The walk back to the Fail Zone after the… decidedly strange - but also brief - encounter with the third Candace didn't take very long. The stacks and stacks of long-since scrapped space rippers of all shapes and sizes stood out in marked contrast to the dull gray everything all around, making it easy to find their way back - provided they didn't get too far, otherwise the thick mist of unreality would have something to say about that.

Candace winced slightly and shook her hand back and forth, secretly hoping her other self didn't see the motion. She… hadn't really meant to hit her other self like that, nor that hard, although she was hard pressed to think that the third Candace hadn't kinda deserved it either. No Candace - no matter what dimension they may or may not hail from - should, or could, be justified in saying such things, surely.

Still, it was sort of annoying. That was her good hand - the one she favored for microsoldering work on miniscule components. Having to use her other hand would feel really weird, and probably be a lot harder. Oh, well - it wasn't like she had much of a choice, was it?

"So…" Other Candace spoke up. "What exactly is the plan, again? I mean, I get a cold fusion reactor. Are you just, like, gonna use it open a portal for us to leave through? Can you - is that possible?"

"I wish it was that simple," Candace replied. "No, I can't do that - no one can. The space-time continuum's got this natural flow of energy between dimensions going on. And if you go-"

"-if you go with the flow of the energy, to the dimensions downstream of you, it's very easy, but trying to open a portal upstream is much, much harder. It would take eight million gigawatts of energy, overloading the local power grid. I've… heard this before."

Candace glanced over at her other self and blinked. "And you said you couldn't do this kind if stuff." Other Candace shot her a significant glare, and she cleared her throat and continued. "Right. So, anyway - that's true. But the thing is, we're outside of all dimensions - outside of the energy flow entirely. And there's this protective barrier around the space-time continuum that's incredibly hard to get through, especially so from the wrong way." She paused. "But it can be done - with the help of this material known as Pizzazium-"

"-Infinionite? Hey, I know that stuff too. Phineas uses it for a ton of stuff at home. That's the super-energetic stuff."

"Yeah," Candace smirked slightly. "We - I - use it a lot too - as much as we can get our hands on the stuff. It is super energy-dense, in fact, it's quite literally the only currently known material in existence with enough energy to actually breach the the space-time continuum's protective outer shell. As you said, traveling in between counterclockwise dimensions is possible without it, though it's not necessarily easy. Traveling back inside space-time as a whole?" She stopped and shook her head. "Unless we get ahold of some Pizzazium, that's… not going to happen. We could build a battery with a capacity of ten thousand gigawatt-hours, and spend a hundred trillion years charging it up to maximum capacity, and we'd still only have three-quarters of a percent of the base energy requirement to open even the smallest of space-time rifts. That's to say nothing of actually trying to keep the rift open for any extended period of time."

"... you're making our chances sound awfully dismal, you know that?"

Candace grimaced slightly. "What can I say? Optimism is Phineas' job. I'm just… stating the facts." She laughed nervously. "Though I could use a good dose of that myself, too. It's just, well, unless you're Phineas Flynn, optimism's pretty hard to come by when you literally don't exist anymore."

Other Candace chuckled knowingly. "Yeah, I suppose you're right." She paused for a second. "So what's the cold fusion generator for, then?"

"We can use it to power a better space-time aberration detector than this tiny one." Candace held up her phone. "One powerful enough to predict rifts, to some extent. Which will drastically improve our chances of being catch a natural rift and slip back through it."

"Right. Well, let's hope it works."

Candace grinned. "Now you are sounding like Phineas."

"Well, I like to think he's rubbed off on me a little," Other Candace replied. "At least after all those years, if you know what I mean."

They had just reached the entry of the Fail Zone, and Candace's attention was drawn by the piles and piles of scrap. Most the stuff here was useless, but with a bit of luck, there should be enough here to finish the reactor she'd started previously. "Can't say that I do," she remarked idly, pushing a rusted photovoltaic neutronic phaser array out the way, then kneeling and trying to pry the stiff maintenance panel open.

"Uh huh." Other Candace seemed unconvinced.

The array's internal workings held nothing of value. Pushing the device farther out of the way, Candace turned to the next one, beginning to repeat the process. This.. could take a while, she realized. She really did wish Phineas was here with her. Along with - or perhaps even instead of - Other Candace. Who was pleasant enough, but it wasn't quite the same.

"So, what are you looking for?" Other Candace asked. "I can help."

"What?" Now Candace was confused. "I thought you said you couldn't do this stuff, though?"

Other Candace cocked an eyebrow, making a weird face. "That doesn't mean I'm dumb, you know. I'm pretty sure I've learnt enough from Phineas to be able to tell the difference between a…" she pointed at two of the random contraptions lying around. "... digital hard light wavelength obstructor and a - is that some kind of beta particle manipulator?"

Candace shot the device in question a glance. "Yeah - it's a transpirator. Huh, fair enough, I guess. See if you can find any pieces that look they could go to a neutronic phase emitter?"

"Neutronic phase emitter," Other Candace mumbled under her breath. "Okay… that's the thing with the, like, glass and the diodes and the, yeah, I know what it is. I'll see what I can find."

Well, for Other Candace's… rather stubborn attitude from not too long ago, she sure wasn't acting like any of the gadgets scattered around were strange to her. Candace suspected that it was because she was right - because Other Candace was another version of her, of course. No Flynn, no matter what dimension they come from, can be too far removed from the inventing genes, right? Actually, Candace didn't really know - she'd never been to another dimension before.

And apparently Other Candace got around, even to the extent of communication with her spatio-temporal duplicates. Which was pretty cool, if she did say so herself. Maybe she'd have to bring it up to Phineas when she got home. Communicating with versions of yourself from other planes of existence? Yeah, it was a promising concept.

"Hey, look, I found a quantum ion amplification… thing," Other Candace announced from behind. "Hang on, lemme get it out of here… got it!"

"Awesome!" Candace exclaimed. She glanced at the pile of parts she'd collected, mentally cataloging them. "You know what? I think that just about does it. We just need to find one more diode array and we'll be good."

"Oh, those things." Other Candace rolled her eyes. "Does your brother lose them in the couch all the time too? I don't even know how they end up there anymore. Sometimes I swear he's gotta be messing with me."

"Never a diode array," Candace returned. "Though we did lose thirty feet of electron conduit tubing under our bed and it took three weeks before it decided to show up randomly." She could still remember that incident. How had that tubing even gotten under there in the first place? No one used electron conduit tubing in the house, for obvious reasons. She was about to say something more, when she suddenly realized that Other Candace was staring at her very, very intently. "...what?"

Other Candace raised her eyebrows and smiled slightly. "Under our bed?"

Candace swallowed hard, feeling the blood rush to her face. "No - I mean, what? I - I didn't say that! I mean, I didn't mean to say that! I meant your - mine - his - a! A bed! A random bed that was…" her voice trailed away at the look on her duplicate's face.

"You know, I get the impression that you and your brother share a lot more than a family business." Other Candace crossed her arms, but her face was still marked with amusement.

"Wh - what do you mean?" Candace stammered, desperately trying to will away the heat she could feel radiating from her skin. This wasn't a subject she intended to talk about with another version of herself. No way. No freaking way.

"I don't know. I mean, you've said you share a yard, and I did catch that slip with the car, and just now you just went and said you share a bed." Other Candace grinned. "In fact, if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that you aren't in a family business at all - rather, it's the family business."

No, no, no, no, no - this could not be happening. Candace tried to think of something to say, to change the subject, to distract her other self. She reached out and mutely held up a diode array, trying to remind her duplicate what they were supposed to be looking for.

"Hang on," Other Candace said. "It's quite alright - how about I go first, hm?"

What?

"Because I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you and your brother are a heck of a lot… more intimate than your status as siblings would seem to allow. Now, am I right or am I right?"

Candace couldn't quite bring herself to move or speak or even breathe at that. What was Other Candace accusing her off, exactly? Of committing incest with her own younger brother? That… was bad - it was unthinkable!

Because, obviously, it was true - and no one was supposed to ever know, save a very small group of people, mostly people who'd figured out on their own anyway, and been consequently inducted into the group before anything could get out of hand. And that group did not include herself from other dimensions.

"Look!" Candace burst out in desperation. "I don't know how your dimension is but I swear that I'm not weird, okay, I'm not that weird and I'm sure you think it's disgusting and you never want to see me again and I can't really blame you for that but you really have to please remember where we are and we have to work together and I'm sorry that you had to find out I really didn't mean for this happen no one was supposed to know and I don't know how you-"

"I figured." Other Candace said calmly, cutting her off. "Well, what can I say? Welcome to the club? It's great to meet you."

Wait… what?

"I - I'm sorry?" Candace managed after a few seconds of staring at her other self.

Other Candace shook her head. "You're kinda bad at this - no offense, of course." She paused and grinned slightly. "Don't worry - you're fine by me. And by my Phineas, too - and I'm not necessarily using 'my' there in the context of 'my dimension', either."

"Wait, so you… and Phineas - Phineas from your dimension - you…" Candace stammered. "I… I don't… I mean, I just…"

Other Candace shrugged. "Believe it, I guess? It's the truth - I swear it. You've got no problems here." Her face hardened momentarily.. "Now that other version of us… yeah, there might be a few issues there - although what do I know? Maybe the fact we outnumber her now will be good for her."

Candace let out a long, low breath. This was… entirely unexpected.

Grrrrrrrrr…

That was also entirely unexpected, and compared to the utter silence of the non-dimension all around, it seemed very loud indeed. Candace whipped her head around to face the source, wondering what it would be that could produce such a throaty sort of rumbling in such a threatening manner.

Her eyes grew wide as she saw… it.

"It's - it's - a - a," she stammered breathlessly, but the long-unused word slipped her mind. "Like a lion, but the other one - that doesn't exist anymore."

A tiger. Yes, that was it. The huge animal was crouched low to the ground, its brilliant yellow eyes glowing like a pair of LEDs. A low, guttural growling drifted from the back of its throat as its long tail twitched back and forth.

"Wh - wh - what do we do?" Other Candace hissed, her face suddenly pale.

"I think - think we stay still? Can't they only see us if we move?" Candace whispered out the side of her mouth. The animal hadn't yet moved, but its eyes were still on them, as if it was sizing the situation up. Its ribs were showing through the brightly colored fur, and Candace could almost see the drops of saliva running down its razor-sharp fangs.

Behind the animal, not a hundred feet away, stood the small shed designed for storing the Molecular Re-Atomizer. It was small, but it had a door. With a lock. If they could just reach it time to get inside and bar the door, they'd be safe. If. Candace knew that no human on Earth - or off Earth, for that matter - could ever hope to outrun a tiger. Especially not one intent on hunting.

"It's not a dinosaur!" Other Candace retorted through closed teeth. "I'm pretty sure we're supposed to run!"

The tiger growled again, and crouched even lower, its hind legs coiling up. It was getting ready to leap at them.

"Wait-" Out of the corner of her eye, she realized her duplicate was still clutching the quantum ion amplificator. "Candace!" she hissed. "That thing in your hand - you need to hold down the red button - then count to… ten. Then throw it."

This had a small chance of working. She only hoped Other Candace didn't count too quickly, or else they'd only make the animal madder by punting a small piece of metal at it. Of course, if she counted too slowly… at least then it would be quick and painless.

Other Candace's knuckles were white around the small gadget in her hand, but her thumb moved slowly up and depressed the wide round button.

One, Candace counted. Please don't leap. Two. Please don't leap. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Ni-

Other Candace drew back her arm, and with a last wide-eyed glance in her direction, hurled the small device through the air.

Too soon.

It landed on the ground in front of the tiger, bouncing twice and rolling to a stop. The animal reached out one enormous paw and batted it away. Then it turned back to them, wiggled slightly in place, and jumped.

KRAKOW!

A brilliant rainbow-colored explosion shook the junkyard, sending devastating reverberations through the ground. The shockwave thundering through the air caught the tiger mid-leap and flung it to the ground. Candace couldn't move, or think, or even breath. It had actually worked. That… was amazing.

"NOW!" Other Candace must have realized what the plan was. Candace felt a cold, clammy hand grab her own, and pull her to her feet.

Adrenaline is an amazing thing, and Candace was no stranger to its effects, but this… was on another level. It was as if she'd had rockets strapped onto her. Barely even taking time to breathe, she and her duplicate ran as she'd never run before - never. Behind them, a deafening roar shook through the air, followed by a savage snarling sound that sent chills through her spine.

Just… needed… to get inside… the shed…

They made it. They made it.

Candace's lungs were burning, and her legs felt like two noodles. She just wanted to collapse.

"The door!" Other Candace shouted breathlessly, her face gone as red as her shirt. "Help me shut the door!"

Candace turned back and grabbed ahold of the wooden door's handle. The tiger was running at them in earnest now. With a slight slamming sound, the door snapped shut. Candace snatched up the nearest thing she could lay her hands on, and jammed it into the hinges.

...It was the Molecular Re-Atomizer.

Bang!

A thunderous crash echoed as the wooden door suddenly dented inwards to a frightening degree. The Molecular Re-Atomizer sparked and flashed as the metal it was made of was slowly crunched into something more resembling a pancake.

Bang!

Pieces of wood splintered away from the door, showering down on the tiny room. The Re-Atomizer was almost bent completely in half by this point. It was completely ruined now.

"There's nothing - nothing left to bar the door with!" Candace gasped, looking around the small space. Other Candace followed her gaze, up, down, all around. "What do we do?!"

"How should I know!?" Other Candace shouted. "You're the one with the… thing!"

Bang!

Candace caught a glimpse of orange through a particularly wide split in the door. The hinges were straining, struggling to keep the flimsy barrier in place.

"I don't even have my tools!" Candace shouted, becoming more and more terrified. "And even if I did - there's nothing in here!"

"Then what do we do?!" Other Candace returned.

Bang!

A huge chunk fell away from the top of the door, and a massive hairy paw reached through, wildly waving around in the air. A tremendous roar shook the entire shed. Candace screamed and jumped back, into the far corner. She clung to the nearest thing for support, trying ever so hard to maintain her… consciousness, at least. If she fainted, she was surely a goner.

Bang!

Not that even staying conscious promised much hope right now. They cowered back into the corner of the shed, trying desperately to fit themselves into what little space simply wasn't there. There was only one way out of this shed. No windows - and one door.

Bang!

Something was squeezing her upper arm in vice-like grip, but she couldn't really be bothered to check what it was right now. She tightened her own grip, doing her best shrink down into nothing. Nowhere to run - nowhere to hide. Nothing to do but stand here.

Bang!

An entire plank flaked away, and the door's top hinge fell away from the wall. One by one, the other screws began wiggling their way out. The battered, broken remains of the Molecular Separator snapped directly in half in a shower of sparks, tumbling away from the door. No longer reinforced by the metal, the hinges gave way - and entire door fell inward with a thunderous crash.

A tremendous roaring shook the building, as the smoke slowly settled.

Candace closed her eyes, hoping beyond all hope that it wouldn't hurt too badly.

Then another roar. And a loud, almost buzzing sound. And a yell - a very human yell.

A very Candace yell.

Candace opened one eye, wondering just what in the heck was going on. And then a most unexpected sound could be heard - a loud animal's yelp, followed an extended ear-piercing squealing that gradually faded into the distance. And then… nothing. She opened both her eyes now, straightening slightly. She finally let go of… Other Dimension Candace's arm, sucking a huge breath.

And then someone else stepped inside the room. She was… them. Candace - another Candace. Another Candace with a very long, gray pole in her hand, another Candace panting heavily as if from great exertion.

Another Candace who took a huge breath and lowered her dark sunglasses away from her eyes.

"Care to explain to me what exactly is going on here?"


A very decidedly normal Candace had walked for about ten minutes straight before coming to a halt and deciding that she was utterly lost. The place she had landed in had at least contained buildings and all sorts of technology (most of it no doubt left there by the Phineas and Ferb of this dimension… so much for that idea that they were outside dimensions altogether? Oh well.) But after ten minutes of walking she had ended up in what seemed to be an open field. A very grey open field, but an open field nonetheless. The greyness felt strangely familiar, but she couldn't place it – not that she cared anyway.

Well, she was lost. That could be both a good thing and a bad thing – it was a good thing because now she couldn't see her other selves anymore, but a bad thing because it was not getting her any closer to being back home. Then again, it wasn't like arguing with her counterparts would have helped her one bit in that regard. She would just have to find this world's Phineas and Ferb. They had to be out there somewhere – she knew her brothers far too well not to realize that when trouble happened, they'd show up sooner or later.

Candace knew that wasn't quite the fairest thing to say. Not after Phineas had gone through so much effort over the past year to help her out. He had even gotten her to admit that she had problems beyond what her psychiatrist might be able to fix, and that spending some time together as brother and sister could be beneficial. Honestly, she knew he wasn't a bad guy. And more so than last time, she also knew that she couldn't avoid her other selves forever. Even if she could find a version of Phineas and Ferb here – which might be a bit of a pipe dream, realistically speaking – she'd still need to get back into contact with her other selves, because she wasn't as selfish to leave them stranded here while she went home.

And honestly… she wanted to be on speaking terms with them. Arguing all the time was the most natural thing to do between such diametrically opposed personalities, but it wasn't going to do them any good. If only they weren't so impossible! Incest Candace for the way she kept looking at her as if she were the bad guy, and then the Other Candace, who had seemed decent at first, but had completely flipped as soon as she'd told them some inconvenient truths. Because apparently any criticism of Phineas would stop both of her counterparts from listening to reason. How had that even happened? She knew that wasn't what she was like when she was younger, and she doubted her other selves had started out as such Phineas-fangirls either.

Candace sighed. Just standing here and thinking to herself wasn't going to do her any good. Maybe she should go back and face them again…

RIPPP!

She had no idea what happened. The one moment she heard a strange ripping sound coming from the sky, as if the sky itself was tearing apart (and that was another strangely familiar thing – maybe it would be good for her to investigate that memory and see if she could figure out anything about this place from it); the next, she found herself lying on the ground with a heavy weight on her. "What?" the heavy weight called out. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"That's a question I should be asking you, considering that you fell on me!" Candace snapped. "For crying out loud, if you're going to fall from the sky, can't you at least announce it first and…"

…and then that voice registered. That incredibly familiar voice.

Every. Single. Time.

Candace groaned loudly, even as she felt her other self get off her back. (This was going to hurt as much as her chin already did.) She got up very slowly, feeling absolutely dizzy, and examined the person before her. Yup, that was her all right. The same orange hair, the same frown on her face. She was dressed in strange light brown robes for some reason, but aside from that, there was nothing surprising there.

The other Candace, however, did not share that opinion. Once she got a good look at normal Candace's face, her eyes went wide and she shrieked. Candace sighed, being half-relieved to finally see a normal reaction at all this craziness but not quite in the mood to deal with this. "Look, I'm just…"

"You're a clone!" Other Candace snapped, and before normal Candace knew it she felt a strange gun pressed against her throat. (Come to think of it, she should have noticed that thing slinging over other Candace's back before.) "How is this possible? I know the cloning factories on Kamino were destroyed! Where did they produce you, the Outer Rim? And who did they possibly think they were going to fool with that ridiculous outfit? Please! You'd never have gotten through any Coruscanti security post with that!"

"I – what in the world are you talking about!" Normal Candace snapped in return, feeling a shiver of fear running up her spine. Her other self wasn't actually going to shoot her, was she? She definitely sounded crazy – well, more crazy than the other weirdos. "I'm not a clone, and I've never even heard of any of those places you mentioned!" Honestly, being called a clone felt slightly offensive – if anyone was the clone, it was probably Other Candace. A defective one, no doubt. "I'm from another dimension!"

"Another… dimension?" Other Candace said incredulously. "What, like hyperspace? What do you take me for, somebody who's never even been off-planet? Now, I'm not going to ask this again…" She pressed the gun closer to Candace's throat. "Where did you come from and who sent you?"

Candace was definitely panicking now. "I'm not a spy!" she exclaimed. "I – look around you, for heaven's sake! I don't know where you think you are, but you're not there anymore!" Was that convincing her? She didn't think it was. "Look, whatever you want to know I'll tell you, all right? I'll tell you as long as you just look around first!"

Other Candace continued to glare, but she did look sideways for a few brief moments. "We're on some grey-ish planet, I assume" she murmured. "What is this place? How did you get me here?"

"I didn't get you from anywhere!" Normal Candace snapped. "For crying out loud, if I was a spy and I'd intended to get you somewhere, wouldn't I be armed? Wouldn't I be standing somewhere else than right on the spot you'd show up, so that you would land anywhere but on me? Which really hurt, by the way!"

Other Candace didn't relent, but from the thoughtful look in her eyes Normal Candace could see she was considering it. Good. This was what she needed. She wished she'd been paying more attention while watching spy movies with her brothers in her youth, but any second in which she wasn't being shot at was undoubtedly a good thing.

"So…" Other Candace said, much softer this time. "If you didn't get me here, who did? And where are we?"

"We're…" Normal Candace tried to come up with a way to explain this to someone who was apparently unfamiliar with the mere concept of other dimensions (which was really stupid, by the way. She might not have travelled through dimensions before, not being a freak show like her counterparts, but at least she'd heard of them.) "I don't know exactly where we are. I was pulled in here like you were. But I am another version of you. I am Candace Flynn." She saw Other Candace's grip on her gun tighten again (and really, her throat was getting sorer with the second) and realized she needed to think of something fast. "Are you… are you familiar with time travel, at least?"

Other Candace frowned. "What, like travelling back to the Republic and trying to stop it from falling? Yes, I've… uh, I've seen something about that on the Holonet. Doesn't sound like a good idea, though. You know, paradoxes and stuff, not to mention all the Force sensitives that would sense that something was off right away – like the Emperor himself, of course."

…Normal Candace had no idea what she was talking about, but 'yes' sounded good. "This is something like that. Like you're going back in time, so every… planet?... that you know is still there, but it's different. And there would be another you there."

Other Candace pondered that for a moment. "Yeah, I suppose there would be," she murmured. "So, you're, like, me from the past? Or from the future?"

"Sort of," Normal Candace replied. "If you'll just go along with me, you'll find that I'm telling the truth. Over there is a city somewhere, and there'll be stuff there you're unfamiliar with that will tell you that you're in an entirely different world – er, universe."

Deep in thought, her counterpart stared in the direction she'd pointed for a long while – long enough to make her nervous – until she finally nodded. "Very well then" she replied, putting the gun down from Candace's throat and allowing her to breathe more freely once again. She almost collapsed from relief, eliciting a chuckle from her counterpart.

"It wasn't even loaded, knucklehead," she said, then grinning even more as she saw Normal Candace's eyes widen. "What, did you really think I sleep with a loaded blaster in my bed? Puh-lease. I keep that one in my nightstand."

"I didn't know you just fell out of bed, though," Normal Candace replied. "You sleep with a gu – er, a blaster?"

"I suppose you wouldn't, if you really had nothing to do with what happened to me," Other Candace mused. "And yeah, I do. Can't be too careful, you know? My husband thinks I'm paranoid too, but we've had far too many close calls over the years. Even if we won't be able to catch a trained assassin off-guard for more than a few seconds with this as they'd be able to tell it isn't loaded right away… but every second counts in those situations."

Normal Candace nodded duly, not sure if she should feel offended or not, until a thought suddenly occurred to her. It would be an awkward question to ask, but since Other Candace wasn't pointing the blaster at her for the moment anyway… "You're married?"

"Yep. Have been for years now." Other Candace gave her a bemused smile. "I guess that means you really aren't a clone designed to replace me. If you don't even know I'm married…" She shook her head, and her shoulders shook weirdly for a moment before going back to normal so fast that Candace figured she must have imagined it. "I mean, Senator Organa and her brother were there, for crying out loud. It was a pretty big deal. If you had been a clone, whoever sent you would have made sure you'd know."

"I see," Candace replied, again not registering much of what her counterpart had said but focusing on the important part: her counterpart was married, in a public ceremony no less, and she could even tell Other Candace wore a wedding ring now that she was paying attention to it. At last, a counterpart with common sense who wasn't hooking up with her own brother. (Okay, so she didn't actually know whether the Candace who had punched her was also with Phineas, but given her ridiculous overprotective attitude regarding him she was prepared for the worst.)

As they continued to walk back towards the town – and Normal Candace hoped desperately that they wouldn't get lost again because even if the blaster wasn't loaded that didn't mean Other Candace's good reflexes wouldn't easily do her in if she got impatient – Candace finally allowed herself to mull over a lot of the other things this Candace had said. She was from a universe in which cloning was normal (well, if Phineas and Ferb had had their way in their youths it would most likely have been in their world as well, but the other Candaces hadn't even considered that she was a clone when she first fell into that pillow pile so even in Crazytown they had never gotten their way on that) and she'd mentioned something about planets, and a lot of different words for common items, such as blasters instead of guns. It all reminded her far too much of those old Space Adventure movies. She hadn't actually watched them the way her brothers had, but between Phineas and Ferb geeking out over them (well, mostly Phineas) she had heard the word 'blaster' mentioned.

This was great. She'd gone from Candaces who were obsessed with their little brother (and for all the wrong reasons, too) to baby-sitting a trigger-happy Candace from outer space.

What else could this day have in store for her? What else could possibly go wrong?

Normal Candace desperately hoped she'd never find out.


Candace had a bad feeling about this.

That was a thought she generally didn't have lightly, as the phrase was often used among Force sensitives for whom such bad feelings were very serious indeed. But even though she herself couldn't use the Force, she still had a bad feeling right now.

In a way, that was hardly a surprise after she'd just been awoken so rudely. And the fact that she'd faced a clone of herself in the process wasn't the best sign either. She'd let the clone ramble about her silly stories, but the facts spoke for themselves. Someone who looked exactly like her could only be a clone designed to impersonate her. What were the odds of someone looking like her by coincidence? Or, as the impostor had suggested, some form of time travel?

No, that was surely too ridiculous. But even so… the impostor was right that in the circumstances of her waking up she'd clearly been caught as much by surprise as Candace herself was. Circumstances which by themselves were quite unusual, of course, in that she didn't know any Imperial technology that had the capacity to teleport people right into the sky. And then there was the fact that she had landed right on Clone Candace, which was hardly something Clone Candace would do to herself, would she? Granted, it could just be an elaborate ploy to get her to think that there was no way this was a real impersonation, but… it was all just too far-fetched.

And finally, and perhaps most significantly, Clone Candace wasn't acting like a clone would. She was scared and uneasy, in a way that was… well, it was actually a lot like herself. Which made no sense, as no clone would continue the impersonation in front of the one they were supposed to be impersonating. Not in such a convincing way, at least. And as she looked at the cowering woman beside her, Candace just knew that the bad premonition she had wasn't about her.

So, Clone Candace was not the enemy. That was good. What was worse was that Candace still didn't have any idea where she was, and how she'd gotten here. They had been walking through desolate areas for minutes, and although the part of this grey wasteland they were now entering was actually sparsely filled with buildings there was no indication that anyone lived in them. In terms of likelihood of running into humans, they might as well have been in the deserts of Tatooine. A comparison her husband wouldn't have wanted her to make, but it was true nonetheless.

A pang shot through her heart as she thought of him. Had he noticed her disappearance yet? Depending on when she was taken, he might have. But surely if he'd noticed, he could also track her down and get her back. Candace had seen him build a tracking system for his closest friends a couple of years ago, and it had thus far worked flawlessly, incorporating the Force and its ability to sense distant presences into his invention (granted, that had mostly been his brother's contribution.) As soon as he knew she was missing, she knew he would move Tython and Moraband to find her.

"I – we should run into the others any minute now," Clone Candace suddenly spoke up, having apparently misinterpreted something about Candace's expression as skepticism about where they were going. "They may have walked off – it would be just typical of them to do so when I need their help – but I'm sure they're still in the area. This city has to have an other end, after all, and I doubt that they've walked out of it."

Candace figured that it might be best not to point out that Clone Candace had been the one who'd left the city they were going to. There were clearly holes in her story. Not enough to justify the explanation that she herself preferred, but something was up. "So, what do we do?" she said. "Just wait here, or walk around town until we – "

"CANDACE!"

The sound of her name (their name) being yelled from what couldn't be more than two blocks away caught them both off-guard. Candace and Clone Candace simultaneously turned their heads in that direction. "Well, that went easier than I thought," Clone Candace muttered. "Come on, and I'll prove to you that something more is going on here."

Candace still wasn't sure what exactly her clone was trying to prove (unless there was something to the whole 'other dimensions' story after all) but she ran along anyway as Clone Candace dashed through the small alleyways into the direction of the sound. It took them just a few seconds to get there, but when they did, Candace felt her knees suddenly turn into jelly.

Standing in front of them, leaning against the wall, was… her. A woman who looked almost exactly like her, although dressed in a similarly ridiculous outfit to Clone Candace's. She was giving Clone Candace a smug look and didn't seem to realize that Candace was standing behind her in the shadows, which… which was probably a good thing. It allowed her to try to deal with the newest addition to this rapidly unraveling plotline of her life.

The obvious solution might have been that this Candace was another clone, possibly the one behind the fact that she was here now. But that just didn't feel right, there were too many facts that didn't add up already and adding another Candace to the bargain made it feel like an overly complicated solution. First Candace had been scared, whereas this Candace was confident but with a look of strong contempt on her face – nothing like what she'd expected a clone to be like.

Maybe she should drop the whole clone theory. Go back to the basics of what she knew. And that was that she had abruptly ceased to be in her bedroom in her Coruscanti apartment, and that she'd woken up in a grey town somewhere else entirely, where not one but two people with her face were walking around. The time travel theory was beginning to sound increasingly likely.

In all her contemplations, Candace almost missed the new addition to their group talking to Clone Candace. "I figured that you might be here almost right after I woke up," she smugly spoke, glaring at Clone Candace. "And if you're here, the ones who caused this mess can't be far behind. If they know what's good for them, they'd better start fixing it right now."

"I – what are you talking about?" Clone Candace spluttered. "Where did the other me go?"

"The 'other' me?" the newer Candace said. "I'm the only one there is. Unless you had another molecular splitting incident? I wouldn't put it past the boys to put us through all that again."

"A molecular…" Clone Candace muttered sneeringly. It was weird to see such an unpleasant expression on her own face. She stared closely at her other self and shook her head. "Oh for crying out loud – you're a new one, aren't you? I haven't spoken to you before."

"I try to stay out of sight, yes," Other Candace replied. "Especially given the fact that you're living my life, if you hadn't figured that out yet. I don't want to have anything to do with that, thank you very much. It's bad enough for me to have been uprooted from one day to the next to go to a life without my family and Jeremy Johnson – who was my husband, because I put some effort into that relationship rather than make it wither away as you did and…"

Just as Candace was beginning to enjoy getting a chance to reflect on all this insanity (seriously, the time travel theory was beginning to look ever more likely to her – either that, or a couple of people being insane enough to believe they'd time travelled and were in altered realities) Other Candace looked straight at her. "What the – there are two of you? And you're carrying a gun?" She gave Clone Candace-who-might-not-be-a-clone a suspicious look. "Did you put me here to try to get rid of me, and is the gun for intimidation purposes? Because if you're going to force me to uproot who I am again, you might as well shoot me and be done with it! Or better yet, just question my existence – that's cleaner, right? And it's not like you'd care about anything else…"

Clone Candace stared at her. "Look, I don't even know what you're talking about…"

"I figured, and I don't care."

"But we're not… well, whoever you think we are," she finished. "We're from two different dimensions, and there are two more versions of Candace Flynn out there. We don't know how we got here, but we do know we want to get out again and we might need your help to do it. And for the record, I am actually married to Jeremy Johnson. See?" She took off the promise ring that was on her finger and handed it to Other Candace, who examined it with ever increasing amazement (and some frustration).

Maybe, Candace wondered, this was going to work. Maybe they were going to get a reasonable explanation, and this other Candace was going to come with them without her having to use her blaster – because seriously, this whole situation was confusing enough that she would long have pointed it at either of the others if she had only known whom to point it at. She was all for being kind and understanding with other people, like her husband had taught her, but there were limits and potential threats were the clearest examples of that.

And then the other Candace turned fuzzy. It was only for a second or so, but it was enough for Candace to get her hand solidly back on her blaster. "You're a hologram?" she exclaimed. That was a surprise – she'd never seen them look so lifelike before…

Hologram Candace – maybe that was what she was going to call the other anyway, for lack of a better name – shook her head. "Not really – although you're not far off" she responded. "I'm a temporal anomaly."

"A what?" Candace muttered. This day just kept getting stranger.

Hologram… er, Anomaly Candace gave them a strangely unsettling smile. "You'd better sit down. This is going to be a long and very interestingstory."

Candace looked at her clone self, who shrugged and sat down. Curiosity had won the day for her, then – and she had to admit that this was something she too wanted to hear about, even if she was confident that she wouldn't understand all of it. The original version of herself she'd met was strange enough, but this woman? She just seemed… off, in a way. Not unlike that Darthenshmirtz guy whom Perry used to fight.

"It all began a few years ago" Anomaly Candace began, after Candace sat down as well. "I'd been living a happy life with my Jeremy and my kids until one day, my brothers turned up from the past. Do you remember that day, at least?" She frowned. "You were there, right? When we later went back to the future and you tried to bust them to my Mom?" Candace was glad she wasn't looking at her, because she was still stuck on trying to remember whether the name 'Jeremy Johnson' sounded familiar or not.

Clone Candace frowned. "I… I think that might have happened. I'm not really sure."

"Good enough for me" Anomaly Candace said with a shrug. "Anyway, when I saw that my brothers had time travelled I knew that this was my golden chance to go back in time and bust them for the rollercoaster. I went back and tried to do it, only to be cut off by a version of me from an alternate future in which I'd succeeded and turned Danville into a dystopia. I reluctantly gave in and she later disappeared as an anomaly, after which I went back to the future – only it was different."

There was so much there that Candace didn't get, whether it was the 'rollercoaster' or 'Danville' (was it a planet? A town? This other place Clone Candace claimed to be from, or yet another place that Anomaly Candace might be from?) But Clone Candace was still watching her intently (albeit with a pronounced scowl on her face) so she presumed that maybe she was the crazy one, and the things they were discussing here were incredibly normal.

But even if they were, she still wished more than ever that she could be home again.

"You still didn't explain what an anomaly is," she pointed out. "And how can one disappear and the other stay there?"

Anomaly Candace gave her counterpart a very demeaning look, and Candace had a feeling she would have started yelling at her for her stupidity had it not been for the blaster she was holding. She didn't hold back much as it was. "I was thinking that I wouldn't have to explain obvious details that anyone would know," she muttered. "Or at least, anyone who's from our crazy family." She really had a thing against her relatives, didn't she? Candace couldn't even begin to guess where that derived from – of course, she didn't have too many relatives to speak of and make a comparison. But she was prevented from really delving into that by Anomaly Candace proceeding. "An anomaly occurs when you go back in time and prevent the means or the reasons that made your journey back in time possible," she explained. "That is what happened with the me from the bad future, and that… that was what happened to me as well." Candace noticed that she looked genuinely pained now. "I was walking out of the Danville museum with my mother and my daughter, when they disappeared in front of my eyes. And when I got home, my house turned out to be occupied by another family. There was another Candace Flynn in town who had taken over my life, and thanks to my brothers' stupid antics, I didn't even technically exist anymore."

"That's… that's harsh" Clone Candace muttered. "I mean, I knew those experiments were dangerous… but non-existence? What did you do? Did you ask them to reverse it, or…"

Candace felt slightly confused by the fact that apparently Anomaly Candace's brothers were to blame for all this, because she hadn't managed to decipher their precise involvement from the story. Maybe they had tricked Anomaly Candace into doing this 'busting' thing she was talking about earlier. She wasn't sure what that meant – the only way that sounded familiar was from her efforts to bust rebels when she was still a Stormtrooper, but she doubted that Anomaly Candace had been intending to haul her brothers before a court. Unless they were conspiring with the enemy… all this was suddenly making her very glad that she didn't have siblings. (Well, she did have one technical sibling, but that hardly counted.)

"I tried to get them to do their job and fix this, but they wouldn't help me," Anomaly Candace said, gritting her teeth and suddenly flickering in and out again. "They just told me to accept my fate, because I had become a quantum error and that couldn't be undone. And the worst part was that they were right about that at least – no matter how many times I took that museum time machine back, I couldn't fix it. So then I had to settle into a new life – until that one disappeared too, a couple of months later, and I had to travel back in time to fix it. Somehow everything did get fixed, but for whatever bizarre temporal alignment my life was the only thing that didn't return. The only thing I could really do was to settle in the past and hope against hope that those overgrown children would finally stop playing with the fabric of the universe and let me live my life in peace. But apparently, even that simple wish was too much to ask." She stood up and paced around. "And now we're here. Where are we, even? I don't know. How did we get here? I don't know. How will we get out of here? I haven't a clue! The only thing I do know is who got us here – PHI– "

"Okay, okay, I get the picture!" Clone Candace exclaimed, holding her hands up to calm down her deeply distressed other self. "Look, I don't know how we'll get out of here, but I have some idea of some people who might. I… I met a couple of other versions of us already. They're incredibly obnoxious, but they still want to get out of here as much as we do. They might be able to help."

Anomaly Candace nodded thoughtfully. "That sounds useful" she muttered. "Perhaps the Candace that took over my life will even be with them."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Clone Candace muttered. She turned towards Candace, who was still mulling over everything that had been said. "So, do you… trust us now?" she said cautiously. "Do you want to come along with us?"

Candace let out a long sigh. "I might as well," she said. "I mean, I highly doubt you made up that whole story just to fool me. As for you, well, I'm sorry that you have to suffer from… all this. The whole anomaly thing."

Anomaly Candace snorted and stood up straight. "Thanks, I guess." She stood up. "All right then, let's get a move on and find those other us-es. We need to get out of here, and fast."

"Couldn't agree more," Clone Candace said, getting up as well. "But you might want to refrain from telling them anything about what our brothers did. The last time I tried to raise criticism of them, I got glared at and eventually smacked in the face. I have no doubt that they'll come up with all sorts of reasons why they think your story isn't true. I mean, my brothers never did anything like as bad as yours did, but I can still see that there were issues on which they were very slow to grow up. It looks like your brothers never even got there."

Anomaly Candace briefly gave her a strange look, but then she nodded. "They never really stopped their insanity," she muttered. "Always determined to outdo me. Always making me look like an idiot. Always trying to get me involved in whatever madness they were up to this time." Clone Candace looked ready to raise some protest against that, but she stopped when Hologram Candace took hold of her hand. "You actually aremarried to Jeremy, aren't you? You really are the lucky one of us." Her voice sounded awestruck, but also slightly resentful. Candace wondered whether Clone Candace would notice.

"Yes, yes I am," Clone Candace replied. "Especially in comparison to some of the other versions of us we've met. Trust me, you don't want to hear about some of their escapades involving our little brother."

Candace sighed, falling back a little behind her other selves as they began the long walk to… well, wherever Clone Candace was leading them. Two more other selves, apparently. Who undoubtedly had their own life stories. That would be hard, considering that Candace's head was already spinning with this one.

She couldn't believe all these other versions of her – who were apparently from other timelines, but who could co-exist with each other – had so many issues involving her brothers. She wondered what had happened to make them so important in their lives, whereas she didn't even have brothers – well, unless you counted Phineas, of course.

A thought suddenly occurred to her and she stopped in her tracks. Anomaly Candace hadn't mentioned her disruptive brothers' names throughout her narrative, probably thinking that it was self-evident, and she hadn't really thought about asking for it. But when she was shouting near the end, a sound had escaped from her lips before Clone Candace had cut her off. A sound which was suspiciously like the sound which opened Phineas' name. Now, Phineas was someone who she didn't really think of as a brother, but if you wanted to get technical he was, of course, her biological sibling. Maybe he was one of the brothers these Candaces were referring to? And... maybe Ferb could be another?

"You coming, or what?" Anomaly Candace yelled out to her. Candace numbly looked up to realize they'd stopped to wait for her – and wait quite impatiently. She gave Anomaly Candace a look, pointing very unsubtly at her blaster, before hurrying up and rejoining them. Seriously, she was thankful for the distraction – it gave her a chance to stop the ridiculous thoughts in her mind in their tracks.

Ferb hardly counted as a sibling in any scenario, and he would hardly be the obnoxious hooligan which her counterparts had claimed their brothers were. Either he would have been the cold, threatening Sith she'd seen only once on the Death Star, or he could be his quiet yet friendly self. Imagining him as a miscreant who would ruin her life in the way Anomaly Candace's brothers had ruined hers was absurd.

But it was with Phineas that the explanation really became impossible. Because Phineas was so pure, so innocent, so light. His kindness and patience were infinite. She loved him more than anything else in her life and she knew that he could never be the brother her other selves were referring to. Phineas would never do any of the things that these people had apparently done to Anomaly Candace. She was utterly convinced of that fact.

No, any and all similarities between Phineas' name and the miscreant brother, as with all other details about those brothers, were simply coincidences. Candace knew that, and it made her next steps just a little lighter as she walked past her other selves back into town. Whatever had happened to her other selves, Phineas was not the cause – in fact, he might well be the solution. She'd have to talk to him about that after he had found her. Because find her he would. She could be confident of that. She should be confident of that, right?

And yet…

And yet somewhere, Candace Flynn still had a bad feeling about this.


A/N: Candaces introduced this chapter:

Candace/Other Candace - or SW Candace: Adult Candace featured in "Phineas and Ferb Star Wars". Used to be only the stormiest of stormtroopers. What happened? Well, it was a funny thing, actually, she-

Anomaly Candace - or OGF Candace: Adult Candace featured in "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" and "Driving Our Sister Insane". The unlucky one to get tackled by Bad Future Candace and attempt to return to the Good Future, only for the meddling with her own past to wipe her timeline and leave her drifting alone, caught permanently betwixt past and future.