"Good evening, I'm Tom Tucker with Channel 5 news. We now go live to Ollie Williams with a recap of the events in the fan-fiction Ed Justice. What's happened so far, Ollie?"
"ED CAN SHAPE-SHIFT!"
"How'd that happen?"
"ATE A RADIOACTIVE ROCK!"
"Then what?"
"EDD GOT STRUCK BY LIGHTNING!"
"And how did this affect him?"
"HE CHANGES THE WEATHER!"
"So, what's Eddy up to?"
"BROTHER CAME BACK!"
"What happened there?"
"BROTHER'S A CROOK!"
"And?"
"EDDY GOT POWERS!"
"Thanks, Ollie. And now, we return to the story, in progress…"
--
Ed Justice
By The Mauve Lantern
Chapter 4: The Last ED of Krypton
It's midnight, and the young residents of Peach Creek are all asleep, dreaming pleasant dreams, except for one. A young girl stirs in her sleep, her eyes clenched tight; she mumbles in her sleep, "No…no…stay back…get away from them…"
A little blonde-haired girl, only four years old, is on her knees, crying, as the flames around her raise higher and higher into the night. No one can hear her crying, because there is no one alive; everybody in the building is dead. They were all murdered…
It was just a regular night at the Philip J. Frye Orphanage: she had felt thirsty, and went to go get some water; she felt herself faint on her way to the bathroom, and had just woken up a moment ago. But what had happened? Was it the Bogeyman that Miss Evelyn spoke about to bad children, or was it something else?
She couldn't stand the sight anymore, so she got up and ran; she ran as fast as she could, not caring where she went.
As she ran, a voice called out to her, saying, "You cannot run from fate, child. This was all your doing; never will you be rid of this. Run as you might, this will happen again, in due time. On your fourteenth birthday…the power you hold will be unleashed."
The girl screamed, "Get away fwom me! Weave me awone!"
"You cannot run from fate…Nazz-ira El-roj…"
"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Nazz Zor'ell shoots up in her bed, a terrible nightmare waking her from slumber. It's not the first time she's had the nightmare; on the contrary, she's had it ever since she was about four or five years old. Did it mean anything? She certainly didn't remember anything from that time in her life, but she was sure that she hadn't come from an orphanage and she wasn't an orphan.
Nazz shook her head, and said, "Don't think about it too much, Nazz," while she got up and went to the bathroom. When she got there, she began to fish through her medicine, and found the sleeping pills the doctor had recommended she take; she popped in the usual two pills, and took a drink of water to swallow the pills.
When she got back to bed, she told herself, "I'll talk with Mom in the morning about this whole thing…" and then she fell into a dreamless sleep, which was better than one plagued by nightmares.
The day was June 5th, 2008; Nazz was twelve, and her 14th birthday was a year and two months away.
A few hours later, at the O'Brian residence…
Eddy was waving his elongated arms like a madman, wondering how in the world this could have happened to him. "DOUBLE D!" he shouts, "WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME!?"
"I-I'm not sure, Eddy! Maybe something happened last night; can you remember anything happening to you?"
The shortest Ed suddenly remembered what had gone down last night:
Finally, as the two raced along a narrow bridge above a vat of teal-colored liquid, Luke tripped and fell on his face. "Damn," he thought to himself, "Why does this always happen during my high-speed pursuits?!"
He flipped himself up, and started to move again, but his blunder had given Eddy enough time to leap onto his brother, tackling him to the ground. Eddy grabbed at his brother and shouted, "Why did you do it?! Why did you beat down Ed and Double D; why didn't you kill them like you did the security guard?!"
Luke struggled against his brother and said, as loudly as he could, "You're not ready to learn yet! Now, GET OFF!" He swung an arm up, and knocked his brother off his body; unfortunately, his hit threw his brother off the bridge, and down into the vat.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"EDDYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"
Eddy flew down into the vat, his body submerging into the strange mix of chemicals.
The boy pointed his finger into the air, and said, "This must have happened when I fell into that vat of gunk at the science lab; it's the only thing out of the ordinary that happened to me!"
"Just like Joker, Eddy?" Ed, the resident comic aficionado, asked.
"Sure, Ed, sure. Double D, how do we fix this?"
Edd held his hands out to calm his friend, and told him, "Just try to relax Eddy. Try to imagine your body returning to normal shape; focus on making your arms shorter."
Eddy closed his eyes, and sure enough, he felt his arms shrinking, growing smaller, although not in the way he wanted…
"Eddy, your arms are getting thinner!"
He opened his eyes, and saw that his arms were now about the diameter of a twig. "AAAAAHHHHH!" he screamed, and suddenly, his arms returned to their ordinary length and width. The boy stared at them, and again imagined them long and noodle-like, as they had been a minute ago. Right before his eyes, they changed, growing to the point where they stretched all the way outside the room.
The shortest Ed marveled at the sight, and then imagined his arms returning to a normal length. Sure enough, his arms snapped back like coiled springs, throwing Eddy back a few feet when they returned. Undeterred, Eddy scrambled to his feet and said to his friends, "Ed, Double D, do you realize what this means?!"
"It means you have superpowers like me and Ed?" Edd guessed.
"EDDY'S A SUPERHERO!" Ed shouted as he threw his arms into the air.
"Yeah, yeah, that's cool too. But I'M INVINCIBLE!" Eddy shouted as he stretched himself out into a flat panel.
Edd stared at his friend, bewildered by his actions, and asked, "…Invincible, Eddy?"
"Yeah, the way it see it is this: I'm rubber, so most anything will bounce off of me, and not hurt me at all! It's just like Ed's comic books!"
"And you're sure about this?"
"Absolutely. C'mon, let's go down to the junkyard and try out our powers!" Eddy said as he ran to get some clothes on.
Ed was still running around, exclaiming how the three of them had superpowers, but Edd began to tremble in his shoes. "B-But Eddy," he said, nervous as can be, "If we leave to go test our powers, we'll be…skipping school!"
"Earth to Sockhead: we're already late! Look at the time!"
Edd took a glance at the clock in Eddy's room; it read 9:27. "GOOD LORD, WE'RE DREADFULLY LATE!"
"Yep," Eddy said as he pulled on a pair of pajama pants and a tank-top, "Now, go home and get changed; we're gonna be stretching our super muscles, Double D!"
"SUPER MUSCLES!" Ed shouted as he changed into lightning and flew around the room.
"EEEEDDDDDD!"
--
It's now 9:30 in the morning, and Nazz is at her locker, gathering her books for her next class; next up is Math class, which would be the most boring class on Earth if Double D weren't in her class. The smartest Ed really was a genius, and he was much, MUCH smarter than the teacher, which he displayed to the class on a regular basis by constantly correcting Mr. Martini whenever he missed a step or did a problem incorrectly.
Then, after that would be PE, which at least gave her the benefit of exercise, but it too was a very boring class, with the exception of Eddy and Kevin. The two boys were always trying to show each other up, even though Kevin didn't have to, since he was a teacher's aide and all. Still, those boys would compete at everything, making the class a lot more entertaining.
Her last class for the day involved all the Eds, but it was the one that Ed Mason really stood out in: Art class. All the children of the Peach Creek cul-de-sac took the class at the same time, and it usually devolved into some realm of chaos at some point or another, depending on whether or not Kevin and Eddy had gotten over their feud in PE. Typically, things would start off well, until the teacher turned her back and put on some music, at which point Eddy and Kevin would begin throwing paint/clay/papier-mâché at the other, and then the Kanker sisters would join in and soon the whole room was caught up in the brouhaha.
When things were peaceful, it was interesting to see what every child drew; it has been said that a person's soul came out in their artwork, and Nazz believed this to be true, for the most part.
Jimmy's artwork displayed how much of a little kid he still was, considering most of his drawings involved cute things; the pictures done by Sarah belied her true nature: they were usually cutesy pictures that showed animals or landscapes.
Kevin wasn't much of an "art guy", so he usually just scribbled on the paper, which revealed a, surprisingly, simple guy with ordinary desires in life; Johnny, on the other hand, created art that was very…bizarre, and displayed, for all the world to see, his odd nature.
Rolf had no troubles in art class, and actually did okay in the class, his artwork unveiling his love of animals and of nature as a whole; Nazz frequently drew from her dreams from the previous night for ideas, which made her pictures "creative", as the teacher would always put it.
The Kanker sisters, despite having somewhat similar personalities, all had extremely different art styles: May's was a more classical style, allowing her to excel at such things as painting and sculpture; Marie's had a very gritty, grunge look to it, making it perfect for t-shirt designs and sketches that filled her notebook; Lee was very hands-on in her style, and she did best when she was working with clay or some such material, allowing her to shape her own creations.
By and far, however, the Eds were the most interesting to observe, since they had such entirely different and varied styles, expressed in many different ways. Ed was very free-spirited, so his pictures were always incredibly random, drawn in some erratic, yet intriguing visuals; Edd took a more attentive approach to his work, and while it wasn't always the best stuff, it was always clear what his message was going into the project; Eddy had the attention span of a gnat, and this showed in his stuff, which always looked rushed and sloppy. The teacher wasn't really happy with the stuff the boys came up with, but Nazz thought they had some incredible work.
Today, however, the Eds were absent, which made her classes all the more boring; the other kids either thought nothing of it, or they were ecstatic at not being fleeced of their allowance. Nazz, on the other hand, was bored out of her mind until PE class.
Once she got to class and changed into her gym clothes, she ran out onto the football field, where she saw Kevin sitting on the bleachers, deep in thought. She ran up to him and said, "Hey, Kev, what's up?"
"Oh, Nazz!" He must have really been thinking hard, because he didn't even see her run up.
"Whatcha up to?"
He shuffled his feet for a second as he debated whether or not to tell Nazz what he had seen last night.
Kevin West was trying to get to sleep but found it difficult with all the noise going on outside. After covering his head with his pillow, plugging his ears with cotton and earplugs, and even turning heavy metal rock on his iPod. Finally, he could take it no more, so he threw his window open and shouted out, "SHUT UP, YA DO-" but was blown back by a gust of wind.
He scrambled to his feet, and stared at the sight before him: Ed Mason and Eddward Mardon were hovering in mid-air, Ed's legs having become pillars of fire, and Edd's body swallowed up in a tornado.
"No way…"
Finally, the red-capped boy looked at Nazz, and said to her, "Nazz, there's something I have to tell you. Something…weird."
"What do you mean, Kevin?"
"Well, last night, I saw something unreal; at first I thought it was a dream, but then I checked and it wasn't an-"
"Kev, just get to the point."
He took a deep breath, and said, "Nazz, I saw Double D and Ed flying: Double D had a tornado circling around his body, while Ed's legs were like…jet engines or something. I don't know what it was I saw, but I saw it."
Nazz hadn't been expecting that; she thought that she was the only one that knew that Ed had superpowers! Okay, she had to be cool, and just talk her way out of this…
"Geez, Kev, that's a pretty crazy dream you had!"
The boy frowned and shook his head as he said, "I know what I saw, Nazz; those dorks were flying in the air! You have to believe me!"
"Kevin, I'm sorry, but it just sounds like you had a weird and messed up dream. You've got to lighten up a little, y'know? I think you're getting too peeved about the Eds; next, you'll be saying, what, Eddy can stretch his body like rubber? Puh-LEEZE!
"Not to mention," she said as she patted his shoulder, "You've been overdoing it at school: staying up late studying, trying extra-hard at classes; you gotta slow down."
Kevin nodded his head as he listened to his friend's words of encouragement, and then he told her, "You're right Nazz: I HAVE been working pretty hard lately. Y'know what?"
"What?"
"After school today, I think I'm gonna take a nap. 'Cause I am REALLY tired…"
Nazz smiled and said, "That's great, Kev. A little sleep will do wonders for you!" She noticed a few of her friends calling to her from across the field, so she told Kevin, "Okay, I gotta go. I hope you feel better, Kevin!" and then she ran off to go chat with her friends.
Kevin waved to her, and then he furrowed his brow as he thought to himself, "Something's not right here, I know it. I'm gonna get to the bottom of this if it's the last thing I do!"
He stared off in the direction of the cul-de-sac, and asked, "What are you dorks up to now?"
--
"Okay Double D, here's the plan: we're gonna see just what we can do; we're gonna get really, REALLY good at it, and then we're gonna get filthy RICH!" Eddy told his friend as he dragged him to the junkyard.
"But Eddy, I don't WANT to do this!" Edd shouted as he tried to fight back against his stronger friend. "We should be in school right now; this isn't the time to be doing this!"
Ed skipped merrily along, and said to his capped friend, "Come on, Double D! We need to work hard and play hard if we want to be SUPER EDS!"
Eddy shushed his friend and told him, "SHH! You wanna get taken off the net?!" Then, he turned back to Edd and said, "There's no time like the present, Sockhead: we've all gotten superpowers in, like, three days; this ain't natural, and it sure as heck ain't normal. Something's gotta be done!"
At last, Double D relented, and simply decided that he wouldn't be able to fight back against Eddy. Also, he DID want to try out his powers, and see just how he could control the weather…
After a short walk from Eddy's house, the boys made it to the land of trash and debris known as The Junkyard, and they began to spread out, to make sure any stray attacks didn't hit their friends.
"All right, fellas; let's GO!" Eddy hollered as he stretched his arm back and shot it forward at a high speed, blowing a pile of garbage apart in the process.
Edd turned to ask Ed a question, but saw that he was currently smashing through the junkyard with arms made of steel. The smartest Ed sighed and said, "Oh well," as he focused his power into making a tornado around his body. However, THIS time, Edd wanted to test something out: he shrank the cyclone around him, making it no wider than his feet; after this, he changed the location of the winds, so that they remained underneath his body. From a distance, Edd looked like he was standing in the air, with nothing supporting him.
He tried walking, and found it just as easy to do in the air as it was on the ground; taking it even further, Edd changed the shape of the wind so that he was riding it like a surfboard. "Steady…steady…" the boy told himself as he kept himself from falling by creating an air pocket around his body. As he flew through the air, Edd began to smile and laugh, performing all sorts of tricks and stunts on his board made of wind.
Down on the ground, Ed was having a blast as he shifted his body into anything he could think of, from a comet to an icicle and vines to wind. The boy was laughing his head off as he smashed through an old car with arms made of gold, and soon he was imagining everything was like one of his superhero flicks.
"Take THAT, Black Manta!" he hollered as he set fire to a discarded rug that vaguely resembled a manta ray. "Have at thee, Toyman!" the boy shouted as he tossed a My Little Buddy doll into the air, and smashed it with a hammer arm.
His attention was then turned to the giant, menacing figure of a pile of bolts, screws and other assorted metal objects. "Prepare to meet your MAKER, Shrapnel!" Ed screamed as he jumped at the pile of metal, his body shifting into a brick wall.
Eddy was focusing his attention on another mound of garbage, and before he could attack it, he was hit with a spray of nuts and bolts. Turning to the source, he shouted at Ed, "Watch where you're getting your tools, Monobrow!"
The tallest Ed poked his head out of the pile of metal, and said to Eddy, "Sorry Eddy!"
"Check this out!" the greediest Ed told his friend as he whipped his arms back in an arc, then he began to spin, creating a dangerous whirlwind of violence as he knocked away everything within 20 feet of his body.
Ed climbed out of the screws and clapped his hands in amazement as he shouted, "BRAVO! BRAVO, BRAVISSIMO!"
Eddy sarcastically bowed, and said, "Thank you, you're too kind!" then he looked around and asked, "Where'd Double D go?" His question was answered by a large clap of thunder, as a bolt of lightning came down from the sky at a certain spot in the landfill.
"I'm guessin' he's over that-a-way," Ed said as he changed his legs into jets of fire, "COME ON, EDDY!"
"Hold yer horses, Ed!" Eddy twisted his legs until they were roughly shaped like springs; satisfied, he bounced a couple of times on the ground, then shot himself into the air as he leapt into the sky.
The two of them made their way to the spot where the lightning had appeared, and found a slightly-charred Edd, still hovering in the air, as he held a ball of lightning in the palm of his right hand.
"Ed, Eddy! Look at what I can DO!" their friend shouted as he held his hand up and released the stored lightning. The bolt burst from his palm and obliterated a large hill of garbage.
The two other Eds could only gape in awe as they stared at the area where the garbage once was; now, there was absolutely nothing, not a thing left.
"Wwwwwwoooooooooowwwww," Eddy said as he gazed at the destruction his friend had caused. Then, he began to wonder if he could make a profit off this.
"And that's not all!" Edd told his friends as he waved his arms, "I can do so much more; look!" He pointed a finger at another pile trash, and a stream of water fell from the sky with enough intensity to blow it apart.
"Wait until you get a load of THIS!" He held his hands close together, as though he was holding a baseball, and the blue fire began to sparkle as it glistened off the snowball that formed in Edd's hand. Giggling mischievously, the boy threw the snowball at Eddy, knocking him off the mountain of garbage he was sitting on.
"WOW, Double D!" Ed shouted as he applauded his friend's display of power, "That was so cool!"
Edd looked down at his hands, and modestly said, "Yes, they are pretty cool, aren't they?"
"WE'RE GONNA BE RICH!" Eddy screamed as he threw himself back up onto the garbage heap.
"How now, brown cow?"
"We're gonna be PROFESSIONAL HEROES! This'll be GREAT!"
Edd was the only one to object, and saying, "Eddy, PLEASE! I'd rather we kept this a secret; who knows what would happen to us if people discovered that we actually HAVE superpowers?"
Eddy paused and put his finger to his chin as he lost himself deep in thought. He had to weigh out the positives and negatives: on the one hand, they'd be doing good for the community; on the other hand, people might be afraid of them. They could be something big, or they could wind up in a test tube somewhere in Area 51…
Finally, he relented and said, "Fine, we'll keep things secret for now, okay?" He then climbed down from the garbage pile, and told his friends, 'Get back to work! We've got a lot of ground to cover before we can call it a day!"
Edd smiled as his friends went back to what they were doing, and he returned to studying the limits of his powers.
Their training was interrupted by a deep, guttural roar, which shook the very ground that Eddy stood on. The three boys turned to the source, and discovered it to be a boy, roughly their age, that looked royally pissed off.
This boy was wearing a pair of jeans and a black sweatshirt (despite it being June) that had a red, upside-down S in the middle of a red outline diamond. His skin was chalky-white, and was cracking and peeling in many places; messy black hair hung down in his eyes, which he didn't even bother to brush aside. He had glowing red eyes, and his fists were clenching and unclenching, as though he were ready to fight.
"Who the heck is that?!" Eddy asked Edd as he got off the ground.
"I'm not sure," the boy replied, "I've never seen him before!"
Ed, on the other hand, was floating in the air, chewing on his fingernails as he said, "B-B-B-BIZARRO!"
Both of his friends turned to him and asked, "Bizarro?"
"He's one of Superman's enemies! But he's not a kid; maybe it's Match? No, he doesn't wear a sweatshirt…"
As Ed drifted off into Comic book Land, Edd asked the strange boy, "Can we help you?"
The boy growled, and shouted, "You puny superheroes no match for WEIRDO! Weirdo crush you like bugs you are!"
"What did he say?!" Eddy shouted.
Edd kept a wary eye on Weirdo, and said, "I think he said his name is Weirdo, and that he's…going to crush us?"
"NO TALKING!" Weirdo said as he flew into the air, "Me hate to talk! Me want crush you NOW!" He flew straight for Eddy and threw a punch at him; Eddy snickered, and took the blow. Sure, it hurt like crazy, but he just absorbed the blow and felt Weirdo stretch his body back until…
BOING! The monstrous boy shot back in the direction he came from, and landed in woods, not too far from the Eds.
"That was a close one!" Ed said as he flew back down to the ground.
Edd glided over to Eddy and asked him, "Goodness, are you okay, Eddy?"
"Yeah," the shorter boy replied, "I'm okay; it stings a little, but I'm fine."
"Good. Now, let's get out of here before-"
"RRRRAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!" Red lasers shot out of Weirdo's eyes as he tore up the forest and flew up into the air.
"Oh, COME ON!" Eddy shouted, stretching himself so that he grew twenty feet into the air. He was SO not in the mood for this guy. Weirdo flew straight at Eddy, but this time, before he collided with Eddy's plastic skin, he shot a laser beam from his eyes at the boy's chest.
The lasers heated Eddy's skin, to the point where it began to bubble, and he collapsed in a heap, shrieking in pain, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!"
"EDDY!" Edd and Ed shouted as they rushed to their friend's aid. The brilliant Edd turned to Ed and told him, "Ed, I need you to go and keep Weirdo busy; I'll try and help Eddy's burn."
"Got it, Double D!" Ed rocketed up into the sky, where he changed his torso into a mass of fire, his right arm into a giant mace, and his other arm into pure metal. "PREPARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER, BIZARRO!"
"Me no am Bizarro!" Weirdo growled, "Me am WEIRDO!"
The two boys flew at each other and their blows connected, knocking both to the ground, with Ed shaking his head, trying to gather his senses. Before he knew it, Weirdo was on him again, delivering a beating; Ed was able to shake him off by increasing the flames on his body. While the monstrous boy howled in pain, Ed smacked him in the head with his mace-arm, sending him flying across the junkyard.
"That's how we do it on EARTH, o bizarre one!" Ed shouted as he charged at Weirdo, ready to deliver another blow. Just before he punched his opponent, however, Ed's punch was blocked by the strange boy.
Weirdo glared at Ed, and said, "Me…am…Weirdo!" and then he blew frigid air at his enemy, freezing Ed in a block of ice.
Before he could smash the ice, he was blown away by a tornado; Edd flew over to Ed's side and cried, "EEEEEDDDDD!" The weather-manipulating Edd created a mini-sun in his hands, and began to use its warmth to thaw his friend out.
A few seconds later, Ed was partially unfrozen, but Weirdo had gathered his wits again, forcing Double D to go one-on-one with this monster. Edd dodged each of his blows and occasionally blinded the menace with a brilliant ray of sunlight, while he would retreat and unfreeze Ed a little more.
Finally, Weirdo caught onto Edd's trick, and he laughed uproariously, saying, "You am funny, weather-boy! You think you have Weirdo beaten, but it am Weirdo who crush you!" The strange-speaking boy shut his eyes, and shouted, "Me have super-senses, so me can hear you coming, and me can also see what you am doing with X-ray vision!"
"Oh dear!" Edd thought to himself, "How do I stop this behemoth?!" He didn't have time to think, as Weirdo flew right at him; Edd quickly flew to the side, dodging the monster boy's insane charge. "Wait a moment, I could use THAT attack!" he said to himself.
"What attack am you using, Sockhat?" Weirdo shouted as he looked in Edd's direction.
"You'll see, Weirdo, you'll see…" Edd held his right hand to the sky, and a bolt of lightning struck his hand and was shaped into a ball of crackling energy. He held his palm open at Weirdo and shouted, "THIS IS FOR ED AND EDDY!" as he released the pent-up lightning at the powerful boy.
The energy fried Weirdo, and knocked him unconscious; Edd quickly flew over to Ed's side and unfroze the rest of his body. Ed fell over, but his friend caught him and asked, "Ed, are you okay? Can you hear me?!"
His eyes opened slowly, until they were half-open, and he said, "Happy Birthday!"
"Oh, thank goodness you're all right!" Edd cried out as he embraced his friend in a tight hug. When they separated, he asked Ed, "I need you to help me, Ed."
"Whatsa matter, Double D?"
Edd stood up and brushed himself off, saying, "Grab something heavy and wrap it around Weirdo, while I check on Eddy."
"Roger, Double D!" the dim-witted boy said as he rocketed through the air.
Double D went to go see how Eddy was doing, and found him sitting up, albeit in pain. "Eddy! Are you okay?!
The boy gasped a little, but he said, "Sure, never better. 'Cept now I know what a Thanksgiving turkey feels like!"
"The cold water I poured on your burn should help, but we'll head back to my house and clean it up with some ointment."
"Yippee."
Ed returned a moment later with Weirdo wrapped up in metal chains; he threw Weirdo onto a pile of debris, and said, "Well, that takes care of that!"
"I agree," Edd replied, "Now, let's get home and clean Eddy up while I get you some hot soup, Ed!"
"YAY!" the boy shouted as he skipped along to Edd's house.
Edd smiled as he watched his friend, who had been frozen alive only a few minutes ago, run off, and he said, "Lovable lump…"
Unbeknownst to the boys, Weirdo would be waking up in a few hours, and Nazz would be heading home with a headache around that time…
At about noon, Nazz began to feel sick. She told her teachers that she couldn't concentrate, so they sent her to the nurse's office; she wasn't able to figure out what was wrong with the girl, so the kind old lady sent Nazz home, telling her to take the day off.
The blonde girl didn't know what was wrong with her: her eyes felt like they were burning up, she felt cold inside her body, her muscles felt strained and tight, and overall she felt light-headed. What could be the problem?
As she turned into the cul-de-sac, she saw the Eds sitting out on Edd's porch, watching the clouds go by. She rode up on her bike and asked, "Hey guys, what're you doing here? Were you cutting class?"
"Nope," Eddy said as he yawned, "We've been working on getting our superpowers honed."
"Superpowers? But, Eddy, you and Double D don't have-" Nazz was interrupted by Eddy, who stretched his arms five feet above his head. "Whoa," she said as she stared in awe, "What happened to you?"
Eddy just picked at his fingernails and told her, "Eh, I fell into a pot of chemicals last night, woke up with my arms stretching halfway across the room. No biggee."
"…And you're…okay with this?" Nazz asked. Normally, Eddy tried to fit in with the crowd, and didn't do many things out of the norm.
"We sure ARE!" Ed shouted as he stared at a bird that flew over his head, "And we've gotten really good with our powers! See?" The boy began changing his body into countless different things.
Nazz laughed and said, "That's so COOL, Ed!" Then she turned to Edd and asked, "Double D, have you got any powers?"
"Y-Y-Yes," the boy said to her as he made a ball of sunlight in his hands.
"That is AWESOME, Double D!" she shouted as she clapped her hands together.
"Hey, what about me n' Ed?" Eddy asked indignantly as he pointed a finger at himself.
"All of you guys rock!" Nazz said as she smiled. "This is so cool; I can't believe I'm talking to some real superheroes!"
The Eds looked at each other, saying to each other, "Yeah, I guess we ARE superheroes now, after what happened this morning."
"Oh, that reminds me," Nazz asked, "There were some explosions at around 10 this morning; was that you guys?"
Edd spoke up first, and said, "W-W-Well, th-that's a fffunny story. Y-Y'see, we were tr-training, and-"
A familiar roar interrupted the boy's sentence, and soon, Weirdo had returned in all his unbridled fury. Of course, this was Nazz's first time seeing the villain, so she screamed and backed away, saying, "What is that thing?!"
"Me am no nothing," Weirdo told her, "Me am WEIRDO, and me crush puny boys!" He threw a punch at Edd, but was knocked away by Ed's brick arm.
As Eddy and Ed pounced on Weirdo, Edd grabbed Nazz's arm and said, "We have to go!"
"Are they going to be all right?!"
"They're still a little sore from fighting Weirdo earlier, so I don't know how long Ed and Eddy can last, but I can only hope that it's long enough to get you to safety!"
Unfortunately, a few seconds later, his friends flew over his and Nazz's heads, followed by a blast of intense heat at his back. "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Edd screamed as he fell to the ground in pain.
"DOUBLE DEEEEEEE!" Nazz tried to pick him up, but Weirdo had grabbed her arm and hoisted her into the air as he flew up to the sky.
"You am pretty girl," Weirdo said as he held her in the air, "That's why me am have to kill you. Pretty girl no like Weirdo, but Weirdo love pretty girl; so, pretty girl go die."
Now, they were high above the ground, easily a hundred or so feet in the air; a fall from this height would kill Nazz for sure. Weirdo let go of Nazz's arm, and she began to plummet from the sky, screaming every inch of the way.
"OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!" she screamed in her head, "I'M GOING TO DIE!"
She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the ground catch her, and she waited for the feel of the hard pavement; surprisingly, it never came. Nazz opened her eyes a crack, and saw that the ground was at least a foot away, maybe more. The girl opened her eyes all the way, and found that she was floating above the ground. But how?
Ed and Eddy were unconscious, and Edd was in no condition to do anything; how was she floating? Then she realized what was going on:
"I-I'm flying?"
Sure enough, Nazz was flying; something inside her had woken up, and now, Weirdo was in for a world of pain…
The monstrous boy growled and shouted, "Why pretty girl no die?! PRETTY GIRL MUST DIE!"
"Not today," Nazz said as she flew straight up to Weirdo and punched him in the face. The punch actually sent him hurtling through the air, and he almost crashed into one of the houses below. The blonde girl gazed in wonder at her fist, almost not believing what had happened.
But there was still business to attend to, as Weirdo was not finished. He got off the ground, and flew at Nazz, shouting, "THAT HURT, PRETTY GIRL! NOW, WEIRDO MAKE YOU PAY!"
Nazz scoffed and told the boy, "We'll see about that." Once he was close enough, Nazz kicked him, right where it hurts the most.
Weirdo howled in agony, and bent over in his intense pain; using this as a chance to fight back, Nazz brought her elbow down on his back, and sent Weirdo down into the street; he passed out on impact.
Amazed at what had happened, Nazz dropped down to the ground, the job done. She picked up her fallen opponent by the leg, and began to spin around, until she was going so fast a dust cloud formed around them; once she reached the right speed, the girl let go, and sent Weirdo flying, throwing him for miles.
She heard a groan, and Nazz remembered that the Eds had been injured protecting HER. "Double D, are you okay?!" she asked as she flew over to his side.
"Yes, I should be all right," he said as he lay on the ground, "I just need to focus on making it rain cold water on my back." A few seconds later, a small stream of water appeared out of nowhere, and doused Edd's burnt back.
"Ahhh, that's much better," the boy said as he got up with help from Nazz. Then he turned to her and told her, "You were incredible, Nazz!"
"Really?!"
"Indubitably! And we'll talk about it momentarily; right now, we have to go help Ed and Eddy."
The two of them walked over to their friends and brought them inside Nazz's house, Nazz carrying Eddy across her shoulder, Edd carrying Ed on a platform of wind.
What has caused Nazz's terrific transformation? And what of her nightmares; are they omens for things to come? Will Kevin discover the truth behind the Eds? And who will be the next to receive the superhero treatment? Find out in the next incredible installment of: ED JUSTICE!