In the last year, it had become standard practise for all animal agents to wear their proper translators. This was how he was able to respond to Major Monogram's shocking request.

"What?" he gasped. "Did you just say-?"

"Yes, Agent P," interrupted Major Monogram wearily. "I understand you're surprised and you probably have your reservations, but I believe it will be of great benefit both to you and the trainees."

"But sir, I don't have any experience in teaching!" protested Perry.

"That is exactly why it will be of great benefit to you. They say that if you can't teach it, you don't know it yourself. The best way to learn is to teach. Besides, their scores are great individually but for teamwork…not so much. You're OWCA's top agent. If these trainees have any chance of becoming great agents, it's under your leadership."

Perry sighed and made various frustrated noises until he finally said, "Fine. Now who are these trainees?"

"They're waiting for you in the gym, where you are to have your first session," Major Monogram replied. "However, as they are not full agents, they do not have any kind of translator. I would recommend you leave your proper translator here."

Perry rolled his eyes, took out his translator, and put it in its case, which he then handed to Major Monogram. "Good luck, Agent P."

As Perry traipsed out of the office, he wondered if this was going to be as hard as he thought. Four trainees with no experience out in the field, and he was expected to train them until they were great OWCA agents.

He forced himself to be optimistic as he headed over to the gym. Surely the trainees couldn't be that bad.

When he opened the door to the gym, he found a red bird hanging from her foot from a rope that was tied to the ceiling fan which, thankfully, was not on; a yellow cat was lying on one of the rotors and playing with the rope; and a purple hyena was rolling on the floor, laughing at both of them.

Yeah, it's definitely as bad as it looks, Perry.

Frowning, he counted the three of them. Major Monogram had said there were four trainees. There were only three here.

Then he caught sight of the open storage closet door. Avoiding the hysterically laughing hyena, Perry went over to the storage closet and peered in. A human figure was rooting through the crates of various sports balls. His black shirt and green trousers were very familiar to Perry, but it wasn't until the man turned around that the platypus saw his face.

"Hey Perry the Platypus!" Heinz Doofenshmirtz said happily. "You're gonna be training me! How awesome and slightly weird is that?"

Perry couldn't stop staring at his nemesis. This was his fourth trainee?! He had heard that Heinz had joined OWCA—under the technicality that he was legally considered an ocelot—but he had no idea that he was going to have to TRAIN his nemesis!

"Perry the Platypus? Are you okay?"

"Excuse me one moment," squeaked Perry, realising too late that Heinz couldn't understand him.

He staggered back into the hall, completely stunned. He failed to notice the red missile flying at him until it actually hit him, sending both of them bowling over. The bird gave him a sheepish smile. That triggered something in Perry. If he was stuck with training these idiots, he needed to install a sense of discipline into them.

So he took a deep breath and yelled as loudly as he could, "ENOUGH!"

Everybody froze.

"GET INTO LINE! NOW!"

All four of the trainees immediately scrambled into line. Perry paced slowly up and down in front of them like an army commander.

"Okay, as you may or may not know, I'm going to be training you as a team for the next however long it is."

"Uh, Perry the Platypus…? You know I can't understand you, right?"

"DON'T INTERRUPT!" Perry yelled, stabbing his finger in Heinz's face. Well, as close to Heinz's face as he could reach. Even though he couldn't understand the platypus, the former evil scientist got the message and fell silent.

"Now, I'm going to be training you, and I'm not going to go easy on you. The real world is not easy so I won't be either. You'll be treated like real trainees instead of children. If you try as hard as real OWCA agents are expected to, you'll succeed. If you don't, you'll fail. Do I make myself clear?"

Everyone nodded except Heinz, who said, "I-I didn't get any of that."

Perry ignored him. "Alright, we're going to start with a simple exercise. I'd like you to get into pairs."

Harry the Hyena glanced at Heinz and then Maggie the Macaw, before taking a couple of deliberate steps until he was standing next to Karen the Cat. Heinz looked down at the tiny macaw, who gave him an equally displeased look back, and sighed. "Great."

"Sit down in front of each other so that you can make eye contact," Perry instructed.

Heinz still couldn't understand Perry but he just copied Harry and Karen, who sat down in front of each other.

"Making eye contact is often difficult for people, as it requires a certain amount of trust and respect. Some people avoid it while others simply aren't very good at it; they may look away often or appear awkward or uncomfortable, sometimes fidgeting. Now, I'm going to time two minutes. You're going to make eye contact for the whole two minutes without looking away."

Even Heinz seemed to get the gist of the exercise. Perry set a two minute timer on his watch. "Three, two, one, go." He started the time.

Immediately, the two pairs stared into each other's eyes. Perry realised too late that he probably should have told them they were allowed to blink.

Karen and Harry seemed to be fine, but then Heinz blinked and rubbed his eyes. Maggie began hovering and pointed her claw jubilantly at Heinz. "You blinked! You blinked!" she crowed.

Perry pinched the bridge of his nose. "This isn't a staring contest, Maggie!" he snapped. "You're just supposed to keep eye contact!"

A crashing sound made him turn. He saw Harry lying on his back with Karen standing on his stomach, her large and unnerving eyes just inches away from Harry's now-thoroughly-creeped-out ones. "Karen, what the heck was that?" Perry groaned aloud.

Heinz said something that Perry couldn't quite hear. A moment later, Maggie angrily flew at Heinz and latched herself onto his face, making him flail and stumble backwards, trying to get her off.

Then Perry turned and found that Harry had somehow kicked Karen back up onto the ceiling fan; the cat was now hanging onto it upside down, the same vacant expression on her face.

"BACK IN LINE!" Perry bellowed.

Heinz, Maggie, and Harry immediately fell into line. A couple of seconds later, Karen fell down from the ceiling fan and landed on her feet.

"That was a disaster," sighed Perry. "None of you tried hard enough. If you don't try, you won't get anywhere. Now if you'll excuse me, training is over for today."

Perry turned and walked towards the door of the gym. "We all need to recover from that session," he muttered on his way out.

I'll never be able to change them, a voice in his head sighed. They're lost causes.

"No," Perry said aloud, hopping into the deserted BT gym. "You just have to work with them, that's all. If you give up on them now, they'll never be anything. They need someone to guide them. That person is you. They're going to become great agents someday, and you'll be able to look back on it and say with pride that YOU were the one to turn them into such great agents."

You can do it, Perry. You can.