It was the sound of the electric drill that did it.

Probably.

Honestly, Candace Five wasn't all that sure how she recognized the sound in the first place. Then again, there weren't many things that did make that sort of high-pitched mechanical whirring sound, so it wasn't like there were many options for her to guess from. It wasn't like she was dumb or anything.

The rain outside was coming down in sheets now, pounding on the windowpanes of the ninth floor of the building, punctuated by occasional flashes of lightning that lit everything up with the intensity of the noonday sun and rolling thunder that felt as if it shook the building down to its very core. It was the sort of storm that made a person glad for a roof overhead, even considering what that roof stood for, and grateful for a warm and dry place to sleep, even if that place was nothing more than a mattress thrown haphazardly on the floor of an unused office on the ninth floor of a building currently without a functioning elevator.

(Seriously, someone ought to fix that. It was getting annoying by now. Candace Two wouldn't like that, of course, but then again, Candace Five was sure that no one took Two seriously anyway.)

At any rate, she'd been sitting on her 'bed', trying her best - and still kind of failing - to lose herself in a book. It… yeah, it wasn't working that well. It wasn't that Candace didn't like reading - she rather did, and could read pretty quickly anyway - but that someone in the next room was making some kind of intolerable racket.

At first there had been the banging, like somebody was having the time of their life with a massive drum set or something. Candace had promptly shut and barred the door of the office that had more or less become her bedroom, only to discover, much to her chagrin, that the sounds came just as well through the paper-thin walls separating one office from the next.

She had briefly entertained the thought of trying to move her mattress-bed somewhere else, but all the other rooms on this floor were taken up anyway. At least, the ones nearby were. She probably could've dragged her bed up the hallway for, like, three miles or something, but that would just defeat the point and probably be more effort than it was worth.

So, instead, she just grit her teeth and redoubled her efforts to distract herself with her book. The fact that the book was… not very interesting probably didn't help her much in that endeavor, either.

And then there was the electric drill, and that was the last straw. Banging she could take, along with whatever else it was that was causing the heretofore constant cacophonous sound, but not the constant whining of one of those drills. Those things… ugh. They just hurt her ears, honestly.

That, then, was the reason that she gave a long suffering sigh and sat the book down before she stood up. She couldn't really imagine a reason that Four's brother would be up to something right next door when he had not only that whole entire basement but also all of today to do this sort of thing.

And today had actually been an alright day , she lamented herself as she opened the office door and stepped out into the hall. And it had, really, given the circumstances - another dimension, specifically an incestuous one, yadda yadda yadda. After spending a week here last year, this second week now was losing its shock value a lot faster, to the point where by now, at the close of the fourth full day, it was more boring than anything else.

'More' boring, of course, because it would never quite reach that point fully, but ever since Five had promised Four that she would sort of… "lighten up" on that whole subject, and Seven had pulled her little face-heel turn and cut her self off from the world, there really wasn't much to do.

Which had left her with one of the least remarkable Sundays in recent memory, consisting of rising late, eating slowly, reading some, going for a walk under a growing storm, reading more, eating more, sitting down with one of the computers in the building and poking around on the Internet doing stupid things, and eventually getting tired of that and reading some more.

It was really unfulfilling, she had to admit, though there wasn't much else to do.

And, of course, although she hadn't been interrupted once all day (except in the late afternoon, by Six, who suddenly fancied herself a reporter and wanted to take a dozen pictures with and of her), now , when she was actually actively invested in wanting quiet, someone had to come up and make an insufferable racket.

She'd guessed that it was one of Four's brothers, up here doing something for… some reason, but as it turned out, that wasn't the case. It wasn't Phineas (or Ferb) at all - it was another Candace.

Wait, what ? she thought. Oh, wait a second - that's right. Candace Three.

Although 'Three' was on the tip of her tongue, along with a few other choice words about causing such a racket now , of all times, she didn't actually say it. Instead, she leaned against the doorjamb of the other office and just sort of… watched Three, who clearly had no idea she was being watched.

There was a pile of lumber on the floor, and Three was was busily taking pieces from it and fastening them together with that electric drill that had annoyed Five from the other room. It was still annoying now, but kind of less so since she wasn't trying to read despite it anymore.

What Three trying to build anyway? Whatever it was, it was clearly still in its beginning stages, because it was still very much unrecognizable.

Candace Five had seen Three doing some stuff in the non-dimension, but she hadn't really been paying attention then, having been too distracted by her rivalry with Four, her irritation at Two, her kind-of a fear of Six, and her confusion upon meeting Kevin. And she'd known sort-of superficially that the other woman was helping Four's brothers do… whatever they were doing down in the basement, but whenever she looked over there, it hadn't looked like much except drawing on paper and writing on chalkboards and sketching on blueprinting paper, without any actual building .

Here, though, she was definitely paying attention. And as she watched the pile of lumber be summarily dismantled and assembled into a… was that bedframe? (yes, yes it was), she was left with no doubt about what she'd always known but never really paid any real mind to.

All her life she'd struggled with her brothers and their immature and dangerous creations. Okay, well, that was a bit of an unfair exaggeration, if she had to say so herself. How about all her childhood ? That was definitely true, right up until she'd gone off and left home to join Jeremy in college.

Coming back for summer vacation after that first year of college had been weird . She'd been fully expecting another hundred and four days all too similar to her childhood, filled with danger and crazy inventions that really shouldn't have been built and (probably) pain. Instead, there'd been… well, there had been some of that? Maybe. But it was noticeably less, even to her.

The projects were smaller, less impressive. The natural laws flaunted were less immoveable. The impossibilities achieved were less… impossible, if such a thing was even possible. Days would sometimes go by without anything being done, and on the days that something was done, sometimes it wasn't even bustable . Not that a twenty year old woman should've been trying to bust her little brothers to her mother anymore, but it had certainly helped when she could look at the project of one of those hundred and four days and be… unimpressed.

And it dropped off more steeply every year she'd returned for summer break, until she'd actually gradually found herself not dreading the yearly hundred and four days so much. And then, early one year, there'd been an incident with an earthquake that'd shaken the town of Danville. She'd gotten a chance to return home because of the disaster, which, of course, had been caused by her brother. Still, something about causing such widespread destruction (even if the quake wasn't that bad) seemed to have affected him, and she'd returned home for the last time after graduating at the end of that year to find it… utterly gone.

After so long, she was free.

Even so, despite all that, her brothers were the ones who'd done those sorts of things. (And grown out of them for the most part, thankfully, but the fact remained.) They'd done them. They had always been the ones to do them.

Seeing a version of herself do it was… weird. Looking at Three could have been like looking in mirror, just about, (like with pretty much any version of herself, except Two with her sunglasses that Five was pretty sure by now were glued onto her head), and yet here she was now, watching Three do something that Five was pretty sure she'd never be able to do with an air of near-effortlessness.

And it wasn't even like a bedframe was all that complex or even dangerous, provided that it was just that, which, if Three was anything like Phineas and Ferb in their more immature years, it was almost guaranteed to not be.

Still, drawn partly by curiosity and partly by boredom, she continued leaning there and watching, right up until Three screwed in the last piece and picked up her mattress, slid it into place on the frame, and turned around.

"Oh!" Three exclaimed, jumping suddenly, and dropping her screw gun, which clattered noisily onto the floor, narrowly missing her toes. "You - you scared me," she panted. "You can't sneak up on people like that, Four."

Four? Five glanced down at her own shirt and noticed that her own identification sticker was missing. Oh, that was right - she'd not thought to put a new one after showering that afternoon, not thinking that it would be necessary.

"Not Four," she corrected the other woman. "Five."

"Five?" Three seemed to eye her cautiously. "Oh." She hesitated for a long moment more before continuing. "What do you want?"

Five shrugged. "Nothing."

"Not even a ham sandwich?"

"What?" Five raised one eyebrow.

"Nothing." Three awkwardly brushed her off, staring kind of intensely at her the whole time, her face slowly growing redder as time went by. "Sooo…"

Five didn't quite know why, but for some reason she got the feeling that Three was nervous for some reason. Oh, wait, she probably did know why, didn't she? Three and Four and Six were the three incestuous Candaces. If she had to admit it, she kind of preferred Three's getting nervous over the way Four would just shove it all up in her face. 'Would', of course, because she had so far followed through on her promise yesterday and left Five pretty well alone.

"Don't worry," she decided to say. "I am… not interested in discussing - in discussing your brother."

"Oh," Three repeated. "Really? Then - then what are you here for?" She reached down and picked up her screw gun off the floor, walking over to the desk on the far side of the office and setting it down there.

Well, what was she here for? Nothing, really, with perhaps the exception of a means to relieve her boredom, especially now that she was pretty much alone in a sea of weird Candaces whose senses of normalcy were horribly skewed. Instead of saying any of that, though, she decided to point at the bedframe in the middle of the office. "You built that?"

She didn't know why she phrased it as a question, really. Of course Three had built it, after all, Five'd watched her with her own eyes. She also had no earthly idea where she was going with this.

"I did," Three replied, nodding slowly.

For another long minute, silence hung in the room as Five tried to figure out something else to say.

"And you do all the things that Phineas and Ferb used to do?" Again, why the asking for confirmation? She already knew this. Still, it was kind of hard imagine that a version of herself could ever do such things anyway. Especially so because she knew how long and hard she'd fought against her brother's dangerous creations, against the irresponsibility and immaturity they represented.

To know that a version of herself - to see that version of herself doing it was… thoroughly weird, and kind of unsettling, if she had to say so herself.

Still, she had told Four yesterday that she would make an effort to be more - more tolerant and whatnot. Not that there was really much to tolerate here, specifically. (At least not yet.)

Three nodded slowly, the corners of her mouth turning slightly downward. "I do, yes. Why - what is it?"

"I don't know, honestly," she answered. "I mean, I always sort of knew? But never really paid attention to it before. It's just… it's kind of-" she stopped abruptly mid-sentence, suddenly remembering something Four had mentioned the previous day. "I mean, it's - it's - uh…" Oh, crud, now this was really awkward.

Three blinked, drumming her fingers on the desk's top. "It's 'weird'? That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?" She exhaled and smiled faintly, and the drumming stopped. "That's okay. I - I know my place in the world. It's… well, it's worked out so far, I guess. It's like a designated role anyway, so I don't think I ever really had much of a choice in the matter."

"I guess," Five replied noncommittally. Man, Four'd better be grateful for this. Or at least, she had better be grateful if she ever learned of this, since there was a good chance she wouldn't. For all her dealings with Four last year and this year, for brushing shoulders with Three and Six constantly over the past few days, it really never did get any easier to accept what they had done.

But Five was over that anyway - or at least, over the outward expression of it, as she'd promised. And, like any mature adult should be, she would be true to her word.

Three blew out a long breath and shrugged. "It's how the Force works, I guess. I dunno." She stopped for a second to stare at Five and shrugged again. "But what do you want , if you're not here to lecture me?"

"I don't know," Five said, shrugging again. "So, it's true then. And the other things Four said too, you know, the whole getting sick if you don't? I mean, she told me this story about a - a storm cellar or something?" She sort of found that difficult to believe, but to be fair, although Four had done a lot of twisted things, Five'd yet to see any evidence that she was also a liar. After all, you've got to give the devil his due.

"Getting sick ," Three snorted. "Yeah, that's true too. I, well, I don't know what all exactly Four told you, but I don't really think there's a way to overrepresent it in any case." She shrugged sort of halfheartedly. "What can I say? Weird? Yeah, sure - tell me something I don't know."

Geez, Four wasn't joking, was she? Three really did have some kind of issue with this. Knowing that, she probably ought to steer whatever-the-heck this conversation was away from it, in a more… well, different direction. Five still had no what she was even doing. Candace Three obviously wasn't thrilled about talking to her either, if the way she kept eyeing Five was anything to go by.

"I'm sorry," she eventually decided on. "I'm - I'm just having trouble picturing, well, picturing myself doing all those re-" oh, wait, would that impose on the compromise she'd reached with Four yesterday? Probably. Best to not say it, then. "-those things."

"I'm sure you are," Three replied dryly. "That's the same thing that Four told me - I'm not really surprised by it anymore. But it's the way things work, and that's that."

"I suppose," Five said thoughtfully. "And because you get sick, you can't ever stop." She shook her head. "That must suck."

Three looked strangely torn, her face twisting up into a unreadable expression. Oh, what was it this time? Five had been watching herself. She hadn't said anything , as far as she knew. She'd promised Four to stay generally away from the subject of incest, but at the same time, she couldn't really help it if Three read some hidden meaning into Five's perfectly innocent words.

Maybe it's her guilty conscience , she thought wryly, even if she doubted it. So far there'd been no indication of anything of the sort existing inside either Four or Three or even Six, and now would be an awfully strange time for it crop up.

"At times?" Three said, almost like it was a question. "There have… there have been times, I guess." She shrugged. "But for the most part? I… well, I'm good with it." She stopped and shot Five a pointed glance. " Every thing, Phineas included. You're not going to change my mind on that , you know."

Five just about couldn't resist the urge to roll her eyes. She wanted - so badly - to fire off some retort that if Three felt so strongly about needing to defend her… messed-up take on sibling relationships, then she couldn't have been as unshakably secure in it as she liked to claim, but… ugh. She really didn't feel like getting into this with Three, too, now that she'd finally managed to get it settled with Four. "I didn't say anything about that," she said instead, doing her best to make sure her tone was perfectly even and not all exasperated. "And I won't, either, if you don't. Sound fair?"

A moment or two passed with Three regarding her suspiciously before finally answering. "Sure, I guess. Wait, when did you get so non-interventionist anyway?"

"Maybe I got bored of arguing," Five replied flippantly. "Does it really matter?"

"I… guess not." Three shrugged. "Okay, whatever. Fair enough."

"Yeah." Five nodded. Well, this was going wonderfully, wasn't it? Just wonderfully. If she was going to keep standing here, she ought to say something , at least, to break this awkward silence between them. "How's this even possible? With you, I mean."

"I don't know," Three said. "I was born with it. Just like Phineas. And Ferb. And, later on, Amanda and Xavier. It's just the way it happened."

Five shook her head. "I find that… difficult to wrap my head around. Like, for so long I tried to keep my brothers from building those st- st- stationary? - sometimes they were stationary - inventions. I did everything in my power. Of course, I always failed, but they later stopped anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. In retrospect, I probably should have just relaxed more as a teenager, I mean, they would probably have grown out of it with or without my influence anyway. But then, here's you. I don't know… I can't really comprehend it."

Three just stared at her for a moment. "Four told me about that, you know."

"Four told you about what?" Five snorted. If Four'd been trashing her behind her back, well, there would be some words, that was for sure. Then again, what could she expect anyway? Five was feeling a bit like the lone adult trapped in a building full of children, along with one psychopath and one basket case. Thankfully, the latter two seemed to have disappeared recently, so all that was left was the children, along with their unwilling babysitter.

And Kevin. (Honestly, Kevin was kind of an enigma. She hailed from a dimension so radically different that it drastically showed in her behavior and even her name. But although she seemed to be an adult - and happened to be mayor of Danville, no less - her reaction to both Phineas' and Ferb's irrational and unwise obsession with dangerous inventions and to the reveal of Four's and Three's and Six's… ahem … life choices had been so muted that it left Five kind of confused on what conclusion to draw there. And then there was her connection to the talking zebra and… it was just a weird situation.)

"That your brothers - Phineas and Ferb Five - stopped inventing," Three explained. "You know, I find it hard to understand that ."

"It's not so hard to understand." Five said. "They were irresponsible kids. They grew up, and left irresponsible kid stuff behind them. It's what you do." She suddenly hesitated. "Well, not you , specifically. Or your brothers? Because you… well, because you can't ." Suddenly, Five was very glad that whatever it was in Three's dimension that made them sick like that was not a thing in her own. Imagine that - Phineas and Ferb never growing out of that phase, no matter how much time passed, not because they didn't want to, but because they physically couldn't .

Yikes. What would she have done in a situation like that?

...well, it hadn't happened, and wasn't going to. So, really, was it worth thinking about? No, no it wasn't.

"I guess that's one way of looking at it?" Three frowned. "I don't know if I'd call it 'kid stuff' - haven't seen any normal kid doin' it, but that does hinge on normalcy, so I guess I'll give you that one. And no, stopping just randomly is… not within my capabilities, really. But it never has been, so I guess it's just my life, or something."

Five frowned. She'd never talked to Three before, at least, beyond straight-up shouting at her in an argument, which didn't really count. She did have to admit that this wasn't quite what she'd expected to find, either. She didn't really know what she had been expecting, in all honesty. Someone… closer to Phineas and Ferb in their more immature days? It was kind of hard to unequate the link between those ridiculous inventions and immaturity in her mind, after all, putting so many people in danger and driving their sister and basically everyone with common sense up the walls for some 'project' was the height of immaturity. The very height. It seemed a logical enough connection to her. She hadn't really ever asked anyone else about it, but she didn't really need to because it was kind of obvious, in any case.

But if Candace Three did it because she had a physical need for it…

Of course, she should keep in mind that, like Four, Three was similarly tangled up with her own brother. She obviously wasn't that much better than Four, at any rate. But maybe on this subject, at least, she could find some sort of something that might possibly be considered... common ground.

It would be so ironic, too.

"Do you even like it?"Five hazarded.

"Like what?"

"You know," she said. "The whole, like, inventing thing. I mean, you keep going on about how 'insane' it is - and don't worry, I fully agree. But are you doing it because you have do it, despite how you feel?"

For a minute or two, Three just stared at her, like she'd just made some profound statement or something. She stared with such an intensity that it was kind of starting to weird Five out, even, before she finally responded. "No. It's alright. Good by me, I mean, you should see all the great stuff I can do. And Phineas and me and the kids? I mean, we can do anything , just about. I, well, I'm happy with it."

"Oh." Five could feel her heart dropping somewhat. Okay, yeah, it was kind of asking to be disappointed, but she'd at least tried, right? None of the other Candaces seemed to realize what sort of things Phineas' and Ferb's creations had stood for, except Candace One, and that didn't really count either, after all, One was just a little girl. Two was ridiculously obsessed to the point of insanity, Four and Six were generally too busy singing their brothers' praises, Seven completely misconstrued them and cast Phineas and Ferb as some kind of evil masterminds, Kevin… was Kevin. "Sorry, it's just you were saying all those things about how weird and crazy it is and I just thought, you know…"

"Oh, it is ," Three half-chuckled. "There's no debating that , at least." She shook her head and shrugged. "But, honestly, I've been the weird one my whole life. It's me . I can't get away from it, so I might as well enjoy it, right? And I do, at any rate. I guess I do complain about it a lot at times, but… it's been part of my life for two decades now. I can't really imagine living without it again, nor do I particularly want to, if I'm being honest."

"I guess so?" Five replied, not fully sure what she was guessing at anyway. "Well, you have to, and you like to. Guess it worked out for you, then." Probably not so much for all the people that were put in danger thanks to inventions of the caliber that she knew they were talking about. But if Candace Three had to, well, what exactly could Five say? She could perhaps scold her for being so irresponsible as to enjoy it, but she couldn't exactly think of anything else to say.

Well, she technically could , but those things would be verging awfully close to the line that she'd said she'd stop crossing yesterday. So, yeah.

"Kind of," Three said. "And, really, no matter how much I might complain about it, there really is nothing like it." She waved her arms in the air, gesturing wildly. "Sometimes I wish Mitch would leave us alone for once, but in general, it's pretty great. And yeah, maybe there's some things I won't get to do, but then you gotta think of all the things I do get to do and it's like… well, for being the designated weirdo, it's not so bad after all. And I'm happy, which is… well, that's the important part, right?"

Five shrugged. "Sounds right, I suppose." She wasn't quite sure how Three could so quickly see-saw back and forth between lambasting having to invent stuff and defending it? It seemed kind of contradictory and rather counterproductive. But apparently it worked for her, so whatever. "I just… I don't know? It's unnatural ." That was probably the best way to put it, anyway. No one was supposed to be messing about with the most basic laws of nature, but of those who did, it was Phineas and Ferb. Not - not herself. That just wasn't how it worked. It was never how it had worked, and it wasn't supposed to be ever how it would work.

Three snorted again. "That's what Four said too, you know. I guess that's not too much of a coincidence, given that you both are more normal than I am, in that sort of way." She shrugged. "Natural, unnatural, I don't know. It's how I was born, it's how Phineas was born, it's how our children were born. It's just the way it is, really."

Five raised one eyebrow, choosing to benevolently ignore the obvious reference to Three's incestuous relationship in favor of something perhaps less shocking but also closer to home - or at least closer to her now , which was about as far from 'home' as you could get. Mainly, she was pretty sure that 'normal' was not a descriptor one could use for Four. To be Four was to spit in the face of normalcy. There was no way the adjective applied.

Five was normal - or at least, she had worked hard to be as normal as she could get coming from her family. Four? Not hardly. Not in a million years, no, not in a million light years. (Wait, wasn't that a comparison that Three would make anyway? Where was the line between terms that Five should and shouldn't use? Lightyear… was a pretty well-known one, but it was kind of science-y too… maybe she should be safe about it. Normal people did not obsess about lightyears.)

To be fair, though, Three hadn't exactly said that Four was normal, either. She'd said ' more normal' which… okay, even Five had to admit that was kind of true? At least when compared to Three, who was like Four insofar as messed-up relationships went, but also with the whole inventing thing (which wasn't even something she could help , apparently).

Of course, the next thought that entered her mind was wondering why if Three was, in theory, so much worse than Four was, was it kind of proving to be easier to talk to one as opposed to the other? She certainly couldn't relate to Three on… anything at all.

At least with Four, they'd pursued… you know, roughly the same career. And they were the same age, something that she'd learned yesterday was not apparently not true for all of them. And they had-

You know, she really shouldn't be doing this. Four was… not a person she should be trying to relate to. At all. Four was everything she'd rejected in her childhood, and also a boatload of things that she'd never had to reject because she wasn't bent up enough in the mind to ever even considerthem.

Candace Five was happy in her life. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but who's was? Hers was good enough for her, and she'd fought long and hard to get it that way. She wasn't going to ruin it all for herself now, not after all that, after last year, heck, after the events of the past few days, even.

"You know," Three spoke up. "I'm getting the impression you want something from me."

"No, no I don't," Five assured her. "I was just… thinking."

"Mmm hmm." Three nodded. "And staring at me like you're trying to burn a hole into my brain." She made a face, sticking out her tongue. "Trust me, you don't want in there. But, whatever - I do have some extra lumber here. You want a - a bedframe or something?"

Candace Five blinked, surprised, perhaps even unreasonably so. "What?"

"A bedframe?" Three repeated, furrowing her brow and generally looking confused. "You know… like the one right there?" She pointed at the one she'd just built.

Well, it did look more comfortable than having just a mattress thrown on the floor, at least. Sleeping on a real bed again would be nice. Provided it was just a bed, which… yeah, okay, what were the odds of that?

" Is it just a bedframe?" she asked, regardingly the bed cautiously. "And nothing else?"

"What?" Three scoffed. "That would be boring, though." She reached under the desk and produced a small gray box, waving it in the air. "Check it out. It makes itself, and it's got a built-in gyroscopic stabilizer in case of earthquake or strong winds. Plus it would float if you put it in water and would hover if you knocked out the floor from underneath of it. You can change the color of the bedding with this keypad, see?" She pressed multiple buttons in rapid succession, causing the blankets to flash different colors in an almost seizure-inducing way. "Oh, yeah, and it has tractor disruptors built into it so you can't be abducted by aliens in your sleep. Those… also have the side effect of preventing the plowing of nearby fields? But the alien thing is enough justification, I think."

Candace Five exhaled through her nose, hardly able to resist the urge to roll her eyes. "And when would that ever come in handy?"

"More often than you'd think," Three replied. "Mitch is usually pretty good about letting us get dressed before he does stupid stuff, but ever since that one time a few years ago, we don't take that chance anymore. Of course, there's a chance that he was just as embarrassed as we were, but you never know these things about aliens. It's a culture thing, I think. Meap apologized on his behalf, at least."

Five just… just stared. At the crazy story, at the ridiculous implications it had, at the completely serious way that Three was rattling it all off. "Okay, well… if do you want to make another one on which to put my mattress, leave all that stuff off, will you?"

Geez. At least, even at her worst, Four had some common sense. Not as much as would have probably benefited her, but some . At least enough to know that all… that was not necessary, was probably not safe, and was definitely not responsible. What the heck was wrong with Three?

Well, the same thing that had been quote unquote 'wrong' with her own brothers for so long: immaturity and short-sightedness and impatience getting the best of them, clouding their vision of what was actually for the best. Quite unfortunately, however, Three would never be given a chance to grow out of the phase.

Candace Five liked to imagine that had Three been given that chance, she would surely have taken it, would have left such childish things in the past, and along with that would have realized that Jeremy was the person she needed in her life to support her in a serious way.

But obviously Three'd never been given that chance. Normal life was objectively better - even the people that she had thought would resist it to the end of their days had realized that, had left that frame of mind behind in favor of it. If even Phineas and Ferb could acknowledge that, then there was no way a version of herself wouldn't, if given the chance. But that chance had never been given - Candace Five couldn't possibly think of anything that could provide motivation to reject that normalcy, to regress back into the childish frame of mind that even her brothers had grown out of with time.

Why was she trying to justify this craziness anyway? Was she so desperate for some sort of companionship here that she had to tell herself that surely Three would have been that companion if she'd been given the chance to become it?

Okay, so what if she was? There was no one on Earth who could blame her for feeling that way. When the only other version of herself who was married in a normal fashion was freaking Kevin , you sank down to desperate measures, okay? Ugh, maybe she should try to find Kevin after all. That would be… an experience, for sure.

A slight shudder ran up and down her spine at even the thought of such a thing. Kevin was… maybe it wasn't rational to be so uncomfortable with her about a vague association with that zebra? Certainly not compared to all the madness that was going on here. And yet, somewhere in Five's mind, the thought of actually going up to Kevin and talking to her was unbearable enough that she'd actually prefer sticking it out here. At least for the time being.

"Hmm." Three seemed to be deep in thought. "I don't think I can promise you anything. But I'll do my best and we'll see what happens." She stretched and stood up from the desk again, scooping up the screw gun. "Come on, let's get busy."

"Whoa, there," Five said, holding up her hands. "'Let's'?"

"Yes, 'let's'," Three replied. "I think we can - oh, wait. You don't like this stuff, do you?"

Five frowned. "It's not that I don't like this stuff specifically, it's that I don't like what it represents . It's the im-"She stopped abruptly, suddenly getting the feeling that if she went any farther, it would do nothing but spark an argument, which was something she'd managed to avoid doing all day so far, and didn't want to bungle into now , of all times, before going to sleep. "I'd just - I'd just prefer not , okay? Can we leave it at that for now?"

"And yet you still want me to make you a bedframe," Three mumbled under her breath. "Hypocritical much?" Candace Five glared at her and she shrugged. "What? You do realize that someone has to build these things, right? Why not me, then? Why not you? It's not like your bedframe at home just manifested itself into existence from nowhere, after all."

"And I don't have an issue with bedframes," Five returned calmly. "I have issues with flying bedframes that double as rocketships and oceangoing vessels and whatnot because that is impossible - impossibly reckless and dangerous - and that is something I disagree with."

"You realize that it can't be im possible because I just did it." Three returned. She waved one hand flippantly in the air. "Which is kind of a contradiction in terms. I guess it's a good thing you weren't around when they were inventing the newfangled wheel , Miss 'Impossible'." She afixed a withering stare in Five's direction. "Whatever. I'll still do it because I want to and if you want it when I'm done then you can have it. If not, well, I'm sure someone else will take it."

"I'm sure they will." Candace Five was really feeling the urge to wade into this fight now, but… no. She was a rational, sensible adult and she was above this. Today had been long and boring, but it had been tolerable, and she was fully intent on keeping it that way. So, no fighting. Instead, she took a deep breath in an effort to soothe her already rising temper. (Four owed her such a favor for this.) Hmm, actually. Four, yeah. That was probably a good way to explain herself - especially since it fully seemed that her incestuous selves could only understand sense if it was talked to them by a different, also incestuous self.

It was like they had a little club or something going on, a clique, an in-group, into which the price of entry was to have sex with your brother.

That was not a club Five ever intended to join.

So, she took another deep breath and expelled it slowly. "I have nothing against either you or what you do." Not true at all, really, but then again, it was white lies that made the world go round, wasn't it? Like the ones she told Jeremy when he asked her if something was bothering her. "But I do have my own - perhaps arbitrary - preferences. One of which is that I do not partake in this sort of thing." In bustable behavior , an inner voice whispered, even though she knew what her psychiatrist had said about thinking like that. (Ugh, here was another entire week of insanity she was never going to be able to tell anyone, let alone him .) "I've seen you and Four, Three, and don't tell me you try to conscript her for this because I know you don't. So would you please just respect my preferences in the way you respect hers?"

She was also well aware that here she was again, putting herself and Four in the same boat, even though they didn't belong in the same ocean . But what could you do? She was really trying here - surely somebody would see that and give her a break.

Three stared at her for a moment more. "You're right, I guess. I - I'm sorry. I guess I'll do it myself, then."

"Don't feel like you've got to give me anything," Five returned. "I'm sure you'd rather give it to Six anyway, because she's… well, you know."

Three shrugged. "I'll get her one if she asks, but she's probably used to some weird outer space bed anyway. Oh, excuse me, holo bed."

Five was about this close to chuckling, but decided that laughing at a joke made by someone like Three might say something bad about her, so didn't. (Maybe that was an irrational decision, but she was past caring at this point and wanted to play it safe, and honestly, by the time she could decide whether or not she could laugh about this, the joke would have worn itself out anyway.) "Fair enough," was all she said instead.

And she had to admit, an actual bedframe (provided that was all it was) would be nice to have. The alternative, after all, was sleeping on the floor again. Which wasn't really something she was thrilled about having to do.

Three didn't say anything else, but bent down and picked up two pieces of lumber and set to work again, starting up the electric drill again, with that high-pitched whining noise that Candace Five hated.

For another minute or two she leaned against the door jamb and watched Three. Even she had to admit that… well, it was weird. That was all she had to admit, all she was willing to admit - even to herself. Nothing more had to happen. Imagining herself doing the same things that Phineas and Ferb had once done? A childhood wherein she wasn't the shunned outcast incapable of anything meaningful in light of their - what they'd done?

No, it wasn't appropriate. That was reckless and foolish and she would not consider it at all, not for even a moment. Her brothers had left that behind for good reason. To entertain such thoughts would be to bring shame to herself.

Just, then, Three's electric drill slipped from her hand and this time around, she wasn't so lucky. She let out a yelp and stumbled backwards with her foot in her hand, landing on top of the bed she'd just finished. "Owwwwww," she moaned. "That hurt ."

"Sorry," Five offered, cringing slightly. But inside, somehow, she felt better. Because, as she'd always been when it came to matters like this, she was right. These things were dangerous. And Three was unfortunate enough to be forced to endure it for the rest of her life. It sucked for her, but Five was happy. Her life was good. Perhaps not perfect, no, but what was?

And so soon as she got home, she would be back. Back in her life, surrounded by normal people. Normal people with normal lives - including her own brothers, brothers who had seen the light and realized the error of their ways. It was definitely something that made her thankful that they'd had a chance to do so - a chance that she now knew was not a guaranteed thing to receive.

She yawned and stood up straight, leaving Three's room behind in favor of her own again. Well, that stupid electric drill noise was still going to be bothering her, but she could deal. Three wasn't half so unpleasant as she'd seemed at first - much the same as Four, really. Although at least Four wasn't quite so out there as Three.

…and no, she was not about to fall into that trap again. Not by a long shot. There was a divide between her and Four, a divide that could not have been greater if it had tried. And there was nothing that anyone could do about that, especially not someone like Three. Psssh. The very idea was ridiculous.

And honestly? It wasn't such a big deal. So what if Three could - could build roller coasters or whatnot. Because Five knew the suffering that sort of thing caused, and she knew that her life was better for the lack of it.

No, her life had its fair share of pitfalls and shortcomings. But did that matter at the end of the day? At the end of the day, when Three had to go bed knowing that she was just a hairsbreadth from insanity if she didn't constantly put herself in danger of life and limb, when Four had no one to go home to but her brother , when Seven had no one at all because she claimed to hate them all - when all of that was going down, Five would be home again, in her own house, with her loving husband and happy family.

Yes, perhaps she'd been looking at this the wrong way. Because if Candace Five really thought about it, she was the lucky one. Heck, maybe she should be pitying her other selves, even. Because who was it that had managed to persevere through countless obstacles to maintain a healthy relationship with the love of her life without having to turn to incest or psychosis or whatever had happened to her other selves?

That's right, she did.

And so she really shouldn't be annoyed at the sound of the electric drill coming from the next room, should she? Because it was reminder, not of the bad, but of the good. That she had managed to keep a normal life, that she'd managed to save her brothers from traveling down that path as well. And even despite all the various obstacles that had constantly cropped up into her path to prevent that, still she'd succeeded.

And she'd succeeded in the right way, with Jeremy , not her brother, not with the help of recklessly knocking away the foundational pillars of the universe, not with any of that.

Huh. It was an interesting train of thought for sure. One that, even in the decidedly unpleasant surroundings she was in, and the horrendous storm pounding down outside, served to lighten her heart and lift her spirits.

The struggle wasn't over - it would probably never be. But that was alright, because it was normal. And after all, wasn't that who she was?

Candace Five smiled slightly to herself as she sat down on the mattress on the office floor, listening once more to the sound of the electric drill.

But this time? It… didn't bother her.