Everlasting Ed-Stopper

"All right," his voice was but a whisper within his garage, "just one more application and this batch should be ready for testing."

The young suburban child peered though his goggles at the concoction he was mixing, the flame from his Bunsen burner keeping the contents warm.  He allowed the extract from the vial he was holding to drip into the primary mix.  One drop…another…yet another…he set down his vial and took notes of the reaction.

"Hmm…viscosity levels seem to be lessening…opacity is being replaced by translucence…I think it's actually done!  This could solve all of our…"

A sudden crash and flood of light invaded his senses.  He turned to the source, not very surprised to find the solution so suddenly.

"Double D!" shouted the first, a tall boy with a long, olive green jacket and a smile that offset whatever thoughts he was or, more than likely, wasn't having.  He was a boy of impressive strength, having thrown up Double D's garage door so easily.

"Hey, Sockhead," came the shorter of the two, barging in with a greasy swagger as though he owned the place, "stuck in the dark again?  What'cha workin' on this time?  Somethin' that'll make that hat of yours obsolete?"  He pulled on Double D's hat in jest, Double D holding tight to its rim to keep it on his head.

"I'll have you know, Eddy, that I'm working on something that just may solve all of our…"

"Is this more soda pop, Double D?" the taller one interjected, holding the concoction that the young genius had finished, "smells fruity."

"No Ed!" Double D screamed, rushing over and snatching the concoction from his friend, "You do not…"

"I thought we already did that episode," Eddy commented, picking up random vials, "You should get some new tricks up your sleeves."

"But he doesn't have sleeves, Eddy," Ed corrected, playing with the flame at Double D's work table.

"Enough!" Double D interjected, snatching his vials away from them and quickly placing them back in their proper order.  Grabbing them both, he set them a few paces away from his worktable, lowered the heat being applied to the concoction, and stood back near his experiment.

"Now then," he began again, "I have been working on something that just may solve all of our problems.  After numerous setbacks from the multitude of 'scams' that we've pulled, I thought it best to try and replicate the rewards desired from those unfortunate happenings without the need of unnecessary hazards and the ever increasing denigration from the cul-de-sac community.  In an effort to save time and money, I bypassed the application for a spinning cylinder base and experimented with the traits that made up the various endocrines and peptides of…"

Ed and Eddy just stared at Edd as he continued his explanation.  Ed was drifting off into his own imaginary world while Eddy grew more and more irritated that Double D would not shut up.  Finally, he voiced his opinions to his talkative friend.

"Why do you have to do this every time?!" he shouted, "I'm not gettin' any of this, and Ed's not even paying attention anymore."

"Yup," Ed agreed, "haven't got a nickel to spare, or a spare to share if I did have one there…somewhere."

"All you had to do," Eddy continued, "was say, 'hey guys, I did this and this today; isn't that neat?', but noooooo, you have to give us all this science talk that neither of us understand or care about!"

Double D started in a sort of surprise at Eddy's outburst, in spite of how often he's heard it before.  He turned back to his experiment and continued working.

"Well, far be it for me to try and enlighten you on the hard work I've been doing," he replied, "I went through a lot of trouble trying to make this work correctly.  You have no idea how many times I had to pull materials out of my anise to…"

Both Ed and Eddy's eyes widened at his sudden remark, thinking they misheard him.

"You did what now?" Ed asked.

"I said I had to keep pulling materials out of my anise so that I could…"

Double D was again cut off when his friends collapsed with laughter.  He couldn't find what was so funny about a statement that he didn't even get to finish.

"I guess that's where you get most of your ideas, huh Sockhead?" Eddy quipped between guffaws.

"Is that why all of your ideas stink, Double D?" Ed chimed in, sending the two into a greater laughing fit on the garage floor.

Double D thought of the meaning of their remarks in comparison to what he had tried to tell them.  It took but a few seconds for him to figure it out, a deep blush covering his face from both embarrassment and anger.

"Oh grow up!" he yelled, "What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm making jawbreakers!"

This stopped their laughter cold, both of them looking up in Double D's direction before rushing back to his work table?

"Jawbreakers?  Where?  WHERE?" Eddy asked eagerly, looking all around Double D before pretty much patting him down.

"Is this the jawbreaker?" Ed asked, holding the vials again, "I think you broke it, Double D."

Eddy pushed Edd aside as he rushed to the concoctions that Ed was holding.  He leapt up onto his friend's shoulders and grabbed both vials, toppling Ed to the ground as he did so.  Landing upright, he examined both warm containers.

"This doesn't look like a jawbreaker," Eddy remarked, looking from the bigger beaker to the smaller vial, "looks more like pasty sugar water or something."

"Yes, well, I've still yet to actually test it yet," Double D replied, readjusting his clothes as he stood, "I used up a lot of, umm…pimpinella anisum plants just to make a batch that would be stable enough to hold a solid form once rolled into…WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

Picking out random liquids from Double D's workstation, Ed and Eddy began plopping in different liquids into the primary concoction.

"Maybe this stuff'll turn it into a jawbreaker," Eddy wondered out loud.

"This reminds me of a movie I once saw," Ed remarked as he poured in a light blue liquid, "it was called 'Return to the Fridge 4:  Baking Soda Slaughter'!"

"You're head's filled with baking soda."

"You can bake with cherry cola Eddy?"

"Shuttup Ed."

Double D grabbed the chemicals out of the hands of his friends and returned them to the table.

"Oh dear, what have you done!" he examined the changes happening to his primary formula, "I had everything worked out perfectly this time!  Now there may be an imbalance with the somatothropes that could greatly affect the stability in this batch."

"Soma-what now?" Eddy questioned.

"Sumo throw?"  Ed added.

"I was trying to make it so that this liquid would snowball into a solid when applied to a sugary core," Double D explained, "Now I have no idea what it may do."

"Big deal," Eddy interjected, "that stuff doesn't look all that good anyway."

"It still smells fruity," Ed added.

"Besides," Eddy continued, heading for the garage door, "we can always buy jawbreakers, and I've just the scam that'll have us rollin' in dough!"

"Donuts!"  Ed screamed, bumping Double D's table when he lifted his arms in celebration.  Edd steadied the contents as he looked over the concoction once more.

"I guess that's another trial for another day."