So, it both sucked and rocked being one big series of scrapes from head to toe. Candace had, unfortunately, figured it out the hard way. It sucked on so many levels: the pain, the icky oozing, the bandages that did not look cute with her outfit in the least, the explaining about a gazillion times that she'd had an accident on her bike and it looked worse than it was. Then there was the better, "awesome sauce" level: Jeremy. He hurried to carry her books and generally fawn over her all day. Candace was not complaining. She had expected Stacy to participate in the "Help a Girlfriend Out" program, the way Candace had when Stacy sprained her ankle last year, and Stacy had, but there were no complaints whatsoever about Jeremy stepping into the role. None at all. As Candace had hurried to assure Jeremy, both girls looking at each other and making a high-pitched noise that sounded suspiciously like "Squee!" was not a complaint.

Candace was limping her way home with her blond Adonis and Stacy, when her cell phone announced a text message. Stacy cheerfully retrieved the phone from Candace's purse and glanced at it. "Message from your mom."

"Read it to me, could you?" Candace wasn't even trying to milk it. She had gone to the school nurse to have her bandages changed before last period, because they had gotten nasty over the course of the day, and the nurse had been a bit overzealous on her hands. She literally couldn't manipulate her fingers enough to open the phone, much less punch buttons. This situation would have to be remedied once she got home. Fortunately, Candace had last period with Jeremy and it was study hall. He was by far the most interesting and beautiful thing she'd ever studied.

Stacy nodded. "Family meeting tonight – tell P and F." She frowned. "Doesn't your mother know she can send copies of the same message to everyone?"

Candace rolled her eyes. "Hard telling. She and my dad were acting so weird yesterday. Like, all day. Mom kind of hovered for awhile, but...yeah, pretty much since Saturday afternoon, they've been talking quietly and acting...well, weird."

"Weird," Stacy said.

Candace nodded. "Yeah, totally."

Jeremy laughed. "Parents. Who can understand 'em?"

"Who, indeed?" Candace breathed. Yeah, she was so going to marry Jeremy someday.

- - - - - - - -

"Sometimes," Ferb told his brother as they walked home from school, "it occurs to me that my higher level of functioning than many autistics puts me at a disadvantage."

"How so?" Phineas asked. "I mean, you'd still be awesome if you weren't, but it's cool that you are."

"Most times, yes," Ferb agreed, "but I delivered a note for my teacher to the special needs classroom today." He thought about it, closing his eyes briefly and bringing the image to mind. "Did you know they have beanbag chairs?"

"Really?" Phineas asked, looking suitably impressed.

Ferb nodded. "Yes." He liked beanbag chairs.

Phineas looked thoughtful. "Maybe you could get into one of those classes in middle school next year."

Ferb shook his head. "I'm afraid our reputations precede us in the Danville public school system. We could use the school band to reunite the Baljeetles, though."

"That'll work." Phineas skipped for a few steps, but stopped when their cell phones both rang. Ferb's was a mix version of Candace's song "Queen of Mars," made for her demo reel and inspired by their trip through the portal. Of course, in the liner notes, they changed a few of the details and circumstances, as Candace had insisted that she was not going to let her brothers and their crazy schemes ruin her reputation. Phineas had his ring tone set to Jonathan Coulton's "That Spells DNA," and the boys smiled at one another. Those were the ring tones they had set for Candace. They both pulled out their phones. Ferb looked at the message on his phone. "Re: Mom -- fam mtg. 2Nite" He understood the need to conserve space to express one's ideas in 160 characters or less, but Ferb had never been able to understand why people insisted upon using certain "chat-speak" words, where it wasn't that much more difficult to type the word properly. The occasional article dropped, Ferb could understand, as they weren't entirely necessary, but some texters seemed to have lost track of the English language entirely. Then, many people labored under the delusion that Ferb was unable to or simply didn't talk at all, so what did he know about "normal?"

For the most part, neurotypical people confused Ferb, and he was able to get along with his family and friends as well as he despite their so-called "normal" profiles because of their eccentric natures. Candace was an exception to the "normal" rule; since her OCD was diagnosed, she and Ferb had come to understand each other a lot better. No one would ever be able to duplicate the bond he had with Phineas, but Ferb had come to see Candace in a new light once everyone realized she really did have something more going on than some deep-seated need to get her brothers in trouble. It was her way of trying to protect them, and that made it easier for Ferb to accept when she couldn't resist the urge to bust. She was trying, but it still happened. Phineas had never seemed to mind, but he often lived in a cheerful utopia where everyone was essentially good and working to bring out the best in others. Unfortunately, that only made it that much more of a rude awakening when his happy bubble was shattered, such as the Christmas debacle and Michael's return.

Ferb assumed three things from Candace's text, either of which he was willing to accept could be wrong. First, Stacy had typed it, as the bandages on Candace's fingers would have made it difficult to manipulate even the QWERTY keyboard of her latest favorite phone – and Candace generally had the decency to type something grammatically correct if the message was going to Ferb. Second, both Ferb and Phineas had received the message, which meant that either on her own or under Candace's direction, Stacy had considered that the brothers might not be together. They usually were, but it was nice when someone realized he was a separate entity. Ferb might have been quiet by nature, but he thought a lot. Sometimes far more than was strictly necessary. And, third – the more disturbing assumption – Michael was involved in this somehow, if Mum was calling a family meeting. In the last case, Ferb rather hoped assumption would result in its oft-quoted end, "making an ass of 'you' and 'me.'" (Even in his mind, Ferb simply couldn't think of the letter "u" as a stand-in for the pronoun "you.")

Ferb had only ever seen Michael in passing, and not in the family photo albums. His mum had gone through and systematically cropped Michael out of every photo from Candace's babyhood, and he had run off before Phineas' birth. Ferb's earliest memories were of a single-parent family, but he could hardly blame his mother for dying when he was very young. A twist in time, aided by a certain machine at the natural history museum, had allowed him to see his mother, hug her, have a memory to hold to. He would always be grateful for that. But Ferb could come up with no rationalization to explain Michael's behavior, other than to scoff that at least he kept up his rather lucrative child support payments. He could certainly afford them, given the search Ferb had done on the record company Michael headed, "Rinky Dink Productions." Michael doubtless thought it was a clever way to compensate for being saddled with a last name like Humperdink – thank heavens Mum had the foresight to keep the Flynn name – but Ferb thought it sounded as stupid as it looked. Nevertheless, they made money, and lots of it. Michael's money might have funded Candace's wardrobe shopping sprees and Phineas' supply runs for their projects, but it ultimately meant little if he was willing to show up out of the blue after more than eleven years and suddenly find his children convenient once he saw dollar signs.

Down deep, Ferb wouldn't be true to himself if he didn't admit that he wasn't sometimes jealous of Phineas – the social ease, the never-ending optimism, the brilliant creativity. Ferb was no intellectual slouch himself, though, and Phineas didn't have his talent for finding ways to take a crazy idea and make it a workable blueprint. He was okay with that. He knew he was lucky, that both his savant streak and high level of functioning were not the norm in the autism spectrum, but even if he had been more challenged, he had no doubt that his family would have loved him just the same. And that was where he could never be jealous of his stepsiblings. If they weren't talented, if they weren't the children of an eighties star, if they weren't attractive...would Michael even care about them? The sad answer was, probably not. And for that, Ferb hated him.

"Hey. Ferbooch." Ferb had absolutely no idea where Phineas had come up with that nickname, but he didn't particularly care. It wasn't one Ferb would have chosen, but Phineas didn't use it often, so everything worked out. "What do you suppose the meeting's about?"

"Hard telling." Ferb shrugged. "I suppose it has something to do with your...." Ferb didn't even know what to call him; he didn't want to risk offending his brother.

"Sperm donor?" Phineas suggested.

It was a good thing Ferb hadn't been drinking anything, because when he sputtered, he would have sprayed it everywhere. "That'll do."

Phineas laughed. "That's what Candace always calls him. I used to want to know all about him when I was little, and Mom told me some things, but you could tell she was trying really hard to be nice. Candace explained the rest. Yeah, I was a little curious when he showed up. I kinda hoped he wanted to make up for lost time. It happens now and then."

Ferb nodded. Not in this case, but what needed to be said about that? They both knew. Phineas might even have understood, on whatever level he needed to accept it. Ferb, though? He could never understand. People like him got a reputation for being impossible to understand; the truth was one could understand most on the autism spectrum if they cared enough to approach them on their level. If they bothered to try. From the inside looking out, though, the "normals" were an absolute mystery, especially the cruelest of them. What kind of twisted minds did it take to hurt kids, emotionally, physically, or worse? Ferb was glad he'd never met Michael, but a part of him hoped they would encounter one another. Sometimes, it was the quietest ones who had the most to say.

- - - - - - - -

Candace's first stop upon getting home was the upstairs bathroom so she could get the ridiculous bandages on her hands into some semblance of usefulness. Jeremy dutifully waited outside until he was waved in, when he parked himself on the edge of the tub. "Seriously, you guys, my parents are up to something."

Stacy snorted. "Welcome to my world. I swear it's my mom's goal in life to keep me guessing. You want I should ask your brothers what they think is going on?" She still had Candace's cell phone in her hand.

"Yeah." Candace nodded. "Tell them..." She tried to think of how best to phrase it, then tried to angle her way around the sink to get a closer look at her face in the mirror. It wasn't bandaged, upon her insistence, but the scrape on her cheek still didn't look pretty. Something caught Candace's foot, and she used that foot to scoot the trash can aside. Something clattered on the floor, something that had likely been missed during Sunday night's weekly trash take-out. Oh, gross. Fortunately, Candace had a legitimate excuse not to pick it up; if it was really nasty, why risk contaminating her bandages? She certainly wasn't going to ask her friends to get it. Wondering what "it" was, anyway, Candace looked down and saw a pregnancy test on the floor. With a very definite positive pink plus. Candace screamed.

- - - - - - - -

Ferb mentally chuckled at Phineas' grin when their cell phones both started ringing again. Some people, understandably, felt that the advisability of giving cell phones to eleven year olds was questionable, but their parents had erratic schedules and wanted to be able to keep tabs on their children – and provide a means for the children to reach them in an emergency. Whatever the reason he had his, the only separate calls or texts he routinely received were from the family, and rather than be offended, it continued to be a continued source of amusement between the brothers.

Phineas frowned as he checked his phone. "What do you think 'IEEEE!' means?"

Ferb thought for a second. "I can only guess that it's supposed to simulate Candace's scream." Onomatopoeia, if "IEEEE" were actually a word. Ferb tried not to be a snob. He simply clung to his British roots because he wanted to, because they set him apart, and because they provided a link to his mother – even if she was Scottish, she'd settled in London. He had no issue with those attempting to learn English, but he often wished that those who professed fluency in the Queen's language would speak it properly. Exceptions could, of course, be made for commonly accepted Internet acronyms, LOL, as long as they were read and not spoken – Ferb was annoyed he'd thought in one just now – and pictures of cute animals, in which "netspeak" was acceptable.

Phineas nodded. "Yeah, that actually sounds a lot like it. What should we do?"

The solution, to Ferb, was obvious. "We head home for more details, and before we get there, she's likely to calm down and send the all-clear."

- - - - - - - -

"It's...positive!" Candace shrieked.

Jeremy, bless his gorgeous blond head, looked significantly confused and maybe a little hurt. "But, Candace, I thought you said you'd never--"

"I haven't!" Candace insisted. The hurt-puppy look in his eyes that quickly disappeared was all that kept Candace from being offended by that.

"Whoa, chill, girl," Stacy said. "I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation."

"Such as...?" Candace prompted.

"Maybe there's a bright star in the East?" Yeah, with that look on her face, Stacy knew she was reaching.

"Even if there is, I never peed on that thing!" Candace pointed at it accusingly. "And as gross as it is to even think about them doing that yet, none of Phineas' or Ferb's friends are old enough to – and why would it be here...? Geez! Guys, there's only one person in this house who...argh!"

"So your mom's pregnant?" Jeremy asked calmly.

"Well, just look at it." Candace wrinkled up her nose. "Eww."

Stacy nodded calmly. "Yeah, anyone's pee other than your own is always kind of nasty."

"Not that!" Candace had all but forgotten about her bandages in the wake of this discovery.

Jeremy seemed to understand, but he also had a much younger sister. "Yeah, even though you know it's how you got here, realizing that your parents actually do have sex is kind of squicky."

Candace could have kissed him. Of course, she needed very little prompting to feel that way. "Exactly! And I could actually pretend my parents hadn't. They didn't have any of us together." It was the beauty of a blended family.

Stacy was beginning to catch the clue train. "Ah, so you'd actually be okay with a new baby, except for the whole sex issue?"

Candace shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, it's kind of a lot to think about. It'd be a big change."

"Yeah." Stacy nodded. "You're probably fine, though. That one looks like it's been there a bit and my mom says most of them turn positive eventually if you leave them too long. Well, not to me, because I've never used one, but I've heard her tell people that."

"Huh." Candace looked back at the test in question. "Did not know that."

"My mom said most people don't," Stacy said. "So you're probably fine. You want me to send your brothers the all-clear?"

Candace sighed and nodded, opening the medicine cabinet and fumbling for the bandage scissors until Jeremy jumped up to grab them. Yeah, they were so going to get married.

- - - - - - - -

Linda's stomach had been fluttering all night long, and she was pretty sure it was her nerves and not misguided morning sickness. It was one thing to tell a small child they'd be getting a baby brother or sister, and quite another to make the same announcement to children the age of her own. Phineas and Ferb were eleven; Candace was nearly sixteen. This was going to change the family dynamic completely. But it was happening no matter what, so they might as well get "the talk" out of the way. Linda had confirmed her pregnancy at a doctor's appointment that morning, and despite the health concerns she and her doctor – and Lawrence – shared, Linda was almost beginning to look forward to this. She was nine weeks along, and so far, so good. The doctor had done an ultrasound, and though the baby resembled a hamster more than a human at this point, it was wiggling and healthy. Linda knew it wasn't hormones that had her tears filling with eyes when she heard the heartbeat. She'd cried at every appointment with Candace and Phineas, too.

The whole family was assembled, except for Perry, who was unable to be located. It was still early, though; he was always home before nightfall. Linda and Lawrence exchanged nervous glances. Linda took a deep breath. "I guess you're all wondering what this is about." It was interesting to look around the room and take in their expressions. Though a stranger wouldn't have read much of anything into Ferb's face, he was definitely not happy about something. Candace was vaguely paranoid – not unusual, but understandable under the circumstances. Phineas was intrigued, but neutral.

Lawrence stepped up to help out. "Kids, your mother and I...well, we...." Suddenly, he paused, looking contemplative, and turned to Linda. "Darling, this might be a little easier if I knew what a binkie was."

Linda was about to tell him it was just a term for a pacifier when Candace shrieked. Not as loud or shrill as her usual, but definitely a shriek. "Candace, honey--"

"Oh, no, you guys did!" Candace's face scrunched up as she shook her head. "I need brain bleach."

"Did what?"

Candace looked equal parts scandalized and overwhelmed as she wailed, "You guys had sex!"

Linda wanted to burst out laughing, but while she struggled with a more diplomatic answer, Ferb jumped to the rescue.

"Well, of course they have." Ferb looked as if it should have been obvious. Knowing him, he probably felt it was. "They're married and they still feel affectionate toward one another. Why wouldn't they?"

It was one of the few times Linda could remember Phineas giving Ferb a strange look. "Dude. Way too much information."

Ferb shrugged. "I accept it as a given that it happens. Details – now that would be far too much, worrisome if they were divulged, and it would no doubt scar our fragile minds."

Linda was left laughing so hard she could barely see straight, but she wasn't alone. Ferb's sense of humor was normally subtle, but it could be deadly as a razor blade when he put his mind to it.

Candace was the first to recover. "So, you guys really are having another baby?"

Linda nodded. "Yes. It's not what any of us expected, I know, but I think we'll be all right."

"Wow." Candace looked at Lawrence. "I hope you made it a girl this time. I have quite enough little brothers, thank you."

Lawrence frowned strangely until comprehension dawned. "Ah, I see you've had a touch of genetics in your science classes."

"Wow, a baby? Cool!" Phineas bounced in his seat. "That'd be so awesome. What do you think, Ferb?"

Ferb was thoughtful. "Not to be corny, but I suspect this may be the start of one of our greatest adventures yet."

Phineas didn't look impressed. "You just like saying that, don't you?"

Ferb smiled cryptically. "Yes."

- - - - - - - -

Wow, this chapter ended up being longer than I'd expected – which is a good thing. Ferb just opens up and keeps going every time I do his POV; it's definitely the quiet ones you have to watch out for. As for the comment Candace directs to Lawrence, she's referencing the fact that it's the father who determines the gender of a child when it's conceived. :) I'm pleasantly surprised to see I shocked a lot of people with this twist...Linda was pregnant when she died in the original timeline, but didn't know it. Thus, when the future is changed for the better, she still is. It seemed like an interesting writing challenge and I never turn down a good challenge. But don't worry; the new arrival's not going to steal all the screen time. There will still be plenty of the Flynn-Fletcher family we already know and love.