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.

14. Show and Tell, Pt 1

14. "Show and Tell, Pt. 1"

On the way into town, they told them everything. It was a long walk and they had plenty of time to kill, so they told them everything.

They knew it was just making all of this an even bigger risk by bringing some random kids along on their exploits - suburban kids that they couldn't even assume came from backgrounds that would make them sympathetic to the cause, as they could have reasonably assumed of kids from the West Side of the city. But their entire lives were a risk, and everything they'd done for years was a risk, and the coin came up heads often enough for them to still survive, and they were witty and resourceful enough to deal with the consequences when it came up tails. Besides, they thought that maybe if they gave a more detailed version of their stories, it might make it easier for the three kids to warm up to them. But just to be safe, they kept all the other characters in their story nameless. And they had the bottle of chloroform on their persons just as well.

So they told them everything. They told them how Robin had moved to the States with His Girlfriend about thirteen years prior to attend theatre school in New York with her and support her in her dream of becoming a Broadway actress, and maybe try to cut it himself, as he had grown up with an adult in his life who had instilled an appreciation for acting in him. They told them how the summer after they graduated, they realized life in New York was just too expensive for them, so they reluctantly moved to Philadelphia, but Philadelphia was also too expensive, so the next spring they moved down to Washington right around the time that Robin's Girlfriend's Uncle (who was really her godfather and an old friend of her family's from back home in England, but for the sake of convenience and sentimentality, he was her uncle) was moving from Delaware to DC to begin a new career path; Robin and His Girlfriend received heavy financial support from Robin's Girlfriend's Uncle as they shared a two-bedroom apartment with Robin's Girlfriend's Scottish Friend Whom She Met at College in New York, as well as Robin's Half-Brother, who had had harbored a weird romanticized image of the United States for most of his teenage years, and who had turned eighteen the previous July and dropped out of his first semester of university a few months after that. In Washington, Robin and His Girlfriend struggled to find work - they couldn't get acting roles because they were both too tall to play their own species but too small or misshapen to play any others, and they couldn't get regular jobs because they had Bachelor's degrees in Theater. But while they were in that funk, Robin tried to make himself feel better about his predicament by telling himself something: he told himself that he was still better off than a lot of the impoverished people that inhabited the nation's capital. His strategy to tell himself this absolutely backfired. What started out as a way of making himself feel better about being stuck in life wound up just making himself feel bummed out and even a little bit angry, knowing that there were so many people whose lives were even crummier than his own. He also noticed that here in Washington, D.C., a notoriously rough town for those who weren't politicians or their families, the poverty seemed to be even worse than it was in Philadelphia, much worse than in New York, and nothing like he'd ever seen in the major cities back in North-Central England.

They told them, however, that things came to a head when, after about a year of living in Washington, Robin and His Girlfriend and His Girlfriend's Uncle went to Nottingham to visit His Girlfriend's Uncle's Family, minus His Girlfriend's Uncle's Arsehole Brother, who didn't want to see them and who Robin had never even met (the Eds didn't understand why Robin mentioned this part, precisely as Robin hoped). There Robin saw that the situation in Nottingham was even worse than it was in Washington. Many of the poor people there were two steps past Anger in the Stages of Grief and were now well into Depression. Topping it all off was that it seemed to stem from the Mayor, John Norman; after his beloved brother left office after being elected to Congress a year and a half prior (the Eds still didn't seem to make the connection to Robin's Girlfriend's Uncle), the city's political machine left his idiot brother as the only viable candidate. In a year's time, "Prince John" had implemented a bunch of laws that were actively hostile to the poor and beneficial to the rich, the latter of whom Prince John desperately wanted to rub shoulders with. Among many other things, the Prince Mayor's favorite method of oppression was dicking around with tax rates and coming up with insipid and obscene explanations for how he thought they would make life better for everyone.

They told them how seeing this just made Robin angrier. It got to the point that when they were back in DC, Robin needed to privately confide in His Girlfriend and tell her that it all made him just want to break stuff. That was when she told him that while his anger and frustration were justified, that anger in and of itself was not going to solve anything. Anger toward the bad people was destructive, she said, and if he wanted to make the world a better place, he needed to channel that anger into compassion for the good people being victimized and do something constructive for them. They told them that she couldn't have known what she had just inspired in him.

They told them that that was precisely when Robin decided to leave civilian life behind and start taking the retribution of karma into his own hands. He told His Girlfriend; she felt like he was abandoning her over a problem he couldn't solve; he felt like her feelings were valid but that he just needed to try to do what he could to fix things or he'd never be able to live with himself; she conceded that he seemed genuine in having a need to serve his conscience; he pleaded with her to forgive him; she said there was nothing to forgive, and they told them that to this day, Robin didn't know whether she was truly at peace with his decision. Nevertheless, they said their teary goodbyes, Robin told His Rascally Half-Brother that he couldn't come with, and he filled up a backpack with all that that he needed to survive in the woods for a few days and hopped on a one-way Greyhound bus over the Chesapeake Bay to Nottingham, DE.

They told them that while all of this was happening, Little John was losing his goddamn mind trying to come to terms with the fact that he was now thirty, which was being made harder by the fact that he was now closer to thirty-one. Having left Somewhere Ambiguously in the American South when he was eighteen to get away from his fucked-up family and neighbors, he found himself twelve years later living in an apartment in Harbeson with some older dude who the kids these days would probably describe as a "player", and only ever having held odd jobs such as fast-food lackey, warehouse sorter, security guard of things and places that weren't really all that important, budget construction worker, gravedigger, a whole lot of work down by the docks, and other lowly positions that wouldn't pay the bills if he wanted to live a life strangers would respect. It wasn't just that Little John didn't have a fulfilling career; he also didn't have a fulfilling personal life. Between friends, family, and females, he had none. He had told himself for years that it was because he was always working his stubby little tail off to survive and didn't have time to develop any kind of relationships with any kind of people, but he was starting to think that something wasn't right about that - either that was no way to live, or he was doing something wrong, possibly both. He was starting to think that his upbringing - upon which he would not elaborate - had made him not only cold and hardened, but also kind of afraid of people, which caused him to act even colder and hardened-er so people wouldn't think he was a pussy. Suffice it to say that whenever His Older Womanizing Roommate would offer to hook him up with one of the large-species ladies he had known-in-the-biblical-sense who was looking for a serious relationship, John would put on an act of being a laconically disinterested brute as a cover for the fact that he had absolutely no idea how to reply. In short, Little John was angry, not just in his perpetual outward attitude, but angry at the factors that had contributed to his perpetual outward attitude of anger. Note that at this point, Little John made deliberate eye contact with Ed, Edd, and Eddy each to make sure the teenage boys weren't silently laughing their asses off over his inability to get laid; if they were, they stopped when John looked at them. Also note that, in an effort to not look even more troublingly insecure in front of these kids he was trying to recruit, he completely skipped the part where his medically-absurd growth pattern coupled with the size obsession ingrained in the culture of his species (and arguably the culture of society in general) had made him feel like he was a decade behind in life and had done severe damage to his psyche that had healed significantly but not completely and possibly never would; this was certainly one of those times where Little John would agree with Robin that it was best to pretend not to have problems to avoid people losing confidence in you.

They told them how John was blowing off steam one day by walking his usual route through Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve, which was well off the designated path. When he came to one particular fallen dead tree that formed a bridge over the Peach Creek, he saw that there was some fox already crossing it - an exceptionally tall one, but still a little guy in the grand scheme of things. Already pissed at the world, John was in no mood to wait for this fox to cross, so he started his own way across it as though Robin wasn't even there. They told them that Robin had just arrived in Sherwood a few days earlier and was suppressing his burning urge to start robbing people until he got a camp set up in the forest because he thought that was the responsible thing to do, but now here along came some random brown bear who looked like he was aiming to fuck with him just for the hell of it, and Robin didn't need any more obstacles like this, so he didn't back down. They got within a few feet of each other before they both stopped, and as much as John just wanted to plow this fox over, he instead asked him why he didn't have the good sense to get the hell out of his way. Robin said he was there first. Their passive aggression escalated into active aggression, and it led to John leaning down and breaking two huge branches off the tree's carcas. He tossed one to Robin and challenged him to a duel; a few minutes later, John's ass was in the water, and now the big little fox was looking down at him. The fact of the matter was that while Robin was indeed fairly decent at old-fashioned stick-fighting as a consequence of his upbringing, he had mostly played good defense against a bear who was usually very good at old-fashioned stick-fighting (also as a result of his upbringing) but wasn't used to going up against someone that much smaller than himself and just didn't know how to accommodate for Robin's lower center of gravity.

They told them that despite John being mortified, he could see that the fox was handling his victory rather graciously. He was speaking of it like it had been a cheery spar between friends, and he almost seemed apologetic for John's predicament. The way Robin was acting would seem condescending and sarcastic coming from most anybody else, but to John, he seemed genuine, or at least damned good at faking it. Robin offered John a hand to help him back up - not expecting him to actually accept it, fully anticipating the bear would just swat his hand away and knowing damn well that he couldn't pull this guy's weight back onto the bridge - and John took his hand, promptly pulling Robin into the water with him. Little John, moved by how this Englishman seemed to be trying really hard to be kind to him like nobody else in his life had ever tried (especially notable considering that they were in a violent conflict mere minutes prior), remarked that now they were even, and that they probably both deserved to wind up in the water as a price for their pride. Robin agreed. They got out of the water, introduced themselves, and as soon as Robin got the read that Johnny was a good candidate, he popped the question; Little John answered by asking if he could run back home for a few hours to grab the bare necessities of life before coming back to Sherwood. With John's help (and some housewares from his apartment), the two finished setting up the camp that same night. Robin and John briefly paused the story to have a small argument over which of them had been the one to invoke the old adage that "a fox and a bear make a great pair," and which of them had been the one to quote Casablanca and say, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

They told them that they knew they needed more people, but didn't know how to find them. Then they got very, very lucky. First, Robin's Half-Brother appeared out of thin air, looking completely knackered after wandering all of Sherwood for a day and a half to find Robin. Apparently the little hellraiser had remembered he was an adult now and he didn't have to stay back in Washington with Robin's Girlfriend and Her Scottish Friend Whom She Met at College in New York if he didn't want to. Robin's Half-Brother was also extremely tall for his species, a genetic gift from their common parent, but Robin still cleared him by a solid number of inches, which visually suited Robin's Half-Brother's role as the quintessential rambunctious younger sibling. He was a resolute rapscallion whose only tangible goal was to shake things up. He desperately wanted to be a righteous outlaw; it was the perfect combination of the badass he wanted to be with the positive force he wanted to be in the world. Robin - who wouldn't even turn twenty-five himself until that November - really didn't want to put his newly-adult little brother in harm's way, but he could see that His Half-Brother wasn't taking no for an answer. Given the circumstances, Robin figured he shouldn't want to deny him anyway.

They told them that they next encountered a character whom they referred to as The Rooster; even though he was not actually a talking chicken, they would not disclose his true species. This guy had gotten back from a tour of duty in the Middle East earlier in the decade and his head still wasn't back on right. He'd had trouble finding a job when he returned home to Oklahoma, so he said screw it and took his guitar and his Ram pickup truck and went off to see the country, making just enough money playing songs and doing odd jobs to pay for food and gas. During this time, his bond with the common people grew and his opinion of the government diminished. When Robin, John, and Robin's Half-Brother met him, he was playing his guitar while sitting on a log near the edge of Sherwood about a thousand feet from the parking lot. And he was playing well; The Rooster offhandedly mentioned that his uncle was a fairly-well-known country musician, somebody who Robin and His Half-Brother had never heard of but who Johnny the Southerner knew well (Little John noticed when he mentioned this that the three suburban kids didn't seem curious to know who the country musician was, so he didn't even offer to tell them). The four of them talked, The Rooster explained that he was feeling lost and disillusioned, and Robin said the magic words. The Rooster accepted immediately, but had qualms about what to do with his truck, which might betray his secret new residence. They tried to navigate the truck toward the Major Oak to use as a multipurpose room and storage implement, but there simply weren't any gaps in the trees wide enough for it to fit through, so they just ripped the license plates off of it and pushed it into the deepest part of the creek.

They told them that the last major member was a guy they called the Friar because of his religiosity, his tattered clothes like those of a monk who'd committed to a life of poverty, and the unfortunate bald spot on his head; again, they did not clarify his species. The Friar was a homeless navy reject who was walking around the Georgetown neighborhood when he needed to sit down on the sidewalk for a second and rest, seeing as he had some trouble carrying his own mass for long periods of time - in a world where the old joke is that the hyperobese falsely blame their condition on some ambiguous disorder, The Friar swore that the reason he maintained his size on a homeless man's diet was because he really did have an issue with his thyroid; this would be confirmed to the rest of the Men by a doctor years later. But on that day, the four Merry Men stumbled upon him as they were on their way to the East Side to go get some goodies, and he asked them if they had any spare change. They told him that they didn't actually have anything on their person at the moment, but they were about to go get some, and soon enough they would be sharing it with him and all the other needy people of Nottingham. The Friar asked how they were going to get it. They told him in no uncertain terms that they were just going to go rob some rich people. The Friar asked how they were planning to do that. They told him that they would be more or less playing it by ear: if they saw a pocket to pick, they'd pick it; if they saw a car to jack, they'd jack it; if they saw a house to break into, they'd ransack it. Robin and company made it clear that they weren't proud of their methods, but they didn't have any better ideas for how to fix the situation in Nottingham, and that the four of them agreed that action is better than inaction. The Friar agreed that good action gets stuff done better than sitting around and complaining, but bad action could make things worse, and he then asked if they had any weapons on them. They said not really, all they had were a few pocket knives, though they agreed that bad action was worse than no action and they didn't want to preemptively hurt people lest that make the situation worse, and if they had to play defense, they had fists for punching, teeth for biting, feet for kicking, and legs for running; if nothing else, The Rooster had a wrist slingshot with him. The Friar suggested they get some weapons anyway, and if they weren't comfortable with guns and switchblades, he knew where they could get something a bit more… classical. He was joking, but little did he know that he was talking to two foxes who were trained in various classical weapons, a bear who was itching to learn new skills so he could be more helpful and people would think he was more interesting, and a mammal called The Rooster who was down for anything. So The Friar told them that, as a consequence of living on the streets in this city for something like twenty years, he was privy to the fact that there was a rich guy in Long Neck who liked to collect medieval weaponry, and that the guy in question would probably be away from home for the rest of that afternoon. They went and loaded up on all that they could carry; everyone got at least one bow, staff, and sword, but of course everyone had their preferences: Robin with his bow, Robin's Half-Brother with a sword, John and The Friar with their staffs and The Rooster preferring to stick with his trusty slingshot. Maintaining such antique instruments while living in the elements for seven years would be a challenge, however, and now the bow and staff that the Eds saw in Robin and John's hands were two of the four remaining pieces of the collection - five if you include The Rooster's slingshot - and the other two (or three) had been taken out of commission for reasons that would soon be apparent. But seven years ago, the Merry Men were not thinking about the upkeep of their items, only that they may have just found their dorky-cum-badass calling cards, and since they'd be living in the woods without the distractions of modern diversionary entertainment, they would have plenty of time to practice their skills with them. They also told them one more thing about The Friar: it turns out having a guy with you who'd lived on the streets for two decades without succumbing to the elements in spite of an ambiguous medical disorder is a big help when you're making your home out in the wilderness.

They told them that they were then ready to begin their mission. They had a bit of a rocky start as lots of the people they were trying to help just thought they were weird, but eventually, after a little charming, the populace warmed up to them, and ultimately fostered a sort of symbiotic relationship: the Men would give the citizens the means to live under a corrupt city government, and the citizens would give the Men the means to live in the woods year-round.

They told them that after a year, things were going great. That second summer in their first full year - the recollection paused here to resolve some brief confusion over how the math of all of this worked, but it was resolved that since their anniversary was in May, the Men were now in their eighth summer after having just completed their seventh year last month - but that second summer may have arguably been their best. It wasn't just that that was the year that they established themselves as a force to be reckoned with, a guerrilla that struck fear in the hearts of those who ran Nottingham and its environs; it was also the year that the five of them had the most fun. They truly put the "merry" in "the Merry Men". They found joy in their work and fulfillment in their mission, and they revelled in their success; Robin noted that during this time - and he stopped to stress to the Eds that he had been young and stupid and impulsive and irresponsible for doing this - they even robbed the mayor's mini-mansion and left him taunting notes - on several occassions - signed with their real names, daring him to tell someone that he had been bested by a ragtag bunch of misfit bandits living in the woods. That first full year, which contained that second summer - the math was getting really confusing, but Rob and John agreed that it wouldn't sound natural to state the specific year every single time - that was also the time that the five of them got to fully enjoy one another's company. The previous year had been spent slowly growing on one another and working on their group cohesion; that year they finally achieved that true friendship and got to enjoy it. As for the next fiscal year, well…

They told them that the next year was the one wherein Robin's Half-Brother passed. At this news, Ed looked scared, Double-D offered his condolences, and Eddy simply demanded to know what happened (much to Double-D's annoyance). Robin said that while he would rather not talk about it, he did allow himself to state that it wasn't natural, but then he mused aloud that that probably wasn't a satisfying answer, and it might even scare the Eds off if they assumed that to mean that Robin's Half-Brother fell in the line of duty, to which Double-D allowed himself to indulge in some impoliteness himself and say that that was exactly what he was afraid of when he heard Robin say that. John offered to say it for Robin if Robin would allow it, and Robin allowed it, and Little John told them plainly that Robin's Half-Brother had committed suicide over guilt of doing inadvertent harm to a civilian. Robin did not look at anybody or anything in particular as John told them, and he had no more to say on the topic of his half-brother's demise.

They told them that before that happened, that summer was shaping up to be even better than the previous one. Obviously, that did not turn out to be the case. They kept up their act through the summer and into the fall, but Robin was badly shaken for a good long while. The other four just tried anything they could to help Robin moved past it, but - Little John told the Eds this part, and Robin didn't fight him over it - Robin just maintained a deep sense of personal responsibility for what happened to his brother; while all of the Men were familiar with the concept of survivor's guilt (and indeed, the other four weren't too cheerful those days, either), this was the most hardcore case of self-loathing over another's passing that any of them had ever seen, not because it made Robin unfunctional (which it didn't) but because of how long and how unflappably it persisted in someone like Robin who was usually impossibly resilient after his failures. At a certain point in the story, Robin asked Little John to move on from this detail, if for no other reason than because it might be boring and/or bumming out the boys; Little John clarified that he was just trying to instill confidence in them that Robin wasn't one to lose faith in himself, and John was trying to do this by over-elaborating on how shocking the exception-to-prove-the-rule was, but he acquiesced all the same. He wrapped up this chapter by mentioning that it was on Halloween of that year when Robin got his groove back. Halloween was usually a day that the Men took off, both because they didn't want to ruin the night for all the kids trick-or-treating in the event that the cops actually get a run on them and kill the mood by infesting the city looking for them, and because Halloween fell nicely between Little John's birthday in late October and Robin's birthday in early November precisely three weeks after John's, and therefore Halloween was always used as a joint celebration. That Halloween, some kids from the city - maybe third- or fourth-graders - actually wandered all the way into Sherwood, taking advantage of their lack of adult supervision to go and hang out with their local heroes. But they got lost and quickly got tangled with some malicious high-schoolers from the upper-class suburbs who were in the woods to get intoxicated. The Merry Men (themselves a little buzzed from their merrymaking) heard the children screaming from a mile away - Robin always did have impeccable hearing - at which point they came running, scared the mean big kids off, got the kids home safe, and by the time the night was over, Robin offhandedly mentioned that he felt like he was "back." Something about saving those kids refreshed his sense of purpose.

They told them, however, that Robin's bouncing back wasn't going to save the state of the Merry Men. His confidence in Robin's leadership having slightly wavered that year, The Rooster started reading up on sociopolitical philosophy and ultimately started spending some time on his own to play music and contemplate what he really believed in. Meanwhile, The Friar, for his troubles, got Lyme disease. Evidently a tick had gotten stuck somewhere in his fur, bit down, and never let go. The Men were fortunate to know a few doctors who were sympathetic to their cause, and took him to one when his mysterious symptoms got worse. This was shortly after Robin's birthday, not even a few weeks removed from Robin's Halloween rebirth, and the Robin and John both had memories of watching the post-election brouhaha on the TV in The Friar's hospital room when the doctor walked in remarking that it was a miracle The Friar was still alive, not just because of the unchecked Lyme disease but because of the thyroid thing going untreated for decades, both of which were news to Robin, John, and The Rooster. Speaking of miracles, that winter was spent getting help from their civilian friends to forge some documents saying that The Friar had completed seminary training so he could live a safe life as a priest. The Friar would remain a close associate of the Merry Men, but now was most assuredly an auxiliary member, being too old and sickly to regularly engage in the kind of activities as he had for the last two years. The band was starting to unravel, but they weren't done yet.

They told them that that next year was one hell of a rollercoaster ride. It all started that May when Mayor Norman had the balls to bring himself to Sherwood Forest for what was advertised to be some press conference on environmentalism but was clearly supposed to be a poorly-planned ambush to get the remaining Merry Men. Not only did his guards fail to capture them; Robin and John (but not The Rooster, who at this point was disappearing to God-knows-where for days at a time) took the liberty of dressing up in drag and robbing the motorcade itself. It was easily one of their best hauls ever, and good timing for it, because the mayor had recently raised taxes again; Robin and John had long ago lost track of the timeline of which tax hikes Prince John had implemented and when, but they agreed this particular one must have been a property tax one, because Prince John was sending his highest-ranking officers around as tax collectors to personally repossess stuff from people who couldn't pay the new tax and couldn't afford a lawyer to step up in court and say "Your Honor, there's no way this shit can be legal." They specifically remembered a rabbit family - Robin immediately regretted letting their species slip, but he said whatever and moved on. The Mother Rabbit was a widow with a rabbit-y number of offspring, and when she couldn't pay up, a cop just swiped her newly-seven-year-old son's birthday money - oh yeah, did Robin forget to mention that the cop crashed the kid's birthday party? In any case, Robin showed up just as the cop was on his way out and decided to make it up to the Rabbit Kid by giving him his bow, arrow, and his bycocket hat; Robin clarified that a bycocket was the kind of feathered cap that they wore in Ye Olden Days and which Robin thought went quite nicely with his choice of weapon, and after picking up some nice green, yellow, and blue ones while restocking on arrows at a Renaissance Faire during the second summer, he and Little John wore them proudly and unironically for a few years before they all either got too tarnished or just sort of disappeared. Robin then apologized for going on a tangent about medieval hats - God, he loved those things, dorkiness be damned, he really thought he and John pulled them off well for two citizens of the new Twenty-First Century, and he might even go so far as to say that the presence of those hats correlated with the best times for the Merry Men - but he promised that the part about the gifted bow and arrow would be important later on.

They told them that after the motorcade robbery, Prince John was more hellbent than ever to get the Merry Men. Sometime shortly afterwards, a lightbulb went off in his head, and he decided to capture the criminal mastermind known for using a bow and arrow by setting up an archery contest. (Now Robin mentioned to the Eds that this wasn't the part where the bow and arrow was relevant, just in case that made things confusing; Robin was so used to spinning good yarns on the fly that he sometimes got tripped up when recalling the details of real events, and "impromptu nonfiction storytelling" was one of the few skills Little John consciously knew Robin was jealous of John having while Robin himself didn't.) Prince John spent a few months preparing and organizing the contest to get it the most exposure possible and to guarantee that the bandits would hear about it and be enticed into participating. He also had one of his favorite police lackeys taken off duty to train at archery for hours a day so that when the outlaw did show up, he would have to be at his best to outshine the officer… at which point his extraordinary skills would betray his identity, and then Mayor Norman could capture him in front of the whole populace of Nottingham and publicly declare the existence of the Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve bandits for the first - and last - time. A rather cogent plan, Robin and John must admit. Prince John, truly proving to the world that he really didn't understand the value of money, set the grand prize at $25,000, and while getting a chunk like that out of the city treasury was enticing enough, there was another reason why Robin wanted to throw caution to the wind and enter the contest anyway.

They told them that somewhere along the line, Robin and John got word that Robin's Girlfriend was in Nottingham. And she wasn't just visiting; she was in town for awhile, living with Her Scottish Friend Whom She Met at College in New York. And to put it bluntly, Robin was lovesick. (Little John remarked to the Eds that Robin that summer would spend more time than usual taking his bathroom breaks, if they knew what he meant, and each of the boys chuckled while Robin silently blushed, silently confessing to himself that John wasn't lying about that part.) Robin never stopped having feelings for her, but he had long since come to terms with the idea that he would never see her again. Now that he might feasibly see her again… hoo boy, he just couldn't think straight. He wanted so badly to reunite with her, but he got it in his head that they were done. A woman like Robin's Girlfriend was just too good to be in love with a vagrant criminal. Not to mention, the idea that she had been in town for a while by that point and hadn't come to find them when she surely would have known they were still there, well… they didn't know whether it was because she thought it was dangerous to go out in search of armed bandits, of if it was because she thought no self-respecting woman would go running blindly into the wilderness to find a guy who abandoned her several years prior, but either one was understandable. Just as Robin was about to uncharacteristically lose his composure again, Little John reminded him of something: he was Fucking Robin Hood. He was not only a risk-taker, but a risk-taker who knew how make his risks more likely to pay off. If Robin could handle a life of crime, he could handle speaking to his own girlfriend, and although Little John had never met Robin's Girlfriend, Robin certainly made it seem like his confidence was one of the things she found the most attractive about him (although, John quipped, Rob's dashing good looks probably helped; Robin then played up being flattered and they had a moment of playful friend-flirting with one another, which Ed and Double-D found amusing but Eddy found just a tinge uncomfortable to watch, just a tinge). In short, Little John argued that Robin going back to His Girlfriend was well worth the risk, and if his hypothesis was correct, the sheer act of doing it might guarantee its own success. Robin found himself agreeing.

They told them that it was as soon as this conclusion was reached that The Friar came out of the literal woodwork and arrived at the Major Oak to deliver news of the planned archery contest, and that Robin's Girlfriend, who had some connection to Prince John - Robin halfheartedly theorized that she may have been interning at City Hall or something but clearly didn't try too hard to come up with a concrete answer - was going to be there; in fact, there had been rumblings that Prince John's wacky ass actually planned to have part of the grand prize be a kiss from Robin's Girlfriend before some person or people stepped up and told him that treating a woman like a literal trophy probably wasn't a good idea in modern America. Robin immediately declared his intention to go to that contest and wipe the floor with everybody to impress His Girlfriend, and uttered a curse upon political correctness because he really wanted that kiss to be his prize, and maybe a little bit more, but he would find a way to get it anyway. Little John, meanwhile, cursed his ability to uplift his friend, now that it had just inspired him to go into a place armed to the teeth just to get some tail. But nevertheless, Robin broke the recollection for a second to express his gratitude to Little John for always knowing exactly what to say to make him feel better and always having the guts to say it, and although they both knew that Little John wasn't quite so confident in his propping-up skills as of late, they also both knew that those were outliers caused by excessively dark circumstances, and they both knew that Robin would never hold John's failures in these outlying instances against him, and they both knew that Robin didn't think there was anybody else on planet Earth who could do a better job being his hype-man than Little John, and they both knew that John wouldn't protest the compliment. Robin wrapped his arm around the bear's wide back as far as he could in a show of appreciation, and Little John pulled his big arm out from between himself and Robin and draped it over the fox's shoulder and pulled it in toward his torso and hip to reciprocate the sentiment, and walking a few feet behind them, Eddy - who was not offended per se by the goofy platonic play-flirting two minutes prior but nevertheless felt like he was witnessing something he was conditioned to see as taboo, almost like Kevin would materialize out of the ether and punch him in the stomach just for looking at it - felt a similar malaise as before, but this time it was out of uncertainty that he would ever share such fraternity as he was witnessing now with any other living person. Little did Eddy know that right next to him, Double-D was having similar thoughts about whether he would ever have such a real friend; Ed, for his part, was operating under the assumption that he already had such a bond with Eddy and Double-D, but they just chose not to express it in such ways as the elder bear and fox did.

They told them that if teenagers like themselves didn't have any recollection of a widely-publicized archery contest in the area a mere four years ago, it's because the marketing campaign was a flop and not a lot of the citizenry actually cared. Robin and John knew that at least one of their civilian friends theorized that even people who were casually interested in watching strangers shoot arrows at a canvas target would have gotten their fill from the Olympics the summer prior and wouldn't have much interest in watching amateurs and hobbyists do it to vie for a big chunk of wasted taxpayer money. That said, it wasn't like the event was abandoned or anything; it was just that the crowd was comprised of a few very specific factions: legit archery fans; the regular Ren Faire crowd; the mayor's goons who were there to capture the eventual winner; some rich folks - who were the closest thing Prince John had to friends (and who included a ridiculously-disguised Little John on a mission to butter the mayor up) - who had a personal desire to see this character apprehended; and people from the West Side who knew who the archer in the skinny panther costume really was.

They told them that the competition was actually pretty competent. A lot of the other entrants were hardcore hobbyists and Ren Faire regulars, and even one guy from New Jersey who had allegedly barely missed the cut for the Olympics the year before. Most surprising, however, is that the mayor's favorite cop - Robin and John still weren't giving any more specific identifiers than that - was giving the "panther" a run for his money. Apparently all that forced training was paying off, because this guy was routinely making shots within two inches of the bullseye. Robin was planning on sandbagging to quell suspicion, but at a certain point, he saw His Girlfriend in the crowd, and then all his inhibitions fell away; it was time to show off. Robin then made the conscious decision to sink every shot perfectly and proceeded to bumslay everybody. He was so consumed by pride that he completely forgot that this was exactly what Prince John needed to weed him out, despite Little John's attempts to convince the mayor that it was an unbelievable case of beginner's luck.

They told them that at a certain point, they held a tiebreaker between the obese cop and the malnourished panther. (Robin let the qualifier "obese" slip, and Double-D briefly entertained the thought that it might have been a certain officer he knew, but he dismissed this, thinking that his uncle surely lacked the discipline to become amazing at archery in a month, and Double-D told himself to be a polite and attentive listener and to go back to focusing on the adults' story.) The officer went first and nailed it perfectly; they broke out the tape measure and they literally could not perceive any variance between the point of impact and the geometric center of the target. They then proceeded to not actually remove the arrow from the board. The panther protested, the mayor's eccentric new pal protested, and even Robin's Girlfriend and many strangers in the crowd protested, but all were told to be adults and live with it. So Robin went ahead and shattered the officer's arrow, waltzed over toward the crowd with eyes locked on His Girlfriend (whose intuition made the panther's true identity no mystery), and asked for his prize while a large chunk of the crowd cheered him on, some even excited enough to be chanting his actual name. His victory lap did not last long.

They told them that it was a shitshow. They sort of glossed over the fine details, but they mentioned that Robin was disrobed and revealed, and the mayor was ordering his cops to shoot him in the head if he dared to move a muscle, but Little John "convinced" the mayor to change his mind with the help of a switchblade at his neck (at this point, Little John turned to the Eds and clarified - making eye contact with Double-D more than the other two - that this was an emergency action and that they never had premeditated intentions to kill anyone, and judging by the look on the wolf-boy's face, Johnny was glad he made that clear), and along with the objections from Robin's Girlfriend and many others in the crowd that they had precisely no evidence that this panther was a wanted criminal, Prince John actually told his cops to let him go outright. Then the crowd rioted anyway. Amid the chaos, there were many injuries, much broken glass, and a marriage proposal, which Robin's Girlfriend accepted on the spot. Robin clearly looked very content as he recalled this part, though he did confess that he had no idea if she would still honor their verbal engagement if she met him again today. That said, he did have a ring for her, fashioned out of a soft-stemmed flower, which he put on her finger as he showed her around Sherwood Forest that night, during which time they caught up, took in the moonlight, walked by the small waterfall, and just basked in the wonder of each other's presence. Robin didn't look at the Eds as he mentioned that he wished they would be lucky enough to know young love, thinking they were at that age where they may crave sex but couldn't appreciate romance, but he also avoided looking at Little John, who Robin was afraid might have a moment of intrusive thoughts about how he had not been so lucky to know such a thing and probably was now chronologically disqualified from ever experiencing it.

They told them that their tender moment was pleasantly interrupted by one of the quirkiest parties they'd ever been to. A bunch of people from the city had made their way out to the Major Oak for what they could only think to describe as an "urban hoedown," wherein a bunch of city dwellers who would typically not care for country and folk music danced, drank, and made merry to the songs played by Little John and The Rooster (who was kind enough to stop being AWOL for a few hours). Little John even sang a song mocking Prince John, which he and The Rooster (when he wasn't MIA) had secretly been developing in their heads for a few months by that point. This was an important detail because the song was actually a very catchy earworm, with Little John giving about half a dozen encores, and rumor had it that after a week's time it had spread so much that the mayor heard his assistant and the cop from earlier singing it to themselves in a false moment of privacy and damn-near cracked the officer over the head with his cane when he discovered them. The mayor, by the way, had probably spent the unclaimed prize money from the archery contest - and a lot more from both personal and private funds - to pay off all the media entities in town to just pretend the archery debacle didn't happen. He was now on a warpath, and the Men had to make something happen before something happened to them.

They told them that before they could make the first move against the mayor and his elite, he made a move against the people. Prince John implemented some "emergency tax" to remedy the city's sewage and drainage systems, which he claimed were still backed up after a tropical storm had brushed by coast two months prior in June - and to be fair, the sewers were still malfunctioning two months later… but only in the neglected parts of town. Therefore he only implemented the tax in the parts of town that needed fixing, and when the poor people couldn't pay up, he tossed them in jail for tax evasion. This included The Rooster, who was mistaken for a regular homeless man unaffiliated with the Merry Men while wandering aimlessly around Georgetown, and The Friar, who was the unfortunate one to answer the door at the clergy house when the tax collector/police officer came knocking; John Norman knew damn well that churches were tax-exempt, but he framed it as taxing the clergy as individuals instead of taxing a Catholic Church, just like how Protestant ministers have to pay civilian taxes. In fact, word on the street was that the mayor was trying to get The Friar the death penalty because he had just said fuck it and fought back against the cop at the door of the clergy house, and then they framed it as a much more extreme attack then that; depending on how thoroughly Prince John could talk up the court that oversaw his trial, there was a fair chance The Friar would actually get booked for a lethal injection. There were some rumblings that there wasn't really any plans to push for capital punishment, and that it was just a ruse specifically to lure Robin Hood and Little John to come bust The Friar out. Nevertheless, Rob and John - who were starting to come to terms with the fact that the Merry Men would ultimately boil down someday to just the fox and the bear who made a great pair - decided to stage a jailbreak.

They told them that Prince John's haughty laziness actually made it much easier for them. Because the city was taking its sweet-ass time processing its offenders, exactly zero of those arrested actually were sent to a full-fledged correctional facility, nor did any of them even see a judge for that matter. They were literally just being kept in the holding pen at the city police headquarters, all of them - dozens and dozens of men, women, and children whose parents and guardians were arrested (John Norman would later say to the only journalist with the balls to ask him that he thought keeping the kids with their parents was more humane than separating them and throwing them into foster care). Since the Paranoid Prince's mini-mansion was not even a block from the main precinct (a very deliberate design choice), only separated by the Peach Creek as it ran through that part of town on its way to the ocean, Rob and Johnny decided to perform double duty: Robin would loot the mayor's house while Little John freed the people. Simple.

They told them that they don't know exactly where it all went wrong. One moment, everybody from the mayor to the cop guarding the holding tank were fast asleep and it seemed like everyone was going to be home free, the next, everybody and their grandma was awake and trying to kill them. Robin said somberly that that was the closest he'd ever come to meeting his maker, and when he jumped in the creek to escape the guards' bullets and didn't come up from the water for what seemed like a solid minute, Little John - who had been watching from the banks of the creek along with the freshly-liberated Rabbit Kid, refusing to let their friend be left behind - certainly thought that Robin had finally learned the answer to the old question of what happens to our conscious minds after our bodies can't continue any longer. Little John had just turned his back to the water, overcome by grief and not knowing what on earth he was going to do with himself now, when the Rabbit Kid noticed some movement in the water. Little John said he had never felt such elation in his life. They all went back to Sherwood with the newly-freed citizens, and although all of them were physically exhausted, they had all found the strength to party for another sixty hours. The only thing that made this party worse than the previous one was that Robin's Girlfriend couldn't be there, because as somebody connected to the mayor, she was expected to help clean up the mess her secret fiancé had made. She was expected to leave town soon afterwards, and to date, Robin had never seen her again; the last thing they spoke of was the morning after the hoedown after the archery contest, when upon stating that she needed to get back to civilization, she realized that Robin's Half-Brother had been nowhere to be seen; Robin, not wanting to ruin their goodbye, sheepishly fibbed that His Half-Brother was captured somewhere along the line and now they had no idea where he was. Robin morosely mentioned that he still kicked himself every single day that his semi-permanent farewell to the love of his life was not only such a downer, but a lie at that.

As an aside, they told them that they would not expect the Eds to subject themselves to such danger as seen in the jailbreak… unless they really, really wanted to.

They told them that they specifically remembered that the jailbreak happened on a Thursday night going into the Friday morning after Labor Day. The city government spent Friday cleaning up the mess and covering up their embarrassment, took the weekend off to collect their thoughts, and announced on Monday that the emergency tax was cancelled, all the debts tied to it repudiated, and all the people apprehended "let go." Word around town was that Prince John was just one bad minute away from resigning for his own personal safety. Any day now and all of this could all be over. It seemed as though all that hard work, all the pain, all the sorrow, all the days and years of their lives sacrificed wholly in service of the common people, was about to pay off. And if things had been different, perhaps it all would have been worth it.

They told them that the boys probably remembered that Tuesday. Robin and John sure did. They were making their usual rounds, a bit more casually than usual since they believed their goal was in sight, when they realized that there were a lot of cops out for the morning rush hour, and that there were a few helicopters buzzing around. The first friendly civilian they saw flagged them down and told them in no uncertain terms that they'd best head back to Sherwood and take the day off, and probably a few more days after that. They politely ignored the citizen's implorations, but after three or four more people told them basically the same thing, they started to get the feeling that something wasn't right - not that those people were telling them what was up, because they didn't know much more than Robin and John did. The two of them went back to the Major Oak, only to find that The Rooster was there too, and he didn't know much more than they did. He had heard that there was another hurricane off the coast - but, like, way off the coast, like by Bermuda - and that the beaches were closed because of some nasty waves, and his best guess was that there was some weather-related mess, even though it had only drizzled a little bit before sunrise that morning. The three of them played cards, took turns reading a book out loud, practiced sparring, attempted writing some new songs, and quite frankly tried to stave off boredom. All the while, they kept hearing sirens in the distance, though the helicopters seemed to trail off throughout the day. Toward the evening, out of ideas for what to do, they just laid down in a clearing and stared at the clouds as they slowly turned orange. During this time, Little John had the thought that he couldn't see a single airplane in the sky, but Robin and The Rooster were talking about something else and John didn't know if it was actually that weird, so he didn't bother mentioning it; maybe he had just never noticed that there weren't any flight-paths over Sherwood. The next morning, the three of them went to pay a visit to The Friar to find out what the heck had happened. When he told them, they were in such disbelief that they went around to a bunch of their other civilian friends to ask them to corroborate the story. The Merry Men weren't just scared and heartbroken by the news of the events; they were also worried because they had no idea how this would affect them, and while they certainly didn't want to think such selfish thoughts after such an occurrence, the coming weeks, months and years would confirm their fears that they were, indeed, screwed.

Prince John, the sick fuck that he was, was more than happy to have a reason to kick government security into high gear. He petitioned the governor to send the Delaware National Guard to Nottingham so they could just sort of, you know, hang out, just to be around in case some people with "extreme" beliefs and "radical" values were to engage in behaviors that could be construed as an attack on the city and its people. While he didn't succeed in getting a militia to patrol the city, he still had plenty of excessive force to go around, and, shockingly, a scared and confused populace found themselves faintly supporting him; they were in no means in love with the guy, but terrible leadership was still better than no leadership, and now more than ever, the people really needed a leader. In this bizarre world where the poor of Nottingham found the tyrant to be somewhat tolerable, and where said tyrant was now justified in acting upon his paranoia in the name of protecting his people against a newfound evil, the Men understood that they now needed to mind their P's and Q's more than ever. What was probably the darkest day anyone alive had ever witnessed had given John Norman a new lease on life.

They told them that, if it wasn't already obvious, all of their progress was undone, all of their momentum was gone, and all of their hope seemed lost. They kept doing what they were doing, but much more carefully now; no more signed notes to the mayor, and no more of their fans shouting their names in the streets. "They" also started consisting exclusively of Robin and John. The Friar asked politely if he may be excused from service going forward, save for maybe some extraneous circumstances, and Rob and Johnny granted him his honorable discharge. As for The Rooster, it turns out that he really had done some thinking during his times away from the others, much of which turned out to have been spent in Zoar Park and Hollyville with people with big ideas, and somewhere along the line he had embraced no-shit, for-realsies anarchy, and not the "guy who holds radical beliefs and reads a lot of political literature and wears a lot of knit sweaters but is functionally harmless" kind of anarchism, but instead the "robbing the rich to give to the poor is great, but in the interest of remedying society, we can also go about destructively disrupting society in its present state as its own end, which will be effective in and of itself" kind, the "Weather Underground seemed like an upright bunch of kids, but they would have been better to distance themselves from statism" kind, the "liberals get the bullet, too" kind of anarchism. (Robin and John felt the need to spell out Alan's politics, just on the off chance that any of the boys identified as an anarchist and would be turned off by the insinuation that that was a bad thing to be, not because any of the Eds outwardly seemed like the kind who would, but because they were teenage boys, and Robin and John knew that there was always a chance that any given teenage boy in the United States could be the kind go around proudly calling themselves an anarchist without really knowing what that word meant.) The Rooster thought that the excessive patriotism in the aftermath of those dark days was grossly inappropriate and borderline evil, and he was legitimately pissed at Robin and John for not wanting to start breaking shit to get stuff done. The Rooster was genuinely confused by how they weren't on board, and he argued that the whole "rob from the rich to give to the poor" schtick was essentially anarcho-communism anyway. And Robin and John didn't really have a good rebuttal to that, because, as they told The Rooster on several occasions, they had never really thought of their actions through the lens of political theory, only through the lens of Good and Bad; they thought that it was Bad that people were being taxed to death in Twenty-First Century America, and they thought that they had found a way to do Good by toeing the line of "constructive action that will have a positive effect", whereas The Rooster's ideas struck them as "destructive action that will just make things worse". Indeed, when Little John straight-up told The Rooster that, despite the inherently political nature of their actions, he just didn't give a rat's ass about politics on a day-to-day basis, The Rooster called him cowardly, a redneck, convictionless, and a fascist all in about three seconds; when Robin cosigned on John's statement to back up his buddy (not knowing himself whether it was completely true that he felt precisely as John did, but knowing damn well that he wasn't on board with The Rooster), The Rooster said plainly that he expected the Englishman to be more enlightened. In what became a sort of inside joke between the fox and the bear, they told The Rooster that the last thing they wanted was an all-out class war. But The Rooster just seemed disappointed in them. Robin and John acknowledged to the Eds that they were probably boring them with all this talk of political theory (much like how The Rooster bored them to tears when he wouldn't shut the fuck up about something-something about bread), but wrapped up this section of the recollection by saying that The Rooster didn't abandon them yet; he was certainly content to keep his stuff at the Major Oak and had no problem eating their food or borrowing their toilet paper. But he kept growing more and more distant as he spent many days going off and doing his own thing, becoming more like an annoying roommate than a partner in crime, and many nights were spent with arguments going well into the night, with The Rooster doing most of the talking, seemingly to himself. (Little John nearly mentioned the time when Alan seriously crossed the line by telling Robin that Will had basically been a radical anarchist and if he were still around, Will would side with him in a heartbeat, and John had to break up a fistfight between the two of them, picking Robin and Alan up by the scruff of their necks and making them talk it out while two and a half off the ground, but John bit his tongue, not wanting to remind the prideful Robin that the country coyote had been well on his way to kicking the lanky fox's ass.)

They told them that they both hoped the boys would never experience such a tragedy as the ending of a friendship; it was a truly gut-wrenching thing, but since there are so many worse things a person can experience, people rarely recognize it for being as tough as it really is. It wasn't quite like a breakup with a significant other, they posited (not that Robin nor John were experts, since they'd only ever had one girlfriend between the two of them); a relationship could (foolishly) be built upon sexual attraction before anything else, but a friendship just leaves raw chemistry, so for something to interrupt that, something really must have gone wrong. John and Robin said didn't hate The Rooster; in fact, they still cared about him, and might even go as far as to say they still loved him as a brother after all that time they spent together, but they didn't really want to hang out with him anymore, and they most certainly didn't feel comfortable working with him if he was liable to start stirring shit for the sake of it. They knew that the changes he went through were products of his own pain and grief, but that understanding didn't make it any easier for them to deal with those changes. If they saw him tomorrow, lying on the side of the road and dying of thirst, Robin and Little John would both give him something to drink, and neither would leave his side until he was well again, but they wouldn't stick around much longer after they nursed him back to health. After all, your brother isn't necessarily your friend.

They told them that there was virtually zero chance of seeing him tomorrow, however, lying on the side of the road or otherwise, because The Rooster was the guy they had told the Eds they didn't have to worry about ever meeting. For a while, he continued redistributing wealth his own way, in addition to other extracurricular activities that may or may not have actually been quite as helpful to anyone, but after a few years - this would have been about two years ago, on Valentine's Day before the Merry Men's fifth anniversary - The Rooster got busted. It turned out that his big idea was to steal cop cars, have them repainted, and give them to the poor of Nottingham. Robin and John conceded that it was actually a rather creative idea, one that they kind of wished they'd come up with themselves, but there was a major flaw in the plan. They didn't know whether The Rooster just forgot that cars have VIN numbers, or if he just thought they wouldn't be traced, or if he thought that they couldn't be traced because it would be too much of a hassle á la the serial numbers on a dollar bill, or if he did try to erase the VIN numbers but just never thought to replace them with fake ones and therefore made it even more suspicious that a Crown Victoria with a dark spot where the "POLICE INTERCEPTOR" badge would be also doesn't have a Vehicle Identification Number, but in any case, it was easy for the cops to ascertain that the paint shop in Wood Branch servicing a disproportionate number of Crown Vics with no titles or registration attached to them probably got them through illicit means. The authorities raided the operation, and The Rooster had the misfortune of being there at the time. Robin mused that, as far as they knew, The Rooster never actually killed anyone, (though he was certainly booked for several dozen counts of Attempted, as well as a bunch of other charges owing to his sheer recklessness), nor did he engage in many of the extreme behaviors for which he had verbally advocated (they had certainly never heard of him nor anybody else planting IEDs at City Hall), but while his intentions were noble, he seemed too hung up on saying Fuck Tha Police and Other Tenets of the Establishment instead of trying to cut the snake off at its head.

They told them that they fucked up in their recollection and got so wrapped up in their schism with The Rooster that they forgot the payoff to why that Rabbit Kid's gift of a bow and arrow were important. So backtrack to the fourth summer and fall, four years ago, right after everything got messed up. Apparently the Rabbit Kid and his friend went trick-or-treating that Halloween as members of the Merry Men, with the Rabbit Kid donning the hat and carrying the oversized bow rubber-tipped arrow. Somewhere along the line that night, the kids - two seven-year-olds who had just started second grade, perhaps they should have been trick-or-treating with adult supervision at that age - came across a cop, who told them that he didn't like what their costumes stood for. The Rabbit Kid pointed the bow and rubber-tipped arrow at the officer, his friend raised the branch that was supposed to be a sword or a quarterstaff (it was whatever he was feeling it to be in a given moment, really), and they both demanded money from the officer to be given to the poor of Nottingham. Several more cops showed up, and instead of dropping the act, the kids just escalated it. Both of them were sent to juvenile hall after a quick trial. Little John quipped that it was moments like that that made him understand why The Rooster had such a hate-boner for cops specifically. In any case, Robin and John weren't there to save them because they were in the woods, getting drunk alone with each other on their joint birthday (not to suggest they didn't get drunk fairly often without any special occasion before about two years ago, at which point they decided they needed to cut back on their namesake merrymaking if they wanted to survive). They were telling the Eds this because it was one of their biggest regrets, especially to Robin, who felt like he shouldn't have trusted that kid to be as mature for his age as Robin had thought him to be. They told them that between the Rabbit Kid and Robin's Half-Brother, they weren't ever going to make any more mistakes that would endanger young lives ever again. That meant them.

They told them that they were racking their brains to think of whether there was anything they were forgetting. It seemed like the answer was "not really". The last four years, and especially the last two, had been a blur, and not in the "time flies when you're having fun" sort of way, but in the "time flies when you're worried you're wasting your life" sort of way. Their progress had been as stagnant as swamp water, and they were stuck in a stalemate with Prince John and his associates, who might win by default simply because there were more of them. And that's why they were looking to recruit some people like the Eds. There were those who thought the Merry Men were too radical, and some (like a certain Rooster they knew) who thought they weren't radical enough, but there were even more who beyond all that were just worried for Robin and John because they thought they were doing everything right but just didn't have the manpower to pull it off. There had been times when the two of them considered going The Rooster's route, but they saw how well that ended; there had also been times when they'd considered throwing in the towel, but they knew that there was no guarantee that anybody else would step up to the plate and take individual action to make things better for people as they had tried to do. They remembered how they were so close to succeeding once - so close - before they were derailed by the most unforeseen of unforeseen circumstances. They told themselves that this must mean that they knew what to do, they just needed help getting that close again, and this time, they would be sure to pull it off. All they needed was help. All they needed was for someone to step up and say that they wanted to be a Merry Man. Or a Merry Woman, or a Merry Boy or Girl, or a Merry Being of Ambiguous Age and Gender, but it's not exactly like they'd had any luck attracting any one demographic over another in the past seven years. All they knew was that the Eds seemed like cool kids, and now they wanted to share their world with them because they wanted to see whether they'd like to join them there. And they knew it was a risk to show them their world, and they told them as much, but they knew from seven years of doing this shit that nothing new gets done without taking risks - at least not in this line of work. Once upon a time, some motherfucker somewhere - maybe it was Einstein, maybe it wasn't - said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Robin Hood and Little John were done doing the same shit over and over without making a change, because it was making them go insane. They were hoping that the addition of Ed, Edd and Eddy to their lives would be the change they needed to make. And if they weren't comfortable joining them, that was fine, because they couldn't reasonably expect otherwise. But Robin and John had to offer. They needed to show somebody their world because otherwise those new people would never know how rewarding it could be unless they saw it firsthand. And they needed the help, so they needed someone to see how rewarding it truly was. They were taking this stupid risk because it was riskier in the long run to not take the stupid risk. Does that make sense? Do you understand us, boys? Are you lads still on board with us? That's what they told them.

-IllI-

"If you kids remember even half that, I'll be surprised," Little John remarked.

"What, are ya calling us stupid?" asked Eddy.

"No, I'm just saying that it was a lot of information to take in. Chill, bud. We wouldn't've brought ya with us if we thought y'all were too dumb to live." Little John wasn't lying, but between Ed's absentmindedness and the other two's strangely equal but opposite lack of social awareness, he hadn't made up his mind yet whether any of them were too dumb to live. He certainly thought that the midgety fox kid - Little John couldn't believe he caught himself mentally calling this kid "midgety" considering his own past, but that was the word he thought, and it wasn't an entirely inaccurate descriptor - he thought Eddy was definitely a hothead, but perhaps there was still a way to channel that into positive energy. After all, Little John himself used to be full of wayward anger at the world, and he turned that around. Hell, maybe between being extremely late bloomers and harboring anger issues that just needed some guidance, Little John found himself thinking that he might have had a lot more in common with Eddy than he originally thought.

"But just so we can make it clear once and for all," Robin said as he stopped and turned to the boys, "the three of you are all alright to continue with us? We won't think less of you if you tell us no, especially after all the information we've unloaded onto you three, but we're about to leave the forest, so this is your last chance to scoot off without making a public scene. Shall we keep going? Can I get three yeses?"

Ed was just going to wait for Edd and Eddy to answer first so he could just go with whatever they said, but Little John was making eye contact with him. John didn't have any particular reason for looking to Ed to answer first, only that from his vantage point he was the easiest to look at. But Ed was a mere mortal, and his recent concern for the health of his friends' bond was no match for his long and storied history of making impulsive decisions on his own accord. The little bit of him that felt like he should be the last to answer was outweighed by the part of him that felt that he was in the presence of some real cool characters. These guys might have been presenting him the opportunity for that summertime adventure he craved so dearly. The actual moral and sociopolitical implications of the decision didn't even cross his mind; Ed was making a very self-serving choice. If he got to dress up in costumes and play around with bows and arrows and big fucking sticks and run around the city back to his home base like one big game of tag, then he was sold, and if they could later convice him that he was an actively good person for doing so, then that would just be icing on the cake. "Take Ed with you!" he said.

For Eddy, it wasn't a matter of specifically wanting to go last, as he had made his mind up a long time ago. He was just damned curious what Double-D was going to say and wanted to find out as soon as possible; if that meant not giving his answer until Edd was goaded into answering faster, then that's how it would have worked. But after Ed answered, a brief bout of silence made it clear that Double-D was willing to risk disgrace if pretending to be childishly bashful meant that he got to get Eddy to answer first. Eddy wasn't too invested in this game of chicken, and if these two weirdos turned out to be two guys he'd like to hang around with - which, if their purported legendary status could be verifiably proven, might go from being "possible" to "very possible" - he would hate for them to think that he was too gun-shy to pull the trigger and answer a simple question. He wanted to see what these guys were all about, and he was ready to let them know it. "Sure," he said. "Let's check it out."

Double-D was very nervous. Attentive as always, he had been paying very close attention to the details of what tales Robin and John told of their exploits as outlaws, and precisely as the Men had feared, Double-D didn't feel interested in any of it. Double-D believed that they believed they were doing God's work, and they certainly painted a picture that they were doing more good than harm, but his parents had always instilled the names of Law and Order into him, and not even these two charismatic creatures could convince him to concede his convictions that quickly. And then there were the uncanny parallels to the legend of Adam Bell and the outlaws of Inglewood Forest, which… Double-D didn't even want to think about his feelings about that story and its characters. And yet here he was. Eddy had challenged him to live his life, Ed had implored him to be a team player, and he had dared himself to give a chance to these two who had so thoroughly won him over before he discovered their secrets. Consequently, he was now standing at the far edge of Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve with two strange adults who were unabashedly proud of their vigilante methods of social change. Double-D knew that there were people twenty minutes from his house who were going through situations tougher than he could ever imagine, but he believed that there must, there surely must have been a way to better their lot in life, a way that was much more composed and civilized, a way that did not endanger anybody's safety, a way that did not require deceit, violence, or dirty socks. But because he was raised to be polite to adults, and because he was raised to think that giving people a chance to make their case - ludicrous as it might be - was the polite thing to do, Edd was allowing himself to partake in some foolish risk-taking in the name of what Ed might call "adventure." And if it all went south and these strangers sought to harm them, well, if this was to be his deplorable lot in life, then Double-D would be prepared for death at any moment.

"Penny for your thoughts, Eddward?" asked Robin.

"Reassure me, if you will: we will not actually be participating in your actions, merely observing them from a safe distance to better understand how you operate?" the wolf asked.

"Eddward, I reassure you," said Robin. "Actually, allow me to be more specific: We insist you keep a safe distance during the robbery part. But we invite you to join us in giving back to the community. We promise you that the poor of Nottingham will not hurt you while you're with us."

"So they'll hurt us when we're not with you?" asked Eddy. Everybody ignored him.

"And this is not a commitment to join your band, correct?" asked Double-D.

"No it ain't, buddy," said Little John jovially. "All it is, is us doing some show 'n' tell."

Double-D told himself that if all of this was a charade to lure them into some sort of trap, then by this point they'd put on such a performance that they'd've earned the right to trap them. "Then I will accept your invitation," Double-D affirmed.

"I like how the guy asks for three yeses and not a single one of you says anything even close to the word 'yes,'" Little John couldn't help but remark. All these thoughts of the way they used to be had John thinking about whether the recent turmoil he and Robin had gone through was causing him to relapse into his former perpetually-grumpy self. He still believed that a little bit of sarcasm in moderation was a nice touch for flavor here and there, but he was trying to monitor himself so he didn't slip back into being the snarky, un-fun asshole he used to be.

"Johnny, don't be such a snarky, un-fun arsehole!" said Robin. "This is a great day! We may have just made three new friends! Don't scare them away!"

John really didn't need to hear that, but he didn't want to have an extended chit-chat about it in front of the kids. "Well, hell, if they can't handle a few remarks, then I guess they can't handle me." Little John wasn't being sarcastic this time, he was just stating a fact with a shitty attitude.

"Oh, nonsense! They just happen to have only seen you when you have a good reason to be frustrated. When our fortunes turn up again, then they'll see the better side of the bear I'd call my brother."

"Okay, Mister Broken Record Player, that's literally not even the first time you've said that," said Eddy. "And it wasn't any less weird when you called him your 'brother' the first time." Now it was Eddy who was kicking himself for his habitual snark. He didn't want to get on these guys' bad side. But he also didn't want to think that he was going to jump from being the leader of his own band of misfits to being in a spot where he was constantly reminded that he was the third wheel to history's greatest bromance.

Robin just cocked his head at Eddy with a smile, one of those vexed-but-determined looks. "I really feel like I ought to thank you for this opportunity to practice my persuasion skills on a tough customer like yourself. We'll get you in groove with us yet. And I must say, Eddy, though it might not seem like it, I really like your energy. We just have to channel it into something positive."

With all his head eight feet in the air and all the others' attention on the foxes down below, nobody noticed the bizarre wince on Little John's face. Channeling his energy into something positive… Was Robin reading his damn mind today? It was honestly kind of getting bizarre, and yet if there were actually some telepathy going on, then why would Rob keep stepping on his toes? The more John thought about it, the more he lamented that it would be awhile before he would have a chance to have another extended private talk about it. Of course, all this talk of the past reminded him of all the guys in his life who would chide him for wanting to have a conversation about feelings with another guy, and he now was starting to lament that wanting. He decided that they ought to stop burning daylight, and with any luck, he might have forgotten about Robin driving him crazy by the end of all this.

"C'mon, Rob," said John, "we're probably boring them again. Where we gonna head to?" Fuck! he thought to himself as soon as he said that; he realized he had just handed Robin the keys again to make a decision for the both of them, and furthermore was establishing himself in front of these kids to be Robin's underling. And Little John would have remedied his error immediately by proposing a location himself, but with his head wrapped up in his newfound self-loathing, he just couldn't think of any place to go. And then he thought that maybe this was why Robin was the one to make most of the important calls and not him.

"An excellent question, Johnny!" answered Robin, who then turned to the boys. "Now, gentlemen, we have a few different strategies for how we go about collecting. Do you boys know Sherwood Forest Road?"

"Yeah," answered Eddy.

"Since that road is used disproportionately by the rich, we often like to play a bit of dress-up and pretend we're also some rich blokes who've had a breakdown and need assistance, try to flag them down. The rich won't help many people, but they'll certainly help their own."

"And then what happens?"

"We drug 'em," said Little John matter-of-factly; he was making a specific point to not let Robin do all the talking. "We don't hurt them if we don't have to. We keep them comfortable while we clean out their pockets and the trunks of their cars."

"I-I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that," stammed Double-D predictably.

"As we imagined," said Robin. "But you needn't worry, lad; we're not going to be doing that with you today."

"Besides, we usually save that for nighttime," explained Little John. "It's almost rush hour, isn't it? Too many people out for a targeted… uh… targeted…?"

"'Operation'?" Robin offered.

"What he said," said John.

"We also sometimes make house calls, but not as often as we'd like."

"Everybody's stepping up their home security systems now. I swear it seems like technology's jumped fifty years in the seven years we've been doing this."

"Don't remind me, Johnny; I don't fear much in this world, but I'm not looking forward to the day one of our donors realizes their new fancy mobile phone has a camera built into it. Now I ask you, when on earth did these come about!? But lads, again: don't worry, we won't ask you to come loot someone's home with us until you're ready."

"If you're ever ready."

"What he said," said Robin.

"But when do we get to play with the bow and arrows and sticks and stuff?" asked Ed impatiently.

"I hope not to disappoint you, boys, but these are mostly carried with us for self-defense."

"Or defending someone else," added John. "Hell, just yesterday we had to break up a robbery. And I don't mean a good robbery like we do. I'm talking like a poor-on-poor, winner-take-all robbery."

"And not long before that, we had to stave off some - er…" - Robin realized that there was a slim but real chance that these kids knew the red-capped hyena who had thrown rocks and hollered epithets at them before running afoul of Elkins, Goldthwaite, Woodland, and Nutzinger, and in that event, he didn't want the Eds thinking they had anything to do with that boy's fate - "some crazy bloke who came upon us in Sherwood."

It took Little John a second, but he realized what apprehension had caused Robin's hiccough, and thought he could help obscure the connection. "Yeah, he was probably on meth or something," John added.

"So don't get the impression that these never get used. And when we do use them, we always aim to scare or incapacitate the miscreants, not to hurt them. We want to make it clear as day that we have no interest in being the bad guys any more than we need to be."

"I'll tell you what, kids," said John, "these weapons are like the hourglass on a black widow. It's a sign that says to the world, 'If you fuck with us, we'll fuck with you, and we'll fuck with you in a way that we know you ain't prepared to fight back against."

"Ooh, Johnny, I like that analogy!"

"I-I-I also appreciate the creativity of the simile," Double-D said, forcing himself to say something - anything - so that the bandits didn't think he was mute with fear, even if that was true.

"Hm. Thanks, bud," said Little John. "But, uh, yeah, so we carry these guys with us around Sherwood and in friendly territory, but when we're in Rich People Land, we usually store these at a friend's house if we're just out collecting money and not looking for a specific fight."

"'Not looking for a specific fight'?" asked Double-D, who was so confused by that statement that it effectively cured his catatonia.

"Like if we need to loot the mayor's mansion."

"Or if we need to save someone on the East Side," added Robin. "Doesn't happen to often, but when it happens, we'll be there with our trusty bow and staff."

"Then what the heck are we doing today, then?" asked Eddy, trying to hide his impatience from these people he may or may not later choose to impress.

"If it pleases the court," said Robin, "we'll be demonstrating the most innocent method of collecting we do. And I do mean collecting rather than taking."

"Which is?" asked Eddy and Double-D in unison, but with very dissonant tones.

"What is it!?" asked Ed half a second later.

"Swindle the shit outta some rich people," said Little John.

-IllI-

"Take it all in, boys," said Robin as the five of them walked through Georgetown en route to Otto's house. "There may come a day soon when you'll need to be very familiar with this part of town."

The Eds followed Robin and John through the streets, just a few feet behind them, close enough to speak but far enough back that if a wise cop turned the corner and recognized the Men, the Eds could claim their proximity was incidental.

Ed was going through a mild sensory overload as he observed all the minute details of the area he'd never been to before. The homes and businesses that teetered on the line of simply looking tired and looking downright ramshackle made Ed think that it was like the junkyard was built up to be a pretty decent-looking city in itself. The only thing keeping him from running off and getting a closer look at any little thing that caught his eye was his desire to get the chance to play with the bow and arrow and the big fucking stick. Ed was showing an unusual level of self-control as he walked along, and it was really a shame that he wasn't getting any positive recognition for it. The only two people present who could have appreciated his impressive restraint were themselves letting the scenery wash over them.

Double-D, as you may have imagined, Dear Reader, was very, very nervous. He had been told his entire life that this part of town was a no-go area, a place you would hardly choose to drive through let alone walk about on foot. He was aware of the irony that he was trusting his association with two known criminals would keep him safe from the ire of the locals, and he kept thinking about whether it was a mistake to go out and give this a try; with regards to that question, his mind kept changing on a minute-to-minute basis. He was also well aware of the fact that the people of this area were, indeed, looking at him. But their looks were not as foreboding as Edd had anticipated; the denizens first laid eyes upon the familiar fox and bear, saw that their familiar smiles and waves were accompanied by gestures to the boys behind them as if to say they're with us, and observed the three inquisitively. The locals were trying to get a good look at the trio to try to figure out what their connection was to Robin and Little John; were they lost outsiders being safely escorted through a strange land? or delinquents off to be reformed by the criminal masterminds? or some rich kids being led into a trap to get their parents' money from them? or some orphaned teens liberated from an abusive foster home? or Robin and John's illegitimate kids plus… um… a wolf just for good measure? Could it even be that - despite the unfocused looks on their faces - these kids were trying to join the Merry Men? Robin and John had specifically told Double-D beforehand that this was Georgetown, not Hermosa Park, and the majority of the locals here aren't interested in recreationally fucking with outsiders, but instead would merely be confused by the presence of some kids who exude a noticeably suburban aura; and Double-D trusted them as much as he could, but he was starting to feel that being the subject of confused stares wasn't much better than being on the receiving end of hostile ones.

Eddy was a little bit scared like Double-D, and a little bit overwhelmed like Ed. But he was also a little bit bored. He wanted to see what all the fuss was about. He was already telling himself that if he wasn't impressed by their methods, he could probably at least steal a few money-making ideas for his scam-plans. He wanted to see how these guys worked that they could live on the lam for years and never be caught even once. Actually, that posed a pretty good question.

"So let me get this straight," Eddy said. "You don't want to go mess with people on that road in the woods because there's too many people out now… so it's safer to mess with people downtown in broad daylight?"

"The lad's observant!" remarked Robin. "Just like a fox should be. Eddy, what if I told you that there also weren't enough people out on Sherwood Forest Road right now?"

"Yeah, kid," said Little John, "haven't you ever heard of hiding in plain sight? Even if one of our plans goes belly-up-"

"Which they won't," said Robin.

"Yeah, sure. But even if they did, people wouldn't know us from any other criminals roaming this town. You know, as much as we don't associate with those types, we'll gladly blend in with them if it'll save our asses." Little John didn't care too much for Robin's overly-confident interruption, but he knew for an absolute fact that Rob would say that there was a time for modestly and a time to inspire confidence, and that this was definitely one of the latter times. Then again, John was feeling better with the boys in tow, almost as though he was no longer on the bottom of a two-man totem pole…

...Hey, wait, that kind of made him realize something, albeit something he'd need to talk over with someone other than Robin.

Eddy, meanwhile, still couldn't tell whether these guys were stupid or geniuses after the 'hide in plain sight' comment. Compounding his confusion and his sense of boredom and impatience were the fact that they still weren't even at the safehouse, let alone the unspecified place where they'd be holding their event. The walk in the city so far had been at least as long as the walk through the forest, if not longer. His little legs were killing him. Eddy was starting to think if these guys were so good at stealing shit without consequences, they would have eventually stolen themselves a car.

Finally, they arrived at the row house on Iowa Avenue between 43rd and 44th, getting close to the southeast corner of Georgetown's official boundaries. Robin walked up the stoop and knocked on the door while Little John stayed on the sidewalk with the boys.

"Who are we visiting?" asked Double-D.

"Is he gonna give us a ride to wherever we're going?" asked Eddy.

"Brother, a little exercise is good for ya," said Little John. Eddy wanted to say that that was rich coming from a guy who literally embodied the notion that 'pear-shaped' and 'bear-shaped' were exactly the same thing, but Eddy thought nothing positive would come of him saying so.

"This is our friend Otto's house," said Robin. "If you're ever in this neck of the woods and you need help, he runs a tool and die shop at 45th and Florida, although he closes shop on Sundays and Mondays, when you can probably find him here. You're our friends; he'll help you."

Otto opened the door and was opening is mouth to greet Robin, but when he saw John was back by the sidewalk, he saw the three kids at his side.

"Top o' the morning, Otto," Robin greeted before the hounddog could get a word out.

"Howdy, Robin," answered Otto, a bit confused by the sight. "Who're your boys here?"

"They're not our boys yet, but they may be soon," said Robin. "This is Ed, Edd, and Eddy, although the middle one will insist you call him Eddward or Double-D - it's a long story about spelling discrepancies. Think of them as Merry Men Cadets, if you will; they're here to see what we do, and they may soon be joining us on our little adventures if they like what they see."

"And we know it's weird that we found three kids with the same name," added Little John, "but we're taking it as a sign that they're gonna work well together. Like they're a package deal. And by the way, we just told them you live here and that your shop's around the corner, so if these little shits betray us and use this information for evil, the wolf kid lives at the corner of Harris and Rethink in Peach Creek, so you'll know where to find him."

"Excuse me!?" exclaimed Double-D, feeling as though his privacy had just been violated.

"Hey, I told you I wouldn't forget a stupid name like 'Rethink,' and I didn't," said John. (That one actually got an amused smirk out of Eddy and Robin.)

"But why me!?"

"Man, I don't know your friends' addresses," John scoffed, then broke into a chuckle. "Kid, I'm just messing with you." He turned back to Otto: "Don't worry, Otto; I'd be damned surprised if these kids turn their backs on us."

Otto chuckled himself as he walked down the stoop to greet the boys. "Oh, Little John, you're gonna hafta be nicer than that if you want these kids to go along with you." He went straight to Double-D to shake his hand. "Otto Smith, pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Oh, uh… E-Eddward Lupo, and likewise Mr. Smith," Edd stammered.

"'Mister Smith'? Huh, you're a polite one!"

"I don't know any other way, Mr. Smith!"

Otto turned to shake with Eddy.

"Heyhowzitgoin," Eddy mumbled. "Eddy."

"You're an efficient one." Otto turned to shake with Ed, but Ed preferred a different greeting.

"Hello, Mister Doggy!" Ed squealed as he pulled Otto into a hug.

"Hey, there, um… you're a friendly one, aintcha?" Otto choked out.

"Ed, go easy on old Otto!" said Robin half-playfully and half-worriedly. "His old bones aren't what they used to be! He broke his foot a few years back and it took almost an entire year to heal."

"Oops!" Ed said as he released Otto from his grisly grizzly grasp. Otto had gone limp in the hug, and collapsed when he was released, falling flat on his posterior. "Sorry, Mr. Doggy."

Little John helped Otto back up. "Hey, kid," Otto said as he got back on his feet, "it's better to love too much than too little, eh?"

"Otto, I'll be brief," said Robin. "We're only here to introduce you to the lads, pick up our disguises, and drop off our weapons before we head downtown. You'll have to pardon our curtness."

"Oh, it's quite alright," said Otto. "It's always good to see you guys-"

"Ooh, ooh!" went Ed as he raised and waved his arm like a kid desperate to answer a question in class so he could get those precious participation points and pass with a D. "Can Ed use your bathroom?"

The other four just kind of looked embarrassed.

"Uh, well, uh… I'm not one to deny someone their basic mammalian rights, so… be my guest," Otto said as he cleared the doorway for the adolescent bear.

"Thanks, Mr. Doggy, I promise I'll wash my hands real good!" Ed said as he lumbered up the stairs and into the doorway, casually smacking his head on the doorframe as he did.

"It's on the left," said Otto, "and be sure to watch your-"

While Ed still had a little less than a foot of clearance to the ceiling, he ran with a bounce in his step, and hit his head on the ceiling light fixture, which shattered with a pop. Ed, dead-set on getting to that bathroom, was undeterred.

"...head."

"Er, we'll… we'll clean that up, Otto," said Robin.

"I'll help!" said Double-D, not knowing how to be anything but polite. "A-although, um… may I also use your facilities, if I may?"

"Yeah, uh, me, too," said Eddy.

Otto stepped aside again to let everyone in. "I hope this isn't eating into your time too much."

"Well, at least we'll have something to do while we wait," said Robin as he walked in. "Where are your spare bulbs?"

"In the same linen closet as your costumes, top shelf," Otto answered. "But I don't think you'll be able to reach them. No offense-"

Otto felt Little John tap him on the shoulder. The towering bear was still on the outside of the doorway, and Otto couldn't see his face from where he was standing inside the foyer. Otto stepped back out onto the stoop to see him. "Something up, John?"

"Yeah, uh… You gonna be home at your normal times this week?" John asked in a hushed voice.

"I don't expect any late nights, but I don't know what my future's gonna bring. If I'm not here, you can probably find me at the shop. Why, what's up?"

"I just need to talk about Robin… and me… to someone who ain't Robin. And you might be the person who knows us best with Tuck out of the picture now."

Otto had heard something very similar to this just yesterday, and he was starting to wonder if the Merry Men were both independently trying to turn him into their makeshift therapist. But being who he was, he would try to help them as best he could before he told them to take it to a professional.

"Sure, John, just find me wherever you can and I'll make some time for ya."

"Thanks, Otto. I don't know when I'll be able to get away from Rob, but I'm gonna try to make it soon. I'm not feeling myself recently, man, and it's kinda scaring me. Or at least I'm not feeling like the Me I want to be."

Otto thought he ought to pull Robin aside and tell him that he finally had a concrete answer to Robin's question about John the day before, but he didn't want to open that can of worms again; besides, for all he knew, Robin might want to open that can of worms again himself.

"Thanks for having us over, Otto. I appreciate ya." Little John ducked into the doorway and made his way inside. "I'll get to work on the broken bulbs. You got a dish towel so I can unscrew them?"

*A.N* Okie dokie, so I saw this chapter getting long, and I was on the fence about cutting it in two. Then I remembered that today was Little John's birthday (and his brother's, happy 52nd, gentlemen… Jesus, why do I know this offhand?), and then I saw that the featured article on the front page of Wikipedia was about the Coterel gang, one of the real-life bands of outlaws who messed around in Sherwood in the 1300s and likely heavily inspired the legend of Robin Hood, AND THEN they put up a new billboard on my way home from work advertising Jimmy John's new Little John sandwich (this chapter isn't sponsored… but if they wanna give me money, I'll take it). Okay, fine, Universe, I'll upload the first part of Show and Tell today, and I'll try to finish the other half in time for Robin Hood's 46th birthday in exactly three weeks (again… why do I know this?). Now you know why I did that, Future Readers.

I also owe a shout-out to the one known as J-Shute-Norway, who shouted me and this fic out - several times, actually - and I said I would reciprocate, and I'm a man of my word (inasmuch as I still believe in my word, which in this case, I do). From the looks of it, it seems like J-Shute's already known in a certain corner of FicLand, both for writing and (it seems like) curating, so maybe you already you're already familiar with the name. If not, I encourage you to get familiar with the name.

Ya all take care now, Future Readers.