Chapter 1
"I know what we're going to do today!" Phineas shouts triumphantly. "Hey, where's Perry?"
Meanwhile…
"Agent P, today your assignment is very different. We are no longer asking you to fight Doofensmirtz. In fact, our agency," Major Monogram begins.
"He means me!" Carl interrupts from the side, sticking his head in the screen.
"Be quiet, Carl!" Major smooths down his jacket, which is, in fact, a real jacket this time. "As I was saying, our agency has found a way to stop Doofensmirtz, once and for all. But it will require you to make a sacrifice."
Perry growled in agreement but slight unease.
"You'll have to give up your host family."
"What? No, that's not what I told you!" Carl jumps in. "I told you that –"
"No one cares what you said, Carl," Major Monogram turns back to Perry and the screen. "If you will attempt this mission, you won't see your host family again for many years. But if you don't accept, im afraid we have no choice but to relocate you and your family and wipe this house and all its passageways off the face of the Earth. Will you accept?"
Reluctantly, Perry nodded. He gave one last look to the slide, the slide that he had gone down many times this past summer. The slide that he will probably never see again.
Then he got on the scooter, and started his new life. Working for Doctor Doofensmirtz.
Back at the house…
"What are you going to do today?" Baljeet asks Phineas. "You never told us."
"That's the point! We're going to make a ray that lets us read each other's minds!" Phineas announced.
"Oh, oh, oh! That's exactly what I was thinking! What are ya, some kind of mind reader?" Buford says, jumping up and down on Baljeet.
"We all will be soon!"
"Ow, ow, ow! My spine is not a trampoline, Buford!"
*Working song*
"That's it, gang! We're finished!" Phineas said, dusting off his hands. On a side table, there was a tiny little ray, no bigger than your finger.
"No fair! I never got to ask you what you're doing!" Isabella says, storming into the backyard.
"Sorry, Isabella. We started early and forgot you had a Fireside Girls meeting. You can ask me now, if you'd like."
"Ok," Isabella says. She clars her throat and sings the scale a few times. "do, re, me, re, do! Okay." She takes a deep breath. Just as she opens her mouth, Buford jumps in.
"Oh, just get it over with! What'cha doin'?"
"Buford!" Isabella shouts, "You stole my line!"
"It's not like I've never done it before!"
"Why you…" Isabella rolls up her sleeves. "I'll get you for that!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Phineas says. "We haven't even used the invention yet!" He points it at himself and fires, then at Isabella. At the last second she darts out of the way, and he shoots Buford instead. "I'm not getting anything." Phineas shakes the little ray. "Maybe it's broken."
"Or maybe I'm just not thinking." Everyone turns to look at Buford.
"You know, that's more likely than Phineas's ray being broken." Baljeet declares. Everyone murmers and agrees.
"Okay, let's try a different test subject." Phineas shoots a ray at Isabella before she could react. She gives a little squeak and valts over the fence, just as Phineas starts blushing. "Um, who got her those parkour courses for her birthday?"
"I did!" Irving yells, sticking his face over the fence. "What'cha doin'?
"Everyone's saying it but me!" Isabella's voice comes from somewhere far away.
Baljeet sighs. "We are not a group of monkeys!"