Worthington Manor was a grand old building dating back to the 1800s, standing as solid evidence that, in England, there's good money in tea. The slogan, 'If it's not Worthington, it's not worth it' had burrowed its way into everybody's minds and Worthington was a household name. The building itself was maintained by Mr. and Mrs. Worthington's small force of 17 butlers, gardeners, and servants, but they hired another 2 when their daughter was born.

She was a beautiful baby girl, petite and perfect in proportions. Mr. and Mrs. Worthington expected great things from her, their first child who they would impart their entire lives' experience and wisdom to and mold into a remarkable woman.

But enough about Evangeline.

Almost immediately after their daughter was born, the Worthingtons handed her off to the nursing maid. They did this so they could focus fully on the new advertising campaign that demanded their full attention. Worthington tea was, after all, facing an urgent crisis: the need to update the very image of tea-drinking itself to appeal to the new generation. Eventually, they cracked it, and Britons everywhere agreed with the billboards they had erected across the country; after all, nothing says 'Worthington Tea' like a monkey in a fedora.

Flush with the success of the campaign, they returned home, only to find that Evangeline was already 4 years old. They marvelled at their daughter, already bright-eyed and with all the makings of a beautiful, refined woman. But Mr. and Mrs. Worthington did then regret missing the beginning of their little angel's life, and vowed not to continue the same mistake. Their recent marketing success gave them enough to celebrate, after all.

9 months later, Caroline was born.

After the dust settled in the ward, they noticed with shock that the tufts of hair on baby Caroline's head were green, rather than brown like Evangeline's. Fortunately, the doctor was quick to put their worries to rest: Caroline simply had the Main Character gene, a usually recessive trait that sometimes manifested itself as unusual hair (it was more common in regions of Japan). She was destined to be important.

Things seemed to line up perfectly for Mr. and Mrs. Worthington. Here was an opportunity for them to raise their daughter, properly this time, unlock her Main Character potential, and eventually pass on the entire Worthington empire to her. From there, as a Main Character, the sky was the limit. Would she bring Worthington to the whole world? Would she discover some new perfect tea recipe? Would she discover the legendary lost chalice of hot beverages, aptly named the holy grail?

They resolved to quit their roles at Worthington Tea and take the time to raise their daughters.

To their credit, they managed it for three years. But they had tea in their blood (perhaps even literally after all their time in the business) and raising a child turned out to be considerably less rewarding than they thought, so after that time, they began slipping into their old, comforting work routines.

And Caroline had started to disappoint them slightly. For they expected, as only fitting for a Main Character, that little Caroline would astound those around her with her uncanny ability to solve rubik's cubes or puzzle games, but it was not so; when they would tempt her with such things, she would play with them for a while, but do nothing spectacular. She knew how to talk from the usual age, but rarely did. A doctor later explained to them that they were confusing the Main Character gene with the so-called Mary Stu gene, a common mistake for the inexperienced; she would be a main character, not an incredibly beautiful supergenius who had perfect control over her emotions and could do everything she attempted perfectly on the first try.

So the work-addicted Worthington parents began cheating on their children with their business duties. Slowly but surely, they gave less and less attention to their second daughter just as they had to their first. But their daughters were intelligent, right? Besides, Sebastian, was more than capable of raising them properly. And evil masterminds weren't born to rich parents. Right?

Heinz was looking forward to tonight. Ok, it was just a charity dinner, and it was arranged by his brother Roger of all people, but for once he was actually looking forward to it. After all, this would be the first time he had a special someone to take to such an event that wasn't crazy about whales, didn't believe aliens had abducted her, and hadn't set him on fire. And there was that one who kept stabbing him with a fork. Well, the night was still young for the last couple, but he was optimistic about the outcome.

He wanted tonight to be special, and had gone to extra lengths to make it so. He'd spent hours on his appearance: carefully combing his hair neatly and gelling it in place, picking out a tuxedo that didn't have inator burn marks on it, making sure his breath didn't smell bad, applying his best aftershave. Heinz took a final look in the mirror and tried a seductive grin, which came out as a grimace that made even himself shudder.

This might be his last date with Caroline, after all.

It's not that he wanted it to end. The opposite, in fact. He and Caroline got on together like a house on fire, which Heinz thought was a very strange expression, and he wasn't sure whether he was the house or the fire, but it fit.

But he cast his mind back to one of his first dates in America, a woman named Sophie. She had been wonderful: smart, funny, pretty, and he was sure she had evil tendencies if he had just looked hard enough. They'd gone out to dinner and their soup had already arrived, but there was a problem.

"Ugh, There's a fly in my soup," she complained.

"Not to worry!" he had said, whipping out a small ray gun from his inside lab coat pocket. "I've been working on this Anti-Cliche Inator for a while now. Let me just..."

He had zapped the soup with his Inator. But to his horror, the fly merely mutated into an alligator. It leapt at Sophie, knocking the soup all over her.

"That's odd, I'm pretty sure this isn't my Turn-Into-An-Alligator Inator…" Heinz wondered. Sophie had fainted on the spot, and the alligator had gone on to cause a great deal of 'property damage' and create a 'public disturbance' and a bunch of other words that Heinz was now far too used to hearing.

It was then that Heinz started to realise that the universe may have hated him ever so slightly. He wasn't sure what he'd done to deserve that. But to Doof, that just meant he had to work twice as hard to keep Caroline!

Make that three times as hard. Cat was the best thing to happen to him since Vanessa. She was beautiful and sophisticated and delightfully evil and she loved self-destruct buttons... and she was a really great listener. Perry the Platypus swam into mind there, and Heinz felt a twinge of guilt at how little of his nemesis he'd seem the past couple of days. But eh, Perry was a mensch. He'd understand. Right?

Cat arrived, in a cream dress with green highlights that accentuated her olive hair. Heinz fumbled his way through a compliment and she giggled, that adorable little laugh of hers that Heinz couldn't get enough of, and they left with the self-conscious evil scientist recounting the time one of his dates showed up dressed as a duck and kept quacking loudly during inopportune points of the date.

They left DEI together. The hall that the charity event was being hosted at was only a couple of blocks away, so they'd agreed to walk the short distance. On their way, they passed a particularly cheerful person.

"Good evening," he said politely, in passing, with a small tip of his hat.

Heinz immediately spun around, furiously whipping a ray gun-like device out of his inner pocket and pointing it directly at the man. "Just keep walking, mister, or I'll send you to another dimension where there are babies everywhere! They'll be all screaming and crying… basically it's a total nightmare."

Terrified, the guy ran away. Heinz was panting angrily, worked up, as if he'd just been in a physical brawl. Caroline shot him a bewildered look. He then looked back sheepishly.

"Eheh… sorry about that," he said, rubbing the back of his neck apologetically. "It's just that… well, once, I was about to go on a date, years ago. So me and this girl had just left my apartment. I think her name was Shaniqua - weird name, I mean, names with a 'q' in them are so awkward because you have to have a 'u' after it, essentially taking up two letters for one, but I digress."

Heinz took a deep breath before continuing. "Anyway, the point is, just as we were about to leave, this random incredibly handsome and manly biker shows up out of nowhere and she ended up riding away with him in no time. He totally stole my girl!"

Caroline couldn't help herself. She burst out in a giggling fit.

"H-Hey!" Heinz protested. "It was emotionally scarring, really!"

Heinz felt his mood lightening. Cat wasn't laughing at him, That was something he knew, not in the 'there are infinite prime numbers' kind of way, but in the 'today's going to be a good day' kind of way. Her unrestrained giggling meant that, even though the backstories in his past were emotionally scarring, they were still in the past, and maybe there was some good in them after all if his life was to work out in the end. It was therapeutic, actually, in a similar sort of way to monologuing to Perry the Platypus and turning them into evil schemes. It helped him deal with it.

He wasn't sure why she loved his stories so much, but this was one of the happiest times in his entire life, and he would go to the ends of another dimension to keep things that way.