Chapter Text
The sun was raised high on this bright summer day, as Buford and Baljeet entered the backyard around 10 a.m.
”Greetings, Phineas and Ferb,” the nerd said, “have you heard the news about Stumbleberry Finkbat? According to Clive Addison…it appears that you have started without me.”
“Sorry about t—”
”Don’t worry about it, Phineas,” Baljeet interrupted. “I should have predicted that you would expedite our summer escapades. It simply is the most rational response to the iconic events from yesterday that all of us remember very well. I just forgot to reschedule my plans and had a call in for my college class; it turned out that they ran out of maths for me to do, so I had to invent new maths. I ended up solving the Hodge Conjecture—the answer is twenty-seven, by the way; they let me go early because I had already ‘made exceptional contributions to the field of mathematics’ today, but I’m still annoyed they didn’t assign me any homework,” he explained.
“You could have just disproved the Four Color Map Theorem,” Buford suggested, “all you’s need is a three-dimensional map.”
”Ugh, the theorem specifies that the map must be drawn on a plane,” the nerd argued.
“Well, we built a plane last summer—a giant Pelican Plane out of paper; you could’ve just done it then,” asserted the bully.
The studious boy was very irritated by this response. “It’s not referring to an aero-plane, you dolt! If you actually read the appropriate literature before running your mouth you would find…”
The two frenemies continued to argue as Isabella tuned them out; with an annoyed grumble, she suggested, “You know what? The next time that those two show up late, we should just leave them behind. Who’s with me?”
Three hands shot up in the air.
“Put your hand down, Ferb,” Phineas ordered.
“Ferb, put down your second hand,” he added.
[“Put.Your.Third.Hand.Down.”]
Ferb finally all of his hands down.
“Thank you,” Phineas sighed. He returned to his usual, more cheery tone, “all that’s left to do is double-check the cone stability, funnel INDIGO into Astroberry, and calibrate the Raspberry Pi-ping. After that’s done, everything will be moving smoothly.”
Things were not moving smoothly— at least not for Heinz Doofenshmirtz (he didn’t really care if things were moving smoothly for anyone else).
”What do you mean you guys aren’t in operation?” the evil-doer ranted. “That literally makes no sense—if you have been shut down, then how are you still employed here? And what is your job title anyways—aren’t you like a receptionist or something? How does that even work? Since when do power plants have receptionists! I am just a busy man trying to do some bad in the world by doing what people have always told me to do—you see, people have always said that I needed to ‘hang-on’, and clearly what they meant by that is that I needed to hang on to power so that I could become ‘The Ruler of The Entire Tri-State Area!’ and the only way to do that is to go to a power plant and hang onto the generators with my hang-on-inator, thereby holding onto power and fulfilling my scheme—and I can’t do that if you don’t lead me to your grid!”
The receptionist of the power plant replied, “sorry, mans, I don’t make the rules.”
Eventually, Perry wound up showing the worker his OWCA ID; the employee smiled and nodded, “Oh, you’re with Oh-Ka? Second stairwell to the left, head down to ground level, exit out the door in the back, keep heading until you find yourself outside, the generator is two feet to your right—it’s impossible to miss. If you want any snacks or need to see any classified government documents, let me know. Hmkay?”
“Wow. You really have quite the reputation, don’t you Mr.Hotshot,” Heinz teased.
Perry blushed and swung out his hands as he and Doof walked outside together.