"As you can see from this picture, the situation is serious!" Major Monogram informed Perry. "You must find Doofenshmirtz and put a stop to it!"

Perry looked at the photograph of a man being savagely attacked by giant snapping turtles, completely baffled. Normally he tuned his boss out and fantasized about warm sunny spots in his backyard, but sometimes he actually listened to the words coming out of the man's mouth and immediately wished he hadn't. The headache that followed as his brain tried vainly to make sense of the situation pulsed right between his eyes. He saluted smartly and managed to avoid massaging the area until he had jumped into his hover jet and was airborne.

Soon he was flying above his nemesis's tall purple building and decided he felt like crash landing through a glass window today. Classic entrance.

CRASH!

Before he had time to assume his fighting position, Perry was hanging upside down, his left foot caught in a rope.

"Well, hello, Perry the Platypus!"

The agent twisted his body around until he came face-to-face with a teal colored platypus with a German accent and messy hair. The platypus continued talking in Dr. Doofenshmirtz's voice.

"I knew you would go for the classic crashing-through-the-window entrance, so set up a classic foot-lasso-on-the-floor trap!" Platy Doof bounced with giddy glee at having guessed correctly. "So, now that you're here I can show you my latest inator! BEHOLD!"

The evil scientist stepped to the side to allow the beholding of a new giant laser cannon with a dolphin hood ornament seated at the tip of the barrel.

"I call it, my DOLPHINATOR!" Doof said proudly. "At first I was gonna call it my Dolphin-inator, but that's such a tongue-twister, you know? So then I thought of Dolphinator, but then people might think it means Dolph-inator and what the heck is a dolph?" He scrunched up his face then shook his head. "So anyway, I went back and forth with this one and eventually decided that Dolphinator just sounded better and stuck with it."

Perry crossed his arms, unimpressed.

"Well, anyway, let me explain my evil scheme." Doof began his monologue. "You remember my fear of diving boards and inability to swim?" Perry nodded. "Well, everyone knows that dolphins are famous for saving humans from drowning and sharks and such, so I decided that if I'm ever going to become a man and not a schnitzel, I should make sure I had one handy while practicing."

The agent raised an upside-down eyebrow.

"Oh sure, there are human life guards," Doof rolled his eyes. "But they're so unreliable! They're always flirting with attractive women in bikinis and can't be bothered to notice if you wore an inner tube that was too small and accidentally flipped over and could not right yourself again..." he shivered at the memory. "So I thought, why not turn ALL life guards into dolphins? I mean, it's not even all that evil if you think about it. It's more of a public service, really."

Perry chattered.

"Okay, so maybe the life guards would be negatively affected by the loss of land-legs, opposable thumbs, and human speech," the doctor consented. "Sheesh, Perry the Platypus, why can't you ever look at the bright side of my schemes? You're such a downer!"

Perry reached inside his hat and handed Doof the picture of a man being savagely attacked by giant snapping turtles.

Doof eyed it quizzically. "What's this? Why are you showing me a picture of... Oooh, I get it!" His eyes lit up with understanding. "You think I'm responsible for this?"

The agent nodded.

"Well, you're right. It's an embarrassing story, actually," he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I'm not really sure what went wrong, but when I activated my Dolphinator instead of turning all the life guards into dolphins, it turned them into giant snapping turtles. I mean, how does a mistake like that even happen? Dolphins and turtles don't even look alike or have similar spelling! Honestly, I'm just as baffled as you are."

Doof gave the picture back, then faced his inator with his tiny hands on his hips. "I thought about fixing it, but then I'd have to take the whole thing apart, look for the problem, fix the problem, reassemble it, recharge it, blah, blah, blah and it's just so much work!" He let his arms go slack and turned back to his nemesis. "So instead I've decided I'm just going to change the name of it to the GIANT-SNAPPING-TURTLE-INATOR and pretend that that was my original plan all along!" He laughed maniacally at his own ingenuity. "I just haven't done it yet because I'm still waiting on the turtle shaped hood ornament I bought online to arrive in the mail."

Perry rolled his eyes and then pointed up and down at Doof.

"Hmm?" Doof looked at his own furry body. "Oh, right. You're wondering why I've reused my Platyp-inator. Yes, well, I figured since the whole dolphin thing was a bust and platypuses are semi-aquatic, it would help me with the swimming. I even got a new pool!"

Doof gestured to an 8-foot long and 30-inch tall inflatable pool on his outdoor patio.

"It's a little smaller than what I would have liked, but my alimony check hasn't come in yet and... never mind, that's not important. Anyway, like I was saying, being a platypus will help my swimming because if I started drowning then my animal instincts would take over!" He brought up his hands in an animalistic ready-to-pounce gesture. "Then when I become human again, those instincts might stick, you know? Originally I was thinking about just asking you to teach me how to swim, Perry the Platypus, but that would just be so awkward."

The agent's eyes widened.

"I know, right? I mean, what's the protocol for asking your nemesis for help? Should I just call up Francis and ask to borrow you for a few hours? Would I need to do something evil first to justify him sending you over, then ask you afterward? What if you were busy or something and said no?" Doof looked away, nervously tapping his fingertips together. "Anyway, there was a lot of uncertainty down that road, so I figured it'd be easier if I just went with the whole turning-myself-into-a-platypus-again plan."

Perry thought about it for a moment, sighed, then used the laser installed on his watch to cut himself loose, flipping so he landed on his feet.

"Eep!" Doof squeaked, turned tail and ran.

Before he got too far, his nemesis launched a flying kick to his backside and flattened him onto his front. He was pinned under the weight of the other platypus suddenly sitting on him and shot his arms up to cover his head and neck, shutting his eyes tight and bracing for another assault.

Instead of a punch or beak-attack, however, he felt a light tapping on his shoulder. Surprised, he looked up to see Perry nonchalantly looking down at him. The agent pointed at the doctor's inflatable pool.

"Eh?" Doof looked back and forth between them. "You wanna use my pool?"

Perry nodded.

"Uh... well, I don't see a problem with that I guess, but you picked a weird time to take a break from foiling, Perry the Platypus."

The agent shook his head and stood up, then reached down and took Doof's hand, helping him to his feet, pointing once more.

The doctor excitedly put the pieces together. "Oooooh! You wanna teach me to swim?"

Another nod from Perry, but then he pulled the snapping turtle picture out of his hat again, pointing meaningfully at it.

"I get it," Doof sighed. "You'll help me if I change the life-guards back to normal... well, I don't usually make a habit of foiling my own evil schemes-" Perry smirked "-on purpose! That one time when I sent you home and destroyed my Levitate-inator was only because it was your birthday and I hadn't gotten you anything. But that was your fault too, you know!" He wore a hurt expression. "You should've told me instead of sneaking back and forth between my apartment and your party and making me think you might be seeing another nemesis..."

The scientist then walked over to his Dolphin/Giant Snapping Turtle-inator and flipped the reverse switch, which was conveniently located at platypus level for some reason.

Before he could think too hard about all the self-defeating designs he subconsciously installed into all his evil inventions, the inator fired a neon green beam into the air where it bounced off a satellite and scattered back down to Earth. A blipping noise from Perry's watch alerted them of an incoming message.

"Good work, Agent P," Major Monogram congratulated him. "The snapping turtles have returned to normal life guards and the tri-state area is safe once again. We expected nothing less from our top agent. Monogram out."

Across town, Mrs. Flynn Fletcher put her hands on her hips. "Really, Candice?" She frowned. "A giant snapping turtle ate Perry's entire stash of meal worms then turned into a lifeguard and ran away? That's the best excuse you have for why you haven't finished your homework?"

Satisfied that the scientist had kept his end of the deal, Perry took him by the hand and led him over to the small inflatable pool. Which, since the doctor was no longer a 6-foot-tall human, didn't look so small anymore. It towered above him, over twice his height! Flashbacks of being trapped between the impossibly high diving boards in Drusselstein and the equally high expectations of his parents appeared unbidden in his mind, filling him again with the familiar dread and sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Doof gulped, his earlier resolve slipping away. "Uh, y-y-you know Perry the Platypus, maybe right now's not a good time to do this." He began to dig in his heels. "I just ate a little while ago before you got here and I don't think it's been a whole hour yet and I might get a cramp. Why don't we watch a movie or something first?" He thought about a film suitable to his situation. "Have you ever seen 'Battle of Moscow,' directed by Yuri Ozerov? It's six hours long, completely in German, and has no English subtitles... but it stars the actor Mikhail Ulyanov! You should watch it just to see him in action. He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1969, you know?"

Perry frowned and crossed his arms.

"We don't have to sit for the entire duration," the scientist continued stalling and then backing away. "We could take a bathroom break every 2 hours and-"

Perry grabbed hold of Doof's wrists, halting both his rambling and retreat, and looked him seriously in the eye.

The poor terrified evil scientist suddenly became teary eyed and whimpered.

Perry's hard stare softened a bit. That pitiful look of the doctor's got to him every time.

Letting go of one of Doof's wrists, the agent slowly lifted his free hand above his chest and took a deep breath, indicating to the other that he should do that same.

After wiping his eyes and taking a few deep breaths together, Doofenshmirtz actually did start to feel better. His initial panic was subsiding and just having Perry's strong presence around made him feel safer.

"Hehe... thank you, Perry the Platypus," he said when he felt he could speak without fear of blubbering. "I guess I should've asked you for help first instead of creating an elaborately complicated scheme, eh?"

His nemesis smiled warmly and reached for Doof's hands, interlocking their fingers together and holding them up between them.

The scientist blushed at this intimate gesture, not really sure what was going on. "Um, Perry the Platypus, what are you-"

The agent suddenly flipped onto his back, using his legs to catapult the doctor up and over the edge of the pool.

"-DOOOIIING?!"

Splash

"glub-glub...I'm drowning!" Doof came up sputtering. "Somebody-glub-glub...HELP ME!-glub-glub-glub..."

Apparently his animal instincts were taking a while to kick in.

Perry easily jumped and cleared the rim of the pool. He landed behind the floundering monotreme, knowing better than to directly approach a panicked swimmer. He quickly snuck his arms under Doof's armpits and wrapped them tightly across his chest, leaning backwards as he kicked his webbed feet and guided them to where the doctor could hold onto the pool's edge.

Coughing up the last of the water he'd swallowed, Doof glared at his savior. "That was a rotten thing to do, Perry! Are you trying to help me or kill me?!"

The agent ignored him and began swimming away.

Doof watched in silent resentment as the expert swimmer began performing different aquatic aerobics: butterflying with windmill movements of his arms and legs, breast-stroking with alternating frog kicks, and even mermaid style, which was really just normal style for a platypus. Finally, the agent swam back to Doof.

"Are you done being a show-off?" the scientist asked icily.

Perry replied by taking Doof's hands in his again and dragging him away from the edge.

Doof immediately began to panic.

"Wait, WAIT!" he squirmed wildly. "I-I'm not ready yet! Let me go!"

Perry shrugged and complied.

Doof realized his mistake as soon as he began sinking and quickly grabbed his hands again, "DON'T LET ME GO! DON'T LET ME GO!"

His nemesis couldn't hide a cocky grin, making Doof blush furiously beneath his fur.

Now that they both knew who was in charge, the scientist stopped fighting. Perry gestured at Doof's legs and chattered. Perry then slowly pull him around the pool while the doctor himself practiced kicking. After a few minute of this without Perry trying to drown or outshine him, Doof started to simply let himself feel comfortable in the water. It was a little cold, but it wasn't so bad.

Perry watched his tense facial features relax and offered the doctor an encouraging smile. They practiced for an hour or so: floating on their backs, holding their breath, treading water, and finally doggy paddling. Doof was soon exhausted, but also happy. He'd finally conquered his fears and was learning how to swim! It was a big moment for him.

"Perry the Platypus, you've done so much for me today!" he said with all sincerity as they paddled across the pool together, Perry keeping a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "This is so easy! I should've done it years ago! Maybe I should try snorkeling next? You know, I have all these pretty under-the-sea screen savers on my computer. I bet they're even nicer to look at in person. Maybe I'll even get lucky and see some dolphins? I'd have to plan it so my trip coincides with their migration patterns, or I could create an inator that just tells them where to go, though I'd probably have to work out the kinks so I don't accidentally attract schools of giant snapping turtles instead..."

The agent stole a glance at him. He'd been steadily picking up speed, subtly pushing the doctor's limits and keeping a watchful eye on Doof's reactions. It seemed the scientist hadn't yet noticed, too distracted by his own ramblings, and was easily keeping pace. He decided the other monotreme looked and felt confident enough to swim solo. He removed his hand from Doof's shoulder, quietly dove underwater, and waited.

It took Doof a minute to notice the sudden loss of contact on his shoulder and the fact that he was monologuing to himself. He stopped paddling and looked around, confused. "Perry? Perry the Platypus? Where'd you go?"

He paddled over to the edge and peered around over the side. His apartment was empty. "Huh ... I guess he left."

This fact made him sad. Sure, he felt confident enough to swim on his own now, but that didn't mean he wanted Perry to leave. "I thought we were having a good time together. Maybe I'm the only one that felt that way? He didn't even say goodbye..."

Perry watched him paddle slowly back across the pool. Why did the doctor never think to look underwater when searching for him? Sometimes that guy was so clueless. He should learn to be more aware of his surroundings.

Then a wicked idea entered his brain. He tried to shake it off, but the urge wouldn't go away. Even as he told himself that such behavior was unprofessional and unbecoming of a secret agent, the opportunity was just too tempting to resist.

Doof felt something bite his tail. He shrieked and began thrashing, kicking violently as he raced toward the edge. "AHHHH! SNAPPING TURTLES! EVERYBODY OUT OF THE POOL!"

About a third of the way, he looked back to see how close he was to being eaten alive. Instead of a gang of giant, angry reptiles, there was only his lone nemesis floating in the center, shaking with silent laughter.

This had a devastating effect on Doof. He felt at first relieved, then embarrassed, then angry, then betrayed. "You're a real jerk, you know that?" he exclaimed. "You were being so nice to me before! I thought that... I thought..."

Perry stopped laughing. He couldn't believe it... he'd made Doof cry.

"You're supposed to be a good guy!" Doof turned away so his nemesis couldn't see the lone treacherous tear that had escaped. "But you're acting like a big bully right now! CURSE YOU, PERRY THE PLATYPUS!"

Guilt squeezed the agent's heart. He'd taken his playful teasing too far. He started swimming towards the doctor.

"NO!" Doofenshmirtz exclaimed, sticking a warning hand out when he noticed him coming closer. "When I say 'Curse you, Perry the Platypus' you're supposed to go away! Shoo! Scat!"

Perry wasn't going anywhere. He swam right up and placed his hand up against Doof's own. He looked over apologetically and chattered softly.

"Oh, now you're sorry?" the scientist angrily yanked his hand away. "Well, it's too late now! I'm mad at you. Just go away and leave me alone..."

The agent was at a loss. He felt horrible and didn't know what to do about it. But he couldn't just leave his nemesis so miserable knowing he was the one at fault.

Without really being aware of what he was doing, Perry's hand reached out and wiped the tear from Doof's face.

The doctor snapped his head back in shock. He hadn't been expecting that.

"Uh..." Doof felt his face get hot, especially where the other's hand had touched his fur. "I... I don't know what you're trying to do, but I already told you it's too la-"

Doof's next words got lost in his throat as Perry leaned in close and planted a light kiss on his forehead.

Doof remained frozen in place by indecision. More than anything he wanted to get away, but there was another part of him that liked the special attention. His parents were never proud of him, his daughter was seldom affectionate, and all his romantic endeavors inevitably fell by the wayside. So, it was nice to know that there was at least one person who genuinely liked and cared about him. Even if it was his sworn nemesis.

"Okay, that's enough!" A red-faced Doof put his hand over the monotreme's bill. "I forgive you, I forgive you! You can stop now."

Perry seemed to realize what he'd done and turned just as red. What had come over him? It'd hurt so bad to see Doof that crushed and he'd desperately wanted to make things right. He normally wouldn't have gone about it the way he just did, but wasn't too upset with the results. Though he was shocked by his own actions, he noticed he wasn't... disgusted. Like, at all. Even better, Doof was no longer crying.

"...Well, this is awkward," the scientist avoided his gaze. "I think I'm starting to get pruney from being in here so long. Wanna get some lunch?"

It looked like Doof hadn't minded it either, if he still wanted to be around him. Perry tipped his hat down to hide a small smile and nodded. He still had a while left before his owners began to miss him.

Doof reached the edge of the pool first and hoisted himself up, then reached down to give Perry a hand.

Though he could easily have jumped out of the pool and made a perfect landing, Perry took the proffered hand. The entire length of his arm tingled at the contact. It was obvious by Doof's clammy grip and shaky smile that he was experiencing similar effects. He wasn't sure if or how this incident would change anything between them, but there was definitely something new going on inside himself. It was like that time he'd accidentally eaten a box full of cocoons from Phineas's 'Butterflies in the Classroom' kit and they'd hatched inside his stomach. When they jumped down together, Perry noticed Doof was still holding his hand. And he was in favor of that.

It was going to be an interesting summer.

A/N: Platypus sex involves venomous battles, courtship dances... and tail biting xD