doofenstrudel | 05 - Sharp-Dressed Villain

[Action A, 457 Stone Street, Morning]

[It's another marginally beautiful Mayfield morning, and Doofenshmirtz has volunteered to head out front and get the mail. Still half-asleep, he steps over the brown-papered package on the front step, staggers to the mailbox, extracts the bills, and steps back over the package without even noticing it. Click, and the door shuts behind him.

A few moments later he's back out on the step, staring down at the thing he had previously ignored.]

Ehn, what's this?

[Peering down at it, he's surprised to see that it's addressed to him. A suspicious look is cast left, then right, then upwards, then he quickly snatches up the package and retreats inside.]

I've heard about this! They've given me something back! I wonder what it is?

[He shakes the box this way and that, judging the weight of the contents. Still no idea. Ah well! He rips the paper off, lifts the lid off of the box inside, to find that he's been given back his labcoat.]

..it's a start. A pretty good start.

[Action B, Bakery]

[Another day, another dollar. Heinz is at work... well, he's at work. Physically present at work, behind the counter and minding the bakery. But he's not doing much. No baking, no frosting, no kneading. He has a notebook in hand, and he's scribbling in it madly, occasionally muttering to himself.]

I'll need three dozen of those... hm, I'm going to need multiple trips. Taking measurements into account, we'll need this much lumber just for the supports.... ooh, and tarps. Tarps are important. Many tarps.

[And he's got his apron tied over his labcoat. Having gotten it back? It's going to take effort to make him remove it.]

[Action C, Around Town]

[His shift at work is done, and Doof is now out and about shopping. Still wearing his labcoat, of course. And grinning from ear to ear, occasionally consulting his notebook before plucking an item from the shelves and tossing it in his shopping cart. Hardware store, general store, record store, he's stopping by it. His list of needs is long. You might catch him between stores, too, arms loaded with bags.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Such barriers are meaningless to the mighty and knowledgeable Red Mage.]

Building a secret underground bunker, I see!

[Doof is no longer shooing him with the notebook. He's making a purposeful attempt to hit the guy.]

Shh! It's not secret if you go and tell everyone!

Would you like some help with that? As I mentioned before, I can build nearly anything.

...

[Why yes, he would like some help with that... but he has to think it over for a moment.]

So how are you with carpentry? Also, hole-digging?

Additionally, I still need to settle on a method of dirt disposal. Ideas?

If you give me a few moments, I can be an expert at whatever you need.

Right, right, of course!

[He's less skeptical now, though. In fact, he's grinning! Yes, yes, let's put this claim to the test.]

You willing to, say, be hired on as a 'contractor'?

I will have to pay you in cake, fair warning.

[You could offer Red Mage anything and he'd figure out a way to make it sound like an amazing reward in that crazy head of his.]

That sounds entirely acceptable.

Excellent!

[To be fair, it should be pretty decent cake.]

I'll be starting construction in the next few days. Can I give you a call once I've finalized all the little bits and pieces?

[He flips to the back of the notebook where the pages are blank, then offers that and his pen to Red Mage, expecting a phone number to be provided.]

Of course, of course.

[He writes down the name 'Red Mage Statscowski: Thaumatic Genius For Hire' and the phone number of his house in town.]

If you'd like, I can get started on my own preparations as well so that we'll be able to start right away. What's the first thing you'd like me to help with?

[Heinz takes the notebook back, seems to find the contact info acceptable, and then scribbles out his own number and address. A page is torn out, folded in two, and given to Red Mage.]

Communication should be a two-way street.

Hm. Dirt disposal will be an ongoing issue. If you have the free time, scoot around town and see if there are any places where some impromptu gardening or dirt-dumping won't raise much suspicion.

Perhaps we could use it for a large-scale landscaping project somewhere.

[He taps his pen against his chin, still pondering the matter.]

Under some sort of non-suspicious pretense, I would hope. Does this place have a... parks and recreation department? Are there real people on it? I'd hate to have to convince a drone that what we're doing with all this dirt is legitimate.

I wonder if we could get away with saying we're on a 'town beautification' committee of some sort.

I like the sound of that. It sounds plausible. Plausible is good!

I've found that plausible is quite often all you really need. Most people don't tend to look very deeply into this sort of thing.

Most people. You've been here longer than I have... drones are just drones, and don't... report back to home base, I hope? If so, then we should have no problem at all giving them something plausible!

...but I do not want to try to convince the milkman of anything that's only plausible.

Ha! The drones wish their Wisdom scores were that high. It shouldn't be an issue. And the milkman typically won't bother you if you don't bother him.

Aaah.

Well, good! One more thing to check off the list.

[And he does indeed check something off in the notebook.]

...Oh! I do have something that will help! Hold on a moment.

[RM digs into his pocket for a moment, drawing out a small yellow spherical object.]

There! This should solve our dirt problem.

Ehn?

[Heinz leans in, eying the little yellow thing.]

What's that?

This, my friend, is called a Hypercube.

[Yes, he may notice that this thing is indeed quite spherical.]

...it looks more like a sphere.

[He leans back.]

I can take the educated guess that this is some sort of.... folded extradimensional thing, but... it's a sphere. It's poorly named.

Correct you are. In fact, it exists on so many dimensions that we are unable to perceive it in its true shape. Hence, it appears to our eyes to be spherical in form.

Oooooooooh...

[He seems to want to reach out and touch it. But he stops himself short of making fingertip contact, and looks to Red Mage instead.]

What does it do?