Disclaimer: See Prologue
Trial by Ed
Chapter VI: Lessons Learned the Ed Way
"Wow, guys, don't you think this is a little cruel, leaving Eddy in there alone like that?" Nazz asked, placing a bag onto the microwave turntable and setting the timer.
"It's a lesson he needs to learn," Jimmy said calmly, applying a healthy lump of butter into the stove-popped corn.
Exactly when their snack had degenerated into a full-out debate between the taste of microwavable and stove-top popping corn was a complete mystery to them, but Nazz and Jimmy were more than willing to end that debate. And, in Nazz's case, to prove once and for all that yes, there is one dish she can make and not turn into rat poison.
Ding! Both of them perked up; Nazz grabbed a pair of oven mitts and pulled out the piping hot, greasy, salty, buttery-smelling bag; Jimmy hastily applied his preferred dose of salt.
Carrying the bag and bowl to the table, the two cooks heard a jubilant, heavily accented voice saying, "Rolf's honor has been avenged! Come, Edboy! The Eels of Forgiveness may be busy marinating the yams, but Rolf shall celebrate by consuming weakling city-boy popped corn! Care to join me, yes?" The victorious Rolf came waltzing merrily into the kitchen, dragging with him a battered, fish-smelling Eddy who looked for some reason like Christmas had come early.
Kevin looked like he agreed with him.
Alas, poor Rolf—no-one else here appreciates the Eels of Forgiveness. (Besides Ed.)
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Edd perused through the DNA Sequencer's findings—he had never understood why his parents had kept such a machine in their own home, but once again he found himself not complaining in the least—and highlighting several oddities that he found intriguing on the computer print-outs.
For one thing, he found that the Kanker Sisters were, as he had expected, in fact half-sisters. Their mitochondrial DNA was exactly the same, and on cross-referencing, half of their nucleic DNA came out saying about the same thing, but their genetic similarities almost entirely ended after that point.
For another, it seems that Ed and Sarah really were Russians. Ed was not kidding. Edd wondered if the loveable lug had known of his ancestry.
But what he had been looking for he found not in the expressed phenotypes—but rather, in the ironically titled "junk" DNA, the genes not expressed in proteins. There, he found rather obvious evidence that the Kankers', Rolf's, and Sarah and Ed's genetics had been tampered with—particularly useless pieces had been cut out and replaced with pieces that had atypical effects when expressed.
What made it so obvious was that for the Kankers and the , the replaced DNA seemed to be exactly the same. Then why did the genes express themselves so differently? There was no alternative cause to the oddity, since this seemed to be the only truly significant, abnormal similarity shared between the subjects. Thus, he hypothesized that perhaps it was how the replacement genetic material reacted with the preexisting, remaining original genetic code, and perhaps the mindset of the person, that determined how it manifested.
Rolf's, on the other hand, was very different, though it seemed to have been applied through the same technique.
Eddward had to wonder: Were any of the others' the same? His own, he knew, had already been tampered with more than once—god forbid that Ed should ever find out—but not the same genes, as far as he could tell. Then again… He decided to check on his own DNA first, which he had already sequenced without his parents' knowledge.
Silently, he thanked his parents' understanding of his interest in truly in-depth study; they had originally permitted him to use the DNAS in order to sequence hairs he found caught on trees in order to study the demographics of mammal life in the area.
Now, it seems he had a new use for it.
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"Eep!" Everyone stared at Jimmy, who had been ignored in the spectacle of the two combatants rejoining their number. His hands were no longer holding the bowl filled to the brim with fluffy, puffed-up kernels—but try as he may, the bowl seemed quite intent on sticking to his hands like overly-tenacious sticky tape! The contents of the bowl seemed to be the largest part of the problem—couldn't try anything more vigorous without spilling the popcorn. "Sarah, the popcorn will spill!" His friend had a solution.
"I'll get another bowl, Jimmy! Don't panic—just stay calm." With Sarah safely out of range in the kitchen, Eddy let out a laugh.
The bowl that Sarah had been carrying back then made impact with his head. "Watch it, Flat-head!" She picked up the bowl, still spinning from the Frisbee throw, and set it down on the table. "Go ahead, Jimmy." Thanking the fiery redhead, Jimmy awkwardly poured the popcorn in.
"Has the entire orb of the earth gone insane?" Rolf muttered.
Kevin looked at him incredulously. "You're telling me. I don't—"
CLANG! Whatever Kevin was about to say was lost, as Jimmy's retainer became the next target of the metal bowl's mysterious attractive properties.
"Cool!" Jonny said through a mouthful of Knickerbockers'.
The white-haired boy, on the other hand, disagreed with Jonny's positive assessment. "Somebody, help me!"
"I'll save you, Jimmy!" Sarah said, pulling on the other side of the metal container. Realizing that she alone could not help, she said lightly, "If pulling doesn't work, we could try cutting it off at the hand!" With that disturbing image in mind, Nazz shortly joined in, as did Kevin and Rolf, and even Jonny left Plank's side to try and help the youngest of them get…detached… from the metallic tormentor.
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"Whoa." Even though he was trained firefighter, Lieutenant Kubat of Engine 49 had not been expecting wreckage on this scale in such a small town. "It's like a hurricane came through here!" He said, handing back the images emailed from the informant's digital camera.
His direct commander, on the other hand, looked less than surprised. "Yeah, get used to it—by the time the year is out, every time you hear the word 'Peach Creek Estates', you'll be getting your game face on."
Mike raised his eyebrows. "Surely it's not that bad." The company officer just laughed—a harsh, bitter, raucous sound, hoarsened from years of smoke inhalation and barking into radios. The new guy on the force felt a stroke of dread weight down his stomach.
"You're right—it's worse!" he cawed. Then he sobered, and made eye contact with Mike, his dark eyes sober with an indefinable emotion. "Seriously, though…it's amazing these kids do half the damage they do…"
Now, Mike was truly skeptical. "Kids," he echoed incredulously. "…Where are their parents?" Surely, if these kids were so dangerous, their parents would at least try to keep them on a short leash.
"Working," the middle-aged man sighed exasperatedly. "You're new to the department, but you got to understand—if there is any real life proof that the old model of family life is deteriorating, then this is it. The parents work all the time up in the factories—you know, where most of the emergencies come from?—and…"
"Wait. So their parents are never home?" Mike interrupted, disturbed.
"Mostly—the Gypsy kid—well, sort of, anyway; apparently his ancestors made their troupe settle down and take up farming and a barter system after money became worthless in Europe after World War I, and his great-grandfather made them modify their way of life to look like they had been living there for generations the moment that he got wind of what the Nazis were doing. They say that because their village was so remote and they perverted their entire culture so well that the Nazi scouts not only believed them, but after being exposed to their customs for a week, they slotted them down as "wildlife" and turned their area into a game preserve…Damn I would've liked to see that…" The older fireman took on a wistful expression as he rambled; he really seemed to like telling this tale.
"Sir, you're rambling," the driver said. The officer looked apologetic.
"Sorry bout that…it's an interesting story, if you ever have the time to listen… Anyways, that kid's grandmother is usually home, and most of their parents are home at least in the evenings… There's one kid whose parents are really high on the food chain at that research facility—DATO, SCRAPA, something like that?—his mother usually is only home two days a week, three during the summer, and the father only gets home once a week if he's lucky. But unless something really major comes up—and for these people, the entire block being trashed is nothing; the factories are the main cause of the emergencies we respond to, after all—so that is about all the parental involvement these kids get. All and all, these kids are really quite self-sufficient."
Mike had a bone to pick with that. "It seems rather unsafe."
His commander/tour guide nodded. "Yup. You're from Seattle, right? Well, there, and in most places, you'd be completely right. Heck, in the south end, trying anything like this would be pretty dumb. But up here and in southern Lemon Brook, it's the opposite." Mike stared at him, daring him to go on, which he did. "It's Gypsy territory," he said plainly—when Mike did not indicate comprehension, he went on. "After some jackass decided to pull something on one of their own, the clan made it quite clear that they can and would take the law into their own hands, and PCPD would never catch them in the act or get enough evidence to call them on it. They say that they only use household chores for punishment, so the Forensics people never can find evidence. But whatever they do is unusual but certainly quite effective. Whatever it is—the police never were able to get anything out of their victims. So, criminals worth their salt don't go here anymore. And for the rest… well, as I said," he chuckled bitterly, "these kids are really self-sufficient."
A sly smile flickered onto the senior officer's face, and his subordinate gulped. "Tell you what—why don't you go meet them?"
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Whump! Crash! Double D looked up from his personal genome map, startled at the sounds. Loathe as he was to leave the task at hand, he detached himself from his work and started down the stairs to see what the uproar was about.
He noticed almost immediately upon entering the stairwell was the heart-attacking merger of grease and salt. Popcorn? Double D groaned—this meant another hour's worth of work on his part cleaning up the grease. Therefore, entering the kitchen, he began to lecture. "Do you realize…" he trailed off, absorbing the sight before him.
Kevin, Ed, and Nazz were struggling to pull Jimmy from what seemed to be one of Mother's stainless steel kitchenware. Opposite them, Sarah, Rolf, Jonny, and Eddy, were yanking at the bowl, similarly to no avail. They were not succeeding in separating the two; Jimmy's teeth and hands seemed to be attracted like a magnet to the metallic pot.
Considering what had happened in the last six hours, Eddward supposed he shouldn't be surprised. Already, he had a very good idea bout what was going on… Looks like I'll be sequencing Jimmy's next, he thought excitedly. Suddenly, an idea occurred to him. "Um, fellows…"
They ignored him, and so nervously Double D left the relative safety of the doorway and tentatively approached the epicenter of the chaos in his kitchen. He stood about an arm's length from the unfortunate sky-blue-shirted boy, and began again. "Erm, Jimmy… Perhaps you should try focusing on the attractive force stopping?"
Jimmy looked, if it was possible, even more distraught. "I'm trying, Double D!"
"Preaching to the choir, Double Dweeb!" an irate Kevin snapped. Edd sighed.
"What I meant was focus on the attractive force not being present any longer—maybe it will stop? Or perhaps if you focus on your want for it to not be there, it would have a positive result? Or…try focusing on the degree of attraction lessening and the repulsive force between you and the bowl increasing until the forces are equal in strength? Then you should be able to remove your hand."
Jimmy recognized what the older boy was suggesting, and nodded. Staring straight down, his eyes narrowed in concentration, and the two tugging parties were ripped apart a moment later, propelled in opposite directions at the sudden loss of tension.
Edd wasn't surprised that Jimmy succeeded—Sarah had unintentionally used the same tactic, as Jimmy very well knew, and Marie had confirmed that it could be used purposefully with enough application of will. However… "Which one did you use, Jimmy?"
Jimmy thought it over, phrasing the experience in his head before even attempting to describe it. "First I imagined it not being there, and wanted it to be that way really hard. Then I imagined the strengths of the… forces… as being like a see-saw, with bricks weighing down one side and no bricks on the other. I imagined half of the bricks moving to the other side of the see-saw, so that it balanced out. As I did that I focused really hard on it happening."
Edd nodded; it made sense. "Thank you, Jimmy." The wheels were turning in his head as he spoke. Jimmy really was a very artistic person, so it made sense that he would have the most success by thinking in mental images. But if how he thought was reflected in how he controlled his—Not powers, Edd corrected himself peremptorily; he was loathe to use that term, despite nothing else really fitting—abilities, then what did that say about how Sarah and Marie thought?
He put that thought on hold for the moment; this was not the time. "Erm, fellows, may I please have a hair sample from each of you? Yes, Sarah, I am sure this is entirely relevant," he said, cutting off the loudmouth redhead's sharp-tongued reminder before it left her voice box. "I just need a larger range of samples to work with for comparison." Her mouth snapped shut, and Jimmy held out his hand, a couple of strands in his palm. "Oh, thank you Jimmy… Would you mind putting them in a plastic bag? I want to minimize risk of cross-contamination. Left drawer," he directed.
"Risk of what?" Jonny asked as Jimmy went to place the white-blonde strands in a clear plastic container. He paused suddenly, for a moment—listening to Plank—then shook his head. "Don't answer that. Double D, I am bald," Jonny pointed out, literally pointing to his extra-large noggin.
"Arm hair should work fine, Jonny," Double D assured.
"But what about Plank?" Double D froze, staring at the darker-haired kid, and attempted to compute an answer that wouldn't get him pegged as a "wood-hater". Within thirty seconds, he came up with one he thought was passable. "Well, Jonny, it is not really necessary for Plank to contribute. Only human DNA is necessary for the experiment, and furthermore, I neither have any wood to cross-reference Plank with, nor a clue as to how I would collect a specimen from Plank without harming him."
Jonny nodded, somewhat understanding—Plank doesn't have to give a sample; it is unnecessary; Double D doesn't know how to take a Plank sample; it's nothing personal—okay, it's fine. He brightened. "Oh, it's okay, Double D—Plank didn't want to do it anyway!" With that, he and Plank ventured over to collect a plastic sack, leaving a somewhat bewildered Double D standing there, wondering what exactly just happened.
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Lt. Michael Kubat of the Peach Creek Fire Department knocked cautiously on the door of the first intact building in the area, the lead weight of dread weighing down his hand's pounds. The grave sound echoed ominously off the wood.
Then, suddenly, with a creak, a sort kid in a yellow shirt opened up the door. Without even looking, he shouted, "Go away, Kankers, or we'll sick Rolf on you!"
"Excuse me." The kid froze, and bothered to look. First the kid's gaze landed on his belt, level with his eyes…and he glanced up. Yellow jacket, check. Black shirt, check. Kooky hat, check. "Double D! The fire department's here!" Kubat stared, taken aback by the child's nonchalant attitude, and probably would have stayed plastered to the floor he was standing on had the kid who opened the door groaned and said, "You might as well come in. This is gonna be a while…" He sounded genuinely irritated at something, but considerately held the door open as Kubat entered the building.
The room he entered was the living room…and it seemed to contain every child on his list of people to find but one. The children were staring at him, not unsurprised but not very concerned.
"He's new," a girl observed, hardly interested. With that, the children's attention diverted back to whatever they were doing before.
"Erm… I am here to ensure that all the current residents are accounted for. May I have your names?"
"Nazz."
"Kevin."
"I'm Jonny, and this is Plank!" Awkwardly, the firefighter pushed the board that the strangely enthusiastic bald-headed kid had shoved in his face out of the way.
"That's…nice, Jonny." Humoring the kid, he added, "Hello, Plank." His breath caught in his throat as the crayon smiley face seemed to glare at him.
"I'm Jimmy."
"Sarah."
"Eddy," the short kid who had opened the door said, "And this is Ed." He pointed at a yellow-skinned child who had come in carrying a massive sandwich, and now had his mouth full. "Double D's upstairs."
"Double D?" Mike asked skeptically, thinking of the double entrendere.
"Yeah—he's an Ed, but with two D's." Mike nodded, not quite getting it, but understanding the motive behind it—three Eds would get confusing after a while.
"I am Rolf, the Son of a Shepherd," a blue-haired kid said with a bow. "Rolf's family is known throughout this land for our customs and…"
"Torturing Nazis?" At this, Rolf smiled. "Ah! So you have heard of us! That is true, though that was not what Rolf was about to say. Rolf's family is better known for our skillful raising of livestock, but if you must ask…" Suddenly, the rest of the children, sans Jonny and Ed, started making remarks that he should leave. Realizing that the story was one to be avoided, Mike began to comply, when…
The sandwich-eating Ed, who had frozen at the sight of the fireman, suddenly broke out of his shock and emitted a resounding yell. "SARAH! YOU SAID YOU WOULDN'T TELL!" Had his ears not been bleeding, Mike would have pitied the loudly frantic boy, who looked about ready to break into terrified tears as he plastered himself against the wall, arms holding protectively a little clay toy demon.
"Ed! I didn't!" a red-haired nine-year-old, presumably Sarah, countered.
Mark just stood there, very confused. He knew he should be suspicious about what ever Ed had accused Sarah of telling on him for, but…
"What did he ever do to you?" The older redhead, who was ignoring his sister's promises that she hadn't been the one to squeal on his possession of the purple monster-thing, finally let his tear ducts start raining, pouring down on the chicken-butt-haired child who was trying to calm the siblings down.
…He didn't want to get into this matter. Thus, the fireman stood back beside the stairs as the spectacle's final acts played out.
Sarah, red-faced with rage, finally lost all control of her temper. "Nothing! I. DIDN'T. DO. ANYTHING!" Then she hit him. Before she could repeat the act, a yellow hand stopped her.
"Shush," Ed hissed, as if listening to something very quiet. "The yeast is rising." The girl's mouth dropped open, but, seemingly unusually for the violent redhead, no sound came out of it. All in the room could hear the seconds ticking as the sister stood there, her wrist trapped in the older brother's hand, I-cannot-believe-he-just-said-that expression writ on her face, and the older brother pondered something incomprehensible to the so-called 'sane' of the room.
Then realization hit the ditz, and he smiled widely. "Baron o' Beef Dip, you are safe!" he exulted, bouncing up and down with joy. "Bless your little napalm cylinders."
Mike's eyes bugged out, alarmed. Say what? What that kid was suggesting was that this thing was a veritable flamethrower! But, staunchly staying on his set course of action, he opted to say nothing, even though he knew that if his superiors ever found out about this negligence, his silence would come back to bite him in the a**. He justified that it was apparent this kid had obviously been in possession of this thing for a long while, and nothing had happened because of it before (hence why it was still in his possession). Now if only he could convince his superiors of that if they ever discovered this…
Suddenly, a male voice—obviously juvenile, based on its pitch—echoed from the hallway. "Is Ed drinking his Baron's refills again? Ed, you really should know better than that by now—think of your digestive tract!" Thus scolded the sock-headed child at the top landing, now straining under the weight of the numerous reams of paper he was trying to carry down the stairs.
Eddy snickered. "No," he responded, just as Ed assured, "Not in this glass, Double D."
"How'd it go, Double D?" the white-haired kid—Jimmy—asked, seemingly desperate to find out whatever it was. What is it?
"The DNA analyses are ready—oh, hello," the sock-capped boy—Double D—digressed, realizing that the firefighter was still in the house. "I apologize; it really is quite hard to hear with the machines running and the soundproof walls." He looked down, and suddenly went from apologetic to cold. "Erm…"
"What?"
"Er…" the kid pointed. Mike looked down. "My shoes?"
"Yes! Dragging in filthy, nasty, contaminated soil!" Mike blinked. That was not what he had been expecting, though the children did not seem to have just been expecting it—they were laughing at him for his lack of preparedness. "I…see. I cannot take it off; it's part of my uniform."
The kid sighed. "Just go stand in the entry. Eddy, why did you let him in without telling him to remove his shoes?" Mike glanced over, and noticed the pile of sneakers piled next to the door. Oops… Suddenly, he felt kind of awkward, breaking a family's customs like that. From the sound of things, he was a practitioner of Shinto or something…
The shorter boy rolled his eyes. "You try telling firefighters to not do…whatever, Mr. The Joys of Rules."
Quickly making a head-count, Mike estimated that they were all present, and jotted it down in the paperwork. Then, while the neat-freak with his load of paper and the loud screechy kid with his argumentative nature escalated in their bickering, Lt. Kubat slipped out the door.
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"Well, how'd it go?" Michael Kubat glared at his company officer, wishing for nothing more than him to undergo the same level of mental trauma he had been through in less than an hour!
Slyly, he smiled. "You know, Dan, you failed to warn me properly…" The senior officer's bushy eyebrows rose up above his large glasses; Michael had been positively pummeled with the horror stories of those brats before going in—how could he have failed to be prepared for the mental assault? "Those kids are positively insane!" He shoved the clipboard into his superior's hands.
Looking at the check sheet, Daniel returned to his usual morose self, coughing into his sleeve. "You missed three." He pointed to the three unchecked boxes. "The trailer park is that way. Enjoy!" He shoved the checklist back into his subordinate's arms.
The lieutenant groaned, looking about ready to cry.
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