Back at the mall, Candace was fuming. First she’d had to deal with Phineas and the Ferb-Tones, and now her mother had outfitted her in a brand-new pair of hideous, black-rimmed glasses.
“Argh. I told Mom I don’t need glasses!” she muttered as she stomped out of the mall. “What the…”
Candace blinked, then blinked again. She yanked off her glasses and stared straight ahead.
No way! she thought. But there it was, as plain as day: a bus with Phineas and Ferb’s faces and P.F.T. all over it!
Well, at least, Candace thought, her mom would believe her now.
Or would she? The bus was pulling away!
“No! No! Wait!” Candace begged, calling after the bus.
But hang on!
Was that a picture of Phineas and Ferb plastered across the side of an office building? Candace grinned and headed back into the mall. “Oh, Mo-om!” she called.
She ran through the mall until she finally found her mother in a department store.
“Mom!” cried Candace, grabbing Linda by the arm. “Come here, you’ve got to see this!”
“But Candace,” said Linda, who was still trying on a jacket, “I haven’t paid for this yet!”
Candace didn’t care. She dragged her mom right out of the store, jacket and all.
Woo-woo-woo! went the alarm as Candace and her mom passed through the detector at the door.
“Hey!” yelled a security guard as he started chasing them through the mall.
“See?” cried Candace as she led her mom outside. She watched her mom’s face as she pointed behind her to the wall where she’d seen the huge sign for P.F.T.
Linda looked where Candace was pointing and said nothing. Curious, Candace turned around.
“Aaagh!” she screamed. The building wasn’t there!
That particular building had resided directly in the path of Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s building-robot and had been demolished only seconds before Candace arrived with her mother.
Candace stood frozen, trying to figure out where the building had gone while the mall guard walked up and nodded sternly at Linda. “Uh, ma’am?” he said. “You’re going to have to come back and pay for that.”
“Yes, of course, officer,” she replied, blushing.
As Linda followed the guard back inside, he turned to look at her more closely. “Hey, weren’t you Lindana?” he suddenly said.
Linda smiled shyly. “Yes, I was,” she said with a chuckle. “I can’t believe you recognized me.”
“Well, I was a huge fan,” he told her. “I loved that hit single you had in the ’80s—‘I’m Lindana and I Want to Have Fun.’”
Linda smiled more brightly. Somebody actually remembered her!
“You still have to pay for the jacket,” he said.
Linda nodded. “I know,” she said with a sigh.
So many things were happening at once. Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s pepper pile was growing higher and higher. The giant robot was marching on. Candace’s blood was boiling, and her mother was paying for her new jacket. And in yet another part of the city, the biggest record company in the world was offering Phineas and Ferb the deal of a lifetime.
Chapter 5
“Boys,” said Ben Baxter, the president of Huge “O” Records, “let me start by saying, we love your act, and we want to be in the Phineas and the Ferb-Tones business.” He gestured to the other executives gathered around the conference table. “Uh, by the way,” he added skeptically, “aren’t you a little young to be pop stars?”
Phineas and Ferb exchanged a look on their side of the table, then turned back to Ben. “No,” Phineas replied.
“Well, okay, then!” Ben flashed a wide smile and quickly whipped out a large stack of papers. “We’re prepared to offer you a very lucrative contract… if you’ll just sign exclusively with us for your follow-up single.”
“Follow-up single?” Phineas stood up, outraged, and leaned across the table. “Who do you think we are? Some two-bit hacks who’ll keep writing new songs just because you’ll pay us obscene amounts of cash?” He reached out and grabbed Ben Baxter’s contract and bitterly tore it into pieces. “Phineas and the Ferb-Tones are strictly a one-hit wonder!” he declared. “Good day to you, sir!”
And together with Ferb, Isabella, and the rest of the one-hit-wonder Ferb-Tones, Phineas marched out of the conference room without looking back.
Satisfied, Phineas pulled out his checklist as they waited for the elevator. “Diva tantrum… check!” he said, marking off the second item on his list.
The elevator doors opened and the group stepped in. As the doors slid shut again and they began to descend to the ground floor, Phineas listened for a moment to the catchy, mellow tune drifting down from overhead. It was their song!
“Elevator music… check!” This was easier than he’d thought it would be!
Back inside the conference room, Ben Baxter merely shrugged.
“Ah, who needs ’em?” he said. He held up a tape and his eyes flashed. “We’ve still got this videotape of their performance. We can do live CDs, DVDs, podcasts! Heck,” he went on, “we can digitally re-create their images to make our own sitcom—The Phineas and Ferb Show! We can squeeze twenty years of entertainment out of this one videotape!”
He was so excited about the gold mine in his hand that he didn’t even realize what was happening outside the window behind him.
Across the room, another executive jumped up and pointed out the window. “Ah!” he cried. “That giant robot is coming right at us!”
Ben Baxter turned around… and could not believe his eyes.
Sure enough, as it continued on its path of destruction, Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s giant robot was just about to crush the Huge “O” Records headquarters.
Inside the robot, however, Dr. Doofenshmirtz was still earnestly grinding away at the pepper mill.
“Wow, you sure like a lot of pepper,” he told Perry, as the mountain of spice grew. “I’m more of a paprika man myself.”
Perry eyed the pile, then closed his eyes. With the cool resolution of a seasoned spy, he blew hard at the pile of pepper.
A cloud of spicy black dust erupted and filled the air.
“Kwahh-kuhh-kegh-kah!” The villain coughed. But he was not to be deterred so easily. “It will take more than condiments to foil my brilliant plan!” he spat as he waved the cloud away. His eyes grew wide as a deep, bellowing sound began to echo all around them. The floor, walls, and ceiling began to tremble and quake.
“Ah… ah… ah… CHOOOOO!”
The robot was sneezing! As it did, it shot Dr. D. and Perry out of its robot mouth. They went tumbling into the air and straight through the window of the conference room at Huge “O” Records.
They hurtled past the stunned record executives. “The tape!” hollered Ben Baxter as Perry flew by and snatched it out of his hands.
“Aaagh!” cried Dr. Doofenshmirtz as he and Perry crashed through the opposite wall and fell, head over heels, toward the ground thirty stories below.
Cool, calm, and collected as always, Perry grabbed hold of the videotape and pulled it smoothly out of its case. Then he tossed it around a flagpole like a rope as he shot past. He used the tape to swing himself safely around and onto the pole — while Dr. Doofenshmirtz kept falling.