"If I am allowed to ask," Edd said, inspecting the goods, "where do you get your supplies from?"

"Collective consciousness of humanity," the trader smiled.

"There's no need to be snarky, I was just curious."

One of the reasons why the Followers kept Edd around despite his less-than-stellar-by-their-standards morals was his ability to procure supplies that the Old Mormon Fort simply couldn't operate without. You see, Edd knew Eddy, and Eddy knew a few traders able and willing to provide supplies at lower prices than the Crimson Caravan. Edd was having a one-on-one meeting on the crossroads not that far away from New Vegas with one such trader; a bespectacled skinny raven-haired man from Reno. He was accompanied by a pack brahmin and a black cat.

"And?" the trader asked. "Good enough for you?"

He reached into the inner pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a stack of NCR bank notes. "Everything appears in order. Could you please deliver that to the old Mormon fort in Freeside? Claim it's a donation from an anonymous benefactor."

"Sure, we can be sneaky if you want." The trader took the money from him and turned to his cat. "Right, Mona?"

"That's our specialty!" the cat grinned.

"Wait, did your cat just-"

"Outta the way, gratuitous cameos!"

The three turned towards the source of the voice and saw a redheaded girl in Great Khan attire running towards them. "Smart guy!" she proclaimed. "I need you, pronto!"

"I assume you know her," the trader remarked.

Before Edd could outline the relation between them, Lee grabbed his wrist and dragged him in a seemingly random direction.

"We're in trouble…" she said, between breaths. "Big trouble…"

"Calm down!" Edd shouted. "What trouble are we talking about and why do you think I can help you with them?"

"You'll see… no time…"

The two ran towards what used to be a suburb before the bombs hit. Lee dragged Edd along to one of the dilapidated buildings and all but threw him inside. The other two Khankers were in it already, and the sight of the sockheaded scientist seemed to soothe their, uh, sworries.

"Oven Mitt!" Marie glomped him in greeting. "We're saved!"

"Good Lord…" He wriggled out of her grasp. "Can someone tell me what's happening?"

"Long story short," May said, "we've been trying to find some scavenge. Y'know, as a side gig. And, well…" She gestured at the worn-down staircase leading to the basement. "Come and see for yourself."

Edd discreetly put his hand on his chest to see if his laser pistol was still in its place. "That sounds… suspicious."

Lee finally managed to catch her breath and said out loud: "It's a nuke."

After a beat, Edd blurted out: "I beg your pardon, what?"

"An honest-to-God A-bomb. With, like, ten minutes on the countdown."

Deciding that if this was a trap, the Khankers would come up with a more plausible lie, Edd rushed downstairs, tripped on the last step, and fell flat on his face. When he picked himself up, he noticed something big and bulky in the middle of the room. He pulled out a flashlight and turned it on.

In front of him was a thick metal pipe, a few meters long and just shy of a meter in diameter, with patches of rust and minuscule dents here and there. One of its ends was closed by a welded-on plug, the other end had one riveted on. From between the rivets, a few cables emerged, connected to an alarm clock taped on top, showing nine minutes and thirty seven seconds to midnight and ticking. Even in his pocket, the Geiger counter began to crackle rapidly.

"This thing was here since before the bombs fell," Lee explained from upstairs. "The guy that built it was a paranoiac that saw the war coming, and wanted to take a few Chinese with himself. I guess he didn't live long enough to activate it."

"And how do you know all that?" Edd asked, reaching for the Rad-X pills he kept on himself for such emergencies.

"The computer in the basement still works, somehow. It's in the corner." Edd noticed a desk and the aforementioned machine on top of it, its screen emitting a faint green glow. "That nutsack was keeping a journal and-"

"Who cares?" Marie butted in. "Disarm this thing, Oven Mitt!"

"I, uh, don't know how."

Cue a few seconds of heavy silence, broken finally by Marie going "What do you mean 'you don't know how'?!" Marie raised her voice. "You're the fucking smarty pants of the group!"

"We usually left explosives to Ed," Edd explained.

"He's a moron!"

"He's dim, yes, but his durability means he was able to make enough mistakes to learn from them. He will know more than I do."

"Where is he now?" Lee asked.

"Loitering around Freeside, I assume."

She turned to May. "I'm too tired to run now. Bring him over," she commanded. May wordlessly complied and ran out of the building at top speed.

"Will she have the stamina for the trip?" Edd asked.

"She'll have enough to reach Freeside in… five to six minutes, I think," Lee replied, as she and Marie descended into the basement. A few more rads wouldn't make a difference at that point. "And from there we're praying Lumpy goes into double time."

"What are the chances of this thing being a dud?" Marie asked.

"With my two points of Luck?" Edd sat on the chair by the desk. "Going into the negatives."

"...what are the chances of us outrunning the fireball?"

"Not worth the effort." Edd let out a sigh, the reality of the situation slowly sinking in. "If we stay here, our deaths will be quick and painless. To put it gently, we will cease to be biology and become physics instead."

"Can we do anything besides waiting for cavalry?" Lee asked.

"You have mentioned there are journal entries on this device," Edd pressed a few buttons on the keyboard. "I will go through them, maybe I will find any useful information you overlooked."

"You know," Marie sat on the desk and puffed up her chest a bit, "I can think of a more fun way of spending the last few minutes of our lives."

"I would rather chew on a microfusion cell," Edd didn't dignify that with eye contact and continued skimming the logs. "How old are we in this continuity anyway?"

"Twenty-ish, I guess?" Lee replied. "Still on the younger side but with some experience in surviving the Mojave."

"See?" Marie smiled. "Not creepy!"

I'm not writing smut one way or another.

"Then do a cut to the next scene!" she fruitlessly protested.

"Better yet," Lee yanked Marie by the collar away from the desk, "do a cut to the scene where he finds a detail that helps us disable that nuke."

"I would appreciate that, truth be told," Edd sighed. "The journal is incoherent, barely readable, and mostly consists of every imaginable insult one could direct towards the People's Republic of China. There are mentions of acquiring radioactive materials piece by piece, but nothing about the construction of the bomb itself."

"That's weird, don't you think?" Lee remarked. "How could such a dumbass make an atom bomb in his house, even if he had the noo-koo-lar stuff available?"

"A… mail delivery order kit?" Edd scratched his head. "No, that couldn't be it. Gah, I feel like I'm this close to a breakthrough…"

"That's what she sa-" A light bulb went over Marie's head. "What's the SPECIAL skill for Explosives?"

"PER," Lee responded.

Marie turned to Edd. "What's your Perception, Double D?"

"Five out of ten."

The Khankers glanced at each other, nodded, and then turned back to Edd. "Open your mouth," said Marie.

"Um, I don't-"

She responded by unholstering her .44 and pointing it at him. "And keep it open."

"Er… Ah?"

Lee produced a metal box and pulled out two pills from it, then shoved them down his throat. Before he could attempt to cough them up, she followed up with a bottle of some unspecific alcoholic-tasting liquid. "C'mon, Two-D. Down the hatch."

Lacking better options, Edd dutifully swallowed everything, gulp by gulp. Content, Lee put the empty bottle away as he gasped for air. "What on earth was that?!"

"Mentats washed down with Absinthe. Plus three to Perception in total," Lee explained. "Do you have your breakthrough or do we need some coyote tobacco in the mix?"

Edd leaned against the desk and tried to not think about the aftertaste in his mouth. "Hm." A short pause. "From what little I know, nuclear weapons are usually precise devices."

"Guessed as much," Marie remarked. "We thought about smashing it to bits and getting de-radded later, but this thing's too sturdy."

"'Usually' is the key-word." With some difficulty, he got up from his chair. "Nuclear weapons work by… by causing uncontrolled chain reactions. You can get that by simply getting two…" he punched an open palm, "slamming two subcritical pieces of radioactive material with enough force. Straightforward enough that… even a simpleton could construct it with the right materials." He glanced at the bomb, then reached into his lab coat and pulled out a flathead screwdriver and a hammer. "We need to remove these rivets."

Lee pulled out her knife and grabbed a large chunk of debris in lieu of a proper tool. "What for?"

"If I am correct, behind this plug should be some sort of conventional explosive." He rested the screwdriver in his off-hand on top of one of the rivets. "I might not be able to disarm it, but if we remove it from the assembly, we'll reduce the scale of our problem." He took aim with the hammer in his right, swung, missed, and smacked his left hand. "Gah!"

"Shit, you okay?" Marie asked, concerned.

"Fine, just…" he hissed. I usually don't work while inebriated… I don't get inebriated in the first place…"

"You've already done enough." She grabbed the tools from the ground. "Go upstairs, have some Rad-Away. We'll deal with this."

Edd shakily walked upstairs while the sisters proceeded to remove the rivets, one by one. Clumsily, and slower than either had hoped, rhythmic ticking of the clock intermingled with the irregular sound of improvised chisel scratching metal.

There's a weird sort of peace to be found in a certain doom. Knowing that whatever you do won't matter in the end allows you to grab a drink, set up a chair, and watch the approaching shockwave. It's the slim chance of survival that truly messes with one's brain. Maybe that will work. Maybe you won't end up as a discolored patch on a basement wall. Maybe you'll be able to finally go and get drunk with those guys after putting it off for a few months. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

"There!" The last rivet finally gave way and Marie tossed the pipe plug aside. As Edd had predicted, inside was something that looked like an explosive charge, made out of a bunch of Nuka-Cola bottles and tin cans, connected via the cables to the alarm clock on top. Marie carefully removed the device from the nook, while Lee cut the tape attaching the clock to the body of the bomb. "Less than a minute left," she remarked.

"We can smash it to bits now."

"Too risky." Lee took a breath to calm herself down. "We're playing rock-paper-scissors. Loser grabs the bomb and runs full tilt away from everything."

"Okay," Marie raised her fist and shook it, unsure. "One, two, three."

She threw paper, and could've sworn that Lee threw rock a moment after her. "Welp." She grabbed the explosives before Marie could protest. "Take care of May, will ya?"

Then she ran. Up the stairs, past Edd clutching his head, and out the door. Then, in a random direction. Twenty-five seconds left. She could've just ran full-tilt towards an empty tract of land, toss the hot potato behind her without stopping on the ten second mark and get out of the blast ra-

"Lee!"

She glanced to the side and noticed Ed catching up with her with all the nonchalance you'd expect from the guy. "I came as soon as I could!" he said, keeping up with her. "Where's that bomb?"

She glanced at the bundle in her hands, then shoved it in his arms. He took a single look at the clock, and, without stopping, put everything in his left, spun around his axis, and threw the bomb forward and above, his own strength and speed adding up to a truly impressive throw. At the peak of its arc, twelve seconds before midnight, the bomb exploded, the shockwave and shrapnel spreading over an area empty enough to not cause anyone harm.

Lee skidded to a halt, attempting to process the past few seconds. "Your idea of bomb defusal is just… yoinking it into the stratosphere?"

"It was either that or eating it whole," he shrugged, "and that would give me the worst tummy ache. Wasn't that supposed to be an A-bomb, by the way?"

"Uh, Sockhead said that if we removed that thing from the bomb proper, there would be no mushroom to worry about."

"Ah, a gun type nuke," Ed nodded.

"...how do you know what they're called?"

Ed produced a comic book from his jacket. "Adventures of Radboy!" He showed it to her with a dopey grin. "He had dealt with a bomb like that in issue 235!"

Lee pushed the comic away from her face. "Whatever. Let's wrap this up." She turned around and marched back towards the building. "Where's May?"

"She'll catch up. I ran ahead 'cause she said things were bad."

The two marched back to the house. When they entered, they noticed May and Eddy were already present at the scene – the latter was holding up a bag of Rad-Away, while the former, still trying to catch her breath, was trying to find a suitable vein in Edd's arm. Marie was standing in the corner, overlooking the scene.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" Eddy remarked.

"Shut up and hold it," she muttered. "I know how to give someone intravenereal drugs."

"Intravenous," Edd corrected, weakly.

"Eye-vee, whatever. Little prick…"

"Ow!"

"Hey, I warned ya."

The liquid started flowing down the tube. Eddy turned to Lee. "So, is this it?" he asked. "Nobody's in danger anymore?"

"I think so," she replied.

"I mean, beyond all the radiation we got," Marie added, pulling out some fungus from a side pocket and taking a bite. "But we'll manage."

"Good." He turned to Edd. "Sockhead, when you recover, check what was inside that bomb. I might know a guy who knows a guy who'd buy it."

"And then stick it in another weapon?" Edd protested.

"Or maybe a power plant somewhere in Cali," Eddy grinned impishly. "C'mon, Double D, we both know I have some standards, I'll make sure it finds a good home."

"We want a cut of that," Lee announced. "We found it after all."

"Yeah, sure," Eddy turned to her, "just lemme give you a bill for Eds' Rescue Service and Bomb Disposal. It adds up to, uh," he counted on his fingers, "oh, just the amount you would've asked for."

"It might take days before your buyer grabs it, ya know," Marie joined the conversation. "Someone could end up stealing it and then throwing it into Colorado and then nobody will have it." She grinned. "Unless you hire someone to guard it."

"Ten percent," Eddy scowled.

"You mean per person." Lee matched her sister's expression.

"If I am allowed to ask…" Edd said, "...how, exactly, did that bomb end up activated over two hundred years after its construction?"

Ed peeked into the basement. "Isn't that a pulled tripwire by that pipe?" he asked.

The Khankers felt the Eds' pointed stares on them and Lee finally muttered: "Twenty five percent, final offer."

"Twenty, and I'll let you live down how you almost nuked the Mojave again."

"Deal."