Taylor watched in awe as hundreds of gift baskets poured out of the strange machine every minute, covering the sky in an array of bright wicker and scanning beams. "I don't believe it. I'm seeing it and I don't believe it."
"Mmmm..." Isabella rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Well, they're not bending the laws of physics this time, except for the whole mass production in a tiny space... but that is still pretty impressive. I'm going to put this one as a 7.2 out of 10 on the 'most impressive things Phineas and Ferb have done' scale."
"This is only a 7.2?"
"At a rough estimate." Isabella shrugged. "Could be lower, honestly. I'm a little biased."
"Alright, everyone, production seems to be going well." Phineas stepped out of the machine with a smile. "All we need to do now is maintain equilibrium, and things should take care of themselves."
"I don't believe it." Taylor stared up at the swarm of baskets. "I'm seeing it, and I don't believe it."
Isabella smirked at her. "Oh believe it, sister. This isn't even close to being the craziest thing they've done."
"What? What do you mean by that?"
"Weeeeeeelll..."
~On the first day of summer they built a roller coaster that twisted and turned through the town~
Taylor blinked, finally tearing her eyes from the swarm of gift baskets. "Uh..."
~And a few days later they made a one-hit wonder that still makes people boogie down~
"Why are you--?" Taylor's question was interrupted by a guitar riff from Ferb.
~They've built so many buildings in this very backyard
And I've helped them a lot, it wasn't even that hard
Cause when it comes to the impossible, baby, these brothers take the croooooooown!~
~Ferb's british and he's quiet and Phineas has! A triangular sort of a face~
"Okay, that's--that's good to know Candace--"
~And when it comes to weird contraptions I admit it! They are way in first place!~
"Why is she singing?" Lisa whispered to Stacy.
"Shush, she's on a roll!"
~They've built a shrinking machine, and a growing one too
I'm not even sure there's anything that they can't do
I've honestly lost track of how many times they've been to spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!~
~You wanna talk warping reality, these two once built a portal to Mars!~
~They made a giant robot platypus, and remote drove life-size cars!~
~There was that time I needed to earn a beekeeping patch, so I asked them to turn me into a bee!~
~I've been turned into juice! And into a fly! And one time they even split meeeeeeeeeee--into two mes!~
"...where is that music coming from?" Lisa asked, staring around. "Does--does she have control of the mall's P.A. system?"
"No, that's just a Danville thing," Stacy assured her. "Oh look, here's the chorus girls!"
"Who are these people?!" Taylor cried, looking around wildly. "And how can I hear the other half of this song?!"
"Look Ferb, chorus girls!" Phineas waved brightly. "Hi ladies!"
~If you want something fun, the boys'll get it done~
~If you want it real soon just wait an afternoon~
~These two can build anything you can imagine and mooooooore!~
~Impossible's a word the Flynn-Fletchers find absurd~
~They'll make you say wow with a little know-how~
~So trust me you have no idea what's in stooooooooooooore!~
Lisa glanced around carefully. The locals didn't seem disturbed at all, while her fellow Brocktonies were very visibly confused. Her eyes turned back to where Candace was... angrily dancing.
"Seriously, is this normal?"
~I'll reluctantly admit there are perks when it comes to having the brothers I do~
"What, the musical number?" Stacy shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much."
~Like that car they rebuilt and the custom cell phone, and I guess that beach party too~
"I... see," Lisa muttered.
~Sure it stresses me out when they make their machines~
~Cause until they're all done, I never know what it meanst~
~But I know that they love their sister, and yes I love them back, it's true!~
Taylor boggled at the blatant choreography going on in front of her, and the complete lack of reaction that Phineas and Ferb were having to it.
~When they put their minds to it and set down to do it those two boys can make anything they wish~
How, she wondered in a daze, was Isabella keeping up with the professional dancers?
~They'll build anything from a spaceship to the moon to a submarine to save a goldfish!~
And when had Phineas pulled out an electric keyboard?!
~I know the odds can seem like a million to one~
~But if you need anything then to these two you'll run~
~Making dreams into reality is practically these two boys' whole dish!~
~I don't think I can ever forget the theme park for cheese!~
~We went around the globe under two days with ease!~
~They've invented futuristic sports like Football X7!~
~Every day they do something that's like a little slice of heeeeeeeeeeeeaven! Uh, because... it's seventh heaven, you see?~
"....why are you blushing?" Taylor asked suspiciously.
"What?" Isabella looked around quickly. "I'm not blushing, you're blushing!"
"But--"
"CHORUS GIRLS!"
~If you want something fun, the boys'll get it done~
~If you want it real soon just wait an afternoon~
~These two can build anything you can imagine and mooooooore!~
~Impossible's a word the Flynn-Fletchers find absurd~
~They'll make you say wow with a little know-how~
~So trust me you have no idea what's in stooooooooooooore!~
Lisa watched the finale with some bemusement, quirking a brow as Candace somehow twirled down a human pyramid and landed arms extended right in front of her.
"...so, uh... do I applaud?" she asked Stacy, sotto voice.
"I mean, if you want to. Donations to the local choreography corps would probably be more appreciated."
"The what?"
"The choreography corps. What, do you not have those in your world?"
"We don't have spontaneous musical numbers, no," Lisa deadpanned.
"Huh." Stacy considered that for a moment, and then shrugged. "Weird."
"...okay." Taylor turned away from the baffling image of a green-haired boy writing out paychecks to a group of chorus girls. "Okay, so you have organizations devoted to... sudden musical numbers. That's... kind of bizarre, but alright." She took a breath. "What I want to know is where that other singer's voice was coming from!"
"Oh that's just a basic duet simulcast," Phineas explained. "Perfectly common."
"Perfectly common." Taylor nodded in disbelief. "This from the kid who built a miniature gift basket factory in his backyard."
"Yep."
"...You really don't understand how any of this is strange."
Isabella grinned. "I prefer the term extraordinary."
"...but Mimi was practicing with her fire, so Ned's fart exploded! She went flying! Probably would have died if she didn't set her pants on fire to teleport back to the bridge."
"Yeah, falls from that height can be dangerous," Doofenshmirtz agreed from his toolbox. "Just gotta connect this to that..."
Riley looked up from the game she was playing with Perry. "I really hope you finish that up soon. I was kind of in the middle of helping mister Jack when you brought me here."
"Helping him with what?"
"Oh I was improving him," she explained, rolling the dice and moving the unicorn a few spaces along the board. "You know, putting in some muscular enhancements and all that."
"Right, you mentioned you did mention you were some sort of surgical prodigy. Wait, did I pull you out of your world while you were doing surgery?"
"Yep."
"So is this Jack guy in danger? Cause it sounds bad to leave a surgery half done."
"Oh, he's not going to die, I'm too good for that. But, well, he might be inconvenienced."
"Bonesaw? Where'd you go? Be a good girl and come back, I can't move... my anything. And I think my liver just fell on the floor..."
"I'd like to get back as soon as possible, in any case."
"Then it's a good thing you've got a proper evil scientist working on this!" Doofenshmirtz declared.
Perry rolled his eyes and the dice, moving the fedora piece along the board.
"I mean I'm not exactly comfortable sending you back," the scientist continued, "since it's been conclusively proven your life is way worse than mine. And, well, you are only four or five years younger than my own daughter."
"You have a daughter?"
"Oh yeah, Vanessa! She lives with her mother, we both agreed that would be better for her after the divorce, but she comes over to visit a lot." Doofenshmirtz attached a few wires to a computer chip, frowned, and then reattached them to different points. "You'd like her, I think. I mean, she likes dressing in black and she was at that dance party in a scrapyard."
"So she's some sort of... punk goth girl or something?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
Riley paused in the middle of rolling her dice. "Heeeeey... you aren't trying to convince me to stay 'for my own good', are you?"
"What? No! I mean, I wouldn't mind you staying, you seem like such a sweet little girl, but forcing my own will on you would be immoral and irresponsible. And it would probably also count as kidnapping. I don't do that."
"Chrrhrhrhrr," Perry reminded him.
"Alright, fine, I do it on occasion, but only in service of my evil schemes," the doctor corrected. "And I'd never kidnap anybody below the age of consent. I thought that was a given."
"It really isn't," Riley deadpanned, rolling her dice and moving her unicorn to the final space on the board. "So... this is the part where I ring the bell, right?"
Perry nodded, gesturing his concession.
Riley shrugged, reaching out and ringing the tiny bell. "Skiddly-Whifflers...! Hm. I'm not really feeling it. I mean it was fun, but kinda simple? Not really intellectually engaging at all. Back with the others we had to come up with our own games, and inventing the rules was half the fun."
"I guess that makes sense, imagination is one of the most powerful forces on this planet. Right after love, and right before quantum physics." Doofenshmirtz slammed the panel shut. "Okay, I think we should be good to go now! If you just stand on the target painted on the ground there, I'll have you back to your horrible life lickity-split."
"...You're just going to send me back?"
"If you want to go back, yeah. But if you don't that's totally fine too!"
"I mean," she clarified, "you aren't going to test it on anything first? Just in case?"
Doofenshmirtz blinked, looking at the target painted on the balcony. "...Huh. That's a good idea. Wait one second."
Riley watched him run into a storage closet and start muttering to himself as he began to look for something he definitely wouldn't mind losing.
"...he's not going to send me back, is he."
Perry quirked an eyebrow at that statement.
"I saw the way he looked at me when I told him how I met mister Jack. I saw the way you both looked at me, actually, but seeing any expression on a platypus face is weird. But he really doesn't want to send me back, does he?" she continued. "So he's going to saobotage his own machine."
The platypus waggled his hand noncommitally. It wouldn't necessarily be out of character for Heinz to do that, but it also wouldn't be out of the question to fail legitimately.
And, privately, Perry actually did want him to succeed--for all that Riley portrayed herself as a friendly little girl, she had outright admitted to travelling with and being raised by serial killers. He wasn't unsympathetic, especially not after she'd described how 'Mister Jack' had forced her to try to save her family in a twisted game, but... well, he could easily see the girl stumbling across the Flynn-Fletcher house and taking an interest in his boys.
"...You know, you're pretty smart for an animal," Riley mused, leaning in. "And you have very dexterous hands... I wonder how they work?"
Perry leaned back uncomfortably, eyeing the hand that was moving toward the pocket in her apron--
"Alright, I got it!" Doctor Doofenshmirtz stumbled back into the room, carrying a sack of golf clubs. "This'll work out great, right? You can play golf with your buddies!"
"Oooo!" Riley got up, bouncing on her feet as the unsuspecting bag was placed on the sacrifical altar... of SCIENCE.
"Okay, so if I'm right, I just press this button and that thing will vanish. And then, you'll be next! But you won't actually vanish, you'll just go back to your world, which looks like vanishing from our end--"
"I get it."
"Oh, good, I don't have to explain it then. Okay, here we go!"
Doofenshmirtz raised a finger dramatically, before slamming it down on the button. A beam of greenish-white shot out and hit the bag of golf clubs. It began to glow.
"It's working! Oh, it is...!"
The bag continued glowing.
"...hmm." Doofenshmirtz rubbed his chin. "You know, it really should have vanished by now. At least from our perspective. Why is it still glowing?" He wandered over, leaning down to take a closer look. "It's sort of shifting back and forth, like it wants to go but can't. Almost as if there's something on the other side stopping it."
"Really?" Riley tilted her head. "What could possibly stop it?"
"I don't know, an eldritch alien hivemind? Could be anything really. Oh, something's happening, it looks like it's about to--"
The light jumped off the bag and enveloped the Other-Dimensioninator with an ominous glllnchnkr-nk-nk-nk sound. It vibrated into psycadadelics, shifted through various eye-bending forms, before finally spiraling away with a pop. Where once stood a testament of the power of EVIL SCIENCE, there was now nothing but empty space and a bagel.
"Huh." Doofenshmirtz picked up the bagel and took an experimental bite. "Strawberry? Who makes a strawberry bagel? How does that even make sense?!"
"I'm guessing that you're not going to send me back," Riley deadpanned.
"Not today, no," Doof agreed, nibbling on the bagel. "Seems like you're stuck here for a bit."
Riley sighed. "It's... it's fine. I've already upgraded Mister Jack's head to be able to surivive without his body. As long as somebody finds him, he'll be okay."
"Bonesaw? This really isn't funny!"
...sniff, sniffle schnuff...
"Riley? ...Alan? ...Ned?"
...skitter, snnnnnniffff...
"Alright, anybody? Come on! I know you can hear me!"
"Squeak?"
"What was that?"
"Squeak squeak..."
"Oh god. You're a rat. Go away. Shoo--"
Woosh!
"No no no get out of there--no, that is not nest material--no, no no no, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"Schnk, schnk, schnk..."
"But hey," Doctor Doofenshmirtz declared, "that means Perry the Platypus and I can show you how to do the one thing that both evil scientists and secret agents do!" he declared brightly.
Perry blinked, confused.
"And what's that?" Riley asked curiously.
"Weeeeeeee CREATE FALSE IDENTITIES FOR OURSELVES!"
Perry facepalmed.
"That... sounds like a lot of fun, actually," Riley admitted.
"I know, right?" Doofenshmirtz wrapped a hand around her back, guiding her to the computer. "There's a great website for setting up your schooling history, come on, let me show you..."