The Helpless (Act Two)
Disclaimer: Carly is my creation and belongs to me. Vanessa and the other characters of 'Phineas and Ferb' belong to Disney.
"Okay," Vanessa thought aloud. "First thing we should do is find a nice, quiet place, where nobody can see or hear us."
Carly's face lit up.
"I know of the perfect place! Come on, Doof- uh, Vanessa!"
The girls got up and started heading away from the cafe. Along the way, they passed by the shirtless teenage boy from earlier. The pair walked by the guy without so much as a glance...
...and then Carly sprinted back, stopping him and holding out a slip of paper with her phone number on it.
"Hey, I just met you! And this is crazy! But here's my number... so call me may-"
"NO!"
Vanessa cut off Carly before she could hand the slip over, reaching in and pulling the blonde away by the collar.
"Awwww..." whined Carly.
"Don't you 'awwww' me!" Vanessa shot back.
At the hotel, Doofenshmirtz was pacing back and forth in his room. He had five pages in hand, trying to rehearse and memorize the speech he was going to give at the convention downstairs in a couple hours.
"'The first key to being great at evil is to have an emotionally scarring backstory. Hand-me up girls' clothes, raised by ocelots, both parents absent at birth.' Hmmm... feels like something's amiss. Maybe that should be key point number two! But if so, what I do use for point one?"
Feeling himself starting to sweat, he started to walk to the window.
"Man, it's humid in here, even for Florida!"
He successfully managed to open the window, and he stuck his head out to get some fresh air.
"Aah, much better!"
He then heard someone knock at his door.
"Coming!"
He walked over and opened the door. To his surprise, a bellhop had come with a cart that had a tray of sandwiches on it. And the bellhop was Agent P, in disguise.
"Say, I didn't know this hotel had room service!"
He tried to grab a sandwich, but Perry jumped up from the ground and socked Doofenshmirtz in the face. That knocked him to the floor, as he landed on his butt.
"Hey! If I wanted a club sandwich, I would've said some-"
Suddenly, he gasped, as he came to a realization.
"Wait? My bellhop is a platypus? What kind of occupancy establishment are these people running here?"
Perry rolled his eyes before slowing ripping out of his bellhop uniform and then putting on his fedora.
"PERRY THE PLATYPUS!"
Perry attempted to hit his nemesis again. This time, though, Doofenshmirtz caught him and then chucked him towards the far corner of the room. Perry escaped serious injury by using his webbed feet to bounce off. He somersaulted and landed smack in the middle of a rollaway bed, which promptly folded inward from both ends. Perry had trapped himself, with his head sticking out of the top, between the two ends of the mattress-on-wheels.
"A-HA! Now I'm glad I ordered that rollaway bed, in case we stayed the night. And by we, I meant me and Vanessa. Not you and me, 'cause that would be weird, Perry the Platypus."
"Grgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgr," chirped Perry.
"Ugh, you and me both! Anyway, I'm glad you're here, because now I have someone to explain my evil scheme to!"
He leafed through his papers until he found the last page, which conveniently explained his scheme.
"Okay, here we are! So, you see, Perry the Platypus, my biggest problem is that I have no respect! I go on the Internet and find survey after survey detailing the most well-known and respected evildoers in the country. You know where I'm ranked?"
He paused, waiting for Perry to reply. When he did not, Doofenshmirtz answered his own question anyway.
"7,953rd! I'm ranked behind the Sloth King, Scrambled Alphabet Soup Man, and, get this, Rodney! RODNEY! He doesn't even have a full-time nemesis and yet he's got 209 on me! What, what is that even?"
He then turned to another page, which he left in front of Perry so he could read it, even as Doofenshmirtz stated some of what was on it aloud.
"Look at some of the excuses for my ranking! I'm a goof, I have a hunchback, I park in a no-parking zone... like, why the last one? I'm evil, that's what evil people do; we park where we're not supposed to!"
Doofenshmirtz picked the page back up before continuing once more.
"So I've decided to come to Evilcon Southeast, the seventh largest regional annual gathering of crooks, thieves, mad scientists, et cetera, et cetera, to prove I deserve to be ranked much higher than seven thousand, nine hundred and whatever! And to do that, I've prepared this glorious 20-minute speech and presentation! After it's complete, I will gain respect around my peers, be able to work out deals in the odd case that an evil scheme ever brings me to this part of the country, or, better yet, convince some of the lower peons to become my apprentice, allowing me to get one step closer to taking over the TRI-STATE AREA! AH HA HA HA HA HA!"
Perry struggled to try and get out of the trap, but it would not budge.
"I'd quit while you're ahead," Doofenshmirtz said, seeing his nemesis fidgeting. "That rollaway is a Meh brand! Certified death traps!"
Perry's eyes went wide in shock.
"You know, because they snap shut in the blink of the eye and are near impossible to get out of them, leaving the occupant to pretty much starve over the course of several days. Hmmm... maybe I won't sleep in that after all. I'll just... eh, should've booked a room with two beds instead of just one..."
Perry tilted his head to the left, pointing out Doofenshmirtz's latest -inator, which he had not explained as of yet.
"Oh, that funky designed thing? That's my Slave-Inator! Has the power to make people my slaves. You know, just in case... but my speech will go over well. You'll see."
A pink Cadillac convertible came to a stop on a side road, surrounded on both sides by swampy marsh. Carly and Vanessa emerged from the vehicle, closing their respective doors behind them.
"Carly, you DO realize that when I said a nice, quiet place, I didn't mean the MIDDLE OF A SWAMP!"
Carly shook her head as she patted Vanessa on the shoulder, in pity.
"Oh, Vanessa. We're not there yet. This is just as far as we can go by car!"
With that, Carly started walking into the swamp. Vanessa groaned audibly.
"Please tell me you're kidding."
But Carly was not, as she motioned for the brunette to follow her. Vanessa did, having no choice otherwise.
"Be very careful," warned Carly. "Step only on solid ground! Otherwise..."
She never got to finish her own sentence, as she promptly failed to follow her own advice, slipping into a hard-to-see puddle and falling face-first into it.
"...let me guess," Vanessa said, with a smirk on her face. "You'll get wet?"
A couple minutes later, the two girls - with Carly a little wet and muddy as a result of her stumble - reached a part of the swamp where the water was deep enough that walking was no longer an option.
"Now what?" asked Vanessa.
Carly answered her friend's question by pointing at a nearby bunch of bulrushes, cattails, and pondweeds. As Carly made her way towards at her, Vanessa squinted as her eyes as she tried to examine the pile closely. There was something off about it.
Carly started pulling the vegetation away. As she did, Vanessa started to notice a few alligators in the area, spread out in all directions.
"Um, Carly?"
"Don't worry," Carly said, without looking back. "The gators leave you alone as long as you keep your distance and don't act helpless!
Vanessa nodded, as she patiently waited for Carly to finish her work. Eventually, Vanessa's hunches were proven right, as buried underneath all of the plants was a hovercraft!
"Ta da!" shouted Carly, spreading her arms wide as she presented their next mode of transport.
Shortly thereafter, the girls, now wearing life jackets, were aboard the now-moving hovercraft, which Carly was piloting.
"When did you learn to pilot one of these things?" Vanessa queried.
"It's the only way to travel 'round here!" replied Carly.
Eventually, a small island came into view. On it was a huge mansion, surrounded on all sides by what appeared to be a pepper plantation.
"You LIVE here?"
"Oh, I wish! This is just my weekend job!"
With that, Carly steered the hovercraft towards the dock.
Back on solid land, Carly led Vanessa to the front door.
"...and Mr. and Mrs. Lincecum are on the level! They treat the whole staff nice. And they're not cursed werecats nor do zombies come out here at night. We've checked... that only happens in Louisiana!"
Vanessa looked dumbfounded. "Wha? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Werecats and zombies only live in Louisiana, duh! It was in the supernatural apparitions section of the JAILBAIT handbook, remember?"
Carly reached for the doorknob and opened the door.
"Must've skipped over that section," joked Vanessa, who clearly could not remember it existing.
Vanessa walked into the mansion, allowing Carly to close the door behind her. A rich, eccentric couple, in their early 60s, walked into the foyer.
"Oh, it's our favorite maid!" Mrs. Lincecum said with delight.
"Favorite?" questioned Mr. Lincecum. "Oh, yes, her!"
Carly bowed before her employers.
"Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Lincecum! I'm here to pick up my paycheck! Oh, and to lay low for a little bit."
"Ah, of course!" exclaimed Mr. Lincecum. "It's in my office. I'll go get it."
"Thanks!"
As he walked off, Mrs. Lincecum approached Carly.
"I know it's your off day, Carly, but Savannah quit today!"
Carly gasped. "Not Savannah!"
"Who's Savannah?" asked Vanessa.
"Oh, she's one of the part-time maids here, like me! She was so fun to be around! A couple Saturday nights ago, we hung out in town! We saw this hottie, and she pushed me into giving him my number! She was supportive of me being happy... unlike some people!"
"Oh, so someone wants you dead and I'm the bad guy for keeping you from flirting?" snapped Vanessa.
Mrs. Lincecum gasped. "Someone wants you dead? Oh my!"
"It's for this play we're doing together," Carly said, explaining what Vanessa meant. "This is my friend, Vanessa! She's new in town, still hasn't figured out what all the cool kids say around here."
Mrs. Lincecum breathed a sigh of relief.
"Oh. Thank goodness! I thought you were in real trouble!"
"No, ma'am! I'm just me!"
Carly then whispered something to Vanessa.
"They're nice, but fragile. Spooking them's not a good idea."
Vanessa nodded in understanding. She played along with Carly's ruse.
"Oh, yeah! Carly here's teaching me how to talk like a real Florida girl, you betcha!"
Carly smiled.
"So, Mrs. Lincecum, about Savannah..."
"Ah, yes! You see, it was Savannah's day to clean the east wing! I called Patricia and she volunteered to come in early and take her place. But she would only be leaving her other job now. I know it's your day off, Carly, but would you mind filling in until she gets here?"
"Of course!"
"Good girl. Spare outfits are at the full-timers' quarters!"
"Thanks!" Carly said as Mrs. Lincecum walked away.
Carly then turned to Vanessa and smiled. Vanessa could immediately tell what she was thinking, and she did not like it.
"Nuh-uh! No way! If you think that you're going to get me to dress up in one of those frilly maid outfits, Carly, then you're sadly mistaken!"
10 minutes later, Vanessa, dressed in one of those frilly maid outfits, grumbled in annoyance as she stood in the study, while Carly used a feather duster to clean in the background.
"You look so CUTE!" squealed Carly.
"I suddenly remember why I don't like hanging around with you," Vanessa mumbled.
Back at the hotel, Doofenshmirtz was now in the main meeting hall, giving his speech to a packed room of nearly 500 evildoers. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be going well. One-third of the room had fallen asleep, another third were sitting there with bored looks on their faces, and the last third had turned their attention elsewhere, either getting on their small electronic devices or chatting with the people around them.
"...and now you know the 20-step plan to getting a nemesis!" Doofenshmirtz exclaimed. "Now, onto my second key point to being a successful evildoer... developing a crippling emotional backstory!"
Doofenshmirtz, in the middle of the stage, signaled the guy at the podium, who was working the computer, to move on to the next slide in his presentation. He then turned to the screen, expecting photos detailing some of his backstory. Instead, a photo of Vanessa, dressed in nothing but her red swimming team one-piece, appeared.
"Wait, that's not right!"
But before he could signal for the assistant to click to the next slide, the room suddenly came to life with the sounds of interesting murmurs, whistling, and excessive cowbell ringing. The attention of every single person in the room was on the screen, looking at Doofenshmirtz's swimsuit-clad daughter. Questions started being shouted at Doofenshmirtz from the audience.
"Who's that?"
"She's cute!"
"Is she your girlfriend?"
"Her with him? In what society?"
"Is it lunchtime yet?"
Vanessa marched out of the mansion, now dressed in her everyday attire once more. Carly was right behind, also in the outfit she had come in, although it had miraculously been washed and dried fully in the hour they had been there. The brunette then stopped, turning to issue the blonde an ultimatum.
"That last hour didn't happen, Carly! Got it?"
Carly nodded. "Got it!"
She waited until Vanessa started walking away. With Vanessa's back turned, Carly pulled out the projection device, which the brunette had given back off-screen, and booted up a picture of Vanessa in the maid get-up.
"Save," she said under her breath.
The device complied. Carly then pocketed it again before Vanessa could notice.
"Okay," Vanessa thought aloud, "so now we have a plan. We go to their place, you'll apologize, and hopefully that will convince them to drop the hit. Okay?"
Vanessa waited for a response. But none came. She stopped and spun around. Carly had disappeared from sight, despite the fact that they had been standing in the midst of the plantation, where there was virtually nowhere to hide.
"Carly?"
Suddenly, there was a scream.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!"
"CARLY!"
Vanessa heard the scream come from the line of trees on the south end of the estate, in the direction of the dock. She was about to give chase when she suddenly felt something hit her in the back of the leg.
"Ow!"
She looked over her shoulder and saw that there was now a tranquilizer dart sticking out of the back of her left leg. She quickly deduced where it had come from and saw a Cuban man stand up from behind an overturned wheelbarrow. He was holding up a bamboo dart blower, which was his weapon of choice.
"You have got to be kidding me!" grumbled Vanessa. "REALLY? A DART BLOWER?"
Vanessa's rage quickly subsided, though, as the tranquilizer did its job and quickly weakened her muscles. She dropped to her knees, and then to the ground. Her eyes slowly closed and she drifted off into unconsciousness, but not before seeing her attacker grin maliciously as he walked towards her.
Meanwhile, Doofenshmirtz was getting upset with the crowd, who kept shouting questions about Vanessa, whose swim team photo was still plastered on the screen.
"Hey, you!" he finally shouted at the assistant. "Turn that off!"
He complied, pressing the backwards button on the program to go back to the previous, word-filled slide. Doofenshmirtz then turned his attention to the rowdy audience.
"And you all, quiet down! What, what's wrong with you people? That's my daughter that you're all drooling over! And she's 16! 16! I know 95 percent of you are at least 21! Even you, Dr. Shortlegs, great nephew of Dr. Diminutive!"
Pan over to the aforementioned Dr. Shortlegs, who looked like and had the same height as Dr. Diminutive, only a few decades younger.
"Then why is she in the presentation, genius?" asked someone in the crowd.
"I must've mistaken that family photo for a diagram I had created for this speech! It must've happened when I asked her how to insert pictures into slide presentations."
"So, she's also your assistant?"
"Well, she was for a time, but she doesn't do..."
"Is she evil?"
"Sorta..."
Suddenly, Doofenshmirtz wised up, realizing the guy was goading him into talking more about Vanessa instead of stopping.
"Wait, why should you care? No more talk about Vanessa! You're supposed to be learning how to be a successful evildoer!"
"But you're boring!" another guy in the audience shouted.
"We might learn better if she were the one doing the presentation!"
"Really?" an annoyed Doofenshmirtz grumbled. "You'd rather see an inexperienced teenage girl talk about backstories when I'm the one who has actually lived through them?"
"YES!" the crowd yelled. "OR WE WALK!"
The crowd was now loudly calling for Vanessa to take over. Doofenshmirtz was not pleased, but at the same time, he did not want everyone to leave before he had finished.
"Fine, I'll get her," he relented.
The crowd cheered as Doofenshmirtz exited stage left, pulling out his cell phone from his lab coat pocket as he did.
"Ugh. The things I do for respect."
He looked for Vanessa's new phone number, and started to dial it...
"Daddy dearest is calling! Pick up!"
Vanessa groaned as she came to, thanks to the sound of her cell phone ringing. Of course, the ringtone was Norm, who was informing her that her dad was calling.
"Daddy dearest is calling! Pick up or you'll be in trouble, young lady!"
Vanessa tried to reach for her jacket pocket to get her phone, but then she suddenly realized that she could not move her left arm. Or her right. Or any part of her body below her neck and above her waist. That was when she started looking around and learning of her situation.
She was tied with a rope to a pole attached to a raft, which was floating adrift in the swamp. In the far-off distance, she heard Carly scream her name.
"VANESSAAAAAAAA!"
It was quickly accompanied by the sound of screeching tires. Both that and Carly's voice faded from Vanessa's range of hearing as they moved away.
"Gotta save Carly!" Vanessa told herself aloud.
She began wiggling, attempting to try and get an arm free so she could untie herself. She then heard the worst sound you could possibly hear in a swamp.
Splashes of someone, or something, entering the water.
Vanessa's eyes quickly darted to the shore, and she saw two alligators beginning to swim towards her. Two more did the same from the opposite side, and she could sense another one approaching from behind, even though she could not get herself in a position to visibly confirm it.
"Young lady," Norm the phone app shouted, "you're in trouble now!"
Vanessa only had one response to that.
"You have no idea."
*** End Act Two ***