A/N- First question...why a xylophone? Basically because in the video game, if you take Wilbur into the music room and "press x" when standing by Franny, one of the things she says is: "Wanna take a break? We need someone on the xylophone." And thus I chose a xylophone :P Okay, so this story is basically about Lewis's and Franny's first date...which of course turns out to be anything but a normal first date. Took liberties with lots of things in this story, such as Franny speaking Italian with her mom and her mom being a Roman Catholic since she's originally from Italy. I gave Gaston the middle name Emille, seeing as Emille is my second fave character in Ratatatouille. Guess that's it for now. I don't own anything but the invisi-belt :D Well, atleast I think I own the invisi-belt, hadn't seen it in any other fanfics before putting it in my own but it is a big world...not to say I own the concept of all inventions involving invisibility XD

When the Family's Away, Carl Will Pay

"Dad, please? I mean, this is special to Uncle Art. I don't want him to think that I don't care," Wilbur said with a cough as he lied on the couch with an old fashioned thermometer in his mouth.

"Now I'm sure Uncle Art will understand, although, it's not everyday he receives the Interstellar Pizza Delivery Award. It is quite an honor," Cornelius was nudged hard by Franny.

"That's enough out of you," she warned. "There's no need to make him feel any guiltier than he already does." She removed the thermometer, "Hmm. No fever. But I still think you should stay home and rest. School starts again soon, and I don't want you sick when it does."

"Your mother's right, Wilbur. We'll only be gone for the weekend."

"Maybe I should stay too," Franny worried leaving her son home alone and sick.

"No! I mean, no, mom. Uncle Art is your brother. You should be there," Wilbur insisted.

"He's right too, Franny. You really should be there for Art. I'm sure Wilbur will be fine."

"Oh, alright. But I'll be checking in once we get to the hotel," Franny said, kissing Wilbur's forehead.

As the family prepared to leave, Cornelius pulled Carl aside. "How much were you looking forward to going with us?"

"To be honest, not very. Not much fun for robots."

"You mean, not as much fun as, I don't know, baby-sitting Wilbur?"

"I wouldn't say baby-sitting Wilbur is fun; perpetual adventure of disastrous proportion is probably more like it."

"Okay, Carl, I understand. It's just that I have a feeling Wilbur isn't really sick," Cornelius explained.

"In that case, I better stay behind. Who knows what we'd come home to find if I don't," Carl panicked.

"Who knows what I'll come home to find even if you do," Cornelius laughed. "Thanks, Carl," he said before leaving with the family.

"Yeah, yeah," Carl responded, although no one was around to hear. He trudged back to the house. He passed Spike and Dmitri who remained behind, but they hardly qualified as suitable supervision; not for Wilbur anyhow. "Where is he?" Carl hadn't really expected to see Wilbur still on the couch, and he wasn't. He heaved a big sigh and began his search through the house for the missing teenager. He instinctively checked the lab first, but to his surprise, Wilbur wasn't there. "Cornelius was right. He's definitely not sick." Suddenly, the lights flickered. Carl became worried that Wilbur had something to do with it. Again, he was right.

"Woo hoo! Yeah! Ultimate chargeball! How do you like me now, Mr. Trainer?!" Wilbur was in an extreme game of chargeball. Electric charges were flying all over his room. "Not good enough? Freestyle!" Wilbur kept playing, while using his free hand to play an amplified xylophone. The electricity in the room was so much that it was draining the power from the rest of the Robinson mansion.

"Wilbur! What do you think you're doing?" Carl rushed over to unplug the amp. However, Wilbur had been so startled by the robot that he misaimed one of his chargeball shots. The ball of electricity bounced off of his trophy case and struck Carl just as his hand was on the chord connecting the xylophone to the amplifier. The excess amount of power sent an electrical shock through Carl that not even his advanced system could withstand.

"Carl?" Wilbur threw down his chargeball glove and turned his attention to his robotic buddy. "Carl, speak to me! Come on; say something about how irresponsible I am. Come on, I'll help you, 'Wilbur, your dad will kill you if he finds out that you…' completely destroyed Carl!" The severity of the matter finally set in. "What am I going to do!? I have to help him. But I don't know the first thing about fixing a robot. Maybe Jacoby…no, he'd tell dad for sure. Think, Wilbur, think!" Wilbur paced his room. He went to his window and pressed his forehead against the glass. As he looked deeper into the horizon, the answer to his dilemma occurred to him.

--The Framagucci Home--

"La la la la la!" Franny skipped into her small house and about the kitchen where the strong aroma of oregano was in the air.

"And that is how you make the perfect pizza sauce," Mrs Framagucci said, showing eight year old, Art how to make a pizza.

"When I grow up, I'm going to be a pizza man!"

"How lame," Gaston teased, but his attention soon turned to teasing his sister instead. "Look at Franny, she's trying to be girly again. Give it up butch!"

"Gaston Emille Framagucci, one more comment like that and you won't be eating meatballs in your spaghetti for a month, do you hear me?" their mother warned.

"What's wrong with her, mama?" Art asked a little worried, seeing as Franny was still skipping about in a daze.

"Oh no! Oh no! Boys, why don't you run along and see if your papa is done working on the car." After a bit of a protest, Art and Gaston finally left. "Franny, look at me. Is this about Lewis?"

"Isn't he wonderful?" Franny only asked dreamily.

"Oh no, I was afraid this would happen. Listen, sweetie, he's very wonderful, but you're only thirteen and I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with…"

"Mom, guess what!" Franny interrupted her mom; she hadn't really been listening anyways. "Lewis asked me to go to the movies with him Friday night. He felt so bad since he had to miss my thirteenth birthday party last week. Can I go?"

"The movies? Will Lucille or Bud be there?"

"But mama, I think he meant as a date, not as friends! An actual date!" Franny jumped up and down excitedly.

For Mrs. Framagucci, the word date seemed to echo in her ears. "Oh no. No, no, no, no, no! Franny, you can go as friends, but you are still too young to date. I'm sorry, but when I was a little girl in Italy, I wasn't even able to befriend a boy before your age, let alone date. I am doing what is best for you."

"NO! You're just treating me like a little kid. I'm not a child and this isn't Italy!"

Mrs. Framagucci responded by beginning to lecture her daughter's backtalk in her fluent tongue. Franny responded in Italian as well. After a heated round and a few tears, Franny finally calmed down. However she was still nowhere near done being a little resentful. She rushed out of the house, the spring door slamming behind her. She knew she would probably get in trouble for going to see Lewis at a time like this, but she just had to.

--Lewis's Lab--

Lewis tightened a bolt on his latest attempt at building a robot. His ultimate goal, he already knew, was to someday invent Carl. But so far, he still couldn't seem to work out the kinks. "I'm surprised I EVER was able to invent you, Carl," he sighed, as he decided to give his new prototype a try. However, before he was able to, he heard a knock on the lab door.

"Lewis, it's me! Can I come in?" Franny didn't wait for an answer. "I asked my mom about Friday night."

"Oh, you did," Lewis gulped and blushed as he turned his head away from his work and looked at Franny.

"She said no…unless one of your parents wanted to chaperone. As if I need a chaperone! She says I'm too young to go on a date."

"Oh," Lewis couldn't really decide if he was disappointed or relieved. He had asked Franny out without having given it any thought first, although he was certain that Franny had been trying to plant the idea into his mind for awhile. After he had given it some more thought he had felt unsure if he were ready to be more than friends. After all, he already knew that he would have the rest of his life to spend with the sweet but fiery Italian girl.

"She said that she would give it some thought and maybe when I'm fourteen. Something about seven being the number of God and fourteen being twice the blessing," Franny's mom was a devout Roman Catholic just as her mom had been. "As if that even makes any sense! She says that she likes you, so I don't know what the problem is."

"Franny," Lewis knew that she might become angry with him as well, but decided to risk it anyways. "I think that maybe your mom is right. I'm sure she knows what's best. We can still go to the movies to…"

"What? You're taking mama's side? You just don't really want to go on a date with me do you?" Franny accused.

"Well, I…it's hard to explain, Franny," Lewis fumbled. "I think that maybe we should just keep moving forward. You know, take this as a sign that maybe we should just be friends for now. It's not that I don't, uh, ever want to go on a date with you."

"Don't you start with me, Lewis. I'm in no mood to hear you lecture on how the world and everyone in it just needs to keep moving forward. Especially if this time you're aiming it at me," Franny snapped. She crossed her arms, huffed and stomped out.

"Why did I have to fall for her of all people," Lewis sighed, trying to remember the time when he didn't know who his future wife was. He knew he should try to make Franny understand, but also knew it would only make her angrier at the moment. Instead, he went back to what he had been doing. He hit a switch on his invention and hoped for the best.

"Happy birthday!" came a very odd voice, something that startled Lewis.

"Happy birthday? I never programmed you to say that. Wait, I didn't know I had even programmed you with speech ability yet. What's going on here?"

"I am here to serve you, Cornelius."

"Cornelius? How do you know my name…my full name!?" Lewis was beginning to get weirded out. Suddenly, he realized that the power light that he had installed on this model wasn't even lit. The robot wasn't even on! "Alright, now either this robot is possessed or someday a teenage boy better hope I don't remember this or he'll be grounded."

Wilbur laughed as he suddenly appeared out of nowhere. "Man, you should have seen the look on your face! Come to mention it, what's with that look?"

Lewis was in shock by Wilbur's ability to appear instantly. "How did you do that?"

"What do you mean? Oh, you mean how I was invisible?" He pointed to a little gadget he wore as a belt. "It's called the invisi-belt. It's a convenient, travel friendly version of your invisi-ray. This is just the prototype but I think it's going to be a huge success for Robinson Industries."

"Hold on! Let me get this straight. Not only did you sneak out of the house with the time machine, but you also swiped one of my prototypes?"

"Hey! For one, I didn't actually swipe it; let's just say I'm giving it a test run. Beta testing it if you will. And secondly, I didn't sneak. I mean, it's impossible to sneak when there's no one in the house to sneak from."

"You mean to tell me that I trusted you enough to stay home by yourself!?" Lewis exclaimed in disbelief.

"Well, kinda. That's why I'm here; because you didn't actually trust me to stay home by myself."

Lewis huffed, "Alright, enough talking in circles. Just get to the part where you messed something up and you need my help to fix it."

"Wow! You're getting good at this dad!"

"Dad?" Franny's voice was heard from the top of the small staircase that led to the lab. She had come back to apologize to Lewis, but had instead overheard Wilbur use the word 'dad'. "Lewis, what is he talking about? Why did Wilbur call you dad?"

"Oh, it's just a, uh, oh boy," Wilbur scratched his head.

"It's just a silly inside joke that we have, isn't that right Wilbur?" Lewis tried to think of something.

"Yeah, I call him dad, he calls me son. Really silly," Wilbur faked a laugh.

"But why? That's more than silly, it's weird," Franny was still skeptical. She inched closer, staring at them with new scrutiny.

"We're not weird," Lewis and Wilbur said simultaneously with an identical look on each of their faces.

It caused Franny to jump when she saw it. "Oh my goodness! You do look kind of related. Just now, you looked…it was just plain weird. You, you have the same nose, the same ears, some of the same facial expressions!" Franny was creeping her own self out.

"Well, actually, he has a lot of his mom's features," Lewis blurted out almost naturally, but immediately covered his mouth.

"His mom? Lewis, what's going on here? And I WANT THE TRUTH!"

Lewis looked at Franny and then looked at Wilbur, "I can't lie to her, Wilbur. Maybe it's supposed to be this way."

"Dad, no…"

"Franny, Wilbur is my son."