Sweat dripped down Edd's face as he dragged the steel beam across the junkyard. He couldn't believe Eddy had talked him into this. This was probably Eddy's worst idea yet, even worse than when Eddy decided to push the red button. This was beyond crazy. It was just… stupid. There was no other word for it.
Edd looked up towards the cloudless sky. The sun beat down upon him relentlessly, creating strange mirages along the junkyard. The junkyard was enormous. The ground as covered in dirt, mixed in with small pieces of twisted metal and old plastic toys. Mountains of trash shot up towards the sky, seeming higher than ever in the summer heat. They were made of every piece of trash that had been thrown away within a hundred miles of Peach Creek in the last hundred years. It was like a planet in one of Ed's comics.
Finally, Edd reached a clearing where Eddy was looking up at a huge metal frame. Ed was inside the frame, wielding two steel beams together. Eddy turned to face Edd, his huge trademark grin plastered on his face.
"Nice catch, Double-D." He looked back at the frame. "I think that's the last of 'em."
"Right." Edd wiped buckets of sweat off his forehead. "Anything else you need me to drag down here?"
"No, you're good." Eddy pulled out a clipboard and pen out of his baggy shorts and checked off another box. "Ed's gunna finish up the frame and then start putting on the outside walls. Meanwhile, you and me are gunna go plan what we need to bring."
Edd pulled a bottle of water out of his pocket, drank it down, and swallowed. "Well, first of all we're going to need space suits, since the Martian atmosphere does not contain enough oxygen for us to breathe, and Mars doesn't have a magnetic field as strong as Earth's, so we'll need protection from radiation while on the surface-oh, and we'll have to implement defenses against radiation in the ship, too- and we'll need food and water for a few weeks, as well as storage to protect it from radiation-"
"What's so bad about this radiocean stuff, anyway?" Eddy interrupted.
"Radiation, Eddy. Basically, radiation is particles that can pass through solid surfaces. If you get exposed to it, it'll pass through your skin, get into your cells, mess with your DNA, and can give you cancer."
"Oh." Eddy looked back down at his sheet and wrote something down. "Well, you'd better start on the suits, and I'll go help Ed with the ship."
Eddy walked back over to Ed. Edd turned away and started walking out of the junkyard.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Edd said to himself. "This is crazy. This is insane." He looked back at Ed and Eddy, who were involved in a fierce debate. "Why do I even bother with those two?"
"Ed, you idiot! You were supposed to get thicker plates! The lead-lined kind!"
"But, Eddy, look at it! Isn't it cool?"
Eddy picked up the metal plate, which had graffiti all over it, and smacked Ed upside the head "You moron! We have to protect ourselves from the radiocean, remember?"
"What's radipation?" Ed asked.
"It's radiocean, lunkhead. And it's what you'll be eating if you don't get the right kind of plating!"
"It sounds delicious! I think I'll bring some to the next neighborhood picnic! Do you think it would taste better with gravy on it?"
Eddy groaned. "You can bring whatever you want to the picnic. Just get the plating already!"
"Righto, boss-man!" Ed ran off and dove into a mountain of trash.
Author's Note: I know nothing about radiation.
