They let me walk out with fairly little obstruction, the two men on either side of me acted as blinders narrowing my view to the waiting van. But I was free to walk and that meant I didn't need to be restrained. I had passed. My shaved head ducked under the top of the van.

It would be hard to explain. But my thumb, now screwed in place between two metal splints would be harder still. The bruised and wobbling from my aggravated leg, I stood no chance, even the parents would notice. Candice would meep at the sight of my disheveled form and run upstairs to call Stacy and spread the news far and wide. The fireside girls would eye me with even more wariness. Isabella might finally convince Phineas that I'm weird. The boys-

The van squealed to a stop, and I lurched a bit, adjusting to get out was slow going. I was exhausted and rubbery from diving, and not even a step out of the vehicle it roared away around a blind corner, I glared after them. Like I even cared who they were or where they came from. If I didn't need this job.

I wrung and un-wrung my hands on the walk back to the big purple sky scraper. A hat, gloves? No, it wouldn't be enough. I would need an entire costume, and I knew just where to get one.

I fed the expired meter, but it gave no indication of how long it had been expired. The three tickets clipped under the windshield wipers told me three hours at least. So at most I presumed I'd been gone five hours.

The 'missing parts' I'd gone to get were actually stashed in the trunk. I coiled the handles of the shopping bag around my broken thumb, hiding it's color and metal apparatus from sight. I pulled on a baseball cap, a memento from one of the only inventions I'd been around to see made this year.

A gigantic softball stadium, as the boys thought softball was an underrated sport.

My ear had a dribble of dried blood in it, and it was hard to steel myself away from grimacing in pain. I let myself limp to the intercom, but straightened and looked as unremarkable as I could when Heinz answered.

He stood too close to the camera like always, giving an unflattering view of the inside of his nose. "Oh Perry, how nice of you to finally pay us a visit!" He said in mock greeting.

I held up the bag of supplies and like an evil scientist dolphin he squealed his delight. "What's that? Did you actually get me the weapons grade aluminum I asked for?" He buzzed me in, slamming the intercom shut, but opening the main door.

At his floor of the building I made myself walk evenly, although my leg complained. The 'particle cleaner' tent was still up, but it was beginning to peel off his doorway revealing the circular metal porthole that we'd been sucked in through last time. I side stepped it and let myself in.

Heinz looked up for a moment, hand on a big red button, before bashfully putting it behind his back.

It was probably a trap, I'd already destroyed the days inator. He just wanted to catch up for lost time. I almost smiled despite myself, but gave him my best disapproving look. He was pretty unaffected, the doofus.

"Are you ready for a test ride, boys?"

They were nowhere in sight, but I could hear their power tools clatter down. I turned the corner to see their project, but a truly massive tentacle coiled around my midsection and lifted me from the ground.

Holding my hat on with one hand and offering the grocery bag of supplies with the other, another tentacle lashed out and came away with the supplies drawing them under the giant squid and into a big black beak. It ate the supplies and I could hear the boys rummage around, Phineas's voice muffled as he accounted for the items.

The squid tentacle game me a thumbs up, but I didn't give one back. I was already up for air. Then the beak opened again and I was pulled in suddenly.

It was rubbery inside and claustrophobic, the walls sliding around as I moved past them. Like if I were stuck in a deflated bouncy castle. There were obvious channels this way and that, with three main collapsed 'hallways' I could push my way through.

I looked around and whistled, "So you made it bigger."

"Actually this was the plan all along!" Phineas called out from behind the rubber fold of one of the walls. So he was in the center hallway, I imagined Ferb would be to his right, like always so I took the leftmost hallway. It capped off in front of a screen. I could see through the eye of the squid, but the screen was also split and I could see both boys their arms submerged in the walls of the rubber thing we were in. There were glove like sockets in front of me and I pushed my arms into them. They were heavy collapse-able tubes with all kinds of odd feeling parts inside. Hard plastic nubs every which way.

My arms pressed against the hard rubber bits and I could see through the eye that it was moving the arms in a whipping motion. Just by sliding my arms in and out I would rattle two of the arms, suspending them and wiggling them about like they were alive.

We crawled around the corner and when we were right behind him, I tapped Doofensmirtz on the shoulder.

He turned around with a glare, "Oh no you already blew up one invention today!"