Bronze. It was BRONZE.
Heinz could hardly contain his disgust. So stone and granite weren't good enough? Roger was having them erect a giant BRONZE statue of himself in front of City Hall? How much had that cost? How much bronze did it take to equal a twenty-foot-tall Roger Doofenshmirtz? Where does Roger get the money to blow it on silly things like that? he mused, carefully aiming his Twenty-Feet-Lower Inator.
It would have been sporting to wait for Perry to get back up here, but y'know what? Heinz had won this one fair and square. Besides, maybe Perry couldn't catch up. After all, his hang-glider was still sitting on the back of the platform, and maybe he was all out of jetpack fuel. Rocket fuel prices had gotten so high recently that it was criminal. Thank god Norm ran on squirrel power instead.
Heinz fired, then watched in dismay as the metal of the statue reflected the beam, bouncing it harmlessly into the crowded city streets. The second shot arced high, bounced off the wing of a plane, and went down towards the suburbs where he had dropped Perry the Platypus. Ten more shots, all reflected off in random directions. Maybe if he hit a really flat smooth spot, it wouldn't deflect it?
Those bronze eyeglasses were nice and flat. Heinz lowered the platform so he was perfectly perpendicular to them, and fired. This time, the beam bounced right back at him, hitting the inator; now instead of sitting on the platform, it was shorting out in the duck pond under him. Fantastic.
"CURSE YOU, REFLECTIVE PROPERTIES OF METAL! Ugh. Forget this. I'm going home."
"MOM! MOM!"
"I think you're being called, dear" Lawrence said, a hint of humor in his voice, digging through a box of old VHS tapes
"Nope," Linda replied, "Must be some other teenager."
Candace sprinted down the basement stairs. She was COVERED in mud and sopping wet, "MOM! Phineas and Ferb made an alligator pond in the backyard!"
"Candace, why are you covered in mud?"
"It tried to EAT me! It got my shoe!"
"Best go save the day, Linda," Lawrence said with a faint smile.
She shot him a look, and started to reply, but Candace had grabbed her arm and was forcibly pulling her up the stairs. Ooh boy. Judging by the strength she was pulling with, Candace had apparently managed to psych herself into a full-on adrenaline rush. At least when she crashed in fifteen minutes or so, they'd have a more peaceful afternoon.
Shockingly, there was no alligator pond in the back yard. The only thing back there was Perry, who was also covered in mud and shaking like a leaf.
"B-b-b-b-but it was right here! I swear!"
"You and Perry weren't playing in the new flowerbeds, were you?"
"No, there were alligators! Or maybe crocodiles? I was never 100% clear on the difference, but I tell you they were RIGHT HERE!"
"Oh, Candace."
Just then, the gate creaked as Phineas led his friends back into the yard. "Oh, there you are, Perry!" he said with a grin, "We were looking all over for you, but I guess you never left the yard. Silly boy!" The platypus scurried over to the kids, and Ferb scooped him up.
Jeremy followed them into the yard, and Linda cringed internally when he saw Candace. Damn it, she had forgotten that the kids had made plans, otherwise she would've insisted that Candace get cleaned up before dragging her to the backyard. She knew how sensitive her daughter was about her appearance when Jeremy was involved.
"Uh, Candace?" he said, "Do you need a bit more time to get ready?"
Candace responded with a squeak, and dashed back into the house. There was an uncomfortable moment of silence.
"Who wants pie?" Linda said, and the kids (Jeremy included) all immediately started to head for the kitchen. Normally she would have insisted they hose Perry off before bringing him into the house all covered in mud, but right now she mostly wanted to distract them from what a mess Candace had been and give her some time to compose herself.
Besides, it was blackberry pie, which Candace had one mentioned in passing was one of the Johnson boy's favorites.
Later that night, Perry headed down to his lair. He hated typing, but he supposed he should probably send Carl an e-mail explaining why he had prematurely left his mission today. Not that he had been at all shaken by having to fight a crocodile or being kicked in the face by Candace about six times. And certainly, it had nothing to do with water, of course. He was semi-aquatic, after all. It was just that his host family had been a bit suspicious about his earlier disappearance, and he needed to spend some time reinforcing his cover.
However, he was surprised to see the- what had they called it?- "Perry-tastic Synthetic Creek" sitting down in his lair. It had come disconnected from its power supply when it had moved the twenty feet down from the yard to the floor of his lair, so the portals were turned off, but other than that it seemed to be undamaged.
Cautiously, Perry approached it, and dipped his bill into the water to test with his electroreceptors. There were countless small heartbeats and tiny nerve impulses—the tell-tale signs of countless snails, crayfish, and other tiny aquatic critters—but no indication of any larger pulses. No crocs or other large predators had made it through those portals before they shut down.
For a long moment, he considered putting in a work order, then decided against it. No, this was something he could do himself. Perry crept back upstairs, fetching some scrap metal from the garage and Phineas's rivet gun from under his bed. Before long he'd placed some protective bars across each of the portals (spaced closely enough to prevent any bigger native creatures from passing through, but widely enough to allow any potentially delicious invertibrates easy passage). That done, he plugged the portals back in, and was pleased to see them spring to life.
Perry sat there for a long time, watching his new water feature from a safe distance. He spent an even longer time laying on his belly with his bill in the water, "listening" to all of the electric chatter from the nervous systems of all the tiny snacks living down at the bottom.
The delay was completely necessary, of course. He had to be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that nothing large or dangerous had managed to get into the water. It wasn't fear, naturally, just prudence. Any other well-trained agent would have done exactly the same. In fact, only a complete fool would have entered that water after anything less than four or five hours of observation. Maybe seven.
It was just after dawn when Perry climbed up onto Candace's bed, holding her other shoe in his mouth. She was still sound asleep, so he gave his sopping wet fur a shake to wake her.
"AUGH! Perry! You're not supposed to even be IN here! And why are you all wet!?" She glowered at him, but her eyes widened after a moment. "Wait, what do you have there?"
He dropped the shoe, and flopped over on his side, making sure to look like it had been unintentional. He watched with one eye as Candace picked up the ruined sneaker and turned it over a few times in her hands. "Where did you get this?"
She looked at him for another long moment, then her expression softened. "You see all the crazy stuff they do too, don't you Perry?" Candace reached over and scritched the back of his neck with her fingernails. Phineas did the same thing a lot, but his nails weren't as good for it as hers were. Perry chattered dumbly, snuggled his head against the duvet, and shut his eyes.
"Okay, fine, you can stay up here this morning. But don't get too used to it."
