A/N – OK, this is a prime example of how I've ended up breaking with the series canon – I know the last few episodes of P&F dealt with Doof and Vanessa and him giving up Evil, and I enjoyed how they handled that in the series, but in my long-standing head-canon, he's not to that point yet. This is another story taking place in the wake of "Unspoiled Universe" and, like other things I'm doing lately, there is a bigger purpose to it.
Erring on the side of caution, I'm sticking a T on this, but only because of the implications of Doof's "old saying from Gimmelshtump" – which I've had in mind for ages and am so happy to finally get to use.
All the characters belong to Dan & Swampy.
Dinner Date
Vanessa Doofenshmirtz was shredding carrots for the salad when she heard the familiar whine of the rocket skiff descending into the driveway outside the little bungalow. Right on time.
The back door was open and he came around that way and knocked on the screen. "Helloooo. Anybody home?"
"Come on in, Dad," Vanessa called out and her father ascended the four steps into the kitchen.
"Hey, Baby Girl," he greeted her.
Vanessa gave a small, surprised smile when she saw him all turned out in suit and tie. "You dressed up," she observed, as he collected a hug and a kiss on the cheek from her.
"Well, it's not every night I get invited to dinner. Mmm, what smells good?"
"Tuna casserole," she informed him. "It's my secret recipe, you're going to love it." Adding the carrots to the salad bowl, she invited, "Have a seat and I'll get you some iced tea. Dinner's almost ready."
Once he was settled down with his drink at the tiny kitchen table, he said, "So, Fletcher's off fighting robots?" He sounded impressed at this for a moment, until he qualified the thought. "Not that robots are that hard to fight; I mean, they're robots, all you have to do is find their self-destruct buttons."
"He's not fighting robots, Dad. He went to Seattle for the robot Olympics. They build robots and put them through different contests."
"He's in Seattle? Why didn't you tell me? I love Seattle! I could have given him some pointers – Or I could have gone with him, like a tour guide. Kept him company."
Vanessa was still amused by how much her father had warmed up to her fiance over the several years they had known each other. She doubted, though, that the college engineering students would have appreciated having an aging Evil Scientist underfoot, sabotaging the competition and blowing things up. "I'm sure Ferb's fine," she assured him. "He's there with his posse."
Dr. Doofenshmirtz grimaced at the word. "His posse? Just when you've convinced me he's not a hoodlum, you tell me he has a posse."
The sigh and the eye-roll came out of her reflexively. "That's just what I call them. They're his engineering buddies."
"Then why don't you call them his buddies?" her father groused. "Or something respectable, like his colleagues." Lighting up with inspiration, he added, "Or his compadres? Yeah, I like that! Compaaaadres," he savored the sound of it. "That's a good word."
"Okay, Ferb's in Seattle with his compadres," Vanessa humored him, and distracted him from the subject with a tempting, "And he left brownies."
"Ooh!" Doofenshmirtz gawked around the kitchen with the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning. Ferb's brownies were legendary among all who knew him.
"For dessert," she pointed out, dishing him up a bowl of salad and a plate of tuna casserole.
As she put the food on the table for them, he said, in a leading way, "Sooo, you haven't asked me about my latest scheeeme."
She should have seen this coming. "You're not still messing with that doonkeline thing."
"Nooo," he waved this off with a frown. "I finally decided, what's the point? Even if I did get it to work, it's fundamentally good. It's environmentally friendly renewable energy, I mean, where's the evil purpose in that? Maybe that's why I can't get it to work," he contemplated, as if this thought had just occurred to him. "I'm only good at doing evil."
Frankly, he wasn't so great at doing that, thought Vanessa, and probably better at doing good than he wanted to acknowledge. But she'd eaten enough of the doonkelberry jam that was the most common byproduct of his failed experiments with the fruit, she was just as glad he'd given up on it. And evil schemes weren't exactly her favorite topic for dinner conversation.
"So, Dad," she changed the subject, "that's a really interesting tie tack. I don't think I've seen you wear that before."
"Oh, this." He lifted the purple necktie in his fingers to show off the ornament. It was an angular green stone and it caught the light in a way that almost made it glow. "Yeah, I guess maybe I haven't worn this before. Your grandmother left this to me."
Vanessa wouldn't have broached the subject if she'd known this, but now she just said, "Oh," in a sympathetic tone. Grandma Doofenshmirtz had passed away a couple of years ago, but Dad had never mentioned his inheritance. Now she added, helpfully, "That's nice."
"Yeah, I guess it is," he sighed with a sad thoughtfulness. "At least it's something. Of course, she left everything else to Ro-oger." He pronounced his brother's name with the usual sarcastic disdain. "Including the real estate – I didn't even know she had real estate!" This part, Vanessa had heard before, but that was never a reason for her father not to hash it all out again. "She bought a piece of land outside Danville as an investment, and of course she left it to Roger, and what did he do with it? He let the city build the doonkenol power plant on it. For free. He's not even charging them rent! He's letting the DOOFASes from Drusselstein grow doonkelberries on it and he's not charging them anything either. Well, I know what he's up to," Doofenshmirtz grumbled. "This is just another one of his goody two-shoes schemes to make himself look all charitable and altruistic, and to make me look bad."
Vanessa hated to say this, but Uncle Roger wasn't really making his brother look bad or good. For all his misfired take-over-the-entire-Tri-State-Area schemes, Heinz Doofenshmirtz was still pretty much a non-entity in Danville. Well, except in the files of O.W.C.A.
"So, how do you like the casserole?" Vanessa tried this diversion.
He had managed to down a few bites even in the midst of his tirade, and now he took another and savored it thoughtfully. "You know, this is really good. And I'm not just saying that to spare your feelings," he added hastily. Taking another mouthful, he pondered over it and said, "Is that condensed milk?"
Vanessa nodded, eating away at her own plate. "I got the recipe online. It's kind of unusual."
"Mmm," he nodded, taking another bite. "You know, the milk really makes this!" He washed this bite down with some iced tea before resuming his monologue. She should have known she couldn't keep him distracted for long. "But I suppose I should be happy she left me anything," he remarked of his late mother. "My father didn't even leave me a krepnik," he referenced the Drusselsteinian half-cent. "He sold everything to our neighbor Kenny and left all the money to Roger. And now my childhood home is a lawn gnome factory." Another comforting bite of tuna casserole made him admit, "Although I guess that is an improvement."
"Well, it's a nice tie tack," Vanessa put in soothingly. "Do you want more tea?"
"No, I'm good. You know, you still haven't asked me about my latest scheme."
"Okay," she indulged him with a little smile. "What's the latest scheme?"
To her surprise, he declared proudly, "I've solved your problem."
"What problem?" Vanessa didn't know she had one.
"How to get married on the Eiffel Tower!" he said, as if surprised she had to be reminded.
"Dad, we don't need some 'evil scheme' to—"
"No, wait, hear me out! This is really good! So, you and Fletcher need some way to get everyone off the Eiffel Tower long enough for you to have a wedding without getting arrested."
"Please tell me this is not the 'stinkinator' or whatever it was."
"It was the smellinator," he corrected her huffily, "and no, it's not! Behold!" he crowed, then looked around himself, obviously remembering where he was. "Oh. I guess I should have invited you to my place for dinner, then I could do the whole 'Behold!' thing. It kind of loses a little effect without the inator actually here."
"Let's just pretend it's here. What am I beholding?"
"The Acrophobiainator!" he proclaimed.
Vanessa stared at him with that deadpan look that Ferb would have instantly translated as Really? Dad didn't have Ferb's knack of reading her expressions, however, and responded with annoyance.
"What, nothing?" he challenged. "Seriously, it's like talking to Perry the Platypus! Aren't you going to ask me, 'What does it do?'"
She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but gave in and said, "Okay, Dad, what does it do?"
"What does it do, you ask?" he launched into the sentence before the last words were out of her mouth. "You see, acrophobia is the fear of heights."
"I know what it is."
"All I have to do is blast the Eiffel Tower with my acrophobiainator, and everyone on the tower will suddenly be stricken with a paralyzing fear of heights! They'll all come rushing down, and you'll have the place all to yourself!" He regarded her with a trimphant look, anticipating her thrilled reaction.
Instead, she remarked dryly, "How are they going to get down if they're all paralyzed?"
"Oh, ha ha, Miss Sarcasm," he retorted. "It's a figure of speech. They'll come down, trust me."
Vanessa suspected the acrophobiainator was unlikely to work any better than his usual schemes, especially since Perry would be there and would doubtless thwart it. Frankly, she and Ferb had already discussed asking Perry to get his French O.W.C.A. connections to call in a favor from the Paris authorities, but she knew better than to bring this up in front of Dad. Instead, she simply said, "We don't need an acrophobiainator."
His disapproving reaction to this was something she hadn't anticipated. "Fletcher is still going to marry you, isn't he?" Dad challenged in that over-protective father voice.
"Ye-e-s, we're still getting married," Vanessa rolled her eyes.
He was talking over her again, "Because you know we have a saying in Gimmelshtump. 'What sort of idiot buys a goat when they're giving away free cheese?'"
Vanessa dropped her fork and her eyes went wide with shock. Oh, he did not just say that to her! "You did not just say that to me!"
He actually seemed baffled by her offended glare. "What? It's a saying, from Gimmeshtump. About goats, and cheese. What did you think it meant?"
Her immediate translation had been, Why would the guy marry you if he's already getting what he wants? Dad wouldn't have been the first to make a crack about Ferb moving in with her. What else should she think he meant? But Dad had this genuinely innocent and confused look on his face and she calmed down enough to remember that he was probably in enough fatherly denial to cling to the pretense that Ferb always slept on the couch.
Exhaling her exasperation, she just shook her head. "Never mind."
He wasn't dropping it that easily, though. "Here you are, working, and paying the bills, and cooking dinner, and all he has to do is go to school and let you take care of him." He scooped up a forkful of casserole.
"You sound just like Mom," Vanessa groaned. This had been her mother's argument against Ferb living with her in the first place until Vanessa had pointedly informed her, We are NOT you and Dad! Honestly, she had thought they were all well past that point.
"I'm just saying," her father defended himself, with a 'whatever' wave of his fork. A lump of tuna tumbled off and landed on his tie tack. "Ugh," he reached for the napkin to wipe off the mess, but before he could do anything, the green tie tack began to glow eerily, and then his tie moved away from his shirt. An aura of light broke forth as the tuna dripped away and the tie tack rose toward his chin, stopped in its ascent only by the chain that attached it to his buttonhole.
For a moment, they both just watched it hovering there, then Vanessa said, in a suppressed and slightly alarmed voice, "Dad, what's going on?"
He pushed the tie tack down to his shirt front with a finger, but as soon as he released it, it bobbed right back up again. "I don't know. It's almost like it was made of…" His eyes went wide as he pushed it down a couple more times, as if conducting an experiment, then he burst out with delight. "It is! Ghee-hee-hee-hee-hee! I don't believe it!"
"What is it?" Vanessa demanded.
"Don't you see? It's pizzazium infinionite!"
"Why is it doing that?"
"Oh, who knows?" he brushed this off. "It's pizzazium, no one really understands it. But I'll bet I could find some evil use for it!"
"But – where did it come from?" She hadn't heard the words pizzazium infinionite since she'd had that adventure with Ferb when she was sixteen. And that was certainly the only time she'd ever seen the rare element.
"Oh, Mom probably picked it up on clearance from the Super Duper Mega Store," he guessed. "I'm sure she had no idea what it was. Or she would have given it to Ro-oger." No matter how happy he was, he still had to drone out the hated name. "You know," he exclaimed, suddenly inspired, "we can use this on the Eiffel Tower! We'll get everone off with the acrophobiainator, then we'll use the pizzazium to float it! You can get married on top of the Eiffel Tower in the sky! "
"With that?" she raised an eyebrow. "It's pretty tiny."
"It's enough. You'd be surprised what you can do with just this much. With this much," he formed a sphere the size of a softball with his hands, "I could take over the entire Tri-State Area."
"Why stop there?" Vanessa cracked. "With this much," she pantomimed holding a soccer ball, "you could take over a whole country."
Dr. Doofenshmirtz looked intrigued by this prospect for only a moment, then he sighed as he polished the tie tack with his napkin. The gravity-defying properties of the pizzazium were decreasing, and the green aura had faded to the original glow that suggested nothing more than an interesting reflection of the light. "I don't think there is that much pizzazium." He straightened his necktie and patted it back into place. "But just in case…" He gave his daughter a pleading smile. "Can I have that tuna casserole recipe?"
The End
A/N – If you are scratching your head over all the pizzazium business, now would be a good time to go read "Rhode Island Fletcher and the Pizzazium Skull."