L'EDgendary

by dobanochi

A few years since we last saw any of them, the Peach Creek Boys and the Merry Men run into one another at just the right time, working together to undermine an oppressive city government as well as their burgeoning insecurities. An action-comedy-drama character study about friendship, leadership, self-esteem, and the divide between who we're born as and who we choose to be.

12. The Great Convergence

12. "The Great Convergence"

Despite being a literal trash heap, the junkyard usually didn't smell too bad. The vast majority of things in the mountain range of waste were things that weren't particularly odorous, like discarded packaging or broken machinery, so unless you were standing right next to a cache of rotten eggs or if you stepped on a piece of newspaper that once lined the cage of someone's pet iguana and got literal shit stuck on your shoe to follow you around all day, one would probably find the scent of the junkyard fairly tolerable - not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but you would need to be particularly fussy to still be complaining about the smell after giving yourself a few minutes to acclimate.

That day was an exception to prove the rule. The temperature was climbing to the upper eighties, and the trash was cooking in the sun, producing smells like an olfactory hell's kitchen. It was still something most people could probably get used to after a while, but few would want to stay long enough to build up that tolerance.

Of course, some mammals have stronger senses of smell than others. The canid species were famous for it. But as the fox and the wolf winced walking through the junkyard, there was a piece of information to which they would have had different responses if enlightened about it. If someone were to materialize out of thin air and tell them that, statistically by species, the one with the best sense of smell among them was actually their bear friend in tow, Eddy would probably have scoffed and said that Ed must not be a good specimen because there's no way he could tolerate the junkyard on a day like today, let alone his own entire borderline-unsanitary way of life; Double-D, however, would have replied that he already knew that, but he also knew Ed, and taking all of his observations into consideration, he had deduced long ago that Ed absolutely did have a good nose on him, but simply didn't find most odors offensive as other people did.

And Ed really didn't mind the smell of the junkyard. He didn't mind a lot of things. He didn't mind the vague conflict happening between his friends, so long as Eddy and Double-D made up in the end. At the moment, it seemed like whatever issues they had had the previous day were now water under the bridge.

And Double-D was hoping that was the case, but he couldn't get that strong of a read on Eddy one way or another. The fox had been purposefully very coy that whole morning as they rendezvoused to make their way to the junkyard to check on the generators. Edd could tell by Eddy's terrible acting ability that Eddy was just pretending to feel blasé about the fact that they were still hanging out two days after he had explicitly told Edd not to bother showing his face if he wasn't going to be a team player. It didn't help that Double-D was trying to decipher his own emotions about the three's previous visit to the van-cum-hostel. Would Misters Hood and Little be back? If they were, would they turn out to not be who they claimed? If they hadn't been lying, would Ed or Eddy or even Double-D himself commit some sort of faux pas that would cause the men's high opinion of him to deteriorate? Double-D would have liked to imagine he'd have the mental strength to get through a situation where either the strangers turned out to be violent criminals or where he and Eddy got into a public falling-out, but he couldn't even pretend that he would be capable if both of those things happened at the same time.

And Eddy didn't know why the fuck Edd was here, either. He knew that Double-D claimed to be invested in the plan because he had volunteered his house to be the delivery point for the contraband, but Eddy didn't buy that for a second. Eddy, for one, wholeheartedly believed that Rob and John were gone and weren't coming back, and thought that any logical person would have come to the same conclusion, so he didn't know whether Double-D's musing soliloquies about the chance of seeing them again were some sort of juvenile over-hopefulness or whether Double-D was actually stupid in that "everything-he-knows,-he-knows-from-books,-and-he-has-virtually-no-experience-living-in-the-real-world" sort of way. Eddy didn't get why Edd wanted to see them again so much - or at least that's what he would say if prompted. He understood entirely why Edd wanted to see them again - the wolf admired them as a pair consisting of a well-spoken, well-groomed, well-educated gentleman and a much realer guy who must have had similar qualities by proxy to win the first guy's companionship, and he liked that they liked him back - but Eddy didn't know why Edd wanted the things he wanted.

On the way to meeting up at Ed's house that morning, Eddy was struck with the ability to put his big question about the wolf into words: why couldn't Double-D just be normal? Hell, for that matter, why couldn't Eddy have any friends who were normal? Sure, abnormal people make life more interesting, but when you have no normal friends, then surely you can't just be their 'normal' friend, can you be? Eddy was starting to wonder if something was wrong with himself that the only two real friends he could call upon were a couple of weirdos. He needed to make some new friends. Not only that, he had to make several new factions of friends. He could keep Ed and Double-D around as his jawbreaker pals, but he needed some regular people to hang out with to keep him in touch with reality; hell, maybe his bad luck at business had something to do with his fundamental disconnect from the normal people he was trying to market to. On that note, he also needed new friends to help with his enterprising new plans. But then again, they always say to never go into business with your friends, and perhaps that's how he'd gotten into this mess in the first place-

"Eddy?" Double-D asked, breaking the fox's introspective trance. "Are those our generators outside the van?"

The contents of the glove compartment were removed and shoved neatly under the passenger's seat, and the compartment was filled back up with all the money and other valuables Robin and John had collected the previous day, but which they had lacked the energy to redistribute at the time. Their personal items were splayed out on the front seats, and their weapons shoved into the space wherever they may - John's staff sticking well out of the open driver's-side window, which luckily was obscured from outside view by the two piles of refuse that bounded the vehicle - and with the glove compartment occupied, Little John just kept the cold metal piece in the back of his pants, hoping to hell that his butt didn't accidentally disengage the safety, but still thinking that the risk an involuntary discharge would be less likely than the surefire frustration Robin would present if he found out John was carrying a stolen gun on his person. Little John didn't want to risk pissing off the only person in the world he was certain still cared about him. At least not now that he had a clear head.

Ironically, it was now Robin whose head was unclear. They had gotten back well before sunset the previous evening, but were up well past midnight as their minds raced, filled with tormenting thoughts. Robin lay on the mattress, staring at the wall of the van, wondering if all of this - all of this - had been one huge mistake; John lay there, facing the other direction, lamenting that he didn't know what he could do to make his favorite person feel better.

Little John had tried talking to Robin last night as they lay in the van not facing each other, but the conversation just went in circles, with Robin not saying much more than variants of "I feel terrible," peppered with the exact phrase "I've killed people I was just trying to help," murmured dejectedly to himself - John picked up on how Robin was saying "I" rather than "we", but didn't know what to make of it.

And Little John entertained the thought that he was a bad person for not feeling as bad as Robin did about the liquor store robbers' fate. Perhaps Robin had a point that they had started a domino effect that had gotten some complete strangers killed - strangers so strange that they didn't even know anything about them other than that they once lived, and for all they knew may have been terrible people who Robin and John couldn't have saved from a life of crime and a violent end by giving them desperation money, and actually fuck it maybe they never even existed and Alex's mom had gotten her facts wrong or possibly even outright lied to Robin and John just to psychologically torture them. But John really didn't believe that there was any blood on their hands; maybe it was because he was raised in a very conservative, individualistic environment, but he believed that there was no way they were culpable for some dirty cops they didn't know using excessive force on some liquor store robbers they'd likely never even met - and, again, who may have never even existed. If there was a more direct connection between them all, then John would have been more likely to agree that they held some responsibility, but he couldn't shake the feeling that this was a bridge too far. He told Robin as much, but each time Rob just mumbled something to refute it on the spot. For all of his imploring Robin to be more open about the fact that he sometimes felt bad like a regular person, it had never crossed John's mind that Robin would so soon be in a place where he'd just lose the ability to communicate altogether.

John didn't dare look at Robin after their cyclical conversation finally trailed off, so he couldn't tell whether Robin was crying. Robin certainly wasn't loudly weeping, but John heard some sounds that he couldn't tell whether they were teary sniffles or just Robin's fur brushing along the surface of the mattress as he shifted in place; maybe the sounds were a mix of both. After a few hours of these sounds - Little John just knew Robin was still awake the whole time, as two people who have to room together for seven years can just kind of tell - John almost had a breakdown himself, not because he agreed that they had made everything worse despite their best intentions, but because he just didn't know how to change Robin's mind. John didn't enjoy feeling like a fundamentally weak person; he had felt that way for most of his life, and he had been starting to think it was finally over these last few years, but now it all came rushing back, manifesting itself in a way he never could have imagined. That's why he didn't let himself start sobbing again. He thought that if he wasn't smart or wise or agreeable enough to be a leader like Robin, he ought to at least try to be a good follower and prop Robin up when Robin couldn't stand on his own two feet. If Robin couldn't be strong for himself, he would have to be strong for the both of them. He just hoped he was doing it right.

At one point, John broke the silence to say that he was still awake and if Robin wanted to say anything more he could just say it, and if John fell asleep he had permission to wake him up. Robin just made a mmhmm sound and that was that. Neither of them knew who finally passed out first, but it was still several hours after that, Robin busy wondering whether he was evil, and John focusing on the silence in case his friend wanted to say something. But Robin never did.

Once they were out, however, they were out like a light, and the sun and the heat and the smell combined weren't even enough to wake them up as the day grew closer to high noon. In fact, they almost slept through the knock on the trunk door.

Tap, tap, tap.

"H-hello?" asked a high-pitched voice through the walls of the van.

"Hrm?" asked Robin.

"Dhrrrmhhdrm," Little John replied.

"Hrrrrm, hm," Robin concurred.

"Rrrmdhrrm, svvrrrhmm."

"Mmm."

"Vrrrhrhhhmmm…"

Knock, knock, knock! The sound came harder this time, and from the glass rather than the sheet metal.

"Huh?" asked Robin, this time opening his lips more than an imperceptible fraction of a millimeter.

"Wha'?" mused John.

"Hello?" asked the voice on the other side of the drawn curtains.

"Ahh!"

"Gah!" THUNK. "FUCK!"

"John, what happened!?"

"I hit my fucking head again!"

"I can hear them!" came a different adolescent voice, this one noticeably much raspier.

"I did, too, Eddy!" said the earlier voice.

"It sounded like Future Me and Eddy, guys!" came a deeper third voice.

"John, I think those lads are back!" Any traces of the previous night's existential crisis were gone.

"Yeah, I can hear 'em." Little John had collapsed back onto the waterbed, his giant paws clutching his head, eyes closed and speaking to the roof, making no effort to sit up again.

"Are you gonna be alright, Johnny?"

"I will be when we don't have to stay in this fucking van anymore!"

"I meant do you need the wolf-boy to give you first aid like he did with me?"

"Just open the doors and say hi. And tell them to give me a minute."

Robin started to scoot his way over to the trunk, but when he looked back at Little John to ask one last time if he was alright, he realized something.

"Shit! They might see our stuff in the front seat!"

"Well this is as good a time as any to recruit them."

As Robin processed John's statement, he could faintly hear the boys talking outside, but wasn't listening hard enough to figure out what they were saying. "Little John… are you serious?"

"Shit. Jesus. I was serious before you put the doubt in my head! I'm just sayin', man, you regretted not asking Alex, and these kids seem cool enough. You've got an opportunity; take it."

"I… see your point."

"Feel them out some more if you feel like you need to. But they did us an enormous favor, so some people would say we owe them the truth."

"If we told everyone who was nice to us who we are, we would have been found out a long time ago!"

"No shit, Sherlock," John scoffed. He still wasn't moving his head or opening his eyes. "Remember, we got the chloroform just in case they don't take it well."

In the head of the moment, Robin had not, in fact, remembered that.

"Go on. Work your magic," Little John continued. He then added as a mumbled afterthought, "Like only you can."

Robin didn't hear that last part; he just thought it was John murmuring in mild agony.

"Well… here goes nothing," Robin said as he grasped the door handle.

He opened it just as Ed decided to knock on the window, and in typical Ed fashion, he knocked right through the glass.

CRASH. "It's okay, Future Me and Future Eddy!" Ed hollered as he knocked on the first solid surface his hand found past the glass, which incidentally was the top of Robin's skull. "It's just Past Me and Past Eddy and Double-D! We wouldn't hurt you, lest we also hurt ourselves as we are also you also!"

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK. Between the pounding on his head and the glass exploding in his face, Robin was trying really hard to scream. But he was merely a mortal, and he had his limitations.

"God-bloody-fucking-DAMMIT!" he shouted as he grasped his face and head and collapsed back onto the waterbed, being in much the same position as Little John. Robin had faced much danger in his seven years as an outlaw, but he had never been so thoroughly incapacitated by broken glass as he had been these last couple of days.

The sounds of shattered glass and his friend crying out in pain were enough to send Little John shooting up in bed. "Rob, what's wro-!?" THUNK! "FUUUCK!" John collapsed back into roughly the same position as he had been five seconds prior.

"Ed, what have you done!?" Double-D shrieked as he reached through the broken window to open the door from the inside.

"I just knocked on the door, Double-D!"

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…" Double-D said as he seemed to dance in place at the end of the van, wanting to tend to his injured houseguests but not wanting to go crawling through broken glass to get to them. "Mr. Hood, can you make your way around the glass to the door so I can see what happened?"

"I think some glass got in my eyes!" Robin answered, trying to sit up but collapsing back down onto the mattress. The creeks and rivers of blood running down among the fur on his face weren't too wide, but there were a lot of them.

"Oh, no. Eddy! Please go to the glove compartment and retrieve the first-aid kit!"

"M'right," Eddy said as he walked toward the side door in absolutely no hurry; he'd sustained worse injuries from Ed's idiocy before and had never needed first aid for them, so he genuinely didn't see what the big deal was.

"Ed! Please brush off all the glass you can-"

"Wait!" Robin said as he shot up all the way this time, hand still over his eyes so as not to irritate them by moving his eyelids - which he failed to do, compulsively wincing as he sat up. "Errrgh! Er- don't go to the glove compartment!"

"Wh-why not?" asked Double-D.

Robin just hoped that their injured state was distracting the boys from seeing the large medieval weapons in the front seat were already clearly visible from the rear of the van; so far, it was working. "B-because we've, er, we've put a bunch of our belongings in there, and it's a real mess, everything strewn about, and, er-"

Click. All four of them went silent when they heard Eddy open the door at the side of the van. A moment passed.

"Is that a fucking bow?" Eddy asked. "Like for arrows?"

Double-D looked past the strangers toward the front seat, and indeed there were some very large objects that had been hiding in plain sight. One was indeed an archer's bow, but the other appeared to just be a big fucking stick.

"And what's with the big fuckin' stick?" Eddy continued.

Simultaneously but separately, all five of the characters' minds started turning.

Eddy was pondering why these very, very old-timey weapons seemed to ring a bell. While it had been him who told Double-D that he suspected these strangers were the infamous bandits of Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve, that suspicion had slipped his mind by the sheer shock that they would leave the van only to come back a day later, and now he thought they were just an odd couple of guys more than anything else, possible criminality being irrelevant. But seeing that bow and that staff put his mind on the precipice of remembering a detail - a detail that was only rarely brought up when the Merry Men were being discussed by the suburban students of Peach Creek Middle School, who were not as well-versed in the legend as the children of the inner city - that would give him reason to think his hypothesis had been right the first time.

Double-D, who had never known the detail about the medieval weaponry being a trademark of the forest outlaws, was trying to rationalize where these weapons came from and why they would need to be here. The idea that Robin and John were the legendary outlaws was on his mind, but… a bow and a quarterstaff? Really? In modern America? That would be a strange couple of weapons of choice for career criminals, but would it make any more sense if they weren't criminals? Was he sure this wasn't all just a very strange dream? For Christ's sakes, Ed just knocked through a window; it was entirely possible that this was all a bizarre dream. But Edd still had a feeling that this was all still too realistic to be confused for a nocturnal hallucinations.

Robin, who was operating functionally blind, was well aware of his uncharacteristic lack of eloquence in his last few attempts at a sentence, but was telling himself that this was symptomatic of getting bonked repeatedly on the head concurrent to having glass explode in his face. He realized he was at a juncture: either keep lying or tell them the truth. What complicated matters was that these boys already knew Robin's and John's real names. Robin was kind of wishing he hadn't told them, but he also thought that if put in that situation again and again, he probably would have told them every time. Part of it was out of gratitude for giving himself and John a place to lay low, and part of it was that he had genuinely thought that they must be fairly impoverished (and therefore sympathetic) kids if they were hanging out in the junkyard, but for the most part, he had historically been able to trust young people with such information; younger children wouldn't tell the adults because they would be awestruck by his heroic and friendly aura - almost like he was their cool big brother - and would be more than willing to keep his secrets safe with them, and older kids and teenagers wouldn't tell the adults because they were all rebellious assholes who wouldn't be telling the adults in their lives anything they didn't have to; so far, the only known exception to this rule was fear-stricken Martin, and even then he wasn't sure if that kid had actually dropped their names. Robin thought that these three boys would follow the model, but in his blinded panic, he was suddenly starting to think that perhaps kids who lived comfortable suburban lives might have less incentive to keep their mouths shut. Robin had gone seven years without letting the Nottingham Police Department and Municipal Government find out his and John's real identities (well, TBD vis-à-vis Martin) as a consequence of impeccably good judgment of who to share that information with, and he'd be damned to let that streak break now. All he knew was that the last time they'd spoken, the boys didn't recognize Robin and John by their names or faces, so unless they asked around, there was a good chance that the reveal might still come as a shock to them. But could he and John afford to go without help for that much longer? Even if they couldn't, should that help come from a ragtag trio of teenagers they'd just met, at least one of whom they each had a rather low opinion of? Maybe he would have to do as Little John said and just work his magic, but - and maybe this was the glass in his eyes scrambling his confidence - these kids might prove to be tough subjects.

Little John was similarly lamenting Robin's big mouth; he kind of understood why Rob told them their names, but he didn't understand even more. But beyond that, he was wondering whether he should be proactive and make a decision on behalf of the both of them. In a perfect scenario, he'd have time to talk it over with Robin, but with each passing moment, it was looking less and less likely that they'd get such an opportunity. John wondered how he would even go about making such a decision - he'd already made up his mind that he was going to invite the boys and if they rejected his offer he'd simply put the fear of God in them so they wouldn't squeal like Martin did, but how would he make sure that he was making the right decision until it was over? Did Robin always know he was making the right decision, or did he just deal with whatever consequences came as a result of his choices? Aw, goddammit, John was finding himself thinking of Robin as Mister Perfecto again, and he knew it. John felt so embarrassed in so many ways for these thoughts: the way he deified Robin, relegated himself to the background, and not to mention the part where he questioned whether he knew how to make a decision as though he'd never done such a thing before in his life. Though this did beg an interesting question: would Rob be displeased with him if John were to make the decision for the both of them? John wasn't as convinced that Robin was a clinical narcissist as he was a few days ago in the tree, but he wasn't completely sure that there weren't detectable quantities of self-importance inside Rob somewhere - seven years of being propped up as a hero by the local populace would do that to anyone. Now John was no longer worried about his ability to make a decision; he was now worried that any decision he made would be a negative one by virtue of automatically stepping on Robin's toes.

Ed thought in pictures and scenes rather than words. He saw the bow and the staff and imagined Future Eddy and Future Himself fighting alien zombies in a post-apocalyptic world where modern technology was gone and all they could rely upon were weapons from a thousand years ago. Deep down, he knew that Robin and John weren't actually himself and Eddy from the future - quite frankly, he didn't think Eddy would ever get to be that tall (or that red, or that British), and he hoped to hell that he himself would never become so grumpy as Mister John - but Ed couldn't let go of the idea. He was afraid that his friends' bond was crumbling, and the idea that he and Eddy would still be friends in the future, fighting monsters and saving the world, brought a bittersweet joy to his heart - bitter, because he just wished that Double-D was there with them. Not being privy to the legend of the robbers in the woods, Ed had absolutely no idea what was about to unfold with the revelation of the bow and the big-ass stick, but all he cared was that he and Edd and Eddy were all friends in the end. And if the older fox and bear wanted to be friends with them, as long as they didn't want to do boring grown-up stuff, he'd be happy to let them in.

"Oh, we had some time to… go back to… our place, and… get some things of ours!" Robin sputtered. After decades of conditioning himself to speak smoothly, the shock of hearing himself trip over his words begat a negative feedback loop and he just got worse and worse. It also bred new anxieties out of thin fucking air: suddenly he was struck by the notion that he had barely visually seen the boys today, and for all he knew they had figured out who they were in their absence and had come back with some weapons (or very quiet authority figures) to make a citizen's arrest. He knew he was coming up with insane scenarios, but if the knock-punching through the window had been a purposeful attack to neutralize him, it would have been a brilliant strategy.

"Why do you own a bow and a big fucking stick?" asked Eddy as he walked back to the end of the van. Something was on the tip of his tongue, and he was hanging on their response to see if it would make everything make sense.

Robin could feel his hands get sticky from the blood from his forehead. He didn't know it, but he was looking almost directly at Double-D, who was growing very worried by the fox's unconfident answer.

"Er, erm, we-we-we… we collect old weapons like that! And we think they're safer with us than in an old smoke-damaged apartment! Of-of course, they've sustained smoke damage - and water damage from the sprinklers! - so we thought it best that they air out here-"

"They looked fine to me," Eddy said dryly.

"Oh! I, er, erm…" And that was that. The legendarily silver-tongued Robin Hood had successfully psyched himself out using only the fear of psyching himself out.

Any further words from Robin were abandoned with the sound of Little John grunting. The bear sat up much more carefully this time, propping himself up with an elbow that sank into the waterbed. He didn't know what the hell had come over Robin in the last twenty-four hours, but he couldn't stand to see his friend struggle like this.

"You boys want to go on an adventure?" John asked nonchalantly, his eyes half-closed and his head still aching.

Once again, a confused silence overcame them all, but this one lasted much shorter.

"'Adventure'?" Ed asked.

"Oh, God," Eddy muttered and scuttled off to go find something, not anything in particular, just something to fulfill a quick and specific purpose.

"Now, Ed, use your inside voice-" Edd requested.

"ADVENTU-" Ed was surprised to find a broken microwave shoved into his mouth. He was so overcome with excitement that apparently his nerves went numb, seeing as he didn't even feel Eddy clamber up his back and stick the appliance in there.

"Ed, shut up," Eddy said to the air in front of his own face.

As for Double-D, this begat a new moment of anxiety that took precedent over the mystery of the archaic weaponry. "Eddy, get that filthy old thing out of Ed's mouth! Who knows where it's been?"

"Can we get some help for this guy over here?" Little John interrupted. "The one with glass in his eyes?" Little John realized that this was the second time in these kids' presence that Robin had not only been hurt, but had been too damned polite to demand the assistance he needed. This was making John revisit his hypothesis that Robin was too emotionally weak to allow himself to appear weak, even in a situation such as this where it would have been objectively beneficial to do so.

"I mean, I might not have glass in my- aargh!" - Robin compulsively winced his closed lids again, and something was making that action painful - "Okay, never mind, I have glass in my eyes."

Little John turned himself back over and reached for the first-aid kit in the front seat, then turned back over and tossed it out of the van to Double-D, who tried to catch it but just muffed it and watched embarrassed as it hit the ground. He picked it up as John crawled backward out of the van and grabbed Robin to move him around the glass and into the light of day.

Double-D had a lot of questions running through his mind at that moment, but he forced himself to put them aside and focus on tending to Robin's injuries. John sat himself on the ground and positioned Robin into his lap, holding the fox's head back so he faced upward and Double-D could get all the light he needed to see what he was going with his patient. Edd put on his gloves, took a breath, and told himself to focus on the task at hand.

"I'm sorry, Future Eddy," said Ed morosely as he craned over the scene and blocked out the sun.

"It's, rhgh-" - Robin seethed in pain again - "-quite alright, lad."

"It really isn't," said Little John.

"Ed, we appreciate your desire to apologize, but if you'd please give us some space for a moment?" asked Double-D.

Dejected, Ed stepped away without a word, and went back over to Eddy, who was browsing a new pile of trash, seeing if there were any print magazines with nude women of compatible species, completely unimpressed that this heroic type whom he was so bitterly jealous of twenty minutes ago couldn't handle a little of Ed's slapstick.

"I just want Double-D to make you unblind so you and Future Me can go back to fighting the Space Outlaws with our sticks and arrows," Ed said to Eddy.

And that's when it clicked with him. Something about hearing outlaw and arrow spoken aloud in the same sentence made it all come together. Eddy recalled the few times that the discussions of the Sherwood bandits got detailed enough to stipulate that they were famous for having medieval weaponry, including the main dude being a badass with a bow and arrow. Eddy remembered, and unless the entire thing was some misunderstanding wherein Robin and John were the forest-dwelling medieval-weapons people in question but the "bandits" part was falsely attributed to them, he had his decisive piece of evidence.

"Ed? Do you... uh…" Eddy was about to tell him, but he thought Ed might overreact as he usually did.

"Yes, Eddy?"

"Can you… do me a favor?"

"What is it, Eddy?"

"So when they're all done over there, the five of us… we're all gonna have a little chit-chat. And when we do, there's gonna be something that really freaks Double-D out."

"Ooh! What is it, Eddy?"

"I can't tell you yet, because it's not my secret to tell. Is those guys'. You get me?"

"I think so, Eddy."

"So the favor I'm asking of you is that you don't freak out."

"But what if I can't help it, Eddy?"

"Then help it. And I need you to side with me when I tell Double-D I told you so."

"Hm… But I don't want to hurt Double-D's feelings, Eddy!"

"Well if you don't help me out, you're gonna hurt my feelings. Do you want that to happen, big guy?"

"... No?"

"Then there ya go."

Ed and Eddy watched patiently as Double-D used a couple of Q-tips like chopsticks to extract any strange foreign objects from Robin's eyes, carefully scanning over a second, third, fourth, and fifth time just to make sure nothing was missed.

"Well, Mr. Hood, it appears you got off rather lucky, all things considered!" Double-D announced brightly; he was quite pleased with himself for not only administering attentive and efficient first aid, but for also compartmentalizing his paralyzing fear that his patient and his makeshift nurse both weren't who they seemed. "Now let's begin treating your cranial lacerations!"

"Doctor Eddward, I still insist you not call me 'Mr. Hood'," said Robin.

"So what's the word?" Eddy asked as he and Ed walked back over.

"It seems that he shut his eyes at just the right time, Eddy," Double-D said. "Some shards got into his lashes, and a few chunks got caught between his lids, but there appeared to be nothing tucked under his eyelids nor any visible damage to the corneas."

"You got lucky again, Rob," said Little John.

"I supposed I did, eh, Johnny!" Robin said, and in his blind spot Eddy rolled his eyes upon seeing that the elder fox was right back to his unflappably-confident persona. Eddy was honestly starting to think the whole cool-guy act was fake.

Robin sat up under his own power and gave Ed and Eddy a good look for the first time that day. "Ah, now let's refresh the old memory about who our hosts are. Let's see, we've got Ed… Edd… and-" - he locked eyes with Eddy and cocked his head with a smirk - "-now what was your name again?"

"What!?"

Robin let out a deep, hearty laugh, and Little John let out a deeper one.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Eddy my lad, I couldn't resist!" Robin remarked, and he gave Eddy a friendly smile.

Eddy did not reciprocate, and he could tell in Robin's face that Rob was surprised Eddy was still fuming over it. Of course, it was not the joke itself, but this guy lording over Eddy again with his excellence at life in general that was rubbing Eddy the wrong way. Robin's face looked like absolute shit with his eyes red and puffy and coagulated blood clumping his fur together all over his head, but Eddy had a funny feeling that there would still be plenty of people the world over who would find his face compelling in several different senses of the word. Eddy wondered if his brother would also harbor the same hostile jealousy if he ever met this guy. On the one hand, it seemed unlikely, since his brother likewise considered himself a smooth-talking persuader and might even see himself in this stranger; on the other hand, Eddy realized, his brother might be devastated if he realized the one key difference between himself and Robin was that Robin was persuasive inasmuch as he was a well-spoken gentleman and Eddy's brother was only persuasive inasmuch as he was a successful con-artist, and nobody remembers a con-artist fondly. In that moment, seeing that battered and bloodied smile from the lanky vulpine Englishman, Eddy suddenly didn't feel so jealous of his brother anymore.

"Now Mr. John," Double-D said, "if you could hand me the cotton balls and the hydrogen peroxide?"

"Hey, while you do that, we've got a question," Eddy piped up. "What was this adventure you were offering us earlier?" This was the part Eddy still wasn't sure about. He had no idea what adventure they had in mind, but he had a feeling that it would somehow involve them showing their true colors. And even if the adventure was some sort of trap - like if they were going to try to rob the three of them - Eddy believed the feeling of vindication would be worth it.

Double-D, Robin and John were all jarred to hear that brought back up, but Ed had the most visceral reaction. "ADVEN-!"

"Hush," said Eddy, clearly in no mood for more distractions.

And Ed did. But now Edd needed to say something annoying.

"Eddy, let's please not think about that until I've finished with, uh, Robin's injuries, would you please?"

"It's fine," said Robin, "We can talk as you work."

"Uh- n-no, it's not that I can't multitask- no, I'm a good multitasker!" Edd spit out, clearly getting more unnerved with every syllable falling out of his mouth. "But whatever you're offering may be too interesting to allow me to maintain my focus on something so important as this."

Little John decided to push the envelope. "You seem nervous, bud. Something on your mind?"

"Uh, n-no, not really."

"Well, there'd better be, because if you're this nervous for no reason, I don't trust you to operate on my friend."

"Nonononono, I, um…"

And Eddy was milliseconds away from saying 'Double-D's nervous because he thinks the adventure is that you're going to rape and murder us,' so as to force Robin and John to say who they really were as a way of refuting Eddy's accusation, but then he had an idea for a more straightforward approach.

"He's nervous because he heard a rumor yesterday that there's two guys running around in the woods with old-ass weapons, robbing rich people and giving the money to poor people," Eddy said as matter-of-factly as he could while suppressing his self-impressed smirk. "He's afraid you might be them."

Double-D's blood ran cold as he turned around to give Eddy a look. And what a look it was: one of the wolf's eyes made it look like he was about to tear the big-mouthed little fox limb from limb, while the other made it look like he really needed an adult.

But with his head turned, he didn't see the nonverbal communication of the adults right in front of him. Robin craned his neck up to look at Little John, who gave Robin a head-tilted-left, lower-lip-out, eyebrows-raised, left-shoulder-shrugging, right-hand-out-interrogatively-with-the-palm-three-quarters-to-the-sky look that seemed to say, 'What do you think?', to which Robin nodded calmly a few times with his eyes closed.

"Eddward, young man, you don't need to fear us," Robin reassured him. "All we want is to help the poor. And we don't like using the word robbing."

Double-D almost snapped his neck from how quickly he turned his head around.

"Yeah, so don't use that word if you wanna hang with us," Little John added, then looked up to include Ed and Eddy in his audience. "By the way, did you guys wanna hang with us?"

Eddy didn't enjoy his moment of validation as much as he thought he would, since he wasn't as emotionally prepared as he thought he was to hear Robin and John just casually say that they were indeed wanted criminals with a record likely thicker than the dictionary, and the part where they asked them if they just as casually asked if they wanted to join them was, among other things, flummoxing. Ed was more confused than anything, since he had no previous awareness of the urban legend, but in an attempt to please Eddy, he used all of his mental energy to keep himself steadfast, trying to focus his mind on Double-D, who went from looking blankly at Robin to looking blankly at Little John, then to Robin for a bit shorter of an interval, then back to John, and back and forth and back and forth until it looked like he was nodding.

"Is that a yes?" Little John asked half-jokingly, since it really did look like the wolf-boy was nodding.

All of the seagulls, pigeons, and other birds in the junkyard flew away hurriedly at the sound of Double-D's scream. The poor creatures must have surely thought the world was ending.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," Little John groaned as he leaned over, picked up Double-D, held him close to his chest like a stuffed animal, and put a paw around his snout to shut him up. "I guess that's a no, then." He glanced up and again regarded Ed and Eddy. "Are you two good? Because I only have two hands."

The younger fox and bear were still thoroughly dumbfounded.

"Uh…" Eddy tried to say something. "Let me get this straight. You want us to-"

"We want some new people to join us in robbing the rich and giving to the poor, until the rich finally give up with being dicks," Little John said bluntly. "Which might sound like a completely fuckin' bonkers plan, but we almost pulled it off a few years back before… some shit happened."

Eddy was going to ask what shit Little John was referring to, but he noticed that Edd looked more uncomfortable than usual in the bear's grasp. "Uh, I… don't think he can breathe," Eddy observed.

John noticed that he had carelessly placed his paw in such a way that it was not only closing the wolf's mouth but also blocking his nostrils. "Oh! Shit. Sorry, kid!"

GASP. "AAA-!" Double-D wailed in the split second when Little John took his hand off Edd's mouth to reposition it. John looked down at Robin, who was still sitting in his lap, and gave him a look that clearly said 'this was a bad idea and I regret it'.

"But why us?" Eddy asked.

Robin felt composed enough to stand again, and stepped a few steps in front of John and Edd. "Because we're a bit desperate right now, truth be told," Robin explained, "and maybe our judgment's been knackered by recent events, but-"

"'Knackered'? What?"

"...Maybe we're wrong, but it sure seemed like you three could be just the help we needed. For one thing, you were kind enough to give us a place to stay. And the fact that you were hanging out in the junkyard in the first place told us that you boys might be up for anything - even a crazy proposal like ours. And then there's the way that you seem like you're nothing at all alike, and yet here you are, all hanging out together, with a clear bond between you that we could see after knowing you for, what, not even an hour? We need more than one person to join us, but we need them all to be able to cooperate with not only me and John, but each other. Then we see the three of you, all seeming to bring your own skills to the table, and you all seem to already be pretty tight friends. You three are like a package deal!" Robin had prepared for that question while Double-D was tending to his eyes, and it proved to be a great way to take his mind out of his body in that moment. His spiel wasn't completely ingenuine, but the details he had listed weren't as impressive as he'd presented them. It seemed better to augment their appeal as a group than to tell them that they chose them out of convenience more than anything else.

Then Ed had something to ask: "You want us to be bad guys with you?" he asked in an unusually small voice.

"Ed, we're not the bad guys," said Robin. "But right now the bad guys are in control, and they made doing the right thing wrong and doing the wrong thing right. And they want you to think we're the bad guys for doing the right thing."

"I'm confused," said Ed. "So you're good guys?"

"I can promise you this much, young man," Robin said; "We're doing our best to do what we think is the right thing. But some bad people made rules and regulations that… let's just say that right now, we're in a spot where it seems that doing the right thing requires us to break some rules."

Robin turned around and locked eyes with Double-D, who was too afraid to look away. "And we have our internal conflicts about what we do. Absolutely! Every single day! But we've thought long and hard about it and we've come to the conclusion that we're simply in an unwinnable situation. But again, we're doing our best."

Then he turned to the younger fox, the one he regarded as an arsehole and thought going into this was going to be the hardest to convince to answer the call. "And we believe this because we see the effect that it has on the people of Nottingham. All over the West Side, people are grateful that we come by and help them out when nobody else could, or would. People are starving, people don't have enough clothes, people can't find jobs, the people who can find jobs can hardly afford to get themselves to work, renters are being evicted because their landlords are greedy and homeowners are getting priced out of their homes because of a mayor who says he thinks he can forcefully raise an area's land value by jacking up the property taxes! ...But we all know he doesn't actually think that's how it works..."

Robin trailed off for a second to get a good look at Eddy. He still looked deeply unimpressed. So Robin tried to pitch the concept in a way that Eddy might like to hear.

"...I know you kids and your comfortable suburban lives might not fully understand the situation on the other side of the forest, but I can assure you that those people adore us for the work we do to make their lives bearable. It's the most rewarding work we've ever done. To them…" - Robin thought for a moment to carefully pick his choice of words - "...we're heroes."

And that word did indeed catch Eddy's attention, but he would never show it. He still wasn't convinced that this guy's personality wasn't completely fake. As a way of feeling better about himself, Eddy started telling himself that other people would surely see this British guy acting like a classical gentleman and surely think it was fake, too. But then again, Eddy had very little frame of reference for how well Robin's personality went over with other people, and if Robin was correct in saying that a large chunk of a major American city loved him, then maybe whether his gentlemanliness was fake or not was irrelevant; after all, it had won over Double-D.

"So long story short," Little John said, "morality is gray, there ain't no good or bad people, just people who do more good things than bad things and vice versa." He then looked down at Double-D and forced the kid's head up to make sure he looked back at him. "And we thought you boys were smart enough to get that. We'd sure hate to be wrong about that, now wouldn't we be?" he asked sternly.

Double-D gave him a look much like he gave Eddy. In one eye was a fire of rage at this monster who - being a million-times-over repeat-offending criminal - had the iconoclastic audacity to say that he and his friend were morally and intellectually superior to him, a law-abiding model citizen (granted, Double-D clearly heard the part where Little John refuted the claim that they thought that they, or anybody else, was a necessarily good person, but Double-D quite frankly didn't believe that); the other eye shivered in a blizzard of fear and uncertainty, silently mourning the death of justice.

Little John continued. "We've never killed anybody, we almost never give somebody major injuries, we don't strike first when we don't have to, and when we get the inkling that somebody's good enough to be let off the hook, we let them off the hook. How old are you kids?"

"Fourteen," Eddy answered; he himself wouldn't be fourteen for another month, but he didn't think that detail was worth stipulating.

"Yeah, we guessed somewhere around there. We thought that you guys had good hearts inside of hearts of teenage rebels; we thought you guys would hear what we did and would think it was some punk-rock way of saying 'fuck the world' while simultaneously improving the world. I… maybe we were wrong."

Little John found himself getting bummed out over bad memories - the way John described how he thought the Eds to be basically described Will to a tee. John forced himself to plow through it, drawing attention away from the fact that these same thoughts had compelled Robin to look down at his own feet and focus his eyes on nothing in particular for longer than a confident-seeming person would.

"You kids don't have to join us if you really don't want to," Little John concluded. "But you owe it to yourselves not to squeal on us. We're just two people trying to do the right thing. We met once, we'll go find somewhere else to stay, and you stay out of our business and we'll stay out of yours."

"Well… hey, man-" - Eddy was right back to being nervous now that the scary-looking Little John was talking - "...it's not me and Ed you gotta worry about squealin' on ya. It's Sock-Head who's all anal about rules and stuff."

Little John looked down at the wolf in his grasp again. "'Sock-Head'? Is that what they call you?"

Double-D saw the upside-down face of his grisly grizzly captor. Edd's fear of germs was quite literally crippling as it prevented him from being physically capable of soiling his undergarments.

"I'll tell you what, Sock-Head," said Little John. "If you get the cops on us, you'd better hope they kill us dead, because if we're still alive, we're gonna tell them you harbored a couple of wanted criminals!"

"Little John!" said Robin. "Calm down! You're scaring him!"

"Good! That's what I'm trying to do! I'm tryna cover our asses, Robin!"

"Hm. Fair point. But you're giving them a bad impression of how we operate." Robin turned to Ed and Eddy. "Don't worry, lads; we only use coercion when we absolutely need to, such as right now."

Neither Ed nor Eddy knew the word coercion.

"I think Double-D wants to say something!" said Ed.

"Does he now?" asked Little John sardonically. He looked at Double-D. "Kid, I'm gonna let go of your mouth, but you better say actual words, or I'm gonna swing you around by the tail and do my damnedest to send you into outer space. Do you understand me?"

"Mmhmm!" Edd pleaded.

"I don't like being this mean to you or to anybody else, alright? Because people were mean to me like that before and I know it didn't make me want to be like them. But when people really, really, really piss me off… I don't think straight. I don't think about trying to convince them to be different. I just want to be really, really mean to them. Understand?"

"Mmhmm!"

"And I ain't proud of that. I wish I could win people over and change them. Which is why it's all the worse when people piss me off. Because if you put me through a moment of weakness… goddammit, I'm gonna try to make you feel even weaker. And right now, you're pissing me off. You understand?"

"Mmhmm!"

"I'm sorry for the long speech, kid, but if we're gonna be working together, I need you to know that. I can be friendly if you give me a reason to be friendly, but I can-"

"I thought you said you were sorry for the long speech!" shot Eddy, suddenly emboldened by the revelation that the large bear was currently feeling emotional weakness.

"Hey, you're next!" John shot back. "Everything I'm saying to him, I'm saying to you, too!"

Eddy was very tempted to call his bluff about the swing-him-around-by-the-tail thing, but he resisted the urge.

"Alright," said Little John. "Open sesame."

He unclasped his hand from the wolf's snout, and Double-D gasped as though he had been suffocating the entire time. In reality, he just wanted to open his jaw for the first time in as long as his raddled mind could remember.

"Oh, c'mon, kid, I wasn't squeezing that hard on your nose!"

Double-D took a couple of deep breaths through his mouth, eyes unfocused and staring off into space, and slowly came back down to earth.

"Now remember, if you wanna have a civil conversation, you hafta converse civilly," said John.

"We haven't hurt you yet, lad," Robin said as he walked over. "We aren't going to hurt you now."

Double-D looked slowly from Robin to John to Robin again, and tried to think and pick his words carefully. He also glanced over to his friends, pleading with his eyes to help, but it was clear that they wanted no part of this.

Edd, still being held close to Little John's chest, chose to address Robin first.

"I… trusted you. And you misled me." Double-D's voice quivered as he spoke.

"And for that, we apologize," said Robin.

"Wait," said John. "We didn't lie that much, did we? I mean the microwave-fire thing was a lie, but we told you our real names for Christ's sakes. We don't usually share that with people we just met."

"Oh, you told us you were actors!" Double-D protested, his intonation wobbly and flustered.

"Yeah, that really wasn't a lie," said Little John.

"Oh, really!? Explain yourselves!"

"We dress us in disguises and compel people to give us their money, we don't stick a gun in their face and tell them fork over their wallets! What the hell do you take us for!?"

"THIEVES!" Double-D's throat sounded like it hurt as he screamed. "I take you for thieves! Cooks! Criminals! Bandits, outlaws, scoundrels, hooligans, scourges upon civilized society! I take you for devils, thugs, bullies-!"

"Hey, Rob. Do you think that having the fuckin' dictionary memorized is a useful skill to us?"

"Oh, does my intelligence make you feel inferior!?"

"Wh- th-!?" Little John sputtered as he turned the wolf around to face him. "Holy shit, you actually think I'm stupid, don't you? You really think you're a genius and I'm a dumbass, don't you?"

In the flurry, Double-D didn't notice the repulsed look on Robin's face. Said look was not directed at John.

"An intelligent person doesn't live as a serial mugger!" Double-D said. "And they especially don't speak as vulgarly as you!"

"Well I'm sorry that you think the culture I grew up in is inferior, you fucking racist!" John shot back, half in jest.

"If you were truly intelligent, you would have abandoned all tenets of your inferior, unintellectual, and quite frankly bigotted backwater culture!" Once again, he was prepared for death at any moment, and standing up against ignorance was a hill he would be honored to die on.

Little John's eyes burst all the way open, and he almost had the urge to let out a stupefied chuckle. He couldn't believe how badly this kid was burying himself. "Rob, you hearing this?"

"To my disbelief, I am," said Robin. At that comment, he and Edd shot each other unimpressed looks, their opinions of one another thoroughly deflated.

"Well, listen, kid," said John, "I'm not gonna swing you around by the tail. But I am gonna throw you really, really far."

"What!?"

Little John stood and placed his hands around Double-D as though he were a football. "Fasten your seatbelts, Little John Airlines Flight Ten-Eighteen is takin' off for Timbuktu!"

"Wait, no!"

Little John wound up to toss him, but never actually let go. He just brought him back around to face him again.

"Chill out, kid, I'm not gonna actually-"

"NO!" came a dopey voice. Thump. "Oof!"

Little John realized he was suddenly staring at the sky. "What the fuck?" He looked down and saw that Ed had tackled him.

"I'm not gonna let you throw my Double-D into space!" Ed cried.

Beyond their huddled mass, he could see the two foxes. The small one was stifling a laugh while the large one just looked confused. John could not, however, see the wolf.

"You ain't gonna let me throw him, but you're gonna let yourself suffocate him?"

Ed took a second to process the words before he hopped up to see Double-D flattened on John's stomach. Double-D clearly had the wind knocked out of him.

"Oops. Sorry, Double-D," Ed said as he picked up Edd, who looked like he was about to go into shock if his diaphragm didn't get working again soon.

"But that's why we asked you," Robin piped up. "That kind of devotion to save your friends and to do what you think is right, even if it means putting yourself in danger and hurting bad people."

"Without taking enjoyment in hurting bad people, because we're not fucking psychos," John added, himself a bit winded from impact and grateful that the firearm in his pants didn't discharge. "We had a friend who… over the years, he got more and more enjoyment out of robbing people. Like, too much. It stopped being noble and started being disturbing. But he's in jail for doing extracurricular stuff we had nothing to do with, so you'll never have to meet him. Just in case you thought we were like some kind of self-righteous sadistics who want to overthrow the entire country like he did. We want to help people, not start an all-out class war."

Eddy jumped in: "Are you sure you don't like hurting people for fun? Because Double-D thought you did!"

John looked at Double-D, who was still catching his breath. "Oh, I love a good brawl! And I hate how much I love it!" He smirked. "You see? We ain't just criminals; we're complex!"

"Complex!" Robin echoed. "Perfect choice of words, Little John!"

"Thank ya kindly, milord."

Robin walked over to Double-D. "How're you feeling, lad?"

"Don't speak to me! I reject you!" Edd spat.

"And you know what? I understand that. When I was your age, I would have reacted in exactly the same way to meeting someone like us."

"Then where along the line did you decide to dispose of what is clearly a well-bred upbringing and become a scoundrel?"

Robin was tempted to point out that he was only half well-bred, but he decided that either he would have plenty of time in the future to clarify that, or he wouldn't, in which case it wouldn't matter. So instead he decided to respond more poignantly.

"I decided that when I realized that this world is far too messy for morality to fit into black and white," Robin answered. "And I wish that it didn't have to be this way. John and I both wish we didn't find ourselves in such a spot where we think a life of crime is the best life we can live. But here we are."

"You think that victimizing innocent people is going to make anything better!?" Double-D snarled.

"The people we prey on ain't innocent," said Little John. "Rob, didn't I already mention we screen people before we rob them?"

"You did, John," said Robin, "though he may have been too flustered to pay attention. But Eddward- or shall I call you 'Double-D'?"

"I repeat: I do not want you to speak to me at all!" Double-D repeated.

"Double-D," Robin spoke, "I pray you don't take this question as some sort of gotcha, truly I do hope, but in all genuineness, I need to ask: what do you plan to do to remedy the rampant poverty and subjugation in the city?"

And just as planned, that shut Double-D right up.

"Maybe you don't have a plan yet," Robin continued. "And that's fine. You're kids; I can't expect you to have solutions to problems the adults can't even fix. But surely you must understand us when we say that when John and I go about stealing from callous, bullying, mean-spirited rich people who seem to be delayed in receiving their comeuppance, and we give that money to some downtrodden soul who…" - Robin found himself getting upset just thinking about it - "...who doesn't know whether they'll still have food and shelter in a week's time, and we see the look on their face, their eyes light up, and it's like we've just given them the will to live all over again, and, and… Blimey, where was I going with this sentence?"

"'You must understand us when we say…'" said Little John.

"Ah, yes! You must believe us when we say that when we do that, and we can see we're making a positive difference in people's lives, then in that moment, it would be a tough sell to tell us that we're simply evil and nothing more."

Double-D looked like he was trying to stay angry.

"And maybe we're wrong," said Robin. "Maybe you're right and we really are making things worse. Heaven knows the thought's crossed our minds. But the fact of the matter is that people are hungry and tired and naked and cold and just miserable… until we show up. To us, this is a solution. So I ask again: would you have a better idea? Because we would love to hear it."

Robin was putting on his patented welcoming look to try to get the best possible answers out of the wolf-boy, but he was prepared for this communication to break down even further, as it looked very much like Double-D was about to start crying self-loathing tears in realization that he was in philosophical checkmate.

But Robin wasn't looking at Eddy, which is a shame, because the younger fox was visibly intrigued by the tales of being regarded as a bringer of light in a world of darkness. He wasn't too happy with the part where they were taking money from the rich, which was a demographic that Eddy aspired to one day be a member of. But he really liked the part where - assuming this wasn't all complete bullshit - they had the admiration of the public. All Eddy wanted in life was wealth and acceptance; now he was starting to wonder if he only wanted one as an avenue to the other.

"...Or do you not want to help the starving people in the city?" Robin asked, tired of waiting, and allowing himself to indulge in some passive aggression. "You do know they're starving, right?"

"Th-th-they can… vote!" burst Double-D. "They can vote for officials who will-"

"Shit, he really doesn't get it," remarked Little John. "Kid, voting is great and all, but it doesn't guarantee that any of the candidates are going to give a shit about the people they serve. In a lot of places, there just aren't any good options. Hell, in this town, anybody who would want to challenge John Norman is either paid off or scared off."

This was news to Double-D. Although he could probably list all of the presidents and vice presidents of the United States in chronological order, he didn't actually know too much about how politics worked in reality. "B-but surely there's someone who can run for mayor who's not bound in the clutches of corruption! An everyday citizen could-"

"An everyday citizen? Kid, do you know how much clout you have to have to get taken seriously on the ballot? Do you know how much election campaigns cost? And even if some random guy had a chance at taking on Prince John, they-"

"'Prince John'?" Double-D asked for clarification.

"That's what we call John Norman," said Robin.

"Because he's barely a mayor but he's bratty and whiny enough to be a spoiled little prince," explained John. "But yeah, kid, there's too many ways to cheat in politics, and even if there wasn't, what? You're gonna wait until November of next year to get elected? And then, like, what?, half a year after that to get sworn in? Push some new laws through the city legislature? If the lawmakers aren't already in your back pocket, that's gonna take forever, and again, who's to say it's gonna pass? Wait, hell, there's another thing! You'd have to find good people to replace a lot more people than just the mayor! The system's infected all the way up and down, and you'd have to-"

"Johnny, Johnny!" Robin cut him off. "I think he gets your point. You don't need to get so worked up over this."

Little John looked like his rant had made him feel exhausted. "Jesus, kid, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want to be the bad guy when I'm stealing shit from people, I don't want to be the bad guy when I'm in a fistfight, and I don't want to be the bad guy when I'm talking to some kid I only met a few times. But… I need to say, kid. Me and Rob were really putting ourselves out there by asking you guys to join us, because the rich people are getting meaner and we could really use some help. Then you guys respond worse than we ever coulda imagined when we took a risk and asked you, and quite frankly, that made me lose my goddamn mind. And I know how fucked up it is that I put my life on the line every day, running from bullets and shit, and this is the thing that gives me anxiety, but-"

"'Running from bullets'!? How daredevilish are your exploits!?"

"You see? There ya go. We thought you kids would be up for something exciting - something fulfilling - but I guess we got a really bad read on you. And like the poor people downtown'll tell you, nothing brings out the worst in you than when you really need help and the people you ask for it from tell you no."

"Can I say something?" asked Robin. "Double-D… going back to the whole idea of fixing everything… John and I don't pretend to have a long-term solution. What we do first and foremost is a short-term solution to curbing misery. If we find a way to use our tactics to scare all the politicians in this town straight so that they'll never be corrupt again-"

"Which we almost did a few years back, before something out of our control happened!" Little John interjected. "But you suburban kids probably never heard about it because Prince John was so embarrassed that he paid off all the newspapers and TV stations not to talk about it."

"So if you didn't hear it straight from a Nottingham native's mouth, you probably never heard of it at all. Do you know what we're referring to, Eddward?"

Edd shook his head.

"Ed, Eddy?"

They shook their heads.

"It's amazing the difference two sides of a forest can make," Robin remarked. "But Double-D, in many ways I admire you. You seem like you would much rather fix this problem from the inside and without breaking any eggs. I wish - I wish - I had the mind and patience to do that, and I'm sure Little John does, too."

"Damn straight, I wish I could work miracles like that."

"But our flaw, Double-D, is that we're just too impatient. People need help now, and as Little John said, I just can't wait for political change to come about organically. You know, Eddward, I was like you once. I was raised to be studious, straight-laced, polite… but above all, I was bred to be unrebellious. I was told to always follow the rules, as I could trust that the rules were the rules for a very good reason." Robin called upon his training as an actor and put up a dramatic pause to evoke the feeling of internal conflict and anguish. "But then I saw that that was not the case. And at the time, it ruined me. It made me wonder if everything I was built up to be was for the wrong reasons, to keep me a cog in a system that isn't necessarily broken so much as it is being used for ill-begotten means. I really do hope you never have such a moment of realization, Eddward. I hope you can maintain your innocence. Because you're a good lad, Eddward. And the ferocity you showed when you tried to defend the straight-laced life you've always known? If we could channel that to defend the poor? Oh, we'd be set! But I can't force you to do something you're not comfortable with if you have good reasons to not be comfortable with it. That's not who we are."

"You're not comfortable forcing me to join your rascalry but you're comfortable forcing people to give your their money!?" Double-D shot back.

"A fair point! Imagine if we had your cleverness on our side! Maybe you can be the cunning one and Little John can be the strong one, and I'll simply be the one who isn't the best at anything but keeping the group's cohesion together!"

Off to the side, Eddy felt a strange resonance with that statement.

"Double-D, I've rambled long enough. I just want to end by saying this: I - we - have a moral compass, and we're trying to follow it where it leads us. We understand if you don't agree with it, but we only ask that you respect that we're doing our best to be the best men that we can be."

Edd recognized that there was nothing else he could say to sway them, so he tried to be the bigger man. "I do not agree with your worldview or tactics, Mr. Hood, though I will dignify that you are doing what you believe to be the right thing."

"Excellent. I'm glad we could have this talk."

"So is that a hard no from all of you?" asked Little John. He looked to Ed and then to Eddy. "How about you two? You guys haven't said much."

"Oh! Uh, just, uh… just listenin'!" Eddy said. "But, uh… I'm kinda still confused about the bow and arrow and the, uh…"

"The big fuckin' stick?"

"Uh, yeah, that!"

"What can we say?" said Robin. "We prefer them. They give us a distinct style that nobody else can copy."

"Doesn't that make you stick out like a sore thumb?" Eddy asked.

"In some ways, absolutely, but in other ways, you can't hear these from miles away like you could a gunshot."

"Besides, guns and bullets are too easy to trace, and not much easier to find when you're wanted criminals," John added.

"And in the hands of experts like ourselves, a bow and a staff can scare the bad guys, maybe hurt them if we need to, but not quite kill them. We don't want to do that."

"Like we said, we're not evil," said John. "I actually used to have a bow, too, but it broke and we've never had a chance to get me a new one. Maybe we could find one when we're finding something you guys can use?"

"Oh, don't worry about us," said Double-D insolently, "we're not interested, now are we, Eddy?"

Eddy was lost in thought. He was imagining himself doing such things, robbing people with outdated weaponry and then being exalted as a hero for it. He wasn't too keen on actually doing it - again, this could all be bullshit - but it was an interesting thought to ponder. Although he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something ridiculous about running around with a bow and arrow and acting like a hero. Not because it was inherently shameful, but because it was reminiscent of something else that teenage boys would typically find shameful.

"Hey!" Eddy exclaimed. "You guys are kinda like, uh… wha-what's that story that they turned into a Sidney movie?"

Eddy knew exactly which film from the ubiquitous family-movie studio's animated canon he was thinking of, but it wasn't cool for teenage boys to like Sidney movies. According to any teenager in America, the best way to dispel rumors that you like something uncool is to feign ignorance of it altogether.

"Where they're running around with bows and arrows in, like, Old-Timey Land?" Eddy continued, hoping someone else would fill in the blanks.

Ed didn't know which Sidney movie Eddy was referring to, because even as a young child, Ed had always preferred watching scary movies and paranormal TV shows on cable.

"And they live in the woods because they're outlaws?" Eddy continued still. "But they're supposed to be the good guys because, um, the government is corrupt or something?"

Double-D did know what mythos Eddy was referring to, but he didn't want to say it. His embarrassment had nothing to with adolescent insecurities like it did with Eddy, but more-so that he was afraid that having a knowledge of animated films marketed toward young children would conflict with his reputation as the intellectual one. Or at least that's what Double-D would tell himself. The fact of the matter is that he had a history with that movie and he didn't dare speak its name.

Eddy was regretting ever saying anything. "And in the Sidney movie they're all humans for some reason?"

Oddly enough, it was the adults who recognized which children's movie the children were confused about.

"Do you mean the legend of Adam Bell?" asked Robin.

"Yeah, that's it!" said Eddy, relieved to be relieved.

"Yeah, who could forget ol' Adam Bell?" asked Little John. "I mean, I never actually got to see the cartoon movie because my dad didn't want me watching kid stuff like that, but I remember when it came out when I was a little kid. Everybody knows the story of Adam Bell! A timeless classic, cartoon or not!"

"Of course!" added Robin. "I myself wasn't old enough to remember it when it was new, but I saw it on re-releases, and a few years after that, I saw it on tape when VCRs started coming about!" While Robin's nuclear family wasn't quite moneyed enough to acquire a VCR when they first became widely available in the early 1980s, Robert and his family were, and as a frequent guest of the Scarlett house, young Robin had full access to their collection of children's movies; Sidney's Adam Bell was one of those movies, probably one of his childhood favorites, and if Robin ever found out that the date that film debuted in Los Angeles was also the date Robin himself was born in Loxley, he would find that to be a very pleasing coincidence.

Now Robin remembered the first few times he sat down and watched a movie on videocassette at the Scarlett house, circa 1982, his toddler half-brother Will sat next to him on the oversized seat under an afghan blanket, and he remembered how the creeping discomfort of being a stranger in his illegitimate father's house was assuaged by the warm presence of the young boy who had always adored Robin and seemed to know from the second he laid eyes upon him that Robin was his brother. He remembered how so many moments that he shared with Will back home in England were tarnished by Robert's presence as he shuffled them through no-nonsense aristocratic activities like banquets, balls, low-velocity yachting, highly-supervised sword-fighting practice, the aforementioned etiquette classes that Will refused to even attend, and other activities hostile to the young mind and spirit, and yet he found himself thinking that maybe this made him appreciate more of the rare moments when they just got to be normal kids together, whether that was kicking a football around, splashing around in Robert's pool, playing unsupervised with plastic toy swords, or just running through the Scarletts' enormous garden, or even just sitting down to watch a cartoon movie together, unbothered by the adults who didn't understand them as they sat alone in a spare room, the eight-and-a-half-year-old's arm around the three-and-a-half-year-old's shoulder to keep him feeling safe in the room that was dark except for the fantastic technicolor coming from the grainy screen and the light seeping in from the gray English Sunday afternoon outside the window.

Splendid, now Robin was sad all over again, and for the second time today over Will specifically. But this was no time to show it. He made a mental note to stare wistfully into space while pondering whether he should lament that he didn't have more innocent moments like that with his brother or be grateful that he had just enough to appreciate how special they were. Now it was time to go back to educating a bunch of Yankees on English culture.

"Yes, I may have taken some inspiration from Adam Bell. I confess," Robin continued. "The stories of him and William of Cloudsley and Clym of the Clough running around Inglewood Forest outside of Carlisle and raising hell for one hell of a good cause… who wouldn't find that almost romantic? You boys must remember what a strong part of my country's culture the legend of Adam Bell is, so it mustn't surprise you too much that the stories of him would always be in the back of my mind!"

"My sister Sarah doesn't like that movie because she thinks it's weird that they're all humans," Ed chimed in. Meanwhile, Double-D - still in Ed's arms for lack of a better place to be - was trying to avoid eye contact with anybody until the conversation went in a different direction. Suffice it to say that the topic was doing nothing to assuage Edd's internal conflict about his perceptions of good and evil.

"You guys really run around with a bow and arrow and never get caught?" asked Eddy.

Robin began to reaffirm their story. "Lad, you'd be surprised by how well we-"

And then, an epiphany came to him.

"...You know what?" Robin asked. "I think actions speak louder than words. Little John, tell me if this is a good idea: lads, I invite you all to come witness us in action - from a safe distance, of course! We aren't going to throw you into the fire right away - hell, we'd rather keep you away from the fire for now. We just want to show you who we are, what we do, and what we're all about. Perhaps that will help to better develop your opinion of us. After all, there's only so much we can convey with words; there's so much more we can show you by showing you! Little John, am I crazy?"

"I mean, you are crazy, but that's a good idea!" John answered. "It'll be like a ride-along!"

"Precisely! So, are you boys willing?"

And once again, he was met with blank stares.

"Oh, I'm sorry to put you on the spot like that, boys," said Robin. "I'm just excited to get the chance to-"

"I'll do it."

"Huh- what?"

"I'll do it," Eddy repeated. "I want to know who you guys really are."

"In that case, Eddy, we'd be happy to show you!" Robin beamed, pleasantly surprised that the nastiest one of the boys was the first to come around to their way of thinking.

"Um, Ed? Mr. Hood? May I have a moment to speak with Eddy?" asked Double-D.

"Most assuredly. We're not the kind to keep friends apart."

"Um, Ed, could you let me d-? Oof!" Double-D landed with a thump, then made his way over to Eddy, who was still standing coolly in the corner, not making any effort to meet Edd in the middle.

"'Sup, Sock-Head?"

"Eddy, have you lost your mind!?" Double-D said in what he thought was a quiet enough voice.

"You know what, Edd? I didn't lose my mind. I lost my confidence in our group dynamic."

Double-D noticed Eddy called him Edd instead of Double-D again, and that the usual franticness in Eddy's voice was once again absent.

"I get it if you don't want to take these guys up on their wacky-ass offer, Edd," Eddy continued, "but I need a change of pace. Let me make my own decisions and see the world outside of this cul-de-sac. If it sucks, I'll let you know and I'll come back to you, but we're gonna be adults before you know it, Double-D, and as much as I don't want to waste my youth, I don't want to be unprepared for being a grown-up, either. I want to live now, Edd; I'm tired of waitin'. Join me or don't."

And Double-D wanted to knock some sense into his little fox friend, but between all the absurd revelations and traumatic talking points of the day, he just had no mental energy left. In fact, as he often did when his brain was tired, he found himself vulnerable to Eddy's persuasion.

Ed lumbered over behind them. "What's going on, guys?"

Eddy didn't answer. Double-D did answer, but he didn't answer Ed.

"Very well, then. Where are we off to first?" the wolf asked the elder fox and bear.

"Wait, you!?" asked Little John, who was just now standing back up off the ground. "I-I mean, you're still welcome to come, we just… didn't think you wanted to."

"We stick together. It's an Ed thing," Double-D replied resolutely. "Your end of the deal is to give us that adventure you promised, and don't make us regret it."

"Adventure!?" asked Ed. He didn't care what path he went down as long as Edd and Eddy were there to walk down that path with him.

"Yes, Ed," said Eddy calmly, pleasantly surprised by Double-D's resolve. "Adventure."

"So again: where are we going first?" asked Double-D firmly.

"Lads, lads, we're glad you've decided to accept our invitation," said Robin, trying to conceal his own surprise at Double-D's decision. "But we're going to need some time to get ready. How about you boys head home, have a nice lunch, and meet us back here in, oh, three hours' time?"

"And change into some clothes you won't mind getting dirty," said Little John. "Not because we're gonna throw you in a mud pit or something, but because we're gonna be walking straight through Sherwood. Come to think of it, bring some walking shoes, too."

"In three hours' time, we'll be here," said Double-D, and he started to walk off.

"Hey, one quick question," said Little John. "Just in case this one tattle-tales on us -" - he was pointing to Double-D - "-what's his address?"

"What?" asked Edd, his determined countenance vanished.

"201 Rethink Avenue. In Peach Creek," said Eddy with a smirk, and Edd gave him a dirty look.

"Rethink Avenue?" asked Little John. Robin shared his confused look at the quirky label.

"Yup!" said Eddy. "A block over from to Reimagine. His house is at the corner with Harris Street."

"...That's a stupid name, but I won't forget it."

Eddy walked past Ed and Double-D, and the other two followed him back to the cul-de-sac.

"See ya later, Future Me and Future Eddy!" hollered Ed.

"See you soon!" bid Robin.

"Later, bucko," said Little John; as soon as they were gone, he looked at Robin. "Jesus fuck, those kids have issues."

"As people, or with each other?"

"Shit, both."

"Well, you must remember Johnny, we were very lucky to find each other," Robin said as he made his way back toward the van. "It's not terribly common for two capable specimens to also be compatible as business partners."

"And friends," John added, just in case Robin wasn't going to.

"And of course as friends."

Without telling one another to do so, they both started wiping off the glass shards from the mattress.

"...This isn't gonna end well, is it?" asked John. "With the kids." And with us two, he thought.

"We'll have time to plot our course," said Robin without looking at him. He seemed vaguely morose again.

"Rob, why do people always think I'm stupid?"

"Because people are quick to judge," Robin answered, still not looking at John. "You needn't worry; you're doing everything right. I and everyone else who cares about you knows you're as smart as they come."

Yeah, but who cares about me besides you at this point? John thought. "Sure, but is there something I could be doing differently? So people aren't so quick to judge?"

"You're doing everything right, Little John." He still wasn't looking at John as he shoveled the glass bits off to the side with his shoe.

"Do I need to start speaking like you? Because the wolf kid seemed pretty hung up on the way I talk. Or do I need to lose my accent? But then ya say my accent isn't even that strong anymore."

Robin stopped fussing with the broken glass and gave a broken look to his friend.

"Do you remember the other night when I told you that I liked you just the way you are?"

Little John suddenly stopped worrying about his public image. "Rob… you okay, buddy?" Upon seeing Robin's face, John now felt a tad alarmed, and regretted that he may have come across as whiny in his last few sentences.

"I'm just not completely over last night," Robin confessed. "And some things said kind of made it worse."

"Like what?"

"It's too much to explain."

"Do you want to talk about it while we go look for breakfast?"

"I actually ask that I can have a few moments alone," Robin said as he opened the side door and started pulling out his bow and quiver. "I'll go look for food while you stay here and keep watch over the van."

"Robin, no, I can't leave you alone out there."

"I need to recharge for a moment, Johnny. Usually talking to people makes me feel lively, but that conversation just made me feel… exhausted."

"Then you should stay here and go back to sleep while I go get food."

"I recharge well in the presence of nature, Little John, you know that."

"Are you sure you don't want to talk about anything? Because it kills me to see you like this. This isn't the Robin Hood I know."

Don't remind me, Robin thought. "You won't have to see me like this if you give me a bit to get this out of my system."

Little John breathed for a moment. "Goddammit, just be careful, Robin."

"You know I always try to." Then Robin went back into the van and retrieved the pencil pouch. "Actually, I would like to talk, but... with some people I haven't spoken to in a while. Do you mind if I borrow this?"

Little John understood. "Alright, but just don't lose it." Aw, hell, it's mostly your friends' stuff in there anyway, he thought.

"Thank you, Johnny. I shan't be long."

"You sure you can reach the berries off the branches by yourself?" John asked, hoping to add some levity to the conversation.

"I'll find a way." Robin was unfazed.

"Rob, seriously, man, remember: I love ya, brother."

"And I don't ever want you to feel like I don't reciprocate that." Though I really wish I thought as highly of myself as you do, Little John. "But right now I just need a bit to myself. To think."

"Don't do anything stupid, Rob. And if I hear any screaming, I'll come runnin'! Y'understand?"

"Neither of those will be a worry, Little John. But I appreciate your concern." And Robin walked off toward Sherwood Forest alone.

As he crossed the Peach Creek and waded his way into the thicket of trees, Robin thought about what to say when he had a moment alone with his photos of Marian to ask for her guidance and forgiveness, and then what to say when he was alone with his photos of Will to ask for his guidance and forgiveness, and then if he felt he had time, he might call upon his mother or Oliver as well. He wanted to think he was asking them for a sign in what to do next, and although he knew he would get no answers, he wanted to at least verbalize his fears and concerns and regrets to the people he wished he could tell them to.

But as he stepped over broken branches and exposed roots, he thought of all the great relationships he had squandered because he was too impatient, or too reckless, or too daring, or too foolish, and he thought that if Woodland's forces popped out of the wildwood and shot him dead right there, he certainly wouldn't be happy with that arrangement, but it would be fitting, as it would bring another premature end to his last surviving bond with another living being.