Of all the benefits afforded to the supposedly-divorced wife of a dictator, Charlene decided having her own penthouse had become the most useful. Amongst everything else it afforded her, and there was a lot, she could meet with her not-ex husband in her parlour. Thankfully out of range of this latest disaster.
"So, Heinz, how's the toilet training coming along?" she asked, over a cup of fresh coffee. Hers, not his; she'd learned long ago never to trust him with caffeine.
Opposite her, Grand Dic(k)tator Doofenshmirtz groaned, slumping back into his chair, the very picture of a defeated man.
Charlene lifted her cup to her lips, concealing a smile. "That bad?"
Sitting up, Doofenshmirtz gestured vehemently with his hands. "He won't stop peeing all over my couch! Except to pee on the bed, did I tell you about that one? And all the pillows too! It's like he-"
"He's your general," she said, cutting him off with a wave. "Why don't you tell him to stop?"
"You think I haven't tried?" he shrieked, loud enough that Perryborg could hear him from back over in Doofenshmirtz's own penthouse apartment as he dropped what looked like gravel and relieved himself on his supposed master's latest blueprints. Letting out a soft sigh of satisfaction, the platypus cyborg returned to his station by the desk, face blank and emotionless.
If it weren't for the stench of platypiss slowly permeating the room, anyone would think he'd never moved in the first place.
Unaware, Doofenshmirtz continued his rant. "It all started a few months ago, when I had a very special guest. Or, you know, prisoner. She was begging for... I don't know what she wanted, she was so hard to understand through the sobbing, and then out of nowhere Perry the Platyborg's peeing on my nice clean floor!"
Charlene nodded, in the way that meant she half-wished she had a bag of popcorn instead of her cup of coffee. For the drama, of course. Delicious, delicious drama, with extra butter.
"I told him not to do that in front of guests, so what does he do next time?" Doofenshmirtz looked at her, as if waiting for her to take a guess. When none was provided, he continued. "He stands behind them and does it."
Unsurprisingly, it took someone with more wisdom than her not-ex husband to realise the flaws in that plan. Someone like her. Not that this could be of any help to him in the slightest, as it would take someone more generous than the not-ex wife of a dictator to offer him a way out of a predicament of his own making.
She hadn't stayed married to him for his brains.
"Have you tried kitty litter?"
Doofenshmirtz spluttered. "Have I- I got some last week and told him he's to only pee on that!"
Another hidden smile. Learning all the ways he could make a fool of himself was well worth the marriage certificate. "And?"
"He's been tracking it around the house." At her raised eyebrow, he let out a mournful sigh. "And onto the furniture. And then peeing on it." A fact that would be no surprise to anyone paying attention to Perryborg's preferred method of following orders. "My bed was covered in it yesterday. Kitty litter and pee," Doofenshmirtz finished, sounding as close to a kicked puppy as a cruel dictator could. "And it was late so I didn't even have time to clean it up before I went to sleep."
It was all Charlene could to do not burst out laughing at him right then and there. Alas, she needed to preserve this relationship, at least if she wanted to continue pulling the strings of this dictatorship from behind the scenes. One of the perks of having the local dictator's ear... amongst other things.
Woe betide him if she ever decided to squeeze.
In the meantime, she set her cup down, offering a plausibly sincere "Oh you poor dear", which her not-ex husband eagerly took at face value. Anything to feel acknowledged for once.
Surprisingly, becoming an evil dictator didn't bring with it any willing audiences for his monologues, merely a terrified populace too busy bowing in fear to pay any attention to their leader's words, not that he'd have let them live with his secrets anyway. A dictator who let his subjects know his weaknesses wasn't fit to rule, and the oppressed populace would see to it that he'd be deposed were he ever to try.
Safer to trust his obedient general. Perryborg would never betray his secrets. After all, he'd been ordered not to. Alas, Perryborg also would never listen when he moped unless ordered to, and no amount of orders could get him to care.
Still, as useless as it was, it had helped, until the day he'd talked too long, stood too close, paid too little attention to his general, and been rewarded with a boot full of platypiss for his trouble.
He, luckily, chose to leave this out of his recounting. While his not-ex wife had been able to hold her tongue thus far, even that had its limits.
Doofenshmirtz sighed. "I should be getting back. Can't take my eye off him for a second. Do you know how frustrating that is?" Without waiting for an answer, he stood up, sweeping out of the room like the drama-obsessed evil dictator he was.
As soon as he'd left, Charlene stood too, moving to the kitchen to prepare a bowl of popcorn for the inevitable scream of anguish from the other penthouse. She'd earned this, she decided.
Not long later, an indignant shriek filled the air, Doofenshmirtz having discovered Perryborg's present. "Oh for badness sake!" he screeched, his shrill voice ringing through the permanently darkened sky. "I was working on that! Curse you Perry the Platyborg!"
Charlene lounged in her comfortable chair with the popcorn, unable to suppress her laughter a moment longer. If there was one thing she could rely on her not-ex husband for, that thing was his uncanny ability to provide endless hours of entertainment. So much better than television, even before that had been outlawed.
Definitely worth, not just the marriage certificate, but the fake divorce as well.
AN: Crossposted from ao3. Title from the live version of Good Goodbye by Linkin Park.
I'm certain Perryborg still has his mind under the programming, as evidenced by his landing on Doof-2's foot in the movie and also the tie-in comic where he followed his orders in whatever way would be most inconvenient to Doof-2. Hence... this.
Plus, you know, he's still Perry deep down. And Perry has proven that, if necessary, he will pee on furniture. It only makes sense to apply that to Perryborg too.