Chapter Text
Melissa sat against the tree in the Flynn-Fletcher backyard, her friends all sitting in a circle around said tree. Milo was sick, and so they decided to visit Phineas and Ferb to curb their boredom.
“I always wonder why Murphy’s Law tends to ebb when Milo gets sick,” Melissa said thoughtfully.
Buford shrugged. “Maybe it's sentient.”
“I mean, I’ve done plenty of research and documentation. I’ve tracked it long enough (and talked to the Murphy family enough) to see the pattern.”
Phineas and Ferb looked at each other, and then back at Melissa.
Phineas smirked. “Well, since he’s sick right now, we could go visit and do some tests!”
“You’d risk getting sick?” asked Isabella.
“Of course,” said Phineas, without hesitation. “Who would pass up the opportunity?”
“I would,” said Buford. “Ma said I can’t afford to get sick. Literally. Our insurance is through the roof.”
“Well, Buford, I guess we won’t be seeing each other anytime soon,” said Baljeet, “because I’m not passing up this opportunity one bit.”
“C'est la vie,” said Buford. “Later, chumps.”
“So,” said Zack, sitting on the bus with Melissa and ‘The Gang’, as they called themselves. “I’ve noticed as well, that things stop going wrong (for the most part) when those who are affected get hurt.”
“Really?” Phineas looked even more excited.
“Last time I broke my arm, nothing bad happened while Milo was around,” Zack continued.
Ferb hummed. “Since we know it’s hereditary, it must be a physiological thing.”
“You’re probably right,” Phineas said thoughtfully. “I can’t believe we didn’t test this when the whole Pistachion thing happened.”
Baljeet chimed in. “Well, to be fair, we were in a bit of a hurry.”
“Still,” said Phineas, a little indignant. “It probably would have been useful information.”
“You know what they say,” Melissa began. “What do they say? Something about the inner machinations of the mind.”
“Oh, hey guys!” Milo beamed, although his voice was nasally and his cheeks were red. “Ferb! Phineas! I haven’t seen you guys in ages!”
“You know what they say: Never pass up an opportunity to study the probability ions of your ill friend,” Phineas said, beaming.
“Can’t argue with that!”
Ferb began setting up the instruments, while Phineas pulled out his laptop and scientific calculator. Baljeet pulled out his own laptop, and Ferb began plugging the equipment into the wall sockets and into both computers.
Zack and Melissa stood, watching blankly. These guys were only a few years older than them - how did they know how to do all this stuff?
Melissa moved closer to take a look. Out of her, Milo, and Zack, she understood most of what was going on. “Sometimes I remember you guys built a roller coaster at age 12 and inadvertently gave me a pathological fear of roller coasters.”
“Actually, we built the same roller coaster twice,” said Phineas, like it was the most normal thing on planet earth.
“Twice?” Zack asked. “I feel like that should have been national news - how did I never hear about it?”
Ferb and Phineas looked at each other, and then towards Melissa and Zack, and simply shrugged.
“However,” said Baljeet, “you’ve probably heard of their one-hit wonder project.”
Ferb began humming the familiar tune as he continued to work.
“Hey!” Zack exclaimed. “At least we have that much in common.”
They hadn’t noticed, but Milo had already fallen asleep. Once the teenagers were finished putting everything together, they gently woke up Milo.
“Huh? What? Who am I?”
“Sorry, Milo,” said Melissa gently. “I think the guys want you to be awake for the testing.”
“We don’t want our data to be skewed by you being asleep,” said Phineas.
Milo simply hummed, seemingly too tired to argue (or at least, not wanting to be his usual grumpiness when tired while Phineas and Ferb were around. They didn’t know each other well enough for that.)
There were lots of scans, and readings; lots of numbers being spewed out that only the three high schoolers and Melissa could understand.
Phineas sighed. “Finally!”
Milo immediately moved back under the covers, asleep in seconds.
“We still need to go over the results and create proper diagrams,” Baljeet began, “but from the raw data, our previous experiments on Milo, and previous knowledge of Milo’s history of illness, I’d say it’s a good conclusion that the negative probability ions decrease when Milo is ill.”
“Well, there you have it!” Melissa sounded happy.
“Well,” Zack hesitated. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” said Phineas. “Slushy Dawg?”