Chapter 37
Candace, Ron and Jeremy were in a sedan headed towards where Mayor Sash was being held at.
"So, what do I do again as the distraction?" Jeremy asked to Ron.
"You need to run around, and distract the henchmen while Candace goes in there and kicks the villain's butt with the cheer moves that Kim...once...had...!"
"Okay...but, how did Candace get those moves?" Jeremy asked, still confused about Candace in Kim's mission clothes.
"Don't know, Jeremy..." Ron sighed, leaning against the window, "...but I wish everything would go back to normal!"
Rufus patted him on the tuft of blonde hair, trying to comfort him as he was going through this unexplained sitch.
Candace, meanwhile, got out the Kimmunicator and talked with Wade.
"According to what Wade has on the Mayor..." Candace said, pointing to the Kimmunicator, "...he's being held at the warehouse at the abandoned television factory in downtown!"
"Does Drakken or Shego have any henchmen there?" Candace asked for more info.
"Henchmen?" Jeremy questioned, "Candace, are you sure you know what you're doing?
"Can you keep it down, Jeremy?" Candace demanded, "I'm trying to get my mission briefed from Wade here!"
"Okay..." Jeremy complied and kept his mouth shut.
"Candace, Drakken and Shego are still in prison as we speak." Wade replied, "The perpetrator behind the kidnapping is DNAmy, who was broken out of prison by her own creations!"
"DNAmy? Who's she?" Candace asked.
Ron was worried, and rightly so.
"Ki...I mean...Candace, haven't you seen her before?" he flubbed a little because he was used to seeing Kim in her mission outfit.
"Can you at least show me a picture of her?" Candace requested.
Rufus went into Ron's unzipped backpack and dug out a photo of DNAmy.
"She doesn't look...evil...to me!" Candace said, looking at the photo of Amy.
"She's completely not right in the head, Candace!" Ron replied, knowing of Amy's craziness.
He then tried to help her fill in the gap, "Last time when we saw her, about three weeks ago, she was riding a CheePanda!"
"A CheePanda? What kind of gibberish are you talking about?" Candace muttered.
"Cuddlebuddies, Candace. She is the world's most noted collector of them and once was going for an advanced genetics Master's degree." Wade replied. "She was even the president of the CuddleBuddy Collector's Club!"
"So...I take it those two do not mix together..." Candace said.
"Nope, the obsession with Cuddlebuddies first ate away her education, then her dating life and, eventually, her mind." Wade continued, "She was kicked out of the Middleton Institute of Science and Technology for those said experiments, hid out in the Alaskan mountains for a time with her experiments before Kim rooted her out last week..."
"...and I sat on the self-destruct button of her base!" Ron intervened.
Wade sighed, "Just lemme finish, Ron!"
"Okay..." Ron ceded all talking authority back to the 11-year old supergenius.
"And now, she's planning her method of revenge as we speak! She's going to turn every single person in Middleton into her Cuddle Buddies!"
All three pairs of eyes were stunned at Amy's insane intentions.
"Candace..." Jeremy intervened once again, "...are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine, Jeremy!" Candace snarked, "I just wanna beat up the bad guys and kiss you on the lips at the end."
"I like the sound of that idea!" Jeremy grinned.
Candace and Jeremy kissing each other on the lips...wait...would the real KP and I do that? Nahhh, that wouldn't be possible! Relationships with sidekicks like me and red-headed crime-fighting teen heroines should not mix! Ron thought to himself.
Wade typed into his computer and replied, "I'm about done with the brain scan on both of them, Ron. Just allow me to do some final touches on the report!"
"And...done!" he declared.
Ron heard the printer finishing up and pleaded.
"Please, Wade! Tell me you have some news!"
"Okay, Ron, we got good news and we got bad news about Kim and Candace." Wade announced.
"I'd suppose you're going to tell us the bad news first..." Ron guessed.
"More than likely..." Wade said before announcing the bad news first. "The bad news is that Candace and Kim have officially switched personalities with each other."
"I already know that!" Ron complained, "Is there any bad news that I don't even know yet?"
Wade continued on, "If their personalites are not changed back to normal by midnight tonight, then they'll remain in that same state...forever! Furthermore, there have been slight changes to the mentalities with Kim and Candace in a few certain areas."
"Like...?"
"You know how Candace is usually obsessed with Jeremy and has a shrine to him in her room?" Wade asked.
"How did you know that, Wade?" Candace asked. "Did you put a tracking chip on me?"
"No...I gave Kim your profile shortly before you accepted the babysitting job." Wade said, "Anyways, the obsession that Candace has with Jeremy...has been tapped into Kim's memory bank when the switch must've occured. In other words, it tapped into the earliest memory that she developed a high school crush on a boy."
Ron gulped, finally connecting the earlier incident of Kim trying to talk with Josh on the phone, "That must explain her sudden re-obsession with Josh!"
Ron's jaw dropped on the thought of having a Kim that was solely obsessed with busting Phineas and Ferb and, far more worrisome, her obsession with Josh.
"That's not all! For Candace, she seems to remember a few of the villains Kim had faced in the past, like Drakken, Killigan, and Monkey Fist. But she doesn't remember one villain on the list..."
"DNAmy?" Ron guessed.
"You got it, and she still recognizes Jeremy as her boyfriend but also..well...you for some odd reason. But there is good news in all of this!" Wade said, now cheerful. He showed him an invention similar to one of Drakken's past devices. It had two metallic chairs on both the left and right sides. The design was similar to that of a curling hair dryer seen in a beauty salon.
"It's the Personalty Reverser!" Wade explained the nature of the device, "It is said to be the most advanced machine in the world. So advanced that it took four supergeniuses to build a prototype!"
"Looks like something that a mad scientist would use to create a mindless army of zombies." Candace said. She wasn't so sure if the machine was diabolical-looking or not.
"Candace, this is our ticket out of your personality-switcheroo-mumbo-jumbo!" Ron grinned at her, looking at that device. It was his only hope of seeing his best friend back to normal. "If I want to see my BF back to normal, this would be it!"
"BF?" Candace asked.
"Best friend, Candace!" Ron answered.
Jeremy intervened a second time, "Wait, Ron! So in other words...Candace...isn't really Candace?"
"Long story short, Jeremy, is that Candace has Kim's skills and memories and vice-versa!" Ron said, giving him the lowdown.
"But not all of them." Wade said, "The memories that Candace has with Jeremy are still intact inside of her brain, only that Candace not only sees you as her boyfriend but as her sidekick!"
"I know that I wouldn't be far from Candace." Jeremy grinned at her and kissed Candace on the cheek.
Candace giggled at the peck on the cheek before allowing Wade to continue his description of the machine that could change her and Kim back.
"But.." Wade interjected.
"Awwwwww!" Ron muttered, "There's always that word that pops up! It should be stricken from the dictionary!"
"As I said, the Personality Reverser is the most advanced machine in the world, and you're going to have to find four supergeniuses in the span of the time between now and when the effects will become permanent, if left untreated." Wade warned.
"Let's see..." Ron said, looking at his watch oddly. "Right now, it's about...I can't tell if the hand is on the twelve or the two!"
"It's two o'clock, Ron!" Wade groaned. "Which means you have ten hours before it's too late! Also, Ron, you need to look for a power coupling like this." He then showed him the diagram of a power coupling on the computer. "It's used to link up the two chairs of the Personality Reverser machine so that the switching back of their personalities can be done flawlessly. Without it, we wouldn't have a shot!"
"Then let's do it, Wade!" Ron insisted impatiently.
Wade typed in the coordinates of the power coupling, but...
"Sorry to burst your bubble, Ron, but the power coupling has been stolen!" Wade said on the status on the part of the machine.
Ron was stunned.
"Who could do such a thing?"