Wishing you readers a Happy Leap Day 2024! I wanted to take this once-every-four-years chance to post something on the rare day, so here is the story's fifth chapter. Let's also respond to the review from last chapter:

Lightblade1121: I'd say their jerkish behavior during the movie peaks at the swamp portion, not here when building and riding the boat, so perhaps I should've been clearer on what Chapter 5 entails. Regardless, they definitely are no angels.

On with the Eds' adventure!

When we left the gag factory, Ed was still laughing his ass off from the jellybean/rubber snake prank. He seemed to think it was the absolute funniest thing ever and had been rolling on the ground cracking up for a few minutes before I pulled him up. That's right; even hearing the "sex" part of "sextant" didn't make the guy laugh as much. Regardless, both of us knew we'd just get lost without Edd, and neither of us were willing to abandon our friend. In the middle of his laughter, my one-eyebrowed pal asked me "Oh boy, Eddy, did you see him go flying?"

Of course I did; it frankly was quite hard not to notice. Mr. Hat Lover went higher than we could've foreseen. Ed grabbed one of the snakes while adding "He flew like a canoe!" and laughing some more, noting "This doesn't even look like a jellybean!"

No longer in the mood to laugh, I simply responded with "Just keep your eyes peeled, chuckles" and tossed away the gag cleaver that was on my head.

Shortly afterwards, we heard Double D's voice call out from afar "Assistance, please!"

Monobrow ran towards a tree and told me "I think he flew over here, Eddy."

"Where?" I asked, running to search for the sound.

For some reason, Ed uprooted a whole tree when asking aloud "What?"

I went closer to the dude and repeated "What?" myself.

Sounding confused, he followed up with "Who?"

Our hat-loving pal shouted "Help!"

Ed happily yelled out "Double D!" while tossing the tree behind him, not bothering to look behind when dashing towards the voice.

Unfortunately, he never noticed how close I was. I yelled out "Hey!" shortly before it landed on me!

Partially uprooting a bush, Monobrow asked "Double D?" and looked around.

Resenting the tree ordeal, I got mad when lashing "Why you dirty-"

Without letting me finish that sentence, he playfully said "Tag, you're it!" and ran away.

I chased Ed towards the end of a cliff. While the guy stopped in his tracks, I grabbed his jacket collar and declared "You're dead!" as I went off the edge.

Shortly after that, I fell down the cliff. Ed tried to delay his ow fall by flapping his arms like wings and joking "Look, I'm Double D! I'm flying!"

It didn't last long, and we plummeted towards the bottom, near a river. I had the misfortune of landing underneath him and getting squished badly. Thankfully, he sat up after a few seconds, freeing me from that confinement. After detaching my body from his, I angrily scowled at him and muttered "Idiot!"

To my confusion and surprise, he smiled upon hearing that remark. Two seconds later, I felt an object hit my head and the impact knocked me onto my back. It was the hat lover's left shoe. We subsequently heard him shout "Get me down from here!"

The two of us finally found Edd up above, dangling by his hat from a ledge near the top of a waterfall. Ed happily called out "Hi Double D!"

I asked on a whim "Hey sock-head, can you see my bro's place from up there?"

His response was an irritated "No! Now get me down!"

As we ran up on some rocks to get closer, I remarked "You heard him, Lumpy!"

"Hurry please; I'm afraid I can't hold on for much longer, gentlemen!" requested Edd.

Turning around to face my one-eyebrowed friend, I pointed my left thumb behind me towards the dangler and stated "Hit him with something, Ed! Something big!" while spreading both arms out wide.

I instantly regretted not mentioning a more specific object. Why was this? Because with nothing else nearby, he ended up tossing me towards the ledge! I grunted in pain upon hitting Double D, and we both screamed with fear while falling towards the bottom of the river. When making a big splash into it, I briefly caught a glimpse of some pirate treasure, though couldn't tell whether it was fake.

To our mutual embarrassment, part of my front lip got stuck in the gap between Double D's two front top teeth. However, it helped me pull him out of the lake as I used my hands to grip the grass. A drenched Ed, who had gotten drenched from the splash, asked me with curiosity "Fancy trick, Eddy! Where'd you learn to do that?"

"How mortifying!" whined Edd.

Thinking on the spot to save some pride, I quickly bluffed "My big bro showed me!"

Having bought it, Mr. One-Eyebrow requested "Do tell!" as I removed the hat enthusiast from my lip and placed him on the grass.

My next words were "Yep, my bro's a whiz at harpooning whales!" and I finished by pointing to said lip.

Sock-head questioned in disbelief "He is? Your brother is a whaler?" and gave me an irritated look.

Placing my right pointer finger on his nose, I added "My mom's got 50 pounds of blubber in the freezer as we speak!"

Double D followed up with "You mean all this time-" before getting cut off.

Ed interjected with "That's more blubber than my mom's got!"

Trying to make Ben sound like a tough-as-nails survivor, I fibbed "And he's got a peg leg too!" as I put my left arm around him and added "But that's what you get for wrestling walruses."

Wanting to be heard, our brainiac pal blurted out "Eddy! If your brother is a whaler, then he must reside by the sea!"

This prompted Ed to inquire "How do we find it, Double D?"

Walking over to the river, he explained "It's quite simple, Ed. You see, this stream is a veritable highway that will lead us straight to it." while picking up an acorn and placing it in the river before adding "We merely need to float upon the current, and it will carry us to its opening and Eddy's brother's retreat." as the acorn was carried away by the running water.

Over the next 30 minutes, we assembled a boat to carry us on the river. However, I got worn out after roughly 10 minutes, so I sat beneath the shade of a leaf to rest. What I told them was "Getting hit by a tree and making a big splash into water drained my energy more than I would've liked."

"Fair enough, but don't try to take too much credit." Double D added.

"I can more easily carry the heavy things anyway." Ed remarked.

My words there were not bullshit. How would you have felt after enduring those? I did help sketch out designs for the boat and gather some materials; I just didn't have enough energy to carry on for the whole endeavor. When nearing completion, Monobrow grabbed my left ankle and declared "Eddy!"

I yelped a bit in surprise as he maintained his grip to carry me over to the duck-shaped boat. He added "It's a duck, see?" before dropping me to the ground and chuckling to himself.

Feeling puzzled and frankly unimpressed, I laid out my left hand while remarking "I thought you were making a boat."

"And a boat it is, Eddy." insisted Double D, who went onto polish the thing with a rag and explained "It mimics the common mallard in order to offer minimal disruption to the local fauna."

Mishearing the last word, I excitedly asked "It's got a sauna?"

Having already gotten into the duck-boat, Ed popped up and got lodged in Double D's hat. He remarked "Saunas make me sweat. More."

Edd tried to dislodge himself, but his hat fell off in the process and remained on Mr. One Eyebrow's head. While he's no longer so insecure about going around hatless, this was humiliating as hell for him at the time. After becoming an adult, Double D started letting people know what was underneath and nowadays is willing to show it to those who politely ask him first. This means he has also given Ed and me permission to discuss the truth. Without further ado, I'll answer the big mystery of what's hidden underneath: a nearly bald head with a large scar from getting hit way too hard with a dodgeball. Somehow that never seemed to fully heal.

Feeling more lighthearted than earlier, I jokingly complained "My eyes, they're burning!" after seeing sock-head without his hat that day, smirking afterwards.

Not at all amused, he pointed at me and ordered "You stop that!"

Ed inquired "Does it hurt, Double D?"

Reclaiming his hat without answering, he added "Oh shush!" and sprayed the inside with some disinfectant before asking "Can we please get down to the business at hand?" as Monobrow scratched the back of his own head.

After putting the hat back on, Edd followed up with "Thank you. Ed, drumroll please."

I shrugged my shoulders and questioned "For what?", unsure where things were going.

Mr. One-Eyebrow ran around excited, giggling to himself. He did a backflip while biting onto the bottom of his shirt to pull it up. What did the guy do next? Beat his stomach with both hands to imitate drums. In the middle of that drumming, Mr. Hat Lover grabbed a bottle and declared "By the authority vested in me, sanctioned by Moi, I hereby christen this seaworthy vessel, the esteemed, um-" before looking closer to read aloud the title: "S. S. Mutant Almost a Chicken Duck?"

Hearing the name made Ed chuckle audibly. Looking towards him, I gestured towards S. S. Mutant Almost a Chicken Duck while remarking "Surprised you didn't run out of paint."

"Stand clear, gentlemen!" cautioned Edd as he pulled the bottle back to smash it on one side of the boat.

However, his weak swing didn't reach that, and he blushed with embarrassment. I laughed at this and pointed at him while teasing "Hey muscles, can we go now?" before dragging Monobrow to the side to stand atop the guy and adding "My bro will make us eat a barnacle if we show up while he's watching Matlock."

"Really?" asked Double D as I dragged him by the hat into the S. S. Mutant Almost a Chicken Duck and dropped the guy within it.

Ed eagerly inquired "He's gonna feed us, Eddy?"

"Heck yeah!" I added while springing off his face to land on our duck-boat's head, truly believing at the time Ben would offer us food, but I deviated from the truth by claiming "He was the royal cook for the king of English-land."

Edd corrected me with "You mean England, Eddy." as Mr. One-Eyebrow climbed aboard.

To our surprise, Ed said "Alley-oop!" and shockingly dragged the land to the side so we'd land in water, letting out an "Aah!" afterwards.

Don't ask me how that worked because I have no answer. Double D also remains stumped on that. Anyway, as the S. S. Mutant Almost a Chicken Duck began to sail, I happily declared "And away we go! It ain't nothing but smooth sailing straight to big bro's place, boys!"

However, I later learned danger would follow. We spent 2 hours without any issues until the current swept us into a swamp. All of us screamed in fear and shouted aloud "We're too young to die!"

While none of us got hurt during the ride, our boat unfortunately crashed into a tree and became unusable. We had no choice but to travel on foot from that point onwards.

The swamp scene and its argument will be up next. Even without the cameras showing our narrator helping with the boat, I didn't want him to get away with being a complete slacker there, so I just had the guy some parts before opting out. A note about looking under Double D's hat (which Danny Antonucci once teased would get revealed but the vision gets blocked out): it's a theory I came up with based on Ed's question about pain along with Eddy implying the sight is unpleasant on the eyes (even when clearly exaggerating the ordeal). Edd is also known to have had an off-screen incident with dodgeball that excuses him from that. Some of you might recall an EEnE food-fight game where players can pick who to play as to go against other characters were our brainiac tosses up his hat to reveal some hair underneath. FYI that game isn't canon when it has no involvement of Mr. Antonucci or anyone else from a.k.a. cartoon. Brief glimpses from "An Ed Too Many" and "Run Ed Run" suggest there's little to nothing beyond the three hairs that we typically see dangling on the back of his head. With all of this in mind, do you think what I gave is plausible? Why or why not? If no, then feel free to share whatever else you thought it could be.

Chapter posted: February 29, 2024