"Caa-aa-aandace?"

The voice echoed and re-echoed through the winding back halls of the house as Phineas called through the doorway. There was no response, at least not immediately, and he frowned and evaluated the situation with a more critical eye.

"Oh, come on, Dinner Bell!" Buford's demanded. "I still say I could throw the nerd up there before you're gonna be able to get your sister out here."

"Buford!" Baljeet retorted. "Granted, you may be… brutish, but I weigh eighty-one pounds and I do not think you could throw any object that size all… twelve feet? Up there onto that garage roof."

Buford cracked his knuckles. "You wanna bet on that, nerd?"

"I didn't mean to kick it up there, really I didn't," Isabella cut in ruefully, eyeing the bright red ball perched precariously on the edge of the gutter. "But you're sure you don't have any ladders taller than this one?"

Phineas glanced over at his brother and shook his head. "Well, we do have the one we use for projects sometimes, but it's more of an elevator and I don't think we could set it up so close to the house anyway – the high-tension wire has a surprisingly big backlash zone on it." He looked up at Ferb again. "You're sure you can't reach it?"

Ferb blinked, but he didn't even need to do that much – even balancing on his tiptoes on the uppermost rung of the ladder left him a good many feet short of so much as brushing his fingertips against the gutter. And he was easily the tallest of their group, which gave the blink an air of finality indeed.

"Well, we just can't give up," Phineas mused, rubbing his chin. "I don't know where Candace is, but – oh!" His eyes lit up as an angelic choir harmonized in his brain. "But I daresay that we don't need her anyway, because I know what we're gonna do to-"

"NO!"

Everyone in the backyard wheeled about as Candace burst through the wooden fence gate, her face a perfect picture of exasperation. "No, you don't know what you're going to do today, because you're supposed to be playing ball and not getting up to anything bustable because I have a date and you can't be messing it up and, darnit, can't you just keep playing ball for a little bit longer? I really don't want to have to cut another date short to bust again so soon after last Thursday."

Phineas smiled, unfazed by the rant or his sister's panting for breath afterwards. "Well, we were playing ball, yeah – but Isabella accidentally punted it up on the roof up there and we were going to make something to get it down – maybe something rocket engines or cold fusion or-"

"Anything but cold fusion," Candace muttered her breath, waving him off flippantly. "Shoo! I'll get your ball for you if that's what it takes to keep you off my back." She grabbed the bottom of the ladder. "Ferb, get off there."

He obliged, sliding down the posts with a practiced grace and landing with an almost inaudible thump on the grass. Candace grunted some sort of acknowledgment and scaled the rungs herself in turn. Upon reaching the topmost, it was only a matter of standing up straight to reach her hand over the edge of the gutter and grab onto the ball stuck there.

"Here." She tossed the ball down into Phineas' waiting hands. "Now just… play with the ball, will you? I really don't want to have to deal with any insanity today if I don't have to."

Phineas grinned, spinning the ball around on one finger. "Thanks, sis! And no problem – we were only planning on playing ball anyway. And now that we've got it back, we can start again. We won't bother you anymore."

Candace snorted, descending the ladder. "We'll see about that, I'm sure."

Phineas crossed his arms, staring at the column of red marks etched onto the wall. "Hmm. Not bad – I think that's a whole 'nother inch, wouldn't you say, sis?"

Candace blinked and smirked slyly. "I should hope so – you need all of those you can get if you want teachers to stop giving you directions back to the elementary school buildings on the campus."

"Okay, now, you know you're just exaggerating," he replied. "That only happened once, you know, and she was a substitute teacher anyway, so how was she supposed to know any better? Can't blame her for that."

"Oh, no, I'm not blaming her." Candace quirked an eyebrow upwards. "That was never the intention there. You were a short kid, you're a short teenager, and you're probably going to be a short adult."

"Right, of course." Phineas reached out and swung his hand at the ruler and marker in his sister's grip. She smirked again, raising her arm up into the air, quickly lifting the tools out of his reach. "Really, Candace? How'm I supposed to put your mark on the wall if you do that?"

"I don't know, how are you?" she teased. "I guess you'd have to take them from me – but I don't know how exactly you'd manage to do that, either."

Phineas frowned, sticking out his tongue, and jumped up, stretching up as far as he could, though even his outstretched fingertips still fell far short indeed of the desired tools. "Aw, come on!"

Candace raised her eyebrows victoriously as he jumped several more times before stopping, leaning on his knees and breathing heavily. "Maybe I'll let you have them after all, then," she said, a crooked grin on her face. "But only if you admit, right now, that I am awesome – the most awesome sister ever to be around."

Phineas looked up her, grinning and shaking his head. "Well, that much was never in question, I don't think."

"Oh, ho, is that right now?" Candace dropped her arm and Phineas seized the opportunity to shoot his arm out and snatch up the ruler and the marker, clutching them triumphantly.

"Well, of course," he replied. "But it's not even important right now – right now you just need to get your back against the wall so I can mark you down. Make sure you get your back straight."

Candace rolled her eyes and acquiesced the point, backing against the wall and holding her head evenly against it. "Anything for you, Phin."

Phineas muttered something beneath his breath, trying to stretch up on his tiptoes with the ruler but finding himself woefully unable to reach the top of his sister's head with it. "Hang on." Crossing the room, he retrieved a chair from the dining room table and dragged it across the floor before clambering up onto it. "Ah, much better."

A moment's more work and the second fresh red mark that day was etched onto the whiteness of the wall behind it. Phineas nodded, grinning as, with the added height of the kitchen chair beneath his feet, he was able to just about look his sister directly in the eyes. "Looks like you've broken the big number six."

Candace stepped back and eyed the marks on the wall. "Well. I guess so, then. I swear, I'm probably going to be ten feet tall by the time I finish growing."

"That would be pretty cool," Phineas enthused. "Ten feet! Though it would probably make it harder to… you know, fit through doors and stuff." He smiled, the emotion practically contagious in it's sincerity, and Candace smiled back.

"Well, that's certainly not something you're going to have to worry about, at least." She poked him in the nose gently, waving her hand none too subtly at his half of the marks the very highest of which still barely reached two-thirds the peak of her half. "Guess you'll have to take care of me when I start hitting my head on passing airplanes, then? I'll be counting on you for that."

"Pffft. If that happens, I promise that I'll be there to bandage you up, then. How's that sound?"

"Bandage me up?" Candace shrugged with an affected nonchalance. "I don't know – can you even reach that high into the medicine cabinet?"

"Weeeeell…. no, not exactly." Phineas hopped down from the chair and pat the back of it. "But that's where these bad boys come in, you know? As long as I've got these, there's nothing I can't reach."

"If you say so, Phineas. If you say so."

"Candace, did you put that up there?" Phineas pointed up towards the toolbox perched on the topmost shelf of the garage, practically touching the ceiling with it's handle.

"Did I do what now?" Candace poked her head around the corner of the garage door. Her eyes followed her brother's outstretched arm up to where he was pointing. "Oh."

Phineas raised an eyebrow. "Well, you know I didn't put it up there, which only really leaves the one of us, doesn't it? Think you can you just reach up there and get it for me?"

"Well, I think I can, probably, yeah," she replied teasingly. "Why do you ask?"

"Why do you think?"

"I think that maybe you should just build yourself a ladder to get up there so that you don't have to keep calling me across the house every time you need a lightbulb changed or the attic opened." Candace grinned, ruffling her brother's hair. "What happened to the other one anyway?"

"I don't know," Phineas admitted. "I think I may have left it on Mars by mistake yesterday evening. Maybe, I wasn't really paying attention. Can you just get it down real quick? I've got this really cool idea and I wanna get started – I'm gonna take some titanium sheeting and I've these blueprints for these giant springs and – and-" he paused, seeing the look on his sister's face. "It's gonna be really cool."

"Oh, I'm sure it will be," Candace returned, smirking. "But I gotta admit that I think it's funny to see to you ask. Will I get it? Won't I?" She winked. "That's for me to know and you to find out, I guess."

"Hey, you act like I can't get up there without you," Phineas pointed out. "It may be more conveinent, but it definitely isn't true, either."

"Isn't it now?" Candace said. "Well, go on, then – how do you plan to get up there? She eyed the toolbox. "I don't even think one of the kitchen chairs would be enough to get you all the way up there."

"Maybe not, no." Phineas' face cracked into a wide, silly smile. "But you are, you know?"

"I am? What do you mean by- whoa!" She abruptly cut herself off as her brother reached up for her shoulders and hefted himself up, bending his legs around her for leverage and shimmying farther upwards. "And what do you think you're doing, mister?" she asked, swaying back and forth in attempt to keep her balance as he clung to her and clambered up.

Phineas grinned, wrapping his legs around her waist and clinging with his arms around her neck for stability as he stared into her eyes. "Look, I'm as tall as you are now." He stuck out his tongue. "Bet you never thought that would happen, hmm?"

Candace raised her eyebrows. "Just because you've suddenly got it in your head that you're some kinda monkey doesn't mean you're taller than me, you know. It just means you know how to climb. Also, loosen up with the legs there, are you trying to squeeze my intestines up my throat? Here, here, let me do it." She shifted around, bringing her arms beneath him and hefting his weight up on her hands. "Isn't that more comfortable anyway?"

Phineas leaned his forehead against his sister's. "Well, if you must do all the work for me, I won't complain. Though if you're going to lift me, you're gonna have to lift me a lot farther than this to reach the top shelf."

"Probably," Candace agreed, glancing up at it out the corner of her eye before flicking her gaze back down. "Of course, maybe that's just because there's something else I think I should give you first, at least while you're all the way up here."

"All the way up here?" Phineas returned. "What is this, the upper atmosphere or something? Should I have brought my breathing apparatus, then?'

Candace smirked. "Maybe you should have – but maybe I can help with that, too."

"Oh?"

"There's only one way to find out, isn't there?" Another moment, and the last of the empty space in between their faces disappeared, their lips coming together in a moment of passion made even more overpowering by the closeness of each other's bodies intertwined together. The garage around made for surroundings rather incongruous, but also overwhelmingly appropriate, too.

It'd always been the situations like these that'd brought the two of them together in the first place – depending on each other for things that no else could really do. Iron sharpens iron, and as Phineas was often fond of saying, they had a way of pushing each other to achieve things that neither of them would have deemed possible otherwise.

Always reaching – and help each other in reaching – for the stars.

Or, in his case, for the top shelf. That was also important.

A/N: And in case anyone is wondering, it's indeed canonical that Candace is at least 6'4'' to 6'5'' by the age of 35, as demonstrated by Quantum Boogaloo and measuring her height to Phineas' also canonically established childhood height of 3'6''. As for Phineas' adult height... well, to put it simply, the kid is 3'6'' at 12. Letting him get to 5'0'' is being generous. :P But it's for best, for the cutest. ;)