Disclaimer: Ed, Edd N Eddy and all its characters are copyright AKA Cartoon. I am not using them for profit; I am simply using them to practice my own writing skills….

Author: Sorry, I should have put this up earlier. I apologize for the random Sailor Moon references! I was being a "little" light-hearted in the first half of this chapter… Okay. Kevin breaks the fourth wall. I was being very light-hearted with the first half of the chapter. Hopefully the randomness fits with Ed's character…. ^.^

Chapter Twenty-two: In which Ed Finally Learns How to Use Magic Properly… Sorta (AKA: A Magical Chapter)

"Let's end this!" Ed challenged.

And so the battle began…

...rather un-aggressively. With an all-knowing smile, Captain Fasol waved his hand in a circular motion, the Trebelian sign for 'you go first.' Though Ed did not know this, he went first anyway. Setting the Blaster to the highest level, he yelled dramatically, "TASTE JUSTICE, YOU EVIL-DOER!"

And he fired fifteen million trillion (or maybe ten) blasts, each hitting Captain Fasol right in the chest. Ed smirked as the mysterious dust cloud (Who knew? A Blaster ray produced dust clouds, too?) slowly faded. "Easy victory for Ed!"

"Not really," a familiar voice sang.

Ed gaped; the dust cloud was gone, only to reveal that Captain Fasol was completely unharmed! In fact, he had found the attacks so harmless and uninteresting, he was checking his fingernails for dirt.

"How did you survive?!" Ed gasped.

General Rolf watched, horrified. "Sir Ed! Have you lost your mind? Trebles are immune to Blasters!"

"And every other non-magical, handheld weapon," Captain Fasol gloated/sang. "Let me show you the power of a TRUE weapon, empowered by the Anti-Crystal!"

The Trebles added a dramatic 'dum-dum-dum.' Captain Fasol smiled, and produced what looked like a glowing green French horn. Ed stared curiously; what type of weapon was that? Was it a weapon that stole souls or that fired slimy acids at their enemy?

As Ed pondered, Captain Fasol played a simple melody- or, rather, a simply horrible melody. Ed fell to the ground, clutching his ears in pain. An aural assault! It's even worse then in the movies!

And, indeed, it was. It made the sound of fingernails-on-a-chalkboard equivalent to a beautiful Mozart melody. It made the tortured screaming of a teenager about to get his or her brains stolen by Ventorocians sound like an angelic choir. It made a typical person want to listen to car alarms, just to get the tune out of their head. It made everyone on the ship think up horrible metaphors just to start to get the sound out of their heads.

"T-This is much worse then a typical Trebelian Audio Attack!" Skuashi squeaked in misery, though his eyes did not move from the SR-ComLink-WW. The sooner he fixed the teleporter, the sooner they'd have a chance to escape the horrible racket!

General Rolf, who was covering his ears, wondered, "Why isn't Ed doing anything? He should have eliminated this fool by now!"

Kevin couldn't take it anymore. Ed was clearly faking his reaction to the horrible Anti-Crystal-powered music! Any moment now and the fake would attack the distracted Space Rangers! "That's because Ed isn't-"

Throughout the commentary, though, Ed was remembering a weird Japanese comic his sister bought. Sarah bought and read the first book, then threw it into the closet, wondering out loud how Jimmy could stand reading such trashy and stupid books. Being Ed, he immediately grabbed the comic and read it himself. It was kind of boring and way too girly, so he found himself skipping to the battle scenes.

The main character- something Moon- was told she had magic. She started yelling random, weird-sounding phrases out and- Ta-Da!- was able to use extremely strong forms of magic. What had she said? Something power…

"Ed Power!" Ed yelled.

Everyone stopped to stare at Ed, including Captain Fasol. Fortunately, the movement caused him to stop producing the heinous melody. They stared in utter disbelief as a bright light filled the room.

Quickly, Ed's Space Ranger uniform was replaced with an identical outfit- except that he now wore a simple tiara upon his forehead. "Evil musician from the pit of Hades, you make musicians come back to life AS ZOMBIES! I'm going to stop the Zombie Rebellion- and the Kanker one, too! Oh, yeah. I almost forgot." –Every monologue the Moon character gave included a triumphant yelling of her name.-"My name is Ed! Prepare to face the zombie musicians you have so offended!"

"It should be easy to destroy a man that's completely lost his mind," Captain Fasol sang, trying not to let his nervousness show.

"Kevin," General Rolf whispered, now more confused then ever. "Why on Earth is Sir Ed imitating the Legendary Space Ranger Usagi Tsu-"

"I hate crossovers," Kevin rudely interrupted. General Rolf already knew this- he made it clear in previous meetings that he hated crossovers just as much as he hated the first Kanker Rebellion. But why on Earth was he bringing that up now?

Suddenly, Ed pulled the tiara off of his head.

"My goodness, you ARE going to do it, aren't you?" Captain Fasol laughed. "You are going to use the weakest magical attack in the universe, against me, a person whose magic is influenced by the Anti-Crystal?"

Ed dutifully ignored the man-who-thought-he-was-in-a-musical. "Ed Tiara Action!" The tiara shined brightly, and then flung itself at Captain Fasol, who had fallen upon his back, unable to stop laughing at the ridiculous phrase.

The glowing tiara was not a very interesting, eye-catching sight. The thousands of glowing Blaster rays had been far more intriguing to watch.

Above the laughing Treble, the tiara stopped mid-air. It suddenly turned vertically, facing the laughing Capitan. Then, it continued flying as if though it had never stopped; however, it was flying to the floor- or, more specifically, to Captain Fasol's neck. The laughing villain was quickly silenced as his head was cut off. He promptly turned into a pile of dust, and the room was surprisingly quiet (and saner) with the bass-laugh gone. The tiara flew back to Ed and faded away to some hyper-dimensional pocket (for the moment.)

"That is what you get for offending Mozart's zombie's clone!" Ed shouted.

The Treble guards stared in horror at their enemy.

Ed's mood quickly changed from victorious to friendly. "Hi! I am Ed! What is your name?"

The Trebles ran back to the ladder and climbed aboard their spaceship, screaming in falsettos.

"The weakest magical attack in the universe beat Captain Fasol!"

"Who the heck thought that offering hand-on-hand combat would fool the Space Rangers into surrendering?"

"I did!"

The Treble neighboring him punched him in the face. "Stupid! And why the heck did Captain Fasol challenge ED?!"

The Space Rangers stared in stunned silence, with the exception of Skuashi and Saraline, the later of whom stood looking over Skuashi's shoulder at the SR-ComLink-WW.

"That was the weirdest battle since the Gorglebot Battle of '86!" King Johnny declared.

General Rolf rolled his eyes rather uncharacteristically. "That battle was just a myth, Space Ranger."

"Hey! There's no need to be sarcastic," Johnny snapped.

He was ignored. Rolf turned around to face Ed. "What an amazing tactic! A Space Ranger Usa-"

"Crossovers!" Kevin warned.

"-A Space Ranger UT tactic, empowered by the Ed-Crystal," Rolf continued, only after glaring at Kevin for five seconds. "I would never have thought of using that maneuver myself."

"Only an idiot would have," Kevin muttered below his breath. King Johnny glared at him, but General Rolf (fortunately) did not hear him.

At some point in the conversation, TargonTroi had waltzed up to one of the monitors. "Wow! The entire Treble Armada has retreated!"

"Good thing the Treble Armada is one-hundred percent dependent on its leader, right, Kevin?" Johnny asked.

"And it's a good thing that their leader was stupid," Kevin added. He turned around to glare at Ed, who was now sitting at a monitor and pressing random buttons. Again.

"Everyone!" Saraline cried out, gasping. Everyone, with the soul exception of Ed, obediently span around to face Saraline and Skuashi.

She continued: "Skuashi has found a way to turn the teleporters back on, but only temporarily-60 seconds, actually-"

"We can't use this method!" Skuashi interrupted, horrified.

General Rolf came over to see what the problem was. "This method uses Skuashi's magic!"

Wait. That didn't sound right to Ed. Didn't Skuashi say something like…

"Er, um," Skuashi looked around the room- anywhere but Ed. "I, er…I don't have magic! That's it. I don't have magic."

Had Skuashi lied to Ed? And, if so, why? Ed pouted.

"We need to use it," Saraline said. "Everyone here knows that his magic is unstable-"

"I don't!" Ed interrupted, but everyone chose to ignore him. (General Rolf did give him a concerned glance, though.)

"-but it is the only possible way that the teleporter will work at all in the next ten days!" Saraline continued.

"And the drawback…?" Johnny asked.

"Um, well… If all the ships don't get in," Saraline said, squinting at the SR-ComLink-WW, "in those 60 seconds, this entire sector of space will blow up…"

Silence filled the room. Everyone turned around to look at Ed, because they didn't want to make the decision. Even though most of them knew that this Ed was not as wise or calm or intelligent as their creator-Ed, it was an instinctive motion.

"We need to end the horrible Kanker's reign of horror!" Ed announced bravely, waving his arm as if it were a sword or a Blaster. "Turn the teleporter ON!"

Saraline sent a quick message to the 17 other Space Ranger ships. "Will it teleport them to their correct locations?"

"Yes," Skuashi explained, "if they can get through in time."

"Is everyone ready?" Saraline asked the other 17 ships.

"Yes!" the captains of each ship responded in unison.

TargonTroi, who was the best pilot of the group, sat at the main controls. He nodded to Saraline.

"Go!" Saraline yelled, and, at the same time, Skuashi pressed a button. A giant, swirling portal appeared outside the farthest Space Ranger ship.

"60 seconds," Johnny announced, looking nervously at the monitor (which he had set to essentially act as a timer.)

The ten Space Ranger ships nearest flew in as quickly as possible.

"50 seconds!"

Seven more ships flew in.

"45 seconds," Johnny said, sounding a bit more relieved. "Perhaps everything will be all right…"

"Cratank!" TargonTroi cursed in his native tongue.

"What's wrong?" General Rolf yelled.

TargonTroi yelled, "The engine isn't working! It was damaged in the attack!"

"30 seconds," Johnny said, all relief gone form his voice.

Suddenly, Rolf placed his hand on a nearby monitor and started glowing the familiar-white-sparkly-glow of magic. "I'm repairing the engine," he explained.

"How long will it take?" Ed said, for once asking an intelligent question. He was tempted to add something about gravy, but found himself avoiding this (again) for some reason.

"25 seconds!"

And ten horrible, tension filled seconds passed.

"We have 15 seconds left-" King Johnny began, biting his nails nervously.

Vroooommmm!

Everyone cheered. The engine was working! General Rolf pulled away.

TargonTroi turned the ship to the portal, which was, he calculated, about 15 seconds away at the current speed they were going. He tried to push those thoughts out of his mind; one couldn't race against the clock when worried about dieing….

"Ten seconds!"

The portal seemed to grow larger as they approached it at mind-numbing speeds.

"Five seconds!"

But the engines were not going fast enough; the ship was still at least 10 miles away.

"Four…"

5 miles…

"Three…"

TargonTroi cursed and pushed the ship as fast as it could go. The engines began to squeak, unable to take the horrible pressure.

"Two…"

They were a quarter of a mile away, max. Was it close enough, though?

"ONE!"