid,” he told Marty with a bit of a slur in his speech – another part of his condition. “You have any concept of time?”
“I know, I know,” Marty uttered in her hurry. “Front’s open, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” Mr. Martin said. “I always keep it open for ya in times like this.”
Marty breathed a sigh of relief, fighting the urge to hug him. “You’re my guardian angel,” she told him. “Thank you!”
“You can thank me by nailing that audition,” he returned with a smile.
Marty didn’t know why she was so cautious in roaming the halls of Hill Valley High. School was out for the summer, and it wasn’t like she had to worry about summer school. This “Battle of the Bands” was just an extracurricular activity, one that she took great pride in, as it gave her the opportunity to showcase her musical talents to the community.
It had been a few years since her old band, Lemonade Mouth, disbanded. She was brought in as a replacement for Stella Yamada, the band’s lead guitarist, after she moved to another town. Marty was only 14 years old and Lemonade Mouth’s youngest member. For a while, it all felt like a dream to perform in a band. Unfortunately, it only lasted for a year. The day Olivia (lead singer), Wen (pianist/rapper), Mo (bassist), Charlie (drummer), and Nick (rhythm guitarist) all graduated from Hill Valley High was the day Lemonade Mouth was no more.
Marty figured her band days were long past her, until Joe Gardner – her music teacher – introduced her to Phineas and Ferb, two creative boys that assisted in supplying Joe with the instruments needed for his class. It was Joe who encouraged the three of them to form a new band, one even better than Lemonade Mouth, and the “Battle of the Bands” was just the place to get it started.
Mr. Gardner’s class was where she was supposed to meet up with Phineas, Ferb, and Mr. Gardner himself. It didn’t help that the classroom was located at the very back of the campus where hardly anyone knew it existed. Getting there costed another few minutes of time Marty had already wasted.
She checked her phone again.
8:42.
Why do I have to cut these things so damn close?!
She could hear the voices of Phineas and Mr. Gardner conversing down the hall (she assumed Ferb was there as well, despite being a man of few words). As soon as she walked in, she cried, “I’m here!”
“Finally,” Phineas said. “Where’ve you been?”
“Sorry…I got the hours confused,” Marty sheepishly confessed.
“Well, I did what I could to buy you kids some time,” Joe said. “You were scheduled to come before Brad Buttowski and his band, but I managed to get you bumped to follow after them.”
“How long before they go?” Marty asked.
“In about ten minutes,” Joe told her.
“Plenty of time to get some practice in,” Phineas said. “I left your guitar over there, Marty.” He pointed to one corner of the classroom where Marty’s guitar was still in its case, leaning against the wall.
“Awesome!” Marty was just about to go to it until…
“Hey, McFly!”
She winced as she heard that aggressive call. It was the bane of her existence every day from the moment she first stepped foot in Hill Valley High. As much as she hated to, she turned and faced the one who beckoned her: Tiff Tannen, Hill Valley High’s gym teacher and part-time administrator.
Tannen was a rather busty woman in her late-fifties with short graying hair and a face full of wrinkles. For as long as Marty had known her, she was always wearing a karate gi, despite karate not being on any of the school’s curriculum or having a dojo of her own to run on the weekends. Not to mention that it was entirely inappropriate to the faculty dress code, though none of the other administrators had the courage to tell Tannen.
“That’s your fourth tardy, McFly,” she reprimanded Marty.
“What’re you talking about, Coach?” Gardner confronted her. “School’s out.”
“Tardy’s still tardy, Gardner!” Tannen barked. She then refocused her vitriol back on Marty, adding Phineas and Ferb to the mix. “I heard you three lame ducks are auditioning for the Battle of the Bands.”
“Yeah,” Marty retorted. “What business is it of yours?”
“‘Cause I’m one of the judges, butthead,” Tannen said, much to the chagrin of Marty. “And, if I’m bein’ honest here, I don’t think you punks stand a snowball’s chance in hell.”
“Hey, ease up, Coach!” Gardner demanded. “Can you at least try to be professional?”
“I’m just statin’ the facts, Gardner,” Tannen professed.
“Well, here’s a fact for you,” Phineas spoke up. “Our mom once auditioned for Battle of the Bands at this same school.”
Tannen scoffed. “You mean that one-hit wonder, Lindana? That’s rich, kid. Just face it – no way history’s ever gonna repeat with you buttheads!”
“That’s just it, Coach,” Marty vehemently addressed. “We’re not here to repeat history. We’re here to change it.”
Chapter 2: Chapter Two
Chapter Text
Marty wasn’t sure what heavy metal song Brad Buttowski was supposed to be singing, but he butchered the crap out of it with his bandmates/lackeys, Horace and Pantsy. All he did was screech into the microphone so loud that the feedback whined throughout the school auditorium, stabbing into everyone’s eardrums. Marty had to endure it while she waited with Phineas and Ferb for their turn onstage.
“Another second of this and I’m gonna put Brad out of all our miseries,” said Clarence “Kick” Buttowski, Brad’s little brother. Marty noticed him approaching with his best friend, Gunther Magnuson.
The Buttowski brothers, as well as the rest of their family, were Marty’s next-door neighbors. Whenever she wasn’t hanging out with Phineas and Ferb in Danville, she was always seen with Kick and Gunther at Hill Valley’s skate park, showing different moves they learned on their skateboards.
“Here to watch your bro crash and burn on his audition, Kick?” Marty asked.
Kick smirked her way. “You know it,” he confirmed.
“Wasn’t he supposed to be practicing with his so-called ‘garage band’?”
“More like garbage band.”
Marty busted with laughter. “Even their band name is garbage: the Yeah-Brads? How the hell did he get Horace and Pantsy to agree to that?”
“They didn’t,” Gunther told her. “Brad blackmailed them into it.”
“Seriously?” Marty reacted in total surprise. “Wow. What an assh—”
“Ho!” She heard Brad cry out at the finish of his lackluster performance. “We are the Yeah-Brads!” He jumped off the stage, leaving Horace and Pantsy to stand there awkwardly before Mr. Gardner gave them the cue to leave. Meanwhile, Brad sauntered his way over to Marty and said in a flirtatious tone, “What up, McFly. You come to a decision about tonight’s opportunity?”
Marty felt like she was going to throw up – whether it was from Brad’s horrid B.O. or his sleazy attempt at wooing her, she wasn’t absolutely sure. “I’m not going out with you, Brad,” she sternly told him.
“Not tonight, you mean,” Brad remarked, thinking she was playing “Hard to Get.”
“Not ever, douchebag!” Marty clarified with extra sternness.
Clearly, Brad didn’t take the rejection well. “Fine! Your loss, not mine! But one of these days you’re gonna say yes, and the Brad knows just how to do it!”
“Well, until that time comes, you have fun jerking off to those centerfolds you keep of Natalie Venkman right next to your lotion and tissues.”
There was a collective “Ooh!” from Marty’s burn on Brad.
“Hey! What’s goin’ on over there?!” Coach Tannen bellowed from the judges’ table she shared with Mr. Gardner and Mr. McGillicuddy (HVH’s best science teacher). Everyone promptly kept silent, not wishing to evoke Tannen’s wrath.
Brad fumed from the embarrassment and walked away without saying a word.
“Nice one,” Kick told Marty, exchanging a congratulatory high-five with her.
“Phinheads! You’re up!” Tannen called on the name for Marty, Phineas, and Ferb’s band – an amalgamation between “Pinheads” (the name Marty initially thought up) and the first syllable of Phineas’s name, since he was the band’s lead singer and also lead guitarist. Although all three of them played guitar, Marty still served as the bassist and Ferb was the rhythm guitarist.
On the count of three, the Phinheads kicked into a catchy beat that had everyone in the auditorium, save for Coach Tannen, jamming along…
PHINEAS:
I used to be a renegade!
I used to fool around!
But I couldn’t take the punishment,
and had to settle down!
Now I’m playing it real straight,
and yes, I cut my hair!
You might think I’m crazy,
but I don’t even care!
Because I can tell what’s going on…
It’s hip to be square!
It’s hip to be square!
I like my bands in business suits!
I watch them on TV!
I’m working out most every day,
and watchin’ what I eat!
They tell me that it’s good for me,
but I don’t even care!
I know that it’s crazy,
I know that it’s nowhere,
but there is no denying that…
It’s hip to be square!
It’s hip to be square!
It’s hip to be square!
So hip to be square!
As the band were in mid-song, Coach Tannen suddenly stood up from the judges’ table and blew her whistle, which managed to carry over the sound of the Phinheads’ music. Immediately, Marty and the Flynn-Fletcher brothers stopped, much to their confusion and everyone else’s in the auditorium.
“What’s wrong?” Phineas innocently inquired. “Were we out of tune?”
Gardner wasn’t sure why Tannen blew her whistle as if she were in the middle of coaching the football team, but he said in response to Phineas’s inquiry, “Not at all. You kids sounded great!”
“Great?!” Tannen scoffed. “They were too friggin’ loud!”
“What?!” Marty exclaimed in frustration.
“What’re you talking about, Tannen?” Gardner spoke in defense of the Phinheads. “They sounded perfectly fine.” He then looked to McGillicuddy for support. “Didn’t they, Mr. McGill?”
For a brief second, McGillicuddy considered supporting Gardner’s judging, but then he saw that intense stare in Tannen’s eyes that made the 38-year-old science teacher almost pee himself. “I…I…I…” he stammered before he finally managed to say, “I agree with Coach Tannen. They were a bit loud.”
Tannen beamed with satisfaction. “That settles it then.” Without missing a beat, she then called, “Next group! You’re up!”
“No!” Marty roared, her voice echoing across the entire auditorium. “This is absolute bull$#%+!”
“Whoa! Language, Marty!” Mr. Gardner scolded. “We’re still on school grounds.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. G, but I don’t give a damn!” Marty ranted. “Everyone in this school knows that Coach Tannen is full of it! She shouldn’t even be a judge for these auditions! The only reason she got the job in the first place is because she scares the hell out of half of the school’s staff – including the principal!”
“And what’re you gonna do about it, butthead?” Tannen challenged.
Marty balled her fists so tight that her nails dug into her palms. She wanted so desperately to punch Coach Tannen in the face right there and then in front of the teachers and the other kids. There was only one problem: Tannen was still a school administrator. Attacking her would only lead to getting expelled or even sued – a risk Marty was not willing to take.
In her anger, she jumped off stage, leaving her guitar behind.
She could hear Tannen snickering as she walked out of the auditorium.
Marty had to get as far as she could from the HVH campus…and maybe the whole town. The anger, disappointment, and frustration she felt was unbearable. Coach Tannen crossed many lines in the past, but denying her the chance at getting back into performing in a band was one line too far. She knew how much it meant to her, after all she went through following the separation of Lemonade Mouth.
In her impulsive exit from the auditorium, she made sure to grab her backpack and skateboard. She hated leaving Phineas and Ferb behind on the stage, like Brad did to Horace and Pantsy. The only difference between the two was that Brad couldn’t care less about his friends (unless they were kissing his butt), whereas Marty considered how the Flynn-Fletcher brothers were probably just as hurt and disappointed as she was.
After cleansing her face of the tears that drenched it, she took out her phone and sent a text to Phineas: “Sorry 4 leaving u guys. Coach T pisses me off. C U @ the skate park in 30.”
She left on her skateboard thereafter, figuring she could wash away her misery with a nice Pepsi float at the Retrograde – that awesome new club in the courthouse square that was one-half restaurant and one-half video gaming/sports venue. It was the hottest spot in town for the summer, thanks to its proprietors: Phineas and Ferb.
Unbeknownst to Marty, however, her actions were being observed by two men who stood a short distance across the school parking lot – a relatively short man in a red-and-yellow tracksuit that looked straight out of the 1970s and a tall, thin man who dressed as though he was from the 1870s in an olive green three-piece suit with coattails that ran down to his knees.
“Man, it’s uncanny how much she dresses like him,” said the man in the 1970s tracksuit, as he watched Marty. “It’s like lookin’ into a mirror, ya know? A mirror with long red hair.”
“Dakota, it’s nothing like looking into a mirror,” said the man in the 1870s three-piece suit. “That metaphor only works if he were here with us, looking at his counterpart.”
Dakota shrugged. “Meh. I stand by my comment.” Getting right back to business, he asked his partner, “So what now? We just keep followin’ her around like two creeps?”
“Well, what do you suggest we do?”
“I dunno. Not follow her around like two creeps.”
“We can’t lose track of her, Dakota. Remember what Dr. Brown told us: the counterparts are the key to the sanctity of the space-time continuum. Tonight is the night Martha McFly goes back in time, just as her counterpart did before, and we have to ensure that happens in order for her to follow the path she and this timeline’s Dr. Brown are destined to.”
“Easier said than done with you-know-who runnin’ around.”
Dakota’s partner sighed in despair. “I know. His very presence is a threat to all that we strive to protect as agents of the Time Bureau.”
Chapter 3: Chapter Three
Chapter Text
The Hill Valley skate park was one of few places Marty could drown out her sorrows. Watching other skaters perform sick tricks on the ramps would put anyone in a good mood. Even Zeke Falcone and Luther Waffles, two other friends of Marty, were there. So why did Marty still feel so low?
“There you are,” she heard Phineas’s voice, turning to see him roll up to her with Ferb, Kick, and Gunther. The brothers’ own friends, Isabella and Buford, accompanied them.
“Phineas told us about what happened at the audition,” Isabella told Marty. “I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah…me, too,” Marty lamented. Noticing Buford, she recalled how he was a blood relative of Coach Tannen; that being so, she harshly requested, “Hey, Buford. Next time you see your aunt, could you tell her to lay off my ass?”
“You want it in that specific context or…?” Buford asked.
“Just tell her that I’ve had enough of her shit, O.K.?” Marty demanded.
“‘Fraid I can’t,” Buford denied. “Once Auntie Tiff’s mind put to somethin’, she’s dead-set on accomplishin’ it.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Marty cited.
Seeing how hurt she still was about Coach Tannen and the audition, Phineas gave her some words of encouragement: “Don’t sweat it, Marty. There’s plenty of time to still have your moment, especially while you’re young.”
And these words of encouragement segued into an impromptu song…
PHINEAS:
Do you remember when, not so long ago
all we had was time?
And the future was the last thing on our minds.
What a time.
ISABELLA:
Now here we are, getting older,
wondering what will be.
Life is short,
let’s take advantage of every opportunity.
PHINEAS & ISABELLA:
While we’re young,
let’s go out and have some fun!
Ooh, baby, while we’re young,
let’s go back and give it some!
BACKGROUND SKATERS:
We better do it while we’re young!
Marty almost couldn’t believe how impromptu this song was, with all the skaters in the park – including Zeke and Luther – joining in singing and dancing. Rather than question it, she just rolled with it…
MARTY:
I’ll take a nap in the afternoon.
That’s just part of the fun.
PHINEAS:
So much of youth is wasted on the young.
MARTY:
Hey, watch your tongue.
PHINEAS & MARTY:
We’re not as good as we once were,
but we’re as good once as we ever were.
We’re still kids, it’s not too late.
So let’s take time to recuperate.
ALL:
While we’re young,
let’s go out and have some fun!
Mmm, baby, while we’re young,
let’s go out and get us some!
(We better do it while we’re young! Whoo!)
Taking out her guitar, Marty stepped in with a sweet solo to the cheers of Phineas, Ferb, and the other kids in the skate park. She played along the park bench and jumped off to land on her knees with an epic slide.
ALL:
Ooh! While we’re young!
Let’s go out and have some fun!
Ooh, baby, while we’re young,
Let’s not wait ‘til we’re 91!
(We better do it while we’re young! Ooh!)
Ooh-ooh! While we’re young (While we’re young)!
Ooh-ooh! While we’re young (While we’re young)!
Ooh-ooh! We better do it while we’re young!
Ooh-ooh! While we’re young (While we’re young)!
“SAVE THE CLOCK TOWER!!!”
The impromptu song and on-point street choreography performed along the skate park was interrupted with the emergence of Baljeet Tjinder, who dashed between person-to-person, waving around flyers in one hand and shaking a donation can in the other, all while shouting, “Save the clock tower!”
No one seemed willing to offer him any patronage for his cause.
Especially not Buford, who griped to him, “Hey, dweeb! We were in the middle of a song ‘til ya rudely interrupted us!”
“I apologize,” Baljeet said. “I hope it was a good song.”
Buford gave a passive shrug. “Meh. Sounds better in the soundtrack.”
“What are you collecting for, Baljeet?” Phineas asked, indicating the donation can.
“I am so glad you asked,” Baljeet expressed. “The Mayor of Hill Valley is going to replace the clock on the courthouse. But it is a historical landmark of the Hill Valley side of the Hill Valley-Danville community!”
“What’s historical about it?” Marty inquired. “It’s just a broken old clock.”
“Just a broken old clock?!” Baljeet repeated her words in stunned context. “Forty years ago, lightning struck that clock, and it has not run since! It should be preserved exactly the way it is, as a part of our history and heritage!”
“The only thing you should be worried about preservin’ are yer undahpants, dweeb!” Buford said before he accordingly gave a wedgie and cackled thereafter.
“I should have seen that one coming,” Baljeet whimpered as he dangled.
Marty shook her head at the display. She saw herself in Baljeet’s predicament – another member of the Tannen bloodline abusing someone who was only looking out for the future. As such, she took out a $20 bill from out of her back jeans pocket and slid it into Baljeet’s donation can.
“There you go, Baljeet,” she said. “Hope that helps.”
The gesture brought a smile to Baljeet’s face. “Thank you, Marty. Your kind gesture is a nice distraction from the discomfort I am feeling in my backside.”
At 12:40 that night, Marty was awakened by jingle of her phone. She fell asleep while watching Hulu. The “Are you still watching?” prompt was onscreen at the time her phone woke her. She switched it off and answered the call. “Hello?”
“Are they with you right now?!”
She recognized the frantic, high-strung voice on the other end and rubbed her tired, bloodshot eyes in aggravation. “Candace, do you realize what time it is?”
“Yeah, I do, that’s why I’m calling,” Candace said. “Are Phineas and Ferb with you right now?”
Marty groaned. “No. They’re not.”
“Ooooh! They are so busted!”
“Yes…Yes, they are,” Marty drowsily acknowledged. “Goodnight, Candace.”
“No, wait! They’ve gotta be with that Doctor Emma Brown right now. I only know ‘cause I was eavesdropping on a conversation they had earlier about meeting her at the Twin Pines Mall tonight.”
“And yet you still called me, knowing all of that? I’m hanging up now, Candace.”
“But wait! Look, I can’t risk sneaking out of the house and getting busted myself, and Mom never believes me when I tell her what the boys are up to. So…could you do me a solid and go to Twin Pines Mall and record what the boys and Doc Brown are doing?”
Marty could barely keep her eyes open. “You want me to help you bust Phineas and Ferb?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I want you to do!”
McFly still couldn’t believe this conversation was actually happening close to one o’clock in the evening. It was the curse to being friends with Phineas and Ferb – she had to endure the insanity of their big sister. She wondered how even Linda and Lawrence endured it every day at the Flynn-Fletcher household.
She ultimately decided to humor herself.
Plus, she was just as curious to know why Phineas and Ferb were out so late at night with Doc Brown.
“Sure, Candace,” she agreed. “I’m on my way there right now.”
“Great!” Candace cheered. “And don’t forget to record everything with your phone for evidence!”
Chapter 4: Chapter Four
Chapter Text
Tired as she was, Marty could practically skateboard in her sleep. Her father, George McFly, didn’t even notice her leave the house – he was too busy crunching the numbers for his accounting job. The poor guy carried the weight of the company he worked on his shoulders. He deserved more in life than working a boring old desk job. He used to manage for Linda Flynn-Fletcher, back during her short stint as “Lindana,” until she decided to become a mother; ever since then, George had been stuck with one dead-end accounting job after another.
Marty stopped when she noticed the lit entrance sign to Twin Pines Mall through her hazy vision – that recognizable pair of green pine trees adjacent to the “TWIN PINES MALL” wording and the digital clock that read the time of 1:16am. It was a harsh reminder of how early in the morning it was for Marty to be doing this crap.
In the middle of the empty mall parking lot was a lone multi-step truck that had “DR. E. BROWN ENTERPRISES – 24 HR. SCIENTIFIC SERVICE” printed on the side. E. Brown Enterprises…that the Doc’s company, Marty deduced in her head as she skateboarded towards the truck.
There was only one individual watching over it: deGrasse, Doc’s loyal dog, a larger-than-life black Great Dane. “What up, D.G.,” Marty sweetly greeted him with gentle strokes and scratches on his head. “How you doin’? Are Doc and the boys with ya? Huh?”
VROOM!
Marty heard what sounded like an engine revving, among other bizarre sounds, coming from the truck. Her eyes focused on its rear door, just as it lowered along with the connected ramp. Smoke billowed out from the opened space inside. A pair of red lights shined through the fog, as if there were some sort of dragon living in it. Marty backed a little, just in case.
Fortunately, it wasn’t a dragon. It was a car.
A sleek, stainless steel DeLorean sports car. It had been modified with some crazy-looking units on its rear engine, giving a particularly dangerous feel. There were coils along the front and rear decks. To Marty, it reminded her a lot of the Ectomobile that the Ghostbusters up in New York drove, which they had fashioned from an old Cadillac ambulance.
The gull wing doors of the DeLorean opened, permitting three of its occupants to step out of the vehicle. Marty recognized two of them as Phineas and Ferb. With them was a 52-year-old man with spiky blond hair and rounded glasses; Marty knew him as Cornelius Brown, the adopted son of Doc Brown herself. “Engine’s a little rusty on the start-up,” he said in his sophisticated tone of voice that made him sound like Tom Selleck. “Otherwise, systems are looking good.”
“We’ll have to look into that engine issue,” Phineas noted. “It could have to do with the fusion generator.”
“That is the affirmative action to take, Phineas,” the voice of an elderly woman spoke from the driver’s seat. Marty watched from that side of the DeLorean as the Doc herself, Emma Brown, clambered out in a hunched posture. She straightened her back out to an audible crack. “Oh! Great Scott! We might wanna add some padding to the seats.”
Phineas was about to make note of it on the clipboard he had in hand, until he noticed Marty standing across from them with deGrasse. “Oh, hey, Marty! What’re you doing here?” All attention centered on Marty upon Phineas’s friendly greeting.
“Candace sent me here,” Marty replied, her eyes not once leaving the DeLorean. “I didn’t think they still made this thing. What the hell did you guys do to it?”
“Please hold all your questions for later, Marty,” Doc requested. “You wouldn’t happen to have brought a camera along with you, would you?”
“As a matter of fact…” Marty took her phone out from her back jeans pocket. Candace wanted me to record everything for evidence.”
“Wow! She really knows when to think ahead,” Phineas said, legitimately astounded. “We need the documentation for the experiment.”
Before Marty could ask what the experiment was, Doc yelled to her, “Roll tape!”
Marty didn’t exactly know what she meant by that, so she just figured it was her cue to aim her camera phone at Doc and the DeLorean and press record.
“Good evening, my name is Doctor Emma L. Brown. We’re here standing at the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. It’s Saturday morning, June 21, 2025, at exactly…” She checked her wristwatch for the precise hour and minutes. “1:20am.” She then beckoned for deGrasse to jump into the DeLorean and sit obediently in the driver’s seat. Doc buckled him in with the shoulder harness and placed a battery operated digital clock around his neck.
“This is Temporal Experiment #1. Please note that deGrasse’s clock here is in exact synchronization with my control watch.” She held up a digital watch next to deGrasse’s clock to show that the two were indeed in perfect sync with each other. Looking to her loyal Great Dane, she gingerly told him, “Good luck, boy!” She then lowered the gull wing door, sealing deGrasse inside.
“Too bad Perry couldn’t be the one at the driver’s seat,” Phineas lamented.
“Perhaps next time,” Ferb said, to which Phineas chuckled a bit.
Hearing him snicker, Marty wondered what was so funny about what Ferb said. Her attention was brought back on Doc as she stood with them, holding a remote control unit, similar to one for a radio-controlled toy car. There were buttons labeled “Accelerator” and “Brake,” a joystick, and an LED readout labeled “Miles Per Hour.”
The device amused Marty. “You got that thing hooked up to the…?”
VROOM!
Doc flipped the power switch on the controller; the DeLorean’s engines revved up and the headlights switched on in correlation. Using the accelerator button and joystick for steering, she sent the DeLorean down to the furthest end of the parking lot. She then turned the car around, so that it was pointing toward them.
“So what now?” Marty inquired. “We about to race Mario?”
Phineas giggled at her jesting. “You laugh now, but if our calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious…”
“PHINEAS!” Doc snapped.
“What?” Phineas shrugged. “I was gonna say ‘serious stuff’.”
“Oh,” Doc blushed.
She took a deep breath and pushed the accelerator button.
The DeLorean took off, shifting gears automatically.
The LED speedometer passed 30.
The stainless steel vehicle zoomed faster, passing 40.
Marty’s grip on her phone became moist, her fingers sweating in watching the vehicle speed dangerously closer to where she, Doc, Cornelius, and the Flynn-Fletcher brothers stood. None of them looked as terrified as she felt, which only made her question their sanity.
Doc kept her finger on the accelerator button.
The meter passed 75.
The DeLorean kept accelerating, approaching the spectators. The coils mounted around the car began glowing.
The speedometer hit 85…86…87…88…
Marty felt a sharp blast of air, her field of vision engulfed by a blinding white glow. Initially, she believed it was the heavenly gates calling her on, pulling her soul away from her mortal body before it was struck by the speeding DeLorean, sparing her the agony of dying.
And then…BOOM!
The DeLorean was gone, a trail of fire left in its wake.
Her crotch felt hot, and she realized why when she looked down, noticing the flames from the fire running right in-between her legs, missing her groin by an inch. She instinctively looked behind her to see how far the flames went, spotting the car’s license plate that was left spinning until it clattered to the scorched asphalt.
On the vanity plate was printed “OUTATIME.”
Marty blinked in disbelief, unable to properly process what just happened. Her arms went limp, along with the camera phone she recorded everything on. In her daze, she heard Doc, Cornelius, and the boys wildly cheering in celebration of their successful experiment.
“Y-You…You…You disintegrated him,” Marty muttered.
“What did you say, Marty?” Phineas asked amid the cheers. “I couldn’t hear you.”
“YOU DISINTEGRATED deGRASSE!!!!”
Her frantic behavior ceased the innovators’ revelries. “Calm down, Marty,” Cornelius told her. “We didn’t disintegrate anything.”
“That’s right,” Phineas supported his reassurance. “The molecular structure of both deGrasse and the DeLorean are completely intact.”
“Then where are they?!” Marty exclaimed.
“I believe the appropriate question is: when are they?” Doc said. “Marty, deGrasse has just become the world’s first time traveler!” She heard Phineas and Ferb give a slight intentional cough, as if to correct Doc on her claim. “Oops. Sorry. I meant to say…deGrasse has just become the world’s third time traveler.” It didn’t sound as awe-inspiring as her original claim, but she accepted the honor nonetheless.
“So…what?” Marty said. “You’re telling me that you guys built another time machine?”
“Yeah,” Phineas verified. “Only this time, it’s out of a DeLorean!”
“Doesn’t that seem a little…I dunno…repetitive for you guys?” Marty asked.
“Maybe,” Phineas admitted. “But, it’s Dr. Brown that gave us the idea of doing it from scratch with a car this time.”
“The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine, why not do it with some style?” Doc pitched. “Besides, the stainless steel construction made the flux dispersal—” She stopped when her digital watch beeped. “Oh, damn! Ten seconds! Marty, roll tape! Everyone, brace for a sudden displacement of air!”
Marty aimed her camera phone right where the DeLorean disappeared, while Doc gripped the controller tightly. After five seconds, everyone’s hair stood up on end, charged with static electricity. Suddenly, a sharp blast of wind came out of nowhere, accompanied by a deafening sonic boom.
The DeLorean reappeared right where it vanished, still going 88mph.
Doc hit the brake button, locking up the wheels. The vehicle came to a screeching halt, smoke seeping off its frozen body. They rushed to the car and Doc reached for the door handle, only to recoil in pain. “It’s ice cold,” she cried.
“How is that possible?” Marty asked.
“Could be the brief period in which it passed between dimensions in space and time,” Phineas surmised. “Kinda like traveling in outer space.”
Doc used the tip of her foot to open the driver’s side door, revealing a completely tranquil deGrasse. “There you are, boy! How did you enjoy your trip?” After her sweet-natured greeting, she again compared their watches: deGrasse’s read 1:21:10 while Doc’s read 1:22:10. “Exactly one minute in difference – and it’s still ticking!”
Cornelius, Phineas, and Ferb exchanged five fives, whereas Marty was more concerned for deGrasse. “Is he alright?” she asked Doc.
“He’s fine,” Doc confirmed, unbuckling deGrasse’s shoulder harness and allowing him to roam free, happy and playful. Doc gave him a Milk Bone treat as a reward. “He’s completely unaware of what just happened. As far as he’s concerned, the trip was instantaneous. That’s why his watch is a minute behind mine – he ‘skipped over’ that minute to arrive at this moment in time.”
“Let’s show her how it works,” Phineas suggested, already sitting in the driver’s seat. “First, you switch on the time circuits…” He flipped the labeled switch and an array of indicator lights flashed on inside. Phineas then pointed to three readouts respectively labeled “Destination Time,” “Present Time,” and “Last Time Departed.” “This one tells you where you’re going, this one tells you where you are, and this one tells you where you were.”
“You input your destination on that keypad below the readouts,” Doc indicated. “For instance, you want to see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at Lincoln Memorial.”
Phineas dialed 8-28-1963 and the “Destination Time” readout lit up with the date.
“Or what if you want to visit Disneyland on its opening day?” Phineas suggested, dialing in 7-17-1955.
Cornelius hopped in from the passenger side and dialed in another date. “Here’s one Mom will recognize,” he said with a smirk.
Doc looked on the readout and gasped with her hand to her mouth, delicately touching her wrinkled, peach-blossomed lips. Marty gazed on the date Cornelius entered: “November 5, 1985? What happened?”
“That was the day I invented time travel,” Doc answered, staring off into space.
“Wait, now I’m really confused,” Marty professed. “I thought Phineas and Ferb were the ones who invented time travel.”
“We can’t take total credit for it, Marty,” Phineas said. “After all, it was Doc’s first time machine that we found in the Danville museum.”
Marty’s eyes sparked at this surprising revelation. “You guys never told me that!”
“We didn’t know it at the time when we started converting the DeLorean,” Phineas clarified. “Doc donated her first time machine to the curator.”
“Only as an art piece,” Doc stated. “But it was really just a broken heap of junk. It wasn’t until that day – November 5, 1985 – when I finally got the answer. I was standing on the toilet, hanging my clock, when I fell and hit my head. When I came to, Cornelius found me lying there, staring up at the ceiling and mumbling to myself.”
“What did you say?” Marty asked.
“I said, ‘I got it!’ And, boy, did I get it!” She rubbed at one corner of her forehead where Marty did see a faint scar, aged over time and hidden beneath a few wrinkles. “It was a revelation – a vision – a picture in my head! A picture of this…” She pointed to a particular centerpiece unit mounted inside the DeLorean. “This is what makes time travel possible: the Flux Capacitor!”
Marty aimed her camera phone and got the footage of the unit, even snapping a few pictures for posterity.
“I can’t believe it took me 40 years to fulfill that vision.” In her reminiscing, Doc gazed around the parking lot. “Things sure have changed around here. All this was once farmland as far as the eye could see. My old mentor, Professor Von Drake, owned all of this. The poor man had a crazy obsession for breeding pine trees.”
Marty was overwhelmed. “Man, Candace would have a field day with all this heavy-duty stuff you guys dropped on me. Does it run on regular unleaded gasoline or hydrogen fuel?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Doc replied. “It requires something with more kick. My colleague, Dr. Sean Spengler, gave me the idea of generating 1.21 jigowatts of electricity needed through a nuclear reaction.”
“Nuclear?” Marty felt the blood drain from her face. “This sucker is nuclear?!”
“It’s electrical, Marty,” Phineas elaborated.
“But what the hell do you use to create that kind of reaction?” Marty inquired.
“Plutonium,” Doc said.
“Plutoni—” Marty’s voice drifted on that last syllable, finding the very term itself difficult to say. “Doc, you just don’t walk in someplace and buy plutonium!”
“Actually, you can,” Doc contradicted. “Last week, I attended a black market auction for a group of lab coats bidding on various equipment and supplies. I won two full cases of plutonium when I outbid this one fella who bragged about using for something that ended with ‘-inator’. Who knows what he would’ve used it for, but it’s all mine now.” She gleefully went to her multi-step truck to retrieve a yellow radiation suit that she tossed to Marty. “Make sure your hood’s on when we reload the DeLorean with a fresh supply.”
Marty held the radiation suit in a state of disbelief. “Jesus,” she uneasily muttered.
Before they proceeded any further, Cornelius delivered some unfortunate news: “Uh, Mom? We have a problem. You know that one case we brought along for the experiment? It only has one canister left.”
“How in blazes did that happen?!” Doc bellowed. “There were twelve whole canisters in there when we arrived!”
“I think that’s how it was sold to us,” Cornelius gathered.
“Dammit!” Doc cursed, angrily kicking the yellow plutonium container with the black radioactive symbols on it – though she regretted doing so, as she managed to hurt her foot. “We’ll have to drive back home to retrieve the other container.”
“No prob, Dr. Brown,” Phineas said. “Ferb and I brought along our tele-portable pod with us.” He pulled out a small metal device from his pocket that he threw to the ground. It transformed on impact, mechanically unfolding itself into a large, round teleportation pad. “It’s still preset to your place, Dr. B.”
Doc smiled approvingly on the boys’ nifty invention. “You boys are angels!”
“I’ll say,” Cornelius approved just as much so. “I’ll have that other container back before you know it, Mom.” He stepped onto the pad and was instantly teleported from the Twin Pines Mall parking lot back to Doc’s garage, a remnant of the luxurious mansion she and Cornelius once lived in before it burned down. The garage served primarily as a laboratory. But, after the fire in 1992, it was converted into a free-standing structure and served as the home of Emma and Cornelius from that point forward.
When Cornelius arrived, he anticipated the area to be vacant, but there was a man in a lab coat there, rummaging through the place. “Hey! Stop!” Cornelius shouted, prompting the intruder to freeze in place. “Turn around very slowly.”
The man did so, turning his slouched figure to face Cornelius.
“You!” He recognized the man. “You’re the guy we outbid for the plutonium!”
“That’s right!” the man spoke with a rather screechy voice that had a Drusselsteinian accent. “I, Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, am here to collect what I’m rightfully owed!”
“Rightfully owed?” Cornelius repeated in annoyance. “We won that plutonium, fair and square!” He pulled out his phone and dialed 9-1-1. “You’re going to jail, buddy. I hope it was wor—”
BANG!
A hard object slammed against the back of Cornelius’s head, rendering him unconscious.
Doofenshmirtz merely watched in bewilderment as a tall, dark ominous figure emerged from the shadows, brandishing the blunt object that it used to knock out Cornelius. Heinz saw that the object was made from nanobot technology, dispersing beneath the figure’s black trench coat afterwards.
The most striking feature of this figure was its kabuki mask, which was mostly colored in white with red markings; its eyes were colored a piercing yellow.
“With an entrance like that, you’re definitely evil,” Doofenshmirtz collected.
“It’s not the plutonium you should be after,” the masked figure stated in a deep, automated voice. “It’s the woman – Doctor Emma L. Brown.”
“Why?” Heinz questioned. “She’s not important to me.”
“No. But she is important to me.”
“Then why don’t you go after her and I’ll go after the plutonium!”
“I need your brilliant mind to do what I must for the space-time continuum: erase Doctor Brown from existence.”
Heinz was both flattered and spooked. “Wow. Smooth and sinister. I could learn quite a lot from you, Mr. Mystery Man.”
“Call me ‘Yokai’.”
Chapter 5: Chapter Five
Chapter Text
Marty’s hands trembled while they gripped her smartphone. It was tricky operating the device with the bulbous orange gloves of the yellow radiation suit provided by Doc, who wore a white one of the same make. Phineas and Ferb wore their own suits; Marty still couldn’t believe they were involved in this. Then again, they were pretty much acquainted with the use of radioactive chemical elements. Candace would be doing backflips once she saw all of this on the recordings.
Hearing only her heavy, unsteady breaths beneath the hood of her suit, Marty kept her camera phone focused on Doc as she opened the container full of plutonium, removing a 4-inch clear cylinder with a plutonium rod within. Marty zoomed in to show that the rod was surrounded by water. Doc then stepped over to the rear of the DeLorean and placed the plutonium cylinder into the loading hopper. The rod dropped down into the reactor with a sharp, muffled suction noise.
Once the element was loaded, Doc sealed the chamber shut and removed her hood. “That’s it,” she approved. “Everything is lead-lined, so we’re safe.” Marty took this as her cue to stop filming and remove her hood.
“Ahh, nothing’s more gratifying than loading plutonium into a time machine,” Phineas articulated, though Marty (whose forehead was drenched with sweat) didn’t share his sentiment. “I can’t wait to return to the future. Who knows if everything’s even still the same as it was the last time we were there?”
“Back to the future, eh?” Marty snickered. “How far you fellas going this time?”
“Well, we went 20 years last time,” Phineas reflected. “So, 30 years sounds like a nice round number this time.”
“It’ll be my first trip,” Doc elaborated as she loaded some luggage into the frontside trunk. “I’ve always dreamt of seeing the future – looking beyond my years, observing the progress of mankind. It’s almost like cheating death.”
“Sounds heavy,” Marty said. “Look me up when you guys get there. I should be 47 by that time.”
“Sure thing,” Phineas promised her.
“Roll ‘em, Marty,” Doc cued, and Marty aimed her camera at her and the boys, as they stood beside the open passenger-side, gull-wing door of the DeLorean. Clearing her throat, Doc commenced in addressing the camera, “I, Doctor Emma L. Brown, am about to embark on an incredible journey with my two young friends here, Phineas Flynn and Ferb Fletch—”
Suddenly, Doc’s phone chimed inside her radiation suit.
She unzipped it halfway down to reach inside to retrieve her phone and briefly see who it was on the caller ID. “It’s Cornelius,” she identified prior to answering the call. “Cornelius, where are you with that other container of plutonium? It’s vital that we have it with us. One pallet, one trip. We won’t be able to get back without any extra.”
She paused to listen to her son’s frantic voice on the other line.
“Wait, wait, wait. Cornelius, slow down. Who did you say attacked you?”
“Attacked?!” Marty repeated in concern. “What happened?”
Meanwhile, as everyone was focused on the phone call, Ferb detected a shape far in the distance. It was illuminated by one of the streetlights hanging over the vacant parking lot.
“Cornelius, say that again?” Doc responded. “You said it was the pharmacist from the auction and a man in a kabuki mask?”
Ferb’s unevenly shaped eyes enlarged in alarm.
The figure he noticed in the distance fit the description of the latter individual Doc referenced from her conversation with Cornelius.
Immediately, he tugged on the sleeve of Phineas’s radiation suit. “What is it, Ferb?” his brother inquired, turning to see how alarmed Ferb appeared for a boy who rarely expressed much emotion. Following his gaze, Phineas also noticed the man in the kabuki mask. “Oh, now I see. That is something to be worried about.”
Hearing Phineas, Doc and Marty saw what the boys saw and panicked – especially as soon as the ground beneath the kabuki man’s feet arose and carried him towards the group, as if he were surfing.
“What the hell?!” Marty exclaimed. “Is he some sort of earth-bender?!”
The kabuki man lifted his left arm and the ground beneath the Brown Enterprises multi-step truck buckled, transforming into a massive mound that overturned the truck, much to the shock of Doc, Marty, Phineas, and Ferb.
“That didn’t come from the earth!” Doc observed. “Those were nanobots!”
“Nano-what?!” Marty cried.
“Just take cover!” Phineas yelled, and everyone did as he suggested, huddling near the DeLorean.
That was before Doc glanced over at the overturned truck and realized, “deGrasse’s still in there! I have to check on him!”
“No, wait, Doc!” Marty beseeched, but Doc had already abandoned cover.
When she went to the other side of the overturned truck, she was suddenly cornered by a man in a lab coat. She instantly recognized him as the pharmacist from the auction and noticed that he was aiming a modified handgun straight at her. Doc stepped back a bit, holding her hands up.
From the DeLorean’s side, Marty and the boys could see Doc with her hands up, as if she was being held at gunpoint. “What’s going on?” Phineas inquired. “Is she…?”
ZAP!
In one second, Doc’s body was engulfed in a greenish hue. And then, in the next, it was rendered into a pile of ash.
Marty, Phineas, and Ferb were mortified by what they just witnessed.
Doctor Emma Brown was dead.
“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Marty screamed in rageful grief.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time for her and the Flynn-Fletcher brothers to mourn. The ground beneath them began to shift. Looking down, they could see the nanobots Doc mentioned slithering all around.
“Quick! Into the DeLorean!” Phineas advised.
The three of them got in. Marty taking position at the wheel, while Phineas and Ferb shared the passenger’s seat. As Marty closed the door, she got one last glimpse of Doc’s ashes, which were beginning to scatter in the wind. Tears welling up in her eyes, she slammed the gull-wing door shut and started the engine.
The DeLorean roared off, just as the spot it was parked on had contorted into a twelve-foot spike that nearly impaled the vehicle.
The kabuki man gave chase upon his nanobot wave, summoning other nano-powered stalagmites of various shapes and sizes from areas all over the parking lot in a desperate attempt at derailing the DeLorean. But Marty’s driving was too skilled for the masked menace, avoiding each and every pillar.
“I don’t think he’s trying to kill us,” Phineas deduced. “I think he’s trying to destroy the time machine itself!”
“Yeah, the time machine that we’re in!” Marty retorted.
In her frantic driving, Marty’s right elbow came in contact with the time circuit switch. Phineas and Ferb saw the array of indicator lights flare on, including the three readouts. The “Destination Time” was still set for November 5, 1985.
“Uh, Marty?” Phineas said. “You may not wanna go so fast.”
Marty briefly shot him a disbelieving glare. “We got a murderin’ bastard on our asses! Why shouldn’t I go fast?!” She glanced at the sideview mirror, noticing that the kabuki man was dangerously gaining on their tail. “Alright, asshole. Let’s see you can catch us at 90.”
Marty’s foot slammed on the gas pedal and the DeLorean correspondingly picked up speed.
Phineas and Ferb stared at the speedometer: 65…70…75…80…
The gauges and indicators lit up behind the heads of Marty, Phineas, and Ferb.
…85…88…
Through the windshield, the mall parking lot changed into an open field with a giant haystack in the middle of it. “What the…?!” Marty screeched as they drove through the haystack and straight into an open barn with a loud crash.
Professor Ludwig von Drake was in the middle of fixing his living room television set when he heard a loud commotion reverberate from outside his farmhouse. “What was dat noise dere? Lousy neighbors! Don’t dey realize a genius like myself must get his peace and quiet when workin’ in peace!” It was only after the fact that the Professor realized, “Wait a sec. I don’t have any neighbors!”
His curiosity getting the better of him, the Professor abandoned his repair work on the television set and wandered out of his farmhouse with a flashlight. He spotted a large hole in the front of his barn, which only piqued his curiosity as he approached to investigate.
Peeping through the hole, he stared in open-mouthed astonishment.
“Oum diggidy oumpapa!” he exclaimed as he looked on what appeared to be a spacecraft of some kind, its headlights shining through the dust. Its hatch doors rose slowly. The Professor motioned back gradually, watching expectantly – uneasily – with an expression of curiosity mixed with fear. “Take it easy now, Professor,” he whispered to himself. “No need to lose your cool here.”
It was only when the spaceship’s three occupants – the faces obscured by the hoods from their suits – stepped out when the Professor did actually lose his cool, screaming and running away from the barn like a madman.
Had he maintained composure long enough, he would have heard one of the “aliens” call out to him, “Wait! Don’t go! We’re not radioactive!”
The tallest of three “aliens” pulled back her hood to expose her young, beautiful (albeit disoriented) face. “You guys wanna tell me how the hell we ended up in the middle of Hershel Greene’s creepy-ass farm?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you, Marty,” Phineas said. “You went 88 miles per hour and sent us back in time.”
“Back?” Marty remarked in confusion. “I thought you guys were going 30 years into the future.”
“We didn’t have time to input the date. It was still set for November 5, 1985!”
BOOM!
The sudden explosion of the nearest barn wall drove Marty, Phineas, and Ferb to duck. Another soon followed, tearing through the wooden architecture. “YOU NOT GONNA PROBE ME, YA KOOKY ALIENS!” They heard the Professor yell from outside, brandishing his double-barrel shotgun.
“O.K., we need to get the hell up outta here!” Marty frenetically insisted.
She clambered back into the DeLorean with the boys and started up the engine.
The DeLorean thundered out of the barn, creating yet another large hole in the architecture, in its drastic escape. The Professor continued his reckless firing, missing several times. It didn’t help his aim any with the car spinning around the barnyard. The battle only got more personal when the vehicle smashed through a white picket fence surrounding two newly-planted pine trees in a line, taking out one of the small trees before finding a dirt access road.
“MY PINE!” the Professor shrieked in horror. “YOU KILLED MY PINE!”
In a fit of vengeance, he fired one last shot on the departing DeLorean, missing by a whole six feet and instead destroying his mailbox (along with the dozens of overdue bills that were still in it).
“Get a grip on yourself, Marty. Get a grip. It’s all just one big dream…one very, really intense dream. You’ll go home, go to bed, and wake up the next morning as if none of it ever happened. Doc’s still alive, the kabuki dude wasn’t real…and, hey, maybe you even got accepted into the Battle of the Bands on a technicality. Yeah, that’s what’s gonna happen.”
Phineas and Ferb could only observe Marty as she drove in wide-eyed hysteria from the dirt road onto the main road. “She’s totally losing it, right?” Phineas consulted with his brother, who only nodded in confirmation.
SCREEEECH!!!
Marty slammed down on the brakes without a hint of warning to the Flynn-Fletcher brothers. They watched her struggle out of the vehicle and stare out towards an open field. Curiously, they stepped out to join her.
“What is it?” Phineas asked, but Marty was too flabbergasted to answer.
He only got his answer from a nearby billboard that advertised the construction of Lyon Estates, Marty’s neighborhood, which had yet to see completion in 1985. Now fully understanding her speechlessness, Phineas did what he could to comfort his friend.
“I’m really sorry, Marty,” he said. “But it’s like I tried to tell ya. We’ve…”
“Phineas, just…” Marty whimpered, fighting tears. “Just give me a sec, okay?”
Phineas backed off along with Ferb, both of them returning inside the DeLorean just as they heard a beeping sound. “Uh-oh,” Phineas uttered as he looked on the plutonium chamber indicator – the light was flashing “Empty.” “Well, that’s not good.”
“It wouldn’t be our first time getting stuck in the past,” Ferb noted.
“No, no it wouldn’t,” Phineas acknowledged. “But, unlike last time, we have the luxury of knowing someone in this period who might be able to help us.” He then declared in one voice, “Ferb, I know what we’re gonna do today…in 1985.”
Chapter 6: Chapter Six
Chapter Text
It was a two-mile walk back to Hill Valley. Marty normally took the road from her neighborhood into town on her skateboard, so walking should have been a piece of cake for her and the boys. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for when they arrived in town. Hill Valley in 1985 was dramatically different from Hill Valley in 2025.
Some kids were dressed like punk rockers with rainbow-colored, super-spiky hair.
Others carried boomboxes on their shoulders with the music blaring in their ears.
The cars driven along the streets were vintage and in pristine condition.
The theater marquee advertised two “new” films: Rambo: First Blood Part II and The Goonies. Tickets were $3.55 a seat.
“We’ll have to do our best to blend in,” Phineas suggested.
“S-Sure,” Marty stammered, still adjusting to the bizarre situation she found herself in. “It shouldn’t be all that hard. I-I mean, think of all that we know ‘bout the 80s, thanks to Stranger Things.”
Phineas snickered. “Yeah, including the monsters.”
“T-There were real monsters?” Marty asked. She was so jittery that she took Phineas’s joke as an actual fact.
DONG! DONG! DONG!
Marty and the boys were shaken by the ringing of the Hill Valley Courthouse clock tower, which was still in working condition in 1985. Amused by the historical circumstance, Phineas reflected, “Baljeet would’ve been happy to see this.”
Unable to handle the eeriness around her, Marty needed something to calm her. She took out her phone and put in her wireless earbuds, hoping that some music would calm her nerves. However, when she tried to access her Spotify playlist, she kept getting an error message: “No Internet Connection.”
Of course. Wi-Fi hasn’t existed yet in 1985!
“Dammit!” she verbally griped.
Seeing her distraught again, Phineas told her, “Take it easy, Marty. We’ll find a way out of this. All we have to do is call Doc.”
“How’re we gonna do that without a phone?” Marty indicated her now useless smartphone to Phineas.
“Well, payphones did exist in 1985.” Phineas pointed to one specific area in the square that Marty recognized as the Retrograde. Of course, in this 1985 setting, it was the old Century Café that was established before its closure and Phineas and Ferb renting the space. Immediately, she and the boys went there, being careful not to get run down by the blue 1980 Chevy Silverado along the way.
The difference in the atmosphere was discernable as soon as they entered.
Whereas the Retrograde was designed to be like Phineas and Ferb’s answer to Dave & Buster’s, Century Café was a basic coffee shop hangout with an open mic stage. Of course, being as early as it was, there wasn’t anyone on stage and barely much activity, save for one redheaded girl sitting alone and eating breakfast at the counter and a janitor sweeping away at the floors.
Marty and the boys spotted the available indoor payphone booth near the corner. They wasted no time in going to it, with Marty stepping inside to search for Doc’s address in the phonebook. Once she found it, she dropped a few quarters into the machine and dialed the number. She never used a payphone before – or seen one, for that matter – so this firsthand experience was more than archaic to her.
She heard ringing over the receiver a few times before ultimately getting an answer. “Brown residence,” the formal voice of a young boy answered. “To whom am I speaking?”
Marty barely had a moment to venture a guess as to who the kid was, so she cut right to the chase: “Uh, hi…is Emma Brown there?”
“Yes, she is,” the boy replied.
“Can I speak to her?”
“I dunno. Can you?”
Oh, great. A grammar zealot. Marty despised those types. Not letting it deter her from the task at hand, she reiterated her request, “May I speak to her?”
“She’s busy right now,” the kid said. “May I take a message?”
Becoming impatient, Marty asked, “Who is this?”
“This is Lewis. Who are you?”
“Somebody who really needs to talk to Emma Brown right now. Now can you put her on the phone, you little…?!”
Click!
Marty could only hear the dial tone. Whoever this Lewis was, he hung up on her.
“Well, that could’ve gone better,” Phineas criticized in his genial tone. “Who were you talking to anyway?”
Marty shrugged. “Some little wiseass named Lewis. Anyone you know?”
Phineas shook his head. “Doctor Brown never mentioned having another son.”
With no other choice, Marty used her phone to snap a pic of the address from the phonebook. “If we can’t call her, we’ll just go to her then,” she suggested.
They were on their way out of the café, until…
“Hey, Flynn!”
Phineas’s head quickly turned just as he heard his last name called out. Marty and Ferb promptly stopped along with him to look towards the café entrance where they spotted a busty, short-haired young brunette in a karate gi, flanked by a wild pack of colorful weasels.
Marty and the boys could hardly believe their eyes when they recognized her.
“Coach Tannen?” Marty gasped in a whisper.
It was like Tiff Tannen had discovered the Fountain of Youth. Her wrinkled, sagged skin had been replaced with a smoother, shinier glow. Her breasts were fuller and even looked authentic, as opposed to the obvious boob job she had well into her fifties. Even her karate gi looked brand new.
Phineas, on the other hand, was more concerned with how Tannen knew of him in 1985, long before he was ever supposed to be born. But it turned out that he wasn’t the “Flynn” Tannen was addressing, as she brisked past him, Marty, and Ferb and approached the redheaded girl at the counter.
Phineas was stricken when he saw that the girl was his mother: Linda Flynn.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, Flynn – you lil’ twerp!” Tannen bellowed.
Linda turned away from her cereal breakfast to face Tannen, putting on a welcoming disposition. “Oh, hey, Tiff. How’re you today?”
“What’re you? My doctor?” Tannen retorted. “Where’s my homework?”
Linda fidgeted. “Well, uh, you see…I was a little busy last night and I…”
“Hello!” Tannen grabbed Linda by the shirt collar and knocked on her head, to the amusement of her weasel associates. “Anybody home? Think, Flynn! Think! Do you know what’ll happen if I turn in my homework with your handwriting? I’ll get kicked out of school, that’s what’ll happen! Now what’s so damn important that you couldn’t focus on my homework?”
“Well…you see, Tiff…the Battle of the Bands is next week and…”
“Oh! Here we go again!” Tiff griped. “We’ve talked about this, Flynn! The odds of you winnin’ that contest are slim to my ass! I’m just statin’ the facts! What’re you hopin’ to achieve with that anyway? Are you gonna be the next Madonna or somethin’?”
“She’s gonna be Lindana!” Marty suddenly blurted out.
Their attention was momentarily brought on Marty, Phineas, and Ferb, following Marty’s outburst. Unfortunately, the only response it got was unrestrained laughter from Tannen and her weasel gang. Linda could only sit in silence and embarrassment, glaring towards Marty and the boys.
“Oh, that’s rich! That’s the best laugh I had in a while, man!” Tannen screamed. “Lindana? What a joke!”
“How ‘bout you guys back off her?!” another voice stepped in.
Everyone turned to the janitor, who stopped sweeping long enough to confront Tannen and her gang.
Really seeing him for the first time, Marty was shocked to see who the janitor was.
“Dad?!” she again gasped in a whisper.
Sure enough, the Century Café janitor was George McFly. He stood there, looking to be the same age as Marty, in a dirtied navy-blue jumpsuit. His youthful appearance was rather androgynous, looking almost like the perfect clone of Marty herself with bright red hair and blue eyes.
“So, who’re you all of the sudden, McFly? Billy Badass?” Tannen advanced on the teen janitor. “Everyone knows you got no scrote!” She nudged her fist against George’s groin, a gesture that made him wince and cough. While George was hunched over in anguish, Tannen took one last look at Linda and warned, “My homework better be to me before Monday, Flynn! Got it?!”
“Y-Yeah, s-sure, Tiff,” Linda stammered, her concern more on George.
On that, Tannen and her weasels departed.
Marty, Phineas, and Ferb could see them through the café window, leaving in a ’76 Ford Thunderbird Convertible.
“Are you alright?” They heard Linda ask George, helping him sit at the counter.
George smiled in gratitude from her concern. “I should be asking you that. Don’t listen to Tiff. You have more than enough right to enter the Battle of the Bands. You’ve got a lot of talent.”
Linda sighed. “Before today, I would’ve agreed…until those three butted in.”
She nodded towards Marty, Phineas, and Ferb, who stood awkwardly across from George and Linda.
“I think I’ll just stay home that night,” Linda opted. “I don’t wanna miss Family Ties anyway.” After checking one last time on George’s condition, she walked out of the café in tears.
“Smooth, guys,” George scolded Marty and the boys. “Real smooth.”
As soon as he was somewhat recovered, he returned to his janitorial duties.
Neither Marty nor Phineas were sure what to make of the incident they witnessed with both of their parents. Rather than deliberate on it, they rushed out of the café and headed for Doc’s place.
Arriving at John F. Kennedy Drive – according to the address from the phonebook, Marty realized that it was actually Joseph Biden Drive in 2025. The street wasn’t all too different from how it was in the future. There was still a Burger King next door and a printing service across the street.
The only major difference was in the Brown residence.
In 1985, the luxurious mansion was still there, along with the garage.
“Had no idea the Doc lived so large,” Marty observed in awe, as she approached the front door with Phineas and Ferb. She knocked on the door, and it was soon answered by a 12-year-old kid who looked a lot like…
“Cornelius?!” Marty and Phineas exclaimed in surprise.
“It’s Lewis,” he corrected. “Who are you guys?”
“We’re here to see your mom,” Phineas told him.
“Are you the ones who called earlier?” Lewis inquired.
“Yeah,” Marty verified. “We just—”
SLAM!
Marty should have seen that door slam coming from Lewis. After all, this was the same kid who hung up on her over the phone. But she had come too far just to allow one snobby kid to stand in her way.
Once again, she knocked on the door.
This time, instead of Lewis, a radiant strawberry-blonde woman in a black evening dress answered the door. Marty, Phineas, and Ferb were blown away by her beauty, particularly once they realized the blonde was a 40-year-old Emma Brown. She was a stark contrast to the elderly woman they watched die in 2025. Her face was amassed with makeup that made her look even younger, her long locks were well-kept, and her posture was elegant.
“You must be the babysitters,” she greeted Marty and the boys.
Seizing the opportunity, Marty played along. “Yes…yes, we are,” she told Emma.
“Come right in – I was just on my way out,” Emma invited. Marty, Phineas, and Ferb walked in right away, getting an eyeful of the mansion’s interior. With the exception of a multitude of contraptions cobbled together within random sections of each room, the Brown mansion was as exquisite on the inside as it was on the outside.
Lewis was in the den, conducting an experiment with a long-haired Collie, in which both him and the dog wore unique helmets.
“Cornelius, leave Einstein alone, will ya?” Emma reprimanded.
“But I’m on the brink of a massive breakthrough!” Lewis protested. “I’m about to establish a telepathic link between man and his best friend!”
Emma shook her head, grinning. “Well, be nice to your sitters while I’m gone.”
“I don’t need babysitters,” Lewis grumbled.
“You got a hot date, Doc…erm, Miss Brown?” Marty asked.
“I do indeed, young lady, and I don’t want to keep him waiting,” Emma said. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge for you kids. Make sure Cornelius is in bed by no later than nine.” She slipped her fur coat on and called to Lewis while heading out the door, “Love ya, honey!”
“Love you, too, Mom!” Lewis called back.
Marty attempted to lend Emma’s ear before she left, but the young Doc moved at a much quicker pace compared to her older counterpart. It didn’t help much that she fretted in her approach. There Emma was, nowhere near as eccentric as she would one day be in 2025, and she was about to be told that she would invent a time machine out of a DeLorean. She would’ve thrown out Marty and the boys without blinking.
“How’re we going to convince Doctor Brown to help us get back to the future?” Phineas posed the exact question Marty was thinking.
It was only when she glanced at Lewis that a feasible idea brewed in her noggin.
“Maybe she’s not the one we have to convince.”
Chapter 7: Chapter Seven
Chapter Text
Staggering along the sidewalk with a bottle of Chardonnay in hand, her makeup running after an hour of sobbing, Emma returned home to her mansion with the hope of forgetting one disaster of an evening. Her date stood her up, leaving her to sit alone at Rocky’s Pizzeria, downing one glass after another.
The second she walked through the front door, she was welcomed by an overenergetic Lewis. “Hey, Mom! Hey, Mom! Hey, Mom!” he yelled, rapidly jumping up and down like he was on a sugar rush. “Can Marty, Phineas, and Ferb stay here? Like forever?”
Emma could barely focus on him. “Lewis…honey…I’ve had a really rough night. Can’t this wait ‘til morning?” She slithered out of her fur coat, letting it drop into a fuzzy heap on the floor. She noticed Marty, Phineas, and Ferb standing not too far behind Lewis, reminded of the babysitters she hired for the night. “Oh, right…um…here ya go.” She reached into her purse and handed a twenty-dollar bill over to Marty. “Thank you for your service.”
Marty looked at the crisp twenty-dollar bill, which she would’ve imagined to be a pretty sizable reward for babysitting in 1985. But that was beside the reason she, Phineas, and Ferb were there. “Doc, listen,” she began to tell the wavering Emma, only to stop and see how much of a mess she was. “What the hell happened to you anyway? You got back a whole lot earlier than you said you would.”
“Honey, do yourself a favor,” Emma hiccupped. “Never go into dating.”
Going off that morose advice, Marty had a good idea what happened to Emma.
“Hey, Mom,” Lewis once again beckoned. “Marty, Phineas, and Ferb told me the gnarliest thing: they’re from the future!”
“Oh, Lewis…” Emma groaned. “They were just having a little fun with you.”
“It’s true, Doc,” Marty spoke up, catching Emma off guard as her bloodshot eyes leered questionably towards the teenage redhead. “We came here in a time machine that you invented. And now, we need your help to get back to the year 2025.”
Emma continued staring at Marty for a long minute…and then she rushed over to the nearest trashcan, vomiting into it. It wasn’t exactly the reaction neither Marty nor the boys expected. Soon after all the contents within her stomach were regurgitated into the trashcan, Emma cleaned the puke off her lips and told Marty, “Get your crazy ass off my property right now.”
“Doc, I’m telling you the truth!” Marty snapped. “You’re the only one who knows how your time machine works!”
“I never…” Emma stopped for a brief second to hurl, thinking she had more to barf out. Luckily, it was just a false alarm. “I never invented any time machine, kid! Now, kindly leave before I…”
Without warning, Marty shoved her smartphone in Emma’s face.
Emma found herself staring at a photo on the future device that had Marty standing with Phineas, Ferb, and a long-necked girl inside some sort of family entertainment center. Marty was happily sipping on a green-colored beverage, presumably soda, while Phineas and Ferb stood aside, exchanging in a brotherly high-five. The long-necked girl was behind Marty, smiling; of course, one off-putting detail Emma noticed about her was the bizarre hairstyle.
“That’s a terrible mullet she has,” Emma disapproved.
“Never mind the photo, Doc!” Marty griped. “Look at what I’m showing it on! When was the last time you’ve seen anyone in 1985 carrying one of these, huh?”
“What? The fancy, oversized Viewfinder? How much did ya pay for that toy?”
Marty’s patience wore thin with the boozy scientist. “I’m telling the truth, Doc! You gotta believe me!”
“O.K., Future Girl,” Emma scoffed. “How ‘bout providing me with some future insight? By the year 2018, who will be President of the United States?”
Marty smirked from the easy question. “Donald Trump.”
Emma immediately burst with laughter. “Donald Trump?! Seriously?! Who’s Vice President – Hugh Hefner?!” She stood up from her hunched position over the trashcan, hostilely advancing on Marty, Phineas, and Ferb. “And I suppose Ivana Trump is the First Lady! And Ron Jeremy is the Secretary of Defense!”
In her ranting, Emma backed Marty and the boys right out through the front door and onto the porch. “Doc, wait a sec! You gotta listen!” Marty pleaded.
“I’ve heard enough jokes for one night, young lady! Good night and good riddance!”
While looking at Emma’s shouting face of disbelief, Marty detected something that she wished she had sooner. Just as Emma furiously shut the door, Marty stuck her foot in to keep it pried open, at the painful risk of the door slamming right into the foot itself. Thankfully, her Nikes cushioned much of the blow.
“The bruise!” she bellowed. “That bruise on your head!”
Emma froze for a brief moment, lightly touching the area above her right eyebrow. It was the one part of her face that was heavily applied with contour. She then defiantly told Marty, “I don’t have a single bruise on my face, kid!”
“Yes, you do! You just contoured the shit out of it!” Marty indicated. “You told me the whole story about it. You were standing on the toilet, hanging your clock, when you fell and hit your head. When you came to, Lewis found you lying there, staring up at the ceiling and mumbling to yourself. You said, ‘I got it!’ And that’s when you came up with the idea for the Flux Capacitor, which makes time travel possible.”
Emma froze again, much longer this time, hearing Marty’s spot-on recap of her “eureka” moment, which had only occurred earlier that morning for the drunken scientist – who sobered up rather suddenly.
After a few seconds of standing frozen in stunned silence, Emma fainted.
Marty and the boys looked down at her unconscious body, curiously.
“A fall like that is certain to evoke another brilliant idea,” Ferb observed.
As soon as Emma regained her senses, she drove everyone out in her 1978 AMC Pacer D/L Wagon to the countryside, specifically the construction site for Marty’s future neighborhood. They stopped at the Lyon Estates billboard. Marty and the boys led Emma and Lewis behind where the DeLorean time machine was stashed beneath piles and piles of bushes.
Emma and Lewis were in awe as they gazed on the fully-functional Flux Capacitor within the time machine, looking exactly as how Emma drew it in her specs that morning. “It works…It works!” she cried out in immense jubilation. “I finally invent something that works, Lewis!”
“You really did it, Mom!” Lewis congratulated her.
Cutting their celebration short, they hitched the DeLorean behind Emma’s Wagon, covered it with a tarp, and returned it back to the mansion’s garage. Curious to know more about the functions of the future technological achievement, Marty and the Flynn-Fletcher brothers showed Emma and Lewis the footage recorded on Marty’s phone of the experiment.
“Oh, my god!” a mortified Emma exclaimed once she got a look at her 2025 counterpart on the recording. “I look so ancient!”
“You look like Great Aunt Vera!” Lewis equated, much to his mother’s chagrin.
Moving past the shock of seeing her older self, Emma focused her attention on Marty’s smartphone, which she perceived with more genuine fascination in her sober frame of mind. “Such a magnificent device – a phone that’s also a camera, a calculator, a computer, and a TV, all in one! You sure Bill Gates isn’t the president in 2025?”
They continued watching the footage until the 2025 Emma Brown said something on the recording that caused her 1985 self to fly into panic.
“1.21 JIGOWATTS?!?!”
It was enough to make her flee back into the mansion and into her study, plopping herself onto her couch and curling into a fetal position. Marty and the boys caught up with her, confused as to why she was so alarmed. “What the hell is a jigowatts anyway?” Marty asked.
“All we need is a little plutonium,” Phineas said.
Emma sat up on the couch, looking incredulously at Phineas. “A little plutonium?! Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to get plutonium in 1985? I’m sure you kids learned about the nuclear arms race in whatever schools they have in 2025!”
“I think you guys are stuck here,” Lewis told the time travelers.
“Well, we can’t be stuck here,” Phineas negated.
“That’s right – we got lives in 2025,” Marty said. “Phineas has a girlfriend waiting for him!”
Phineas raised an eyebrow. “I do?”
“Is she cute?” Emma asked with a smile, her interest held on the topic.
“She’s the sweetest lil’ thing, Doc. Her name’s Isabella.” Marty brought up a photo on her phone of a dark-haired girl with a large pink bow in her hair.
“Isabella?” Phineas reacted doubtingly. “She’s just a friend, Marty.”
Seeing the photo only made Emma feel worse about her inability to help the time travelers. “Marty, honey, I’m so sorry…but unless one of us has the guts to break into a government-sanctioned military base, the only other power source capable of generating 1.21 jigowatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning.”
Those last few words sparked an idea in Marty. “Say that again?”
“A bolt of lightning,” Emma repeated. “The only thing about it is that you never know when or where it’s ever gonna strike.”
Marty reached into her rear jeans pocket, retrieving a folded piece of paper that she kept tucked in there for the longest time. She unfolded the paper and handed it over to Emma. “We do now,” she told her.
Noticing the paper she gave to Emma, Phineas asked in wide-eyed astonishment, “Wait…isn’t that Baljeet’s flier?”
Emma glanced over the flier, seeing that it depicted a historical event in 1985 that had yet to happen: a bolt of lightning struck the courthouse clock tower on the night of November 12, 1985. Reveled by this information, Emma exclaimed, “Eureka! It says here that the lightning is gonna strike the tower at precisely 10:04p.m., next Tuesday night!”
“We could harness the lightning and channel it into the Flux Capacitor!” Lewis surmised. “That should be enough to get Marty, Phineas, and Ferb home!”
“Exactly!” Emma concurred. “Next Tuesday night, we’re sending them...”
“Yes! Now we’re talkin’!” Marty cheered. “Tuesday sounds good. We could spend a week here in 1985. Lewis can show us around some of the great hangout spots. Maybe we can—”
“No!” Emma immediately disallowed. “Marty, listen to me. For as long as you three are here in 1985, you cannot – must not – leave this house or talk to anybody. Anything you do here could have serious consequences to future events. Do you understand me?”
Marty frowned. “Well, that would’ve been important to know sooner!”
“Why?” Lewis asked. “Who else did you guys talk to today before us?”
“Just Marty’s dad and my mom,” Phineas shrugged. “But that couldn’t have—”
“Great Scott!” Emma cried, grabbing the sides of her head as she mentally recalled a miniscule detail from earlier that now carried great importance to the current discussion. “Marty, lemme see that picture you showed me before – the one of that long-necked girl with the weird mullet.”
“You mean Candace?” Phineas identified. “She never had a mullet – not that we know of.”
“That only further concerns my theory,” Emma said, just as Marty handed her phone over to her with the picture in question on display. Glancing at Candace again, she alerted the youths, “Just as I thought! Look at Candace!”
Marty and the boys saw what she did: Candace’s head was completely gone!
“Where did it go?” Marty asked. “It’s like it’s been photoshopped out.”
“Or erased from existence,” Emma gasped.
Chapter 8: Chapter Eight
Chapter Text
There was hardly much sleep to be had in the Brown residence that evening. The possibility of Phineas being erased from existence mortified everyone, rightfully Phineas himself. Something that he, Marty, and Ferb did the other day – their first day in 1985 – endangered the Flynn timeline. The only way to get to the bottom of it was to visit Hill Valley High.
The school didn’t look all that dissimilar to its 2025 counterpart, once Marty and the boys showed up there, the following morning. There was still graffiti on the lower half exterior, but it was of low quantity. The school janitor – someone Marty didn’t recognize – did his best to conceal it all with a fresh paint job at the time of their arrival.
“Good luck with that, dude,” Marty scoffed from a distance.
“Now, remember,” Phineas recounted, “we need to find out what it was that we changed about yesterday’s events. Ferb and I will find your dad, Marty, while you find our mom.”
“Got it,” Marty confirmed, prior to taking her smartphone out from her back pocket and adding, “Let’s keep in touch through text.” She then only realized, “Not that kids ever texted on their phones in 1985.”
Phineas snickered. “It’s not a bad idea, Marty. But let’s just do it in secret.”
On that agreement, Marty and the brothers parted ways.
It was lunchtime in the cafeteria when Phineas and Ferb discovered George McFly there, sitting alone at one of the tables in the corner. He was penning away on a notebook to his left while munching on his lunch (a burger and fries with chocolate milk) from his right.
“Hey, George,” Phineas called.
George looked up from his work and food when he heard his name, noticing the redheaded boy with the acutely shaped head and his green-haired companion seating themselves at his table. “Do I know you fellas?” he asked.
“Eh, kinda,” Phineas said. “We met yesterday at Century Café.”
George’s brow narrowed on the duo. “Wait a sec…you’re the guys who were with that girl! You embarrassed Linda in front of Tiff Tannen! It’s because of you that she’s not gonna perform in the Battle of the Bands!” He began to gather his notebook and food tray, motioning a rapid departure from the table. “I don’t know what you guys want, but I want you to leave me alone!”
“George, wait!” Phineas stopped him. “Just hear us out. We want to make up things with you and Mom—I mean, Linda.”
George kept himself glued to his seat – more out of interest than courtesy. “And how exactly do you intend on doing that?”
“Well…” Phineas thought fast. “You mentioned the Battle of the Bands. Is there any way we can convince her to change her mind?”
George sighed. “You think I haven’t already tried that? I mean, I wrote a whole song for her to sing at the Battle.” He briefly held up his notebook to Phineas and Ferb.
“You’re a songwriter?” Phineas beamed at the notion. “I never knew that!”
“Why would you?” George inquired.
“Erm, no reason,” Phineas covered. Quickly changing the topic, he requested of George, “Can we check out your notes?”
“I, uh, don’t usually let anyone but Linda read them,” George said, “but under the circumstances, I suppose I can let you read the first page I finished, a couple of days ago.” He handed the notebook over to Phineas.
The Flynn-Fletcher brothers scanned through all the musical notes and lyrics that George composed on the completed page. It looked so professionally done that it might as well have been sheet music off a maestro conductor’s stand. Halfway through scanning, however, Phineas and Ferb began to recognize the song George composed for Linda.
It was the “Lindana” song – Linda’s one-hit wonder.
They heard the tune enough times to remember the beat and words.
Although Phineas couldn’t say it aloud to Ferb, the brothers were on the same thought process: Linda Flynn’s performance in the 1985 Battle of the Bands was a pivotal moment in the family timeline. It was what led to her success as “Lindana” that in turn convinced her to become a mother. Without that conviction, Linda never followed her destiny, and neither Candace nor Phineas were ever born.
“Could you excuse us for a minute, George?” Phineas entreated.
George passively shrugged. “Uh, yeah…sure.”
Phineas led Ferb into the closest bathroom. After checking the stalls and locking the door, he pulled out his phone and proceeded to text Marty the same thing that he verbally told his stepbrother: “We have to get Mom to perform her song on that stage, if we wanna fix the timeline and prevent me and Candace from being erased.”
Marty roamed the halls along the other side of the school when she received Phineas’s text message, double-checking to see if anyone was around before she read it off her phone. As she read the message, her ears picked up on some noises coming from the school auditorium. She brushed her hair back behind her left ear to listen more clearly, ultimately drawn to the sound.
Entering an empty building with only the stage lit, she found a girl standing there and singing acapella to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Marty squinted from the rear section, hoping to see who the lone performer was. To her surprise, it was Linda Flynn.
Marty smiled. Linda’s singing was out of this world, which came as no surprise to Marty, who listened to “Lindana” quite often, whether it was on the radio or whenever her parents played it in their living room stereo.
She couldn’t help but to applaud as soon as Linda wrapped up her singing.
“W-Who’s there?!” Linda jolted from the applause, not anticipating anyone else to be in the area. It was usually this empty during lunchtime, before the drama club students arrived for fifth period. The spotlights made it virtually impossible to see beyond the first few vacant rows.
Her admirer immediately stepped forward – a redheaded girl about her age, dressed in a velvet solid corset top, a cropped denim jacket, and blue jeans. Of course, Linda better recognized her from the down vest she wore yesterday at Century Café.
“You!” she hissed at Marty. “Are you following me?! Who are you?!”
“Easy, Linda,” Marty said, her hands held up peacefully. “I’m not here for trouble.”
“How do you know my name? I’ve never even seen you before!”
“I kinda know George McFly. I’m his…neighbor.”
Linda eyed Marty shiftily, her arms crossed. “Uh-huh. What do you want?”
“To apologize for yesterday…and to insist that you go through with your performance at the Battle of the Bands.”
Linda scoffed. “You really do know George, doncha? Did he send you?”
“Nope. I came here on my own. We felt guilty about embarrassing you in front of Tiff Tannen.”
“And by ‘we’ you mean yourself and those two weird boys you were with?”
Marty tried not to laugh at Linda’s description of her future son and stepson. “Right…those guys.”
“Well, I appreciate the thought, but I don’t know if I have it in me to go through with it anymore. What Tiff said really got to me, ya know? Do you know how terrifying it is to be rejected?”
Marty stiffened with a frown. “Yeah…I think I have a good idea.”
“Then you should know how tough it is to get back that confidence once you’ve lost it. Before yesterday at the café, I would’ve been thrilled at the idea of singing in front of the whole school. But now…I just…I don’t know.”
Seeing Linda stand on that stage and look so discouraged broke Marty’s heart.
She kept seeing herself up there, particularly the other day at the auditions for the 2025 Battle of the Bands. In both cases, Tiff Tannen robbed a young woman of her self-esteem with a few hurtful words.
“So…why not start with a smaller crowd?” Marty suggested from an idea that just popped in her head.
“Like who?” Linda asked.
“Like the one at Century Café this Saturday,” Marty devised. “They have an open mic stage there. Why not try it out?”
Linda was deeply hesitant of the idea, hugging herself apprehensively.
Sensing her uncertainty, Marty sweetened the pot. “Tell you what – those two weird boys and I will help you practice. We’ll even perform with you.”
As Marty expected, Linda warmed up to the plan. “Really? That’s sweet of you. I…I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Marty.”
Chapter 9: Chapter Nine
Chapter Text
It was a moderately quiet Saturday morning in Hill Valley when Heinz Doofenshmirtz and his accomplice, Yokai, arrived via time portal. It opened in the shadowed portion of an empty alley between a drug store and a gas station. No one witnessed their emergence, which was adequate for Yokai.
“November 8th, 1985,” Heinz said as he looked on the town square just across from their alley. He breathed in the 1980s air, coughing roughly afterwards. “Smells as bad as I remember,” he gagged.
“You’re wasting time!” Yokai barked.
“Am I really?” Heinz balked. “I mean, we are time travelers. We got all the time we want.”
“It doesn’t work like that! Any mistakes we make here and now cannot be undone, not without the risk of running into our past selves! That’s why it’s imperative that you find Emma Brown’s time machine before November 12th at 10:04pm.”
“Why am I the only one doing the legwork here? What’re you gonna be doing?”
“That is my business and none of yours.”
Heinz huffed. “Alright, fine. At least tell me why we need Emma Brown’s time machine when we have a perfectly good ‘Time-inator’ that brought us here.”
“I don’t want a time machine…I want the time machine. Brown’s DeLorean is the key to all of time itself – the very pinnacle of the continuum!”
Struck by Yokai’s intense phrasing, Doofenshmirtz was more than convinced.
The mad inventor set off on his mission, while Yokai disappeared back through the time portal. Just as soon as Heinz stepped out of the alley, he bumped into a pedestrian – a busty, short-haired young brunette in a karate gi, accompanied by a pack of weasels. Unfortunately, she was drinking a purple slushie at the time, leaving a big purple stain on her karate gi.
Fuming over the accident, she grabbed Heinz by the collar of his lab coat and aimed her fist for his face. “Hope you’re on your way to the pharmacy, ‘cause you’re gonna need a lot of medicine after I’m done with ya!” she threatened.
“No! No! I’m sorry! Totally my fault!” Heinz pleaded. “I can pay you back! See?” He pulled a hundred-dollar bill out from his wallet, flashing it to the young brunette and her weasel friends, their eyes filled with dollar signs.
“A hundred smackers?!” exclaimed the weasel in the light pink double-breasted zoot suit. “Can you imagine what we could do with that much dough, Tiff?!”
“I dunno, but I can imagine quite a bit,” Tiff (the brunette) said.
Heinz forgot how much $100 was worth in 1985. He still had another crisp hundred in his wallet. In that moment, a devilish idea struck him. Sensing evil intentions within Tiff and her weasel buddies, he offered, “How’d you kids like to make another $100?” Those dollar signs in their eyes got even bigger.
The past three days in 1985 Hill Valley had been an educational experience for Marty and the Flynn-Fletcher brothers. They spent the majority of the time working with Linda for her performance that Saturday afternoon at the Century Café. Linda’s confidence seemed to have grown over the course of time, just as Marty and the boys hoped it would.
They were just about to leave the Brown residence to meet up with Linda at the café, before Lewis suddenly intercepted. “Marty,” he beckoned. “Something’s been up with Mom.”
“What is it?” Marty asked, her concern for Emma suspending their departure.
She followed Lewis into Emma’s lab, a.k.a. the garage. Emma spent a lot of the past three days cooped up there, working tirelessly on her plan for sending Marty and the boys back to 2025. She didn’t even look like the glamorous woman they first met those few nights ago; she started to look more like her future counterpart with her unkempt hair and dirtied clothes, which consisted of a formerly white undershirt and a blue mechanic jumpsuit – the upper portion tied around her waist.
When Marty and the boys came to the garage, they found her sitting on the hood of the partially covered DeLorean, holding Marty’s smartphone close to her wearied face. Marty wondered where it had been lately.
“deGrasse’s still in there! I have to check on him!”
“No, wait, Doc!”
Those were the voices Marty and the boys heard from recorded footage that Emma played back several times on the phone. They were the voices of Marty herself and Emma’s 2025 counterpart, shortly before the latter was murdered. “She’s been watching just that part since last night,” Lewis informed, keeping his voice down to a whisper. “What happened after that? It just cuts off from there.”
Lewis’s curiosity was as justified as Emma’s. They were owed an explanation.
“Hey, Doc?” Marty spoke up, announcing their presence in the garage.
Emma jolted immediately once she heard Marty’s voice. “Oh! Marty! I didn’t even hear you come in.” She jumped off the DeLorean, handing Marty’s phone back to her. “I was just, uh, admiring your video-phone device. It’s quite fascinating.” Her jitteriness was evident in her address. Clearly, she was intrigued by what she had seen in the video but couldn’t bring herself to discuss it.
Marty, on the other hand, knew it needed to be. “Look, Doc, there’s something Phineas, Ferb, and I didn’t tell you about the night we recorded this—”
“I don’t want to discuss, Marty!” Emma snapped.
“But you don’t understand—”
“No, I do understand! If I know too much about my own future, I could endanger my own existence, just as you all have endangered yours!”
Marty frowned at this logic. “It’s not the same thing! Your future’s—!”
“Marty,” Phineas stepped in with a calm breath. “Just let it go.”
Much as she didn’t want to, Marty realized what Phineas was trying to get her to comprehend. Emma’s mind was made up and no one – not even Marty – was going to make her see reason. “Alright…fine,” she consented. “You made your point.”
“Now then,” Emma proceeded, leading the youths to a crude plywood tabletop model of Hill Valley town square. “I spent the last couple of nights working on this. Please excuse the crudity of this model, I didn’t have time to build it to scale or to paint it.” She gestured to a nail attached to a piece of wood with a watch strapped around it – Marty and the boys figured it represented the Clock Tower.
“We put a lightning rod on the clock tower and run some industrial strength electrical cable from the rod, across the street.” Emma then brought out a red remote-controlled racecar with a wire sticking straight up from the back and a hook on the top. “Meanwhile, we’ve outfitted the DeLorean with a big hook directly connected to the Flux Capacitor…”
Phineas had noticed a similar rig on the actual DeLorean. “So that’s what that is!”
“Affirmative,” Emma nodded before continuing, “At the calculated moment, you start off from down the street driving toward the cable accelerating to eighty-eight miles per hour. According to that flyer you gave me, at 10:04pm, the lightning will strike the clock tower, sending 1.21 Jigowatts into the Flux Capacitor and returning all of you back to 2025!”
“Good deal, Doc,” Marty approved.
“So now,” Emma began again, holding the remote control to the racecar. “Who’s gonna be the driver?”
Phineas started to reach for the controller, but it was quickly seized by Marty. “Since I’m the only one whose legs reach the pedals, I’ll be the one driving,” she stated.
“I knew we should’ve brought the controller with us from 2025,” Phineas sulked.
Marty took position at one end of the model from an area of town that faced in the direction of the clock tower. Emma stood near the “lightning rod” with a stripped wire plugged into the AC outlet. As soon as she told Marty to go, Marty operated the RC car to speed toward the strung wire. Emma touched the live wire to the nail just as the RC car snagged the cable.
POP! Sparks flew and the RC car caught on fire, flying off the table.
Emma managed to put it out with an available fire extinguisher before it could’ve done any further damage. She afterwards gazed on Marty and the boys, whose faces were as white as ghosts. “Never fear. I’ll handle the lightning; you kids take care of young Miss Flynn.”
“Young Miss Flynn?” a mesmerized Marty uttered. She only then realized what Doc had said once she snapped out of the trance she was put into and exclaimed, “Oh, $#%+! We’re supposed to meet up with her at the café!” He urged Phineas and Ferb to follow her out. “We’ll see you guys later!”
“Hold up!” Lewis called. “I’m comin’ with you!”
Emma was glad to see him hanging out with their time-traveling houseguests. It was difficult for her to see him stuck in the house every day, playing Nintendo or watching television, when he wasn’t doing his own inventing every now and then. And even though Marty, Phineas, and Ferb would only have been there in 1985 for a few more days, they were the best friends Lewis ever made.
Alone in the garage, Emma noticed Marty’s smartphone left near the model.
The unbearable urge to watch that video again returned.
Chapter 10: Chapter Ten
Chapter Text
Chapter Ten: Marty Versus Tiff
“Where is she?! This whole thing was her idea!”
George didn’t feel any easier than Linda did, as they waited anxiously for Marty and her two friends to show up at Century Café. The joint was fuller than usual for a Saturday afternoon, thanks to George advertising the event for the entire school. Of course, Linda had not approved any promotion, and with Marty being a no-show, she was highly regretting it.
“She’ll be here,” George tried to reassure her, even though he wasn’t so convinced himself of that. “We worked our asses off for this gig. She wouldn’t just bail at the last minute.”
Linda’s nerves were shot. “Oh! Just forget it! Forget the whole thing!”
She rushed for the exit, only to find herself face-to-face with Tiff Tannen and her weasel cronies. The entire café suddenly went silent in their presence, all eyes focused on them. “Whoa, Flynn! Where’s the stampede?” Tiff asked.
“Fire,” George uttered. “Where’s the fire.”
“Shut it, McFly!” Tiff thundered. “We ain’t here for a grammar lesson! We’re here for that redheaded floosy you two have been hangin’ around with the past few days!”
“Marty?” Linda figured. “We don’t know where she is. Trust me on that.”
“Bullshit!” Tiff barked. “I got a hundred bucks tellin’ me that you do – and nobody’s leavin’ here ‘til we find out where she’s hidin’!”
Marty was more than thankful Emma allowed her to borrow the Pacer Wagon for whenever she and the boys needed to go into town. It helped that particular day, driving to the Century Café. She tried to obey the speed limit, so as not to get a ticket in 1985. Thankfully, she and the boys made it there safely, albeit much later than they wanted. Marty just hoped Linda and George wouldn’t be too upset with them being late.
But that was the very least of their concerns, once they stopped at the café entrance and spotted Tiff and the weasels through the window. Luckily, none of them noticed Marty and the boys, considering their backs were facing them and the entrance that they obstructed. “I guess the show’s kaput with them here,” Phineas noted.
“Why are they here?” Marty griped. “Don’t they have a 7-Eleven to rob?” She noticed the extra threatening way Tiff addressed Linda and George. Curious to find out what this scene was all about, Marty and the boys snuck into the café unnoticed.
“I got a hundred bucks tellin’ me that you do – and nobody’s leavin’ here ‘til we find out where she’s hidin’!” They heard Tiff vehemently demand.
“For the last time, we don’t know where Marty is!” Linda told her.
Knowing she was the reason for all this, Marty felt guilty. She didn’t know why Tiff Tannen was looking for her or even how she knew about her; out of everyone she, Phineas, and Ferb knew from 2025 that they interacted with in 1985, Tiff was the only one they steered clear from.
Regardless, Marty knew she had to do something.
Acting fast, she snatched a full glass of chocolate milk from a nearby booth and hurled it at the back of Tiff’s head, striking a direct hit. This took the entire café by surprise, with a collection of amused mutters emitting from the crowd. Infuriated, Tiff turned and faced Marty, who saw that someone had already gotten to Tiff’s karate gi, with the large purple stain on its front.
“Lookin’ for me, asshole?” Marty teased.
“GET HER!” Tiff roared to her weasels.
They chased Marty out of the café. Phineas, Ferb, and Lewis stayed inside with Linda, George, and everyone else, watching the chase as it stormed out onto the town square. Marty passed a group of teen skateboarders just loitering outside the Texaco gas station, snagging one of their boards in haste.
“Hey, get back here!” yelled the owner, who was the tallest of the skateboarders.
“Yo, why she jack your wheels, Tony?” one of his friends inquired.
Tony shrugged. “How should I know?” He and his friends then jumped back as a ’76 Ford Thunderbird Convertible flew by in pursuit of Marty, who hopped right onto Tony’s skateboard and rode it faster than the Thunderbird. Needless to say, Tony was impressed. “Wow! Look at her go!”
Marty never pedaled as fast on her own skateboard back in 2025 as she did on Tony’s. All this over friggin’ chocolate milk! Scared as she was, she couldn’t shake off the exhilaration she got from throwing that drink at the girl who would be her future coach. If she had done that in the present, Tannen would’ve gotten her expelled for sure. Doing it in 1985, however, might just get her killed; if not by being rammed by the Thunderbird Convertible, then certainly from all the activity happening in town.
Several obstacles were in Marty’s way, such as moving men carrying a pane of glass and hula hoop girls. “Why is there so much crap going on the streets today?!” she complained aloud.
Her luck changed just as she came up on a truck that was driving ahead, latching onto its tailgate to help pick up some speed. She noticed the truck’s cargo: bowling supplies, mostly balls and pins. She smirked just as an idea formed in her head. Positioning herself aside the moving truck, she popped open the tailgate and released all the pins and balls onto the road. “STREEEEE-IKE!” Marty bellowed, not caring how corny or cliché of a one-liner it was.
Tiff swerved in reaction to the bowling materials that were scattered in her path, but the wheels of her Thunderbird Convertible still hit a few items, sending it spiraling out of her control. To make matters worse, it spiraled right towards a manure truck parked in front of a gardening store.
“SHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!” Tiff and the weasels shrieked as the Thunderbird Convertible collided with the truck, burying them under a large mound of manure.
A crowd gathered around the scene of the accident but also kept several feet from it, due to the horrendous stench. From the alley, Heinz Doofenshmirtz witnessed the entire chase up to its messy climax, seeing how Tiff and her goons failed. “Oh, great! A hundred bucks flushed down the toilet – a rather stinky one at that!”
With Tiff and the weasels taken care of, Marty returned to the café. She was welcomed with applause from all the teens there – except for a peeved George. Marty saw that Linda wasn’t with him and inquired, “Where did she go?”
“She bounced just after Tiff and her gang went after you,” George said. “What the hell was that all about anyway? Why were they looking for you?”
Marty shook her head. “No idea.”
“Well, we better come up with a better one, ‘cause Linda’s back to not performing in the Battle,” George alerted. “Her interest has pretty much crashed and burned.”
“Dammit!” Unable to accept this, Marty thought up another plan on the spot: “Alright. Here’s what we’re gonna do – George, you tell Linda to meet me at the school on the night of the Battle, not to perform but to have it out with her.”
“You’re gonna fight her?” Phineas presumed.
“No…well, yeah, but not physically,” Marty elaborated. “I’m just gonna tell her off, ya know? Pretend to be upset with her, insulting her talents and all that.”
“Oh, reverse psychology!” Lewis reckoned.
“Right!” Marty told him. “George will then step into Linda’s defense, playing the hero and building Linda’s confidence back up.”
Phineas regarded this new plan of Marty’s. “That sounds like a horrible and overly complicated idea.” In spite of that criticism, he asked with great enthusiasm, “When do we start?”
Chapter 11: Chapter Eleven
Chapter Text
Chapter Eleven: The Big Night
Marty had mixed feelings about the night of November 12th, 1985. On the one hand, she was excited about returning to 2025 with Phineas and Ferb; on the other, she was worried about how her plan with Linda would go down. And then there was the fact that she still hadn’t told Emma about her future death, no matter how much she was advised not to by Phineas.
A few minutes before eight o’clock, Marty was gathered at the Town Square with Emma and the boys, putting everything together for the big departure. A cable was strung down from the lightning rod atop the clock tower to a lamp post, which Emma had connected to the socket of an extension tied around the post. Her Pacer Wagon was parked just across the street from the DeLorean. In spite of the fact that DeLorean motor vehicles of this model existed in 1985, Emma thought it nonetheless wise to keep it covered by a tarp from prying eyes.
Sitting atop the hood of the covered DeLorean was a boombox Lewis brought to listen to tunes off the radio as they worked. After playing Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” an ironic tune considering the night’s circumstances, there came a weather report from the DJ: “Area weather on this Tuesday night – an electrical storm in the vicinity will bypass the Tri-State Area, including Danville and Hill Valley – but we can expect continued cloudiness and some light rain…”
Listening to the report from the top of her ladder, Emma grew skeptical. “Are you sure about this storm, honey?” she asked Marty.
Marty, of course, smirked knowingly. “Since when can a weatherman predict the weather, let alone the future?”
“Good point,” Emma smiled, descending from the ladder. “You know, I’m gonna be real sad to see you sweeties go. You’ve really made a difference in my life and certainly in Lewis’s.” She approached the covered DeLorean, lifting the tarp halfway at the rear to look at the units on the engine. “To think, one day, we’re gonna live to see the 21st century, and that I’ll succeed in this – time travel!”
To hear Emma reflect on these events made Marty uncomfortable, knowing the fate that awaited her. It wasn’t any better when Lewis then told her and the brothers, “It’s going to be hard to wait 30 years before we can talk about everything that’s happened in the last few days. I’m really gonna miss you guys.”
“We’ll miss you, too, Lewis,” Phineas said. “Or, at least, this version of you. It’s like meeting a 1985 equivalent of me and Ferb.”
Marty couldn’t fight it any longer. “Doc, listen, about the future…”
“Marty!” Emma deflected. “We’ve already talked about this. Having knowledge of the future can be incredibly dangerous. Even if your intentions are good, it could backfire drastically. Whatever it is you need to tell me, I’ll find out through the natural course of time.”
This was not what Marty wanted to hear; but, just as before, she saw there was no arguing with Emma.
For the remaining minutes Phineas and Ferb had to assist Emma and Lewis in the preparations, before leaving for the Battle of the Bands, Marty was nowhere to be found. The boys set out around the square to look for her, ultimately seeing her walk out of the Century Café.
“Marty? Are you O.K.?” Phineas asked. “What were you doing in there?”
“Oh, nothing,” Marty answered. “I felt a little hungry, so I grabbed a quick bite before we left – that’s all.” She seemed rather cagey to Phineas; she hid her hands behind her back during their brief exchange. Phineas didn’t bother looking into it, as they were late enough as it was to get to the Battle of the Bands. Had he been paying close attention to Marty before they left in the Pacer Wagon, he would have noticed her slipping something into Emma’s fur coat that she kept draped over the covered DeLorean.
The Battle of the Bands was in full swing inside Hill Valley High’s gymnasium. Some of the school’s faculty served as chaperones for the big event, while a few were selected to be the judges for the bands that performed onstage. Sticky Rosen and his band, “The Sticklers,” were the first ones up with their rendition of “Things Can Only Get Better” from Howard Jones.
George stood at the back of the gym, behind the mosh pit of teens that jumped and screamed in support of the performing bands. There was a buffet table that offered a variety of snacks and other dishes, supplied by the school staff. George decided to try some of the Pâté, out of curiosity, only to spit it into the nearest trash bin.
“I think that’s Mrs. Hughes’ cat food.” He heard a girl giggling hysterically at his expense. Looking up, George froze with his head hovering over the trash bin with bits of the Pâté around his mouth. The girl of his dreams, Lorraine Baines, was laughing at him. But it wasn’t the sort of laughter that was meant to belittle him; it was more out of pity. Once she was able to collect herself, Lorraine grabbed a napkin off the buffet table. “Here, you got a little…” She wiped the leftover Pâté off George’s gaping mouth.
“Uh, t-thanks,” he stammered, not once taking his eyes off Lorraine. “D-Do you know who you are?”
Lorraine chuckled. “I would hope so.”
George mentally slapped himself over the flub in his phrasing. “What I meant to say was – do you know who I am?”
“George McFly, right?” Lorraine said. “We have 3rd period Biology together.”
“That’s right!” George exclaimed. “Mr. Dawson made us lab partners once.”
Lorraine verified this with a nod and a smile. “I was there last Saturday at Century Café to see Linda perform. It’s a bummer she never got to because of that mouth-breather Tiff Tannen. Is she going to perform tonight?”
George shrugged. “Only time will tell.”
However, in discussing Linda, George was shaken with recollection. He was finally able to take his eyes off Lorraine to glance at the wall clock hanging above the buffet table. It read 8:59, which prompted him to check his own watch that read 8:55. That prompted him to ask Lorraine, “What time do you have?”
Lorraine checked her pink wristwatch. “Five after nine, why?”
Panic stricken, George told Lorraine, “I gotta go! I’ll be right back! Promise!”
She watched as he ran out of the gym like a bat out of Hell, concerned as to what made the young man so alarmed.
For once, Marty was the one on time and everyone else was late. She waited outside the gymnasium with Phineas and Ferb. The music from the performances vibrated through the walls, booming from inside the building. Marty envied all those bands who were chosen to be the finalists in the school event, never able to have her own chance back in 2025. She couldn’t allow those thoughts to distract her from why she was really there that evening: to convince Linda to go onstage and perform herself. Of course, she couldn’t do that, unless Linda was there altogether.
“Jesus, where are they?!” Marty griped, checking the time on her smartphone, every few seconds. They were in a fairly secluded area for her to do so.
“Relax, Marty,” Phineas urged. “We still have plenty of time.”
“You sure about that?” Marty asked. “It’s seven past nine, which leaves us less than an hour to get your mom on stage and get back to the square in time before the lightning hits the clock tower! If you ask me, we’re cuttin’ things pretty damn close!”
In seeing how much of a nervous wreck the usually cool-headed Marty was, Phineas suggested, “Ferb and I will head inside and get ready for the performance, just to be on the safe side.” It sounded like a solid plan for Marty. She watched the brothers round the corner and disappear out of sight.
Unfortunately, Phineas and Ferb never reached the gym entrance.
The boys were blindsided as soon as they were both snatched up in bags large enough to hold them. Judging from the synthetic odor the bags carried, they figured their purpose was meant for holding recreational equipment, like soccer balls. As they were lugged away to who-knows-where, they heard voices outside the sacks, presumably spoken by their captors…
“Where did Tiff say to take these runts?”
“How dah hell should I know?! She never even told us!”
“Duh, I know where we oughta take ‘em!”
Ranging from cynical to dimwitted, Phineas and Ferb could only deduce that Tiff Tannen’s weasel cronies were behind their sudden abduction. Clearly, Tiff was getting revenge for what happened a few days ago – the putrid scent of manure could be whiffed even through the sacks.
They heard what sounded to be two locker doors opening before suddenly being dumped out of the sacks and into cramped spaces. Sure enough, those were lockers they heard and stuffed into by the weasels. “Have fun gettin’ outta dis one, ya lil’ punks!” said the weasel in the pink zoot suit, prior to closing the locker doors. The weasels departed after the fact, relishing in their malicious act.
Thankfully, it didn’t go unnoticed by an outside party who witnessed the whole thing – a teenage African-American boy who was on his way to the gym to perform a saxophone solo for the Battle of the Bands. But, now, he felt the need to help free Phineas and Ferb. “Hang in there, fellas,” he told them as he approached the lockers. “These belong to some friends of mine, so I know the combinations. I’ll have ya’ll out in a jiffy.”
“Mr. Gardner?” Phineas said from inside his locker. “Is that you?”
The boy frowned. “Do you know my daddy or somethin’? Only everybody else calls him ‘Mr. Gardner’. You can call me ‘Joe’.”
Marty checked her smartphone for what felt like the billionth time. It was now 9:15, and her nerves were practically shot. While she had her phone out, she took a glimpse of the photo. Looking at it was just as nerve-wracking as looking at the time, being another ticking clock.
“Holy shit!” she muttered.
Candace had completely vanished from the photo.
It was just Marty, Phineas, and Ferb left in the frame – and Phineas’s form was starting to fade right before Marty’s eyes.
“MARTY!” She jumped at the enraged calling of her name, turning to see Linda storming right up to her, apparently still angry. That made things a little easier for Marty’s plan. “You really don’t know when to give up, do you? George tells me that you had some sort of complaint about his song and my singing?! What about it?! If there’s something you wanna say, say it to my face!”
Marty could barely get a word in, with Linda doing most of the shouting.
Maybe this plan was going a little too well?
Before Marty could utter so much as a syllable, she was suddenly sucker-punched right in the stomach, a move that brought her down to her knees. Angry as she was at Marty, the punch didn’t come from Linda, who merely stood in shock of what just happened. The scent of manure plagued Marty’s senses as a figure in a stained, tattered karate gi approached from her left, picking her up by the collar, so that she was face-to-face with them. Marty found herself staring into the eyes of Tiff Tannen, flaming with murderous intent.
“You cost me $1,200 damage to my car, you lil’ bitch!” she told Marty. “And now I’m gonna take it outta yer ass!” She sucker-punched Marty in the stomach again and tossed her aside, right into the waiting clutches of the weasels, who were sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels as they drunkenly roughed Marty up.
Linda even smelled the booze off of Tiff. “Leave her alone, Tiff,” she demanded. “You’re drunk!”
“No shit, Watson!” Tiff retorted. “Now beat it! This don’t concern you!”
“I told you to leave her alone!” Linda charged at Tannen, only to be shoved back.
The commotion spurred from their confrontation rang over the area. From around the corner, George heard it and figured Marty and Linda were well into their squabble. Made it just in time, he thought, psyching himself up for what was sure to be the performance of his life. “Alright, you two,” he put some bass in his voice for added measure. “Break it up!”
But when George marched to the scene, he immediately dropped his act out of sheer terror, once he saw Tiff standing over a downed Linda and the weasels manhandling Marty. No one said anything about Tannen and her cronies being there, which only made George that much more scared.
Tannen leered at him. “I think you oughta pretend you saw nothin’ here, McFly. Just turn around and walk away.” George didn’t move an inch, staring in dumbfounded amazement, not knowing what to do. “Are you deaf, McFly?! I said turn around and get outta here!”
For a moment, George considered taking a step back, and he did, only to take a few unsteady steps forward – towards Tiff. “No, Tiff,” he said, his voice breaking yet somehow summoning courage that he thought he never had. “You leave them alone.”
Tiff snickered, shaking her head in disbelief. “Alright, McFly. You asked for it – and now yer gonna get it.” With the snap of her fingers, she sicced her weasels on George, as if they were her own attack dogs. They swarmed in on George, expecting to get the jump on him. The odds were in their favor, being four against one.
However, in a surprising turn of events, George successfully took them down with some lefts and rights that he threw out at random, each one hitting their intended target. George never knew himself to be capable of such a feat of strength. Sure, he watched a few boxing matches on pay-per-view, but he never would have imagined it to contribute to his coldcocking Tannen’s weasels. “Yeah! That’s what’s up!” he celebrated. “That’s what you get for messin’ with George Seamus McF—ACK!”
All of the sudden, George received an unbearable pain in his genital region, courtesy of Tiff. When his guard was down, she rushed on him and locked her appalling grip right on his manhood. George could barely stand it, howling in agony.
As this unladylike assault occurred, Marty was wrought with agony herself, despite being free of the weasels. She was turning pale, all the energy draining from her body. She looked at her hands and was shocked to see them fading in and out. She was being erased from existence, due to Tiff’s assault on George.
Linda, finally fed up with Tannen, jumped back on her feet and did what she should have done all the years Tiff had bullied her – punch her right in the face. The tremendous left hook made Tiff release her hold on George before she hit the ground, out cold. Linda could barely believe she did it, looking at her fist and then at Tannen, grinning widely.
“Oh, my god!” She heard another girl say, walking into the aftermath of the chaotic conflict. She saw it was Lorraine Baines, the most popular girl in Hill Valley High. “Is everybody alright? What happened here?” Surveying the litter of bodies sprawled over the pavement, she noticed George nursing his groin. “Oh, god! George! Are you alright?”
Soon as he was able to catch his breath, George told her, “Yeah…Tiff hadn’t caused any permanent damage.”
“Oh, thank God,” said Lorraine, with profound relief. She then caught herself, especially when George looked at her in surprise, and reiterated, “I mean…thank God that you’re okay…for your sake.”
George smiled from her concern. “I gotcha.”
Meanwhile, Marty immediately recovered, her body solidifying once again and full of life, wired with energy. The color returned to her face, and she managed to get back on her feet, with some help from Linda, who dashed over to check on her. “Marty, are you O.K.?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she verified. “How’s—?” She looked over towards George, noticing the moment that he was sharing with an attractive young blonde who Marty recognized in mouth-gaping bewilderment. “Mom?”
“Mom?” Linda parroted in confusion, seeing how Marty was looking at Lorraine when she said it. “How hard did those weasels hit you?”
Marty smiled, watching her teenaged parents together.
That smile dropped just as she spotted the teen counterpart to another adult figure from her future – Joe Gardner – show up at the scene with Ferb…and only Ferb. “Where’s Phineas?” Marty asked. “Is he still inside, getting ready for the performance?”
Ferb just stared blankly at her and asked, “Who’s Phineas?”
That question mortified Marty. She stood aside, privately taking out her smartphone and glimpsing at the photo again.
Only her and Ferb were in the shot.
Phineas was gone.
Chapter 12: Chapter Twelve
Chapter Text
Chapter Twelve: The Power of Love
Marty couldn’t stop staring at the photo. Phineas was gone, along with Candace. Both Flynn children erased from existence. All of Ferb’s memories of Phineas had phased out, and it was only a matter of time before it caught up with Marty as well. What was even the point of going back to the future, if there wasn’t any with Phineas in it?
“Hey, why the long face?” She heard Linda ask her, looking up from her phone. Seeing her approach with George and Lorraine, she quickly pocketed her phone away before they were close enough to notice. “If you’re still upset about the performance, I changed my mind.”
This was just the uplifting news Marty needed to hear. “Really? Just like that?”
“George told me about your ridiculous plan to get me onstage,” Linda said, to which George hung his head with embarrassment. “But, after what just happened with Tiff and her goons, I am pumped!” She punched at the air with the same swift motion that knocked out Tannen. “You know, ever since I met you guys, all I’ve thought about is the future – what my life would be like after school…after tonight. And you know what? I’m not so worried anymore. The future is what we make of it, no matter the risks. So, let’s make it a good one and rock on!”
Marty could see where Phineas got his gift of motivational speeches from. Linda’s certainly brought her out of despair. Together with Ferb, the two girls took to the stage, just as they were the last band to perform for the night. The song they chose to sing was the one George wrote, the one they were supposed to sing at the Century Café. The second Marty, Ferb, and Linda hit the music, the entire gymnasium erupted with cheers. Marty was guitarist and Ferb was the drummer, while Linda stepped up to the mic and sang her heart out…
The power of love is a curious thing
Makes one man weep, makes another man sing
Change a hawk to a little white dove
More than a feeling, that's the power of love
Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream
Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream
Make a bad one good, make a wrong one right
Power of love will keep you home at night
You don't need money, don't take fame
Don't need no credit card to ride this train
It's strong and it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes
But it might just save your life
That's the power of love
That's the power of love
First time you feel it, it might make you sad
Next time you feel it, it might make you mad
But do be glad baby when you've found
That's the power that makes the world go 'round
And it don't take money, don't take fame
Don't need no credit card to ride this train
It's strong and it's sudden, it can be cruel sometimes
But it might just save your life
They say that all in love is fair
Yeah, but you don't care
But you know what to do (to do)
When it gets hold of you
And with a little help from above
You feel the power of love
You feel the power of love
Can you feel it?
Mmm!
Marty knew this was the part when she went into her guitar solo; however, the notes started coming out before she hit them. She realized that the music wasn’t coming from her guitar but another guitarist who took the stage: a familiar boy with a triangular-shaped head and spiky red hair.
“PHINEAS!” an overjoyed Marty cheered. The very fact he was even there encouraged Marty to secretly gaze at the photo again.
Everyone was back together in the frame: Candace, Phineas, Ferb, and Marty.
We did it! Holy shit! We did it!
Phineas’s sick guitar solo brought the song to a close to roaring ovation. One of the judges joined them on the stage, holding a large gold-plated “Winner” trophy. “Well, I think we know who won this year’s Battle, don’t we?” the judge asked to even louder applause. As she looked on this judge, Marty couldn’t help but to notice how much he resembled a young Powerline – the famous pop artist of the 90s.
“Thanks, everybody,” Linda addressed the crowd in her acceptance speech. “But we’re not done just yet. Per ‘Battle’ tradition, the winning band is allowed an encore performance. As such, I can’t think of a better person to take us home than my bandmate and good friend: Marty!”
Marty wasn’t ready for such a massive opportunity, nor did she think there was much time for it. It was nearly 9:35, and she and the boys had to get back to the Square in the next fifteen minutes. And yet, she couldn’t resist the urge to seize her chance, especially with everyone – including Phineas and Ferb – cheering her up to the microphone. Her body moved faster than her mind could keep up, finding herself at the mic, with all eyes now on her.
For a fleeting second, she was wrought with nerves.
As soon as that anxiety passed, she let out a deep breath and sang a tune that she hadn’t sung since the days of her old band, Lemonade Mouth…
Ooh yeah, hmm
Breakthrough
Up, down, spinnin' all around
Fly, high, fallin' to the ground
Sometimes, dreams can feel so far away
Time keeps, skippin' out a beat
Left, right, trippin' on your feet
Life is like a string of cloudy days (Here we go)
Sometimes it's raisin' your voice
Sometimes it's makin' some noise
Sometimes it's provin' to the world it was wrong
Whenever you can't see the light
Whenever there's no end in sight
Keep on, keep on movin' on
Keep on movin' on
Here comes a breakthrough
Here comes a day
Here comes a moment that you gotta go for it
So don't let it get away
It's all about breakthrough
Just turn the page
'Cause every day, I'm gettin' closer
Life is just a rollercoaster
Shake it 'til you make it
'Til you break it all through
Don't stop 'til you break it all through
Shake it 'til you make it
'Til you break it all through
Don't stop 'til you break it all through
Stop, still, take another breath
Roadblock, move it to the left
Get around whatever's in your way
Heartbreak, pick up all the pieces
Don't stop dancin' in the bleachers
It's gonna be your turn to play
Gonna be your turn to play
Sometimes it's raisin' your voice
Sometimes it's makin' some noise
Sometimes it's provin' to the world it was wrong
Whenever you can't see the light
Whenever there's no end in sight
Keep on, keep on movin' on
Keep on movin' on
Here comes a breakthrough
Here comes a day
Here comes a moment that you gotta go for it
So don't let it get away
It's all about a breakthrough
Just turn the page
'Cause every day, I'm gettin' closer
Life is just a rollercoaster
Marty’s adrenaline-pumping song had everyone – students and staff alike – jumping in the gymnasium. George hopped alongside Lorraine, who turned to him and shouted loud enough to be heard over the music, “She’s really good! What’s her name again?”
“Marty,” George shouted back.
“That’s a nice name!” Lorraine mused with a smile.
Chapter 13: Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Text
“Damn! Where is that girl?!”
Emma’s fur coat fluttered in the wind, which began to pick up from the oncoming storm. Lewis could hear thunder in the distance. The entire lightning rod setup was complete with the cable strung across the street between two lampposts. Emma had been checking her wristwatch every few seconds, exclaiming “Damn!” with each glance at the time, which was 9:57 – three minutes before ten o’clock.
“Relax, Mom,” Lewis calmed her. “They’ll be here.”
Sure enough, just as Lewis offered his guarantee, Emma’s Pacer Wagon pulled up across the street from the tarped DeLorean. Marty jumped out, dressed in her clothes from 2025, along with Phineas and Ferb. “You’re late!” Emma howled at her. “Where the hell have you been, kid?! Have you no concept of time?!”
“Hey! I’m not leaving my clothes behind in 1985!” Marty argued. Both women, with the boys’ assistance, pulled the tarp off the DeLorean. “My old man and Mrs. Flynn-Fletcher really came through tonight.”
“Yeah, they both really stood up to Tiff Tannen,” Phineas added. “Mom decked her pretty good with a single punch. I never knew she had it in her.”
“Same here,” Marty said. “My dad’s never stood up to anyone his whole life.”
She showed Emma and Lewis the proof on her phone, which she kept on the photo of herself, Phineas, Ferb, and Candace. The snapshot was fully restored, yet Emma examined it with contemplative interest, following on what Marty told her. “Never, you say?”
“No, why?” Marty inquired. “What’s the matter?”
Remembering the time crunch they were on, Emma dismissed her thoughts and refocused on the task at hand. “Never mind. Let’s set your destination time.” She climbed into the DeLorean and indicated the Last Time Departed readout, which read the date of June 21, 2025 at 1:35a.m. “This is the exact time you kids left. We’re gonna send you back at exactly the same time.” She punched in the keypad; the Destination Time now read the same as the Last Time Departed.
“It’ll be like you guys never left,” Lewis added.
Emma stepped out of the vehicle and pointed eastward down the street. “We painted a white line on the street, way down over there – that’s where you start from. Lewis and I calculated the precise distance, taking into account the acceleration speed and wind resistance retroactive from the moment the lightning will hit the Clock Tower, at exactly seven minutes and twenty-two seconds.”
Lewis held a digital timer with the minutes and seconds displayed in LED. “When this alarm goes off, you hit the gas.”
“Gotcha,” Marty nodded, watching Lewis as he placed the timer on the dashboard.
Emma huffed after her thorough explanation. “Welp. Guess that’s everything.”
Marty looked on her forlornly. “Thanks.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I should be thanking y—” Emma was suddenly surprised just as Marty leapt onto her with a tight hug. She returned the embrace, although she wasn’t quite certain why the young redhead was so emotional. She could hear her sniffling over her shoulder. “Hey, hey. Forty years for me will be like forty seconds for you. We’ll see each other again – in the future.”
“I…I hope so,” Marty whimpered.
Emma unlatched from her, looking confidently into Marty’s misty eyes. “Don’t worry. As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely 88 miles per hour, the instance that the lightning strikes the tower, everything will be fine.”
Marty wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her denim jacket, nodding affirmingly. “Gotcha,” she verified, hopping into the driver’s seat while Phineas and Ferb took position at the passenger’s side.
“Good luck, guys!” Lewis waved in farewell.
“See you in forty,” Emma included, putting her hands into the pockets of her fur coat. Noticing her doing so, Marty wanted to warn her not to, but she was too late. Emma detected the item left in there by the young time traveler: an enveloped letter marked with the instruction “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2025.”
“Dammit,” Marty muttered as she saw Emma regarding the letter curiously.
“You wanna explain this?!” She demanded an explanation from Marty.
Phineas noticed the letter in Emma’s hand. Looking on Marty and remembering how she momentarily disappeared before they left for the Battle of the Bands, he put two and two together. “So that’s what you were doing in the café!”
“This is about the future, isn’t it?!” Emma flew into panicked rage. “This is information about the future! I warned you about this, girl! The consequences could be disastrous!!!”
“That’s a risk you’re gonna have to take!” Marty countered. “It’s your life we’re talkin’ about here!”
“NO!” Emma shrieked. “I will not accept that responsibility!”
On that declaration, Emma tore up the letter.
“Doc! No!” Marty protested, hopping out of the DeLorean. Just as she did so, however, a tremendous gust of wind blew through, accompanied by a loud CRACK! All heads turned to see a tree limb in the square fall right onto the cable between the Clock Tower and the first lamppost. The plug attached to the lightning rod on the tower was yanked out, resulting in the cable being dropped down.
“GREAT SCOTT!!!” Emma cried over the sudden disaster.
BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!
To make matters worse, the clock bells struck ten o’clock on the dot.
Ferb gulped. “Well, that’s not good.”
“We’re gonna be stuck here for sure now,” Phineas sulked.
“Not on my watch!” Emma asserted in adrenaline-fueled determination, grabbing a big coil of rope. “Lewis, find the end of that cable and I’ll throw the rope down to you. Marty, you and the boys get in the DeLorean, drive to the start line, connect that hook, and get ready as soon as that alarm goes off!”
Marty hesitated. “Doc, I have to—”
“Look at the time!” Emma pointed to the clock on the tower. “You’ve got less than four minutes! Please, hurry!”
Much as she wanted to stay and warn her about the impending future, Marty had no other choice but to heed Emma’s warning. She, Phineas, and Ferb ran to the DeLorean, took their positions, and put the car in gear. While the DeLorean took off down the street, Emma bolted into the courthouse with the rope. As Lewis fetched the cable from the fallen tree limb, he inspected the point from where the limb was severed, noting how clean the cut was – as if the limb was deliberately cut.
Marty drove past the hand-painted white line on the street, which included the words “START HERE” for their benefit. She made a sharp U-turn, pulling up to the line, shortly before Phineas and Ferb hopped out to connect the hook at the rear of the DeLorean.
Temporarily alone in the vehicle, Marty furiously slapped the steering wheel. “Dammit, Doc! Why’d ya have to tear up that letter?! If only I had more time.” Realizing what she said, she glanced at the readouts and got an idea. Quickly, before Phineas and Ferb returned, she made a slight alteration to the Destination Time.
She was finished just as soon as Phineas and Ferb returned, and the alarm signaled them with a series of digital beeps. “Right on cue,” Phineas cheered. “Ya think Lewis and Dr. B got the cable fixed?”
“Only one way to know for sure,” Marty said, restarting the engine.
Unfortunately, just as she turned the ignition, the engine died.
“Oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me!” Marty flared.
Madly charging up several flights of stairs, Emma finally reached the Clock Tower. Her blond locks blew wildly in the wind as she stepped out onto the ledge. Looking up, she saw the connecting socket dangling on its cable between the “1” and “2” on the huge clock face. Its other end was attached to the lightning rod on the tower above. Looking down, Emma saw Lewis – five stories below – waving the plug in his hand.
Emma tossed one end of the rope down, unraveling the coil. Lewis caught it, tying it to the plug. He then waved to his mother, who started pulling the rope with the cable back up. Immediately, she worked on getting the plug reconnected with its socket mate, but the latter was too far for her to reach. The only way was to move across the ledge, much as she didn’t want to do that.
Conquer your fear, Brown! Those kids are counting on you!
She thanked herself for opting to wear tennis shoes rather than her pumps that night, or else this duty would’ve been a billion times more challenging. She edged herself across the ledge, slowly enough to avoid falling while quickly enough to avoid wasting valued time. She was just near the dangling socket before…
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Something she perceived to have been a statue frightened her right off the ledge. Her only saving grace were the clock hands that she instinctively grabbed onto, sacrificing the cable that was in her hand and now on her left foot.
Down below, Lewis turned pale. “MOM!”
Hanging off the clock face, Emma caught another glimpse at the thing that initially terrified her: a dark figure in a kabuki mask. It held out its right arm at her, unleashing some sort of black blade that nearly slashed both of Emma’s wrists, had she not released her hold on the clock hands. Once again, she fell but managed to get a grasp on the ledge at the last second. Her feet were now dangling precariously above those five stories she distinguished earlier.
“It’s over, Doctor Brown!” the stranger in the kabuki mask told her, speaking in a robotic voice.
Emma gazed up at him, seeing how menacing he appeared with the tower, the lightning rod, and the lightning itself behind him. He attempted to stomp at Emma’s hands, breaking her grip on the ledge; but, anticipating such an underhanded move, Emma snatched his ankle and gave a tremendous yank.
The kabuki man screamed, losing his footing.
He fell right over both the ledge and Emma, who couldn’t bring herself to watch his body smack to the courthouse steps below. Thinking of Lewis, she looked down over her shoulder…
…the kabuki man’s body had vanished without a trace.
Marty fought rigorously to get the DeLorean’s engine started again, but every attempt was futile. Phineas and Ferb anxiously watched her, with the former brother offering whatever advice he could: “Just give it a sec, Marty.”
“We don’t have a sec, Phineas!” Marty retorted, still turning the key. “We only got two minutes left! I don’t wanna be stuck in 1985! I don’t wanna miss having Wi-Fi…posting TikTok videos…or watching Netflix!” She growled in frustration, bashing her head on the steering wheel.
VROOM! The engine roared back to life.
Marty and the boys lit up along with all the indicators in the car.
She hit the gas pedal, peeling the DeLorean out down the street.
Lewis wasn’t sure what to make of what he just saw. The stranger that attacked his mother had suddenly disappeared while falling from the tower. It happened so sudden, between the blink of an eye and the flash of lightning. But he couldn’t afford to dwell on the mystery, with his mother pulling herself and the cable back onto the ledge.
He remembered that the cable near the lamppost still needed to be connected, something that he neglected to do after he rushed to fetch it from the broken tree limb. However, just as he was about to reconnect the cable, a man in a lab coat suddenly appeared, snatching the cable and lamppost socket away from Lewis. “A-ha!” he shrilled.
Lewis looked on the pharmacist, confusion intertwined with anger. “Hey! What’re you doing?!”
“Making sure no one goes back to the future tonight!” said the pharmacist.
Lewis heard a car speeding their way – the DeLorean was accelerating towards the square. He then looked to the Clock Tower – his mother had successfully plugged her end of the cable. All that remained was the one end yet to be connected, thanks to the maniacal pharmacist’s interference.
BOOM! In spectacular fashion, the lightning bolt struck the Clock Tower, right at 10:04p.m.
The connecting cable became electrified, with the current charging right through the pharmacist’s body, acting as a cathode, much to his unforeseen agony. The DeLorean passed under the cable between the lampposts, its hook making direct contact with the electrified cable.
Lewis watched in wide-eyed astonishment as the vehicle puffed out of existence, leaving behind fiery tracks that ran the rest of the way down the street. It was the coolest scientific breakthrough he had ever witnessed up close. “Lewis!” he heard his mother call to him. He turned just as he watched her rush out of the courthouse. Her hair had turned completely white – no longer the glistening blonde she once was – presumably due to being so close to the lightning when it struck.
“Mom! Are you alright?” Lewis asked her.
“I nearly fell to my death and was almost struck by lightning, but otherwise, I’ve never felt better in my life!” Emma grinned from ear-to-ear, her face masked with exhilaration, especially once she looked on the aftermath of their successful experiment. “We did it, honey.”
“Yeah, barely,” Lewis said. “Who were those guys that tried to sabotage everything?”
“Guys?” Emma parroted his plural usage. “You saw someone else?”
Lewis nodded. “This pharmacist – he tried to…” He glanced to where he presumed the manic pharmacist’s body was lying on the ground, charred by the lightning that surged through his body. But it was not there. “He’s gone! W-Where did he go?”
Emma eyed the surrounding area suspiciously. “Something tells me we weren’t the only ones who knew about our friends from the future.”
“You think it might’ve had something to do with what Marty tried to tell you?”
Contemplating Lewis’ speculation, Emma reached into her coat pockets to retrieve the torn pieces of the letter. “Perhaps…”
Chapter 14: Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Text
Along one corner of the Courthouse Square, a humble farmer started a used cars business. He figured it was in the perfect place – adjacent to the local gas station. However, there was one problem that his wife had no qualms in reminding him, late that summer evening of June 21st, 2025. He just wished she hadn’t done it in front of a group of teenagers across the street, all of whom were filming their squabble on their smartphones.
“How do you plan on running a used cars lot without any used cars?!” she nagged.
Sure enough, the farmer (as always) was unprepared for the new business venture, failing to stock with the requisite merchandise. It happened many times before with the bunny farm, a van rental place, a mountain spring water bottling plant, a monkey basketball team, a Biological Oddities Museum, and a dragon-themed amusement park.
Usually, when this happened, some mysterious force would bring the required stock to the farmer’s establishment; but, with the evening being so quiet and not a cloud in the sky, he doubted a bunch of used cars would just fall out of the sky. Nonetheless, his wife still berated him, “A bunch of used cars aren’t just going to fall out of the sky!”
And then, suddenly…
POW! POW! POW!
They were stunned by a series of sonic booms and a flash of light at the corners of their eyes. The recording teens were taken aback as well, hit with a sharp blast of wind, just as something appeared in view of their videophones, screeching down the street and crashing into the boarded-up movie theater down the block.
The farmer, his wife, and the teens looked down the street in wide-eyed bewilderment, seeing what appeared to have been a strangely-modified DeLorean backing out of the big hole in front of what used to be the theater. Seeing it, the farmer meekly told his wife, “Well, it didn’t fall from the sky, but it still counts.”
The DeLorean pulled up near the used car lot. Its exterior was covered in ice, emitting puffs of cold fusion vapor. The driver’s side, gull-wing door opened and a redheaded girl jumped out, surveying her surroundings with the utmost glee. “Yes! We did it! We’re back!”
The passenger’s side door opened as well, and two boys (one redheaded, the other green-headed) also regarded the late-night atmosphere. “It seems that we have,” the redheaded boy said. “Unless…”
“Unless what, Phineas?” the girl said to him. “Everything feels like 2025 to me.” She noticed the teens filming them on their phones and waved. “Look! Kids on their iPhones, streaming us! You can’t tell me this isn’t 2025!”
“I just meant that it feels like we’re here much earlier than we should be.”
To verify his suspicion, he glanced at the LED clock outside the local bank – the time read “1:24a.m.”
Phineas frowned. “We’re a whole ten minutes early! Marty, what’d you…?”
He turned to find her back in the DeLorean, putting the car in forward gear, only for the engine to die again. “No!” she cried in a desperate attempt to turn it over, with minimal success.
Noting her desperation, Phineas could only figure as to why Marty had put them ten minutes early from their intended destinated time. He moved to confront her, but Marty was already out of the DeLorean, abandoning it – as well as the Flynn-Fletcher brothers – to run on foot in the direction of the mall.
Phineas saw no point in chasing after her. Instead, he turned to his brother and instructed, “C’mon, Ferb. Let’s fix that problem with the engine like we should’ve from the beginning.”
Exhausted yet resolute, Marty’s pace withered as she finally arrived at Twin Pines Mall – a minute shy of the time that she hoped to get there. In her debilitation, she thought the mall’s entrance sign read “Lone Pine Mall,” with a single pine on the logo. But she was too focused on the scene happening at the parking lot to bother with whatever Mandala Effect occurred with the sign.
She arrived at the moment Doc, along with Marty’s past self and those of Phineas and Ferb, were cornered by the man in the kabuki mask. From her spot near the entrance sign, she gained a new vantage point of the moment, spotting the culprit behind Doc’s disintegration – a maniac pharmacist.
Unfortunately, Marty was too late to avert the disintegration itself, as it happened exactly as before. Mortified, Marty was left to witness the repeated events – a rerun of her time previous to going back to 1985 – with the kabuki man attempting to destroy the DeLorean before the other Marty, Phineas, and Ferb jumped in and madly speeded throughout the parking lot.
The kabuki man surfed on his nanobot wave, gaining on the DeLorean as it accelerated until it was enveloped in a blinding white glow and vanished out of 2025. Momentarily losing control of his wave, the kabuki man suffered a painful wipeout, tumbling across the pavement. The pharmacist – and Doc’s murderer – rushed to check on him.
Seeing this as her chance to go to where Doc’s ashes were, Marty left her post and hid beside the overturned Brown Enterprises multi-step truck. She saw that deGrasse managed to get out of it, safe and unharmed, and kept the hefty Great Dane close by her. She overheard the pharmacist ask his dark associate, “Hey, you O.K. there, buddy? That was a really nasty fall!”
“Leave me be!” the kabuki man flared.
“Alright, sheesh!” the pharmacist ridiculed. “That’s what I get for being a good Samaritan for once! This is why I opt for evil!”
“Do you have any idea what’s just happened?!”
“Pretty sure I just annihilated a woman, which wasn’t my intention when I fired my Time-inator at her.”
“Of course, not…it was mine. I recalibrated your ‘Inator’ to erase Brown from this point of time. But that young friend of hers will certainly try to alter it with that blasted time machine. We must catch up with her.”
“I hear ya,” the pharmacist said. “But, without knowing when she went back in time, it’s gonna be like searching for a needle in a temporal haystack.”
“Then let’s dive in and find it, Doctor,” the kabuki man insisted.
After that, Marty didn’t hear either of them say another word. Peeping around the corner of the overturned multi-step truck, she saw that both the pharmacist and the kabuki man had disappeared. Alone with deGrasse, she went to the ashes of Doctor Emma Brown, most of which the wind had swept away.
“Oh, Doc,” Marty tearfully mourned.
deGrasse whined, also grieving his deceased owner. Marty embraced the canine, imagining how alone he felt with the Doc gone. But she wouldn’t dare abandon him. She owed it to Doc to take good care of deGrasse, no matter how her parents felt about dogs in their house.
“Marty?”
She jolted when she heard a familiar voice softly say her name. “Doc?”
Turning to where she heard it come from, she was surprised to see the elderly scientist standing over her, just the way she was before the disintegration.
“You’re alive!” Marty happily exclaimed.
“Well, of course, I’m alive,” Doc smiled.
“B-But I saw you die – twice!”
In response to her arrested acceptance of the presumable “miracle,” Doc unzipped the green jumpsuit she had worn that evening and revealed what looked to be a high-tech breastplate with an array of lights and buttons.
Marty looked on it, amazed as she was confused. “Is that…a bulletproof vest?”
“It wasn’t designed to stop bullets,” Doc clarified. “It’s a prototype ‘Time Vest,’ meant to transport its wearer two minutes into the future.”
“So…when that pharmacist dude shot you with his ray…?”
“Only my radiation suit had fragmented. The rest of me was repositioned where you see me here and now.”
Complicated as it all was, Marty gradually understood the science of it all.
Yet there was still one thing she needed to know: “How did you know though? I never got a single opportunity to tell you.”
Brown smiled, reaching inside the right pocket of her jumpsuit and pulling out Marty’s letter from 1985. Taped back together, it had worn over the last forty years – turning yellow and brittle – but her words were still clear as a bell on the paper. “I figured…what the hell,” Doc chuckled.
Marty chuckled along with her, taking her friend into her arms and hugging her exactly how she did with Emma’s past self. This time, Emma returned the embrace in earnest, fully understanding the importance of it. Both women hugged for close to a whole minute before they heard a vehicle approaching the area. deGrasse barked excitedly at it, just as three figures stepped out: Phineas, Ferb, and Cornelius.
“She really is alive!” Phineas exclaimed.
“Told ya,” Cornelius knowingly smirked. He then asked his mother, “Did you show her the letter?”
Doc nodded. “I did.”
Marty scoffed. “I can’t believe you both held onto this secret for forty years!”
“Hey, who do you think helped her tape it all back together for three straight weeks!” Cornelius jokingly griped.
The DeLorean pulled straight up to Marty’s darkened house in the Lyon Estates neighborhood, which Marty was grateful to see just as how she left it – full of houses that, while showing signs of aging, were fully constructed and lived in. Stepping out of the DeLorean, which was a little cramped with Doc, Phineas, Ferb, and deGrasse all sharing the space inside, she took one last look at her friends and asked, “So, is the plan still 30 years ahead in the future?”
Doc shrugged. “We’ll take it slow at first, but then maybe stop in the 22nd or 23rd century.”
“Well, good luck to you guys,” Marty said. “And maybe look me up when you get there. I should be 47 by then.”
Doc sealed this with a wink and a nod. “Sure thing, hon.”
Closing the passenger side door, Doc and the boys watched Marty disappear into the night as they pulled away from her driveway, backing up enough to go 88mph down the block. “Are we really visiting the 23rd century, Dr. B?”
Doc smiled as she inputted their Destination Time.
Phineas and Ferb glanced at the readout, which displayed the year 2999.
“How ‘bout we go much further, boys?” Brown proposed. “The turn of the 31st century – here we come!”
On that note, the DeLorean zoomed off, disappearing in a blinding glow.
YeetedSkeeter on Chapter 2 Wed 18 Aug 2021 09:05PM UTC
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LivingStoneWriter on Chapter 2 Sat 21 Aug 2021 05:44PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 4 Sat 01 Jan 2022 08:24PM UTC
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LivingStoneWriter on Chapter 4 Fri 04 Feb 2022 08:57PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 5 Thu 17 Mar 2022 04:57PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 6 Tue 28 Jun 2022 10:32PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 7 Thu 18 Aug 2022 06:04PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 8 Thu 26 Jan 2023 07:22PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 9 Wed 12 Apr 2023 04:43PM UTC
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Sayman on Chapter 9 Thu 04 May 2023 03:56PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 10 Thu 06 Jul 2023 10:36PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 11 Wed 26 Jul 2023 05:04PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 12 Thu 03 Aug 2023 06:27PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 13 Sun 12 Nov 2023 03:44PM UTC
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Ulterion on Chapter 14 Wed 15 Nov 2023 05:45PM UTC
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