When she had woken up this morning, 'fighting a ferocious tiger' had not been on the list of things Candace Flynn had been expecting to do. Then again, very few of the things that had happened since had been on that list.

She'd finally, finally allowed her brothers to persuade her to go on a holiday, together with them. It was not something she had really believed in – Doofenshmirtz was still out there, and she knew he could jump on this chance he got to strike – but it had been quiet for a long time and that they were already doing everything they could to prevent a resurgence of Doofenshmirtz's evil.

But apparently they hadn't been doing enough, because she'd been snatched away from her family just on the second day of their trip. Something that was even worse was that apparently, Doofenshmirtz had managed to erase her from existence so that when she got back home, he would be back in charge. She didn't even know how he had managed to take her out of her dimension or if she could have stopped him if she'd stayed back in Danville – especially if it had happened in another dimension – but she knew one thing for sure: he was going down for this.

Which did, of course, mean that she had to figure out a way to get home first, and if the child version of herself (and meeting her had been a surprise, too… this was precisely the reason why surprises were something Candace had never been fond of) was right, a possible third version of herself – or the kid's brothers, even – might be able to help with that.

In any case, there would have to be another version of herself around. Possibly the one from the first dimension, whom she'd met all those years back and who had (along with her version of Phineas and Ferb) helped defeat Doofenshmirtz the first time.

But even with that knowledge, Candace had not been expecting the explosion she'd heard just now, or the tiger, of all animals that she'd had to face. (She wasn't complaining about the latter, though. The oversized cat had gone down far easier than the Goozim she'd originally pictured would have.)

And, finally, finding not one, but two utterly terrified versions of herself in a wooden shed was not exactly in the line of expectations either.

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

The two Candaces exchanged glances, as if nervously and wordlessly deciding who should answer her. It was good to see that even after months of no real leads and faced with two people who were, in all likelihood, herself, her ability to inspire fear was unshaken.

"You're… you're outside your home dimensions" the one closest to the shed's door eventually spoke up. "We all are – we are all from different worlds."

Candace rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I got that much from Little Me back here. Trapped outside existence, no one remembers you were there, the whole shebang."

"Oh, for crying out loud – will you stop calling me that?" her child self complained, in a high-pitched voice Candace never remembered having when she was that age. "I told you I'm a teenager! You can't just go on dismissing me like that!"

Candace was about to remind her just who exactly was in charge here when she remembered the presence of her other selves – versions whom she couldn't just place by their age differences. "All right, then," she acquiesced. "We'll use a numbering system instead. You can be Candace One, I'll be Candace Two, and as for you two… which one fell in here first?"

Once again, the Candace closest to the door was the one to speak up, as the other one looked puzzled for whatever reason. "I did," she replied. "I fell in here a while ago, and then I managed to track down Other Candace when the new rift opened."

Candace (should she think of herself as 'Candace Two' now? Possibly.) nodded. "Very well. Then that means you're Three, and the other one will be Four."

The other Candace – Candace Four – spluttered. "Hang on a second, who do you think you are to just barge in and tell us what we should be called?"

"I'm the woman who saved you from that tiger" Candace Two replied calmly. "And incidentally, also the one whose question you still haven't answered! And if you two don't get it, let me spell it out for you: how did we get here, what is this junkyard we're standing in, and how are we going to get out again!"

"Wait," Candace One timidly spoke up, "didn't I already, you know, kind of answer that first one? We got here because I turned on that Do-Over thingy in Vanessa's Dad's apartment."

"The Do-Over-Inator… wait, you're from then?" Candace Three said, clearly taken aback. "You're from 2017?"

Candace One shook her head in confusion. "No – it's 2038? I wasn't even born yet in 2017."

"Fascinating, absolutely fascinating," Candace Two snidely replied. "But what I want to know is, how could Doofenshmirtz's invention somehow send all of us to this place, from across all these different dimensions? And once again, does anyone here have any clue on how we get out?"

Candace Three shook her head. "I have no idea how we got here" she said. "I… I haven't really focused on that question, to be honest. But I do know how we can get out again – or at least, I have an idea for it. I can't guarantee that it'll work."

Candace Two frowned at that. She had really been hoping to get some clarity about the whole 'being transported to another dimension' business, especially if it was something that he could just do to them again once they got home. But then again, Candace Three was right that it wasn't really the main focus.

"Fair enough. I suppose that is the most important thing to do – and when we get home, I can just track down Doofenshmirtz and get the answers straight from the source." There was no way he would be able to hide himself once he'd taken over Danville again, whether it was through her disappearance in the past or in the present, and she relished the thought of that confrontation she'd been waiting for so long.

Candace Four, who had been fairly quiet thus far, looked up at her as she said that. "Hang on… Doofenshmirtz… aha!" She grinned. "I knew I recognized those glasses from somewhere! You're from the Second Dimension!"

Candace Two raised her eyebrows at hearing the unfamiliar words and yet recognizing their source from a distant memory – the only memory she had of another version of herself. "Ah. You're the one who tried to get me to hook up with Johnson, aren't you?" Strange, that that would be the first thing that occurred to her when thinking of the other Candace she'd met at just fifteen, but largely it had been the only thing of any significance that her other self had managed to pull off, even if calling it 'significant' at all was a bit of a stretch.

"Wait," Candace Three asked, seeming to grow nervous again. "You and Jeremy, uh, you're together now? Because of Four?"

Honestly, Candace Two hadn't been expecting such… frivolous questions out of her other selves either. Was her potential marital status really the main thing they were going to focus on right now? But then again, what was turning out as expected today?"No?" she said scornfully, still opting to answer on the off-chance that there was a point to this line of questioning. "When would there be time for such worthless pursuits? It was a pointless, meddlesome effort, and doomed to failure from the start."

Candace Four blinked. "You're… welcome?" she muttered. "Well, I suppose that answers that question." It was a sentence that didn't make much sense, but Candace Two supposed that was bound to happen when interacting with inter-dimensional versions of yourself for a prolonged period.

"You broke up with Jeremy?" Candace One exclaimed, so loud and outraged that it almost made Candace miss seeing Candace Three whisper something to Candace Four, and the latter then whispering something back. Her lip reading wasn't as good as it used to be when she'd gotten more practice, but she thought it was something like 'I thought it was a good idea at the time'? Nah, she definitely needed practice. That didn't make any sense.

Candace Two shrugged. If there had been a point to the question, it was certainly not a worthwhile one. "I have a Tri-State Area to take care of and a family to protect, and as long as I am stuck here both of those things are in danger – these useless questions aren't going to help with any of that." She saw Candace One about to issue another protest, and quickly silenced it with her staff. "We're all going to focus on what's important now – so if you are done looking like you're about to faint without actually fainting, and if you two are done whispering to each other, then we'll get a move on. We've already been here for a couple of hours and I don't know when the sun sets in this place – or if there's a sun out here at all – but we need to be home before then."

"If we're lucky, you might be," Candace Three muttered. "Come on, let me get the things I need and I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about."

As the Candaces watched her rummage through the scrap piles in front of them and get to work – Candace One with confusion (as far as anything was visible on her face that wasn't shell-shock) and Candace Four with resignation – an entirely indifferent Candace Two figured that if they were going to be hopping amongst dimensions, she probably ought to try and prepare herself as much as possible for whatever she might encounter - starting with asking her original counterpart (hmm, it was probably too late to have her swap names with Candace One now) a question. She did recall said counterpart's version of Perry being pleasantly capable, at least back then. "Four. Is your platypus still someone we can rely on to have our backs in a fight?"

Candace Four looked weirdly at her for a moment, and then chuckled in a distinctly forced manner. "Oh, you know Perry, I guess? Well, if that platyborg of yours got back to normal and stayed that way, at least."
Candace Two nodded. "Married to his job, still occasionally fighting evil even though he's been retired for years now. His health has been declining a little over the past months, though. He's trying to hide it, but Phineas, Ferb and I have been wondering how much longer he's got left. They're already working on a natural de-aging machine, but even if that'll delay his death it won't keep him alive forever."

Candace One frowned, blinking rapidly as she had apparently regained enough of her senses to concentrate on something else other than Johnson, who was… apparently a big deal to her.. Which was strange, because she couldn't remember his fighting capacities being any more than average in her own dimension?

"Wait," One said, "when you say Perry, do you mean Phineas and Ferb's smelly platypus Perry?"

Candace Four looked over at her. "Oh yeah, right. I'd forgotten that you wouldn't know… or know anymore, I suppose, if you're really from the end of that summer. Surprise, surprise: Perry is a secret agent who fights Vanessa's mad scientist Dad. That's where he sneaks off to every day. Or at least he used to, because in my time Dr. Doof has long retired from evil. He never did have the talent for it that Two's world's version of him did."

Candace Two was about to speak up that that was an incredibly naïve thought for her counterpart to have and that any Doofenshmirtz would always be up to something, but Candace Three spoke up before she could. "Perry is a - a secret agent in your world?"

"Yes, yes he is" Candace Four replied, frowning as she walked over to her other self. "I can't believe you don't know that…" Four stopped talking for a moment and stared at Three as if some great revelation had just occurred to her. "Unless he never told you," she said, sounding thoughtful. "Is he still alive in your dimension, too? At an... unusual age for a platypus?"

Candace Three frowned as well. "Yes, yes he is… but that doesn't mean he's a secret agent. That's - that's ridiculous. You're joking, right?"

Candace Four rolled her eyes. "Oh yes. That's ridiculous. And being in … being close to Phineas isn't."

"Not so loud!" Candace Three hissed, freezing up where she stood – which lead to her almost burning her hand with a blowtorch. "And I thought you… well, didn't you suggest… I don't mean to imply things, but…"

Candace Four sat down next to her and rolled her eyes again, and when she spoke it was so soft that only Candace Two's lip reading skills (she really hadn't interrogated a prisoner for too long) allowed her to get the gist of the conversation. "Yes, yes I did. And I didn't say anything, did I? I wasn't going to spill the secret. Have a little faith in me."

Candace Three gave her a look. "I can't afford to have faith. Not on this, and not here."

Candace Two didn't have the slightest idea why being close to Phineas was a big deal or something to be embarrassed about, so she decided to file it off in the 'irrelevant to the mission' compartment of her brain. Honestly, a lot of things she'd observed here fit with that. And since she didn't want to see her other selves come to blows with each other – infighting was never a good thing when it came to achieving a purpose in a timely manner – she stepped forwards.

"All right, break it up," she ordered. "Three, is your project done yet?"

"I think it almost is," Candace Three replied. "I just need to add a few of those boxes and we should be able to create the most feasible scenario for us to get back into our home dimensions. Or at least, out of this place."

Candace One also stepped closer and frowned. "What in the world are you even doing?" she wondered. "And how? Are you a mechanic or something?"

Candace Three turned to her and smiled. "I'm doing the same things Phineas and Ferb would do, because I can do the same things Phineas and Ferb can do. The inventing gene is in my blood, as it is in yours – you apparently just don't know it yet."

"That's what you think" Candace Four murmured, almost too soft for anyone to pick up. Candace Three definitely didn't notice, even though Candace Two took note of it. There was some resentment there. Did her other selves really think this was the kind of thing they should be worrying about? Here? Now? Candace shook her head in confusion. .

"I…" Candace One stammered. "You're kidding, right? I can't do any of that stuff! I mean, for crying out loud, they can build rollercoasters, time machines… heck, I couldn't even put a basic track for a rollercoaster together, let alone do it to the extent my brothers can, making it so huge and fancy and in such a short period of time." She groaned. "They always have to better than me, no matter what I do. And now you're trying to tell me you can do all their crazy things too?"

"Phineas and Ferb aren't trying to be better than us" Candace Four softly corrected her. "Nor are the things they build crazy."

"Thank you, other me" Candace Three chimed in. "And yes, yes I can. I could do all this until I was, what, seven years old? And then my desire to start busting my brother kicked in because every time Mom walked in as I'd built something, it disappeared, but that never happened with Phineas. The busting thing took over my urge and my ability to build, but that doesn't mean it wasn't still there – it just needed to come out again. Like it did with me, when I travelled to this non-dimension at your age, and like it will happen to you. You just need to get through that mental dam in your mind, and it'll make sense to you."

Candace Four cleared her throat. "Yeah, that's not how it works."

"Didn't you say you'd picked up enough from Phineas to be able to help him out?" Candace Three said. "You obviously still have the inventing gene, perhaps to a lesser extent than my brothers and I do, but it's there." She shook her head. "But that's something we can talk about as soon as we actually get out of this place. And that's something I think we should be able to do very soon, 'cause I'm done." She put in place a last screw and stepped back, finally allowing her counterparts to really see what she'd put together.

It was… something. A collection of what looked a lot like stacked boxes (which was strange) but with some sort of cone on top and an antenna on top of that. Attached to it was a smaller, though far more complex looking device. Whatever this whole thing was supposed to be, it did have a vague resemblance to some of the gadgets she'd seen Dr. Baljeet tinkering about with from time to time - though on a considerably larger scale. And although she was nowhere close to being a mechanic, she had a hunch that what her counterpart had managed to put together was unusual indeed. "So what is this thing supposed to do?" she demanded.

Candace Three didn't answer at first, as she cautiously examined her handiwork. "It's a space-time ripper" she finally said. "A fairly crude one, of course, but given all the available scrap metal I was able to make something from it nonetheless. I… I'm not sure but I think it should work."

"Not answering my question," Candace Two said severely. "What does it do?"

"Besides, you know, bringing us home" Candace One added.

Candace Three sighed, as if she really couldn't believe that she needed to explain this to other versions of herself. "The space-time ripper uses the cold fusion reactor to rip a hole into the outer layer of this non-dimensional space" she explained. "If I had Pizzazium Infinionite to power it, I could pinpoint us right back to my own dimension, and possibly even to each of yours. But with this we're only going to be able to make a breach into dimensional space at a place where the layer is weakest. I don't know in what dimension we would end up, but it would probably be a place where they actually have the Pizzazium I need so that I can power up the machine fully – or build a new one, as it turns out – and bring us back to our homes. Of course, it's entirely possible that once we get there, we'll run into yet another version of ourselves, or Phineas and Ferb, and they might be able to provide me with the Pizzazium I need."

Candace Two frowned. "You don't sound very convinced that it'll work."

Her other self hesitated. "I… I think it will. But I created this in a hurry and it's not quite the same as it was the last time, when Phineas and Ferb and I built it together…" She shook her head. "It'll be fine. I know it will be."

"You're not exactly instilling us with confidence here" Candace Two said. "It looks like it could be functional, I'll give you that, but I wonder whether you can actually pull this off all by yourself."

"It'll work," Candace Three repeated, appearing to even take some sort of personal offense at the last words. (Pride. The leading cause of failure for any soldier's mission.) "It might take a while, but it will work. This is my life – my passion. How would you feel if someone started questioning your capacity to take down your Doofen-something guy?" She shook her head, as Candace Two mulled on those words, which had come true far more than Candace Three would probably think. All those incompetents who thought she was too young to pull this off, who had doubted her to her face so many times and then presumed they could still take charge once even they couldn't deny that Doofenshmirtz had shown his ugly face again…

Her counterpart noticed that Candace Two had deemed the conversation complete and turned to Candace Four. "Candace, you know I can do this, right?"

Their other self hesitated briefly but nodded anyway. "I… yes" she replied. "If any one of us is going to pull this off, you're going to be the one to do it."
Candace Two frowned. "I suppose we won't know until we try it" she murmured. "All right, if you back her. But just so you know – I'm holding both of you responsible in case this blows up in our faces."

Candace Three rolled her eyes. "I really appreciate that confidence vote." She knelt down next to her machine and located a screen and a button next to it. "You might want to stand back, by the way."

"Wait, you're going to trigger this thing now?" Candace Four asked. "Shouldn't we, like, wait until the other us gets back first? As annoying as she might have been, she is a version of us, and we can't just strand her here. Not to mention that we don't know whether more of us won't show up."

"That's certainly possible," Candace Three replied. "But it'll take the machine some time to warm up again anyway, so using it for a test now should be all right." She glanced at her other selves. "Are you ready?"

Candace One nervously looked at the contraption in front of her. "I don't feel ready" she muttered. "But I suppose we can't keep hesitating forever." Candace Four nodded, and finally Candace Two did the same, although she took a step back and carefully continued to inspect the situation. If this whole thing would go wrong, it would not sneak up on her.

Candace Three pressed the button, and for a moment it looked like the space-time ripper was actually coming to life. The engine of what she had called the cold fusion reactor roared, and it looked like the antenna was actually doing something. It was, wasn't it? A powerful beam was shooting out, and…

And it wasn't right.

From what little she'd managed (and bothered) to follow earlier, the machine was supposed to be achieving a rift right around now, wasn't it? Then why was the ray bouncing off the skies? This was looking bad. This was very, very bad. The lower parts of the ripper were rattling up a storm, as if they might tear themselves apart at any moment.

"It – it's not achieving enough power to break through!" a frantic Candace Three explained to the three faces that were all looking at her with concern. "Maybe… maybe if I turn it up a little more… and I increase the focus by 0.23 percent…"

"You're not turning up anything!" Candace Two snapped. "That thing looks seriously unstable! Let's get out of here before it…"

The sound of rumbling inside the machine stopped her in her tracks. Even Candace Three, who had been yanking at the controls, now looked terrified and followed the others as they broke into a run. Candace Two wasn't sure where they were running towards and how far they would need to run, but anything would be better than continuing to hang around here.

The next moment, a large explosion rumbled across the area. Candace Two instinctively fell down to the ground, folding her knees up into her chest and tucking her head down as low as possible - incidentally bowling over Candace One in the process.

Even though it all happened in a couple of seconds, the sound waves that were rumbling over her were nearly thick enough to cut through with her , she could hear debris fall out of the sky – the most dangerous part of an explosion. That lasted a few seconds, and then that, too, was over.

Candace Two got to her feet and looked around, checking herself for injuries in a way that showed as good as anything how routine this had become to her over the years. (Well, perhaps not especially recently, but it was still ingrained in her psyche.) At least her staff was still around, so she grabbed that right away. Next, she saw that Candace One was also getting up, apparently none the worse for being pushed down to the ground like that. A little bit further away, Candace Four was sitting up and rubbing her clearly bruised head. And Candace Three…

Wait, where was Candace Three?

Candace Two tightened her hold on her staff and looked around. Her reckless counterpart was nowhere to be seen, but she could guess where the other woman had gone. She paced back to the crash site, hearing Candaces One and Four slowly follow her. Sure enough, Candace Three had gone back to the remains of the space-time ripper and was rummaging through the wreckage.

"I… I don't understand!" she wailed. "I must have made some kind of miscalculation… the barrier of non-dimensional space was too strong… but it worked twenty years ago…" She looked up, confused. "This wasn't how it was supposed to be."

"It better not have been," Candace Two replied sternly.

"I can fix this, though! There might be something else in the shed – I didn't think there was earlier, when my other self and I were locked up there and we needed something to fight the tiger with, but maybe there's something I overlooked and I can…"

"No," Candace Two cut her off, "you won't. For crying out loud, you nearly blew us up! We could have been killed! Were you out of your mind, to start messing with those dangerous explosive machines like that?"

Candace Three bristled. "I've worked on this before, you know" she replied. "I must simply have made a small error, and…"

"If this is what you call making small errors, then I'm not going to allow you to make any large ones" Candace Two coolly replied. "From this moment on, I'm in charge. And you're not getting close to any scientific equipment again."

"Hang on, weren't you already in charge?" Candace Four mused. A poke of the staff against her belly and a dark glare from underneath her sunglasses made it clear to her childish other self that the joke wasn't appreciated. "All right, all right!"

"Good to see you're all ready to listen," Candace Two said. "I want us to get back home before nightfall, and even if that's not going to happen we can at least try until we wear ourselves out. That's why I've picked a specific direction in which we're going to walk and that's that way." She pointed east… or west, possibly. She had lost all sense of direction in this dimension, and the needle of the compass she carried in her utility belt was just spinning about randomly anyway, but it was all fine. Her experience as a resistance leader would guide her.

"So, wait, your plan is just to start walking in one direction until we find something?" Candace Three replied. Really, did she have such little room for self-reflection that she was already getting in the way of her other self who was clearly far more capable at handling these things than she was? "That's… that's stupid!"

"I'm not taking any lessons on what is and isn't stupid from the woman who tried to blow us up" Candace Two said. "Come on!"

She stepped forwards, and behind her the others were slowly but surely beginning to follow. Candace One first, of course, as she'd already stuck around with her the longest, and then Candaces Three and Four. She glanced over her shoulder and felt a grim sense of satisfaction. They weren't happy, no, but they would follow her. (Or get left behind.)

Her thoughts had already trailed to what they could possibly hope to find along this road – and she had no idea what it could be but it had to be something, perhaps even a rift they could just get through in the same way they had all arrived here – when something on the horizon caught her attention. It was a small group of people, which was eccentric enough. But what was really unusual was that they all had bright orange hair.

More Candaces, she thought to herself. Of course.

Well, she'd just have to deal with it. It wasn't like she didn't lead larger groups in every-day command of the Resistance, and – most importantly – there was no other alternative. Candace Three, who had fancied herself to be a scientist, was clearly delusional, and none of the others had offered up any alternatives to help them get home. She doubted that these new arrivals would come up with something. And with that, too, she would deal. She'd take charge of the situation and keep it, because she was the only one she could trust to do so.

Candace Two stopped and surveyed the situation among the group that was following her, thus far. Candace One looked tired, Candace Three was annoyed, and Candace Four was just uncomfortable. It wasn't the best team of Candaces she could have hoped for, but they would have to do. And most importantly, they would learn to accept her leadership, and so would the newer ones.

"So," she spoke up, shooting a glance over at the approaching Candaces. "Do any of you know these people?"

If you'd ever asked Candace what she thought she'd be doing this fall, to celebrate the end of the hottest part of the year - she'd have said anything, anything, but this.

The littlest Candace - Candace One, as that other Candace had told them to call her - shifted back and forth on her feet, looking incredibly uncomfortable. Well, good for her - everyone was uncomfortable. The Candace with the sunglasses was just an uncomfortable sort of person, apparently, and she insisted on thrusting that uncomfortable-ness onto everyone else. It really wasn't helping the situation, but considering that she had just saved their lives from the tiger (and also looked a little... intimidating in general), Candace hadn't really found it in herself to stand up to the woman.

For goodness' sake, every time Candace looked over at her, she found herself looking up at her, which was something she hadn't had to do with really anyone since, like, high school. It was more unnerving than it had any right to be.

She'd declared that she was 'Candace Two' and that she was also in charge of the leading their small group back to safety. Which was fine and all, but even despite that, Candace got a creeping sense that 'Candace Two' had no idea what she was doing, even with the fancy secret-agent sunglasses. Still, whatever. Her other self had beaten that tiger and towered up over Candace's own six feet and four inches... she wasn't taking any chances.

"Do any of you know these people?" Candace Two asked sharply, looking at each of them in turn as the other group approached - the group containing what appeared to be three more Candaces, including one that was dressed as if she'd been torn out of somewhere long, long ago. Which was great - time travel was just what they needed now, to make this whole situation even more complex and confusing. As if the fact that there was a teenage version of herself already here wasn't bad enough.

She refused to let herself worry about what might happen if said teenaged Candace were to ever catch wind of anything going on in her older selves' lives. Not only were there potential spatio-temporal consequences at play, but there was also... well, it was her. As a teenager. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots.

Candace Four shot her a sideways glance and rolled her eyes, projecting a remarkable amount of carelessness about the situation. "Yeah, me and, uh, Three? over here… I think."

Candace also rolled her eyes in response, trying to match the other woman's attitude to the best of her ability. "I mean," she said, thankful that her voice had finally stopped trembling. "We met a Candace, who ran off on us after I, uh, had an altercation with her." Uh oh. It suddenly occurred to her that if this was that Candace back again... the Candace who knew about Four and her and their brothers and... what was she going to do with that information? It hadn't exactly made her happy, and then Candace had gone and given the woman a reason to hold a grudge against her and now she was back and... "I don't know who the other ones are." The tremor was painfully obvious in her words again. She sidled over a step, all the while telling herself that, no, she wasn't hiding behind Candace Four, that was silly.

"Well, that's just great," Candace Two muttered darkly, thankfully not seeming to notice anything. "More of me to worry about. Because my job isn't hard enough already." She banged the end of that staff of hers on the ground, grumbling more inaudible things under her breath.

The group of other Candaces had drawn close enough to talk with by this time. Was it strange that Candace was becoming increasingly accustomed to using her name in the plural sense? Probably. Everything in her life was strange, after all, so why not this too? A dull sense of foreboding welled up in her gut, and she kicked at the ground mindlessly, staring hard into the tiny clouds of carbon dust kicked up.

"Alright, listen up." Candace Two was talking loudly again, wildly swinging her staff around in the air like she was trying to lift off the ground with it. "I'm in charge here. Got that? Good. And I'm also the one who assigns the numbers." She paused and pointed at each of the new Candaces in turn. "You're Candace Five, you're Six, and you're Seven. Got it? Good. Meet One, Two, – that's me – Three and Four. It's great to meet you all. Now we need to be going." She didn't bother to specify exactly where they 'needed to be going'. Well, that was just the rub, wasn't it?

They were hardly ten feet away at this point, plenty close enough for Candace to recognize the newly-christened Candace Five. She was the Candace that had… overstepped her boundaries just a little bit, and consequently gotten what she deserved. There was still a red mark on her face.

It does serve her right, Candace insisted to herself, even as she was trying very hard not to look at the other woman. Especially after what Other Candace - Candace Four - told me about her. Not that it wasn't immediately obvious.

Candace Five glared at her, then smiled in a smug way that had a distinct unsettling effect. Maybe Candace Five had deserved the blow, then, but... what now? What had she done? The foreboding was back, and she resumed staring hard into the ground, able to all but feel the gaze still burning into her. What if Candace Five told everyone? What if she'd already told those other two Candaces?

It wasn't like before. There was no numerical advantage now, only her and Four against the world. And Two had the stick and it would be so easy... she swallowed hard, feeling a curious, logic-defying amalgam of hot and cold stirring up in her gut, making her queasy in the intensity with which it churned.

"I'm not hearing any input!" Candace Two remarked flatly. "I'm taking this to mean that you have none, then." Two turned and pointedly glared at Candace through her dark lenses. "Which is fine with me - I don't need any more of this explosion junk. I've had quite my fill of that already." Candace shrank back meekly, too worried by Five's presence to risk trying to cross the woman in black.

"I'm sorry?" The weirdly-dressed Candace - Six - replied. "Who put you in charge?"

Candace Two lowered her sunglasses slightly, stepping forward, closer to Candace Six, almost getting in her face, towering over her by what was nearly a foot, easy. "I put me in charge. And just because you've got the whole… pajamas thing going on there, that doesn't mean you can just override me like that." Candace Two shrugged and pushed her glasses back. "Or you can try, if you want." She tapped her staff a few times on the ground, as if waiting for some sort of opponent to attack.

To her credit, Six didn't look much frightened, at least not on the outside, but she still grunted something in reply and seemed to back down from her objections, which seemed enough to satisfy Two.

"It's - it's alright," Candace Four spoke up from beside her. "Two is… probably the best to be in charge anyway. She did just single-handedly beat off a tiger, after all."

"She did what?" Candace Five demanded, sounding stunned for a moment before shrugging it off with a surprising sort of ease. "Oh, whatever - I really don't care about that. Tigers, pah. What I do want to know is if she - if you - are normal, even if only by the most generous definition of the term. You married?"

"What is it with you and your other selves and this obsession with marriage?" Candace Two asked coolly, her tone as cold and uncaring as ice. "Right now I need to get home - and that's what I intend to do, with or without you - but if you're coming, then leave your stupid questions behind, you understand?"

"I'll agree with you there," the heretofore quiet Candace who'd been dubbed 'Seven' said. "But I'll bet you anything that we won't be able to get home with those - those irresponsible meddling little-" She grit her teeth and cut herself off. "Ugh. This is why I left them behind and never looked back."

"That's okay," Candace Five said, a frightening amount of smugness in her words. "Honestly I don't care that much whether you're married or not. It's still normal enough for me. This is gonna be fun."

Candace Seven rolled her eyes - and fizzled.

Like, quite literally, fizzled and flickered, rapidly appearing and disappearing for a fraction of a second, before everything went back to normal. Candace blinked, momentarily distracted from her worries, sure she had to be seeing things. What was-

"Whoa- what was that?" the little Candace One squeaked, asking the question that Candace herself dared not. "You just, like, got all fuzzy for a second? What that, like-"

Candace Seven scowled. "Yes, I know. Whoo, the temporal anomaly occasionally pops in and out of existence! Such fun it is."

"Okay, listen up, this has been very nice-"

"Wait, you're a temporal anomaly?" Candace blurted out, unable to stop the exclamation. "That's… whoa."

Candace Seven shot her the dirtiest of looks, and she shrank back under the withering gaze. "Yeah, real nice. Let's all jump on the case of the woman who doesn't exist, and just wants to have a life. Not even her own life, because apparently even that's just too much to ask."

"-okay, listen up, people!" Candace Two said, her voice tipped with growing exasperation. "I'm sure you'd all love to sit around and chitchat all day, but I've got things to do. And dictators to depose. I'm gonna begin enforcing my plan in exactly three seconds - and as you all know, that plan is gonna be 'start walking in that direction until we hit something'. If you don't wish to do that - then you'd better come an alternative. Quickly." She frowned. "Does anyone recognize this place, to provide a second opinion from hers?"

"Well, how about we discuss this first," Candace Five said icily, glaring at Candace Four. "Because there's one of us that's not everything she appears to be. Oh no - I forgot. Make that two." She smiled mockingly, feigning an expression of warmth.

A cold dart of fear crept inside Candace as her other self continued speaking. She felt as if her limbs freezing up, as if the world itself was screeching to a halt around them, every eye drilling into her, every ear demanding some explanation of her deeds.

"Here's a thing I think is rather important for all of you to know. Ready? Might wanna brace yourselves, 'cause I know a bit of warning would've helped me, though I got none. That these two, right here, are complicit in committing incest. With our little brother. You know, Phineas."

Candace felt her face turning very, very red, her throat constricting and squeezing the breath up and out of her lungs. She instinctively took a step back, her mind dimly hunting for a direction in which to flee, to run, to escape the judgemental looks, the rejection, the condemnation, the scathing remarks that were sure to follow.

She couldn't actually run, though. There was that tiger, and if she ran off alone, it could... it could kill her. She was trapped here, standing here, frozen in place, utterly alone in a sea of critical eyes, stabbing into her soul as if they could truly see everything that lay within it. Somewhere, her ears dully registered a crash happening off to the side somewhere, as Little Candace, her complexion gone as white as a sheet, backed into some piece of debris lying on the ground and collapsed in a heap on top of it.

"In fact, I know that her, Four, actually had children with him," Five continued unabated, the smugness practically dripping from her voice by this point. "And you probably did too, because why else would you think that punching me is something - something you should do? You did, didn't you? I knew it. Did Four put you up to that? I bet she did, didn't she?"

"If I wanted to punch you, believe me, I'd be perfectly happy to do it myself – especially if you keep talking like this," Four muttered almost inaudibly.

Candace was now wishing that she'd done much more to the other woman than a (relatively) light blow to the side of her jaw. Maybe a – or two – black eyes would've been more appropriate. But she hadn't then, and it would never work now – not when she could hardly breathe or move at all, much less draw back her arm and put any meaningful sort of force behind it.

Everyone was staring. Everyone was staring, Little Candace was lying the ground looking like she was hyperventilating, and there was no escape.

Candace Seven was staring, her eyes wide, and mouth agape. "Oh, this is just great!" she spat, throwing up her arms and flashing in and out of existence again. "What sort of freak show is this? Oh, I've had it about up to here with those boys, I swear!" She stopped momentarily, eyes flashing. "Is this true?"

Candace Five nodded and shot a significant glance at Candace Four. "Of course it is. I should know - I spent like a week in her place. And she got to taste the normalcy that is my life, and then decided to go and lecture me on how she was right and I was wrong. Who's wrong now?"

Candace's brain had long since ceased to process what was happening, to register anything or the barrage of hateful words directed at her. She hoped – she prayed, she begged that the ground of the non-dimension would open up and swallow her alive.

It didn't.

"It is of no concern, and of no importance, what you all, any of you, do with your lives, incest or no." Candace Two muttered loudly. "Because right now, our top priority is getting home, and compared to that, nothing else matters. Do you all catch my drift?" Her voice grew dangerously low. "I would highly recommend that you just can it and suck it up until we're home again. Then you're free to debate this with each other all you want."

"Wait a second…" Candace Six said slowly, looking as if she was deep in thought. "Your brother? Like… technical brother? You did say Phineas?"

Candace Five's eyes danced. "Exactly. I couldn't believe it at first either. But it's all true - too true, honestly."

"Okay, look here," Candace Four said darkly, stepping forwards. "What I decide to do with my life is none of your business. It wasn't then, it isn't now, and do you really-"

"Oh, oh, oh, that's what you think isn't it?" Five retorted. "But there's three of us married to Jeremy now, and that means you two are outnumbered. Which goes to show exactly who's in the right and the wrong in this - I mean, if you couldn't see it before, which you obviously couldn't."

"I - I -" Candace finally stammered, trying to reach out to some words to defend herself. None would come. There was no defense, was there?

Candace Seven flickered again. "Well, this is just great, isn't it? Geez. When you said that our other selves were 'obnoxious', I wasn't expecting this. I would have appreciated a warning, but I guess I can't trust even myself anymore, hm? Thanks a lot for that."

"Will you all listen to me and just drop this subject?" Candace Two interjected. "Did you not hear what I just said? I would appreciate not having to waste energy over something as completely unimportant as this. Have you no discipline at all?"

A dark look shot across Five's face for a moment as she glanced over her shoulder at Seven, but she shook her head and it cleared. "Well, what do you have say now, mes? Not much, I see." She gestured back at Candace Seven and Candace Six. "The universe has spoken - my relationship - the normal one - officially has the majority. And the majority rules."

"Hang on," Candace Six said. "I - I'm not married. Not to any 'Jeremy', I mean? I'm not even sure who that is? Is it someone I'm supposed to know, because..."

Out the corner of her eye, Candace saw Candace Two push her glasses further up her nose and impatiently bang her stick on the ground, and despite the sunglasses obscuring her eyes, the hard, thin line that was her mouth frowned continually deeper as time went on. But she wasn't really paying attention to the self-appointed leader anyway.

"What?!" Candace Five exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me this before? What is - then who, exactly, are you married to?"

"Excuse me?" Candace Six returned, raising her eyebrows a little, looking a little taken aback by the woman's tone. "I've been married to Phineas Fletcher for the last-"

Something about the name – her brother's name – drilled its way into Candace's subconscious, and she blinked in shock. Seriously, one more minute of this and her brain was just going to be – to be utterly shot. She was going to end up like Little Candace, who'd dragged herself up off the ground and was now sitting dejectedly on the chunk of machinery she'd tripped on, head in her hands, looking a bit like she'd just seen her best friend murdered in front of her eyes.

"What?!" Candace Five almost shouted, whirling around. "Why - you - how could you?! And I thought you were a normal one! Ugh - you people disgust me!"

Candace Four smirked. "Welcome to the club, Six . It's nice to meet you." Even more than Six's announcement, this was a remark that made Candace sit up (at least metaphorically) and take notice. How? How? How was the woman so... confident? Unless she was just really good at talking over her own feelings somehow, but...

It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense, really. Four was just... she was standing there, hardly a single shiver in her voice, and here was Candace herself, still having not said a single word, her mouth feeling as if it'd been stuffed with cotton, her tongue trapped in place despite all her efforts to move it, her heart beating so loudly and erratically in her ears it seemed like the others surely must be able to hear it.

And here was Four, just...

"I don't know-" Candace Six started, a look of confusion contorting her features. "I mean, Phineas is…"

"He's your brother!" Candace Seven and Candace Five snapped at almost the same time.

"I mean, technically, yeah," Six continued, raising her eyebrows even higher. "If you wanna go think about it like that, but really, when was the last time you ever thought of him that way? He might be, like, if you're being all binary about it, but he's really not, I mean-"

"Okay, I've had about enough," Candace Two exclaimed. "I don't care who you all are going to bed with, and quite frankly, neither should any of you, not right now. What I do care about is busting Doofenshmirtz - and getting out of here. I don't understand why none of you have the ability to realize what's important here, so I'll do it for you: not another word about this. From this point on, getting home is the topic of this conversation, you hear?"

"Wait, did you just say Darthenshmirtz?" Six asked curiously. "What about him now?"

"Are you all insane?" Seven exclaimed. "Or is the only one who can see the madness here the one who doesn't exist? I should've expected this from people would commit-"

"Hey!" Candace Four snapped, having had about enough. "You may not exist, but you can still shut up when something isn't your business. If I wanted your opinion on my life choices, I would have rung you up on the cross-dimensional telephone and asked you." She glanced back at Candace, obviously expecting some sort of backup.

"Wh – ye – yeah..." Candace stammered weakly, her voice hardly audible over the pounding of her heart and thrumming of her blood in her ears.

"Nobody - nobody cares?" Candace Five spluttered. "Well - she cares!" Five pointed at little Candace One, still staring blankly into space. She flinched at Five calling her out, her eyes as wide as two dinner plates and face white enough to match. "Little me from the past cares - am I right? At least there's one of us who won't fall into whatever - whatever creepy mess happened to you three. Was this your idea? Or Phineas'? I guess it doesn't really matter anymore, does it?"

"I mean," Candace Six pointed out. "Phineas never-"

"I said enough!" Candace Two yelled. "I don't care about this. Neither should you! Not! Another! Word! Don't push me! We have things to do."

"Pah," Candace Seven retorted. "Everyone's favorite quantum-meddling busybodies will be by to pick us up in a bit, I'm sure. And probably to ruin my life even more, because, why not? What else do I have to lose? Guess I'm gonna find out."

It wasn't true, though. That much Candace knew. She swallowed hard when no one else spoke up to point out the obvious error in Seven's words. Was she really the only one out of all seven of them who could see this? "That's – that's not true," she finally managed. "Phineas and Ferb. They – they won't be coming for us."

"And why wouldn't they?" Candace Six asked, as Seven flickered disturbingly in and out behind her, glaring daggers all the while. Candace shivered and redirected her eyes to Six's face, which was doubting and suspicious, but at least not openly hostile. "Phineas would travel even to Mustafar to find me if necessary, I know."

"Phineas this, Phineas that," Candace Seven spat. "Our wonderful brothers. Eeeeeverybody loves them. Just like always." Her voice trailed off, but she continued muttering under her breath.

Candace Five shot Seven another weird glance, but shook her shoulders and rolled her eyes. "And why wouldn't they, then?"

"Because when we're here," Candace Four spoke up. "We don't exist - right?"

Candace nodded, sucking in a deep breath. If she really was the only one here who could understand these things, then she'd have to be the one to talk about them. Talk about them in the face of the other Candaces staring at her with their... don't think about, don't think about it, don't think about it. "It's – it's complicated. Basically, the short version is that we've kinda, uh, fallen. Outside of reality itself. Therefore - we're unreal. We don't exist. And past and present and future changed to reflect that - and it'll stay that way until we get back."

Talking a subject she understood so well was calming, in a way. She could drown her worries in the complexities of spaciotemporal interactions and hide there, away from the terrifying things the others were no doubt thinking about her.

"And how do we do that?" Five retorted. "Since your precious brother isn't here to rescue you?"

Candace Six was looking increasingly confused. "Wait – is the Phineas (and Ferb) you know significantly different from the one I do? I can't say I-"

"How many times do I have to say that you all need to shut up?!" Candace Two demanded, swinging her staff around and around in the air, before stabbing the end into a random piece of metal nearby, leaving a significant dent. Little Candace jerked violently, almost falling over again. The implied warning was clear.

Candace Five shot Candace a death glare, along with Four and Six, bringing that terror bubbling back up inside her. Candace Seven groaned loudly and briefly disappeared again, before popping back. Candace glanced over where little Candace One was sitting. Maybe – maybe she could go over there and see the smallest version of herself was okay - she did look kinda… shell-shocked. The two of them could get along, right?

Oh, who she was kidding. That was never going to go over well. And Candace Two was right. They needed out of here as well. Maybe if she just focused hard on that. And didn't let anything else distract her. She could manage that, right?

"Well," she started, "I was thinking I-"

"No," Candace Two cut her off. "No, no, no, no. I've had enough of your useless, time wasting ideas for one day. Anyone else?"

"H – hey!" Well, that was rude? Here she was trying to help, and now Two was just going to ignore her because she'd made on tiny mistake? That was – that wasn't very fair. "You act like that was my fault or something!" She turned to Candace Four, hoping some of the woman's amazing composure would be helpful here as well. "You know that wasn't my fault, right?"

"So you're just ignoring us now?" Candace Five interjected. "You simply forget all about the fact that these three are committing incest? Oh, okay, just making sure."

Candace Seven rolled her eyes. "It's typical. You get used to it. Nobody really cares about you - you've got look out for yourself, because you can bet your life that no one else will. 's what I had to learn the hard way."

"I mean…" Candace Four said slowly, turning to Candace and smiling apologetically. "I guess?"

"I was told that someone here would know the way home?" Candace Six echoed. "Can't we just go back whatever way we came?"

"No, no we can't," Candace cut in, trying her best to keep her voice steady. Just focus on the science. I can do that. I can do this. "If we – if we wanted to tear open the space-time continuum directly, we'd need a boatload of Pizzazium Infinionite. So that option's... it's right out."

"Right - as we all learned just a little while ago," Candace Two said, the sarcasm dripping from her tone. "And you want to risk our lives again? I don't think so."

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me with that?" Candace protested feebly. "It was only one mistake – a – a miscalculation, you know? And it was – it was only because there's no Pizzazium around here, or I'd have already gotten us out here!" She hesitated. "Probably."

"Okay, then." Candace Two shrugged. "When you find your precious pizza-stuff, you let me know. Until then, we're taking ideas from anyone but you."

"Well, I - I - I -" Candace spluttered. This was starting to rub her temper a little bit in the wrong way, if she was being honest. She really was trying her hardest here, it was... she was doing her best! Couldn't Two see that? "I can't just 'find' Pizzazium! There's simply none in the - this non-dimension!"

"Couldn't we push these piles of junk to create some sort of beacon when explorers come?" Candace Six echoed.

"No," Candace Four replied quickly, shooting another apologetic glance in Candace's general direction. "If anyone does come for us, it won't be like that." Once more Candace was struck at the sheer coolness which which the woman spoke. It was like she was unaffected by any of this. Aw, geez... was she that weak?

"Quit ignoring me, please!" She pleaded. They – they didn't believe her, did they? What was she supposed to do about that? "There's none here and I'll – I'll prove it." Oh, great, way to run your big mouth, Candace. How am I supposed to do that, do you think? She quickly scanned the surrounding piles of junk. Well, maybe, if she was lucky... "If you all just – would just hold for even a few minutes and just – and give me a chance to do something, it might be useful to getting out of here."

"So I guess we just die out here then? Might as well ask me why I'm still here and spare me the misery of starving to death."

"No one's starving," Candace Two replied coolly. "We'll all be fine for at least another fortnight before that becomes even slightly relevant. I have a job to do - and I'm not giving up on it. If you wanna stick with me, then neither are you."

Either they were deliberately giving her a chance, or they were just ignoring her, because she was just that unimportant to the debate going. Stifling her worries over which it was, Candace knelt down and began studying the discarded gadgets piled in the Fail Zone more thoroughly. It was a good thing that she'd gone back and retrieved what was left of her scanty tool set after the tiger's attack. Constructing a basic radiation detector wouldn't be that hard. It wouldn't be the most accurate sort of gadget, but she hardly cared - or needed it anyway.

The other Candaces hardly cast a second glance at her as they continued rambling back and forth to each other about random ideas, some actually half-decent, and some so idiotic that Candace wondered what had gotten into the Candace that suggested them.

"Are any of you Force-sensitive?" Six asked. Candace had already briefly entertained the idea of trying to leverage the Mysterious Force into helping them get home - but it would never work, since the key ingredient in prodding the Force to act - Linda Flynn-Fletcher - was safely at home in reality.

"We could try, like, going around the long way?" Candace Four remarked. Which might have worked - had they been stranded inside reality, instead of outside of it. That was what was making this whole thing so difficult, really.

"I just can't believe I'm stuck here with you all," Seven groused. "Do you really think we can get out by ourselves? Of course not - we're just pawns in those boy's game with the universe itself. They don't care what happens so long as they get to do what they want - they get to have fun." Which just made no sense at all that Candace could interpret.

"Why did this have to happen again?" Five asked no one in particular - and she got no answer. Candace didn't even know what she was talking about.

Candace One was still sitting over a couple of yards off, and although she watched Candace as she worked with a strange, thoroughly shell-shocked expression on her face, she made no effort to draw closer - which was fair enough. At that age, Candace would probably have reacted in a similar manner to the knowledge that she was someday going to break up with Jeremy Johnson and get together with her brother instead.

"Can you let me have that?" she softly asked the girl, motioning to the quark stabilizer that One'd been sitting on. "I'd appreciate it." The girl only half-nodded silently, standing up and backing away, not taking her eyes off Candace for a second, as if she was expecting her to suddenly attack her like some crazed bloodthirsty vampire.

After a few hours of steady working while the other Candaces alternated between debating their situation and standing around in scattered groups shooting distrustful looks at each other; while Two just vanished - to scout the area or something? - and then reappeared, having climbed up to the top of a nearby junk pile (presumably to get a birds-eye view of the junkyard around them, which was honestly a better idea than many she'd heard the other Candaces bring up) Candace – Candace Three herself had finished the crude radiation detector and stood back up from the ground.

"Alright, I've finished," she said aloud, feeling proud of herself for reasons she couldn't quite describe - there was nothing particularly special about the device she had put together, after all. Maybe it was because even in spite of everyone ignoring her and Candace Five triggering what had to be her third worst nightmare by revealing her secret, she could still build. And as long as she could still invent things - no matter if those things weren't going to be of immediate help to anyone - she knew there was still hope.

Candace Two had somehow seen the motion, and also somehow managed to slide down the huge pile of junk in, like, two seconds flat, enough to be in her face before Candace could get a second word out. "What is it this time?"

Candace took a deep breath, if only because the amount by which the woman towered above her seemed to increase every time she turned her back. "It's a… simple radiation detector. Not very sensitive at all - in fact, quite insensitive, when it comes down to it. Only a tiny handful of materials can offload enough energy radiation to trigger this thing."

"And those are…?" Candace Four asked.

Candace smiled slightly despite herself. "Mudanium Finite could probably do it. Cutonium for pretty nearly certain would, and, most importantly, Pizzazium Infinionite definitely will." She couldn't be a hundred percent certain on the other materials without her calibration equipment to test it with, but Pizzazium's energy signature was so distinctive it was easy to eyeball - if you knew what you were doing, of course. Which she did. (Apparently unlike everyone else here? Somehow? Which was... not something she understood?)

"And that helps us how?" Candace Seven asked sarcastically.

"Please, I'm trying to explain," Candace replied, her voice dropping a touch or two in volume. "Since all it does is detect energy signatures, I can turn it on and prove that there's no Pizzazium in at least a five-hundred mile radius. Meaning-"

"-meaning that we won't be able to get back?" Candace Four echoed.

"Oh, that's great!" Candace Five threw her hands up in the air. "Just how I wanted to live out the rest of my days - with you all." Her eyes suddenly narrowed, and Candace swiftly looked elsewhere.

"If this explodes…" Candace Two said slowly, idly passing her staff between her hands. "We're going to have a problem."

Candace tried to think of a snappy comeback, but nothing came. Her hands were still shaking slightly – she was in no shape to be sarcastic or witty. Four, now. Four could probably do it, couldn't she? "Well, you - you… you'll just have to see." She reached down and turned the dial on the device, flipping the small switch to boot the creation.

"How are you even doing this?" Candace Five asked, her voice hinted by something that was, for the first time, not smugness or thinly-veiled disgust. It almost sounded like a faintest tinge of curiosity. "You're one of us - admittedly, a freaky version of us - but that doesn't change the fact that-"

She was interrupted by a loud beeping come from the scanner, that startled Candace as much as everyone else, almost into dropping the thing.

"What's that?" Candace Two demanded. "I'm warning you...!"

Candace glanced down at the small digital readout and could hardly believe her own eyes as she did so.
"Theres's -" she stammered. "There's Pizzazium Infinionite nearby!" She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. "Like… directly nearby? But – but – I don't-"

"You found some?" Candace Four asked incredulously, peering over her shoulder. "That's - that's great."

"It's more than great!" Candace exclaimed. "It's amazing!"

"Yeah, sure, so you found the pizza and now everything's solved?" Candace Seven quipped. "I'll believe it when I see it."

"I don't even know what we're looking for?" Candace Six scratched her head. "What is this 'pizza' you keep talking about?"

"Something, like, super energetic," Candace Four explained hastily. "Like a… battery, only a million times better?"

"A million?" Candace scoffed, waving the device around, trying to get a better reading, if at all possible. "Try along the lines of a septendecillion or two. Then you'd be getting at least close."

"And how exactly is this going to help us?" Candace Two echoed. "Since the last time your plans only resulted in us very nearly getting blown into bits."

"Because last time I didn't have Pizzazium!" Candace returned, for once hardly registering the scary undertone to Two's voice. The reading on the tracker seemed to be emanating from… Candace Six? Strange - she didn't seem to be glowing. Or dead from exposure to radiation. There must not be very much, but there was definitely some, for absolute sure.

"Six!" she exclaimed. "You got anything under those pajamas? Anything… techy, in some way?"

"What?" Candace Six responded. She reached back and pulled out an odd-looking almost gun sort of thing. "Like… this?" Candace Two lowered her sunglasses and glared, obviously not pleased with this sudden development. Five and Seven seemed entirely unsurprised by it, although Candace Four took a tiny step backwards. (It was the first time she'd ever seen the other woman betray even the slightest hint of fear, honestly.)

"Yes, yes, yes! That's gotta be it!" Candace could hardly believe her - their - good luck. "Here, give it to me!" She reached out, but Candace Six drew it back before she could touch it.

"What are you doing? This is my blaster."

"Yeah, well, it's got Pizzazium Infinionite somewhere in it and I'm gonna tear it apart until I find it."

Candace Six looked shocked. "You will do no such thing!"

"Yeah," Seven agreed. "No such thing." She sent a significant glance in Candace Five's direction.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Candace exclaimed, the shaking her voice now mostly due to excitement rather than the lingering effects of her rattled nerves. "Don't you - don't you want to get out of here? Get home? How else do you expect to do it?"

"Yes, we want to get out of here," Candace Two replied coolly. "Although in light of… recent events, it seems unwise to put our trust in your hands." She paused. "Six wasn't here to witness the explosion, but I can see that she's at least got a good brain in her head on that regard, at least."

Now Candace was getting just the tiniest bit angry, but mostly just exasperated. "What the - what is wrong with you? Do you have a better plan?"

"That's the same question I might ask you," Candace Five replied, crossing her arms. "If you can't think straight enough to realize how bad an idea marrying your brother is - I'm inclined to side with bossy-" a sharp look from Candace Two made her hesitate briefly. "-Candace Two over here. An utter waste of time."

Now this was just too much. She had the way out, right here. Why wouldn't these other Candaces just listen to her? Okay, admittedly, she'd messed up, in kinda a big way. But seriously… come on! Candace turned back to Candace Four - her one true ally in this situation - trying to find someone to take her side.

"I said no, and I'm in charge," Candace Two broke into the conversation. "This ends here. Drop it."

But Candace couldn't drop it. "No!" she yelled back, her voice perhaps getting a bit louder than she'd intended. "You - you - ugh! It's not like-"

"Umm… hello?"

It was her voice, of course, because the entire argument and all conversation before it had taken place in her voice. But though this voice was the same, its tone was entirely different - and wholly more timid. It reminded Candace of how her own voice had sounded when she first…

Every head in the group turned to the left, and all eyes fell upon - Candace. Another one, to be precise, one who looked very out place in the gray, dusty streets of nonexistence in her fancy suit and tie and long pants.

"Oh, great," Candace Two muttered. Raising her voice, she cleared her throat. "Candace - you're officially dubbed Candace Eight. Meet One, Three, Four, Five, Six, and Seven. I'm Two - and I'm the boss."

"So she claims," Six remarked in an off-handed way, earning herself a glare from Two. Candace got the uneasy feeling that something might go down between those two before too long. Six did have the gun, too, but she was standing entirely too close for it to be mathematically helpful. Not only that, but it was possible that the pizzazium in her gun was coming from the ammunition (though it would certainly be a strange place to find it), so she couldn't let the woman fire it, just... couldn't. It could potentially strand them here, for all time. Did no one else understand what she was trying to do? If only Six would just focus on what was clearly more important here... (maybe Two had a point in that regard).

"Ah ha!" Candace Five was smiling widely. "And who are you married to? Jeremy, right? I bet she is - she totally is."

The new Candace looked back and forth, seeming utterly confused. "I - I'm sorry?" she finally said. "Who's Candace?"

Now here was another unexpected event for this long, long unexpected day.

"That's you," Candace Four spoke up. "I mean… you and all of us. We're all from different dimensions."

"Are you, like, an amnesiac Candace or something?" Candace asked aloud. That was – would be bad of her to hope so? Because then this Candace wouldn't remember things, and then she might not just up and get so...

"Bet she's got two little brats who sent her here," Candace Seven mumbled, earning her a sideways glance from Candace Five. That kept happening - for some reason Candace suspected something wasn't right between them.

"I'm - no?" Candace Eight explained. "I'm not 'Candace' - I've never heard that name before in my life."

"Then who are you?" Candace Two demanded, tapping her staff impatiently on the ground.

"My name? My-" the new Candace cleared her throat, straightening her posture dramatically and sticking her hand out, smiling warmly. "My name is Kevin - Kevin Clarke. Mayor of Danville, at your service. It's a pleasure to meet you."