Secrets of the Platypus – Part 5

"I can't believe it!" Carl said, sticking a note to the last clear patch on the globe. "The Bermuda Triangle! Now he's really been all over the world!"

"I know, Agent P's amazing," Monty said, slurping from a can of soda.

"Yeah, he's amazing alright," murmured Vanessa with her head in her hands on top of Perry's desk and her eyes fixed on her notes. "And he's a pretty good actor too; otherwise I really can't explain how he does it."

"Um, does what?" asked Monty.

"It's like he's two completely different people. When he's not a secret agent he's apparently this perfect sunshine boy. Or at least that's what his family thinks. Do you think he's just pretending?"

"Oh no, Agent P loves his family more than anything," Carl said, "trust me, I've seen it before."

"I know that, Carl, I just don't get why he would want to miss on all of that. Why does he even need this job when he already has so many reasons to live for?"

"Well, I don't think I ever asked him exactly what his motivation was, but Agent P has always been very ambitious and showed potential long before his actual initiation."

"What do you mean?"

"You know how most cadets start training around fourteen," Carl continued, "but the Agency had its sights set on him when he was barely half that age. Major Monogram ignored many rules and always went out of his way when it came to him."

"That would probably explain the Great White's attitude. But what exactly did Perry do to earn this reputation?"

"Well, I'm not quite sure. It happened quite a few years ago."

"We could ask Dad," said Monty.

"The Major is in an important meeting with the leaders of the other divisions right now," said Carl.

"Then let's go to his office and find some clues!"

"I really don't think this is a good idea," Carl whispered a few minutes later, carefully closing the door behind them. "We shouldn't be here!"

"Relax, Carl. Dad won't mind," said Monty who switched on the lights and grabbed one of the files piled on the desk, causing the rest to come flying down. Carl hurried to catch and stack them back, giving Monty a look of reproach.

Vanessa pushed the desk chair aside and started to open the drawers, only to find some pens and paper clips, and when she got to the last one she realized it was locked.

"Hey, do you have a bobby pin?" Monty asked.

"Um, sure," Vanessa replied, reaching back and letting some of her hair fall to her face.

"Perry taught me this trick," Monty said, inserting the pin and putting his ear to the lock.

"You know, I'm starting to think you two would make better pickpockets."

"Hey, you might be on to something," Monty said with a smirk. "Wait, is that... yeah, it is! My first-place award from the second-grade gymnastics competition! I can't believe he still has it."

"Hey, and what's this?"

Vanessa discovered under Monty's diploma an old volume of the local newspaper. The first article spanned the entire page. Beneath the large, bold headline was a picture of Perry who looked about the same as in the second family portrait in the Flynn-Fletcher living room, except perhaps for the scruffy-looking man he had pinned to the ground.

Real-life Super Child

A seven-year-old orphan boy manages to capture an armed criminal in the midst of a robbery that took place this morning on Baker's Row.

Vanessa noticed that there was a slightly rusted knife and a purse on the sidewalk in front of the thief, but his hands were secured behind his back by a red scarf. He looked like an overgrown trussed-up turkey.

"Cool!" Monty said, glancing over her shoulder.

"Wait, isn't there anything else?" asked Carl, pushing them aside and rummaging through the drawer, as if hoping to find among the Major's prized possessions something to attest to one of his greatest childhood achievements. He sank to his knees when he found nothing. Monty reached out and patted him sympathetically on the back.

Vanessa quickly took a picture of the front page with her phone and put everything back as she found it.

So Perry was already an orphan when he was recruited by the OWCA. According to the article, he had dropped on the thief's back from one of the roofs of nearby buildings, completely unseen by him until the last moment. But the paper failed to mention why a seven-year-old child was alone on the rooftop in the first place.

Vanessa tried to zoom in a bit right before she got a call.

"Did something happen?" she asked the second she picked up.

"No, I just wanted to check on you guys," Perry said, "I'm almost done here, I think I'll be back after this," and a thick muffled voice came out, like someone who'd been gagged.

"Wait, is someone there?"

"That would be the Silver Scorpion."

"Who?"

"Oh, just Paris' most wanted mafia leader. I've been tracking him down for weeks now."

Vanessa couldn't help but snort, "What? Did you steal his glass slipper?"

"I... what?"

"Oh, never mind. Just come back safely," Vanessa said before hanging up. Perry's old picture reappeared on her screen and she wondered how difficult it must have been to capture a mob leader versus a common criminal.

"Was that Perry?" Monty asked, peering through the half-open door.

Vanessa nodded. "He said he was on his way."

A wide smile stretched across Monty's face. "Carl discovered something you might find interesting!"

Vanessa supposed they had some time left so she followed him, but not before locking Perry's office door with the keys she found on the desk, assuming this task now fell to her.

They returned to the regular training level and reached a corridor that the janitor seemed to have long forgotten. The walls were covered with half-torn questionnaires and posters, and the linoleum on the floor was full of holes and strange dark spots.

They entered a large, dimly lit room containing what appeared to have once been a training circuit consisting of a springboard with one missing spring, a climbing wall, several thin wooden poles in various stages of mold, and a small, boarded-up pool.

"Where are we?"

"This used to be where Agent P trained before he turned fourteen, but that's not what I wanted to show you," Monty said.

He led her to an open door made of hard steel. Carl was hunched over a small monitor, which was the only source of light and didn't add to the already sinister sight. Cold blue glowed faintly in the lifeless eyes of animatronics about a head taller than a normal human, that were lined up along the wall.

"Aren't they fascinating?" asked Carl who was studying the detailed plan of a kangaroo robot spinning on the screen.

The other animatronics also had the appearance of wild mammals all native to Australia. There was a bilby, a dingo, an echidna, and a Tasmanian devil that were missing large tufts of fur, whereas the koala bear had also lost an eye.

"I could think of a better word," Vanessa murmured.

"The Major brought Agent P all kinds of instructors and combat masters, but when he had no one to train with he had them built just for him," Carl said.

Vanessa noticed how each robot was connected to transparent tubes that ran through the floor.

"Wait, he thought this was a good idea for a seven-year-old?" she asked.

"Well, they have adjustable difficulty levels, of course."

"I think I found them," said Monty who went behind the kangaroo and began to spin a knob on the back of its head. "Let's see... Beginner... Easy... Normal... Medium... Advanced... Super Advanced and... is this a skull?"

"Um, maybe you shouldn't do that," Carl said, jumping to his feet.

"Come on, Carl, these things haven't been used in years. What are the chances they still work?"

"Uh..." Vanessa watched anxiously as the blue liquid rose through the tubes and up to where they connected to the long, mechanical ears.

The kangaroo jerked once making Monty jump and back away slowly. All three watched in silence as the silver eyes turned blue. With a long creak, the kangaroo slowly opened its short arms, and for a second seemed ready to embrace them, when out of nowhere it pounced at them. Monty pulled Vanessa out of the way and the Kangaroo punched a hole into the wall.

Carl blinked several times adjusting the glasses that hung from his ear, and turned to Monty, "Now look what you've done!"

"You should have warned me!"

"I did!"

"Well, you should have warned me sooner."

"Guys!" Vanessa snapped, watching the kangaroo trying to free its stuck fist. "Can this wait?"

They hurried to the steel door which Carl managed to block by smacking his card against a panel that replaced the doorknob. He took a few steps back and a series of bangs shook the metal on the other side. After a while, it all went quiet, and Monty dared to peek through the hole left in the wall right before the rest of it was smashed to pieces.

Monty coughed and Vanessa and Carl covered their mouths, watching as two glowing eyes rose from the dust, and, after it cleared away, they saw that a large patch of fur had peeled from the muzzle, exposing the metallic skeleton underneath.

Carl made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a hiccup, but Monty said eagerly, "Don't worry guys, I got this!" and plunged headfirst into a boxing match, man versus machine.

"We're not leaving you," Vanessa said, glaring at Carl whose hand was hovering above the doorknob. Carl looked longingly at the door, turned his head to Monty, glanced back at the door, and sighed before joining Vanessa.

"You're not as fluffy as you look," Monty said, shaking his already bruised fist.

The kangaroo spun around and slammed its tail into Monty's chest, sending him to the ground. He flipped over a split second before the floor beneath him was crushed by two metal fists, and grabbed onto the tiny plastic hoops hanging from the ceiling. The kangaroo stood up on its hind legs and fixed its eyes on him. Monty was jumping between hoops when the one he was about to touch was hit by a blue laser beam and melted on the spot.

"Laser eyes, seriously Dad?" Monty uttered under his breath, landing in a pit of rainbow-colored plastic balls. He started tossing them and although they had no way of causing it any harm, the kangaroo still tried its best to hit each one with its lasers. Monty managed to keep it busy until the smell of burnt plastic smothered the entire room.

"There has to be something we can do," Vanessa said.

"Um, the level switcher just sets it on, if we want to turn it off there's a control panel behind the head," Carl said, "but I don't know how we could get to it."

Monty was now clinging to the climbing holds on the plywood wall, dodging lasers left and right.

"Monty, do you think you could hold him still for a few seconds?" Vanessa bellowed.

"Um, I'll see what I can do," Monty said, leaping to the other side of the wall. He went around the cluster of wooden posts, swung on a time-worn rope, and jumped through a metal hoop that had clearly been designed for a much smaller Perry because Monty could barely fit through it. The kangaroo, on the other hand, remained stuck and began firing its laser at the floor.

"It's all yours, Carl," Vanessa said, nudging him from behind.

Carl swallowed hard and tiptoed closer to the machine. Monty turned the knob back to beginner's level and the laser subsided, but the kangaroo continued to struggle. Luckily the front paws were also immobilized. Carl felt the furred back of its neck with the air of someone trying to defuse a bomb. "It's screwed in," he noticed.

"Hold on," said Vanessa, remembering the nail file still in her pocket.

Carl unscrewed and removed a metal plate which revealed a series of color-coded switches and thin cables resembling blood vessels. The same blue liquid seemed to run through. Carl flicked several switches at once and the kangaroo went limp.

"Look at us, we make a pretty good team!" Monty said, rubbing his nostrils with the back of his hand to make sure he wasn't bleeding.

"Good thing it's over," Carl said, breathing a sigh of relief, but shuddering again at the sight of wall debris and burnt marks. "Oh, Major Monogram is going to kill us!"

"Uh, we might have bigger problems," Vanessa said, pointing a shaking hand at the half-demolished back wall through which five other animatronics crept in line, eyes flashing dangerously.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" said Monty. "Watch out!" And they darted away from the laser shower, ducking behind the climbing wall. "Vanessa, I take back what I said about your dad. A self-destruct button would do us good right now!"

"I think they were activated simultaneously!" shouted Carl covering his ears with his hands as if blocking the sound of the lasers was enough to stop them altogether.

"Then why are they still on max level?" asked Monty. "Shouldn't it have changed when I reset the first one?"

"Maybe they want to avenge their fallen friend."

"That doesn't make any sense," said Monty.

"No, actually Vanessa might have a point," Carl said, dropping his hands. "The Major may have been trying to teach young Agent P some values and rules of conduct on top of everything else."

"That's a messed up way to give someone a moral lesson. What was Dad thinking?"

"I don't know, but we can't sit still and find out," Vanessa said, dodging to the left as one of the lasers went straight through the plywood

"Um, well, I'm open to suggestions," Monty said after another blue beam flashed right over his head.

Vanessa and Carl looked at each other, but before either of them could open their mouths to speak, the door to the exit slammed open and a blur of turquoise and brown blew past them.

Perry yanked one of the metal pipes from the side wall and spun it in front of him, causing some of the laser beams to bounce off the ceiling. He used the pipe to jump over the heads of the animatronics, then pierced the echidna in the back. The pipe shot through the hairy chest from which blue liquid gushed. Perry kicked the Koala bear's head off, jumped over the bilby tail that came at him like a whip, and smashed the muzzle of the Tasmanian devil with his fist as it tried to sink its fangs into his shoulder.

Vanessa recalled her father telling her how Perry had once defeated an entire army of evil robot clones, so this must have been child's play to him, quite literally now that she really thought about it.

After the floor was littered with robot limbs and exposed circuits, they decided it was safe to come out of hiding.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Carl said, shaking his leg after stepping in a blue puddle.

Monty gave a low whistle as he passed the dingo dog which was broken in half.

Perry tossed aside the metal pipe and slowly turned towards them. "Alright, what's going on here?"

Monty and Carl flinched under his gaze, then pointed a finger at the other and said, "He did it!"

Perry raised an eyebrow.

Vanessa shook her head, though she agreed that the blue liquid dripping from his forehead made Perry look quite intimidating at the moment. She took a step forward and said, "Actually, it was my fault. None of this would have happened if I hadn't tried to find out about your past. Monty and Carl were just trying to help me."

"Find out my past?" Perry asked, raising his other eyebrow as well. "So you decided to bring out my old toys?"

"You know, dude, most kids collect action figures or Bango-Ru pets," Monty said.

Perry smirked, which made Carl relax enough to ask, "But how did you know where to find us?"

"Well," Perry began, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief and turning back to Vanessa, "someone locked me out and I didn't feel like kicking down my own door."

"Oh," she said, pulling the office keys out of her pocket along with the platypus paw keychain, "sorry about that. I thought I'd get back before you did."

"It's okay, I'll get you a new one."

"You know, when you asked me to install a GPS locator in your keyring so you wouldn't lose your keys, I didn't think it would end up saving my life," Carl said.

"You can never be too prepared, right?" Perry said, twirling his key chain around his finger. "But seriously, don't do this again."

"We're really sorry," Vanessa said and Monty nodded, hiding his hands behind his back, "I just wanted to find out more about who you really are if we're going to work together."

"Look, I'm flattered, I really am, but why didn't you just ask me?"

"Well, you were pretty busy, so I—"

"Vanessa has proven herself to be quite the detective, Agent P," Carl came to her aid.

Perry looked down at the scorched floor. "That's good to hear, but there's really not much to investigate."

"Weird, that's what Candace said."

"Well, she doesn't know the whole story," Perry said with a quiet laugh, looking up at her. "I guess no one does."

"Then how about you tell us?" Vanessa asked.

"You know no confidential information leaves this building," Carl said.

"Yeah man, are you going to tell us how you made it to the front page at just seven or what?"

"Oh, yeah, that..." Perry hesitated, and there seemed to be more than just modesty into play. Vanessa became suddenly very aware that he might felt pressured into reliving some not-so-happy memories. But before she could say anything, Perry sat down on the floor and spoke, "Alright then, but wouldn't you rather I start at the beginning? It's pretty hard to explain unless you know the full picture."

Carl and Monty exchanged some grins and dropped down in front of him like two kindergarteners eager for storytime. Vanessa sat next to Perry.

"I must warn you though; it's quite a long story."

"We have time," Vanessa said, placing her hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah, don't keep us waiting!" said Monty.

Perry glanced at them each, then at Carl. "I'm really in no hurry to tell Major Monogram how this all happened," he said, waving a hand around the room.

Perry smiled. "Alright, I suppose it all started when I was about three..."