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They'd accidentally met again at the hotel beach. They'd both apparently found the same hotel, booked it on the same floor, and gone to the same place to enjoy some free time.
Perry had no idea how his two lives kept coming so close to being shattered, but this was it. He'd seen Heinz coming, and he'd tried to steer Phineas in the opposite direction, he'd tried to distract Ferb; but Heinz had come and directly asked them an engineering question about something they were building. The boys were hooked.
And now they were building sand castles together. And giant robots. It was the giant robot part that was scaring Perry. This was dangerously close to second dimension chaos if Heinz had his way and the robots were built with evil in them. Heinz had tried to put self-destruct buttons on the robots, but Phineas and Ferb had stopped him. Another red flag for Perry.
"No no, that wasn't enough! That's when you should've put on your little hat! Not now, after we've gone through it into this mess!"
He had to stop them. He had to find some way to get them to leave.
He coughed. Phineas immediately stopped what he was doing and ran over, Ferb soon after.
"Perry? You okay, buddy?"
"Your platypus's name is Perry?"
Perry was getting serious déjà vu. He had to get them to leave. He coughed more.
"Do you think he's sick?" Phineas asked, looking from Ferb to Dr. D.
He was sick of having to pull stupid stunts to get out of situations, that's what he was sick of.
Phineas picked him up, and thankfully, the robots were forgotten.
"Gosh, thanks for helping us build today, but we better get Perry inside. It seems like he's not feeling well."
Back in the hotel room, he swapped himself for a bag of rice in the hotel fridge as soon as the boys' attention was diverted. He had to go see what Dr. D was up to out there on the beach. And he was indeed up to something. Perry jumped out the 32nd story window and parachuted to the beach below.
Doofenshmirtz was tinkering with a robot.
"Oh, hey, Perry the Platypus. You're just in time for my latest awesome invention! And I made them all by myself. Well, okay, not all by myself, I had some help from two boys that were down here. Great thinkers! They had a pet platypus, who, strangely enough, was also named Perry!"
Although the normalness of the monologue calmed Perry slightly, he was still on higher alert than usual. An army of giant robots was second dimension Heinz's territory. He never figured his Heinz would do something like that again, and he never figured Heinz would avoid self-destruct buttons again. His boys, he had to hand it to them, they were good with machinery. Too good for Perry's liking when he had to be the one to fight it.
"Well, anyway, I figure I should activate these things, and, y'know, take over the entire tri-state-area and all that, right? Hey, are you listening to me?"
Perry blinked.
"Um, hello! Taking over the tri-state-area? You're the good guy?"
Perry figured maybe he could stall him. He looked around at the beach and then confusedly up at Heinz. He chattered.
"Oh, yeah, I completely forgot about a trap. I didn't even know I was going to be doing evil this weekend. Oh well!" Dr. D pushed a remote and suddenly the robots scattered around on the beach started to rise into the air. Doofenshmirtz hopped onto one and rode it up higher in the sky.
Perry did the same, preparing to jump to Heinz's robot. He had to wonder how none of the hotel staff had noticed the giant robots flying around outside.
They fought. They fought like they always did, but this time, Perry couldn't beat the robots.
Perry fought the robots. He punched metal. he ripped open the circuitry. But the technical genius of Phineas and Ferb was really getting to him. The robots weren't going down. He felt like every time he managed to do some damage, several more appeared.
Nothing he was doing was working. He was in a strange place, his owners were in a building not far from robot chaos, and worst of all, Heinz was beating him.
Was this the turning point? Was this where his Heinz fell into more evil than he was? When he won? He still had a smug smile on his face. He was enjoying watching Perry get beaten up by robots. That didn't surprise Perry. Whatever. He was evil. But did his own Heinz have the potential to do the same thing second dimension Heinz did? Was the only difference the toy train?
Perry leaped over to Doofenshmirtz's robot, pushing the man's leg with weak arms.
"Is that all you've got?" Heinz jeered, holding the button out of reach.
Perry tried to grab it, but he was tired. He couldn't keep going, and what would be the point? There was no way to destroy the robots. Heinz had won.
He could try and save his boys, but what would happen then? Would Heinz enslave humanity? Perry hated that nobody remembered the second dimension. He hated that he remembered a genuinely evil Heinz Doofenshmirtz, because that made him question everything he knew about the first dimension Heinz. Did Heinz have the capacity to turn that evil?
Perry sank with every thought. How could this be happening? He never let his own thoughts get in the way of fighting. The battle came first, crises came second.
"Are you crying, Perry the platypus?"
Heinz kneeled to his level, setting the button down on the robot.
And then there was the difference. There was a difference. He'd known it all along, but with the robots being so similar, Perry had been worried. But second dimension Heinz would have used his vulnerability against him. He would have laughed in Perry's face and told him he was weak. He would have said, "Are you crying? Wow, some secret agent. Too bad!" He would have continued destroying everything.
First Dimension Heinz, His Heinz, had his mouth in a concerned 'o'. The first words out of his mouth were...
"We can stop."
Perry whipped his head up to face Heinz, and in turn, Heinz shrugged slowly. "A-are you okay? We don't have to keep fighting."
Perry nodded quickly and tried to remove emotion from his face. He was a stone cold agent. He could keep fighting forever.
Heinz rolled his eyes and sat down next to Perry, on top of a giant robot hovering in the sky.
He reached out a hand and Perry gladly took it.
"I'm not going to fight you if you're going to be like that. You can thwart me again back in Danville, okay?"
Perry was going to cry again and it was all this man's fault. He nodded again and leaned in to hug Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Heinz patted him somewhat awkwardly and then reached over for the remote.
"Well, I don't need these things anymore," he said, and then he shut them off.
This man really did not have any planning skills.
As the robot they were currently on plummeted to the earth, Heinz fell over backwards off the robot.
Perry jumped after him.
Because that's what he did.
His parachute activated and he glared down at Heinz.
"Boy, if I had a nickel for every time you've saved me with that thing, I'd have, like, at least a dollar."