Episode 4: A New Hope Busted
Early one morning at the Flynn-Fletcher home…
The voice of one neurotic teenage female could be heard through her open bedroom window from the dewy grass of the front lawn below. "Today! It all happens today! Wahahahaha!"
The sun had just risen above the horizon to gently cast golden shafts of light into Candace's room when Stacy walked in, still stifling a yawn. "Uah! I got your text. Usually I'd still be sleeping in for another three hours, but here I am."
As Candace turned away from something she seemed to be carefully studying on her desk, her slouching posture betrayed the fact that she'd probably been standing like that all night. She instinctively wrung her hands together as she spoke. "Ah, Stacy the Hirano, you are just in time. And of course, by just in time I mean, er, something metaphorical about being just in time."
"Candace! You know I hate metaphors!" protested Stacy, taking a seat on the bed. "And don't call me 'Justin'!"
Candace moved in closer before speaking again. "You are probably wondering why I told you to come over so early," she began. Her statement was met with another yawn. "Well, remember how last night we were talking about boys, and you tried an internet search to learn some ways to tell if a boy likes you? Well, that got me thinking. What if I searched the internet to find ways to bust my brothers?"
"Ugh!" Stacy collapsed backwards onto the bed. "Please tell me you didn't."
"I did! And don't give me that look, Little Miss 'ooh! The internet knows all!" Candace mocked, using a sarcastically mystical voice.
Stacy grunted.
"Anyways," Candace continued despite the lack of enthusiasm she was getting, "I stumbled on the perfect plan, a foolproof way to bust my brothers." Candace paused dramatically, and Stacy tilted her head up slightly to see what the obsessed elder sibling was planning this time.
"Behold! The Bust'em-inator!" Candace loudly announced, grabbing some blueprints that had been lying on her desk and holding them out for Stacy to see. The designs showed a schematic for a complicated mechanical device that reminded Stacy a lot of some of Phineas' and Ferb's creations.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Stacy said, sitting up. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Yup."
"Hmm." Stacy took a closer look. The diagrams looked extremely complicated and intricate, a telltale sign they were probably real.
"I found it on some pharmacist's blog of inventions," Candace explained. "A real machine that will bust someone for you! Stacy, this is just what I've been needing all summer!"
"Are you sure it will work?" asked Stacy.
"Of course it will work!" Candace assured. "What better way to bust my brothers than using a machine just like the ones they always build?!"
Stacy thought it over. "You've got a point there. But how are you going to make it?"
"You mean, how are we going to make it? C'mon, Stace, how hard could it be? My brothers build one of these babies every day, with just the blueprints. I'm sure we could figure it out."
For once, Stacy thought this might actually work. She followed her red-headed friend out the door as Candace cheerfully exclaimed, "I know who we're gonna bust today!"
The two entered the backyard to find Phineas and Ferb already gathered with the gang around their latest project. "Oh, hey Candace!" Phineas waved on sight. "Do you guys want to see our newest invention? We built a special machine that targets a certain electromagnetic frequency in the brain, eliminating all emotion from entering the cerebral cortex. It was Baljeet's idea."
"I want to reason freely, unburdened by the shackles of human passion," Baljeet explained.
Candace puffed up to tell Phineas he'd be busted for something like that when she remembered the blueprints she had rolled up in her hand like a scroll. "Oh, uh, sure," she said, thinking quickly. "And we'll, you know, just 'borrow' any spare parts you have left over to make you a 'surprise' afterwards." Candace couldn't help grinning like mad at her own brilliance.
"Okay, cool!" Phineas replied, thoroughly incognizant of any ulterior motive. "Well, we barely finished it right before you came out; so you're just in time!"
"Stop calling me 'Justin'!" Stacy blurted, but Phineas had already rejoined the others to admire the brand new invention. It looked like an open telephone booth who's door was missing. A metal cap which could only be the place to put your head hung above a stool in the center.
"Is it ready to use?" Baljeet asked with an eager look.
"It's ready," responded Phineas, "but before anyone else says something, where's Perry?"
"Good morning, Agent P," Monogram briefed from the large screen above. "Today, Doofenshmirtz is getting his lab inspected by a panel of evil scientists from L-O-V-E-M-U-F-F-I-N."
"Sir," Carl interrupted from somewhere off-screen, "you can just say, 'LOVEMUFFIN'. You don't have to spell it out."
"That's just what they want you to say," Monogram returned sternly. "Anyway, we'll be sending you over incognito to observe the proceedings and if necessary, well, I think you know what to do."
Perry briefly saluted and departed.
A gloved finger pressed a doorbell and the jingle, Doofenshmirtz Dingdong Incorporated! chimed through the apartment.
Doofenshmirtz answered immediately. "Ah, hello there! You must be the last one. Come in, come in, the other inspectors are just over there," Doofenshmirtz indicated, allowing a disguised Agent P to enter. The secret agent wore a white lab coat with black gloves, and had bushy eyebrows and a white wig that somewhat resembled an Albert Einstein look with frayed strands splaying every direction.
Agent P joined the throng of a half-dozen or so other evil scientists he recognized from events such as the LOVEMUFFIN potluck, the Dr. Feelbetter Show, and the day Lawrence competed to become the head of the League.
"Ladies and gentlemen; welcome to the Doof Cave!" Doofenshmirtz began. "Even though it's not really a cave, I admit; maybe you could call it a 'man-cave' and get away with it—I don't know, but that's not important right now. Why don't we begin over here at my grand overlook of the city? I already have a few prototypes set up on the balcony." Turning to lead the way, Doofenshmirtz brought the group to a small array of menacing machines each aimed at the city below.
"First off, we have the Splash-inator," explained Doofenshmirtz. "It—doesn't really do anything, I just left it out as a decoy in case my nemesis came by early or something to try to foil our appointment."
Suddenly one of the inspectors spoke up while marking something on a clipboard. "Ah yes, your nemesis. Do you have a trap prepared for his arrival?"
"But of course," Doofenshmirtz assured. "He should be here soon, and I think you'll find everything is in order."
"It better be. Remember, we are here not only to critique you on your evil schemes, but on your nemesis interactions as well."
"I know, this isn't my first rodeo!" said Doofenshmirtz. "Now, allow me to direct your attention over here to just a few of my other prototypes. Here we have the Fish-out-of-water-inator, the Internet-search-inator, the Drool-inator, the Window-glare-inator; you can find the full list on my blog. Some of them I haven't got around to building yet, they're just blueprints at the moment."
"What does that one do?" Another of the inspectors asked, pointing at a particularly wicked looking device.
"Ah, you like my Volunteer-inator, do you? Yes, well, I could tell you, but wouldn't a demonstration be so much better?" Doofenshmirtz said, hitting a large red button. He rubbed his hands together as the machine powered up, finally shooting a whitish-blue plasma beam off into the city.
There were "oohs" and "ahs" as the panel of judges took more notes. "What did it do?" one asked. "Where did it hit?"
"Hopefully, my ex-wife. Now, why don't we move on to some of my more diabolical creations?"
"Alright, who'd like to go first?" Phineas asked the group.
Before she even knew what happened, Candace's hand shot in the air. "I volunteer as tribute! I mean—." Not wanting to look foolish, she added, "—as tester! Like, to make sure it's safe, and everything."
"Don't worry, Candace," Phineas said as he gently pushed her into the machine. "We haven't had any accidents yet!"
"Really?"
"Yeah. You're our first costumer." Before Candace could stop to think about what was happening, he'd already sat her down on the machine and attached the cap to her head. "Now, you might feel something like a static shock at first, but afterwards, you won't feel anything."
"Well that's good to know."
"No," Phineas explained, "you won't feel anything. You will no longer experience human emotion."
"Wait, what? What does that mean? Phineas?!"
Before anything else could happen, Ferb plugged in the machine, and in a flash of light and a spark, it revved to life. "How come she got to go first?" Baljeet complained softly as the process quickly came to an end. With that, Ferb unplugged it, and the cap retracted itself from Candace's brain.
"Well?" Phineas asked. "How do you feel?"
For a second, Candace's face gave away that she thought that was a silly question. "By touching something with your hand," she stated matter-of-factly. Then, when she saw the slightly confused looks of those around her, she continued, "Although, by the context in which you framed your question, I believe you were actually implying that you wished me to analyze the emotional interpretation of my body's cumulative subjective experience at this given point in time. In which case, it would be impossible to identify a word that better describes the reactiveness of my amygdala to the environmental stimuli of pain and pleasure than the phrase, not at all; though it would be futile to explain the reasoning behind that to creatures whose only measure of understanding comes from relation to familiar experience, so to avoid unnecessary explanation of the irrelevant I will say merely, I'm good."
Stacy looked floored. Phineas zoned out about half-way through her discourse, glancing back and forth between Ferb and Isabella to make sure they were seeing the same thing he was. Baljeet and Buford stood just staring at her with mouths agape. "I am so in love with her right now," Baljeet whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
"What?" Buford asked.
"Nothing."
"I—guess that means it worked," Phineas decided. "Anyone else want to try?"
Baljeet looked like he was ready to dive in headfirst when Isabella said, "Uh, Phineas? Are you so sure that removing all someone's emotions is a good idea?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well," Isabella paused to figure out how best to say it, "it just seems to me that people need to be able to feel. Without their feelings, they can't do something like, oh, I don't know, fall in love, and stuff."
Buford snorted. "What a girly thing to say." Isabella glared in return.
Phineas seemed to consider it. "Maybe you're right, Isabella. We should wait and see how Candace does first before letting anybody else try it."
"Aww," Baljeet sighed, hanging his head.
As Doofenshmirtz was explaining each of his various inventions to the fellow evil scientists, Agent P noticed the frowns on each of their faces deepening as the devices grew sillier. It did not look like he was impressing them at all. "Here we have the Juggle-inator, the Lamppost-inator, the Kitty-litter-inator, the Rendezvous-inator, the Spam-inator—the meat kind, mind you, not the junk-mail kind; that one's over there: the Junk-mail-inator!" It was not hard to imagine why what happened next shocked Doofenshmirtz so much it caused him to visibly jump in recoil.
"Stop wasting our time with these worthless Inators!" One of the judges Agent P recognized as Dr. Diminutive exploded. "I'm starting to understand why your nemesis isn't here yet, Doofenshmirtz! He doesn't think you are competent enough to bother thwarting!"
Agent P cringed as all the other evil scientists gasped at the insinuation, and several pencils began scratching on their clipboards at a disturbingly increased rate. He even felt a little sorry for him, once he saw the way Doofenshmirtz was taken aback by that comment.
"Wow, that happened," Doofenshmirtz said aloud.
"Ze short von is right," a French accented female scientist Agent P didn't know the name of said. "We have seen enough of your inventions, and zey stink. Either show us your nemesis, or we will be forced to present a bad review to ze League."
Doofenshmirtz uncomfortably pulled at his collar. "Heh, look guys, I'm sure he's just stuck in traffic, or something. He'll be here, h-he always comes!"
The other evil scientists were already heading back for the front door. "Hold on!" Doofenshmirtz shouted, running ahead to block the way. "Hold on, give me one more chance! Just wait a little longer, I know he'll be here!"
Agent P watched the other scientists look at each other and decided now was as good a time as any. From where he stood in the center of the group, he tore off his evil scientist costume.
"Okay, who brought the platypus in here?" Doofenshmirtz asked. Agent P gave the same unimpressed look he always gave and capped himself with his fedora. "Perry the Platypus!?"
"Quick, Doofenshmirtz, trap him before he starts beating us up!" Dr. Diminutive yelled before turning tail and running across the room.
Doofenshmirtz hastily produced a remote from his lab coat pocket and pressed the single large red button. A suitcase emerged from the floor beneath the secret agent, swallowing him whole but for his head, leaving him free to observe his surroundings.
"See, guys? I told you, I had it covered," Doofenshmirtz said smugly. "You can all stop hiding like scaredy-cats."
Somehow, the panel of inspectors had managed to scatter across the room and hide in the few seconds Agent P had stood in their midst. Now they hurried to regroup, hoping not to look too much like they had ever been scared to begin with.
"So," a tall evil scientist with a buttoned-up lab coat said, "this is Perry the Platypus, the most feared agent of OWCA? Hmf. How pathetic."
"You're one to talk," one of his peers reminded, "considering your nemesis is Howie the Housefly."
"Hey! He's really hard to lay one on in a fight!" The tall one defended himself amidst snickers from the others. "Let's just finish the inspection, already! Make sure the trap is up to code and all."
The others quickly surrounded Agent P to study the suitcase he was tightly zipped in and began swarming him with questions. "Can you breathe normally?" "Can you feel your extremities?" "Does it hurt if I poke you here?" "Does Doofenshmirtz provide an adequate supply of water?" "Are you a member of the Agency Union?" "How many fingers am I holding up?" "What color is the sky?" "Where can I find the cheapest auto parts store?" "What is the fastest land animal?" "Who was the first man to walk on the moon?" "What year was Leonardo Da Vinci born?" "Can you tell me the order of Maslow's hierarchy of needs?" "What is the thirty-second element on the periodic table?" "If two trains leave from Moscow and Berlin going towards each other at 80 miles per hour, how long will it take for them to meet?" Agent P was starting to feel a headache when finally it was all over.
"I'm impressed, Doofenshmirtz," one of the inspectors who was sporting a beard announced. "Your trap actually exceeds League specifications. It is humane yet cartoonish; escapable yet impedimenting. However," the man paused to emphasize his next sentence, "due to the incompetence of your Inators, and the fact that you failed to recognize a secret agent without his hat, it won't be enough to pass inspection. Unless—."
"Nooooo!" Doofenshmirtz cried. "You can't fail me! I need this for my credentials! If I fail to pass inspection, they'll take away my evil science degree and I'll be disqualified from receiving any funding from the Inator Company! And, hey! It's not like any of you saw through his disguise either!" He got down on his knees and begged. "There just has to be a way I can still pass! Please!"
"Do you ever stop talking? I wasn't finished!" the head inspector said. "I was about to say, it won't be enough to pass inspection, unless you destroy your nemesis, Perry the Platypus."
"Destroy Perry the Platypus?" Doofenshmirtz asked, sounding a little confused. "You mean, like, destroy Perry the Platypus?"
"Are there any other meanings of the word 'destroy'?"
Doofenshmirtz took a sideways glance at Agent P. "But, he's my nemesis!"
"Precisely."
Slowly, Doofenshmirtz got to his feet. Agent P swallowed loudly as he saw a shadow cross the evil doctor's face.
The group had returned back to the living room to decide what to do.
"Well, all her vitals seem stable, though that's to be expected, I suppose," Phineas told the others while Ferb put away the stethoscope he'd been using to listen for Candace's heartbeat. "What we really need are some tests to see how she'd react to stressful situations. Ferb, let's prepare the gladiator arena and our digital holographic projector."
"Or we could ask her to tell us what she's thinking," Isabella said.
"That's the second most girly thing I've heard today," Buford reported, but quickly looked away when Isabella shot him another glare.
All the group looked at Candace, wondering what she'd say this time. Candace looked around, taking a moment to think before saying, "What have I got in my pocket?" At that, she pulled out the blueprints she had been holding on to earlier.
"Some blueprints, cool! Let me see those!" Phineas said, snatching them from his sister's hand. "It says how to build a 'Bust'em-inator'," he informed the others. "Cool! Did you want us to help you build this, Candace? It looks like fun!"
"Fun is illogical," Candace murmured.
"Uhh, I guess, from a certain point of view," Phineas said, looking like he had a hard time swallowing that statement. "But it's definitely rewarding, refreshing, and rejuvenating!"
Candace's expression didn't change. "So is breathing. But breathing serves a purpose, and keeps you alive. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't stop breathing for more than a minute."
"Uh," Phineas put his hand to his chin in thought. "Maybe you're right. But what if I—took your 1984 collectible Ducky Momo plate where they reprinted the entire plate upside down—and threw it like a Frisbee!?" He said it extra fast while grabbing the plate and acted like he was about to throw it before anybody had time to react, but Candace didn't seem to mind at all. She just watched him with a Ferb-like stoicism.
"No reaction," Phineas noted, putting it back down. "Interesting."
"How am I supposed to destroy Perry the Platypus? We've been through a lot together! I can't just destroy him!" Doofenshmirtz was still complaining.
"Either you destroy him right here, right now, or you will fail this inspection," one evil scientist responded.
With a slump, Doofenshmirtz seemed to accept there was no way around it. "Okay, just give me a second to say good-bye to my nemesis first." Doofenshmirtz walked to Agent P, an honestly sad look on his face. "I'm sorry it has to come to this, Perry the Platypus," he said, "but I guess we both knew it was going to end this way one day. It's been a heck of a run, pal. Whenever I get foiled by Peter the Panda or whoever they assign to me, I'll always remember the times we had." With a great heave, he laid his hands over his face and said, "I'm not gonna cry, I'm not gonna cry!" Then he had to extract a tissue from his lab coat and loudly blew his nose.
After a moment to regain his composure, Doofenshmirtz put the tissue away and replaced the menacing evil grin he always wore. "Now, Perry the Platypus, it is time for you to meet your doom, once and for all!" He ran quickly for a nearby -inator, jumping into the seat to take aim at the platypus.
Agent P jammed his beak into the zipper of the suitcase, using it like a crowbar to pry it open. Right as Doofenshmirtz fired the laser Agent P burst forth from his trap and dodged out of harm's way.
"Oh, you escaped from your trap, did you?" Doofenshmirtz catcalled. "I'd expect nothing less from you in our final battle!" Doofenshmirtz sprang from the machine and picked up a nearby rocket-launcher type of –inator, using it to rain an unusual combination of dirty socks, flat basketballs, and folded umbrellas for ammunition upon the secret agent. Agent P effortlessly dodged them all, springing up to break the –inator with a smash of his elbow.
Doofenshmirtz was knocked backward by the impact. The look on his face seemed to change to one of dejected failure as he came to realize the inevitable—he never won. Agent P watched the life of this poor man unfold on the pupils in his eyes; realizing how much passing this inspection meant to him, he suddenly felt sad for his nemesis. And that gave the clever spy an idea.
Agent P threw a lazy punch, one that he knew even Doofenshmirtz could dodge, and braced for a retaliatory karate chop to the head. Through the stars, he saw a look of surprise, then glee mark itself on Doofenshmirtz's face. Agent P smiled too, though it only lasted a moment as Doofenshmirtz grew in confidence by landing another strike. Again and again, Agent P staggered backwards from another blow, hoping that the panel of inspectors didn't notice he was purposely going easy.
"Doofenshmirtz!" One of them called. "You're doing it! Give him another right, another left!"
"I know, I can hardly—hah!—believe it myself!" Doofenshmirtz yelled back.
Agent P let himself get knocked down by the final blow, and Doofenshmirtz stood panting heavily over him.
"Now is your chance, Doofenshmirtz!" The bearded evil scientist coached. "Destroy him now!"
Agent P gently picked himself up and hobbled to the balcony, turning one last time to let the inspectors see his legitimate black eye before casting himself over the edge.
"Aww, fishsticks," the head inspector said. "Well, Doofenshmirtz, you may not have destroyed him, but you won a decisive victory in the name of evil, and I think that's good enough. Here's your certification, you pass inspection." He handed the still gasping scientist a slip of paper while the others applauded.
"I did it!" Doofenshmirtz said, throwing his arms up in celebration. "I won, didn't I! Yes!"
From up in the rafters, a not-nearly-so-hurt-as-he-previously-appeared-to-be Agent P gave a tiny nod and disappeared into a ventilation shaft.
"I think I have figured it out now," Phineas told the others. "Because Candace doesn't feel emotion anymore, there's nothing motivating her to do anything besides sit on the couch and exist. Check this out," he said, turning to face his sister, "Candace, do you want us to build this machine that you have the blueprints for, or do you want me to throw it in the garbage?"
Candace shrugged. "It doesn't concern me."
Stacy jumped up at that moment. "What about busting your brothers? Remember that scheme that you ran by me this morning?"
With no sign of emotion in her face or voice, Candace responded. "It once gave me pain to see what my brothers do, but no longer. I don't feel like busting them anymore." Phineas gave her a quizzical look like he didn't have any idea what she was talking about.
"What about Jeremy?" Isabella said, catching on. "Don't you want to go see your boyfriend?"
In dead calm, Candace said, "Not worth the energy. I'd burn at least 225 Calories walking there, and for what purpose? To listen to some music? Watch a movie? Talk? What an illogical thing to do. It's better to save that energy for something important, like if an asteroid was hurtling toward earth."
"Ooh, I got one!" Buford exclaimed, deducing that insults might work. "Why's your neck so long? Was your dad a brontosaurus or somethin'?"
"Negative; and before you try further to elicit an emotional response from me, it is never going to happen."
"Wow," Phineas said conclusively. "Looks like it worked a little too well. I guess you need emotion to motivate you to do something, or you'll never do anything. Maybe removing it all from a person was a bad idea. Sure, you won't feel humiliation or fear or depression or anger ever again, you also can't experience love or joy, or even just the simple pleasure of having fun! Sorry Baljeet, looks like Ferb wins this debate."
Ferb blinked loudly.
"Ferb's reversed the polarity of the machine, so this should bring you back to normal," Phineas told Candace as she sat once again inside their invention. "Oh, there you are, Perry," he mentioned in passing as Ferb hit the switch once more.
In a flash of light, it was over, and Candace practically bolted out of the machine.
"Gotta bust, gotta bust, gotta bust-bust-bust!" She sang to the tune of the Lone Ranger overture and raced all across the backyard building her Bust'em-inator with superhuman speed. "Gotta bust, gotta bust, gotta bust-bust-bust!"
"Whoa, she's building it even faster than we usually would!" Phineas exclaimed to Ferb as they watched her zip by multiple times.
"Gotta bust, gotta bust, gotta bust-bust-bust! Gotta bust! Gotta bust! Bust! Bust!" No sooner had she finished her song than the –inator was also completed.
Candace stopped to catch her breath. "You guys—are so—busted—this time!" She panted, placing her hand over her chest to feel her heartbeat slow. "As soon as—I push—this button." There was a beep! as she jammed it with her finger.
Some lights located at the top of the machine started flashing, and Candace chuckled crazily while wiggling her steepled fingers as a siren-like noise beeped at a steadily increasing rate. Faster and faster the siren screamed, and in a climactic finale a cartoonishly-loaded boxing glove shot out, punching the emotion-sapping booth to bits before self-destructing itself. Now where the two inventions had stood, there was nothing left but a pile of wreckage.
"Na-hah-hah!" Candace sobbed, falling to her knees. "The Bust'em-inator busted the project instead of the culprits! It was supposed to work this time! It was supposed to work! This! Ti-hi-hime!"
"Aw, cheer up, Candace," Phineas said optimistically. "There's always tomorrow."
"Well, as long as there aren't any asteroids hurtling toward earth," Ferb clarified with a finger held up.
At that moment, Linda opened the back door and shouted, "Kids, I'm home!"
"Hi Mom!" Phineas responded.
"You guys ready for some snacks?"
"Only always!" The group cheered.
Before reentering the house, Linda commanded, "Candace, don't forget to clean up that mess before you come inside!"
Candace, raising her fist to the sky, yelled, "Curse you, inadequate blueprint manufacturer—person!"
Meanwhile, as the credits roll…
Irving entered the backyard with a boy nobody recognized. "Hi, Phineas! Hi, Ferb!"
"Hi, Irving!" Phineas replied.
"How'd today's project go?" Irving asked.
"Oh, quite smoothly, all in all," Phineas answered. "Who's this?"
"Phineas," Irving introduced pompously, "this is my cousin from California."
"Nice to meet you!" Phineas said. "Well, we were all just about to go inside for snacks, so you are just in time!"
Irving and his cousin fan-squealed the moment Phineas completed his sentence. "Eeeeeeeee!"
"What?" Phineas inquired.
"You know my name!" Irving's cousin hyperventilated. "The great Phineas Flynn actually knows my name!"
"Excuse me?"
"I'm Justin Time! You knew I'm Justin Time, without me even having to tell you!"
"O-kay," Phineas said.
Irving and Justin squealed again at an even higher pitch this time before simultaneously fainting.