Time and Time Again 1

The major changes that have been made are actually not so major. The main plot is still about the same, and most of the dialogue and stuff, so there’s not that many differences. I mostly just fixed up the narration and added in adjectives and stuff. xD

Additionally, guess what? The fourth isn’t just a random date I chose to release the story on- it’s actually the two-year anniversary of the story! And that makes it fun.

So without further ado, I present to you: Time and Time Again! :3

The story I will tell you is extensive in length, and just as complicated. It is a convoluted tale that spans many years and is tucked away in the folds of time, unknown to all but those who lived through it. By the time you get through with it, you may wonder how it can even exist…but heck, it’s long enough already without the intro. Let’s get started, shall we?

Our tale begins on an ordinary summer day…

Some say morning is the most beautiful time of day, and that morning, you could really see why. The sun shone with a bright radiance, amongst a setting of clouds that came straight out of an oil painting and a powder blue sky. The trees beneath it glittered with morning dew in the light, and birds could be heard singing sweetly all around. A soft wind blew waves through the seas of grass in the fields and swept a few stray leaves into the sky, soaring even higher than the birds. It was a lovely morning in Danville indeed…and two stepbrothers were about to make the most of it.

Phineas and Ferb were currently asleep in their beds, their alarm clocks reading 6:59. But they’d be up and about, doing what they did best, once the time officially switched to 7:00…

Or, perhaps even a little earlier.

Sure enough, as the sun peeked in through the closed blinds, Phineas opened his eyes just an inch, roused by the birdsong outside his window. Then, seeing that morning had arrived, he sat straight up in bed, followed quickly by Ferb, who had apparently woken up at exactly the same time. Glancing over at the clock, he turned it off just as the time switched to 7:00 and grinned triumphantly.

“Haha!” His laugh showed no sign of tiredness, only excitement for the coming day. “The alarm couldn’t even go off! We’re just too fast, Ferb.”

In the other bed, Ferb gave one of his slight smiles, along with a quick nod. Ferb wasn’t one for big reactions, but the small motion was more than enough for his brother.

Phineas stretched his arms and yawned widely, then reached down to lay a hand on Perry’s side. “Good morning, Perry! And I do mean that- today is gonna be great!”

At the sound of the words, the platypus stirred, opening one eye with an almost lazy air to look up at his master. A rumbling purr entwined itself with the gentle rise and fall of his breathing, and with a giggle, Phineas began to pet him.

He glanced back over at Ferb. “So, ready to create the most awesome role-playing game ever?” he asked eagerly. Ferb gave the thumbs up, but he hesitated. Sensing something, Phineas hesitated too. There was something strange in the air today…something tense. Exciting. The kind of thing that one couldn’t quite define.

“Hmm…” Phineas murmured thoughtfully. “Ferb, do you know what today is? ‘Cause I don’t.”

Ferb answered promptly, “It’s Tuesday.”

Phineas glanced at the calendar, not to confirm if this was true, but to check whether there was anything else special about the day. There wasn’t. “Well, that’s odd,” he mused with a little tilt of the head. “With the electrified atmosphere today, it just seems like there’s something going on…something big.”

Beneath his gently massaging fingers, Perry tensed suddenly and briefly. Something big! He had almost forgotten…

However, Phineas didn’t notice this, and he merely shrugged and returned to his usual smile. “Maybe we’re just going to do something really cool today, and we’re already excited for it without even knowing what it is!” he said cheerfully. “Come on, Ferb, let’s go!”

And the two of them zipped downstairs for breakfast, a newly invigorated Perry hot on their heels.

A while later, after they had cleared the plates from breakfast, the boys headed out to the backyard with Perry in tow. Almost as soon as they had sat down underneath the tall, shady tree that served as their usual place of resting, Ferb pulled a sheet of blueprints out from his pocket and showed them to Phineas. The redhead grinned eagerly at the sight of them, eyes sparkling with excitement.

“This is great, Ferb!” he exclaimed happily. “We really are gonna have the coolest role playing game ever! We can have swords and shields, and our own armies, and we can battle evil overlords! And Isabella can be a ninja, and Buford can be a Viking like he said he wanted to be, and we can even make Perry a warrior!” he picked the platypus up and moved his arms around playfully, as if he were throwing punches. “Ha! Hi-ya!”

Perry chattered in protest, although he did nothing to extricate himself from Phineas’ grip, and the boy quickly set him back down. “In short, it’ll be great,” he confirmed cheerfully. As he and Ferb began to discuss the details of the plan, Perry wandered away discreetly in the direction of the house, slipping in through the back door before either boy could notice.

“So, let’s get started!” Phineas exclaimed, leaping out of his seat excitedly. Suddenly, he paused and glanced around his feet at the grass below. “Hey, where’d Perry go?”

“Maybe he didn’t feel like being a warrior,” Ferb suggested quietly.

Phineas nodded, a little deflated. “Well, he is a platypus. They don’t do much.”

Inside the house, Perry had ambled into the living room. There he waited for a moment, glancing around surreptitiously to see if anyone was watching. Then he crept over to the rug in the center of the room and crawled underneath, leaving no trace of having been there except for a small lump in the center. But even that abruptly disappeared, as a panel opened up beneath his feet and he dropped in.

Moments later in his underground lair, the platypus agent promptly dropped out of a chute in the ceiling and landed in his chair, looking quite irritated. On the ride down, he had gotten covered in bits of dust and dirt from crawling under the rug, and it was rather itchy. As he adjusted himself in the seat and tried to brush himself off, the telescreen above him turned on with a flash of static, displaying the ever-serious face of Major Monogram, who looked businesslike as usual.

“Good morning, Agent P- oh, my,” he paused mid-sentence and winced when he saw Perry’s sordid condition. Perry only scowled in annoyance, crossing his arms reproachfully.

Monogram frowned uncomfortably. “We were going to have that entrance cleaned yesterday, but it looks like someone forgot…and by someone, I mean Carl.”

“Hey!” came Carl’s nasally voice from off-screen. “That is so unfair!”

“I told you it was a bad idea to make an entrance under the rug if you didn’t want to clean it,” Monogram continued, ignoring his intern’s protests. “Well, anyway…on to your mission, Agent P.”

Perry was too busy brushing himself off to salute, but he did look back up at the screen expectantly. Monogram hadn’t yet mentioned anything about what today was, but he couldn’t possibly have forgotten…could he? Wasn’t he going to mention it at all?

However, if Monogram knew what special occasion Perry was thinking of, he didn’t show it- he just launched right into the mission briefing without a second thought.

“So, Dr. Doofenshmirtz is up to his usual nonsense,” he continued gruffly, reading the information off of a sheet of paper. “He’s bought up a huge supply of titanium, and has checked out a few dozen library books regarding the time-space continuum. Recently, our spy cameras picked up a video of him putting together some very complicated-looking machinery. It looks just diabolical!”

As he spoke, a video of Doofenshmirtz holding a soccer-ball-sized lump of wires and metal flashed across the screen. “Even worse,” Monogram continued, “all the books he rented haven’t been returned yet, and he’s at least a week late! This could be anything but good.”

As if to illustrate his point, the thing Doofenshmirtz was holding promptly exploded. Perry’s eyebrows went up.

“So anyway, we need you to get out there and stop him,” concluded the major. “Good luck, Agent P.”

Perry was a little disappointed, but he saluted crisply anyway. And with that, the screen went blank.

But, as soon as he was alone, he let out a small sigh. So Monogram had forgotten. Ah, well, it didn’t concern him anyway, and Perry supposed it didn’t really matter whether he recognized the day or not. He got up from the chair and wandered over to the wall of the lair, where a small calendar with a picture of a fedora on it hung. Studying the calendar carefully, he soon found what Phineas and Ferb’s calendar lacked- a handwritten reminder of the special occasion that today represented. With a smile, Perry looked over the note that he himself had put down on the square area- ‘Neme-Versary with Doof’. For today was, indeed, the anniversary of the very day he had met Doofenshmirtz all that time ago. With a fond smile, he recalled the first battle he had ever had with his nemesis, in which he had gotten into a foosball match to the death, dropped Doofenshmirtz into a truck full of cuppy-cakes, and- oddly enough- saved his enemy’s life. Ah, good times. Weird times, but good nonetheless.

Then, leaving the calendar, he headed back to the telescreen and opened a drawer on the button-covered dashboard. Inside was a small plastic package, containing a single, jauntily-frosted cupcake. The label on the plastic read, Cuppy-Cake Pastries, and it brought back many memories, causing Perry to smile to himself again. He was perfectly aware that his nemesis hated the pastries (the same way he hated a good deal of other things), which was exactly why he planned to give it to him- as a joke, of course. After all, it was practically written in the job description that he had to irritate his enemy at every given chance. And even if he didn’t have to, it was just so irresistible sometimes…

Perry took a nearby marker and scribbled a quick note on the cuppy-cake’s packaging. Satisfied, he pattered off toward the lair exit, where he picked up a retractable hang glider that had been left for him there. He had no idea how the agency had managed to build such a thing, but it was extremely useful.

Especially when taking the fun way to work.

“At last, it is finished!” Doofenshmirtz announced to his mostly-empty lab, stepping back to admire his work with a wide grin pulling at his lips. The all-important, incredibly amazing, dastardly devious project which he, Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz, had worked so long and hard on…done!

The device he had just finished building looked like something out of a science fiction movie- flashing lights, sound effects, and all. It was a large, cylinder-shaped apparatus with an electronic door that you could open and close with a push of a button, operated through a control pad on the side. Inside, the machine was mostly blank, except for the floor, which would light up like a floodlight when activated. The machine was just over Doofenshmirtz’s height and a little wider than Norm- and though the appearance was certainly very impressive, even more impressive was the actual function. This machine was capable of a huge feat, one that had never been done in the history of evil science (well, except for that Xavier Onassis guy, but he didn’t count). Doofenshmirtz had titled it the ‘Time Transporter-Inator’- and, as the name implied, it was capable of transporting objects through time.

Dun dun duuun.

“And now,” continued the doctor, rubbing his hands together eagerly, “I can embark on my diabolical scheme to go back in time and do…” here he paused awkwardly and allowed the sentence to trail off. “…Something.”

The truth of the matter was, he didn’t exactly have a plan yet- the machine still needed to be tested before he could use it on himself, anyway, and he had yet to think of an actual scheme to use it for. Worse yet, Perry the Platypus would surely arrive soon. With any luck, he would be late, and the doctor would get an extra minute or two.

“Well, might as well test it. I can’t do anything else until that’s finished, anyway- and I’m sure I can think of something to use it for in the meantime,” he told himself, choosing to ignore the fact that he really didn’t have anything to use it for (Heinz always liked to look on the bright side when it came to his evil schemes). To properly calibrate the machine, he had to test it with an inanimate object and a living creature- the former being a coin that he pulled from his pocket eagerly. Money in hand, he left for the other end of the room to pick up the second subject, which happened to be a furiously squeaking lab rat. Grinning in anticipation, he placed the test subjects inside the machine and closed the door as quick as he could (the lab rat was a real escape artist, and he wasn’t taking any chances). The device lit up as he adjusted the coordinates and played with the options, making sure not to waste a moment. If all went well, the machine would activate at the next point in time available, which he assumed would be in eight minutes or so (for some reason, the whole time travel thing went by eights- you could get transported anywhere between eight minutes and eight decades into the future if you weren’t careful). That meant the test would be over soon, which was good, because Perry the Platypus-

CRASH!

Oh. Well, that was probably him.

Whipping around, Doofenshmirtz saw the window at the far end of the room shatter into a thousand slivers of glass, and who should come diving through it sleekly but Perry himself, hang glider drifting down behind him outside the window. He rolled neatly as he hit the floor and landed in a defensive posture with one knee on the ground, glaring at the doctor as if he had just committed some incredibly heinous act (which, of course, he was about to).

“Ah, Perry the Platypus,” Doofenshmirtz sneered, gazing down at his nemesis with a sinister air. “You’re right on time, as usual…and yet, you’re still too late!” And with a devious grin, he pulled a remote control from his pocket and activated today’s trap, which in this case was a large grandfather clock that fell from the ceiling. Perry instinctively covered his head and ducked, but to no avail- the clock-turned-trap landed around him like a very fancy cage, and when he looked back up, he found himself trapped inside the cabinet, the pendulum swinging lazily behind him. Doofenshmirtz broke into a maniacal cackle, thrilled with his small success, and Perry rolled his eyes. Recently, these traps were just getting crazier and crazier.

“So, you like the trap?” Doofenshmirtz asked conversationally. “It goes along with my scheme today. Speaking of which, I bet you’re wondering just what it is, huh?”

He waited for a response of some kind from the platypus, but all Perry did was stare the doctor down expectantly, waiting for him to make a move. In the short silence, Doofenshmirtz couldn’t help but notice that there seemed to be something different about his inscrutable nemesis today…was it his hat? No. His fur? No…he looked just the same as always. Whatever it was, it wasn’t physical. He could only describe it as some kind of excited aura- like his nemesis was eagerly anticipating something big that might happen any minute. The doctor wracked his brain, trying to think of a suitable reason for this, but nothing came to mind. Maybe Perry had just had one too many cups of coffee. Or maybe he was really excited about the scheme! But no, he didn’t know what it was yet, so that couldn’t be it…

Ah, the scheme! Yes, he had to get on with it. He was sure Perry’s strange excitement could wait to be explained. “Okay, I’m going to take your silence as a sign of curiosity,” Doofenshmirtz continued. “So, I may as well tell you what my evil plan is before I ultimately decide whether to use it to destroy you.” (Which, come to think of it, was a pretty good use for the machine.)

And he swept one arm toward the machine with a grand air, grinning in excitement. “Behold, the Time Transporter-Inator! It, uh…transports stuff through time.”

Perry’s expression changed from an expectant stare to a condescending glare in the blink of an eye, and Doofenshmirtz scowled in response. “Well, don’t look at me like that!” he protested. “No evil scientist has ever done it before, and besides, I felt like doing something big today!” Then he paused, considering that. “Granted, I can’t actually remember why I wanted to do something big today…not that it was just random, either! I had some important reason, but now I can’t remember.”

Suddenly, Perry’s glare shifted into an expression of immense shock, and then reserved disappointment. How could Doofenshmirtz, his own nemesis, forget their Neme-Versary? He must have known earlier, but now it seemed to have slipped his mind entirely.

Doofenshmirtz blinked, confused. “What?” he asked. “What’s that look for? Was it something I said? I mean, it’s not like…” he struggled for something to say, probably wondering why Perry looked so let down all of a sudden. Finally, he growled in frustration and turned back to the machine. “Look, whatever. The point is, I have to test it before I use it on anybody. If it works without blowing anything up, then it’s safe to use. And if it goes horribly wrong, then I’ll just use it on you instead!” And, grinning excitedly in anticipation of either result, the evil scientist turned his back on Perry and strode back to his machine.

In his trap, Perry sighed. It was bad enough that Doofenshmirtz had forgotten their Neme-Versary, and it was even worse that he planned to use a potentially disastrous time machine on him. If now wasn’t a good time to escape, Perry didn’t know what was- and maybe after that, he’d give Doofenshmirtz that Cuppy-Cake in the hope that it would jog his memory.

“And now, Perry the Platypus,” said Doofenshmirtz as he reached the control pad of the Time Transporter-Inator, “you will witness the chronological capacity of this creatively complex contraption!” he paused there and laughed briefly, a normal laugh that indicated he had tried to make a joke. “You see what I did there? With the whole alliteration thing? Yeah, and I called it ‘chronological’ ‘cause it’s…heh, y’know…”

Perry just crossed his arms and glared, unimpressed. Gradually, the doctor realized that Perry wasn’t laughing, or even smiling, and his laughter died down. “Ahh, never mind.”

Then, with an eager flourish, he pressed the last key and stepped back, both he and Perry watching as the machine fired up. For a moment, it did nothing more than light up and beep loudly, but before long, it was humming and shaking unsteadily, letting out flashes of light from inside the now-closed off chamber. Then, there was a huge flash and a terrified squeak from the lab rat, and the nemeses shielded their eyes. When the light cleared, Doofenshmirtz opened the door eagerly, to see that both the coin and the rat had disappeared. He grinned, evidently pleased by this success.

“You see, Perry the Platypus?” he exclaimed proudly, turning to face his nemesis with a triumphant air. “It works! Now, they should be back in eight minutes or so, assuming I programmed it right. That’s the minimum amount of time. The maximum is…well, actually, I don’t know. It’s eight something. Hours, days, you get the idea. I haven’t actually tested that yet.”

Perry raised an eyebrow, wondering why the whole system seemed to go by eights. It seemed a bit unnecessary and eccentric; but, then again, ‘unnecessary’ and ‘eccentric’ were the perfect two words to describe Doofenshmirtz and his methods.

In any case, no matter how crazy he was, Doofenshmirtz couldn’t possibly expect him to stay put for eight whole minutes; most battles barely lasted eleven, and at least half of that was just the scheme presentation.

He turned in a circle, inspecting the clock-trap. The walls didn’t look too tough- just your typical breakable wood, no match whatsoever for Perry’s wall-breaking skills- but if he tried to break through, the entire clock might collapse. Instead, Perry directed his attention to the roof of the clock, which supported the pendulum swinging behind him. He could use that to get out…it seemed like it would hold under his negligible weight. But how to get there? It was much taller than him, and he doubted he could jump that high.

Then something caught his eye- a large, round, gently swinging something that led straight to his escape. He smiled as an escape plan formed in his mind, because he knew it would work. Without further hesitation, he crouched briefly before springing at the pendulum and grabbing hold of it, and he began to climb to the top of the clock.

“Y’know, Perry the Platypus, I just can’t remember what today is,” Doofenshmirtz mused in mild frustration from beside the Time Transporter-Inator. “It’s crazy, because I could have sworn I knew earlier today and I was all excited about it, and then- poof! Now it’s gone. And I can’t find my calendar, either! Why do I have such bad luck?” He turned around to face Perry, probably so he could complain some more- only to see an empty grandfather clock. He blinked, then came closer to the clock to examine it. “Perry the Platypus? Where’d you go?”

Just then, Perry opened the roof of the clock like a hatch and peered down at his nemesis. He chattered loudly as if to say, Up here. Doofenshmirtz looked up just in time to yell as Perry crashed into him, knocking him to the ground forcefully. Without a backward glance, Perry leapt off and began to sprint towards the Time Transporter-Inator, intent on getting rid of it before it could do anything else. Plan or no plan, Doofenshmirtz could still wreak havoc with this thing just by being present in another time period. Unfortunately Doofenshmirtz, being very resilient, managed to recover his wits in time to pry himself off the floor and chase after Perry.

“Gotcha!” he yelled, launching himself at the agent and effectively flattening him. Perry struggled for a moment under Doofenshmirtz’s weight, then managed to fling the doctor off of him and leapt back up. Doofenshmirtz flew through the air and crash-landed on the Time Transporter-Inator’s control pad, which, surprisingly, wasn’t even dented.

He growled as he got back up and glared at Perry. “Oh, you’re gonna get it now!”

Perry just cocked an eyebrow and beckoned as if to say, Bring it on.

Then Doofenshmirtz let out a mad battle cry, and the two of them rushed forward to engage the other. Fists began to fly, Perry was leaping around wildly, and Doofenshmirtz’s hair was soon even more of a disaster than it had been before. However, in the heat of their confrontation, both of the adversaries failed to notice a shadow behind the Time-Transporter-Inator; a shadow that discreetly moved toward the controls.

“Hold still, Perry the Pest-a-pus!” shouted Doofenshmirtz as he made a swipe at his quick-footed nemesis. Perry performed an agile flip out of the way and evaded it easily. Having missed the initial attack, Doofenshmirtz launched a punch at Perry, who dived right under the evil scientist’s legs and wound up next to the Time Transporter-Inator.

Frustrated, Doofenshmirtz growled and whipped around to face Perry, accidentally throwing an arm out in the process that hit the little platypus with a loud thump in the chest. Perry was knocked backward, out of breath, and landed inside the Time Transporter-Inator, whose doors were still open. Doofenshmirtz, suddenly getting a mad idea, turned to the control pad to close the doors- but before he could even touch it, something strange happened.

The doors slammed shut with a click, there came a loud whirring noise from the machine, and lights began to blink alarmingly. Doofenshmirtz stared in bewilderment as the Time-Transporter-Inator activated once more, this time of its own accord, with lights flashing from the interior and a powerful hum that got louder by the moment.

Inside the Inator, Perry was just as stunned as Doofenshmirtz. He glanced wildly around the walls, looking for some way of breaking out, but there was nothing- no visible means of opening the doors- and then, before he could do anything else, the device suddenly gave off a huge flash of light that seemed to erase the rest of the world.

The floodlight floor lit up, enveloping everything in blindingly bright, harsh light. Other smaller lights around the exterior suddenly began to blink frantically, though the room was by now so flooded that no one could see. Perry slammed his fists against the walls of the machine desperately, his heart racing faster than it ever had in his life, all sound blotted out by the booming noise inside the Inator. Doofenshmirtz covered his eyes and ran away shrieking, but the noise of the Inator was so loud that you could hardly hear him.

For an excruciating moment, the blinding light persisted, but then, in the blink of an eye, it was all over. The light vanished; the Time-Transport-Inator fell silent; the room showed no trace of anything having happened there.

Doofenshmirtz looked up slowly, his arms still tucked over his head for protection. For another moment, there was absolute silence. Then he cautiously approached the control panel and pressed a button to open the door. He watched intently as the door slid open, his mind feeling rather numb. Had it really happened? Could everything really have happened that…easily?

As the door slid to a halt, he peered inside cautiously, ready to run in case Perry leapt out to launch an attack; but no attack came. And it seemed it wouldn’t be coming anytime soon, because Perry…

Well, Perry was gone.

Doofenshmirtz quickly scanned the inside of the machine, the walls, the ceiling, and even the rest of the lab, just in case Perry really had escaped. He even got out the Platy-Tracker 3000 that he had bought from a TV commercial once, but it received no signal whatsoever. Did that mean Perry was really gone? And…Doofenshmirtz had won? It seemed too good to be true…

He was about to give up and conclude that he really had won when something caught his eye; light glinting off of a small, plastic package on the floor. He quickly picked up the thing and inspected it, only to find that it was one of the many things he despised; a cuppy-cake. He was about to throw it away in disgust when he noticed another thing about it; the plastic wrapper had some kind of handwritten note inscribed on it. He didn’t recognize the handwriting immediately; it was in a beautifully written script that might have taken a lifetime for one to master, yet it seemed to have been scribbled down quickly. Doofenshmirtz gasped as he realized what it meant- and what he had missed.

“Oh, yeah! That’s why I was building something big!” he muttered in understanding. Then he frowned. “I guess it’s too late to give him his card now…” For the note read;

He almost wished he hadn’t seen the note; it made his victory seem sort of hollow and not quite right. Still, it had happened, and nothing would change that. The last thing to do, then, was to check just how far his nemesis had been transported into the future. Doofenshmirtz approached the machine’s control pad and checked it- only to see that something was obviously wrong. The control pad featured a blinking set of numbers that seemed to be counting down- and with a start, he realized it was the self-destruct. It had activated of its own accord, just like the machine, and was steadily counting down with a mere five seconds to go. It must have been going the entire time he was looking for Perry.

Doofenshmirtz groaned. “Oh, man, I really do have bad luck,” he muttered to himself.

To be continued…