A/N - Sometimes I think all the work I've done on this story was just so I could get to THIS...

The Doonkelshtump Hits the Fan – Chapter 5

It was January 1, 5:42 am, and Vanessa Doofenshmirtz had had a couple of hours of sleep, tops. Ferb's compadres at Ackerton State sure knew how to throw a party. The Underwater Welders had pumped up the crowd with their upbeat rock, and their green-haired guitarist had looked seriously hot in his leather and shades. She loved watching Ferb and his friends play, but she was glad they'd been only one of several campus bands taking turns on the stage so she also had plenty of time to dance with him. The musical sounds of the various combos had ranged from southern funk to western swing, sultry salsa to the jump-jivin' jazz of the seven-member Little Big Band, and in between live sets, Ferb's friend Cory had served as a DJ, spinning tunes to keep the party hopping. A couple of the chemistry students had concocted a sort of faux-champagne, more sophisticated than the usual sparkling cider but alcolhol-free to keep any of the college kids from getting busted for underage drinking. The food had been plentiful and as varied as the music, including some traditional touches; there had been an impromptu competition over who had brought the best homemade tamales, and Ferb's engineering cohort and fellow Underwater Welder Ruthie Leeper had been pushing black-eyed peas on everyone like the good southern-fried girl she was. Stuffed and exhausted, Vanessa and Ferb had staggered home to the bungalow around 3 am, shared a sip of real champagne before giving up on the idea of any more celebrating that night, and crashed out.

Now it was 5:42 am and her cell phone was ringing. The sound woke her up, and she felt Ferb stirring beside her. She recognized the ring tone, and Ferb groaned groggily, "Sounds like your father."

"I can't believe he's checking up on me," Vanessa grumbled, turning over. Her phone was plugged in on the dresser and she was not getting up for it.

The voice mail message kicked in, and Dr. Doofenshmirtz's voice came from the device. Vanessa could actually hear him from across the room; he sounded hysterical. "Vanessa, pick up! Where are you? Did you see this?! I can't believe it! Why aren't you answering the phone?! Call me!"

This unexpected message made her roll onto her back and raise herself on an elbow. "Seriously? What is he freaking out about?"

Ferb's cell phone rang. It was in the pocket of his trousers, which were still on the floor by his side of the bed, and he reached an arm over and groped for it. He barely even glanced at the screen before passing it to her. "It's for you."

With an exasperated sigh, Vanessa took it and answered, "What, Dad?"

"Fletcher, where's Vanes – oh, that's you. Did you see this!?"

"See what?"

"The news! Did you know about this?"

"Dad, it's like five in the morning, you woke me up. What is this about?"

"You haven't seen the news? It's everywhere! It's even on the L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. website! Oh, I'll bet Rodney couldn't WAIT to post it."

Ferb could obviously hear every word of this, and had gotten up to retrieve her phone from the dresser. He started pulling up the evil organization's website and she saw his eyes go wide and his pupils shrink with the shock of what came up. Without a word, he held out the phone to show her.

The headline at the top of the news feed read: DOOFENSHMIRTZ! EVIL, INC.? And below the headline was a photograph of the smiling, well-coiffed face of…

"Uncle Roger?!" she exclaimed.

"It's ROGER!" Doof railed.

"Uncle Roger is evil?" Vanessa couldn't believe it. This had to be someone's idea of a joke.

"He's EVIL!" her father confirmed. Vanessa put Ferb's phone on speaker as the man continued to rant and took her phone from Ferb, skimming the article as she scrolled through it. Dad was going on. "He's been scheming to take over Drusselstein! Why didn't I think of that?"

He went on ranting while Vanessa continued reading, Ferb leaning on her shoulder and following along. The phrases that leapt out at her just made the whole thing more jarring: fraud – conspiracy – market manipulation – pizzazium smuggling – assassination plots… Wide-eyed, she glanced at Ferb and saw that he was equally astonished.

"He even had minions!" her father railed. "I've never had minions!"

Vanessa had just reached this part of the article. "What are – BADin-KADin…?" she struggled to pronounce the unfamiliar word.

"Badinkadinks," said Ferb, obviously familiar with the term, but clearly surprised to see it. "Phineas found them in the basement of the toy factory," he explained to her under his breath. "That summer." This phrase had become shorthand for the summer they had first met.

"Where did he get all that pizzazium?" she marveled. Only twice had she ever seen or even heard of the rare element: once at the MegaStore when she was sixteen, then a few months ago when Dad had worn that tie tack he got from…

"From Mother!" said Heinz. "That piece of land she left him? It was on top of a gold mine of pizzazium! Well, not a gold mine," he corrected. "Then he would have had a lot of gold. And of course I suppose he still had the pizzazium locator – how lucky is that? He wouldn't have even known what it was if I hadn't told him."

"What was he doing with the – ?" Vanessa began to ask, then bit her tongue as she was pulled out of her distracted state by the memory. Long ago, after she had kissed Ferb goodbye at the end of their MegaStore adventure, the resourceful green-haired boy had recovered the broken pieces of the pizzazium detector and rebuilt it for her, and she had returned it to her father. Now, Dad was already recounting his part of the story.

"Don't you remember? I had it at the Doofenshmirtz Family Reunion, just poking around the park with it, not bothering anyone, and Mother caught me, 'skulking around,'" he quoted her sarcastically, "instead of being sociable like Ro-oger, and she took it away from me and gave it to him. He didn't even know what it was!" the man railed again. "But he wouldn't give it back. 'I'm sorry, Heinz,'" he mocked his brother's tone, "'but you heard what Mother said.' Trust me, he was not sorry. You don't remember, Vanessa? It was at the Family Reunion," he reiterated. "After the Kickinator year, but before the year you made those cookies."

"How could I forget?" Vanessa retorted with dry displeasure. Although he might not have meant to express it, he had referred to 'those cookies' with a trace of disgust, and she was not letting him dredge that up. "Do you think your Mother knew?"

"No-o-o," he sounded contemplative. "She wouldn't have given me the tie tack if she thought it was anything more than a funny-looking rock. It sounds like no one knew about it until Roger found it and started digging it up. That's what he needed the minions for," he pointed out.

Vanessa was trying to piece together what information had been reported so far about her uncle's plot. She wasn't an evil genius, herself, no matter what Dad might have wished, but even she couldn't resist commenting, "You know, his scheme is unnecessarily complicated, and doesn't even seem like it would work."

"You're telling me!" the Evil Scientist burst out in agreement.

She had reached the paragraph about her uncle's accomplices and recognized the names of Zengle and Guiserblint, Melanie Grissel and Cousin Nartheliott. Ferb was slightly ahead of her and she heard him mutter, "Bloody hell," just before her eyes found the last name: Ambrose Petersen. He pulled away, looking as if he'd been puched in the stomach. Letting Dad blather on unheeded, she reached out and rubbed a hand over Ferb's back and heard him murmur a barely audible, "Poor Candace."

"Oh, and you want to know the best part?" Dr. Doofenshmirtz was going on. "You know how I could never get my Doonkeline to work? That's because it doesn't work. Not for anyone! It's snake oil! Roger sold everyone on this miraculous Doonkenol and it's snake oil! But, of course, everyone just believed it because he's Ro-oger and he's so wonderful."

"I should have known," said Ferb out of nowhere. When Vanessa looked into his eyes and brushed back a lock of green hair, he answered her curious gaze. "About the Doonkenol." He spoke up toward his phone, addressing the Doctor. "You never could make it work."

"Yes, thank you, Fletcher," he drawled sarcastically. "Just rub it in, why don't you?"

"But, you're brilliant," said Ferb. "If you couldn't make it work – of course no one could."

For the first time, Heinz Doofenshmirtz's tone softened a little as he sighed, "Yeah, thanks for the flattery, kid. But, what am I supposed to do now?" For the first time ever, Vanessa thought her father sounded old and tired. "Roger's scheme was seriously evil. He nearly took over a country! How can I top that?" he lamented.

"Dad, you don't have to –" she tried to comfort him, but he went right on talking over her.

His voice was weirdly soft and pensive. "All these years of Doing Evil – it was the one thing Roger could never beat me at. And now he has." There was a gloomy silence for a moment, and then he added, "I guess I really am a failure."

"Rubbish," said Ferb, in a clear, firm voice that took Vanessa by surprise. "You're an inventor, you can't let a little thing like this get you down. Roger bested you at Doing Evil? So what? It's time you showed him you're the better man at Doing Good."

Vanessa knew that Ferb could have talked her into anything with that inspiring British determination, but her father replied, "Seriously, Fletcher? That's the best you've got? 'Just do good'?" The old familiar edge was coming back into his tone. "What do you think I'm supposed to do, just turn all my evil inators into things that would benefit society…" His tone had been drenched in sarcasm up to this point, then he stopped short. "Wa-a-ait a minute. Maybe I could use my inators to benefit society. I could make a fortune! You know, I'm still getting royalties from that eye exam thing… I could help people eat whatever they want and still lose weight! I could make people handsome! I could turn bricks and metal into broccoli and pineapple juice and feed the world! Wow, I'm really having an epiphany here! And not like that last one, that one didn't turn out so good," he admitted. "But this time – I think I've really got something!" As he spoke, Vanessa heard in the background a faint whoosh and a small thump, and Dad's voice moved away from the phone. "Oh, good," she heard him remark, "Perry the Platypus! Your timing is impeccable. And by impeccable, I mean – wait, I think I've used that one before. Never mind. Now that you're here, you can help me with this." His voice was suddenly louder as he returned his attention to the phone and his daughter. "Sweetie, I've gotta go," he blurted. "I've got work to do!"

And with that, the line went dead.

Vanessa turned to the green-haired young man sitting beside her. His knees were drawn up and his head was in his hands. His pensive, unfocused look clearly told her he was lost in Ferbland. Gently, she put an arm around him and caressed and rubbed his far shoulder. She couldn't imagine how long her father would have wallowed in his misery, lamenting his failure and rambling about the pointlessness of his life if not for Ferb's incisive remarks. She leaned over and held her lips against his cheek for several seconds in a soft, grateful kiss. He responded by turning his face slightly toward hers, welcoming the contact, then after a moment, he reached over and picked up his phone.

"Are you calling Candace?" she asked, when he began touching the screen.

Ferb shook his head. "Just texting. She won't want to talk to me," he opined. "She'll expect me to say, 'I told you so.'"

Vanessa saw the message he sent: I'm here if you want to talk. Then he put aside the phone.

"I guess you were right about him," she said softly, referring to Ambrose.

Ferb shook his head again. "No. I just thought he was annoying. I never imagined this."

To be continued….

A/N – I've had so much of this chapter in my head for so long. At one point, I was tempted to skip everything else and just explain the whole plot by having Ferb and Vanessa talk about it. And yes, I made a callback to one of my favorite Doof lines, from "Sidetracked."