Author's Note: CATU comes out tomorrow so this chapter is coming out today.

Ch20 Originally Posted to AO3 08/27/2020

Perry winces, bracing himself for the dimensional car's inevitable crash.

Except the crash...never...comes? Perry cracks open one eye to see Heinz freaking out and the car hurtling straight towards a ground that looks very trampoline-like.

Hopefully it's actually a trampoline. Although if it is, won't they just splat straight into it due to their speed, instead of bouncing off? Isn't that what Newton's third law is all about? Or is it a different law?

He's never been a scientist, he doesn't know.

Surprisingly the dimensional car does bounce off the ground (so it is a trampoline), springing back into the air. The world spins upside down, head over heels, ass backwards, and back again as they bounce around.

Perry's eyes go wide. Even disregarding the complete violations of the laws of physics, this is insanity.

And more than a little nauseating. He can barely handle roller coasters , or Heinz's attempts at driving. Last summer with the driving test? He's just glad he got out alive.

Heck, are there even brakes on this thing? There must be, since they're slowing down. Or maybe that's just their momentum slowing.

Really, he should be grateful that gravity is working in this dimension. With all the other laws of physics they're breaking, he wouldn't be surprised if gravity were nonexistent in at least one of these dimensions.

Actually, now that he thinks about it, why haven't they come across a dimension where there isn't any gravity yet?

He doesn't have time to ponder that, since the car screeches to a halt...by smashing into the ground.

"Well, at least we're fine," Heinz says. "We just need to do a few repairs, and then we'll be good to-"

An ominous click that sounds suspiciously like the click of a self-destruct button echoes in the car.

Heinz gulps. "Oh no."

Perry barely has time to cover his ears before an explosion rocks the car.

The good news? Neither of them are harmed.

The bad news? There's now a gaping hole in the back of the car where the engines used to be.

Perry groans. Heinz, why the fuck would you put a self destruct button on the one thing that can get us home?

At least he looks thoroughly cowed. "Sorry?" he squeaks. "It's just a thing, I guess. If I don't do it, something bad will happen. And I know it probably won't, but it still feels like something bad will happen." He looks down at his hands. "I'm sorry."

Perry looks around. Well, this isn't a bad dimension to be trapped in for eternity. Just them, whatever supplies survived the blast, and endless...trampoline...wasteland.

Okay, maybe it is a bad dimension.

"Wait!" Heinz exclaims. "I think I know how we can get out of here."

Well, that's good. Do tell, Perry signs.

"So the way dimensions work is, you can't open a portal within fifteen feet of the next, right?" Perry nods, even though he has no idea what Heinz is talking about.

"And the car basically worked by automatically opening portals and driving through them at warp speed. Thankfully, only the engines were destroyed in that blast. So I can rig up something like a portal gun to open these portals, and connect the DPS to it. Then all we need to do is basically run through dimensions, which should be fine, since there's only about fifteen hundred left, and we've got six hours."

Perry nods. He has only a rudimentary understanding of what Heinz just said, but it might work.

But how far would they have to go to get home? He pulls out his phone and brings up the calculator. Fifteen times 1500, then divide by 5,280…

A little over four and a quarter miles, in six hours. They can do that just fine. How long will it take you to rig everything up? He asks.

"Eh, no more than half an hour. We'll be home in no time."

Is there anything you need me to do?

Heinz shrugs. "Help me while I'm building? Like, hand me tools and stuff. You can do that, right?"

Perry smiles. He helps Phineas and Ferb build whenever he can, he's fine with that. I can do that.

In the end, it only takes Heinz twenty minutes to build the portal gun and link everything up.

Ready to go? Perry asks.

"Absolutely," Heinz says. He shifts the portal gun around, trying to carry it. "Jeez, this thing is unwieldy. Not really very heavy, but kinda awkward. But yeah, ready whenever you are."

Perry considers something. It would probably be faster, and certainly easier, and he can do it…

Here, hop on my back. I'll carry you.

"Perry, you don't need to do that. I can handle this just fine."

It'll be faster and easier. Besides, I've carried you before.

"You've carried me for, oh what was it, five miles before?" Perry can hear the doubt in Heinz's voice.

It's only four and a quarter miles. And if I can pass the OWCA fitness test, I can do this. Trust me.

"Okay, but if you're having trouble, we're going to stop."

Perry nods. Sounds good. C'mere. He holds his arms out, and Heinz climbs onto his back.

"Ready to go?"

Perry nods. He's ready for this whole adventure to be over.

Heinz opens the first portal in front of them. "Then let's go."

Vanessa groans as she jogs all the way back to her set, her drum squeaking on its harness. This is the sixth time they've had to run this section, all because the low brass can't seem to figure out how to keep their feet in time.

To make matters worse, the rest of the band isn't even playing. In fact, she's the only one in the battery stuck even wearing a drum, beating out quarter notes on the rim because the met died an hour ago.

There are perks to being center snare, but this isn't one of them. She envies the soloist standing at the front of the field. Candace, that's her name. She gets to stand there, only playing her solo over and over while the pit tries to figure out how to make the ancient soundboard work in their favor.

She gets back to her set and brings her sticks up, hoping that this time the baritones will finally get it together and they can have a water break.

Right as she starts to tap off, a blue portal appears in front of her, and she jumps, dropping her sticks on the ground. Two oddly familiar people, one on the other's shoulders, jump out, and the portal closes. The people run five yards (in eight steps, Vanessa notes), then open and jump into a similar portal.

"You saw that, right?" she asks Lacey, who's standing right next to her and fiddling with the silk on her flag.

Lacey nods. "I think that was, like, your dad with the, like, portal gun."

Vanessa's eyes go wide as she picks up her sticks. That was her dad, wasn't it. And the guy carrying him was Perry, her dad's boyfriend, wearing scrubs and a 1940's fedora for some reason.

Well, strange things happen every day in Danville.

But marching bands stop for nobody. (Last year, Vanessa plowed right through a field judge that was in her way. Hearing about that on the visual judge's tape was certainly an experience.) Vanessa shakes off any residual "that was weird" feelings and clicks the stick in her left hand against the rim of her drum in time with the drum major's countoff.

"Wait, I think that was Vanessa in the dimension with the band," Heinz says from Perry's back a few dimensions later. "The girl with the drum, the one we almost ran into."

Well, Perry isn't surprised- they do tend to run into themselves (or people close to them) in different dimensions a whole lot. Heinz told him last night how he ran into another Perry in the hospital-and-pirates dimension.

"I know she's really into music right now," Heinz continues, "she's always playing this electric guitar in her room. Although being in marching band seems a little nerdy for her."

Perry shrugs to the best of his ability. He wouldn't suspect that Candace was a bassoon player, but she is. And it looks like she was playing the flute in the band dimension.

Music seems to be another one of those things that crosses dimensions.

Perry runs through his mental checklist one last time. Cell and watch, their batteries with them, shoved into his hat. Taser at his calf, pistol at his hip, grappling hook in his hand.

He listens carefully to the forest around him. Sure, he hears the chattering and cawing of squirrels and birds, but that's not what he listens for. He listens for the tell-tale sounds of humans walking through the woods. He listens for the squeaking whirr of the cameras on OWCA's building rotating on their axes.

His eyes drink in every detail about the building before him. He's been in this building many times before, but never like this. Never has he had to infiltrate his own secret agency to bring it back from the brink of enemy occupation.

He notices everything. The solid weight of the grappling hook in his hand, almost evenly distributed. The slight scent of pine in the air. The way the dirt shifts under his shoes as he prepares to fire off the grappling hook. The slight nerves mixing with adrenaline in his stomach, creating a brew of tension ready to come to a head.

Actually, he notices almost everything.

What he doesn't notice is the duo appearing behind him, another OWCA agent carrying his nemesis on his back. A portal opens, spilling the strange pair onto the forest floor before closing. The agent runs the required fifteen feet, and the scientist opens another portal. They step through, and the portal closes behind them, all without attracting the attention of the agent.

Perry takes a deep breath and fires the grappling hook.

Perry raises one eyebrow. He's pretty sure that was the forest right outside OWCA's Danville HQ in the last dimension, and he's certain that it was him with the grappling hook. His is dented in the exact same way, on the side, in a way that throws it off balance ever so slightly.

He's not quite sure why he would need to sneak into OWCA's headquarters via the roof, but he hopes everything turns out alright for that version of himself.

Another few dimensions, and they step out onto Danville's Main Street, right near the mayor's house. Heinz sighs. "Nope, still not ours. Only nine hundred dimensions to go, though."

Well, at least there's that. He can't do the math in his head, but they've probably got about two and a half miles left.

Perry screeches to halt as a...something materializes out of thin air right in front of them. It looks like the time machine from the museum, actually. And is that another Heinz sitting in it, right next to another him?

Jeez, talk about running into themselves.

They look...much older. Somewhere in their sixties, if Perry had to guess.

It's good to know Perry's terrible fashion sense doesn't change across dimensions.

The other Heinz tips his top hat at them, then checks his pocket watch. He tells something to the other Perry, who shrugs and pulls the lever on the side of the time machine.

The machine disappears into thin air, and Heinz opens a portal where it was.

"Was that the time machine from the museum?" Heinz asks a few dimensions later. Perry nods.

"And that was us , wasn't it? Gosh, I hope we don't get mixed up in time travel," Heinz says. "That would be a pretty crazy story. Even crazier than this one."

Perry considers this. It'd have to be a pretty long story, and it would be pretty science-y.

Maybe it would end up written, but he kinda doubts that. It'd have to be in-depth, too, and he figures that after a crazy story like this one, he deserves some time off.

Although who knows if he'll actually get time off. He works for Major Monogram, vacation is practically a foreign concept.

It's about half an hour later when Perry steps through into a dimension that looks eerily similar to Perryborg's dimension. Complete with statues of Doofenshmirtz everywhere and patrolling Norm-bots.

Even the choking smog is the same. He can feel Doofenshmirtz tense up on his back, opening the next portal as close as safely possible. The counter on his watch that Heinz hooked up a few dozen dimensions ago says that this isn't Perryborg's dimension, but he isn't so sure. It looks way too similar for it to be a different dimension.

Either way, they can't stay. They don't have long to get home, they need to keep moving as quickly as possible. Much as Perry hates to leave a tyrannical dimension in need of a good overthrowing, they need to get home.

Perry steps into the next dimension, a whimsical dimension full of pink and green plants, the portal closing behind them.

Less than a second after the portal closes, Phineas, Ferb, and Perry the Platypus land on the ground after being saved by rather unconventional architecture.

They have about five hundred dimensions left to go when Perry stops to take a break. He could keep going, but a break will be better in the long run.

And this dimension should be pretty good to take a break in. It doesn't look like there's anything too strange going on. He sets Heinz down and looks around.

Well, it looks like they're in some alleyway in the eighteenth century, so that's a little weird. But other than that, everything seems to be fine.

"Honestly, it's kind of weird to be running through all these dimensions," Heinz says as he fiddles with the portal gun, and Perry nods in agreement. "You certainly see more of each dimension this way."

Two figures appear at the end of the alleyway, talking to each other.

"Good haul tonight, eh, Ly?" A deep voice says.

"Keep your voice down!" a higher yet familiar voice shushes.

The deep voice sighs. "Aw, Doofie doesn' have any plants in this part of London."

"You say that, 'n then you end up in the cells beggin' me to getcha out."

Perry and Heinz share a look. London? And these must be thieves, with how they're talking about "hauls". Perry signs for Heinz to stay silent.

The deep voice laughs. "Nah, tha'd be you. I can geddout on my own."

"Oi, don' drag me like that," the higher voice protests.

"Only speakin' the truth, Lyla, dear." Lyla? His sister is one of the thieves? No wonder Perry recognized that higher voice. "Wait, look."

"Hmm?"

"I think we got us some company. See?"

"I see 'em. Let's get outta here, Per."

"Good plan."

Once the figures move away, Heinz laughs. "You? A thief? That's absurd."

What makes you so certain that was me?

"The teal hair, duh."

Perry shakes his head. There's no way he's a thief in a different dimension. Like Heinz said, that's absurd.

We should keep going.

"You good?" Perry nods and holds his arms out. Heinz climbs onto his back and opens the next portal, all the way at the end of the alleyway.

Perry steps through into a dimension that looks strangely like the other two Doofenshmirtz-controlled dimensions.

However, unlike those dimensions, not everything is purple and green, and there's far less smog.

There's still statues everywhere, all though there's two people on each one. Robots still patrol. But there are also beds of flowers, and the few people wandering around actually look somewhat happy.

As he jogs by one of the statues, he looks up at the text on the pedestal.

Your Leaders, Dr. and Dr. Doofenshmirtz. And the two people standing on top of the pedestal are...him and Heinz?

Now that's something to think about. A dimension where he's evil, a dimension where he's working with Heinz, a dimension where he's (probably) married to Heinz.

And evil. He's definitely evil in this dimension. That statue depicts him in a sharp Victorian-style lab coat, with rather spiky hair, practically screaming evil.

The next portal appears in front of him, and Perry jumps through, eager to get out of a dimension that's this weird.

Grasses whisper in a quiet field. An ambulance wails in the distance. The sun is high in the sky, but the day feels bleak. The air smells acrid, like asphalt after the rain, but everything is dry.

Someone died here, and the earth is mourning.

Perry's shoes raise puffs of dust as he runs along the dirt road.

If he looked down, Perry would see drops of blood scattered by his footprints. If he looked to his left, he would see the quiet peace of the grass interrupted by the smoking remains of a crashed hovercar. If he looked behind him, he would see a warehouse of robots in the distance.

And far in front of him, two ambulances speed towards Danville General Hospital. One with a passenger who is already dead, the other with two timers showing naught but black zeros.

Many dimensions later, Perry steps through a lime-green portal into some park. He barely avoids falling into a large fountain, turning at the last moment.

Somebody laughs from nearby. Perry turns to see somebody wearing a backwards baseball cap, working on a laptop. They must have been the source of the laugh.

"Hey Perry, hey Doctor D," they call out. "Only two hundred and sixty four dimensions left to go, I think. You got this, just don't fall into the fountain." They laugh again. "Be safe out there!"

Heinz opens another portal, and Perry steps through.

"Do you have any idea who that was?"

Perry shakes his head. Looked like some sort of author, maybe. And the place didn't look anything like anywhere in Danville.

"Obviously, they knew who we were. Eh, we've seen weirder, right?"

Perry nods. It's really no weirder than the blob monsters.

"Oh no," Heinz says as Perry jogs through a dimension full of crystals. Perry gulps. He churrs to ask what's wrong?

"The -inator, it's starting to malfunction. It's taking a lot more power than I thought. I'm going to have to wire it into my arms. Don't worry. We should be able to get home."

Perry checks the counter on his watch. Fifty dimensions left. Seven hundred and fifty feet. They'll make it.

It's almost invisible, but the next portal Heinz fires flickers just a bit as it opens.