2
After lunch, Candace found herself walking through and exploring the Tipton trying to enjoy herself. She thought about going swimming in the upstairs pool, the Tipton would provide her a bathing suit, but instead she strolled from the elevator to meet her new friend and look-alike Maddie Fitzpatrick. What she saw instead took her aback. Outside the candy counter, Maddie was wearing an expensive green and gold dress and Zack and Cody were reading scripts they were holding and discussing with Phineas while Ferb adjusted a video camera.
"What are you doing?" Candace raced after them. "What are you doing?"
"We're making a TV show!" Phineas shined with that nine-year-old face. Ferb stood by him holding his video camera ready to start filming.
"Oh-no, you're not!" Candace was not being a part of this. "I'm telling Mom!!!"
"But Candace, we want you to star in it!"
"What?!!" She stopped just a few feet from the hotel restaurant and turned back. "You want me to be a part of it?"
"Of course!" Zack and Cody pulled out a large blue shirt and pulled it over her head. Candace gasped and struggled to extend her arms through the sleeves. Her hair was slightly mussed, but she fixed it but pulling it and swaying it around her shoulders. Zack pushed her behind the candy counter in Maddie's absence. A few feet away, Maddie was dressed in a dress from London's penthouse and holding Ivana, London's Pomeranian, ready to make the TV show.
"Now, let me get this straight…" Candace realized she was wearing Maddie's hotel uniform. "I'm playing the candy girl, and the candy girl is playing a rich hotel heiress."
"Exactly!" Phineas directed her scene. "And I taped the script down to the top of the candy counter so you can just read the lines…" He beamed happily to his stepsister. "You'll be great!"
"Well, why can't I be the heiress?!" Candace screamed.
"Have you ever met London?" Maddie pointed out.
"No."
"Do you know you mean and nasty she can be?"
"No."
"Well, I do…" Maddie looked away. "I'll just pretend I'm Ashley Tisdale as Sharpay in High School Musical." She looked to Phineas with stars in her eyes. "You know, a lot of people say I look exactly like her!"
"I don't see it." Phineas answered then turned to his red-haired stepsister. "Trust me, Candace, this is so much better!" He insisted.
"I'm telling mom!" Candace walked away from the candy counter. "Mom!!!!" Maddie, Phineas, Ferb, Cody and Zack walked her march past him.
"Is she always like that?" Zack asked.
"Yes, yes, she is…."
"Mom!!!" Candace marched past Patrick Kiniski at the podium of the restaurant and entered the Tipton Restaurant ready to air her grievance. Her parents were still enjoying their lunch without the kids. Her mother looked up briefly and saw her daughter in the Tipton uniform.
"Oh, hi, Maddie…" Mom looked up. "Have you seen my daughter, Candace?"
"But I am Candace!"
"Oh, so you are…" Dad removed his glasses to clean them with his hankie. "You and Maddie look so much alike…."
"Mom," Candace overly gestured as she complained. "Phineas and Ferb are making a TV show and making me play the candy girl. Tell them to make me the London the heiress!" Her mother started giggling.
"Oh, Candace…" Mom became amused. "You have some imagination."
"Candace the Candy Girl…" Her father thought it over. "But it's just so perfect!" He shared the giggle with his wife. Candace looked at both of them. She was not getting anywhere with them.
"I'll play the candy girl…." She groaned dejectedly and wandered out to the lobby again. Patrick looked at her.
"Maddie, when did you dye your hair red?" He asked her. He heard a groaning noise from Candace as she wandered out to the lobby again, hung a right past the elevators, down the steps from the landing and turned into the candy counter. She sighed a bit.
"What's my first line?" She groaned defeatedly and noticed the script. "Never mind…"
"Okay," Phineas directed them. "In this episode, Candace, you are the candy girl, and Maddie is the heiress since she knows how to play London. Zack and Cody are themselves. This is going to be great!"
"Excuse me, Phineas…" Zack leaned down to the nine-year-old. "But when we finish the episode then what?"
"Ferb and I will turn it over some producers we met when we made our music video." Phineas told him.
"They made a music video?" Maddie didn't believe them. She leaned into to Candace.
"Among other stuff…" Candace sighed trapped in this scheme. From across the room, hotel manager Marion Moseby noticed the spectacle happening and ambled over to investigate the disturbance in his lobby.
"Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me…" He looked to Phineas in the director's chair and Ferb with the camera. "Aren't you two boys a bit young to be making a TV series?"
Phineas looked up to Moseby for a few seconds as if he was thinking it over. He blinked his eyes a few times.
"Yes, yes, we are."
"Oh…" Moseby looked at him and around the lobby. Candace was in Maddie's uniform at the candy counter, Maddie was wearing London's clothes and carrying London's dog, Zack and Cody were themselves and Phineas and Ferb were taping it. "Just so you know…" Moseby rolled his eyes and returned to his desk. Phineas looked to Ferb ready to continue then realized he was missing something.
"Hey," He looked around his seat. "Where's Perry?"
A mere few feet away, Perry was scuttling around the end of the candy counter and behind the potted fern. Jumping backward to his hind feet, he peeled off some fake fur from his belly, snapped it into a small hat and placed it atop his head. His tiny webbed hand pressed open a panel and he jumped through it into a pneumatic tube built within the walls of the Tipton. Once the hatched closed, he was shooting through the pipe, his head held fast to his head, through the clear plastic pipe through the basement of the Tipton. Maintenance man Arwin Hawkhauser saw the small critter whir past him through the clear plastic tube in the corner of his basement workroom.
"Was that a platypus wearing a little hat?" He asked himself.
Whirring onward through the network of forgotten tubes under the city, Perry saw waves of light and dark flashing over him as he whirred under sidewalk grates, past sewer openings and beneath underground pipes and electrical lines. It started getting brighter and brighter just before he landed in one of hundreds of secret underground bases in the country. Dropped into a seat, he reacted like an animatronic creation looking up to a large screen. It buzzed to life with the image of a Connery-esque leader of a secret spy organization.
"Agent P, there you are." He looked away. "We found him, Earl; he's in Boston." Several off screen voices cheered. "Anyway, Agent P, thank god you're already in Boston because we no longer have money in the travel budget, but it appears Doofenschmirtz is up to no good. We have information that he's been buying up all the large-screen TVs in the area for another insidious plot. Find out what he's doing, and stop him!"
Perry reacted very human like with a salute to Monogram and hopped out of his little chair. Dr. Heinz Doofenschmirtz was a criminal mastermind from behind his supposedly legitimate businesses dotting the country. Though based in Danville, Illinois, he had buildings across the country and one of them was in Boston. He wasn't sure exactly what Doofenschmirtz did for a living when he wasn't trying to extort money from the country, but he did know the eccentric inventor was up to no good. Perry hopped into his hover-car and took off for another grand adventure. He flew over the Tipton on his way to his next secret mission.
"Did I just see a platypus fly by?" Esteban the Tipton bellboy looked to Norman the doorman.
Perry flew higher and higher into the Boston skyline up past the Boston Federal Building, several high-reaching skyscrapers and toward the twenty-five story high Doofenschmirtz Tower. He maneuvered for the head winds off it to land on the edge and then strutted inward on his hind feet. In through a shaft, he slid down deep into the building, knocking off the cover at the bottom and landing quite human-like ready to battle his arch-nemesis once more.
"Perry the Platypus! What are you doing in Boston?!" Doofenschmirtz resembled Arwin a bit with just a bit more hair and much bolder eyebrows. His white lab jacket flailed as he turned to confront Perry. "I'm not doing anything evil, I swear!"
Perry leapt up smacking him with his tail several times. Doofenschmirtz reeled and reacted from the heavy blows. He backed up into his work area, a loft where all the big screens had been merged to create one giant large screen five stories high. Perry landed back on the floor and looked up with those tiny platypus eyes glaring up at his enemy.
"No, I swear! It's not evil…" Doofenschmirtz stopped and thought about it. "Well, maybe it's a little evil, let me explain…." He clicked a remote control from his pocket and a vacuum tube shot from the wall and sucked up Perry. The fourteen-inch tall trained secret agent was absorbed into the tube and deposited into a clear plastic pen with a hamster wheel and pet feeder. Doofenschmirtz began laughing.
"You see, Perry the Platypus…" He began describing his plan. "Ever since I first traveled to the United States, I've always loved watching TV. I love it, but the one thing I really hate is watching my favorite TV shows constantly getting canceled. You hate it, too. I know you do. I am so angry that my favorite TV shows keep getting cancelled… I mean, Arrested Development, Gilligan's Island, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver, The Beverly Hillbillies, Lizzie McGuire, The Drew Carey Show, Titus, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, The Bionic Woman Remake, Phil of the Future, According to Jim, Boston Public, Dark Shadows, The A-Team, Knight Rider, The Partridge Family, The Dukes of Hazzard, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, That's So Raven, Dallas, Dynasty, The Munsters, The Addams Family, Sabrina The Teenage Witch, The George Lopez Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Lois and Clark, Hogan's Heroes, The Twilight Zone, The Benny Hill Show, Happy Days, The Cosby Show, Night Court, Seinfeld, That 70s Show, Bosom Buddies, Family Ties, Who's the Boss, Who's Line Is it Anyway?, Army Wives, Saving Grace, Newhart, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena, Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, but not Star Trek: DS-9 which could be good at times, but not always…. I mean, why do all these great shows keep getting cancelled while really lousy shows like Cory in the House, The Replacements and Family Guy are still on the air, what's up with that?… It just ain't fair, but soon, the entire world shall feel my grief, behold, my Televisionator!!!!" Lightning cracked outside as he turned to his giant screen set pieced together from the stolen big screens. "I designed it to bring all my favorite cancelled shows back to life in the real world so that I'll never really miss them, but to work, it must erase an equal part of the real world to bring them to life!!!!" He screamed out loud laughing his head off as lightning cracked again. "By the way, I didn't do that lightning; that was just dumb timing. What do you think, Perry the Platypus?"
Perry stood up and looked out of his plastic prison, his head looking back and forth trying to figure out what to do. Doofenschmirtz clicked his remote as a large particle-accelerator erected higher and higher from the Televisionator ready to alter the world. The timer started playing backward from ten minutes as it charged itself up.
"So much to do, so much to do…" Doofenschmirtz started plotting. "I think I'll start dating Marilyn Munster, I hope it's the Beverley Owen version, instead of Pat Priest… then I'll have breakfast with the Cunninghams, lunch with the Cleavers, tell Colonel Hogan the war is over, cure David Banner of the Hulk, introduce my daughter Vanessa to Sabrina, dinner with the Bradys and then try to get the castaways off that island… I mean, hey, maybe Ginger would give me a hug and a kiss… then I'll form an alliance with Boss Hogg and J.R. Ewing to rule the world!!!" He started laughing. Perry looked at the timer counting down and pounded at his indestructible cage. He had to stop Doofenschmirtz!!!
