Taylor had entered the Flynn-Fletcher house through the backyard on her last visit. Something about its design encouraged visitors to walk across the grass and pass through the sliding doors. But this time, she decided to put in the extra effort and actually knock on the front door like a civilized person.
She even avoided being startled when she realized the woman opening the door was somebody she'd never met before.
"Hello?"
"Uh, hey." Taylor waved awkwardly. "I'm Taylor Hebert. I'm... one of Candace's friends," because there was no way she would say she was a friend of the boys, that would be creepy.
"Huh." The woman narrowed her eyes. "I don't remember meeting you before..."
"Yeah, we met for the first time a couple of days ago. After, you know." Taylor gestured vaguely at the air.
The woman looked at her for a moment longer. "...Candace?" she called up the stairs.
"Yeah Mom?"
"Do you know a Taylor Hebert?"
"Oh yeah!" Candace came down the stairs. "Hi, Taylor, what's up?"
Taylor shrugged. "Not much. Dad and I are still settling in."
Candace's mom gave her a discerning look. "You're new in town?"
"You could say that, yeah."
"Alright." The woman backed off. "I'll leave you girls alone to do whatever it is you're planning to do today."
"Honestly, I just dropped by to visit," Taylor admitted.
"Yeah, that happens a lot," Candace agreed. "We're all very friendly here in Danville. Well, most of us. There are exceptions."
"Let me know if you see any," Candace's mom said. "I'm going to the grocery store to pick up some things. We seem to be running low on food, for some reason." Taylor thought back to the swarm of gift baskets, and kept her face very still while a pair of butterflies suddenly started fluttering around in a panic. "Oo, butterflies," the woman noted as she stepped past her.
Candace sighed. "See? She sees the butterflies. I bet you that Phineas and Ferb could be building a rocket in the backyard right now, and Mom wouldn't see it at all."
"...you want to check on them before we go wherever we're going?"
"Yeah, that's probably a good call," Candace admitted. "If they're doing something normal, I should be able to enjoy most of the day. Until they do something weird. They always do something weird."
"I'm sure they do," Taylor said indulgently, following her through the house.
"Huh, you've got a point Ferb." Phineas decided. "Alright, let's do it!"
"Hey Phineas," Candace said cheerfully as she and Taylor entered the backyard, "what're up to?"
"We're reinventing the common bed mattress into a multi function entertainment system, including sleep, maximumizing jumping potential, and a full surround-sound entertainment system!"
"A surround-sound entertainment system in a mattress?" Taylor asked doubtfully. "Wouldn't the electronics needed for that lead to an uncomfortable sleeping surface?"
"You'd think that, but thanks to the wonders of soft robotics, we can actually adjust the give and support of the top portion of the mattress on the fly, leaving the lower portion free to install the mechanical necessities."
"You're making robot beds?" Candace sneered. "Oh, you are so busted! MOM! MOOOOOOOOM!"
"...huh." Taylor watched her go, before turning back to the boys. "So. Jumping on the bed?"
"Yep."
"Without falling off and cracking your head."
"We'll wear helmets."
"Would it be comfortable to sleep in helmets?"
Phineas rose a hand, paused, and rubbed his chin. "Hmm. Ferb, we're going to have to come up with some sort of safety measure built into the bead itself. Maybe a force field? That could also work as a resonance device for the surround sound system, and even filter out the humidity of the surrounding air..."
Taylor crossed her arms, smiling faintly as she watched the boys overengineer a mattress. It was... strangely endearing, in its own way.
Now if only she could ask about their platypus's secret underground lair. Ah well, she had other means of figuring that out...
"Good morning Agent P--GOOD LORD! That's a grasshopper on your desk, and it ISN'T wearing a fedora!"
Agent P chrrrred, looking up at the entry tube he'd exited.
"Well, we'll get the grasshopper on the fast track to deputization. It'll be a great diversity hire, we have a serious lack of bugs. For now though, let's just get to the briefing." Major Monogram cleared his throat. "Our intelligence agents have discovered that Doctor Doofenshmirtz has been reviewing numerous articles about Drusselstein wildlife, which, as we all know, has some of the most biologically baffling creatures on the planet. Like the Doonkelberry bats, who might actually be vampires. Or the Ocelot population, who have lived there for longer than the discovery of the Americas, despite Ocelots being native to central America. Or the Goozim. Frankly, I don't know what's going on with that animal, its existence makes no biological sense..."
Agent P, the american platypus, decided not to comment on this observation.
"Ahem. Well." Major Monogram cleared his throat. "Right. Anyway, the point is Drusselstein wildlife is probably not something we want Doof to bring to the Tristate Area. Especially with all this Brockton Bay nonsense. Can you imagine what would happen if any of these capes of theirs saw a Drusselstein cockroach? I can." His eyes grew distant for a moment. "My gosh... they aren't ready. Ahem. Your mission is to go to Doof's lair, and make sure that whatever he's planning is contained. And stopped, obviously. Good luck, Agent P!"
With a salute, the platypus hopped out of his chair and rushed over to his platypus-sized motorscooter, driving out of the underground lair.
"...but seriously, some of those Drusselstein critters make no sense," Major Monogram said. "I mean, how does a cockroach the size of a cat breathe? Or even walk? The square-cube law just doesn't make it work!" His eyes drifted down to the console. "Oh, right, the grasshopper. Ahem. Are you ready for a life of daring and adventure?"
The grasshopper's antennae twitched, before it jumped onto the ground and hopped for the door.
"Wait! Come back! At least sign a nondisclosure agreement! CARL, WE'VE GOT A CONTAINMENT BREACH!"
"I'm on it, sir."
A truce had never been formally declared, but Amy thought they'd have more time before it was over. But, unfortunately, she'd underestimated the stupidity of nazis and yakuza wannabes once again. And now she was caught in the middle of a gunfight in a foreign city with a lot of panicking (Brockton Bay) civilians and a lot of confused (Danville) citizens, trying to navigate the burning wreckage of god knows how many cars and busses while FLIPPIN' HOOKWOLF was getting into fisticuffs with GOSH-DARNED LUNG, of all people.
The murder blender and the rage dragon were happily tearing into each other as well as the road around them, while their cape pals were picking off mooks from the other team. Oni Lee was teleporting through the area and slicing throats, Stormtiger and Cricket were ripping through the pan-asian ocean of enemies with frightening ease, and Amy was the only Hero on the scene and she was NOT a fighter, holy crap, she was having to struggle just to keep some of these people alive not to mention the Danville half was very clearly not used to cape fights and weren't even listening to her trying to get them out of the danger zone and somebody had pulled out a guitar of all things and started a riff which was actually really good but now was NOT THE TIME--
Amy was frightened, stressed, annoyed, and focused more on getting people out then she was on watching the fight. She missed Lung punting Hookwolf through the air, and looked up too late to dodge the mass of knives falling toward her.
In the half-second between seeing her doom and realizing she was going to die, an arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her from her seemingly inevitable fate.
The sudden motion disoriented Amy more then the sound of steel clattering onto gravel, and for the briefest of moments she though her sister had saved her in the nick of time. But no, Vicky didn't ride a motorscooter, she didn't wear a medieval blouse and helmet combo, and she most certainly did not have freckles. Or four fingers, she noted with a glance down at the arm holding her. She'd barely processed these revelations when her mysterious rescuer put her on the sidewalk and handed her a stack of pizzas from out of her motorscooter's castle-themed sidecar.
"Keep these safe, will you? I need to clear the road."
Amy blinked, stared at the pizzas, then looked up just as the pizza delivery girl pulled out a goddamned SWORD and drove her motorscooter off the inclined undercarriage of a burning car right into Lung's surprised and burning face.
"...what in the actual f--?!"
Her curse was cut off by the motorbike exploding in Lung's mouth, ripping his lower jaw off and propelling the blonde woman into the crowd of gangsters. As Amy watched, flabbergasted, the stranger's landing slammed Stormtiger into the ground, her sword smacked Cricket unconscious before she could even retaliate, she casually deflected a strike from Oni Lee who had literally teleported in behind her before jamming a pair of fingers through the mask's eyeholes, then she proceeded to swordfight her way through a gunfight, smacking multiple of the smaller weapons out of gangsters hands with every swing.
"Wh... wha....?"
Hookwolf had recovered from his ballistic arc by the time she made it through to the Empire sided, and upon seeing a knight errant destroying his goons he rushed for her. What followed was a display of martial prowess that ended with her jabbing a sword into his eye, making him reel back in agony and incidentally carving into the side of a horse trailer that just happened to be in the road. Three of the horses bailed in a panic, but the warrior woman mounted the final white horse, who reared up dramatically before smashing Hookwolf's head into the pavement.
As the sirens of both the police and the PRT grew closer, she galloped back over to Amy and swiped the pizza boxes back. "Thanks, princess!"
"Glrk," said Amy, watching her ride into the sunset.
No, wait, that was just another burning car, one she vaulted with ease.... oh crap, right, the civilians! Amy managed to gather her thoughts and turn back to the crowd just as red, blue, white, and green vehicles all emerged, taking a deep breath.
"Alright, listen up! If anybody's injured, line up and come to me! I am a healer and emergency responder!" She paused for a moment. "License pending legal review due to the whole city merging thing," she added. "You can refuse if that makes you uncomfortable."
"Aren't you a little young to be patching people up?" asked one of the adults.
Amy sighed. "Yes, yes I am. But you're bleeding and I'm here, go ahead and ask the Brockton people around you about Panacea if you don't believe me."
Somehow, that actually got through to the group. They lined up, talking almost too casually to each other for people who had just suffered through their first cape fight. As she worked through the monotony of healing scrapes, burns, and bruises, she found her thoughts drifting to the strange girl who had just saved her life. Her fighting style had looked less like the practical kind that most Brockton capes used, and more like the sort of flashy choreography that happened in Aleph films. Heck, it had somehow happened in tune with the weird guitar riff that one guy was playing. The lyrics about a brave pizza-delivering heroine fighting monsters and thugs almost perfectly matched up. Not that Amy fully realized that at the time, but in retrospect...
...Well. The PRT was probably going to want her report on the mysterious pizza knight. Especially since she could see some people already posting videos of it online. Granted, they were Danville natives, so their phones were actually working, but still. When the sound of a motorscooter caught her attention, she glanced at the road almost expecting to see the woman had returned, but instead she only saw a platypus in a fedora. For a moment, she felt a strange sense of disappointment.
Then she blinked. A platypus in a fedora?! That--wait, hadn't Vicky mentioned something about that?
"Uh, miss?"
"Right, sorry," Amy apologized, turning back to the line. "Do I have your permission to heal you?"
Motorscooters, and their oddly intriguing riders, could wait.
"I cannot believe Mom wouldn't listen to me!" Candace complained. "I mean, I can believe it, it happens all the time, but for something like this?"
"You have to admit, jumping on the bed sounds mundane. And she did check the boys bedroom."
"Yeah, but the boys almost never do any of their projects in their bedroom. Which is... weird, now that I come to think of it," Candace admitted after a moment. "I mean, if they wanted privacy--wait, of course they don't want privacy, they're always showing off!"
Taylor hummed sympathetically, casually nudging her out of the way of a bicycle.
"One of these days I'm going to bust them, Taylor. One of these days, I'm going to show Mom exactly what they've been up to. One of these days I'm going to win."
"You know, maybe it's just because I grew up in a world where children could get superpowers and fight villains with superpowers, but I'm not... I'm not quite seeing where the concern is, here," Taylor admitted. "I mean, sure the boys do ridiculous things. That's definitely weird and notable. But they also seem to be... responsible about it? They're not just building death rays because why not build death rays, they're actually thinking things through, if I understand correctly."
Candace huffed, crossing her arms. "Sure, thinking of new ways to annoy me."
"I don't... I don't know if that's part of their thought process."
"They literally have a line about driving me insane in their theme song!"
"...they have a theme--? What am I saying," Taylor muttered, "of course they have a theme song. Because this world is obsessed with musical numbers, apparently..."
"Your world has super heroes, don't any of them have a theme song?"
Taylor thought about it for a moment. "I guess Mouse Protector does..."
"See, there you go!"
"But I don't think she actually sings it while she's fighting villains. Or has a backup chorus singing it, for that matter."
"Huh. Has anybody ever told you how weird your world is?"
Taylor lowered her glasses to give Candace a very unimpressed look.
"What? What's that unimpressed look for?"
"My world's the weird one?"
"Well, yeah." Candace started counting off on her fingers. "You have dollar coins instead of dollar bills, you treat costumes like uniforms for superheroes instead of colorful fun wear, you have giant monsters that scare everyone half to death just talking about them and, oh yeah, you write songs without regularly singing them! Who does that?! It's like buying a bunch of pie crusts and then only making one pie!"
"Alright, so we have our oddities," Taylor allowed. "Counterpoint: You have that krimpiloo thing, Bangaroos, regular alien abductions, and--let me remind you, I have only known them for three days--Phineas and Ferb." She crossed her arms. "There's the pot calling the kettle black, but this is more like the ocean calling a lake wet."
Candace opened her mouth to protest... then shut it slowly, curling her finger back. "Alright, fine, maybe you have a point. But the song thing is still pretty funky, you have to agree."
"Not really. Maybe people on this Earth are just wired for music differently. Where did Stacy say she was going to meet us again?"
"So nobody's going to mind that we're just wandering into this festival?" Lisa asked.
"Nah, it's a festival," Stacy replied casually.
"It's a festival celebrating retrofuturism," Lisa deadpanned. "I don't know about you, but I don't look very retro or futuristic."
"Well that's an easy fix." Stacy held out a top hat with a lot of gears turning on it. "Head cooler! For when your brain overheats."
Lisa scoffed. "Do you really think--wait." She frowned for a moment, taking the top hat and looking inside it. "What... What?! How in the--I mean, that's not--this is insane!"
"I know, right?"
"No, I mean this could actually help me with--" Lisa cut herself off.
"With what?"
"...Nothing." She turned to the stall owner with a bit too much casual nature. "How much?"
Perry narrowed his eyes as he entered Doofenshmirtz's darkened lair. There was still enough light from the various gadgets and gizmos to navigate, but that didn't mean he could see everything. He stepped forward with great caution...
Something clamped onto the back of his neck and he flopped on his face, completely unable to move any of his limbs.
"Surprise!" Doofenshmirtz cried as he flicked on the light. "Good to see you, Perry the Platypus. Do you like your trap? Riley made it just for you!"
"It's based on a surgical neural clamp!" Riley said cheerfully, pressing a button on a remote she was holding to make a robot arm lifted Perry off the ground. "It stops neural transmissions in a certain range from transmitting through your spine, so you can't move your arms or legs! Your autonomic functions are still working, though, cause I'm just that good."
"It's ingenious," Doofenshmirtz said with pride. "Could revolutionize the trap industry entirely! And the spider-design for the base, that is super aesthetic. I think Riley could become one of the best evil scientists in the biz when she grows up."
Perry, dangling helplessly from the end of a long robot arm, couldn't help flinching when Riley giggled. "Aw, thanks Doctor D!"
"Doctor D. I like that." Doofenshmirtz smiled, ruffling Riley's hair and getting a squawk of annoyance. "Anyway, today's going to be a super basic scheme. Mostly to introduce Riley to how we usually do things. Come on, I've got some slides set up for my backstory this time round."
Perry's robotic captor scuttled after the doctor, Riley walking after him with curiosity. "Hey, what is that thing?"
"This? Oh, it's an overhead projector. They used to be super common in classrooms when I was your age." Doofenshmirtz flipped a switch. "See, this is a lightbox--obvious, I know--and this lens and mirror projects a larger image on that wall over there. And if we put this translucent picture on the light, adjust the position on this bar a bit..."
"Wow," Riley breathed as she looked at the wall, "that is one big bug!"
"Yep! That is the Drusselstein cockroach. I used to have one as a pet."
"It's like the size of a cat!" Riley cried, gesturing at the image on the wall. "How does that work? The square-cube law alone--"
"A mystery biologists have been trying to figure out for a long time," Doofenshmirtz admitted. "And one that made my own childhood a menace. Don't get me wrong, Hoarfrost--my cockroach--was a sweetheart, but he wasn't the only big bug in Drusselstien." He quickly replaced the image. "But our bed bugs... those were a real menace."
"That bug's as big as a rat," Riley noted. "And... honestly, those don't look like any bed bugs I've been bitten by."
"Well, to be fair, they're in a completely different genus. More closely related to some moths. And they're called bed bugs because they eat beds." Doofenshmirtz shuddered as he put another image on the projector. "There's nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to find your mattress half-eaten and a few dozen bugs the size of your arm casually nibbling at you."
"...How do you have that image for this sort of projector?"
"I prepare a lot for these backstories," Doofenshmitz replied. "Anyway, that brings me to my point--so many people say 'don't let the bedbugs bite' so casually these days, without even thinking about what it means to us poor souls who actually lived. So I decided, it's time to change that!" He turned the projector off and walked away. "BEHOLD, THE BEDBUGINATOR!"
Perry tried to turn his head and failed.
"Er... Riley, could you--?"
"Huh? Oh yeah!" Riley pressed a button on her remote, rotating Perry enough to see Doof's latest work.
"Thanks. BEHOLD, THE BEDBUGINATOR!" The doctor gestured at the object. "It teleports bedbugs straight from Drusselstein to the target! With this, I can infest any bed in the entire TRISTATE AREA!"
"That's... huh." Riley tilted her head. "I guess that's one way of tormenting people."
"A festival for retrofuturism?"
Candace gave Taylor a side-eye glance. "What, you don't have festivals back in your world?"
"Not very many in Brockton Bay, no. There might be some in smaller towns, or towns with actual Protectorate protection, but a festival in Brockton Bay tends to attract villains." Taylor looked around warily. "I'm honestly surprised there aren't any here yet."
"Heeeeeeey!" Lisa called brightly as she arrived. "There you two are!"
"Oh hey, Lisa!" Candace greeted. "Nice hat!"
Lisa tipped the cog-and-pipe encrusted top hat with a grin. "Thanks. It's a professional head cooler, prevents the brain from overheating." She gave them a smirk. "You have no idea how much this will change for me, seriously. I won't have to buy headache pills in bulk anymore!"
Taylor cringed slightly. "That's... good to know...? Are you okay?"
"Just a minor medical condition, no need to worry about it," Lisa assured her. "Especially now that I have this AWESOME HAT. I cannot understate how ridiculously awesome this hat is. If you gave me a choice between Armsmaster's helmet and this hat, I would choose this hat."
"...good for you, I guess."
"Yeah, and I got these steam-powered grappling gloves!" Stacy added, showing off a pair of gauntlets riddled with complex tubing and wires. "Check it out!" She held out her hands, and the gloves shot off, connected only by thin cables wrapped around her upper arms.
"Huh." Candace followed the erratic path of the steam jets with her eyes. "How are you aiming those?"
Stacy blinked for a moment. "...ooooooooooh, I knew I was forgetting somethyaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing--!"
The other three watched in increasingly horrified amusement as the gloves dragged Stacy through stalls and across stages in an erratic pattern, her screaming voice dopplering as randomly as her trajectory.
"...we should probably try to help her," Taylor offered hesitantly.
"How would we do that exactly?" Lisa asked. "I mean, I can predict her path, but I'm not skilled enough to uncouple rogue jet gloves mid flight--and that is not something I thought I would ever say."
Candace's shoulders slumped with a sigh. "I'll do it. Just tell me how to jump into her path."
"...Alright, you're going to want to get on that statue of a cat battling a train engine first..."
Within seconds, Candace was in position. Lisa was tightly grabbing the brim of her new hat, watching Stacy closely.
"Hold... hold... get ready... NOW! JUMP NOW!"
With the grace of a startled gymnast Candace lept from the statue, latching onto her friend as she passed. Taylor watched in astonishment as Candace wrapped her hands around the bracelet attachments and, with one smooth movement, tore them off Stacy's arms. The pair of them went tumbling across the ground, kicking up grass and dirt, while the gloves continued their steam-powered journey through the air. One flew out of the festival and toward a distant purple building. The other...
Taylor winced as it entered a structure with a 'Jet's Packs' sign over the door. She winced again as she heard various crashing sounds. Then her jaw dropped in sheer disbelief as the structure launched itself in a ballistic arc on six powerful flaming jets.
"...what," said Lisa.
"What," agreed Taylor.
Candace followed their gaze. "What?" she asked the two of them. "You've never seen a flying building before?"
"...I think I need to recharge my hat," Lisa eventually managed to get out in a wavery voice.
Missy took a deep breath as she approached the Flynn-Fletcher house. Sure, she was basically being sent on a playdate with other kids, and normally she'd be upset being treated as a child. However, these two kids in particular were potentially high-priority gang targets, completely unprepared to handle villains or gangsters. And the things they built might become important for the PRT's continued stay on Earth Allegrezza.
(She was still very surprised that they were going with Assault's suggestion, but after research into the existence of the choreography corps Missy had to admit the title fit.)
Tinkers, in general, were predictably unpredictable. Other capes could learn to use their powers in new and exciting ways, but only tinkers could create new powers on the fly. Well, them and certain trumps, but those were going to be basically nonexistent on this Earth. So when Missy pushed open the fence gate, she was prepared for anything. Or, at least, she thought she was prepared for anything.
Seeing Phineas jumping on a bed in the backyard was, admittedly, not something she could have expected.
"Hmm. The tension seems to be a bit low, Ferb. The downward energy isn't being transferred into the jumps as efficiently as it could be."
Missy looked at the bed. Then at Ferb, who was stepping away from a control console and heading toward the bed with a blowtorch. Then at Phineas, who was casually stepping off the bed.
"...what is going on here?" she asked, trying to keep her confusion and disappointment out of her voice.
"Oh hey Missy! Ferb and I are working on making a multifunctional bed that can serve as a comfortable sleeping cushion and a safe indoor trampoline! We're also considering adding a massage function."
"I see," said Missy.
"You want to help?"
"...Sure," Missy lied, "why not." There was no way she was going to tell the other Wards about this. Hopefully they were having a better day then she was.
"You say you're some sort of superhero?"
"Yes ma'am--"
"Then why aren't you flying?"
"Not all superheroes fly, ma'am." Gallant kept his voice level. "You've already met Panacea, after all, and she doesn't fly."
"Not on my own," Amy said with a small grin. "My sister carries me around, though."
"And you expect me to believe that a superhero can't afford a jetpack?" the woman insisted.
"...Ma'am, I don't know how it is in this world, but on Earth Bet jetpacks were not common technology."
"Unbelievable."
"To be fair," Amy interjected with smirk, "Gallant is a Ward. A junior hero, I mean. He probably hasn't earned his jetpack license yet."
"Well, that should be easy enough, I've seen kids using jetpacks all the time!"
Gallant rubbed his forehead. "Ma'am, do you really expect some sort of jetpack rental store to just fall out of the sky--?" The sound of metal and stone crashing into the ground reverberated through the ruined street, making him jump in surprise and spin around. Somehow, impossibly, a building with a 'Jet's Packs' sign had nestled itself in a nearby alleyway.
"HA!" the woman crowed triumphantly. "THAT'S what it feels like!"
"So Perry's been trapped, and I've given my backstory and showed off my Inator," Doofenshmirtz explained to Riley. "Now this is the part where things can get a little crazy. I activate and try to use my Inator, Perry the Platypus escapes his trap, we fight while he tries to thwart me..." He looked her over thoughtfully. "Actually, maybe you should watch this from a safe place, I don't want you getting hurt."
Riley crossed her arms. "Doctor D, I've improved my body with multiple forms of tinkertech. I don't think Norm could hurt me if he tried."
"Well yeah, but he's Norm," Doof said dismissively. "This is Perry the Platypus!"
Riley looked at the secret agent doubtfully. "I mean... he's basically paralyzed right now. I don't see how he's going to escape that."
"I know it sounds ridiculous, but he's one of the best agents that OWCA has."
"OWCA?"
"The Organization Without a Cool Acronym. They're the ones that assign nemesis-s to the evil scientists. Nemesises. Nemesi?"
"The Plural Of Nemesis Is Nemeses, Sir!"
"Right, that."
"So...." Riley's face screwed up. "They're like the PRT?"
"The who?"
"The Parahuman Response Team. They handle capes who do crime." Riley paused for a moment. "Capes is another word for parahumans. Did I ever explain parahumans? I think I did."
"I think you did too, back when you were explaining the people you travel with. Actually, I met a girl who could fly yesterday," he added thoughtfully. "You think she's one of these capes?"
"Probably, yeah. Of course the PRT never caught mister Jack or the rest of us," Riley pointed out with a cocky grin. "So I don't think I should be too scared of this OWCA of yours."
Doofenshmirtz shook his head with a sigh. "Hubris is one of the most common dangers any evil scientist can face."
"That is a platypus!" Riley cried, pointing at the agent with the remote. "With a neural clamp I created paralyzing him! There is no way in the WORLD for him to escape that trap, let alone thwart your evil scheme!"
It was at that exact moment that a steam-powered glove burst through the window, spun end over end, and extended a single finger to punch a button on the remote. The clamp didn't open--Riley was not stupid enough to make THAT a remote function--but the spider legs of the trap sprung upward, crashing the whole thing into an overhead light. Electricity arced down the machine, forcing the clamp open, and releasing Perry the Platypus into a freefall that blended into a dramatic roll when he hit the ground, ending in an action-ready pose.
Riley blinked.
"...no, that... how could... huh?!"
"See, this is what I was talking about." Doofenshmirtz shrugged, picking up a wrench and taking a fighting stance. "Don't worry, it's your first time. You'll get used to it."
Phineas ran his pencil down the clipboard. "Alright, the variable cushioning matrix is properly padded, the perspiration compensation ducts are cleaning up, and the sleepy-sound-suppression speaker system is sublime."
"I still can't believe we managed to install all that into one ordinary-looking mattress," Missy said, staring at the object in question with clear awe.
"We're good at what we do."
"Well yeah, but... this looks like an ordinary mattress," Missy explained. "Not a tinkertech one. If I were to show it to anybody, they'd think it came from the store, and not that it's some sort of super bed. I'm not even sure I could think of a Tinker that would make tinkertech beds, honestly."
Phineas looked at her curiously. "Why wouldn't they?"
"Oh, uh... tinkers have different specialties. Like Armsmaster's is efficiency, Squealer's is making vehicles... Kid Win hasn't figured out his specialty, but when he does he might be one of the best there is. And then there's Leet, I don't even know what his specialty is." Missy shook her head. "My point is, I've never heard of a tinker who would make a bed. What would that even look like? What would they even make?"
"Hypothetically, a tinker that specialized in sleep gear could make a variety of pajamas, sleeping masks, sheets, bedrolls, white noise machines, and various tranquilizers and medical devices in addition to the standard furniture required for sleep," Ferb offered.
"...Huh. That's... actually, yeah, that would be pretty versatile." Missy rubbed the back of her head. "I'll have to ask my uncle if he knows of any sleeping gear tinkers. If anybody would know, it's him."
"Now all we need to do is test the variable protective forcefield!" Phineas declared. "That'll require some fine tuning, but we should be able to get it set up within the next hundred and fourty seven seconds.
"That's... a very specific period of time."
"Engineering requires specificity."
As Riley watched the surprisingly acrobatic platypus battle with doctor Doofenshmirtz, an expression of increasing incredulity formed on her face. "Do you really get into fistfights with a platypus every day?"
"Hey, it's not always fistfights!" Doofenshmirtz protested. "Sometimes we use weapons, sometimes we race each other... there was that one time we both got in giant robots for a fight."
"Ah... huh." Riley shook her head, walking up to the inator's controls. "Well, since you're busy fighting your nemesis, I think I'm going to fire your Bedbuginator. Wouldn't want it to go to waste!"
The doctor quickly blocked Perry the Platypus from rushing up to the Inator. "Wait, are you sure you can handle that? It's a complicated piece of equipment!"
"It's not a problem!" she assured him. "I've been handling complex equipment since I was six! Sure, most of that was medical and surgical tinkertech, but that just means it was all manual. This has a control interface!" She tapped a few keys, pulled some levers, and... her finger hovered over a pair of buttons. "Quick check, the green button is fire and the red is the self destruct, right?"
"No no, the green button is the chamber loader and the red button is the self destruct. The firing mechanism is that big switch on the back."
"Oooooh." Riley nodded slowly, ignoring the sound of an old man getting walloped by a platypus. "That makes sense. Hey Norm, you want to hit that switch?"
"I Would Rather Pull It, If It's All The Same To You!"
"Yeah, that's," Riley began, before shaking her head. "Never mind. Okay, pull the switch."
Norm lumbered over. "Pulling Switch!" he declared, and did just that.
"And that's the variable protective force field done!" Phineas declared.
"...Why is there a variable protective force field?" Missy asked.
"Well, jumping on trampolines without proper protection and safety protocols can lead to serious injuries, and they're designed for that. Jumping on beds would have similar risks. Also, it keeps spiders and other bugs from getting on the bed."
Missy conceded the point with a sigh. "Yeah, that makes sense." For a moment, she just stood there, considering the bed with the two boys. "...okay, so it's done, right?"
"Yep."
"So... we going to test it?"
"Well I was waiting to see if a random beam of energy came out of the sky and did anything," Phineas admitted, "but that doesn't seem to be happening today."
"A random--wait, does that happen often?"
"Eh." The boy shrugged. "Few times a week."
Thomas Calvert sighed as he, finally, managed to enter his bedroom. The last couple of days had been quite stressful, and he was eager to just spend some time sleeping on his own, luxurious, beeeeaaaaaaaahhh...
Those were bugs.
Those were some big bugs.
Those were some very big bugs eating his mattress.
Calvert managed to remain calm, by dint of splitting the timeline and screaming in the one that he was going to drop, while in the timeline he was going to keep he simply pulled out his phone and quickly hit the speed dial for the PRT. "Hello, this is consultant Calvert. I have something I need to call in."