Let It Begin: Frater meus

Candace attempts to drive her brothers apart so their project will cease to exist, but is that even possible?

Part One
"Judging by the average distance between two houses, the device itself doesn't have to be too large."

Candace froze from her descent down the stairs as soon as she heard Phineas‘ voice. The hand that was holding her cell phone trembled as she looked at the time on it.

5:40 a.m.

The boys were up more than a hour earlier than usual. Why did they decide to get up at the same time she did? Did they want to drive her crazy every minute of every day? She went down the last couple of steps and peeked into the kitchen where her brother and step brother were surrounded by blueprints and notes on the table.

“Hey Candace, you’re up early.” Phineas said, smiling. “Did we wake you? Ferb was a bit loud a moment ago, sorry.”

Even though Phineas said that, Candace couldn’t picture Ferb talking loudly. To be honest, she couldn’t imagine him saying more than three sentences at one time. But Phineas seemed to be the only one who would hear their step-brother talk like a normal person. Not that she was complaining, Phineas talked enough for both of them.

“…Right, what are you two doing up?” Candace asked, walking toward them and glaring down at all the blueprints.

“Well, there are only so many days of summer, and we have so many plans! Not to mention how something different comes up every day, so that like…doubles the number. Ferb and I are going through our project book to organize what we’re going to do and when. We also plan on getting up earlier so we can have more time.” Phineas replied, showing her a schedule they were working on. “Like, take Wednesday for example. We will either make a rooftop tour for the tourists or rocket ride around the world. Both of those can be cancelled just incase something else comes up. But we’re still trying to adjust the tour since…”

Candace stopped listening and instead focused on the schedule. She thought maybe she could memorize it but soon found it too difficult to understand and turned back to look at Phineas who was still talking.

“…there could be a monorail tracing the whole course and can shoot and retract everything automatically, that way cleaning could be-”

“Phineas?” Candace interrupted.

He blinked and looked at her, seeming to have forgotten she was there even though he had been talking to her the whole time.

“I’m sure what ever techno thingy…thing you’re saying is very interesting, but I have more important things to do.”

“I haven’t really said anything technical…” Phineas muttered as she went to the kitchen and started going through all the cabinets and drawers. Ferb nudged Phineas and they both went back to their planning.

“Phineas! Where’s my cell phone charger?” Candace asked.

Phineas shrugged and looked at Ferb who thought about it briefly. He slid out of his chair and up the stairs. He came down with her charger and handed it to her. It had some strange markings on it and was warm.

She stared at him accusingly. “You took it?! What did you use it for?” He averted his eyes.

“We used it to charge up our mechanical bat wings.” Phineas answered for him. “I forgot we had it.”

“You guys built bat wings?! Where the heck was I?”

Phineas made an ‘I don’t know’ sound and went back to work.

“Fine, just ignore me and get back to your planning of impossible, possible, plans.”

“Ok Ferb, write this down, ‘giant ant farm‘…” Ferb wrote it down quickly on a sheet of paper.

Candace rolled her eyes and stared down at her phone, listening to Phineas saying each of their future projects…out loud… So many future schemes she would be trying to bust. She rubbed her temples, trying to block the thoughts.

One bar of the phone appeared and she excitedly dialed Stacy’s number and went upstairs to her room. She jumped on the bed and rolled on her back, waiting impatiently for Stacy to answer.

“…Hello?” Stacy answered sleepily.

“STACY!”

She could have sworn she heard Stacy fall off the bed at her shout. Phineas and Ferb ran up the stairs and looked into her room, eyes the size of saucers. Apparently they thought something bad had happened.

“Get out of here, you twerps!” she hissed at them. Immediately, the two went back down into the kitchen.

“Ok, what’s wrong this early in the morning?” Stacy asked.

“One word: Brothers.”

“It’s always your brothers, or Jeremy.”

Candace glared at her phone. “You complaining?”

“No, to be honest, I love hearing all this drama, I just wish I had some of my own. But to more important things, what are your brothers doing that is driving you farther over the edge to insanity?”

“They’re making a schedule! Wait, did you just call me-”

“Isn’t that good?” Stacy asked. “You know, good habits for school and stuff?”

“A schedule for their projects, exactly what they’re going to do and when! This is like, the end of my summer, I will never have a good day in my life!” she sobbed.

“Ok, relax girl, maybe you should just join them in their fun for once. Summer doesn’t last forever. They make summer exci-”

“Never!” Candace said coldly.

"Well if you want them to stop building things, why don't you just tell them?"

"Stacy...that's dumb! They KNOW I don't like it, and it's probably why they build them every day!"

"Well why don't you just turn them against each other?"

Candace went still, eyes wide as she stared up the ceiling. "What?"

"Phineas and Ferb. Those two are always together, I doubt they can do those huge fun projects on their own. If you were to turn them against each other, then there would be no more projects."

"Stacy, they're always together, tearing them apart would be almost...well...impossible! I mean, physically taking them away from each other for more then a few minutes would be hard enough!"

"Hey, it was just an idea..."

"An idea crazy enough to work..." Candace said, narrowing her eyes and giggling softly. "Talk to you later Stacy…”

She closed her cell phone with a snap and paced in her room. There was only three times a year Phineas and Ferb would separate from each other willingly, when they were buying gifts for their birthdays, or for Christmas. She stepped out and sat on the stairs, listening to her brothers as they worked.

“Nah, I don’t think we should do that…not today anyway, we‘ll have plenty of time this week.”

“…”

“But I really want to help Isabella today, we promised.”

Silence.

“Ok, I promised, but isn’t it the same?”

Candace smiled. This was probably a good time to intervene, minor disagreements were rare, this could be her only chance. She went down the rest of the steps and pretended to start charging her phone again. She let out a soft growl when she noticed Phineas seemed to have won over Ferb already.

“It is now 6 a.m. and we have the list of equipment we’ll need. I think I’ll go ahead and order the supplies, you get started on the blueprints.” Phineas said, leaving the kitchen to go to the living room. Ferb obediently pulled out a half completed blueprint and spread it out on the table.

“Hey Ferb.” Candace greeted.

He glanced up at her and nodded. She put her hands behind her back and leaned back and forth, wondering what to say. Talking with Ferb was always awkward, she never knew what to say, and he almost never replied, especially when they were alone with each other. Ferb seemed weird without the company of Phineas to balance him out.

“Whatcha doing?” she asked.

He tapped the blueprint with the pencil.

“Oh…right…So how’s it going? What are you planning on building? Or should I say, what is Phineas making you plan?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her, then looked around to see if Phineas was near to answer. He sighed when he wasn‘t. “It’s fundraiser event for Fireside Girls and Lil’ Sparks.” he answered.

“That sounds…interesting actually, what are you and Phineas gonna do in it? Sell stuff?”

He blinked.

It took a lot of effort for Candace not to begin growling at him in frustration. She needed something to work with. She glared down at the blueprints, trying to make sense out of them, Ferb hadn’t written a title yet. After a moment, she was able to identify what looked like small rides. A merry-go-round, Ferris wheel, rollercoaster, and little kiddie rides. Phineas and Ferb always worked on one thing together before moving to another one. If they worked on separate ones, that may actually slow them down!

But how was she going to get them to do that? He was still scribbling things down. Candace reached for one of the white pencils and twirled it in her hand. She silently watched Ferb finish the page and slide it away from himself.

“Want me to give this to Phineas?” she asked suddenly.

He stared at her, trying to figure out what she was up to, but then nodded, rolling it up for her. Candace practically snatched it from his hands and went into the next room. As soon as she was alone, she erased random numbers and put new ones. She quickly rolled it back up and went to find Phineas. She paused and glanced down at the blueprint when she saw him hanging up the phone.

She had just messed up their calculations, she knew for a fact Phineas never double checked Ferb’s work since he was always so precise, when in doubt they sent it to Baljeet. What if one of the rides went wrong because of something she did? What if they got hurt?

“Oh hey Candace! Is that one of Ferb’s blueprints? Great!” Phineas said, sliding it out of her hands. Candace bit her lip. Well, they would realize if something was wrong right? She began to calm. They would realize something was wrong, Phineas may blame Ferb. Ferb would deny it, yes, this might just separate them…

It was highly unlikely anyone would get hurt, she convinced herself.