A/N: Well, I had scrap over half of this chapter and rewrite it because it contradicted the timeline of events I laid out in a previous chapter. So, that was fun. In other news, I'm not sure how well I like the ending of the first section in this chapter. I don't want to go into detail here because spoilers, but be sure have a critical eye out when you get down to that part, and be sure to let me know what you thought of it, so I can go back and edit it if necessary.
Also, Original Good Future Candace gets a chance to narrate in what will probably her only chance to do so - so she can tell her story. Let me know what you think of that part as well. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy.
For a long while Candace sat alone on the floor of the Molecular Re-atomizer's storage warehouse, leaning against the wall, not making a sound. The silence in the small space was broken only by the faint clattering of the roller coaster cars outside, traveling over and over around their endless loop of track. As she sat, eyes closed, breathing deeply in the perfectly still air, she could almost feel the almost constant adrenaline flow that had been in her blood since Wednesday melting away. She was ever so slowly letting herself back down from the intensity of emotion that she had so recently been undergoing. For a little bit, she successfully emptied her usually busy mind, and for the briefest of moments, felt an intense calm. The moment was soon over, however. Under the direction of habit, she instinctively attempted to raise her left arm, and shooting ray of pain that streaked up to her shoulder served to instantly drag her down from the clouds. Wincing, she bit her tongue and adjusted the sling strap over her shoulder. She'd need to get into the habit of letting that arm simply lie there - it wasn't going to be particularly useful for quite a long time.
Well, the moment of clear-headedness had passed. Reaching up with her right hand, she laid hold on a shelf sticking out of the wall, and used it as leverage to drag herself into a standing position. Once standing, she paused briefly before exiting the small building. What was there to do? While Phineas and Ferb figured out the way home, what was there for her? She wouldn't be opposed to helping them, but both Phineas and Ferb had run off to who knows where to do who knows what. Sighing as she opened the door, she surveyed her surroundings. The lampposts shed their warm sun-replacing glow over everything, chasing away the frigidly cold gray light that illuminated the air everywhere else. The green grass was soft under her feet, as if inviting her to roll around on it. Maybe she would have - but her cast prevented such a thing.
As Candace looked around at the vast array of impossibly complex and colorful creations scattered around, she realized that she didn't really feel attracted to any of them. Her eyes stared unseeing past the fun-house, the water slide, the rocket launching station, and the huge artificial beach. There was so much to do here, and yet, there was nothing to do. It was no wonder, really, that the roller coaster cars had appeared unused, that the fun-house doors stood unopened, the launch pads unmarred by rocket exhaust, and the sands of the beach lie undisturbed, shaped only the waves pounding on the shore. She supposed that Phineas and Ferb felt somewhat the same way as she did. The stuff here was great - amazing, even - but could easily recreated back in the real world. Heck, most of the stuff here was in fact a recreation of something originally built elsewhere. Getting back to the world, back to the things, and more importantly, the people she had left behind, seemed to be the only thing that could truly hold her attention for long. Sure, it would undoubtedly be enjoyable to ride the 5D roller coaster, or mess about in the fun house. But she could do that anywhere. Only in reality, however, could she see the people that she cared about: her mother, her father, her very best friend, her boyfriend, and all such as that.
Now that she was here, Candace began to feel somewhat guilty for the way she had treated those close to her in the preceding handful of days. If they never managed to get back, or if the space-time continuum was irreparably damaged when they did so, would her last memories of them be of rudely brushing them off, offering up a mixture of half-truths and outright lies to escape their presence, whilst justifying her actions by reasoning that they weren't really the people they were meant to be? It wasn't the sort of guilt that stems from regret, however. Her actions, though seemingly hard and cold, had been entirely necessary, in her eyes. How else could she have gotten this far? No, the guilt wasn't I wish I could change what I did. It was more of I'm sorry it had to be that way. But, indeed, it had to be that way. She wondered what her old friends lives were like now that the past, present, and future had doubtless been rewritten without her. Unlike her brothers, Candace had made nothing faster-than-light, or larger than a small moon. There would be no quantum locked traces of her floating around in the universe. No, unlike her brothers, she would be well and truly gone.
It was a strange thing to think about - that you no longer exist. Having been so recently pacified, her creative urge lie still and silent at the bottom of Candace's mind, otherwise she might have found herself motivated to attempt to create something to escape. But what was there to create? She had seen the list of her brother's failed ideas. And although she couldn't clearly dredge the list from her memory, she recalled it well enough to know that the small handful of ideas she had had had already been disproved.
Of all the terrifying things she had to worry about, the urges themselves were doubtless ranked near the top. She had succumbed to them repeatedly, but just like an addiction, nothing was ever enough. She always had to do more, bigger, and better. And if she didn't - well, it wasn't a happy thing to ponder. Just the mere thought of it sent chills up her spine. It was as if a part of her had permanently changed, and not necessarily for the better. Already, she had caught herself mentally constructing a method by which she could accelerate a roller coaster car into the sixth dimension of being, surpassing the usual five, three perceivable and two unperceiveable by the naked eye. Like, who did that? She was a teenage girl - she should be occupied with thoughts of clothing and shopping, not breaking the rules of the universe to create a 6D roller coaster. When Phineas and Ferb eventually did discover the way back, how would she be able to reintegrate back into her old life, filled with school and Jeremy and, well, not much else, honestly. The only other major driving force in her life had been her ceaseless efforts to bust her brothers to her mother. Oddly, or perhaps not all that oddly, all her inclinations to bust them had simply evaporated into thin air. Was it strange that a goal for which she strove to reach for years would suddenly be given up? Perhaps. But she'd walked the fabled mile in their shoes - had been on the other side of the fence, and discovered that the grass wasn't all that much greener over there. She couldn't even begin to fathom the idea of 'busting' now. What would the purpose be? Her brothers were most likely the only people in the entire multiverse she could properly relate to anymore, and not even in her most infuriated mood would she even dream of forcing her brothers to endure the mind-warping pain that filled her when she went to long with building. But busting had formed such a huge part of her psyche previously - and now with that gone, a huge hole was left in its wake. Would she be able to slot back into the hole she had left behind, or even pretend she could?
It was thoughts such as these that kept her stone-still and staring blankly into space next to the small warehouse. Gradually, she came out of her clouded thoughts, and blinked twice, bringing herself fully back to the ground. For the first moment, she couldn't even remember what she had been set on doing. Oh, that's right - nothing.
"I suppose" she slowly drawled aloud, her voice carrying far across the still air, "I suppose that could ... could hunt around and try to find my brothers." Yes, that was a decent idea. Phineas had seemed awfully upset when he had so abruptly left her and Ferb that morning, but surely by now he'd be back to his normal, cheery self. But how to find her brothers in this middle of this crazy-colored theme park of imagination-defying technology? It was huge, and they could be anywhere.
"Phineas! Ferb!" she shouted into the air, then listened silently as the echoes came back.
"Phineas! Ferb! Phineas! Ferb! Phineas! Ferb! Phineas! Ferb!" At last, the echoes faded out. Well, they couldn't hear her, wherever they were. But how was she to find them? Retracing the steps she'd taken that morning with Ferb, she trudged back to the depressing junkyard. Peeking down each aisle of projects, she hunted for either one of them. But no trace of them could be found here. It was a small wonder really, when you considered how draining that place was. Candace had only been here twice, and already was beginning to develop a hatred for it.
Leaving the junkyard behind, she walked along the path to the food stand buffet place where she'd eaten breakfast. There was no shortage of interesting things to look at on the walk, at least. She somewhat wished that her phone was able to teleport her like Phineas's and Ferb's phones were, which would make this whole process much easier. She could surely have made the appropriate modifications herself, but at the moment didn't really want to. Now was one of the handful of moments in which she had a real choice in the matter, and so she derived some sense of satisfaction in telling herself: No. She'd probably end up doing it anyway, either eventually relenting to stave off the headaches, or waiting too long and doing it at their bidding. But for now, she did nothing, instead opting to walk along normally, as a normal person might do.
When she arrived at the food stand buffet, it was as equally empty as the junkyard had been. The only sign of life in the area was the handful of little clean-up robots scattered about. Did they have artificial intelligence, or were they just programmed to do their specific tasks? Well, there was only one way to find out. Approaching a robot standing behind a booth containing a wide variety of pancakes, she cleared her throat.
"Heeey. Uh, do you have - are you intelligent?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't get that."
"I said, are you intelligent? Like, with fancy AI and stuff?"
"I'm sorry. I have no protocol for: Are you intelligent. Like, with fancy AI and stuff. Would you like to create a new protocol?"
Candace frowned. Obviously, these robots had no higher-functioning AI, but maybe they could still help her. They were food robots, right?
"Phineas wants a - a glass of milk."
"One glass of milk coming up for Phineas Flynn." She followed the robot away from the pancake booth as it rolled over towards what resembled a soda machine. It rapidly pressed several combinations of buttons on the machine, and the thing vibrated slightly.
"Milk." it said, as a previously invisible panel in the front slid open, revealing a small, lit recess, in which sat a glass filled to the brim with milk. A long, metal arm slid from the front of the robot, grasping the cup and lifting it from the machine. The robot sat still for a few seconds, beeping quietly, then, a flash of purple light shone around it, and it disappeared.
Candace rolled her eyes. Great - it had teleported to Phineas, instead of just going there normally, in a way she could follow. A few moments later, and the purple light flashed again. The robot was back, missing the cup of milk. Well, shoot.
"Hey!" she called out to the robot as it was rolling back to the pancake booth. "Where was Phineas?"
"I'm sorry" it replied. "Would you like to place an order for Phineas Flynn?"
"No. I just want to know where he is."
"I'm sorry. I didn't get that. May I recommend some blueberry pancakes? Or perhaps a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?"
She sighed. These robots would be of no help to her. Unless ... the robot did know where her brothers were, it just wasn't programmed to tell anyone. If she could change that, then she could get that information out of the machine. Well, she hadn't wanted to do anything crazy, but it looked like robot maintenance was unavoidable, especially if she wanted to get to Phineas and Ferb in any reasonable time frame. But she had no tools - having left them back at the Molecular Re-atomizer's storage house. She threw back her head and heaved a huge sigh. Obviously Phineas and Ferb had designed this place with their teleportation matrix network in mind, not realizing it was going to be exceedingly tedious to navigate without one. She adjusted the strap of the sling over her shoulder and tried to come up with some way to find them without having to walk the entire distance back to the storage shed and back again. Although it was a pretty pleasant walk, as walks go, and not to terribly long, it was beginning to grow increasingly annoying as she considering taking it for the third time.
Her eyes fell upon the enormously thick base of the two trillion story skyscraper rising from the ground nearby. If they were in there, they'd be almost impossible to find. Maybe she could just go in there and take a look around the first couple of floors. There also was no denying that Candace was just a little curious as to what it looked like on the inside. Even though for the most part, the insane creations around her had stirred up no such feeling, there was something different about the tower. Perhaps it was older sibling instinct telling her that they might be in there, or perhaps it just natural curiosity. Whatever the root cause behind it, it would prove a welcome distraction, for at least a little bit of time. No doubt wherever Phineas and Ferb where, they were hard at work putting together a machine to return them home. Could it hurt if she just checked out the bottom, like, five floors or so?
So it was decided. She left the food stands behind, and walked across the grass directly to the base of the tower. It was even more impressive when you were standing right next to it, which was definitely saying something. The windows and doors were tinted, obscuring the interior from outside viewing. Candace laid her hand on the door and gave it a hefty shove. The glass door swung silently inwards, hinges not even making a sound. She could feel her eyes widening as she saw the inside of the buildings lobby for the first time. The air inside was cool, and crisp, giving off an almost business-like atmosphere. The floors were made of black marble, so clean that it might as well have been one large mirror. The broad arching roof towered up above her, completely enclosing the small fountain in the middle of the room. The fountain's quiet gurgling echoed through the air, filling the cavernous space with constant background noise. In the wall opposite the main entrance, there was a single elevator, next to which stood a small podium with a book laid open on it. Drawing near, Candace saw that it was a guest book. Half of the open pages were already filled, though only with two names repeated over and over and over. Smiling somewhat, she picked up the pen lying next to the book and scribbled down her name: Candace G. Flynn. It was a sudden break in the list of Phineas Flynn's and Ferb Fletcher's that filled the other lines of the book. Why had her brothers set up a guest book in a building that would only be used by the two of them? Only they could answer that.
Setting the pen back down, she pressed the button to call the elevator. The doors instantly slid open, with no wait time at all. She walked inside, and the doors closed behind her. Unlike the lobby, there was music in the elevator - elevator music, of course. It was Gitchee Gitchee Goo again. Something about the familiar music helped make her crazy surroundings seem less crazy. She stood still for a few seconds, singing along in her head. Then, turning to the elevator panel, Candace discovered that there was no array of buttons. Instead, there was a keypad with the numbers 0-9 on them, and a small blue screen above them. Underneath the pad, small yet boldly-colored letters read Televator. So, floor one? She pressed the '1' key, then the small enter button. The number appeared on the screen, which remained blue for a moment, then changed to green. A small 'bing' noise could be heard, and brilliant purple light filled the small cabin. There was no sensation of movement, yet the 'bing' noise played again, and the doors of the elevator slid open, revealing an entirely different floor.
This floor was wholely and entirely different from the ground floor. The walls were splashed with brightly colored paint, and huge multi-colored balls rebounded back and forth from the walls and ceiling. Candace naturally recoiled slightly, and subconsciously brought up her right arm to protect her injured limb from the massive rubber balls pounding around. She slammed her hand down on the door button, sealing the elevator doors once more.
"Hard pass on the rubber balls of death, thank you very much." she mumbled under her breath. Maybe the second floor would be slightly more inviting. She pressed the '2' button, then enter. The purple light flashed again, and with a 'bing', the doors slid smoothly open.
This floor was slightly more inviting - but only slightly. Huge stacks of peanut butter jars towered up, from the floor all the way to the arching ceiling. There some labelled 'Creamy' and some labelled 'Crunchy' and some labelled 'In-Between'. It was enough peanut butter to feed an army - for months. The thick odor was like a wall, overpowering and intense, instantly driving out all other smells. It was so strong it brought tears to her eyes, as she attempted to breathe in the heavily peanutty air.
"Ah...Ah...Ah...ACHOO!" the sneeze violently convulsed up and down her body, and she reached blindly for the elevator buttons. Pressing the '3', she pressed the enter button and sneezed violently twice more after the doors slid shut. The peanut smell was so strong that the entire elevator still reeked. The by now-mundane purple light shone again, briefly, and the 'bing' noise. Then the doors slid open, revealing a new strange scene. The doors had opened into a hallway - but it wasn't just any hallway. It was the all-to-familiar upstairs hallway of the yellow house on Maple Drive, which was now worlds away. Everything about the hall was exactly as Candace remembered it from a few days ago when she had last seen it. The carpet was the same plush, the bathroom door had the same squeak, and the runner had the same threadbare spot. There were two doors in the hall - and she knew even without looking what they were meant to be. One would be Phineas and Ferb's room, and one would be her room. Overcome with curiosity, she laid her hand on the knob of door that would have been hers. It swung inwards easily, and she caught her breath at the interior. It was her room - meticulously recreated down to the last detail. Everything was exactly the same: the bed, the closet filled with clothes, the Ducky Momo pillows on the bed. The single window of the room appeared to look out over the old backyard. Upon closer inspection, she discovered it was an incredibly high-definition television screen making it seem so. She breathed deeply the air of the room. It really was an amazing recreation, so exquisitely the same that even she, who had lived for years in the actual room might have been fooled.
However, despite all that, her eyes did eventually light upon one small inaccuracy. The bed frame of this bed was missing a long scratch down the left leg, one that she had made herself by mistake during the time she was disassembling and reassembling it a handful of nights ago. Barring that, however, the room was an exact replica of the real deal. Candace sat down on the bed, feeling the familiar softness, and for a moment was able to pretend that it was indeed the real thing. But a muffled voice penetrating through the wall grabbed her attention. It could only mean one thing: Phineas or Ferb were nearby. Probably Phineas. She sprang up from the bed and hurriedly walked from her room to the door of her brother's. She grabbed the knob, ready to fling the door open, but the muted conversation taking place on the other side stopped her. She withdrew her hand from the doorknob, instead opting to press her ear against the door, intent on listening in.
Phineas' voice came more clearly this time.
"You want an idea? I have one - I have plenty. Let me tell you some. Hang on. We could discover something that doesn't exist! or... or... tame tiger sharks! or stretch a rubber tree. Portals to other planets! Roller coasters! Roller coasters with peanut butter! And rubber snakes!" He paused. His tone was strange - it was an unsettling mix of frantic and panicky, yet at the same time, acceptance and defeat. "These are my ideas, Ferb. They're great ideas, really they are. But you know good and well, that they won't get us home." There was a long pause. Candace strained her ears to hear if Ferb was talking, but heard nothing. Phineas spoke up again, sounding somewhat calmer.
"I know. I know. 'Never give up!' woo... Yeah, I know. But Ferb, you heard me. I know that you, of all people, heard me. It's not that I want to - I don't! The very idea goes against my spirit - but what can I do? We could build roller coasters all day long for years and still we wouldn't be one iota closer to getting out of here." Candace heard a shaky, unsure laugh.
"Write that one down on the list of words infrequently used by children, Ferb. Iota. And not a bad one, if I do say so myself." She heard creaking, as if someone had sat down on a bed, which was doubtless what had happened. A few long minutes passed without any speech.
A cold weight was beginning to build up in her mind. Was her brother implying what it sounded like? Was there no way out of here? She fought back the urge to burst into the room as she heard Ferb speak up.
"Don't panic. We'll figure it out in time. There's no need to get upset."
What? She screamed internally. There was plenty of reason to get upset! If the brief chunk of eavesdropped conversation she had gotten ahold of meant what it seemed ... well, yeah, being upset was plenty justified. She didn't want to live out here forever. It was nice, sure, but it wasn't home. It seemed Phineas agreed with her to some degree.
"I know, I know! I get that, I really do. But look at me! Ferb, I ... I ... well, I can't do it. Just can't." Candace fought her urge to gasp, afraid of being heard. But it was hard - the situation was worse than she had thought. Phineas saying that he wasn't up to a task? The idea was absolutely ludicrous, and yet, entirely terrifying. On the other side of the door, Phineas continued.
"And now Candace. Did you see Ferb? She's got it too, which is like the most amazing thing ever, only now it seems like we'll never be able to actually do anything together! There's no cosmos to explore, or people to meet, or world to travel around. There's nothing here. You know it, I know it, and I'm sure she's figured it out." Candace felt rather humbled. Here was her brother, wrestling with what was apparently destined to be the first uncrossable chasm, the first unbreakable barrier, the first unbeatable challenge, and he was worried about her? She really couldn't have cared less about exploring the cosmos or traveling the world, but exploring the cosmos with her brothers? Well, that might be a different matter. The idea of riding a rocketship quadrillions of light years through space with them might have once seemed horrifying, but a lot had changed recently.
Phineas continued talking, although more subdued.
"She's told me some amazing things, you know? And if we never get home, it would be such a waste of so much potential coolness. We've done stuff, Ferb. We've hosted carnivals for the city, and remodeled deep space milkshake bars. We've seen people use the stuff we built, and enjoy it, and wish for more. They rode on our roller coasters, and used our time machine, and our shrinking device, and even the giant ant farm. But Candace - well, she hasn't. And if we can't get out, she never will. Can you imagine it? It'd be so sad if she never got to experience what its like be the one behind the wheel of the coaster or the space ship or the submarine. We know what that's like, and I want her to too, just so badly. But I just don't know anymore. I just don't know."
She heard a prolonged sigh from the other side of the door. She could hardly contain the push to just open the door and barge in anymore. But she didn't know much her brothers had or hadn't wanted her to hear. It was all so touching that she could hardly believe it had come from her own brother, her very own emotionally oblivious brother who never seemed to realize the depth or complexities of things like romance or even romantic relationships.
Of course, the undercurrent in his voice hadn't been romantic - that would be crazy to think. Her life was chock-full of 'crazy' things, but that would surely be to crazy for even her life, right? (Maybe it was best not to tempt the Mysterious Force that seemingly existed only to prove her wrong.) It had instead been an outpouring of sibling love, the likes of which she had only ever seen directed at Ferb. It was heart-melting stuff. The brotherly relationship between Phineas and Ferb was the strongest one she could immediately think of, to the degree that it was the first that popped to mind when she thought of siblings in general. She had a good relationship with her younger brother, she liked to think. Yet, even at her most optimistic, she had always known that their bond was far closer. (Of course, that was partly her fault, which she well enough knew.) If it hadn't been for him, it would have likely been far weaker than it was even now. Phineas had done far more than was rightly his share in propping up the relationship between the two of them - and the knowledge of this fact had always made her feel somewhat guilty.
Back at home, the guilt over things of this nature had been shoved to the far back corner of her mind. She had other things to do! Busting, shopping, Jeremy, chatting with her friends. But so, so much had changed since then, and the guilt wasn't so easily disposed of now. With an immense effort, she tore herself away from her listening position at the door. Even her worry about whether or not getting back home would even be possible had retreated somewhat to the background. She softly padded down the carpeted hallway away from the door.
Retreating into the elevator, she pressed the '2' button, and rode it quietly to the peanut floor. The all-conquering odor of legumes once again consumed her, letting her tell herself that it was merely the ridiculously strong smell that was causing tears to well up and leak out. For several minutes she sat on a crate of Creamy peanut butter jars, half crying, and half in a sneezing fit from the sheer amount of peanut dust floating around. At last, however, the sneezes gradually overcame, and she retreated back to the elevator. Selecting the ground floor button, the elevator seamlessly transported her back to the glossy marble lobby.
Walking past the guest book, she took the time to sign out, if only to go along with the joke. Candace G. Flynn, signing out at 3:43 PM. Wow, where had the time gone? The afternoon had flown by quicker than one could say 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis', which perhaps wasn't that quickly after all. She walked across the reflective marble floor, the clicking of her shoes echoing and reechoing in the empty space. Pulling the front door open, she gratefully stumbled out into the warm sunshine. Well, not sunshine per say, but the warm glow of the sunshine-replacing lamps scattered about, which felt amazingly warm after the crisply chill atmosphere of the skyscraper's remarkably formal feeling lobby.
So, what now? She could feel the itch to build something growing in the back of her brain, a constant reminder that her body was no longer completely under own control. But what was to build? If she had understood the half-conversation correctly, then even her brothers were having trouble figuring a way home, to the extreme point that Phineas was debating if it was even possible. If they couldn't do it, then Candace wasn't so full of herself as to think she could, even with her recently-discovered inventing capabilities. Maybe further modifying her phone to access the teleportation matrix would be a good thing to do. It would serve many purposes - taking her mind off what she had overheard, pacifying the creative urges slowly gaining strength, and making it vastly easier to travel around to places. So that was the decision.
It was time then, to take the walk from the skyscraper to the Molecular Re-atomizer's warehouse again, hopefully for the last time. As she walked past the food stand buffet, her stomach grumbled loudly, signalling that there were other bodily functions that needed attending. But she was determined to do the inventing first. She was afraid if she put it off any more, bad things would start happening. The distance to the warehouse quickly melted away before her, as she strode quickly over the soft green grass. Not knowing the direct way there, she had to follow the same path from the morning - traveling first to the junkyard, and to the warehouse from there. The unnecessary detour was probably adding an extra ten minutes to the walk, but whatever - it couldn't be helped.
As she walked past the junkyard, however, a high-pitched whine caught her ear. The junkyard was far enough away from the rest of Phineas and Ferb's little city that no sounds of the machines working there carried over, meaning the junkyard was usually completely silent. Candace wanted so badly to just ignore it and walk on by, but the itch behind her head was strong by now, and the inventing part of her brain was already kicking into gear. So, her curiosity was ignited, and she grudgingly rerouted her steps into the yard to ascertain the cause of the unusual sound. The first few rows of failed projects were completely devoid anything that do something like that - but the fifth row caught her eye.
A dim green light was leaking out from behind a tall metal panel attached to a Ultraviolet-Induced Silicon Particle Reducer. Being careful of her left arm, she threw her weight against the large and bulky UISPR, and slowly pushed it out of the way. Behind it, sat a much smaller device, on which was affixed the offending LED, and from which the sound was being emitted. Candace frowned briefly, studying the thing on the ground before her. It was a Spatial Limitation Re-calibrator, probably better known as a space ripper. It really was a cool invention. Indeed, it was this thing that was the key behind 'British sci-fi technology' such as rooms larger on the inside and things of that nature.
No doubt Phineas and Ferb had built it, knowing fully well that it would be unable to rip time, but willing to try anyway, likely purely for reasons of thoroughness. But something strange was going on with the machine right now. There was a small dial attached to it, labelled 'Structural Integrity of Space-time'. The dial had four colored quarters, pink, red, yellow and green. A small black needle was swinging about jankily inside the yellow quadrant, ever so slowly creeping towards the red one. Her eyes flashed over the small control panel, with it's limited array of displays. Most were perfectly normal, but one immediately grabbed her attention. A small screen labelled 'Gravitron Frequency', which had a value of forty-five point seventy six, rising steadily at a rate of almost a tenth of a point a second. Candace knew the math behind the spacetime continuum, and knew well enough that the reason that space rippers were unable to open temporal rifts was because they could never never stimulate gravitrons to a high enough frequency. Despite all these things she knew, however, this machine seemed to doing just that. Indeed, as the needle of the four-colored dial crept into the red section, the frequency number peaked straight into prime rift opening range - about sixty. Was it some sort of strange mechanical malfunction causing it read a frequency that wasn't truly there?
In a spurt of determination, Candace grabbed up the space ripper, and dropped it again almost immediately, as its intense vibrations ripped it straught from her grasp. Whatever. She'd just start it up here. Grabbing ahold of the lever on the side, she gave it a firm pull. Instantly, the rest of the LEDs on the machine began going crazy - flashing all sorts of colors. The previously high-pitched whine began deepening in pitch, becoming more of a buzzing, then a hum. The pointed nozzle of the space ripper began to glow, first red, the bright orange, then a brilliant white so bright she had to shield her eyes.
"I really should get some sort of sunglasses for when I use these things." she thought, raising her right arm to shield her eyes from the intense scouring light. Space rippers didn't glow during normal operation. Why was this one? What was going on with it? The lights and sounds coming from it were awfully similar to the lights and sounds that had been emitted from the space-time ripper she built back in that warehouse.
The space ripper's pointed tip was glowing even more brightly now, and it was starting to get hot, baking the surrounding area with the white-hot heat of a machine forced to do something for which it was not intended. Slowly, shakily, the needle of the dial continued across the red section and towards the pink one. As soon as it reached the pink section, however, bad things began happening. A heretofore unlit bulb began flashing, and the loud humming became interspersed with the wail of an alarm. It continued glowing brighter and hotter, until Candace was driven away all the way down to end of the junkyard row. Even there, almost fifty feet away from the thing, she could still feel the heat radiating off it.
Then, the situation went from bad to worse. The sharp angles and exact corners of the metal structure bent slightly, sagging downwards as the space-ripper began to melt under its own heat. The frequency number began rocketing upwards, soon ticking past a hundred and fifty. The walls slumped inwards, and glass shattering could heard as the LEDs exploded one by one. The colors oozed downwards from the dial, collecting in a puddle of molten pigment on the ground. Candace suddenly realized what was happening, and was possessed with a desire to save herself from the impending meltdown. Curiosity and the complaints from her injured arm were thrown to the wind as instinctual self-preservation took over. Scrambling to her feet, she turned tail and ran. The humming of the machine grew louder and louder, then stopped abruptly. Knowing there were only seconds left, she dove beneath the sheltering cover of an overturned time machine laying nearby, and not a moment to soon.
There was no deafening noise, or dramatic plume of smoke - although the explosion that occurred was just as deadly without these. A sort of splattering noise could be heard, and large globs of molten metal were violently flung to and fro, raining down like hot lava on the junkyard. Candace recoiled deeper underneath the cover of the time machine as the fiery hot rain pounded down around her, creating sickly sizzling wherever the metal landed. No doubt many of the creations here in the junkyard were ruined, with holes melted in them, or straight-up pulverized by the concussive force of the blast if they were close enough to the epicenter.
A decent amount of time passed, as she stayed crouched underneath her shelter, waiting out the storm. At last, it had been several minutes since she had seen the last droplet of metal fall. Nervously poking out her head, she surveyed the sky. It was clear, with no sign of any any airborne death waiting for her to expose herself. Satisfied, she crawled out from under the time machine, and quickly looked around, trying to see just how bad it had been. Okay, it was bad, but not nearly as bad as she had thought it would be. There were certainly plenty of red-hot puddles lying around, marking the ground and melting holes into the various contraptions stacked up and piled around. But they were fairly well spread out, and could easily be avoided by carefully watching where one was walking. Candace grimaced to herself as she straighten out her sling, readjusting the angle on which it hung. Man, that hurt pretty bad. When she had hurt her foot a while back, it hadn't quite so bad, although that was probably because she had done nothing but lie in bed with that stupid traction thing or whatever it was called. Of course, crawling down the stairs and across the yard had hurt to high heaven, but at the time it had been worth it to her. Now, thinking back on it, it was rather embarrassing to think about.
Would Phineas and Ferb be upset about what had happened? Probably not, after all, it was a junkyard for a reason. At least, she hoped so. Carefully navigating through the debris back to where the space-ripper had once been, she was disappointed to discover that it had been entirely destroyed. It should have seemed obvious in retrospect, after all, the melted metal flung so wildly about had been the metal that had made up the machine. But you could always hope, right?
Now that the immediate danger was over, the old itch had returned to its place in her mind, even stronger than before. It had been merely a handful of hours since she had built that a Quantum Light Amplification Stimulator, which was doubtless still sitting where she had left in on the floor of the Molecular Re-atomizer's warehouse. Well, it had been a bit longer that - roughly about ten hours. Where had the time gone? She hadn't done that much today, much less ten whole hours worth of stuff. It truly had flown by.
Gingerly picking her path out of the junkyard, Candace rapidly traveled the short distance to the warehouse. Doubtless much of the time had been burnt walking to and from places, a drain which she was now hopefully be going to able to remedy. Sliding the Light Stimulator out of the way, she pulled out her phone and sat it on the floor. It had been several days without charging now, and was already on the verge of death. Well, she could make a charger for it as well. That would be quite easy compared to hooking up her phone to whatever teleportation matrix her brothers had set up, which she also fully intended to do.
Operating the soldering iron or the arc welder or doing transistor calibrations with only one hand would be a nightmare, but it wouldn't be impossible. Heck, it might even have been easier if it was impossible. Slowly but surely, however, she got it done. Working off of the assumption that Phineas and Ferb's teleportation matrix functioned based on beta particle transpiration, she carefully created a tiny microprocessor and ion reintegrater to slot inside the back of her phone, and connect with the already somewhat modified GPS chip. The whole deal with her cast didn't make it any easier, but she still got it done after a little bit of work.
Carefully reattaching the back cover panel to the back of her phone, she flipped it over and turned it on again. The matrix network had been fairly easy to locate, and latch on to, probably due to the fact that there was so little network traffic outside reality. Only three phones in the whole plane of nonexistence. Opening up the GPS application, she was quite satisfied as the static-filled screen and bold No Signal faded out, and were replaced with a sharp, crystal clear satellite image of the little cluster of civilization that didn't exist. The map was scattered about with small red dots, marking the location of teleportation exits. Selecting the point closest to the food stand buffet were she had been that morning, the purple light flashed around her, and when it cleared, she was sitting on the exact same picnic table bench. Awesome! It had worked.
The smell of the food from the stands distracted her - grabbing her attention and distracting her from any further inventing. She was hungry again and for good reason. Stuffing her phone into her pocket, she picked up a plate from the stand and looked around at the various options for meals. There were so many - but she eventually settled on the chicken soup. There were two huge pots in a stand just a few yards away. Putting down the plate and picking up a bowl instead, she walked over to the pots. They had lids on, and the leftmost pot had a hastily scribbled sticky note attached to it.
Candace, don't eat from this pot. It's got parsnips in it.
Well, that was nice of them. Lifting the lid of the other one, she sat the bowl down and ladled the steaming hot soup into the bowl. Returning to the picnic table, she sat down and prepared to eat. The soup was good - the chicken was warm and tender, and really good. Where had the meat even come from? She had seen now animals of any kind since arriving here. Perhaps it was lab-grown meat or something. Either way, it tasted great, and even more since she had missed lunch. Finishing the meal, she got up from the table and left her dishes for the robots to take care of.
So, where were Phineas and Ferb now? Surely they hadn't been locked up in their room this whole time? She pulled out her phone and opened the teleportation map. Time to triangulate on them - but first, a bathroom.
A handful of minutes later, Candace left the incredibly large and fancy bathroom on the 1,857,148,429,828th floor of the skyscraper. The entire floor had been one large bathroom, in fact, and was equipped with pretty much everything imaginable, ranging from ten-ply toilet paper that was as soft as a cotton blanket to multicolored hairbrushes that came in every color of the rainbow. Running her tongue over her now-clean teeth, she reproduced her phone. Time to find her brothers, for real this time.
They were no longer on the third floor of the skyscraper. Instead, they were on the top of it - the two and a half trillionth floor. Well, if they had left the room, then they must have been done with whatever stuff they had wanted to talk about in private. Tapping the screen, purple light flickered around her, and she was transported instantly to the two trillion and six hundred billionth floor, which was under construction. Her brothers were there, stacking steel and laying bricks. When Ferb saw her materialize, he motioned to Phineas, and they quickly cut off the noisy construction equipment. Phineas took off his hard hat and approached her.
"Hey, Candace! I'm sorry we left you alone for so long" he apologized," We just started building floors and time kind of got away from us. There was, uh, some pretty touchy stuff going on."
"It's okay" she reassured, although she would have preferred to have had company. Phineas didn't say anything, and sort of stared awkwardly at her, passing his hard hat back and forth between his left and right hands.
"Hey" he spoke up "What happened to your hair?" Candace started. What? Reaching back and running her hand through her hair, her fingers ran into a strange, rough feeling spot. Pulling the clump of strands forwards to see them, she realized that a large clump had been blackened from something. Probably the explosion in the junkyard. Well, that would be a pain to get rid of.
"Oh" she laughed, somewhat nervously. "There was a .. well, I guess you could call it an explosion."
"An explosion?" Phineas curiosity was aroused. "What? Where? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine" she replied. "It was just in the junkyard. The space-ripper you had there had some weird sort of issue and melted down." She didn't really want to talk about that. She was more interested in what she had overheard Phineas talking about earlier. But, she didn't want them to know she had been eavesdropping, and wasn't sure of how to steer the conversation in that direction without letting them realize that.
Phineas was concerned however, and wouldn't let the conversation go.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I don't know for sure. It was behaving as if it was receiving an extremely high gravitron frequency from somewhere, and then it tried to use the high frequency to open a rift, but it melted. And exploded."
"What? How did it do that by itself?"
Candace took a slight step back, a bit wary of upsetting her younger brother.
"Uh, it didn't. I - uh - I turned it on." She cringed back just a tiny bit, now feeling stupid for having pulled that start lever. Of course the machine wasn't working right - reading ghost gravitron frequencies. What had she expected to happen?
"Oh. That's kind of strange. Did you see anything that could have made it do something like that?"
"No - it just started glowing really bright and got really hot, then it just went boom, pretty much."
"Huh. That is kind of weird."
"Mmm hmm."
"So, uh, can you listen for a second?" Candace's eyebrows went up. Was he going to talk about what she had overheard?
"Sure... what is it?" she asked, attempting to act as if she had no idea what he was referring to.
"So, uh, well, it sort of seems as if we may have to stay here a bit longer than we wanted to."
Candace did her best shocked face. It seemed as if the conclusions she had drawn from what she'd heard were correct after all. Still, having it for sure confirmed was like a death knell.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked. Phineas stared at the ground and poked the floor with his shoe.
"I've, well, I've tried all my ... " he paused, as Ferb stepped over and tapped him on the shoulder. "What is it?"
Ferb's face was as smooth and his voice was as calm as ever. "Candace said the space-ripper melted down while operational. That means the structural integrity of spacetime will be drastically lowered for a short while, as the continuum attempts to repair itself." The news was incredibly exciting, however. Of course, what he said was true. Candace hadn't even thought of it.
"But" she pointed out, not wanting to rain on the parade, but at the same time not wanting to stir up false hopes, "Even with a weakened structure, the continuum will still be impenetrable without Pizzazium."
But Phineas smiled - and all the clouds on his face were instantly gone. "Not necessarily" he said. "You see, space-time rippers require pizzazium infinionite's insane energy radiation to power up and puncture a hole through space-time." Candace nodded. She knew that - but what did that have to do with anything? Her brother continued.
"And that's what we've been doing wrong! You can't cut through the continuum without Pizzazium. Buuuut, you could take a slice off it!" He paused and took a deep breath.
"See, what we've been trying to do is go straight from here back into reality, cutting through the space-time continuum to do so. But, without pizzazium, it's like trying to cut a hole straight through a steak with a butter knife. Now, if you have use a butter knife to cut a steak, wouldn't it be much easier to approach it from an angle, carving off a slice from the side? Of course! We won't be able to get back to our reality from here, but with the newly weakened continuum, and a little bit of luck and a whole lot of polonium, we can build a device that can slice across the edge of the continuum, shaving off a slice instead of trying to go right through it."
"But that won't get us home...?" Candace said hesitatingly. But Phineas, growing more exited by the moment, wasn't set back at all by the question.
"Well, no, it won't. But, it will bring us back into reality. Not our home plane of reality, of course, but a parallel one. From there, all we'll have to do is build, like, an inter-plane transporter, which will be sooo much easier. I'm sure you know, Candace." She nodded. It would be much easier. No matter which plane of reality they happened to end up in, they at least be in a plane of reality - they would exist again.
"And it's all because I blew up the junkyard" she said.
"That's true! Maybe we should have you blow up everything." Candace smiled wryly.
Despite the generally calm sounding exchange, Candace was about to explode just like the space-ripper had. Phineas had done it again - in complete contradiction to the things she had overheard that afternoon. It was an insane relief. They were going home - not directly, but it was still a step.
"Ferb," Phineas said, "and Candace! can't forget about you. Guys, I know what we're going to do today!" He smiled brightly at the both of them. He was back - and seemed better than ever.
For a long while Candace sat alone on the floor of the Hidden Rising Tower, Inc. warehouse, leaning against the wall, not making a sound. The silence in the small space was broken only by the faint humming of the time thingamajig that Doofenshmirtz had made before storming out. She didn't know if this would work, but by this point in time, she was so pretty much desperate enough to try anything. Her life after becoming a temporal anomaly hadn't been easy by any means whatsoever, and after struggling for months to bring it back to some semblance of livableness, the nightmare had struck again, and she was absolutely fed up with it.
She could never un-become an anomaly, of course. Her stupid brothers and their stupid time machine had ensured that. That crazy day of time travel nuttiness that had single-handedly ruined her life was still fresh in her memory as if it had been yesterday. It was still somewhat hard for her to comprehend, even thinking back on it. She'd seen her brothers and herself - younger versions of the three of them, and had taken their time machine back into the past, to bust them for the gigantic, dumb roller coaster that they had built like twenty years ago. At last - revenge for a stress-filled childhood would be hers. On her way to get ahold of the younger version of her mother, however, she'd been tackled to the ground by herself - an older version of herself in a lab coat - who claimed that if she actually busted her brothers, it would basically ruin the future - making it some sort of crazy dystopia full of people genuflecting and erecting giant statues of some old guy.
So, she'd gone along with her older self, and there had been a cheesy touching moment where she had almost finally given up her busting urges. After all - the young versions of her brothers had a strong resemblance of her own three children, and it had stirred up some strange emotions in her heart. Of course, all of that had been erased instantly just a handful of moments later, when she had returned to the future.
To her horror, she had discovered that the future no longer contained her. Not Candace, the future still contained Candace Flynn, alright, but not her specifically. She'd become a quantum anomaly, torn off from the normal timeline the moment her older self had ceased to exist. When that had happened - the spacetime continuum doesn't like things with no future. When older her had ceased to exist, she should have as well, but hadn't, because she had used a time machine, becoming quantum locked in the process. So, when the space-time continuum rewrote the future, altering who Candace grew into, she had remained, existing in a perpetual state of quantum error.
She'd first realized that upon trying to let herself back into her own home and finding that her key didn't work. Her phone was disconnected, and her banking records were gone, and her identification cards scanned invalid everywhere she went. The future had been altered, the flow of time changed, and she was on the outside of it. She'd lurked around what had once been her own house until she saw the new Future Candace come home - her replacement. Her three children were different as well - they numbered fewer and looked different. So much about childbirth is random that it was somewhat understandable that the history rewrite would change them, but it was still frightening to see such drastic changes in things like height and hair color for herself.
It was too much to take for one person. She'd gone to her brothers there in the future, desperately hoping the twenty-something year-olds would be able to help the stranger who just so happened to have a strong resemblance to their sister - and incidentally, the Queen of Drusselstein. Convincing them that she was indeed a Candace Flynn had been easy - taking a DNA test, and comparing the results with the original Candace. But even Phineas and Ferb had been no help in the end. Phineas had offered to let her stay with him and his family, saying he felt bad for not being being able to help resolve the quantum error. But the gesture had done nothing but inflame her wrath. She didn't want pity! She wanted her life back, her life that only she could remember. And once again, her good-for-nothing brothers had absolutely squashed any chance of normalcy, even after adulthood.
So she ran - and left the Tri-State Area. She'd hitchhiked and walked all the way to the Quad-State-Area nearby, and attempted to take up residence there. If her old life was completely gone, she might as well try to find a new one, and so help her, but this one would not have her brothers in it. All they did was ruin everything. Trying to establish a life with no birth records, or family records, or school records, or records of any kind had been hard. The law degree she'd worked so hard for was completely gone - and top things off, the Original Candace had gone into an entirely different field. So, she was forced to take up an entry-level job in a fast food restaurant, working day and night to make ends meet. Taxes had been a nightmare - as far as the federal government was concerned, she was an unregistered immigrant from some other country. Which country? Well, it didn't matter. She had to deal with the immigration and taxation agencies breathing down the back of her neck, as they both expected her explain where she had come from and where she was going to go. Eventually, she settled on the lie that her parents had snuck into the US and birthed her while here, both either dying or running off, and abandoning her. For months on end, she filled out endless forms and paperwork, trying to establish herself as someone who existed. She couldn't even become a citizen for years and was forced to apply for a green card, which had been incredibly expensive, especially on the tiny wage she was earning. She even debated trying to skip the process by marrying somebody, but the thought was repulsive to her. In her timeline, she'd been married to her one and only, Jeremy Johnson. In this new rewritten future, she had no idea who the original her was married to. Jeremy? Maybe. The thought that it could have been anyone else boggled her mind, but the phone book still listed her original self as Flynn, Candace G., even though she had seen children with her own eyes. Maybe the children weren't hers. Anything was possible.
It honestly didn't matter. Besides her name, which she kept purely because it would have insanely hard to get used to another, she did everything to sever the ties between herself and the her old family. Why should she try to rebuild a relationship? None of them knew her. To them, she was no more than a stranger who happened to look alot like someone they knew. Only Phineas and Ferb and Original Candace would ever be able fully grasp what happened and who she was, and she wanted nothing to do with the three of them. Absolutely nothing. They had already ruined her life once - why should she let them do it again?
And yet, it had happened again. Of course it had - her stupid brothers were always messing things up for her. Just when she had been on the brink of re-establishing her life, of getting back some sense of normalcy, she had woken up one Thursday morning only to find the future entirely different again. This time around, it had turned into some sort of dystopia similar to the one she had been told would have been formed if she had busted her brothers for the roller coaster. The bright and clean streets of the city of Brockton in the Quad-State Area had been transformed overnight into grim, crumbling paths ofsetting crumbling infrastructure and dilapidated buildings.
Of course, it was Phineas and Ferb's fault again. It had to be. And she wasn't going to run this time. She'd worked day and night for months trying to rebuild a life for herself. This time she was going to find her brothers and make them set it right. She had gotten on her bicycle - (still unable to afford a car) - and had pedalled all the way over to the city of Danville - which had been renamed 'Remember'. At least, that's what the big sign on the road said. Danville had been no better than Brockton had been. And wherever she looked, she could find no trace of her brothers. Great! Well, then she'd take the other option. It was time to travel through time again, and nip this thing in the bud before it began. She'd traveled to Danville's condemned museum and fired up the dusty time machine, traveling twenty years into the past.
But, when she knocked on the door of the house on Maple Drive, she listened quietly as Linda Flynn-Fletcher told the stranger that she had only one child - a daughter. That could only mean one thing, of course. Her dumb brothers had somehow managed to erase themselves from existence, drastically altering the future. So how could she fix this? A few days of brainstorming and traveling up and down past Danville's decidedly non-dystopic streets, she'd had an idea. Her old childhood friend, Vanessa Doofenshmirtz had once said that her father was a mad scientist, right? That was what she remembered, at least. So, she had tracked down the only big high school in Danville and caught Vanessa as she was getting into a with some woman, probably her mother. It was weird talking to her old friend again, and the fact that Vanessa was a child again made it even weirder.
Nevertheless, she'd successfully gotten ahold of Doofenshmirtz's address from the girl, and biked over to the small house. The first attempt to get the man to fix the spacetime continuum had gone disastrously, and he had kicked her out of his house. Not to be dissuaded, however, she'd gone back to the time machine at the museum. The machine was incredibly nasty for some reason on the second time around. Huge blood stains were spattered about on it, and the podium on which it stood. Even so, she overcame her revulsion and used it to travel a small distance into the past and stop her past self from going into Doofenshmirtz's house.
"Let me do it" she'd said. Her past self agreed. Armed with knowledge of the future, she'd successfully convinced the scientist to help her.
And that was pretty much how she got here, sitting alone in a warehouse, staring at a small multi-colored dial on a high-tech time box or whatever it was. Hopefully it worked. Although her life as an anomaly before had been by no means pleasant, it would be infinitely better to have it back than having to start over again.
Suddenly, however, the silent recollection was shattered by the loud sound of metal grating against metal. The darkened warehouse room was suddenly flooded with warm late afternoon sunlight as the huge front door was slid protestingly open.
"Hey!" a high-pitched voice rang through space. "Who are you? And what are you doing in my laboratory?" Uh oh - this must be that Rodney fellow that Doofenshmirtz had said the lab belonged to.
"Well?" Rodney demanding, striding towards her. Candace checked the time thingy quickly, making sure the needle was safely out of the pink zone, and then rose to her feet.
"It doesn't matter!" Rodney exclaimed. "I want you out! Now!" He pulled a small silvery remote out of his pocket, and pressed a few buttons it. A weird squelching noise could be heard, and a radiant blue light shone from around him. What was that thing? Rodney seemed satisfied. He smiled, then walked straight towards her, not slowing down at all, as if he expected to be able walk through her. Instead, he slammed into her with such force that both he and Candace were roughly thrown to the concrete floor.
"Hey!" exclaimed Candace. "Watch it! You can see me, can't you?"
"What just happened?" he asked, sitting up. Candace rolled her eyes. She watched as he picked himself up and walked over to a nearby wall, and stuck his arm through it as if it were air. Her eyes widened. This was some Phineas-and-Ferb style muckery. He walked up to her, and stuck his hand out, poking her in the arm.
"Back off!" she said, slapping his hand away.
"Ugh! Stupid girl and her stupid gadgets!" he suddenly burst, pulling out that remote again and throwing it to the floor in wrath. Turning back to her, he said "I don't know who you are, or how you got in here, but I want you gone. Now."
Candace crossed her arms. "Alright, whatever dude." She bent down and picked up the time machine.
"No!" he exclaimed. "Leave that! I can see it's been made from my parts. Wait a second... did you make that?"
"It's none of your business" Candace retorted. "Either I leave with it or stay with it. You can choose which one."
Rodney looked her up and down. "You wouldn't happen to know one Candace Flynn, would you?" Candace hesitated briefly.
"No" she said. "I'm ... Bob." Okay, wow. That was a stupid name to say.
"Bob?" he said incredulously. "You expect me to believe that? Hah! Well, I don't know who you are, but you are leaving now, and the machine is staying." Candace tucked the machine under her arm.
"Over my dead body" she said resolutely.
Rodney smiled disturbingly. "That ... can be arranged." His tone was dead serious and for a moment, a shiver of fear went through Candace's heart. Just who was this Rodney fellow, anyway? Doofenshmirtz had called him 'evil'. Just what did that entail?
Rodney lashed forwards and laid a grip on the time machine, attempting to pull it suddenly from her grip. It almost worked, too, but she managed to seize onto the other end at the last moment.
"Give...it...to...me!" he said, pulling with all his might.
"Not...happ...en...ing!" she responded, pulling the other way.
Torn between the two of them, the machine stretched frighteningly, the rivets holding it together straining to keep the metal in one piece. The needle of the dial began shaking wildly around as they fought over it. It rotated back and forth, settling on the pink section. Candace's eyes widened as Doofenshmirtz's warning replayed in her head. If it goes into the pink section, turn it off immediately. Uh oh.
"We need to turn it off!" she said through gritted teeth.
"Just give it ... and I will!" Rodney spat back. She knew he wouldn't of course. She had to get the thing out of his grip. She re-adjusted her fingers and re-doubled her grip. But Rodney suddenly let go of his, sending her tumbling backwards head over heels into the wall. The device fell to the concrete floor and shattered into millions of tiny pieces.
Candace ignored the pain of slamming into the floor so roughly and staggered back to her feet.
"Now look at what you've done!" she cried. "Now I have to get Doofen-"
Rodney rudely cut her off. "Doofenshmirtz! I should have known! That low-life scoun-FWOOSH!"
Rodney in turn was cut off as a huge curtain of purple flames exploded forth from the ruins of the machine. His eyes grew large behind his wire frame glasses.
"Was there ... pizzazium infinionite ... in that thing?" he stammered out, looking at the oddly-colored tongues of fire.
Candace scowled. "Yeah, like two chunks or whatever." Whatever little color was in the man's bald face instantly drained, and he turned tail and began to run. Not particularly keen on the idea of finding out what he had been talking about, she took off after him, following him out of the warehouses main entrance, and into the by now nearly abandoned warehouse district street. As she was chasing after him, the entire ground was shaken, so violently that they were thrown to the ground, and the loudest explosion you ever heard burst into her ears with cataclysmic force. Shreds of metal and concrete rained from the sky as the Hidden Rising Tower Inc., warehouse was instantly blown to smithereens. Loud crackling competed with the ringing in her ears to be heard. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the now-flattened lot was covered in ten-foot flames raging violently as they consumed all before them, filling the street with unearthly purple light.
She had to get out of there before the fire department and the police department showed up, wanting to interview people. As she shakily crawled to her feet and jogged away from the scene, she shook her head. Well, there was one fail.
"I guess it's back to the museum for me. Second times the charm, right?"