Plankton’s evil laugh rang through the Krusty Krab. “AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

WHAM! SpongeBob slammed open the front door and turned on the lights. Startled, Plankton fell off the counter, releasing his hold on the secret formula.

“I KNEW IT!” SpongeBob said.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!” Plankton screamed. SPLERSH! He landed in a soapy puddle on the floor and slipped around the kitchen.

“I knew I left my keys in here!” SpongeBob said. “Silly me . . .”

Plankton kept slipping and sliding around the kitchen, unable to stand still and grab the secret formula. He reached for it, but it kept fluttering through the air, just out of his grasp.

SpongeBob looked around. “Huh,” he said. “No keys! That’s weird. Where could they be?”

Plankton zipped past SpongeBob and ricocheted off the kitchen wall, screaming, “Ahhh!”

“Keys, keys, keys,” SpongeBob muttered. “Where are my keys?”

As SpongeBob searched the kitchen, Plankton zoomed all over, barely escaping serious injury.

“Where are those keys?” SpongeBob repeated.

BONK! Plankton slammed into the mop bucket. Since it was on wheels, the impact sent it rolling across the floor and past the deep fryer, knocking both of its knobs into the “high” position. The grease in the fryer started to bubble. . . .

“Keys, where are you?” SpongeBob asked, still searching.

WHAP! Plankton crashed into a wall, knocking sharp knives loose. They plummeted straight toward him, and he dove out of the way at the last second. “AHHHH!”

He ran away from the knives, only to slip in another puddle and slide over to the CAUTION—WET FLOOR sign. The angled side of the sign acted like a ramp, launching Plankton into the air and toward the secret formula. He grabbed it!

Unfortunately, he landed in the potato slicer. WHIRRR! It turned on, pushing Plankton toward the deep fryer . . .

“Oh!” SpongeBob gasped. “My keys were in my pocket the whole time!” He held them up and jingled them, laughing. “Good night again, patty!”

He left without seeing the secret formula drift into the sizzling-hot fryer grease. The formula burst into flame, gone forever.

Later that night, Plankton lay in his tiny bed in the Chum Bucket, recovering from his injuries. He tossed and turned, mumbling, “Why? Why? Why?”

His wife, Karen, said, “You’ve been asking that question for twenty years, Plankton.”

Plankton hopped out of bed. “And I still don’t have the answer. No matter how ingenious my evil plans, success always slips through my fingers. Why?”

“It’s pretty simple, Plankton,” Karen said. But before she could give her husband the answer, he interrupted, continuing his tortured musing.

“When I was just a little lad, my parents taught me how to make chum,” he said, pacing. Then he tripped, landing in a pile of chum. PLOP! Covered in chum, he continued to speculate on the cause of his failure. “They taught me how to cook with the chum. How to open my own restaurant. And the importance of keeping that restaurant growing, regardless of how much plotting and scheming it took. But no matter what brilliant plan I came up with to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula, someone always stopped me!”

“It’s not who you think it is,” Karen interjected.

“It’s Krabs!” Plankton fumed.

“Nope,” said Karen.

“I’m sure of it!” Plankton insisted. “It’s Krabs!”

“No,” Karen said. “Krabs is just the one inside your head. The one who always stops you, the one you should fear, is SpongeBob SquarePants!”

Plankton stopped dead in his tracks, stunned. “It is?”

“Absolutely. It’s SpongeBob who always ruins your plans.”

“No way,” Plankton said. “But that’s an interesting suggestion, Karen. Let me think a minute. . . .”

So Plankton stood there in the Chum Bucket, thinking. He remembered times when he’d tried to steal the secret Krabby Patty formula. . . .

He remembered a time when he’d tried to make off with the formula and gotten stuck on a balloon. Who was blowing up that balloon? SpongeBob! The sponge had plucked the formula out of Plankton’s hands and locked it back in the vault.

Plankton remembered another time when he’d disguised himself as a Krabby Patty and scurried across the floor of the Krusty Krab. But SpongeBob was doing an Irish dance, and his foot stomped down, smashing Plankton and his disguise.

Another time, Plankton had succeeded in opening the secret formula’s storage vault only to find SpongeBob inside with a birthday cake and a brightly colored banner that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PLANKTON!

His mind went back to the time when he’d put explosives around the Krusty Krab to blow it up, but when he pushed down on the detonator’s plunger, he only succeeded in blowing up . . . a balloon! Which SpongeBob was sitting on!

He stopped thinking and turned to his computer wife. “Karen, I just thought of something. All I have to do is get rid of SpongeBob, and the secret Krabby Patty formula is mine!”

Karen rolled her digitized eyes. “I don’t know how you do it, Plankton,” she said sarcastically.

“I amaze even myself sometimes,” he said, smiling. “Now down to the evil plan. But first, a little orange juice to stimulate my gigantic brain.”

He went into the Chum Bucket’s kitchen and headed straight for the refrigerator. He opened the door and peered in. No orange juice.

“Karen!” he yelled. “Have you seen my—”

He turned and saw Otto chugging all of his orange juice right out of the bottle.

“What the—” Plankton said.

Karen rolled up behind him. “Oh. You found Otto!”

“Otto?” Plankton asked.

“So cute!” Karen gushed.

“What’s up, bro?” Otto asked, offering the bottle of orange juice. “Want a swig?” The robot burped loudly.

“Uh, no thanks,” Plankton said.

“You’re fired,” Otto replied.