In complete contrast to the little flat of Lawrence Fletcher, the castle of Robinson Collins stood tall and foreboding, with bats circling its tall spires. The clouds cast a dark shadow over it and it alone - over the rest of the street, the weather was as pleasant as normal (but not too pleasant - after all, this was England). It was like a haunted house that had been cut from a macabre place and pasted right into the otherwise perfectly plain street.
The front door was ominous, and looked too heavy to kick down. There was a large, ornate knocker on it, but Caroline noticed a white piece of A4 paper taped at knee-level at the bottom corner of the door, somewhat at odds with the whole image of the castle. She knelt down to properly to look at the sheet.
To the OWCA agent arriving today, please let yourself in, it said, in large Times New Roman letters. The spare key is under the doormat. He had then began to sign his name as 'Mr. Collins', but had struck through it, and changed it to 'Dr! Collins', complete with multiple exclamation marks, instead.
Very bizarre.
Despite this, Caroline pressed on. She flipped open the 'bless this mess' doormat. There indeed was the key, and she used it to enter the door. With a strong push, it swung open, exposing a massive corridor that seemed to stretch as far as she could see.
Caroline stepped through, and her intrigue grew as she walked through the corridor. There were old, random portraits on the stone walls, and there was a line of red carpet leading as far as she could see. What was the story behind this place? Again, there was a piece of white paper, this one stuck next to one of the doors of the corridor at knee-level. This one had a large arrow pointing at the door, and it read: OWCA agent, this way to the evil scheme! By the way, I'm not sure how tall of an animal you are, but I tried to stick this at a level where you can read it...
Very bizarre. Well, it explained why the papers were knee-height. She passed through the door, and it led her into a large room. This one had a high ceiling, an ornate chandelier suspended from it. A large, open spiral staircase on the other side of the room led to the floor above. There was also a large device that was actually similar to the security device in the OWCA, probably part of his evil scheme.
But just as she was taking this in, a large cage fell from above, trapping her before she could react.
"Ah, my nemesis, we meet at last," a voice from above echoed. Caroline heard his slow, steady steps as he descended the staircase from the floor above."I am the evil Dr Robinson Collins, and I will be the one to take over the Tri-County Area, or my name isn't Dr. Robinson Collins!"
He came into view and Caroline finally saw Collins in person. He was a fairly short man, with thick glasses and greasy hair, and suspenders high up his waist. He looked as he did in his photo, which was essentially as she expected someone with a degree in Mathematics to look. Currently he wasn't looking back at her, but was thinking about his opening speech.
"Ah, drat, I said my name twice, didn't I? Great, all that practice and I still got it wrong at the end. That's what I get for- well helloooo…"
His eyes had landed on Caroline, and were now stuck on her like glue.
"My dear, was it the OWCA that sent you, or heaven?" he purred. "Oh hey, that was smooth. Self-high five!" He raised one hand and high-fived it with the other proudly.
Very bizarre. Caroline raised an eyebrow, and Collins realised what he had done. "Ah man, I've ruined it, haven't I?" He sighed. "Alright, well, you're WAY out of my league, so I'll try to view you as just my nemesis, you know, keep our relationship purely professional. Emphasis on try. I mean, you must know this, but you're very pretty."
He resumed descending the stairs, but now he took them more erratically, stepping down two at a time every other step. "I'm so excited about this!" he said, with a nerd-like glee. "There was a little pamphlet about how things work in the gift basket the OWCA sent, and I now know that inside-out! Though," he added, giving her another look up and down, "I expected to get a nemesis that was less, you know, human."
"Now, what did the pamphlet say?" he mused, as he finally reached the bottom of the staircase. "Ah yes, explain my evil scheme. Well, since it's our first time, I've not done anything major. I've just put together a device which doubles the length of any queues that people are in." He patted the large device fondly. "Since we Britons are infamous for our queueing, it is still delightfully evil, if I say so myself..."
Very bizarre. As he continued to ramble to himself, Caroline inspected her cage a little more closely. The cage door was secured with a heavy padlock. She spotted the key hanging out of Collins's pocket, but he was too far for her to grab it directly. She was going to need something clever to get the key from him.
That was when she had a brainwave.
Perry arrived at the clearing where Heinz and Caroline's evil scheme was in full swing underground. What was it again? Something about an evil picnic? No, wait, it was about getting rid of public art so that they could have an evil picnic.
He didn't want to do what he was about to do. But he could hear the kids' voices at a dangerous distance, and it proved hard enough to defeat Caroline 1 on 1 even without having to take them into account. He sighed, and whipped out a small communicator pad and held it in his two hands, pushing a button to connect him to his intended backup. It beeped for a few moments, until finally the call was picked up on the other end, and the recipient's face appeared on the screen.
"Hey Perry!" Stacy whispered excitedly, waving in front of her own device's little camera. "So hyped for my first mission! What do you want me to do, keep the Flynn-Fletchers occupied?"
Gritting his teeth slightly, Perry nodded. The teenage girl let out a suppressed squeal of glee. "Yay! And relax, Perry, you can depend on me," she saluted. "You go fight that evil guy."
He then heard Candace's voice in the background. "Stacy, who're you talking to?"
Stacey frantically shoved the device behind her, the camera now zoomed in close to the back of her dress. "Er, myself! You know, because I do that sometimes."
"Sure…" Muffled as it was, Perry could still hear how unconvinced Candace was by this.
"Er, hey, I bet your brothers are doing something crazy!" Stacy suggested.
"They are so busted!" Candace exclaimed, and a shuffling of feet indicated she had sprinted off.
"Sorry Perry," Stacy said apologetically, now facing the camera again. "But like I said, you can totally count on me! Good luck on your mission!"
The transmission ended and Perry sighed. He really did not want to rely on the teenage girl, but he really had no other options. He couldn't rely on the OWCA for help because the by-laws prevented any consistent sort of assistance they could offer, that was, even if they had the budget for it. Besides, Monogram wasn't looking too closely into who Caroline Fletcher actually was, and Perry would rather the Major didn't know she was the mother of one of his owners and maybe deciding that it was too risky for Perry to keep being Phineas and Ferb's pet.
Anyway. He crossed his fingers in hoping that Stacy's side of things would all work out, and put it out of his head for the time being. He knew he needed some sort of advantage if he was going to beat Heinz and Cat. He took a moment, thinking hard for anything that could give him the upper hand.
Then Perry noticed something from the corner of eye, and he grinned.
"Yes, it's really pretty good for my first scheme ever, don't you think- hey, you escaped!" Robinson exclaimed, noticing that his prisoner was now outside the cage.
His hand rushed to the key in his pocket, but it was still there. "Ah, I see you used your hairpin to pick the lock. Nobody said you needed to use my key to get out, that's some pretty outside the box thinking there! In my defense, though, I did expect my nemesis to have fewer opposable thumbs."
He raised his fists in an amateur fighting stance, but Caroline was practically an athlete in top shape, and she moved at tremendous speed, springing between the walls, ledges, and balconies of the huge room, until she was past Collins and next to his evil device.
"Well, I know when I'm beat," he said, somewhat disappointed by his complete defeat. "I'm not actually sure what you're supposed to do at this point…"
But Caroline knew. Carefully, she pulled off a panel covering some of the complex internal wiring. She studied it for a moment. Then, she shuffled the wiring around, replaced the panel, and then walked swiftly towards the exit.
"Oh, what did you do?" Collins asked curiously, leaning over to inspect the changed wiring. "Oh, you've rigged it to self-destruct! You OWCA agents know what you're doing!"
"Maybe you should be running," Caroline called, over her shoulder.
"Hm? Well yes, obviously, I- oh, right," he realised, coming to his senses mid-sentence, and he screamed girlishly as he fled up the staircase away from the trembling machine.
Caroline shut the heavy front door behind her, as the machine exploded. "Curse you, Agent C!" she heard, from the window, smoke also billowing from it.
She reflected on her day. Yes, Collins was an awkward mathematician. Yes, he was infatuated with her, Yes, he was incompetent. Yes, his whole scheme was ludicrous, anticlimactic, just plaindumb. But she would go back and do it all again.
Why? She didn't know for sure. But if she had to guess, it was probably because she needed a little bizarreness back in her life.
Perry defly located the trigger on the ground and pushed down on it with his foot, causing the ground to shake and part ways, as a huge platform rose ominously to fill the space. Heinz, Cat, and their ominous Inator atop the platform that the trigger was for.
"What the- oh, Perry the Platypus, it was you," Doof said, his momentary confusion over why the platform had risen quickly vanishing as he saw his nemesis. "But you are too late! Our Inator is ready!"
Doof swung the fishing net down onto Perry, who just stared back under the net, unimpressed. The trapped agent repeated the same trick as before, beckoning his nemesis to lean towards him, and of course Doof obliged by falling for the same trick again, receiving for his curiosity a punch square to the face. Doof was sent flying and landed painfully on the ground, now nursing a sore nose and a sore behind, and making a mental note not to slack off when it came to traps in the future.
Perry leapt in front of Cat, his final obstacle, but Cat was simply leaning, relaxed, against the Inator. "This feels right, doesn't it, Agent P?" she said happily, as if detached from the moment. She breathed in deeply, as if at one with the universe. "This struggle between good and evil... Doesn't it just make you feel alive?"
Perry growled. He had no time for poetic reflections on their daily routine, and he didn't have much patience for any of this. He had no idea what Caroline's history was like, or how it led to her profound love for evil, but it didn't matter now. All that mattered was that good triumphed.
Cat raised her fists confidently, knowing she could at least stall Perry long enough to allow the Inator the warm-up time needed to fire off its deadly shot. But instead of attacking, Perry merely smiled knowingly. At that point, Cat heard the completely unmistakeable sound of two old ladies rushing towards them.
"Excuse me, you there! You are in clear violation of park rules!" Ruth exclaimed. "Evil devices on platforms rising from underground are not allowed!"
"Perry the Platypus, you called Esther and Ruth, from the Danville Botanical Garden?" Doof asked his nemesis incredulously, before turning to the two ladies. "Wow, I didn't know you guys worked the Danville Park too. Anyway, this is a free country! Where's your proof I'm not allowed to use my Inator?"
Esther pointed sternly at a sign stuck in the grass some distance away. It read: No evil devices on platforms rising from underground.
"What an oddly specific sign…" Doof said.
Perry shot a triumphant smirk at Caroline, but to his surprise, Cat did not seem angry or upset at all. In fact, she seemed perfectly content with being thwarted. She looked almost… impressed? It only lasted for a moment before she strode past Perry, in order to talk to Ruth and Esther. She would pacify them by reassuring them she'd handle Doof, but it left Perry free to hit the self destruct button on the Public Art Away-Inator and quickly get clear of the resulting explosion.
"Aw man," Doof sighed. "Curse you, Perry the Platypus!"
"No cursing semi-aquatic mammals on weekdays!" Ruth scolded, pointing at the sign saying the same thing stuck in another corner of the park's expanse of grass.
"Man, this park has some weird signage," Doof sighed.
"Oh there you are, Perry," Phineas said, picking up his pet platypus.
The kids had all finished their epic game of laser tag, and were now taking off their special laser tag gear. Stacy too was taking off gear, having joined in the game later on. Perry caught her eye and she gave him a discreet wink and thumbs up.
Perry smiled back weakly. Things had worked out, after all - things were much less hectic after he had called Stacy for help compared to before. And it had freed him some thinking time in order to figure out a way to beat Cat and Doof, something he didn't always need before due to Doof's tendency to thwart himself from time to time.
But Perry knew that the situation was delicate. Stacy was no professional, and all it would take was one moment of carelessness, and his family would find out his secret, or the OWCA would find out that she knew. And Caroline's memories were a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment.
Something had to give eventually, and Perry just hoped he could control the damage when it did.