Candace Two was ready. She was so ready for this.

Today was the day that Four's brothers finally started working on getting her home again - and she knew that Doofenshmirtz would show up to stop them. She just knew it. And she was just waiting for the opportunity to bash him in the face with her fists or the nearest other deadly weapon. This was the confrontation she'd been waiting for. Doofenshmirtz might think they were trapped in another dimension with him, but he was going to be sorely mistaken.

He was trapped in a dimension with her, and she was going to make sure the amount of fire and fury that descended upon his head for this plot was no like other he'd ever seen.

She'd been up all night, watching and waiting, planning and preparing. And also keeping watch over Four's household, because Four and Four's Phineas were so naive that they actually trusted some fancy gadget to protect through the night. It was the most hilariously innocent thing that Candace Two had seen in years, and had this not been such a serious matter, she might have been inclined to have a laugh or two at their expense.

But as it was, there was simply no time for mirth. She restricted herself to a grim smile, and set about keeping everyone safe throughout the rest of the night. All-nighters were no big deal to her - she'd pulled many of them before, even multiple consecutively. When your responsibilities were this grave and numerous, there was simply no time for such luxuries as sleep.

As she'd expected, given his apparent naivety about such things, Four's brother had been relatively easy to fool - she'd told him that she was going to sleep, of course, because what else would she do? And he'd seemed satisfied and walked off.

So soon as she heard him shut his own door, however, she was up again.

"Can't you be quiet?" one of the other Candaces in the room muttered.

But Candace Two didn't respond - instead slipping quietly out the door. Her snug bodysuit was black for a reason, after all, and a childhood spent skulking about in the shadows had taught her a thing or two about how to be quiet if the need arose.

For the first hour or so, she patrolled the house, pacing up and down the stairs, and around the yard. It was a little past three in the morning when another thought occurred to her.

Bugs.

Of course. If Doofenshmirtz didn't attack during this night, when they were all tired, there had to be a reason. It was a perfect opportunity to attack, after all. The layout of the house was absolutely terrible for any kind of tactical encounter, and the owners foolishly trusted in some automatic system to keep intruders out. Sure, it might keep out a person... under ideal circumstances, but could it really withstand a concentrated attack by hundreds of plasma laser cannon- wielding NORMbots commanded by a ruthless dictator who would stop at no atrocities to ensure his will was enforced?

That's right - she thought not.

And a perfectly good reason to explain why that attack never came was if the house had somehow been bugged before their arrival. She wasn't sure how that could have been pulled off, but if anyone could it, Doofenshmirtz could - and she wasn't about to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It may seem paranoid, but this was how you stayed alive. Even after Doofenshmirtz's overthrow, stories about militia members who weren't careful enough and ended up as Goozim-chow were all to common. No one listened too you, until you were right. And by then it was often too late. They knew to submit quietly to Candace's leadership now.

So she headed back inside and scoured the household top to bottom for bugs. And sure enough, attached to a wall in the living room, up near the roof, was a small white box with a tiny light on it blinking slowly and dimly. A slightly satisfied smile crossed her face as she saw it.

Not today, Doofenshmirtz, she thought grimly.

Pulling a chair over, she reached up and tore the gadget out of the wall. It wasn't nearly hard as one might think. She slipped back out the yard, and with a few well-placed swings, made sure that that microphone would never transmit anything again.

Even as she ground the shattered pieces of plastic and metal underfoot, she knew that this wasn't the end. It was only a shadow of things to come. Doofenshmirtz was ruthlessly efficient and endlessly devious. If she was to keep Four's Phineas safe while he fixed her a portal home, then she could never let her guard down, not even for a second.

Not that she was in the habit of letting that down anyway.

With the house successfully cleared of wiretaps and other listening devices, she resumed her guard of the yard, keeping two eyes out for anything even slightly out of the ordinary.

Thankfully, it appeared that her finding those bugs had thrown a snarl in Doofenshmirtz's plans. She could almost imagine him growling in frustration to himself, listening to nothing but static where that microphone was supposed to be.

The sun slowly peaked over the horizon as she paced endlessly, back and forth, keeping watch. When at last the light of the morning had chased away enough of the darkness that you might reasonably consider it morning-time at all, she stopped.

It wasn't over - no, far from it. It had only just begun. She may have delayed it, but it would only be temporary. She returned inside the house, where the other Candaces were beginning to stir, and retrieved the chairs from around the kitchen table, which she jammed under the doorknobs of the front and back doors of the house.

No one was going in or out without her knowing about it. They may not like it, but she was fairly sure they liked being alive. Therefore, they could suck it up and accept it quietly, or else she would make them suck it up and accept it quietly. She had a mission to do.

And that mission was protect her city, her home, her family, her little brothers. Nothing and no one came before that. If Four or her brother or any of the other Candaces assumed otherwise, they would be sorely mistaken.

She stopped only for exactly forty-five seconds to relieve herself and another three minutes to grab ahold of some bread and meat out of the refrigeration system. If you weren't going to sleep, you had to get your energy somehow.

The meat was cold, but that was no obstacle to her. Indeed, compared to the things she'd subsisted on during the heyday of Doofenshmirtz's tyranny, it was downright sumptuous.

This was a hostile battlefield, practically. What was she going to do, complain?

She counted everyone as they milled about the house, wasting time with stupid things like showering, which was hardly a luxury they had time for. Doofenshmirtz could be upon them at any second now, and people like Candace Three still were willing to risk being caught naked and defenseless in the shower? What would she do if a NORMbot was to blast through the bathroom door just then?

Get massacred, that's what she would do.

And all that risk for what? Getting clean? It was hardly worth it, in Candace Two's opinion. There was a time and a place, and practically in the middle of a battlefield was neither that time, nor that place. And given what she'd observed of the other's behavior, she was beginning to think that she was the only one who head their head on straight.

The little girl was about as useless in a fight as they came, and Three and Four and Five were too busy bickering with each other over the most banal of subjects anyway. Six had some kind of gun, but thought she was such a bigshot that she could use it to get her way - well, that hadn't lasted very long, and it had sufficiently dashed Two's hope of the woman having any sort of real skill whatever. Seven was... just a troublemaker in general, and Kevin, at the very least, seemed happy enough to obey orders.

Not that it mattered if she wasn't. None of the Candaces were going to resist anything stronger than a stiff breeze by the looks of it, and most of them looked ready to faint at the drop of hat anyway. At least Six was mildly resilient, if it weren't for that fatal flaw of being actually stupid. Candace had never had patience for such things, and she trusted she'd made herself oh-so-perfectly clear. Six wouldn't try anything smart again, not if she valued her unbroken kneecaps.

Just as she was contemplating the feasibility of going up there and dragging out Four's brother and telling him that he'd better get busy and quit stalling around, he came into the kitchen and announced that they were leaving anyway, for some place called 'Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated'. Candace Two didn't know what that place was, but she didn't like the word 'Incorporated' very much.

No, wait, she was pretty sure 'Fletcher-Flynn' was her family's old surname from before the Era of Doofenshmirtz. Okay, that was… interesting, if only slightly.

But curiosity killed the cat - and it'd killed far too many cats in Candace Two's lifetime for her liking.

Candaces Three and Five and Seven decided to come along with Four's brother to wherever his laboratory was.

Four decided to stay behind for a while, saying something about 'the kids' and Six and Kevin claimed that they didn't mind staying at the house to wait.

Obviously, Two was going with Four's brother as well. It was not ideal that she would be unable to protect Four and Six and Kevin, but it was unavoidable. Four's brother's plans to get her home were more important right now. If Four and Six and Kevin wanted to stay behind, they'd have to fend for themselves. Two wasn't about to waste the brainpower on worrying about them.

And of course, there was One - but Candace Two hadn't seen One come out of her assigned barracks all morning, and assumed that she was still fast asleep. Fair enough. If she wanted to take that risk, then she was welcome to it. Candace Two wasn't going lose sleep over it.

As they rode in this car to wherever Four's brother was driving them, he and Three rambled back and forth to each other about things that Candace Two honestly couldn't have cared less about. It seemed to annoy Five and Seven, who sat silently in the back seat, glowering at everyone, and Seven doing the weird glitching thing.

If any one of them should turn out to be a mole from Doofenshmirtz, she was pretty sure it was going to be Seven. That was part of the reason why Two kept a special close eye on her. Seven complained - as a mole might do - but Candace Two didn't care, nor did she sto

It wasn't a particularly long drive to their destination. Candace Two had memorized the exact map of turns between Four's house and her brother's laboratory. Traveling back and forth between the two would be a snap, if she should need to return there on her own at some point in the future.

"Here we are," Four's brother announced. "Ferb's gonna be here as soon as he can manage it, so we can start planning stuff to try when he gets here." He waved for them to follow as he started towards the doors. "Come on."

Two couldn't believe sheer naivety. Just when she'd thought she'd seen the depth of it, someone else always surprised her.

"No, you get behind me," she ordered shortly, reaching out with her staff and blocking Four's brother's way until she got in front of the group. "Right now, you've got the skills to get me home. Therefore, your safety is priority number one." She eyed the towering building through the lenses of her sunglasses. "That means while we're in here, you are never alone. No matter what. I will always be watching over you, my eyes glued onto you at any given moment in the day."

"Even if I'm in the bathroom?" he joked.

But this was no joking matter. "Especially if you're in the bathroom," she rejoined, her voice not rising or lowering a single pitch. "That's the definition of 'never'. And also the time during which you'll be most vulnerable to ambush." She paused for a moment. "I will not allow that to happen."

"What about me?" that insufferable Candace Three protested. "I could get us home too, you know. Why don't I get a bodyguard?"

Candace Two turned and peered at Three over the tops of her glasses. "Because I don't take lightly to forgiving people for screwing up. It's not something that's sustainable in the field. Screw-ups die. And when there's an attack, if I can only save one of your lives, you can bet it's gonna that person with the best chance of getting me home in one piece."

"Typical," she heard Seven mutter under her breath.

"Can it," she snapped in that general direction. "Unless you'd like me to remind why exactly I'm the one in charge here." She motioned in Seven's general direction with her stick.

Four's brother seemed slightly taken aback by the motion - not that Two could really say she cared either way. He may be a version of Phineas, but even her Phineas knew who was in charge when the rubber met the road. And being trapped in another dimension while Doofenshmirtz laid waste to her home certainly seemed like a plenty 'rubber-meeting-road' situation.

"Behind me," she repeated briskly, stepping forward. She eyed up and down the sidewalk as they walked up to the doors. Sure, Four's Phineas - did that make him 'Phineas Four'? - had said that was his building, his laboratory, or whatever. But that didn't mean that Doofenshmirtz couldn't have somehow gotten here first and laid out a trap. Or infiltrated the place with spies. Shepherd spies, perhaps, the worst kind.

And if any of that had happened, she was not about to be caught lying down.

She burst through the front doors, determined to take any would-be ambushers by surprise. There was some woman sitting at a desk just inside the doors, who jerked back slightly, looking somewhat wide-eyed and startled at the sudden entrance.

"And who are you?" Candace Two coolly asked, positioning herself so as to best tower over her. It was all about the intimidation factor in interrogations, really. "It'd better be an answer I like. If it's not, well, just because I don't feed people to Goozims like your boss doesn't mean you'll be getting out of here alive."

"Candace Two - Two!" Phineas Four exclaimed. "No, no, it's okay. She's just my secretary."

Candace Two glared at the woman behind the desk, studying her hard for a moment. "Fair enough." She straightened back up and adjusted her sunglasses. "You're sure you recognize her?"

Phineas Four nodded rapidly. "Yes, yes, it's alright - trust me."

"Hmph." She knocked the end of her staff against the edge of the desk. "We'll see."

It was the fact that he was another version of her little brother, and that fact alone, that made her even somewhat receptive of the idea. Anyone else? Not hardl

"I'm sorry," Phineas Four said to the secretary. "We're some issues with interdi-"

Candace Two clamped her hand down on his shoulder, cutting him off before he could get too far along on that tack. You never knew who could be listening, who might find this information useful. "Hardly," she said icily. "Where we're from is just about none of your concern. Stand down, civilian."

"Oh! Uh, yeah? I guess? We have some… extended family over? From out-of-state?" He reached up and scratched behind his ear.

"Extended family?" the secretary echoed, eyeing Candaces Three and Five and Seven, who'd just walked in through the front doors. "I… see?" She hesitated. "Why do they all look like your sister's... identical twins or something?"

"Really?" Phineas Four shifted back and forth on his feet. "I… hadn't noticed."

"Alright, enough of this useless chitchat," Candace Two growled, grabbing ahold of Phineas' arm and pulling him after her. "You have work to do. You need to show me your space so I can scout it and you can get started."

"I, uh, okay, I guess." Phineas pointed at the elevator on the other end of the room. "Right through there. Can I, uh, have my arm back?"

She grudgingly let go of his arm, but then resolutely shook her head. "Elevators are deathtraps if you know how to rig them. And Doofenshmirtz certainly does. Come on, we're taking the stairs."

Even if they were heading to the very top of the building, the flights of steps that they'd have to take to get there didn't pose any sort of threat to her. She was rather used to physical exertion by now. She'd seen twelve layers of windows on the outside of the building. So, twelve flights of stairs then? Or twenty-four, depending on how they were laid out? Piece of cake.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Candace Five (at least, Two was pretty it was Five) groaned. "Take the stairs?! Are you insane?"

Seven flickered briefly and rolled her eyes. "Yes, of course she is. They all are."

"You should totally have a Televator in here," Three commented. "They're pretty nifty. Or a quantum tunnel, which would probably be even better." She paused. "Yeah, definitely better."

"Well, there's none of those fancy gadgets here," Two interrupted. "So we're taking the stairs, all the way up if we have to."

"Actually," Phineas spoke up. "Down - my and Ferb's laboratory is in the basement, not on any of the upper floors."

"All the way down," Candace Two corrected herself. "My point still stands."

"I am not taking the stairs, no matter what you say," Five insisted. "I just simply refuse."

"For sure," Seven chimed in. "We're out of non-dimension-land or wherever now, so you're hardly the boss of us anymore."

Candace Two gripped her staff tighter and pondered the feasibility of… forcefully poking, yes, Five - and Seven - for their insufferable insubordination. This wasn't the place or time for this, and she simply wasn't about to tolerate it.

"No, no, it's okay," Phineas cut in again. "You two - three? - can take the elevator. Candace Two and I-" he hesitated for a moment, exhaling. "-will take the stairs."

"It's for your own protection," Two reminded him.

"...yes, so you say." He looked back at her. "I really do think it'd be okay to take the elevator, you know. I was just here yesterday, after all, and nothing at all was going on weird."

"Whatever - your loss." Seven stamped over to the elevator and pressed a button to call it down.

"Look," Candace firmly told Phineas. "I'm the one keeping you safe, because you're the one who can get me home. So if I say we take the stairs, we take the stairs."

She could hardly believe that she had to explain this to him. With elevators, so many things could go wrong. The doors could open and reveal an ambush on the other side, with them all trapped inside with no place to run. Someone could cut through the cables from either above or below, trapping them all in-between floors, or in a worse-case scenario, sending them all hurtling towards their deaths. Plus, it was like the first rule of tactical engagements: always avoid places with one entrance and exit if possible, same as places with more than three entrances and exits.

"Yeah, uh, sorry Phineas," Candace Three said. "I'm…" she hesitated, glancing at Five and Seven and back again. "Actually, you know what? I'll come with you guys."

"Good riddance," one of the two over by the elevator mumbled under their breath.

"Come on," Candace Two interrupted curtly. "Stairs. Now. Three, if you're coming, then all I can say is 'keep up'."

Three grumbled to herself for a moment, but grudgingly followed behind. Phineas pointed out the door to the stairwell, and Two remained safely in front of him as they descended the flights into the basement.

When she pushed open the door at the bottom, carefully scouting the surrounding for any sign of potential ambushers, she was greatly relieved to see none. Five and Seven were here already, so she supposed that any potential ambushers down here might have been flushed out by their presence. Or not, depending on if Doofenshmirtz had issued orders to specifically target this dimension's Phineas or not.

But the very lack of any signs of a coming attack... it also set her on edge. Doofenshmirtz was going to strike, she could feel it in her very bones. She almost wished that he would hurry up and get here, so that all this tense waiting would be at an end.

But that, too, may been part of his plan. Maybe he was hoping that by holding back, she would drive herself crazy and become mentally compromised when he actually did put his master plan into motion. Well, if so, he was going to be sorely mistaken. Candace Two had been living on the edge ever since her childhood. It was her home now, to put it quite frankly. She had no problem remaining here for the duration of her stay in this other dimension as well.

"So this is your laboratory?" Three asked. "It's… really cool."

Phineas nodded. "Yes, yes it is. Much better than the place at home, hm?"

Three nodded. "Oh, definitely."

"Hmmph," either Five or Seven snorted. "Looks just like I would have imagined the place where you cook up schemes to ruin innocent people's lives."

Phineas blinked, but smiled. "...thank you? Uh…" he cleared his throat. "Anyway - this is the place where we can really start working toward getting you all home."

Candace Two watched Candaces Five and Seven whisper something between themselves. She couldn't quite flawlessly make out what was passing between them, but it was something along the lines of, "Amazement? It's all he deserves anyway if you ask me. Pah."

To which Candace Five looked somewhat uneasy, but eventually said something that Two couldn't interpret because her hair was in the way.

"Well, it's time for you to get to work," she said aloud. "I'm going to make sure this place isn't bugged as well, so be careful with what you say until I've given you the all clear on that regard."

"As well?" Phineas echoed.

"You just can't admit that I am just as capable of this as anyone else, can you?" Candace Three protested.

Two shrugged. "You're hardly more than a liability. Ability means nothing without common sense."

Candace Three spluttered some nonsense about her son or something, but Two was hardly listening by this point. She'd become quite adept at tuning out a large portion of these other Candaces' random babbling over the past day or so. Which was a very good thing - she couldn't allow it to distract her from the task at hand, which, when you saw how much the other Candaces loved to wax loquacious about absolutely meaningless subjects, was certainly a possibility.

She cleared her throat loudly, interrupting Three's babbling and turned back to Phineas. "I'll give you the signal when I've examined the area. Until then, watch what you say. Don't want to divulge anything to… anyone who might be listening in."

"Now, Two." Phineas Four put on a reasonable tone of voice. "I highly doubt anyone's spying on us right now."

Two nodded. "Exactly." At least he still had some common sense.

"No, seriously I meant-" he cut himself off and exhaled slowly. "Never mind. You just do you." He turned back to Three, who looked like she was about to explode by now, and motioned over towards a large desk pushed up against one wall. "Come on, let's get started, shall we? Don't want Ferb to get here and think we've been slacking off."

"Finally, someone acknowledges me," Three muttered, shooting Candace Two a dirty look that almost escaped her notice, but not quite. For a split second, she debated derailing her mission to teach that woman a lesson, but then decided against it.

All of these other Candaces were constantly lucky that Two had better things to do than beat common sense into them, although it certainly wouldn't have hurt them.

Well, it might have hurt them a bit. But the common sense would probably have been worth it. At least it would have been worth it to Candace Two. But right now, she simply didn't have the time - and it simply wasn't of high enough priority for her to bother with making time for it.

She set off around the laboratory, making sure to leave no stone unturned in her search of the area. Desks and assorted machines with long names were moved away from the walls, boxes were opened and their contents thoroughly searched, doors were thrown open and their closets were thoroughly scoured from top to bottom.

It took her all of about twenty minutes to completely finish turning the whole place upside down, in search of any trace of Doofenshmirtz, no matter how tiny or minuscule those traces may be.

They'd only be 'tiny' or 'minuscule' to the others, of course. To Candace Two, even a speck of hair out of place would be more than enough to tell her what she needed to know. She'd been in constant struggle against Doofenshmirtz - first trying to overthrow his dictatorial rule of cruelty over the Tri-State Area, then after succeeding for just a short while, trying to protect the same Tri-State Area and it's people, so recently freed from those cruel bonds, from the overthrown but certainly not defeated overlord.

It was her life's goal to bring him fully to justice one day. And one day, she was going to do it. Busting Doofenshmirtz had, for lack of a better description, been her life. And now, he'd gone just a step too far. For this, he was going down, down, down.

There was no doubt about it.

She paced up and down the length of the room as Candace Three and Phineas Four rambled to each other about things that she presumed were leading up to getting them home. They'd better be leading in that direction - or she was going to be absolutely fed up with them wasting this much precious time on some other stupid subject.

She half-watched Candaces Five and Seven out of the corner of her eye. They weren't doing much of anything, really, beyond sitting on a couple of chairs pushed against the far wall and occasionally saying something to each other while looking supremely bored and critical of everything going on around them.

"What are you doing?" she settled upon asking Phineas Four, as a way to ensure that they really weren't just wasting time. Once again, Candace Three looked miffed, but Candace Two didn't care.

Three had already proved herself to be sorely lacking in common sense - in a cool head. And no matter what she was or wasn't able to do, the fact that her feet weren't firmly planted on the ground made her definitively the second choice here, a distant second to Candace Four's brother. It wasn't anything personal, per se, just business.

But it was serious business that had no room to spare such things as 'feelings'. If it trampled on Candace Three's ego that she was being ignored in favor of Four's brother, then let it be trampled upon. It was objectively better, as far as Candace Two had seen, to go to Phineas Four. And when given the chance, who wouldn't make the objectively better choice?

And so she did.

Phineas Four looked up at her, looking mildly surprised. "Oh, uh-"

"Not wasting my time, I hope?" Though phrased as a question, the statement was crystal-clear and the threat of enforcement that lurked behind her words had never been stronger.

"No," Candace Three drawled. "I wish you'd quit that, you know. Why do you keep pacing back and forth? You're making it hard to concentrate on my work."

"Concentrate harder, then." This was exactly what she'd been thinking about earlier. If Candace Three was so inattentive and absentminded that a simple act such as Candace Two's patrol route around the room was able to draw her mind from her work, then it was clear that she'd been right in her mental decision to favor Four's brother.

"It's okay." Phineas Four glanced back at Candace Three for a moment, and Three almost immediately looked away as if she couldn't bear bringing herself to look Four's brother in the eye. "Of course we are - right now just trying to work out a method of powering an isotope replicator without damaging the axionic reaction nacelle."

"And don't say an actuator," Three nearly snapped. "If you'd actually listen to me once in awhile you'd know that I calculated that an actuator would obfuscate the wireless end-to-end conduit, effectively interpolating the resonator."

"Yes, yes it would," Phineas Four repeated. "We thought about recollimating the transwarp neutrino mutation - that'll force the system to collapse the quantum wavefront effect, and, according to our calculations, let us pressurise the ambient nadion stream."

Candace Three shook her head. "I don't know. The problem with that is the photonic E-M distortion. We could manipulate the magnatomic polaron field? It'll vary the auxiliary data coupling, which means it should also help to fluctuate the astrophysical tetryon variance."

"Possibly," Phineas agreed. "We still need to repair the photonic alternating inversion. Let's try energizing that accelerated E-M configuration instead. It'll save us having to oscillate the accelerated subspace harmonic, and - voila! - that should force the system to restrict the reciprocating nano effect."

"If the numbers work out," Three returned thoughtfully. "That might do it - or at least help doing it."

"This'll be much easier when Ferb gets here, don't worry." Phineas Four shook his head. "But we really should try to iron out some of these smaller kinks before then."

Candace Three pointed down to a piece of paper she'd taken to scribbling rapidly on. "Take a look at the quantum neutrino emission rates. If we boost the..."

That was just about enough for Candace Two. So long as Phineas Four was working to get her home, she was satisfied. And completely happy to tune out the rest of their nigh unintelligible conversation to each other. She had to do it enough in her home dimension with Dr. Baljeet that it came naturally to her by now.

Resuming her patrol around the room, she returned to half-watching Candaces Five and Seven slumped down in their chairs, looking as if they were waiting most impatiently for something.

Suddenly, Five shifted in her chair and got up, marching over to Four's Phineas. "How long is this going to take?"

Two wasn't about to let someone like Five distract Phineas from his work. Right now, him finishing that machine was priority number one. But before she could say anything, Phineas himself spoke up again.

"I… don't know, exactly." He glanced down at the papers on his desk again. "We're running into issues with cross-dimensional interference completely fudging a lot of our old data and wildly agitating the extra-dimensional flux waves."

"And?" Five demanded.

"Not too long, I don't think," he replied. "I'll be able to nail down a more accurate guess once Ferb gets here and we actually get started with the real construction of the thing, but it shouldn't be much more than a few-"

"Hours?"

Phineas Four smiled slightly, but shook his head. "At this point, 'days' is a closer estimate."

"You've got to be kidding me!" Five burst. "Again?! Did you - you didn't figure out anything from last time I was here?!"

"I mean, that was completely different?" Phineas raised one eyebrow. "I'm not exactly sure how much the machine that sent you home would help here, considering there's no one to send your mind to in your home dimension. Also, that it would leave your body behind. Here."

"Well, I - I - I-" Five spluttered angrily. "Ugh, I am so out of here!" She turned on her heel and stormed over to the elevator, pressing the button on the wall with such force that Candace Two thought she might break it.

The lack of self-discipline these other Candaces showed at times was simply unbelieveable.

"I told you so," Seven said, standing up and shooting a venomous look in Phineas Four's general direction. "He doesn't-"

The elevator doors slid open and Five and Seven disappeared behind them, and the rest of whatever Seven was about to say was lost entirely.

"Complete thickheads, the lot of them," Candace Two muttered to herself. "Running off alone like that. Who's going to be able to protect them now? Certainly not themselves." That idea made one corner of her mouth turn slightly upwards, in an expression that was the closest thing to a smile that she'd had since falling into the non-dimension-place. Yes… because she could totally see those two women - who'd practically done nothing but complain and waste precious seconds since moment one - able to react with the sort of reflexes that were needed to prevent being literally blown into two halves by a NORMbot's plasma laser cannon. Totally. "And certainly not me. I have more important things to do."

She resumed her endless patrol up and down the basement-laboratory floor while Phineas Four continued to work busily on some papers scattered over his desk.

It'd about a half an hour - or at somewhere relatively around there - when she decided that it might be beneficial to the safety of the mission if she made sure the floor directly above them was clear as well. In the case of an attack, she needed to have as many alternate escape routes as possible, after all.

But first, she needed to make sure that no one came down into the basement without her knowing it. The door into the stairwell was fine - so long as she was in between the basement floor door and the door into the floor above it, any potential attackers would have to get through her first.

It was just that stupid elevator, really. She hated that thing with a passion. It needed to be disabled so that she could ensure that no one could use it sneak onto the ground floor without her knowledge.

Well, elevators were easy enough to disable if you knew what you were doing - which was part of the reason that she'd insisted on take the stairs in the first place.

She marched over to the elevator doors and summoned it downwards. When the doors opened, she reached in with her staff and tapped the button to the top floor. The doors slid closed, and the cab began its trip upwards. But it never made it. Candace Two hadn't fully pulled her staff out from between the doors, and now was able to use that leverage to pry the doors open, exposing the empty shaft and thick cables that suspended the elevator. From there it was a simple matter of reaching into a nearby box and pulling out a random piece of metal and jamming it into the gears and cogs spinning rapidly.

There was a loud crunching noise, and sparks flew every which way as the machinery ground to an abrupt halt.

There. Candace Two thought. Finally we're safe from that deathtrap, at least.

She wasn't sure how neither Phineas Four nor Candace Three had heard the clatter that had occurred as she stopped up the elevator, but she didn't particularly care, either.

Slipping quietly out the door, she returned to the stairwell, climbing the steps until she reached the floor just above.

The door swung inwards quietly, and she found herself in what appeared to be… some kind of office building? Or office section of a building?

Her grip on her trusty staff tightened slightly in preparedness. This was what she'd been raised to do. Been raised by herself to do - to keep those whom she loved safe. Because Phineas and Ferb were her innocent little brothers, and she'd been determined to protect that innocence for all it was worth, even at the cost of her own.

But that was all in the past now. Right now, the top goal was getting home. And making sure that this first floor above the basement was completely Doofenshmirtz-free was the way she made sure that happened.

Failure was simply not an option.

Candace Three wasn't actually having a wholly terrible time, at least not at that exact moment. She was 'doing mad science' as Xavier sometimes put it, and it really was something she enjoyed doing. Of course, the fact that Phineas wasn't there to doing the mad science along with her, or help her with fiddly bits, or to ramble on the way he did, or even just smile and be there was rather disheartening.

There was only so much she could do forget that fact - forget that the Phineas working diligently next to her wasn't Phineas at all. Just a spatio-temporal duplicate, one who could never replace the person he so much resembled.

Still, she tried to put those thoughts out of her mind and focus on her work. Somewhere in the back of her brain it registered that Two had left the room - that they were alone. Which was a tremendous relief in and of itself, honestly.

Without the constant scuffing of Two's endless pacing, however, an awkward silence built up in the basement between her and Other Phineas, until she could just about take it no longer.

She'd not seen him to be an unpleasant person, really. It was just her own confused internal emotions, which so strongly wanted him to be who he never could be, that messed everything up. But if she wanted to get through the almost palpable silence between them, she'd have to say something.

Taking a deep breath, she summoned up her courage. "So, your laboratory, hm?" It helped that she really did want to know more about this. "It's… really kinda cool. The whole building is. It's your building, I guess?"

Other Phineas nodded. "Well, it's not mine, per se - but it's mine and Ferb's. That's why we're both on the sign, after all."

"True," she agreed slowly. "It's really, really cool. Kinda makes me wish we had one too - though it'd be really a waste for us to have a building, considering CDI's only an umbrella corporation anyway."

"Yeah - you mentioned that before," Other Phineas replied. "I take it that means you don't really have a… corporate structure or anything?"

"It's just me and Phineas and Ferb," she said. "And Amanda and Xavier. No one else - the company really doesn't do anything except provide a single entity under which we can lump, like, expenses and business deals and tax stuff. No need for a building or anything for that stuff. It'd just be a waste. Plus, it'd disrupt our carefully balanced loan cycle."

"Fair enough." Other Phineas shrugged. "I take it that you do mostly the same stuff as we do there?"

Candace thought for a second. "I… guess you could say that? Not really. Well, sort of. The Force's never really let anything super cool get off the ground for too long, of course, but we manage. Turns out all you really need to attract attention is small stuff anyway. We patented this, like, new version of a catalytic converter for smokestacks that had about a three point seven percent improved conversion rate - and it took off big time. That one still earns us the most royalties out of everything."

"Sounds… interesting." Other Phineas bent down and fiddled with something on the floor that she couldn't quite see. "Well, I suppose that if it works, you shouldn't bother trying to fix it."

It was Candace's turn to shrug now. "Eh. It's not exactly what I pictured the future being like when I was a kid, but it's great all the same." She paused. "Not that anything really turned out like I originally pictured, to be fair."

"I was gonna ask you about that," Other Phineas picked up. "If it's okay with you, of course."

Candace hesitated, but being in the process of constructing the very machine that might well bring her home made her feel somewhat more at ease, even if she couldn't quite look Other Phineas in the eyes without feeling disconcerted. Seeing Phineas' face without the look in his eyes that Phineas had when he looked at her was… she didn't like it, not one bit.

"Yeah, it was kinda a crazy thing," she finally said. "I never really thought that… it was an option, really." She couldn't hold back a small smile. "But Phineas did, apparently, and I'm sure you know how he - you - always manages to get his way with things in the end."

"So Candace says," Other Phineas replied. "Though I can't say I've ever noticed it specifically."

"Yeeeah," Candace continued. "It was a pretty wild time. I was… not at all ready for - for Jeremy Johnson starting to move into his adult life without me. And I made some, uh, pretty questionable decisions on how to handle that." She grimaced. "You know, a few years ago we ran into each other at the Googolplex. He was… pleasant, because I don't think he possesses the ability to be mad, really. Told me that I almost caused him to have a mental breakdown - you know, question what of what he knew was even real in the first place - and that it took him like two months to be okay again. Which… I hadn't really thought of happening at the time, but it was totally possible. And mortifying, even if he assured me that he didn't have any hard feelings towards me. Which was nice to know, too."

She noticed an odd expression on Other Phineas' face. "What? - Oh, right, you probably have no idea who Jeremy Johnson is anyway. He was like-"

"No, no, I know him," Other Phineas broke in. "I just… that sounds... surprising. I wouldn't have expected… that. You know - from you. No offense, of course."

Candace shrugged. "None taken. It was ages ago. When you combine angsty teenage hormones with the ability to bend the laws of nature to your will, it really is a recipe for disaster."

Whew. This subject reminded her that she really wasn't looking forward to a time when Amanda and Xavier would enter that phase. Of course, there was a possibility that they simply wouldn't, but you never knew. That… could be interesting. She knew that she must've been quite a handful as a teenager.

Sort of like Little Candace One was now, although One still couldn't do the whole 'bending the universe to fit your whims' thing, which really helped in that regard as well.

"Speaking of which," Other Phineas cleared his throat. "I'm reminded of something else I wanted to ask you. Candace told me that you said you'd been out - out there where you didn't exist before?" He paused. "I mean, I've been there once, too, but it was only for like half an hour or so, so I don't really remember much about it. But she said you said you were there for like a week?"

Oh. Well - this was awkward. Candace was sure the way she hesitated said enough about the situation. "That… is true."

Other Phineas nodded. "What happened? I mean - that you had stay that long. I don't remember much from when I was there - it was two decades ago, after all. Still I remember building some sort of catapult thing to launch us out a rift from the inside after we calculated where they would appear."

"Where they would appear?" Candace echoed. "You managed to get out while the Do-Over-Inator was still active? Huh." She snorted to herself. "Lucky you, I guess."

"Yeah, that's pretty much what I remember?" Other Phineas said. "Why? What happened to you?"

"Well, for starters, we sure as heck didn't get any help from naturally occurring rifts - time loop or no time loop. After Phineas and Ferb were sucked up, the loops and rifting - all that stopped."

"Stopped?"

"Yeah, I… never saw the Do-Over-Inator again, actually, but I just sort of assumed somebody turned it off. Vanessa's father, or whoever - I can never remember his name."

"Harold, I think?" Other Phineas offered. "In our dimension, at least. Or something like that."

Candace shrugged. "Whatever. Either way - at that point I knew I was in trouble. Because the time loops had stopped, and Baljeet and Isabella and Buford didn't remember who I was, and I tried to find Vanessa's father again, but he'd skipped town and cleaned out his apartment, so I was pretty much out of luck - and in some real hot water."

Other Phineas seemed confused for a moment. "But… can't you - you can invent stuff like me - and the other me? I mean, I'm watching you right now."

Candace glanced down at the blowtorch in her hand. "Oh. Well, yeah - I can, and could… but at the time I was in this weird time of my life where it sort of faded away behind me being obsessed with trying to get my brothers in trouble with Mom. Which didn't ever work, of course, because the Mysterious Force, but boy how I tried."

An odd expression had crossed Other Phineas' face. "That's… interesting."

"Yeah, it was this weird thing." Candace rolled her eyes. "Guess you probably don't know what I'm rambling on about, but I was pretty… crazy back then. At least, that's what everyone assumed. What Mom assumed for the longest time."

"Harsh," Other Phineas agreed. "So you did that instead of inventing, I guess? I can… sort of see how that works?"

"No one really knows quite how it worked," she replied. "Had something to do with being really, like, over obsessive about it plus the fact that for a large part of it, the withdrawals were staved off by proxy - Phineas and Ferb's proxy. Which did have some… weird effects when their proxy wasn't there, but for the most part it was basically omnipresent."

"Huh. That's… interesting," Other Phineas said. "So I guess if you couldn't (yet?) invent, then it would be kinda hard to get the other me and Ferb back."

"Hard?" She almost laughed. "It was straight-up impossible. I was just an ordinary teenager that pretty much everyone thought was raving lunatic anyway."

"I'm sure it wasn't quite so bad as all that," Other Phineas smiled awkwardly at her. It wasn't so much the smile that was awkward as her confused internal reaction to it, actually. Either way - she could definitely tell that this was another dimension. Other Phineas hadn't been around for those years in the middle, and Candace Four hardly seemed the type to lose her cool in that really embarrassing sort of way. So of course he'd try to be nice, but he couldn't know what went on. Surely.

"Either way," she continued. "I had this idea that maybe I should use the time machine in the museum to go get help - not knowing at the time that it would be even be there still, which of course it was, thanks to quantum locking. So I traveled into the future-"

Suddenly, she stopped. The recollection of that part of the horrific ending of the year twenty-seventeen was not something she liked to think about. Cold shivers ran up her spine as her brain conjured up some of her oldest memories. "I…" she stammered, trying to get around the massive roadblock suddenly appeared in her thought process. Her breaths came short and shallow as the memories of that time came rushing back to the forefront of her mind.

"-Three? Candace?" Phineas' voice sliced through the fog in her brain. "Are you okay?"

"I…" she tried again. "Phineas, I - I need to sit down."

Phineas blinked once, but quickly retrieved a chair from the other end of the room and brought it over. She collapsed into it with a huge sigh, lifting one arm towards him, trying to get him to come and sit with her, as he always did when this sort of thing had happened in the past.

Why was it so bad now, of all times? It was almost never this bad anymore. It must have had something to do with her visit to the non-dimension yesterday, surely. And why, for crying out loud, was Phineas still standing awkwardly in front of her, looking so conflicted? She wanted - needed - him right now, to sit and hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that it was all in the past, that it was not going to happen again, the way he always used to when this used to happen.

...oh.

Right.

Because this wasn't Phineas, no matter how much they resembled each other - and could never be be him, either. This was the Other Phineas, the one who looked like her Phineas, but it simply wasn't the same, nor could it ever be.

And there was also the fact that she was absolutely embarrassing herself in front of him.

With a sudden lurch, she shot up out of the chair and forced the last of the sudden flashback away, back to whatever scary corner of her mind it had hidden itself for the past twenty-one years.

"You alright?" Other Phineas repeated, a look of concern still on his face.

"Yes," Candace swallowed. "I'm - I'm fine." She laughed nervously. "Where - where was I again?"

Other Phineas frowned briefly. "You… said something about traveling into the future?"

"What?" Candace scoffed as best she could. "I… that's - no, that never happened. There was just, uh, a - the talking zebra." She nodded vigorously. "He showed up and it all went downhill from there."

"Uh huh." Other Phineas looked slightly doubtful, but he didn't press the subject. "What exactly do you mean by 'went downhill'?"

She noticed that the random reference to her recurring hallucination - if it was actually that at all, given Kevin's presence here - provoked almost no reaction from Other Phineas that she could see. What did that say, exactly? Something about Candace Four, perhaps? It would certainly be nice to be able to talk to someone who'd had to deal with that insufferable tea-drinking equine the same as she had.

Kevin's presence just made that whole thing really weird, though. Candace still wasn't quite sure what to make of that, honestly, and she didn't really like what it implied.

"Went downhill?" she repeated. "It went from bad - to worse. I jumped, nah, got dumped out from the frying pan and into the fire." She paused. "There was actually this whole thing the zebra and a… I guess you could call it a mental breakdown, if you, uh, wanted to?"

"I… see?" Other Phineas replied slowly.

Candace nodded. "The Theory of Everything - the inventing thing - it was going to come out anyway, because there wasn't any more proxy there for me. Either way, however, it didn't make it any more fun when it finally did come." She shuddered at the memory. "As you might expect, withdrawal set in, practically instantly. It was miserable. I had zero idea how to handle them at that point, and I kept beating myself up with them by accident."

"Ah," Other Phineas blinked. "With...drawal? Yes… I can't say I know what you're talking about?"

Now Candace was surprised. "Oh, waaait," she drawled. "I talked to Four about this, though I didn't quite believe her at the time." She paused. "Do you really mean to tell me that you don't have to deal with this?"

"With 'withdrawal'?" Other Phineas enunciated the word carefully, as if he hadn't had much experience with it. It was almost like he was tasting it as it rolled off his tongue. "I… don't think so?"

Candace rolled her eyes. "Seriously." She thought hard for a moment, then decided to try another tack - after all, given that this was another dimension, maybe they had another name for it or something. That… was possible, right? It had to be. "What about when you don't invent stuff?"

"Don't invent?" he asked back. "Why would I not invent?"

"Just tell me," she pushed. "Have you ever tried to go any significant length of time without inventing?"

"I mean… yeah, I suppose?" He reached up and ran his hand through his hair. "During the school year as kids we'd only do our projects once or twice a week on Saturdays and Sundays. Does that count?"

Five days? A hundred and twenty whole hours? Of course that counted. To go that long without inventing - Candace was pretty sure that it simply wasn't physically possible. "And what happened?" she repeated.

Other Phineas' eyebrows lowered in thought. "I… would get disappointed that we had to wait so long? Maybe a bit cabin-feverish, or something like that."

"And the headaches?" she pressed, unwilling to believe was he was saying. "And the nausea and the vertigo and the shaking and seizure-like convulsions and the vomiting and oh! the migraines?"

Other Phineas shook his head. "Ah… no?" He paused for a moment. "Wait - are you saying that all that happens to you if you don't invent?"

"Not just to me!" Candace exclaimed. "To Phineas. To Ferb. To Amanda and Xavier. It happened to Baljeet once like twenty years ago when Phineas and Ferb artificially induced the Theory of Everything into his head." She shook her head. "It's… kinda like a thing."

"Wow." It was no joke, then? She could tell by Other Phineas facial features that he was telling the truth. "I did not know that was a thing that… was possible? And the other me, too? Huh."

"So let me get this straight," Candace repeated. "You… can do just about whatever you feel like doing, laws of nature and common sense notwithstanding, and yet… you don't have to. It's just… something you do? You could stop - actually, factually stop - whenever you felt like it?" She threw back her head and sighed. "Wow. That's… hardly fair."

It seemed dumb even to herself, but she couldn't quite stifle the hint of jealousy that crept into her heart. 'Hardly fair' was the understatement of the year, that much was for sure. More like - like obnoxiously unfair and entirely unpalatable in the first place. If this was how it worked in this dimension… why couldn't it be the same everywhere? Why did her dimension have to be the one with the horrifyingly painful withdrawal symptoms that inescapably cropped up if she should so much as try to have a normal life?

And Candace Four said she still couldn't do it.

It just wasn't fair. Four had pretty much told her this would be the case back in the non-dimension, but she'd somehow how hoped that Other Phineas had just… not told her, for some reason, similarly to how her own brothers hadn't said anything to her so far back in her childhood - not until she'd run into them herself.

But no, of course, because she was Candace Gertrude Flynn - Candace Three - and she could never catch a break.

"I've gotta say," Other Phineas piped up again. "I'm rather curious about this… thing, now that you've told me about it." He hesitated just for a moment. "Do you know why they happen? Or if - if they can be stopped or cured or whatever?"

"Pfft." Candace snorted. "It's the Theory of Everything. It physically alters the pathways in your brain. Phineas and Ferb and I and Amanda and Xavier… we were born with it. It's not something you can 'remove' or 'fix', because believe me we've looked into it, especially after… after Amanda got into trouble with them for the first time." She paused for a moment. "But there's just no way. Even completely subjugating a person's conscious mind and fully wiping it or otherwise incapable of conscious or subconscious thought can't do the trick. It's like eating or drinking - a physical need that must be satisfied."

"That… is interesting." Other Phineas rubbed the back of his neck. "I… don't really know what to say. Sorry? Is that the right response to something like this?"

Candace just shrugged, doing her best to ignore the envy eating at her insides. "If you wanna be sorry, you can, I guess."

"Uh huh." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I wonder if the same thing does actually happen to me and Ferb but just… takes a longer time to get started or something? Like… it'd have to be at least a week or something, I guess."

"Hardly." Candace scoffed. "Trust me on this one - if they came for you, you'd know."

"I see." He nodded. "Well, that's… very interesting."

"Very interesting," Candace muttered under her breath. "Yeah, for sure."

She wondered what Phineas would say to that. Probably nothing, in all likelihood, because she knew that he wasn't really the type to get jealous over this sort of thing. And she knew that was the better way to be, really she did, but just knowing that certainly didn't seem to help all that much.

She really needed to get away from this subject before it soured her mood to much. "Where was I?" she asked aloud. "Oh, right - the withdrawals. Yeah." She cleared her throat and continued. "Anyway, all that aside, I finally made it through the weird mental block that'd somehow gotten stuck in my brain. And from there…"

She hesitated briefly, unsure of her own memory of such a distant and convoluted time. "I got ahold of a bunch of stuff and built this space-time ripper to get to Phineas and Ferb, but I didn't manage to pull them out - instead, I fell in. And busted my arm all up." She shrugged. "So we were there for like two or three more days, just sort of… stuck until some sort of weird thing happened with a non-pizzazium-powered space-ripper melting down and exploding and weakening the continuum's protective barrier enough for us to slide back in without needed pizzazium - though we were still forced to travel diagonally to quantum energy flow and slide into whatever dimension we hit first. Which was some freaky dimension, but it was a freaky dimension with pizzazium infinionite, and we just went straight home from there."

"That's quite an adventure," Other Phineas replied. "I imagine your parents were quite happy to see you again." He suddenly sat his screwdriver down and reached into his pocket, producing his phone. "Oh, awesome!"

"What is it?"

He fiddled with his phone for a moment, before looking up again. "Ferb's here. Now we can really get started in earnest."

"That's… good." Candace nodded. And it really was. Other Phineas wasn't an unpleasant person at all. In fact he was quite pleasant, and it was only the downright uncanny resemblance to her own Phineas that kept her from being entirely at ease around him. But it could have been worse - they could have ended up in Candace Five's home dimension, after all.

Now, that would have been unfortunate.

"It's also convenient," she hummed under her breath. "I've just finished the calculations we should need for this thing."

She showed the paper to Other Phineas, who read the first line aloud.

"A dozen, a gross, and a score, plus three times the square root of four, divided by seven, plus five times eleven, is nine squared and not a bit more." He shrugged slightly. "Well, it looks good to me, at least. I suppose all that's left is to give it a test run and see what happens."