AN: I guess it's fair to warn you, there will be some Perry/Doof on the later chapters, but slight, and more one-sided. Also, tell me if the rating is too low. It's rated for violence in later chapters, which is about the same kind there is on the show, but somehow writing about people getting punched and kicked seems worse…

"Congratulations, agent P."

The platypus in question straightened up a little in his chair. That was about as much joy and pride as he was going to show. As far as Perry was concerned, congratulations weren't in order. He was simply doing his job.

"Professor Lurchatov has been safely transported to our prison. It doesn't look like he will be giving us trouble any time soon. All thanks to you. "

Major Monogram stopped, and then continued in a tone that suggested that the topic had come up before:

"Why don't you take some time off?"

Perry sat in silence. He was very good with those, and could pull of at least seven different types of silence. In this particular instance it signaled his commanding officer he wasn't even going to seriously consider his suggestion, but that the sentiment was appreciated, as misguided as it was.

The Major sighed:

"I suppose I shouldn't be complaining about how efficient my best agent is. And the way you go through nemesises, is certainly setting some kind of a record. Is that the right plural? Nemesises? Wow, I've never had to check before. That's how fast you are."

As far as Perry was concerned, this was all good. It was his job to stop the bad guys. So he did.

He was just much more efficient about it than most agents, so no villain posed big enough a threat for him to stay his nemesis for long.

"So, let's see."

Major took a stack of papers, starting to go through them:

"Blasted filing system. I could really use someone to take care of this stuff for me. And hold the camera. Yesterday when I briefed Agent T the camera was pointing a bit more down than I estimated, and well, let's just say I need to make sure I wear pants at work from now on- Ah, here's one."

He shoved a picture of an elderly woman encased in some kind of a robotic suit on the camera.

"Iron Lunged Maiden. Don't let her appearance fool you, she's one troublemaking grandma. And classified as a very high-level threat."

Perry nodded. He could handle that. He wasn't about to let foolish sentimentality stop him from bringing evil people to justice. He wouldn't care if his enemy was old, if she had it coming.

"Of course, she operates in Seattle, so you'd need to be relocated."

This was something Perry had to think about. He liked the Flynn-Fletchers, even loved them. But he had his duty. If it meant leaving his cover-family, then that was something he needed to do. But he was ashamed to admit he felt hesitation at the idea of leaving them.

Monogram picked up on this, and went through his stack of papers again.

"Sorry, but it seems you have disposed of all the established villains in Danville. Well-"

Perry perked up slightly, telling him to go on.

"There's this one guy. Doofen- Doofenshirtcz-. An evil doctor. Who is, based on his name, possibly Estonian. The worst kind of evil scientists, you know. Um, yeah, we don't really have any info on this guy yet. Not even a picture. He's on the list of villains to be evaluated so we can assign their threat-level and an appropriate agent. I guess you could go and check him out. And if you think he's a big enough threat, we could officially assign you to his case."

The platypus nodded. At least there was something more he could do right there in Danville, even if it was just reconnaissance.

Finding the doctor's address turned out to be easy.

Although a quick search of the phone book told Perry there were surprisingly many Doofenshmirtzes living in the city, only one company had that name.

Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated.

It was a safe guess that was the place.

The agent had decided to observe the building first, to get a good overview of what he was facing. Almost immediately, however, he had spotted his target coming out.

Tall, but slouches, brown hair, pointy nose. Fitted in the description the Major had managed to find for him eventually. Perry also observed his brown hair looked unkept and that he had bags under his eyes and in general the look of someone who hadn't gotten a good night's sleep for some time now.

Also he was wearing a lab coat, which pretty much meant he was either a pharmacist or an evil scientist.

So far he hadn't really shown any signs of evil. Just apparently visited a photo-store to get his picture taken.

Perry peeked behind the mailbox, preparing to continue following him, when his target suddenly stopped and turned around, looking straight at his hiding place.

Perry quickly jumped back behind the box.

But surely the man hadn't actually spotted him?

He quickly popped out, only for the doctor to again quickly turn around. This time Perry wasn't sure if he had actually caught a glimpse of him.

No, he must have been imagining it. There was no way he had been spotted so easily.

Perry stepped forward using more stealth, ready to continue following his target.

Who was no-where to be seen.

"So, what are you supposed to be?"

Startled, Perry turned towards the high-pitched accented voice. How had the doctor managed to sneak up on him like that? He must have been getting sloppy.

"I mean, are you a duck, or a beaver, or what? That's just weird and confusing, that's what you are. Also you're wearing a hat and stalking me behind a mailbox. That's even more inconsiderate than being a confusing mixture of birds and mammals."

He frowned, reading the calling-card the platypus handed to him.

A bright smile lightened up his face.

"Agent P? A real secret agent?"

Perry's eyes widened at this reaction. He quickly made sure his face stayed blank, and nodded.

"And you're following me?"

Perry supposed there was no use trying to deny it, so he nodded again, a bit unsure how to react to his target sounding so pleased about it.

"I mean, no reason you shouldn't. I'm Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz, after all. You know The Great Ice Cream Disaster? That was my doing."

When Perry didn't show any signs of being impressed, he went on:

"You know, the things with the vanilla-flavor, and the, yeah, no-one noticed, did they? I went through all the trouble of turning all the non-lactose-free ice cream in the whole TRI-STATE-AREA vanilla-flavored, and, well, compared to the effort that went into that scheme the amount of fear, terror, and havoc it caused was sort of minimal…"

Perry was uncertain how to respond, taken back by how quickly the man switched between moods, so far having gone from annoyed to impressed to happy to sad in less than a minute. The agent wasn't even sure if the guy was for real. Deciding that whether or not Doofenshmirtz was serious, he wasn't worth his time, Perry turned around, ready to leave.

"Hey, wait!"

Not even certain why, the agent obeyed.

"You are just turning around and leaving? That's so rude."

The platypus turned to face the doctor with an even blanker than normal expression on his face.

"You are just going to tail me and then go home? I'm an evil scientist, you know. I might be up to something evil. In fact I might be going to do something very evil right now. And if you're thinking that ice-cream thing was the worst I can do, you are mistaken. Yes, very evil things are in store for Danville and the whole TRI-STATE-AREA! And if you don't follow me right now, and if I'll be doing something evil, it's your fault."

Perry was at loss for words. Figuratively speaking, of course, but generally, he was always certain what he would say, if he spoke.

The doctor waggled his slender finger at the platypus.

"So, Agent P, you wouldn't want to be responsible for anything horrible, would you?"

At least Perry knew the answer to that. So he shook his head.

The human flashed another toothy smile:

"Great! Let's go!"

And so startled Perry found himself dragged along by the odd man who was holding his hand.

"It won't be far! I live just few blocks away!"

It wasn't before they got into the purple building and into the elevator that Perry managed to gather his thoughts.

What was he doing?

Somehow this self-acclaimed villain had gotten him to follow his rhythm. And now they were heading into his headquarters. True, Perry wasn't entirely convinced the man was a genuine threat, but an agent as experienced as himself should have never gotten in a situation like that.

His thoughts were interrupted by the elevator doors opening, and he followed warily after the human, ready for any surprise attack.

"Welcome, to my LAIR! By the way, it's usually far more evil. Just ignore all the pizza-boxes, I just haven't been cooking much lately. You know, because of all the evil things I've been planning."

"And that,"

He paused dramatically and gestured towards a machine middle of the huge open space.

"-is my vanilla-flavorinator!"

Interpreting quite correctly Perry's silence, he continued:

"Yes, well, I know its smoking. Probably doesn't work anymore. It overheated a bit and caught fire. It might work, although usually, and I'm talking from personal experience, it's not a particularly good idea to try to use an inator that's giving off smoke like that. It smells a bit weird too. I better open a window."

He turned around, leaving Perry to stand there, feeling oddly out of place.

Just in case, he made sure to stay away from the smoking machine just in case it decided to blow up while he waited for the man to come back. Perry decided to use this chance to get his bearings.

The big room was an odd mixture of a someone's living room and a garage, also possibly with some mad science lab thrown in. There were several odd devices in varying stages of completion around the room, blueprints and tools lying around them. It looked like some of them had been abandoned completely, a layer of dust covering them.

In general it looked like no-one had cleaned up for a while, there were several piles of empty pizza-boxes scattered around, and the sofa and several chairs were covered by boxes, tools, books and Christmas decorations. In July.

Perry's thoughts were interrupted by the scientist:

"I must admit, you caught me at a bad time. I don't actually have any other working inators at the moment. Several on the advanced stages of planning, though. Take a seat, I'll read some of them to you, and you can tell me if there's anything you like. Or hate, I guess. And find foil-worthy."

He gestured towards the only chair in the room that wasn't covered by random stuff.

By the looks of it, it was where he ate his dinners, so Perry deemed it safe enough, and took the suggestion.

The human cleared another chair by unceremoniously dumping the pile of books on it on the floor, and sat across the platypus.

"Okay, this is very evil. Changing the rotation of the Earth. How, exactly, I'm not sure. And it's sort of more on the purely-evil-for-the-sake-of-evil side. Not a whole lot to gain from it, financially or otherwise. But I assume it would- You know what? I'll get to that later.

What else? Ah, yes. Bees. I hate bees. And not in the way I hate spiders or those three species of roaches, either. I despise bees. First, I capture an army of wasps and dress them up as bees. And when I unleash the fake bees on the world they will completely ruin the reputation of real bees! The beekeepers will be all like 'What's up with these lazy bees that don't make any honey and that just fly around laying eggs in insects and not pollenating flowers?'

Did you know that most wasps are parasitic and don't make honey? I saw a nature-documentary on wasps yesterday. Maybe I could also hoard honey and then sell it on huge profit! It's always like this, when inspiration strikes, I have way too many ideas. I better write this down before I forget."

"Okay, the next one, The spatula-un-stuckinator! Uh, well, that's actually just something I'm working on to help around the kitchen. You know how the spatula always gets stuck in the drawer? Ugh, I hate that! Although, I'm pretty certain the device could have evil applications, especially since the prototype tends to less unstuck, and more disintegrate the kitchen utensils in question. A work in progress, you know."

"What do you think so far?"

But before the increasingly baffled agent could reply, the scientist suddenly pointed at him triumphantly and exclaimed:

"A platypus! That's what you are, agent P. Um, do you have an actual name? I mean, "Agent P" sounds kinda, well silly. I mean, I wouldn't want to be called Dr. Pee. So, what's your actual name?"

No opponent of his had ever asked that. Truth be told, they didn't usually even refer to him as 'Agent P', since generally Perry wasn't much into conversation in the middle of missions. Or outside the missions, for that matter.

He made a non-committal chattering noise that came out a bit less hostile than he planned to.

"Huh. So you really don't talk?"

Perry wasn't certain what possessed him to do such a thing, but he reached for his hat for a pen, and pulled a nearby pizza-box to him.

Dr. Doofenshmirtz watched as the platypus wrote something on the cardboard and then pushed the box over the table.

"Perry?" he read aloud.

The agent nodded. It was a foolish thing, he knew, telling his pet-name to a villain, but he supposed the risk of him finding out his cover identity was small. But he wished he wasn't underestimating the man.

"Perry the Platypus, then?"

Truth be told, he wasn't even sure what his estimation of the scientist was. Perry was almost willing to conclude that the man was a harmless crackpot, but on the other hand…

Well, he wouldn't want to be responsible if he did prove to be more dangerous than he seemed.

Also, he had to admit that he was a little bit curious about the man.

So when Perry returned home after listening to a list of schemes of varying degrees of evilness and plausibility, (and watching Dr. Doofenshmirtz zap few spatulas out of existence) and made his report on the Doctor Heinz Doofenshmirtz, he didn't hesitate to write

Unable to make a reliable estimate of the threat-level . But based on personal observation I recommend assigning him a nemesis on a trial basis.

NOTES:

I only chose Seattle as the city of operation for the Iron Lunged Maiden because it was mentioned in the show, and I supposed I might just as well make that her home city, in case I'll use the character later.

Professor Lurchatov is an allusion to Igor Kurchatov, the Soviet physicist known for being the "father of Stalin's atom bomb". And also for his beard. Go google him, and learn something about the development of nuclear technology so you can tell your parents all those hours reading fanfiction about cartoons taught you something and so were not a complete waste of time.

Incidentally, I have plans to use Lurchatov on another story I'm working on.