by Disney Books
“And she brought her evil plant of doom,” Garnoz continued. “She sprayed us with mind-controlling spores. She forced us to build her castles, lavish her with treasures, and make low-quality TV shows. Then, one day, the spores began to disappear. Our minds became clear, so we did the only thing that we could do. We ran away like frightened toddlers.
“Sadly, some of our people are still under her control. And now we hear that she has found someone with the power to make her sinister shrubbery grow once more.”
Phineas and Ferb exchanged looks. Then the entire group said, “The Chosen One!”
Phineas looked out at his friends and the assembled aliens. “Listen, everyone,” he began. “We came all the way across the universe to save our sister. And we’re not going home without her. If you care about your people as much as we care about Candace, then, please, help us!”
“You do not understand,” Garnoz protested. “All we do is cower. We are called the Cowards. In our language, it means ‘coward.’”
“Just because you are Cowards doesn’t mean you have to be cowards,” Phineas said. “And if you can be brave just this once, from here on, ‘Coward’ could mean ‘mighty warrior’!”
Candace was walking down a corridor, glancing up at the pipe that followed the ceiling. It led to an imposing set of doors. When she stood before them, the doors opened. Candace saw a plant inside. Next to it was a sign that said YOU MUST BE AT LEAST THIS TALL TO PRODUCE MIND-CONTROLLING SPORES!
Candace leaned in close, breathing on the plant.
Suddenly, it grew—just a bit, but enough to be noticed. Candace jumped back.
Turning around, Candace saw Super Super Big Doctor along with several guards.
“I see you’ve met Mama!” Super Super Big Doctor said.
“This plant is your mother?”
“No, silly,” Super Super Big Doctor replied. “I named her after my mother…whose name just happened to be Mama. She was also green and very controlling.”
“What’s it for?” Candace asked, looking at the suspiciously huge plant.
“It’s for you!” Super Super Big Doctor said. “Check this out. Bring in the device!”
A part of the floor shifted as what looked like a treadmill rose, and Super Super Big Doctor gently led Candace over to it. “Remarkalonium is Mama’s lifeblood,” she said. “She’ll shrivel up and die without it. Hop up here.”
The alien motioned for Candace to get on the treadmill, which she did. The treadmill started to roll, and Candace began to keep pace with it.
“Thanks to you, now she can grow again and produce her wonderful mind-controlling spores!”
“Oh, so I’m actually doing something—waaaait,” Candace said. “Mind-controlling spores?”
“How do you think I got to be in charge in the first place?” Super Super Big Doctor said. “But now the spores have been wearing off. See?”
Super Super Big Doctor pointed at one of the Cowards, who looked like his head was slowly clearing. The alien then dropped the tray he was carrying and ran right out the door.
When no one did anything, Super Super Big Doctor turned to look at her minions. “Really?” she said.
“What you’re doing is…is awful!” Candace said. “How would your brothers feel if they could see you now?”
“Why don’t you ask ’em?” Super Super Big Doctor suggested.
Behind her, a screen came to life, broadcasting an image of Super Super Big Doctor’s siblings. They were inside a cage, wearing tattered clothes and throwing a makeshift ball around.
“Hey!” Super Super Big Doctor shouted. “I told you no playing in the dungeon!” She pushed a button, and a ray dissolved the ball into nothingness.
“How could you imprison your own brothers?” Candace asked, horrified.
“Oh, it was easy,” Super Super Big Doctor said. “I lured ’em in with these cheesy snacks—”
“No, I mean, how could you? I’d never do something like that to my brothers!”
“You already did,” Super Super Big Doctor said. “I said, ‘I’ll take care of ’em,’ and you were like, ‘Would you? You’re the best.’ So I thought you were down with the whole dungeon thing!”
Candace was fuming. “Wait, you threw my brothers in the dungeon? That’s not what I wanted! I love my brothers!”
“Wow,” Super Super Big Doctor said. “Wow. Candy, Candy, Candy. This is eye-opening. Have I misread things or what?”
“Yeah, I’d say you have. So can we—”
Suddenly, Super Super Big Doctor pressed a button, and handcuffs snapped around Candace’s wrists, confining her to the treadmill.
“Hey! Let me go!”
“I guess it was too good to be true,” Super Super Big Doctor said, shaking her head. “I thought I finally found someone simpatico. And you even exhaled Remarkalonium.”
“Remarkalonium,” Candace scoffed. “What is that, anyway? Is that even real?”
“Of course! In your language, I think it’s called…carbon dioxide or CO2.”
“Wait, your ‘rare element’ is carbon dioxide?” Candace snorted. “Everybody exhales carbon dioxide!”
“Uh, no we don’t,” Super Super Big Doctor said. “We inhale oxygen and exhale oxygen.”
“Well, on Earth, everybody exhales carbon dioxide, genius,” Candace said snarkily.
Suddenly, a strange look came over the alien leader’s face. “Hold up, hold up, hold up. What?”
“Yeah! All seven billion of us!” Candace said, taunting her. “You didn’t even realize I’m not…I’m not…special,” Candace finished, realizing the same thing herself.
Super Super Big Doctor grinned. “If all you Earthlings exhale carbon dioxide, I can feed Mama forever! And I can have hundreds of castles and smoothies and TV shows! Braxington Ton! Fire up the ship! We have an even bigger planet to conquer!”
“Wait, no!” Candace shouted.
“Load up the portable CO2 generator,” Super Super Big Doctor said, pointing at Candace. She smirked at her newest prisoner. “Been a heck of a day for you, huh? Threw your brothers in jail, then threw your whole planet under the bus. Heh…nice going…sister.”
A guard approached the treadmill with a remote and moved Candace out the door. “All right, this way, Chosen One,” the guard said.
Leaving the fortress, Candace could see Super Super Big Doctor ahead. She was taking the giant plant, Mama, with her to Earth.
“Now make sure Mama is comfortable,” Super Super Big Doctor ordered.
Before she could give another order, something distracted the leader. Candace heard it, too.
“Wait! What am I hearing right now?” Super Super Big Doctor asked.
“I think it’s music, ma’am,” a guard replied.
Looking over the edge of the launchpad, the leader saw Phineas and Ferb, along with an army of aliens. Somehow, they had escaped. And they appeared to be armed, too.
But before this gathering army was going to do anything, they were apparently going to sing a song about fighting or something. Not only that, the song revealed that the army was going to appear to attack on the left, but in reality, the bulk of their forces was going to attack on the right.
“The fools!” Super Super Big Doctor spat. “They’re telling us their entire plan—in song! Get our forces over to the right!”
“Yeah, okay, boss,” said one of the guards. “Uh…their right, or our right?”
“No, our right!” the kids and the Cowards sang out.
Super Super Big Doctor stood near the wall on the right with dozens upon dozens of guards. “As soon as they scale the wall, let ’em have it!” she ordered.
But when she looked over the wall, no one was there.
“What?” the leader said, bewildered.
“Psych!” Buford shouted. “We’re over here.”
Had Super Super Big Doctor been drinking a cup of coffee, she would have spat it all over. To her surprise and chagrin, she was now surrounded by Phineas, Fe
rb, their friends, and the Cowards.
“We came in on the left while you were going over to the right,” Buford explained.
“You lied to us!” Super Super Big Doctor fumed. “Through song—an art form that’s supposed to connect people through sincerity of emotion! That is cold. Who are you people?”
“We are the Cowards!” Borthos shouted.
“Well, I’m a big enough woman to admit when—Run!” Super Super Big Doctor screamed.
At once, the leader and her guards scattered.
“Let’s go find Candace!” Phineas said.
Before they even took a step, Ferb pointed at a landing pad in the distance. The mother ship was there, and they could see Candace on a treadmill, being pushed toward it.
“Candace!” Phineas shouted, but his sister was too far away to hear him.
“Activate anti-Coward countermeasures!” Super Super Big Doctor ordered as she ran up the ramp to the mother ship.
The Cowards followed but stopped in their tracks when a spider decoy popped up before them. The “spider” made a scary sound—or at least, it was scary to the Cowards.
Meanwhile, Phineas, Ferb, and their friends were racing toward the launchpad. Along the way, Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s phone pinged.
“It’s Vanessa! She’s not back on Earth! She’s still on this planet!”
He showed everyone a selfie Vanessa had taken.
“I’ll save Vanessa,” Dr. Doofenshmirtz said. “You guys go, while you still can!”
“How’ll you get back to Earth?” Isabella asked.
“By adulting!” the doctor said, locking eyes with Isabella. “I learned from the best. Go! Go now!”
Isabella looked at the doctor with approval, then slapped a patch on his sleeve.
“What’s this?” Dr. Doofenshmirtz asked.
“It’s a ‘getting back to Earth’ patch,” Isabella said. “Earn it!”
Behind them, Agent P stuck out his head, watching the kids and then Dr. Doofenshmirtz. He had an impossible choice: follow his enemy or his family? Either way, they both needed saving.
“Borthos, no!” Garnoz screamed. “You’ll be killed!”
Spear in hand, Borthos was closing in on the painted spider thingy.
Before he could do anything, Phineas, Ferb, Isabella, Buford, and Baljeet ran right past him and smashed through the spider.
“Oh, they’re so brave!” one of the Cowards shouted.
Phineas, Ferb, and their friends managed to climb onto the ramp and get inside.
Then the mother ship blasted off.
For Earth.
“All right,” Dr. Doofenshmirtz said, fiddling with his phone. “Maybe I can figure out where Vanessa is from this photo.”
He tilted the phone, looking at the picture, then comparing it with the fortress.
“There we go! So she must be that way!”
Looking over the wall, he saw the jungle before him and took a deep breath, followed by a few steps, followed by a tumble over the edge.
But before he could hit the ground, Agent P appeared. He dove after Doof and caught him. Agent P shot out his hand, grabbing a branch and preventing both from falling to their doom.
“Perry the Platypus!” Dr. Doofenshmirtz said. “Have you been following me? All the way from Earth? Keeping me safe and protecting me from like a fuzzy teal guardian angel?”
Agent P looked at the doctor and then shrugged as if to say, Sure.
Crack!
The branch snapped, and they both fell.
Before they could reach the ground, a flying dragon creature swooped in, snatching them both. Dr. Doofenshmirtz was shocked to see that Vanessa was riding the dragon.
“Vanessa?” shouted Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
“I thought it was you guys!” Vanessa said. “How did you get here?”
“Oh, I—I have no idea how Perry the Platypus got here,” the doctor said. “But I used my Galactic Travel-inator.”
“You mean your spaceship?”
“Hey, where did you get the alien dragon creature?” the doctor asked.
“You like her?” Vanessa asked, patting the dragon. “I named her Vlorkel. Can I keep her?”
“Well,” Dr. Doofenshmirtz said, “we’re gonna need a bigger litter box.”
Phineas, Ferb, Isabella, Buford, and Baljeet were stowaways aboard the alien mother ship.
“We need to find where they’re keeping Candace,” Phineas said.
“Hey, look!” Buford said, pointing to a monitor. “They’re takin’ us back to Earth!”
“More likely they wanna conquer Earth!” Phineas said, correcting him.
“Attention,” said a computer voice. “Brace yourselves. We are accelerating to warp two.”
“Oh, my, that is twice the speed of light!” Baljeet exclaimed.
Vlorkel landed in a clearing, and Vanessa, her dad, and Agent P climbed off. Dr. Doofenshmirtz hugged his daughter tightly.
“Oh, Dad,” Vanessa said, “I can’t believe you came to save me.”
“And then you saved me!” Dr. Doofenshmirtz said. “But I don’t know how we’re gonna get home from here.”
Suddenly, they heard the cluck of a chicken.
“That’s it!” Dr. Doofenshmirtz exclaimed. “We’ll use the Chicken-Replace-inator to switch places with a chicken on Earth! It worked like a charm earlier. Come on! Get on!”
Dr. Doofenshmirtz climbed back onto Vlorkel, helping Vanessa on as well. Then Agent P hopped on. The doctor aimed the Chicken-Replace-inator at them like he was taking a selfie with his phone. When he pressed the trigger, there was a brilliant flash of light.
Where once sat a Vlorkel, there was now a chicken.
The chicken that had been sitting just a few feet away.
“Wait a second,” Dr. Doofenshmirtz said.
“We’ve gotta find a way to stop this ship,” Phineas said.
“Oooh! Space Adventure,” Baljeet offered. “In episode 347A! Captain Dirk Mortenson and the lovely Lieutenant Zarna, who was secretly—”
“Baljeet!” Phineas, Ferb, Isabella, and Buford screamed.
“Sorry. We can use the shield generator to overload the main reactor and disable the ship, stranding them in orbit,” Baljeet said.
The kids raced to a control panel and looked at the assortment of lights, switches, and buttons.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Phineas asked.
“In Space Adventure, it is always the leftmost button,” Baljeet replied.
Before anyone could stop him, Baljeet pressed a button on the control panel. The shuttle bay doors opened, sucking everything out into the upper atmosphere…including the kids!
They were now falling through the air, junk from the shuttle bay all around them, as the mother ship rocketed toward Earth.
“We are never listening to another Space Adventure idea!” Buford yelled.
“I don’t have a patch for surviving a fall because of the false science of a canceled TV show!” Isabella lamented.
“Hey, I got an idea!” Buford said. “Everybody into the canoe!”
Everyone clambered into the canoe.
“What do we do now?” Phineas asked.
“I don’t know,” Buford said. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Hey, we can use this debris just like they did in Space Adventure episode 436B!” Phineas said.
“All right, let’s do it!” Buford said.
“Oh, yeah!” Isabella seconded.
“Wait, Space Adventure? Why is it a good idea when Phineas says it?” Baljeet asked.
“Everybody, grab something!” Phineas said. The kids started to grab all kinds of space junk as they plummeted toward the ground.
Buford looked up to see exactly what they had been building. It looked kind of like a boat, except this boat was built in the canoe.
“You made another boat?” Buford said. “What have I been luggin’ this one around for?”
Ferb pulled a cord. In a flash,
the “boat” transformed into a glider.
Except they were still heading straight for the ground.
“Pull up, pull up, pull up!” Buford shouted.
At the last possible moment, right before impact, the glider pulled out of its dive.
Buford patted the canoe and looked at Isabella. “And you said we wouldn’t need it.”
“Look, gang, there’s our house!” Phineas said, pointing below. “Put her down there, Ferb! We got some building to do!”
The mother ship had descended on Danville Stadium, home of the Narwhals baseball team. The mayor was on hand to unveil a new statue of the founder of the Tri-State Area, John P. Tri-State. The unveiling went according to plan, if you consider having a gigantic alien mother ship crush the statue along with a decent chunk of a baseball stadium going according to plan.
“Hey!” said some random man. “Is that an alien spaceship?”
The crowd murmured, “Yes, yes it is.”
A ramp extended from the mother ship, and Super Super Big Doctor disembarked, flanked by her guards. Mama was in tow as the guards fanned out, carrying blasters.
“People of Earth!” Super Super Big Doctor exclaimed. “Breathe on me! Or, more to the point, breathe on my plant of doom!”
Mama seemed to be getting bigger every second, absorbing carbon dioxide from Earth’s natural atmosphere.
“Not so fast!” Phineas shouted from atop the scoreboard. “No, really. Don’t breathe so fast. It makes the plant grow! And trust me, that’s bad.”
“What in the…” Super Super Big Doctor said, astounded.