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.

56. Kids and Heroes

56. "Kids and Heroes"

"...Customer Support, this is Crystal, how can I help you?"

"Yeah, I never received the items I ordered weeks ago, and now I checked the online tracker to see whether there was some hold up with shipping, and it says they arrived on the Eleventh!? That was ten days ago! Where is it then!?"

"...Alright, sir, I'm sorry to hear that. Can I please have your name and the order number-?"

"Ya don't sound very sorry! I need these items now! Where are they!?"

"...I'm sorry, sir, but it seems they may have been stolen, these things do happen sometimes. Now to help you out, can I get your name and-"

"Oh, I know these things happen, but they shouldn't! They were supposed to hand-deliver it to me instead of just leaving it at my door to get porch-pirated! I'm not paying for the items all over again when I'm not the one who fuhhh… I'm not the one who messed up!"

"...And I understand your frustration, sir, and I'll do what I can to get your order to you as quickly as possible with no cost to you. Now if I could just-"

"You'd better! That's literally the least you could do! And I need them here today, not just soon!"

"Well, sir, if you're willing to cooperate, I can probably get the items overnighted at no extra charge-"

"Tomorrow isn't today, lady! I need them tonight! If I was demanding they materialize out of thin air in five seconds, that would be unreasonable, but this isn't that unreasonable of a request! I know you guys have a warehouse somewhere between D.C. and Baltimore, that's barely a two-hour drive! I'll give ya until tonight, but honestly, there's no reason it can't be here by lunchtime!"

"...I'll see if we can do same-day-"

"And you know what? To make it up to me, you can toss in some more stuff I need now!

"...Would you like to make an order right now?"

"Yeah, toss it in with the other stuff I paid for."

"Okay… what would you like to purchase, sir?"

"Oh, I'm not purchasing it, you're just giving it to me."

"...I'm sorry, sir, but while we'll gladly resolve a mistake, we can't just give you more stuff free of charge beyond what you paid for."

"...Fine, then put it on the same card as the rest of the stuff." Hey, as long as it arrived today, his dad probably wouldn't notice the charge until his statement came in the mail, at which point the guy could probably just dispute it and get it repudiated. "So I need some special paper and special printers to print them with-"

"Sir, I'd be happy to help and modify your order, but I still need your name and your order number."

Ah, but of course. "...Terrance."

-IllI-

It was official: it had begun. The season of fun and excitement, the time of year when memories are made, the only segment of the calendar wherein the weather seems like it is in our culture's stories of wondrous fantasy - unless you live in, like, Arizona or something. Except maybe it had meteorologically started on the 20th again like it sometimes does, I dunno, that whole thing confuses me, but it was June 21st in the northern hemisphere and the deejays at the classic rock station knew exactly what song to play as he drove:

"Hot town!

"Summer in the city,

"Back of my neck gettin' dirt and gritty…

"Been down,

"Isn't it a pity?

"Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city…"

And seeing as it was roughly high noon, there indeed did not seem to be a shadow in the city, nor hardly a cloud between the sun overhead and the earth below. And while it wasn't the hottest of June days, certainly not as sweltering as that heat wave last week, it was certainly warm and humid as a summer day should be.

As he took the scenic route cruising the surface streets of the northeast side along the diagonal Cape Henlopen Highway, having left work at the office downtown at lunch to head home early and enjoy the day - he was the boss, he was allowed to do that - he couldn't help but wish there was someone on the side of the road selling popsicles, perhaps even molded into a cute and marketable little shape. Alas, Mr. Bulley, you're in the wrong city and the wrong story for that. But as he approached his home in Aspen Meadows, a ritzy neighborhood in the far corner of the city's boundaries squeezed in between the cities of Rehoboth Beach and Lewes, a neck of the woods where every home seemed to be a McMansion, a place that wasn't serviced by TAN buses or trains and didn't want to be so that those nasty poor people couldn't get there, he came across a curious quartet standing on the raised median in the street. It was a pair of bears flanked by foxes - at least he thought they were both foxes, the taller one was almost too tall to be of the vulpine persuasion, but he wasn't in any place to jump to conclusions.

If he'd thought they were regular panhandlers, of course, he would have just ignored them and called the cops. But the two adults among the four looked too smartly dressed to be bums. So when the four of them waved at him, he cautiously extinguished his radio and rolled down his window.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" the bull asked, eyebrow raised just a little.

"Aw, we hope you can, man!" the larger bear bellowed. His clothes seemed rather ill-fitting, but… hey, they still looked too good to have been dug out of the trash.

"Are you from around here, too?" asked the taller fox, whose arm was in a cast; there seemed to be some faint weirdness with the way he said are and here, almost like his R's were too soft, but he didn't sound foreign or anything - hell, if anything, he sounded especially local, like he'd gone to one of the many private schools that dotted this part of the country where they once specifically taught their pupils to speak in an artificial transatlantic accent so they'd all sound like William F. Buckley; if this fox was any indication, apparently some of those private schools still did that circa his youth.

"...What do you mean, 'too'?" the driver prodded.

"Oh, this is our neighborhood, too!" the bear beamed. "Sorry we never got around to meeting ya!"

The bull looked skeptical. "What street do you guys live on?"

The fox sighed. "Well, that's the thing… we don't exactly… live where we used to live." No, seriously, if this fox's voice was just a little deeper, he'd sound exactly like William F. Buckley.

"...What… does that mean?"

"So…" The bear started but immediately trailed off as he looked out into the distance to sigh and groan before turning back to the bull. "...we'll spare ya the depressing details, but long story short, we both got kicked out of our houses."

"Houses that we worked our whole lives to afford!" the fox suddenly snapped with a fiery look in his eyes. "You're a successful man yourself, aren't you!? You know how hard it is to bust your ass to earn the right to live in a place like this!"

"Ah, calm down, Mike," the bear urged the fox before turning again to the bull. "Lemme guess…" he asked with a playful pointed finger, "...investments and the stock market?"

The bull had to let out a nasal chuckle at that. "No, sir; own a construction firm. But I've got to say… it is a bull market!"

"Sorry, Jeremy!" The fox seemed to force himself to lighten up and gave his bear friend a playful nudge. "You can't get out of this mess by playing stocks or you'll ruin the market for all of us!"

And the adults laughed gently at the stupid economics joke, but things quickly got serious again as the bull had to ask the obvious question.

"...So what kind of mess is this? How'd you two lose your houses?"

The two adults groaned under their breath again, neither looking like they wanted to explain it.

"We… lost them in a divorce," said the fox. "Our wives were cheating on us."

"With each other," added the bear, fuming.

The motorist winced. "Oh, that's rough… but wait, the court gave the houses to them?"

"No, here's what really sucks about all this," the bear explained, "they were smart about it. They made it really hard to find evidence to show the judge."

"But they did manage to dig up dirt on us to make us look like the bad guys," added the fox. "Got in contact with women who worked under us, made it look like we were the ones who cheated… it kills us to say they outsmarted us, but we were just blindsided and never had a chance to catch up."

"And the fact that they didn't work for a living made it all the more compelling to give them the houses."

"And a good chunk of our earnings."

"And our savings."

"Did we mention the judge was also a woman?"

The bull whistled a low whistle as he slowly shook his head. "Man, that's rough. Women ruin everything, don't they?"

"Oo-de-lally, I hear that!" boomed the bear. The codeword was engaged.

"Now… we aren't proud to be asking this," said the fox, "but… oh, you know we're not lazy beggars, you know we worked for our fortune just like you did! So…" This vulpine gentleman gave a nervous-looking shrug. "...knowing that we were just the victims of a bad situation, could you perhaps help us out?"

The bull did indeed look like he was feeling some empathy for strangers who seemed to share his successful mindset, but so strong was his sense of independence and belief in self-reliance that he didn't really know how he could help these two even if he wanted to.

"Uh… sorry, guys," said the driver, "but I really don't see what there is that I could do… shy of, y'know, just giving you money…"

The fox and the bear looked disappointed, but understanding, and they nodded morosely to him and each other.

"And… I mean, yeah, we get that," said "Jeremy". "We know it's kind of a tall order."

"But hey! We know how to build wealth!" said "Mike". "We did it once before, we can do it again! ...Somehow…" The fox found himself staring at the ground, clearly not believing his own rallying cry.

And if it were just those two standing on the concrete island, the bull likely would have wished them well but done little more than that before going on his way, and that would be that. But there was the matter of the other fox and the other bear, neither of which had said a word since the man drove up.

"...Who're these two guys?" asked the driver. "These… are these your sons?"

"Heh, the resemblance is that striking, huh!?" the elder bear chuckled as he hung an arm around the cub, who looked like he was very lost and scared before that point but now started relaxing a little with his father's embrace. "Hear that, Grant? Ya look just like your old man!"

"Of course my boy takes after his mother, petite little thing that she was - get over here, Maximilian, come to Daddy!" the tall fox said as he went around the bears to pick up the small fox half his height and had the kit sit in the crook of his arm, the child's own arm going around his "father's" neck. "Attaboy, Max! You're getting so big!"

The kit looked absolutely furious as he sat there, seeming to be glaring at the bull, or perhaps just glaring at the world the bull lived in. He was notably dressed in rather juvenile apparel, a pair of overall suspenders with a Thomas the Tank Engine t-shirt underneath.

"He'll be starting kindergarten in the fall!" his "dad" continued. "Though… I'm not quite sure where he'll be starting kindergarten. Probably can't afford a private education like a boy of his breeding deserves, and I'm not sure what the public schools will be like wherever we wind up…"

"And this guy right here…" the bigger bear began before looking at his son as they smiled at each other. "...I'm so proud of this guy for how hard he's been working, he's been going to a special school for, uh… special needs kids, and he's just been burning up the track, his teachers and I are so impressed by all the progress he's made, but… man, I just don't know if I can afford the tuition anymore. But hey, I… guess I got till August to figure it out. Hey, what's all this malarkey that school starts before Labor Day now!? Wasn't like that when we were kids!"

The bull, understandably, seemed confused. "Wait… so the courts actually gave you two custody after taking everything away from you!?"

"That's just the thing!" the fox hollered, causing his "son" to rear his head back in protest of the sudden loud noise in his ear. "They didn't!"

"Grant wanted to stay with his dad so badly that he ran away from home, thank God I found him…!" Johnny said as he patted Ed on the shoulders, then pointed at Robin holding Eddy. "Meanwhile, Mike's boy Max kept throwing tantrums to go be with his daddy until eventually fucking Angela just gave Mike his son back."

"And neither of our wives actually wanted our sons, they just wanted full custody as a power move!" Robin spat. "That's why they haven't tried to get them back from us! I'd think it was part of a plan to further frame us for kidnapping our children, but we've been living like this for three weeks now, I'd think they'd have made their move by now!"

"Hell, I still think they might be planning something, but they're just too lazy to have done it already!" growled Johnny. "But all we know for sure is that they don't want the kids around because they'd get in the way of their fuckin' interracial lesbian fantasy romance!"

"Why doesn't mommy like me?" the cub asked his father sorrowfully.

"Because your mother's a terrible, horrible, despicable, deplorable person who only cares about herself," Johnny answered as he gave Ed a hug. "And it's not just you, son; your mother hurt Daddy even worse than she hurt you."

"And if you've been wondering why Max here seems so… discontent," said the fox, nodding towards his "son" in his arms, "he's livid that his mother just abandoned him like that. A boy his age shouldn't be so jaded, but… that's what his mother did to him."

The bull was all but speechless. "Jesus… I can't believe that happened to you guys." (And yet he did, he'd bought it hook, line, and sinker.) "So… you guys have been living… where?"

"Oh, in our cars," Robin shrugged.

"Which is usually my car, for size reasons of course," clarified Johnny. "We've been trying to stick together as a unit so as to pool our resources together."

"If our wives want to go be dykes together, we might as well make like a gay couple and have each other's backs!" Robin quipped; a bit of a risky remark if this guy was put off by two guys even joking about being homosexuals, but Rob had faith that the joke would land.

"And that's how we became the Brady Bunch!" Ed added unexpectedly, now seeming much more cheerful with his witty remark.

Johnny had to prove he was good enough at improv to be qualified to teach it, so he rolled with it. "Uh… heh, yeah, that's how we became the Brady Bunch! You got it, slugger!" he affirmed with more pats of the paw on Ed's upper back.

And Ed was beaming, more than happy to have helped the cause. Thank God nobody was looking at Eddy to see him retch at the dumb bit.

"Hey… hear us out," Robin said earnestly to the bull. "We wouldn't be asking this of just anybody. But we can tell you have a good heart and you're strong and powerful enough to help those who need it. Right now, we need it. Between us, we might not even have enough money to stay at the Four Seasons until we get on our feet. Please, sir… please don't make our strange little Frankenstein family stay at the Sheraton."

An extended stay at a hotel that boasted fewer than five stars? A fate worse than death. Mr. Bulley didn't seem to mind that the light had turned green (then red, then green again, repeatedly); he was compelled by the tales of these good, hard-working, righteously greedy wealthy men who had happened to fall into misfortune at the hands of the jealous sex. They thought he could be their hero, eh? Well, he'd always wanted to be a superhero as a boy before he realized that dream was nonsensical and that caring about people who couldn't help themselves was stupid and wasteful and pointless and borderline un-American, but maybe this was his opportunity to make it a reality, if only for a moment.

"Oh, and also, they have access to our bank accounts, so we need it in cash," Johnny tossed in.

Turns out the bull's name was Glenn; they learned this when he took them to the local Chase Bank branch to extract and present them with twenty-five grand in cash, as well as his business card so the adults could go golfing sometime. He actually seemed disappointed when "Mike" and "Jeremy" said they didn't have their own business cards on them.

Twenty minutes later, Robin and Johnny were still giggling like schoolgirls over how easily that had worked as they sat with Ed and Eddy in a nearby Taco Bell. Thankfully it was midday on a Tuesday so they had the place basically to themselves, and since the apathetic staff didn't seem to care who they were, they were free to talk openly amongst themselves.

"Man, that guy was a sucker!" Johnny cackled. "I was this close to telling him I was willing to name my next business venture after him, but I didn't even need to!"

"Remember, lads," said Robin, "the key to hoodwinking a rich person is to appeal to their vanity! Most of the time, the obscenely wealthy usually just want to be remembered as heroes, but they don't believe in heroes, so the next closest thing is for them to make a bunch of money, hoard it, and save up to pay for bridges and buildings and political campaigns to force the public to remember their names. They want desperately to be seen as great people and have statues built in their memory, but their hearts aren't in the right places."

"Uh…" Little John said with a full mouth and a cheeky smirk as he swallowed and put his taco down."How is that any different from the guy who wanted to be a Hollywood action hero running off to the woods to go literally be Adam Bell?"

Robin stared back with a calm smile but didn't say a word for a moment before turning to the boys. "Alright, children, British culture lesson!" he announced with enthusiasm. "Now, you won't see this as often as you used to back in the day, but if I were to do this…" He demonstrated by putting a gesture in Johnny's face that an American would probably describe as a backwards peace sign with Robin's palm facing inwards towards himself.

"Oh, get that the fuck outta my face!" the bear laughed as he smacked the V sign away, and the fox laughed with him. (Ed laughed along too despite not understanding what was funny, while Eddy just watched with a confused wince.) "Wait. Hold on, hold on," Johnny continued, "lemme see if I can explain it to them. So… it's, uh… it's kinda like a… kinda old-fashioned… slightly-less-offensive middle finger? ...Am I right? Did I get it right?"

"Oh, close enough!" the Englishman chuckled as he waved dismissively at the Southerner.

"Well all I know is that doing it with your thumb sticking out is the Vice Lords," Little John said with an example on his paw.

"Does it now!" answered Robin, brimming with curiosity. "Huh! Now I'm learning!"

"Yeah, and before I met you, I was trying to act cool one day and found out the hard way that apparently double Devil Horns is the Latin Kings?" He messed with his fingers as he tried to replicate the subtle details. "Man, that ain't a show of allegiance to anything but the Church of Rock and Roll! ...Twice."

"Are we making you boys uncomfortable by shooting gang signs in public?" Robin quipped with a grin.

The boys had undeniably been very quiet throughout their lunch so far. Ed had an excuse; he'd been scarfing down food like it was nobody's business, but he had still been smiling the whole time, overjoyed just to be included by these adventurers. Eddy, however, very much did look uncomfortable, but it wasn't because of the gang signs; he was just feeling awkward like an interloper in an unfamiliar social circle that was far tighter with each other than they were with him - which, to be fair, he kind of was.

"Uh… no?" the kit squeaked. "Nothing we, uh… nothing we haven't seen before."

"Aw, they're teenagers in America!" Johnny scoffed. "They can probably do the Bloods sign in their sleep!"

"Well, if anything, lads, it goes to show how rarely we interact with those types that we still don't know their insignias, so take solace in knowing we hardly ever go to the really bad neighborhoods… as much as some would say we really should…" Robin seemed lost in thought for a second as he took a long sip of his Pepsi (he'd almost gotten a Brisk Iced Tea, but he'd stopped himself after remembering what had happened the other day), but when he put his cup down, he seemed perfectly content again. "But in case you lads wanted a serious answer to Johnny's question from before our little detour, what separates us from them is that we're willing to do - and are doing - actually heroic things in order to earn our status as heroes. Because there's nothing wrong with wanting the fame and glory of a hero in and of itself - we're mortals, we all have a selfish side, that's an unborn mechanism to make sure we seek our own best interests and stay alive so that greedy instinct is never going away, and indeed, Johnny and I often ponder whether the mammalian condition would allow for anybody to truly want to do heroic things without getting something out of it. Having a desire for greatness isn't necessarily evil - the idea is to channel that desire toward actually doing good things that will make you worthy of true greatness, not the vulgar, self-important greatness the wealthy often seek. Things get bad when you start seeking 'greatness' in the form of power, and control, and manipulation, all for the sake of having power and control and manipulation - basically, when you want a form of greatness that's more selfish than gracious. Now… I understand that I'm lecturing right now, so I'll wrap it up, but in summation, my friends, if you want to be remembered as a hero, that's perfectly alright as long as you strive to be the hero you always needed for other people-"

Robin had to stop talking when he could no longer ignore the fact that the Eds' eyes had drifted away towards Johnny. Long having thought of himself as an engaging orator, Robin wasn't used to losing people's attention when speaking, so something must have been up.

"What are you boys looking-?" He tried to turn to Little John, but by the time he did, Robin had become overwhelmed by the strange anomaly that had entered his head. "GAH! ...JOHNNY!"

And as the fox shook his head violently while trying to fish out the tortilla chip that had been dropped in his ear, the bear went to pieces laughing his ass off and pounding on the table.

"What!?" Johnny guffawed as he sat up again to face Robin. "I put the triangle in the fuckin' triangle! They teach ya this at an early age: if ya see a triangular object and a triangle-shaped hole, you're s'posed ta' put it in!"

But Robin was just too good-humored to stay annoyed at his friend for what was honestly kind of an amusing gag. "Well, good to know you have a toddler's understanding of geometry, Johnny!" Robin laughed. "But if any of the salt gives me an ear infection, it's an arrow between the eyes for you!"

"Oh, good luck with that fucked-up arm!" Johnny joked as he got back to his tacos, tearing open sauce packets and doctoring them up. "Hey, even if Glenn never did figure out who we were, do ya think he'd still want his money back from us if he found out we were eating fake meat specifically seasoned to taste like what we think his people tasted like before we mutually agreed to stop eating their dead?"

Eddy, however nervous as he was, was nevertheless growing a bit bored of this witty banter between people he didn't have much in common with. So when Johnny set him up for a sardonic remark, he shot his shot.

"I just think it's weird that a couple of living action heroes eat so much junk food."

With that remark, Robin put down his burrito and Johnny stopped sucking the remaining droplets out of his sauce packet. They were honestly kind of shocked to be called out like that.

But Robin gotta Robin, so he dared himself to spin this into a happy conversation with a genuine answer. "And you know what? Fair, fair observation. But it's not just that we often don't have the luxury of cooking healthier meals or bumming some from friends; you'll soon see that we get plenty of exercise to burn off all the excess calories!"

"Not to mention," Johnny mentioned, "two of us have body types where you guys can't get fat and two of us have body types where we aren't negatively affected by being fat!"

"I like tacos, Eddy!" said Ed.

"Of course, Eddy," Robin said with a friendly pointer finger, "for our people, our svelte physique is both a blessing and a curse; if we eat nothing but crap like this all the time, then we could be very unhealthy inside and not even know it because our bodies aren't reflecting it on the outside!"

"Yeah, so eat yer fuckin' vegetables," Johnny quipped as he rolled his soft-shell taco into a cylinder. "Hanging out with us, you should be getting plenty a' exercise just from all the walking we do alone, though, so don't worry about that."

Little John stuffed his face blissfully, but Eddy still wasn't quite so satisfied.

"Speaking of exercise…" The kit was speaking slowly and trying to pick and choose his words carefully. "...this was a cool first mission or whatever-"

"Was it ever!" Robin exclaimed. "What a payday! Having some lads around who could pass as our sons could open up a whole new world of ideas! You two should be proud of yourselves!"

While Eddy was annoyed that he'd been cut off, Ed was scrunched up in an aw, shucks smile.

"And I wanna take a second to say - as someone whose life has been defined by having trouble finding things I'm good at and trying to make peace with my flaws…" Johnny added, "...you guys really took it like a champ playing up your shortcomings to your advantage! Eddy… man, I don't even think you look that small for a fox, hanging out next to this tall lanky motherfucker probably can't help though, so thanks for being a good sport about it, I really don't think it woulda worked as well if we passed you off as being… I dunno, eleven?"

"Gee, thanks," the diminutive kit muttered. "So anyway, I-"

"And Ed, buddy," Johnny continued, giving his fellow ursine a look of awe, "just so you know… we know you're not stupid, but damn do you do a good job playing it up for the people who don't care to get to know you! And that 'Brady Bunch' line - took me a second to catch up, but that was some good improv, kid!"

The cub was caught up in a bashful smile. "Thanks, Mister Johnny."

"Aw, stop calling me 'mister,' kid. We're friends now."

"I have to say," Robin had to say, "I quite like the story I put together in my head that we're two single fathers and our sons have an untraditional friendship where the slow boy gets along well with the young boy his own mental age and the small boy feels big and important having a big older kid as a best friend. I personally think that's bloody adorable. I'd love nothing more than to rerun this arrangement until we get sick of it!" He picked up his soda cup and raised it. "To a splendid new plan for a splendid new team!"

Little John was the first to return the toast. "Fuckin' A, we are!"

"What he said!" Ed said with his Sierra Mist raised.

Eddy was still agitated that his point had completely gotten ignored, but he knew he had to show himself to be enthusiastic or they'd start getting suspicious. "Uh, yeah… cheers?"

"Cheers!"

Eddy did feel a little better about himself when he saw each of the other three attempt to take a swig out of their glasses before realizing their cups had lids and straws - and their faces and the way they laughed it off suggested that hadn't been intentional - but the silence marked a good moment to make his move.

"But yeah, uh, it's totally a good idea, it worked out great, but…" He was honestly a bit anxious that they'd be offended by the comment, so he found himself talking with his eyes cast down as he moved a broken tortilla chip like a shark fin through his half-empty cheese cup. "...not exactly what we were expecting, y'know? I mean, it's fine and it's fun and all, but… it's not the one only thing Ed and I signed up for. We were hoping for more action, y'know? Movie-type shit, not just… panhandling."

Eddy knew he had to face them eventually, so when he was out of words, he looked up again. Far from seeming incensed, the Merry Men actually looked a little embarrassed that they'd disappointed their new pupil.

Johnny turned to Robin. "You say you wanna run this plan till we're sick of it - Eddy's already sick of it," he quipped.

"No, no!" Eddy insisted. "I just… it's fine to do this once in a while, obviously it was a huge score, but… just like I said, it's not the only thing we wanna do. Like… hey, you said you wanted to be a real-life action hero; well… so do we. That's the whole reason we said yes."

"Well… we're honored that you feel comfortable enough around us to speak your mind, lad," said Robin, "and… I see your point. Fully, I see your point of view that this might have seemed like false advertising. But…" He glanced at Johnny for a quick moment before turning back to the other fox. "...when we said we wouldn't have you boys doing anything that we wouldn't have our own sons doing, we meant it. And… we really can't think of anything else to do with you that wouldn't be putting you lads in danger."

"Yeah, I mean…" Johnny paused before checking to see if the employees were listening. No, they were all tending to the drive-thru, and the dining room was still empty besides their party of four. Still, just to be safe, the bear whispered: "...we ain't taking you kids along when we're breaking into people's houses and shit like that."

"Oh, and I get that," said Eddy, "but… is this really all we're gonna be doing?"

The adults looked at one another, not having an answer, before turning to the other boy present.

"Ed, were you bored by the trick we played on the bull?" asked Robin.

"Nuh-uh!" Ed said proudly.

"But… would you like to do more?" Little John ventured gently. "And it's okay to be honest with us, please do."

The cub did indeed look like he was a little nervous about betraying these heroes who'd been kind enough to take him under their wing, but he had to follow his heart: "...Uh-huh."

The Merry Men looked conflicted, as they probably should have been. Eventually, the fox simply put his paws flat on the table.

"Well the fact of the matter is, boys, that we might have a reputation in this town as brave men, but even we're not comfortable putting young men in positions they aren't even remotely prepared for."

"Okay, then," Eddy replied without missing a beat, "prepare us for them."

The adults looked spooked.

"What… do you mean, exactly?" asked Johnny.

Eddy squinted in disbelief. "Whaddya mean, what do I mean? Just think about yesterday! Ed was the only one who could save us, but he didn't know how to use your bow and he didn't know how to use your stick… thing… so we probably coulda stood a better chance if we'd've been equals in skill instead of just your helpless tagalongs!"

The adults still looked spooked.

"...aaand now one a' you guys is gonna say 'this is why we need someone like you to point out the tough questions, Eddy!'"

Johnny just slammed his paw on the table and looked furiously at Robin. "Are you foxes fucking psychic!? Is that how you're all so good at reading people? You can literally read their minds!?"

"Well, if I were psychic, I would have seen this grievance coming," Robin said tiredly as he kept staring at Eddy, but eventually he lightened up. "But the lad makes a great point! I have no issue with at least teaching these two some rudimentary skills as a precautionary measure! What say you, Johnny?"

"Hell, I'm game. We already made plenty a' money for one day, now haven't we?"

"Looks like you'll be getting your way, Eddy," said one fox to the other. "We can teach you boys how to play our game juuust in case you ever need to."

And Eddy couldn't help but smile. Apparently swaying these guys was gonna be easier than he thought.

"TRAINING MONTAGE!" Ed hollered, much to the confusion of the restaurant staff behind the counter.

"Just, uh…" Johnny looked like he was gearing up to say something both funny and embarrassing. "...We just wish you woulda said that before lunch, otherwise we wouldn't have taken you to Taco Bell of all places right before a bumpy hour-long bus ride across town."

And right on cue, someone's intestines grumbled, but nobody seems to remember whose gut it came from.

-IllI-

"Alright, so your first lesson was learning how to shit in the woods without it just landing on your pants," said Little John, leaning with his feet crossed and one paw against the Major Oak.

"Lesson Number Two: How to Shoot a Bow and Arrow Like Adam Bell!" Robin announced as he set up their well-worn practice target stand, as pock-marked as an old dart board. "Now, you boys surely won't be experts by the end of the day - and I assure you you won't because we'll only be dabbling in this for today or we wouldn't have time for everything else!"

"But I wanna be an adventure hero!" Ed whined.

"Don't worry, Ed, we'll be teaching you a bunch of stuff in small doses over the coming days and weeks," the archer insisted as he made sure the target was level. "I certainly didn't develop my skills overnight!"

"Coulda fooled us," Eddy remarked.

"Thank you for the praise, lad, but I'd rather not teach you fast when I could teach you right!" He took a spot a fair distance away and gestured the boys over. "Alright, boys, now this is going to sound silly, but hear me out," Robin said as he held up a paw. "Do you see my hand?"

They nodded.

"Okay, now close your left eye."

They both put a paw over their respective left eyes.

"...Er… not exactly what I meant, but good effort. Instead try it without covering your eyes! More like a wink."

They both winked.

...This was gonna be tougher than Robin thought. He glanced past the boys and saw Johnny trying desperately to contain his laughter.

"Okay, er… now try winking without… it un-winking."

They finally got it right, but now they were clearly staring at Robin's face rather than his paw. To make it easier on them, he moved it back into their lines of vision.

"So focus on my hand… un-wink."

They did.

"Now wink again?"

They did.

"Now wink your right eye."

They did.

"...Ed, you can open your left eye again."

Ed did.

"Un-wink."

…

"Wink…"

…

"...Un-wink!"

…

"Now, did you see it shift when you closed one eye but not the other?"

They nodded, not understanding why this was relevant.

"Whichever eye didn't make your vision shift when it stayed open, and did make it shift when it was closed, that's your dominant eye! You'll be keeping this eye open and the other shut to aim the arrow!"

"Don't we need depth perception for that?"

Robin snapped his fingers. "YES, but, accuracy of aim is more important! So…!" Robin raised his bow and readied an arrow to demonstrate. "When you're getting ready to aim, first lock eyes on your target with both eyes open to gauge the depth, then close your non-dominant eye to aim accurately!"

Swoosh! His arrow cut through the air and hit the target perfectly dead center. But you already knew he would do that.

Robin did need a second to shake out his broken arm and seethe through the pain, his request this morning for a double dose of Thor's painkillers denied by Johnny, but the fox was able to continue his masterclass. "Now, have you boys ever heard people describe guns as 'shooting straight'?"

They nodded as he retrieved the arrow and returned to the shooting line.

"Well, they say that because before bullets and gunpowder, they had bows and arrows, and these do not shoot straight. They're light enough that the wind can take them, heavy enough that they sink under their own weight, and - compared to a bullet - slow enough that their speed can't simply negate the first two factors. So when you're aiming…" The teacher readied his bow again to demonstrate. "...you're looking to accommodate for the speed of the wind as well as the distance. If you're shooting from point-blank range, you don't have to worry about it quite so much, but the further away it is, the more you'll have to point it up and into the wind to compensate. Making sense so far?"

Eddy nodded, while Ed raised his hand.

"Yes, lad?"

"What if you're shooting your arrow in the middle of a tornado!?"

While Robin's brain ground to a complete halt, Little John stopped trying to hide his amusement.

"Well, shit, kid, in that case it sounds like you got a lot bigger problems than hitting a target!" the elder bear guffawed as he walked over and put an arm around the cub's shoulders. "Man, you crack me up, kid!"

And Ed might have been hurt if someone else laughed at him for his genuine question, but with Little John doing it… he just sort of felt like it was truly all in good fun. He didn't know how to describe it, Ed just got this weird vibe as Johnny put an arm around him that this guy was a benevolent presence like he'd rarely encountered in his life. Not to say Ed wasn't getting a good protective feeling from gentlemanly Robin, but with this rare fellow bear who was actually more kind than not, Ed simply got this feeling that Johnny… got him. Therefore, Ed smiled and chuckled back.

"That's actually something I wanna see now, though!" Johnny continued. "I mean, heaven forbid a hurricane rolls through town, but if it does, I wanna take the chance to see if you could still hit a target in gale-force winds!" (Johnny Little would like to clarify that this joke was made before that year turned out to be the worst season for hurricanes in the recorded history of the Atlantic, resulting in many, many lives being ruined or cut short. 2005: the year we had so many hurricanes, we ran out of fucking names for them!)

"Well, we still need to take that trip to the Great Plains Tuck proposed to see how I'd fare in a Midwestern windstorm," Robin replied. "But for now, the breeze is gentle, but not to be underestimated! This town gets some bizarre sudden wind gusts like I'd never seen before coming here, but the forest does a bang-up job of deadening them! Now, since you wanted so badly to do this, I'll let you go first, Eddyyyyyyyyyyyerrrrr… erm…"

Robin had held out his bow to Eddy, and only then did he remember that his bow would largely be too large for most of his own species, let alone Eddy.

"What're ya waitin' for?" Eddy asked impatiently before walking up to it and grabbing it himself, promptly falling down as he struggled to hold a bow twice his height.

"Are you alright, lad?"

"Man, how do you carry this thing around all day!?"

"Hey, kid, not to be disrespectful, but, uh… I think we might need to find you a smaller bow, dude," said Johnny reluctantly.

"NO YOU DON'T!"

Robin glanced up at Little John with a look that screamed help me out here.

It took him a second to think, but Johnny did come up with an idea. "Alright, just so he can get a chance to shoot it today…" The bear waltzed over and got down on his elbows and knees. "Alright, up and at 'em."

"What is this?" Eddy scoffed as he stood up, only to feel a pair of paws lift him up even higher. "HEY!"

"We just wanna help Eddy, Eddy!" Ed assured his fox friend as he put him down on the bigger bear's back.

"We'll find a permanent solution some other time," said Robin, "but for now, this can work to teach you the basics." He handed the bow over to Eddy, who begrudgingly accepted it. Robin then held up an arrow, its spear facing downwards as he pointed to its end. "Now, do either of you know what this little notch is called?"

The boys shook their heads.

"Well, if you did, you'd never forget it - Johnny, you want to tell them?"

The furry stepstool couldn't resist a chuckle. "Heh heh… it's called a butthole."

Ed fell to the ground from laughing too hard, and Eddy found himself giggling too.

"Wait," Eddy asked, "is that actually what it's called?"

"There are many names for it, but that is indeed one of them." Robin took the liberty of threading the arrow for him. "Now - Ed, are you paying attention?"

Ed sat up, trying to stop cackling.

"Come now, Butt-Head, if you want to be a hero, you must pay attention!" Robin teased before turning back to Eddy. "Now, where were we? Oh, yes! So the only thing keeping the butt in place is your fingers, and when you pull back to release it, you're going to want your fingers on the butt. Some people - Ed, I can hear you laughing over there! - some will pull the arrow back by hooking two fingers on the string flanking the butt, but that's poor form; you won't get as much power and you'll just make your fingers ache. And as for the front end, the only thing keeping the arrow from slipping off this little ledge is your own concentration. A lot of rookies let it wiggle because their back hand isn't steady-"

"Hey, wait, timeout," said Stepstool.

"Yes, Johnny?"

"Kids, what hand do you write with?"

Little John couldn't see it, but the boys both raised their right paws.

"Good point, Johnny! I'd have completely forgotten about that!"

"Hey, how could I forget? Ya see, kids, I shoot better holding it with my right and pulling with my left. I think I was supposed to be left-handed but my dad kicked my ass whenever I wasn't using my right like a good Christian boy, so now I'm kinda ambidextrous!"

"What's that mean?" asked Ed.

"It means I can use both my hands for different things! I shoot with my left, write with my right, use a fork with my left, use a knife with my right, jerk off with my left, wipe my ass with my right… y'know, the works!"

Ed gasped. "Do you have a superpower!?"

Robin chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Anyway, lads, it sounds like you'll be doing the opposite, holding with your left and shooting with your right. But thank you for pointing that out, Johnny."

"Not a problem."

Robin worked with Eddy to get the arrow positioned right. "So remember, if the arrow's slipping off its perch, use your back hand to push it against the bow."

Eddy did as instructed and did a pretty good job.

"Splendid, Eddy! Now… can you keep it steady as you pull it back?"

Eddy started pulling back.

"Farther back!"

Eddy did.

"Farther!"

Eddy strained.

"Farther, goddammit!"

Eddy pulled it back as far as his arms would let him.

That's when Robin realized the dilemma: the bow was just too big and the kit's arms were just too short.

"Er… let go whenever you're-"

Eddy did. It went about ten feet before hitting the ground.

"...ready. Hrm. Well, then. Not bad for a first try!"

"Pfft, yeah, right," Eddy grumbled as he hopped off the grizzly.

"My turn, my turn!" said Ed as he grabbed the bow out of Robin's hand and an arrow out of his quiver. "I remember the part about the butthole, Mister Robin!"

Robin chuckled a bit nervously at the overzealous cub. "Love the enthusiasm, lad. But do you remember everything else?"

"Yeah, point up and against the wind to fight back against the mean forces of nature and gravity!" And without waiting for further instruction, Ed pulled the bow so far back that everyone could hear the wood cracking.

"Now, Ed, don't be too forceful-!"

Swoosh.

Ed let go and his aim proved to be a little too high - and a little too forceful. He hit the very top of the target board with enough force to knock it backwards.

The Merry Men couldn't deny they were impressed.

"Hot damn, kid!" Johnny hollered as he came and gave Ed a back-slapping guy-hug. "Attaboy!" He was getting along well with this kid; he just hoped it wasn't starting to look… odd.

"Er… wow," was all Robin could say as he picked up his bow and inspected that it wasn't broken from bending. "Definitely too high, but showing promise." Then he realized this praise might implicitly damn the other pupil. "Er, not, not to say you haven't shown potential, Eddy, that was gen-, er, genuinely a good handling of the arrow for a first-timer! We just… honestly need to find a bow more your size."

Eddy just stood there fuming.

"We can buy Eddy an Eddy-sized bow for his birthday next month!" Ed proposed.

"Oh, your birthday's next month?" Robin asked, intrigued. "What day?"

Eddy didn't seem too excited about it. "Eh, the Twenty-Sixth."

"I'll remember that!" Robin promised. "Reason I ask, my brother's birthday was on the Fourth, so…" But then Robin trailed off, seeming to ponder something he wasn't enjoying pondering. "...I almost forgot, Johnny."

"Forgot what?" asked his bear friend.

"Look what's coming up! ...I almost forgot, one week from today will be the five-year anniversary! I… I actually almost forgot! Heh… excuse me for a moment, gentlemen…" And off Robin went, muttering melancholic giggles as he took a second to think.

"What he forget?" asked Eddy.

"I… don't think he'd wanna talk about it," said Little John, "aaand… neither do I, honestly." But Johnny did feel the need to talk about another thing. "Hey, uh… Eddy, can I pull you aside for a sec?"

"Uh… sure…"

"We'll be right back, Ed. Wait for Robin." Johnny simply took Eddy a few dozen yards away to get out of Ed's earshot. "Hey, bud," he said gently as he knelt down to minimize the enormous height difference, "uh… let, uh, lemme just say that… as somebody who's spent most of my life feeling like I was nobody's first choice… I'm very aware that it might seem like I'm giving Ed preferential treatment just because of the mauler connection. So I-"

"It's fine, man, I get it," the kit mumbled nonchalantly. "Y'know… everyone's closest to their own kind, it's normal, whatever." Eddy wasn't expecting to ever be really close with this bear anyway; it was Robin who Eddy wanted to get on the good side of so he could absorb all his talents.

Johnny didn't interpret this as a kid shunning his attention in favor of Robin's, he just thought Eddy was acting like the teenager he was, thinking he was too cool for an adult's approval. So he pressed on.

"I'm just saying, man, like…" Little John glanced back over at Ed, who was playing with an anthill. "...okay, sure, he reminds me of myself in a way, everyone thought I was an idiot who wasn't good at anything for the longest time, and… hey, I don't know his family, but my and his people have a bad habit of being shitty parents, so in case his home life sucks… wait, do you know if his family sucks?"

Oh, Eddy knew for a fact that it did. "Kinda."

The bear nodded firmly. "How about yours?"

Eh, depended on the day, honestly. "Well, you're gonna find out for yourselves soon, aren't ya?"

Johnny needed a second to remember, then blew some air out his nose when he did. "Shit, I guess you're right! Heh… but… yeah, dude, I had a shitty childhood, I just wanna make sure neither of you feel like another adult is ignoring you if that's already a problem… and I'm sure Robin would agree…"

Eddy didn't have the problem of being ignored, his parents certainly preferred him over his brother, but his parents were definitely a little too tough-love with him sometimes for him to really get the sense that they actually liked him as a person and not just as a son they were biologically obligated to love. Maybe Little John here was being a bit too touchy-feely about it, but Eddy could agree it was nice that this bear was at least trying to make the kids feel liked. "Yeah, alright, I can appreciate that."

Johnny's face lit up. "You can!?"

He could. "Yeah."

Little John seemed relieved. "Alright… so yeah, if it ever seems like I'm playing favorites, just stop me and let me know… Rob would probably say the same thing… thanks for hearing me out, kid."

"Yeah, yeah… no problem."

The bear stood up and started walking back to target practice; he had no idea what he'd just done, but he was glad he did it. Hopefully it was more helpful than creepy.

-IllI-

"Lesson Number Three: Stick-Fighting!"

Now it was Little John's turn to lead the class; he'd given Ed Tuck's leftover quarterstaff while giving Eddy a very long and roughly straight tree branch they'd found somewhere.

"How come he gets a fancy poll thing and I just get a stick?" Eddy protested.

"It's not a poll, it's a staff," Johnny corrected. "And so is yours!"

"It's a stick."

"Only if you say it is. I say it's a staff."

"Fine. I say it's a stick."

"It's a staff."

"It's a fucking stick!"

"Well it's a BIG fucking stick!" And with that, Johnny held his own BFS, the B-est of the BFSes, horizontally across himself. "Alright, so I'll tell you guys right off the bat, the skills you'll learn with this thing are actual, practical life skills… not just something you'll use at the fuckin' Ren Faire."

Johnny glanced at Robin standing behind the boys; sure enough, the Englishman was once again playfully throwing up a V to his friend's remark.

Back to addressing the boys: "You wanna know why I gravitated towards this thing when I met Robin and he shared his love of medieval weaponry with me? Because I basically already had some experience with it. Because where I grew up, kids were fuckin' mean, man. Nobody let me play with them, so I went walking alone in the woods to forget who I was, and then they'd jump me anyway."

"They beat up a guy as big as you!?" Ed said in disbelief.

Johnny forced a chuckle. "Let's just say… I wasn't always so big. And I wasn't for most of my life."

"...Whoa." Ed's mind was blown wide open.

Meanwhile, Eddy was silently thinking it was pathetic that Little John hadn't had any friends as a kid - then again, Eddy could look around and admit he wasn't doing much better. And in a weird way, he wanted to know more about what Johnny meant by not always having been big. Did that mean… there was hope for Eddy? No, no, Eddy was a fox, his was a midget species, he'd always be little. But… shit, maybe Eddy and this redneck were more alike than the kit had originally realized.

"But you know what I did to defend myself?" Johnny continued, then pointed at Eddy's stick. "Grabbed me one a' those bad boys. It was the woods, they were fuckin' everywhere. And I had to be resourceful, so… I used my resources. Didn't always work, definitely wasn't an expert with them, but I blocked and delivered more blows with simple sticks than I would have without. So when I met Robin, and he told me about all the old-timey weapons he knew about, I felt like this might be something I had a chance of being good at… and when he told me it was a weapon favored by big brutes without the agility needed for other shit, that just made sense."

Robin chuckled along. The boys just stared attentively.

"And hopefully this will never happen to you, but if you know how to use a stick like this, you'll be able to fight anybody with a stick-like object and you'll be able to fight back anybody who's comin' at ya with a stick-like object. Brooms, rakes, standing lamps, handrails from stairs if some behemoth is strong enough to tear it out of the wall, and, most likely in this life, a cop swinging his baton at ya - they won't fuck with you if you can do this…"

And then Little John did this really cool thing that I don't quite know how to accurately describe, but it was very similar to a nunchuck specialist spinning their weapon around to show off their impressive control. Twirling it rapidly in his right hand, then a quick pass to his left, then above his head like a helicopter propeller, then in front of him like a… also like a propeller, I guess, but like a biplane one, then spinning it in a semicircle in front of his person like a rotating fan as he passed it between paws, finishing by grabbing it with both hands and doing a sort of reverse jump-rope skip as he leapt, threw it under himself and up, and caught it in one hand over his head and swung it down like a sword to smack the negative space on the ground between Ed and Eddy, sending the boys jumping away. Oh, and did I mention that except for a brief moment when he was jumping, he'd had his eyes locked on the Eds the entire time?

"Whoa…" Ed murmured.

"Wow, uh… yeah, that was pretty cool, I guess," muttered Eddy, his enraptured look betraying that he was more impressed than he was letting on.

Johnny just shrugged. "Yeah, well don't be too impressed by that, it took me half a decade to learn how to do that."

"It's still impressive that you learned how to do it at all, Johnny!" Robin cheered from the peanut gallery. And just in case that sounded like a backhanded compliment, he added: "That's not an easy feat!"

"Hey! I'm tryna tell these guys what I'd wanna hear if I were them, motherfucker!" Johnny barked back. "I know you can't relate to losers like me, but most people feel insecure about not being good at things, especially in the presence of someone who seems like they have a natural talent, like you!"

Robin just looked disappointed as he kept his mouth shut.

And Johnny knew he'd agitated his friend, but he felt like he was right about this one. "And I'm sorry for going off on ya, Rob, but I know I'm not impressed by hard work, any idiot can waste years of their life getting good at something, I'm only impressed by what comes across as some inborn skill - and jealous of it. And I know I'm not the only one."

"Yeah," Eddy suddenly piped up, "I mean, I guess it's still impressive if you had to take a long time learning something, but it's more impressive if you didn't… and then I'd be pissed that I wasn't born good at it, too."

Johnny gestured at the kit while looking at his fox friend. "Ya see? And if I were them, if you wanted to convince me that I could become like us, I'd wanna be reassured that we're not friggin' supermen who were born this way."

Robin simply nodded. "Understood." He didn't care for the method of delivery, but he had to come to understand their point of view, horrifically cynical as he thought it to be.

The bear turned back to his students. "Of course, none a' this shit matters if ya can't get yer hands on a stick or stick-like object. So if somebody's comin' at ya with a stick, or a baton, or a baseball bat, or a big-ass piece of PVC pipe, what you gotta work on… is disarming them. Then YOU'LL have the big fuckin' stick!"

The boys nodded. Made sense so far.

"So let's say someone's takin' swings at ya and you're unarmed. Don't try to grab it until you're sure you can get a good grip; until then, dodge, boys, dodge!" He slowly demonstrated some strikes at the air in front of him, some overhead, some sideways. "Now, if they're swinging down at ya, move side-to-side, and if they're going side-to-side, then duck. Always do the opposite or you'll just be easy pickings."

"What if they're swinging up!?" asked the cub.

"Then they probably have no idea what they're doing, which ironically makes them a different kind of dangerous because they can hurt you without even trying. Your best bet it to just jump backwards and get the fuck outta there before he can uppercut ya or nail ya between the legs. Tell yourself it ain't worth your pride to risk it."

"Okay, but what if they're swinging, like… diagonally?" asked the kit.

"Fuck, that's the opposite problem, that means they know exactly what they're doing. In that case, either back off him until you can find your own piece to swing back at him with, or… same as before, just fucking jet at that point. When it comes to actual weapons, if you don't know exactly what you're doing, you're better off being pussies than being hurt." He started making some very, very slow strikes in the boys' general direction. "Let's practice, huh? Remember, duck when it's sideways, dodge when it's straight down, and if you can't do either, just jump backwards and git. You ready? Ed, I'll start with you. Ready?"

Johnny's sideways swing was at a snail's pace as it approached the other bear at shoulder level, and its target made no attempt at avoiding it. Instead, Ed grabbed the staff with one paw and yanked it out of Johnny's hands with enough force to tumble his teacher forward onto the ground.

Now it was Robin who was trying and failing to stifle his amusement as he collapsed to the ground laughing. Eddy wasn't even trying to hide his giggles.

"Uh… Ed, my man…" Johnny said as he got to his feet, "that… that was a good grab, dude, but you were supposed to dodge it."

"I thought we were supposed to steal the big swear-wording stick away if we could!" Ed cried in protest.

"Well…" Johnny had to think about that one. "...and, hey, good on you for remembering that, but we weren't there yet."

"And I thought you said to duck the sideways ones and dodge the down ones," Eddy said with a good helping of snark. "That was a sideways one and you said he was supposed to dodge."

Now Little John looked a tad annoyed. "Jesus, kid, I just got floored! I got my head scrambled and my words mixed up, I'm not thinkin' straight!" Johnny nevertheless forced himself to say this with at least half a smile because he didn't want to be an antagonist to these kids. "Alright, Ed, Take 2. You ready?"

"Sir, yes, sir, Mister Johnny sir, sir!"

This time Johnny swung downwards. Ed still didn't try to dodge nor to duck. Instead, he picked up his own staff, held it crossways like the elder bear had taught him the day before, held it above his head and blocked Johnny's shot.

"Huh?" was all Little John could say.

And he was similarly speechless when Ed pushed his staff away, then pushed similarly against his chest with the borrowed staff, sending Johnny stumbling backwards onto his butt and his back before Ed came in to start beating his sparring partner mercilessly.

"DIE, BAD GUY, DIE!"

The foxes were laughing their asses off.

"ED! ED!"

Ed ceased beating the crap out of his mentor. "Should I stop now?"

"Ed…" Johnny groaned as he stood, rubbing his freshly aching head, "again… that wasn't bad, that just wasn't what you were supposed to… do."

Robin was still guffawing. "Oh, Ed, my good man… you're an absolute riot!"

But you see, Dear Reader, when Johnny laughed at Ed's antics, Ed felt it was like a big brother palling around with him. When Robin did it, however… well, Ed wasn't stupid, he could see that everyone treated Robin like the main character, so when that fox laughed at something Ed did, Ed felt like it might as well have been Superman laughing at him - emphasis on at. It didn't feel quite so amicable.

"What did I do!?" Ed turned around, looking very upset as he faced Robin. "I was doing what he taught me to do in the Kankers' house! I held it with two hands and blocked it just like he said!"

But although he couldn't pretend the kid was the most emotionally mature for his age, Johnny still didn't like seeing the cub feel bad.

"Hey," Little John said with another paternal paw on the boy's shoulder, "that's exactly right. You did good, kid. I don't ever wanna hear anybody call you stupid ever again, because you are clearly a quick learner when you can pay attention - and maybe you just have trouble paying attention! But we've got plenty of time to figure that problem out."

...And Ed felt better.

Robin understood that he may have poked fun at a lad who wasn't in an emotional state to take it well, so he decided to try to do some damage control. "Johnny's right, Ed. What you did was very skillful and impressive - it just wasn't the right time for it!"

"You wanna give it one more try?" Johnny offered.

Ed nodded emphatically. Johnny got to swinging.

"Across!"

Ed ducked.

"Down!"

Ed dodged.

"Ooh, curveball! He's goin' for your legs! Can ya jump!?"

Johnny very slowly swung it all the way down by the boy's knees, and Ed recognized this was just like that game in elementary school gym class where you hop over the jump rope as the teacher swung it in a circle on the ground.

Ed was not good at that game. He jumped just fine, but he landed funny and tumbled over.

Onto someone else.

"AAAAAHHH!" Thump.

"Oh, hell!" Johnny ran over to pull Ed off of poor Eddy. "Shit, you alright, kid!?"

"I'm… fine…" Eddy muttered as he peeled himself off the ground. Certainly wasn't the first time that had happened - and it still wasn't as bad as when he wound up under Johnny's big ass just the day before.

"Oh, thank fuck," Little John sighed. "I did not want to crush a kid to death on his first day with us."

Robin didn't find this accident quite as funny considering his historical aversion to the idea of being flattened - but thankfully he wasn't too stressed about it because he knew it wasn't that bad after he had wound up under Ed's bulk yesterday. "Right-o, Eddy! That's the kind of resilience we need on our team!"

"I was gonna ask if you're ready to practice ducking and dodging," said Johnny, "but if you need to unwrench your back after that-"

"No, man, I'm… I'm fine. Let's do it!" Eddy demanded with a fiery spirit.

"Alright…" said the bear as he readied his staff. "...Here goes nothin'."

Johnny took some swings at the kit. He dodged when he had to dodge and ducked when he had to duck, and dove out of the way when he couldn't do either. In the end, the kit jumped backwards and landed on his stomach.

"Alright, so not a death sentence, but try not to wind up on the ground," Johnny explained. "Makes you too easy of a target. One time a fight broke out in a bar I was in, the owner came out with a bat and came after the dude who started it… owner takes a swing, guy ends up on his chest just like you, owner swings straight down on the guy's lower back… paralyzed him."

"Oh, God," Eddy muttered in disgust as he got himself up off the ground. Ed and Robin didn't look any less aghast by that anecdote.

"Johnny, is that a true story?" asked the elder fox. "You never told me about this."

"Yeah, because you're Mister Optimistic Sunshine Guy and I just assumed you wouldn't care to hear it." Johnny turned back to Eddy. "Now, as you've gathered, I gave Ed a crash course on defense yesterday when we were trying to save you; you want me to catch you up?"

"Hell yeah, I want you to catch me up!" replied Eddy, annoyed that this was even a question. "Don't withhold info from me!"

"Alright, alright, chill, bud!" Little John laughed. "So as I was telling the mauler… two hands on the staff at all times if you can help it. When you're swinging, you're gonna want them right next to each other like you're holding a bat. But when you're on defense? Keep 'em about shoulder width apart for the most leverage. And - Ed, pay attention to this, we didn't get to cover all these details yesterday."

"Okay," said Ed.

"And make sure you're keeping your arms straight. Reason being: holding it a foot in front of you with your arms bent won't help you if your opponent can just circumvent your stick and bop ya in the head or the torso. Besides that, just block the other guy's stick lengthwise, and make sure you put your staff where it's going and not where it is. Just like catching a football, gotta intercept its trajectory, aiming for where it is at a static moment won't help ya. This all making sense?"

The boys nodded in determination.

"And… Eddy, I shoulda mentioned this when we were doing the ducking and dodging, but you actually have a massive advantage here."

"...How?" the little fox asked in incredulity.

"Remember how I toldja Rob beat me in a stick fight on a log bridge when we first met and he knocked my ass into the water?"

Eddy took a moment to recall this story. "...Kinda…"

Little John put up his thumb and index finger in a gesture to signify something very small. "Lower centers of gravity, bud. I wasn't used to going against a little dude like Rob then and I'm hardly any more used to going against an even littler dude like you. Even when we were doing the dodging exercise, you had me off-kilter just trying to get it on your level."

Eddy, naturally, looked vexed by this remark.

And with his history, Johnny totally understood. "Hey. Kid. I know this might sound like some educational bullshit moral from a PBS cartoon, but seriously, there can be upsides to the way you are if you're clever enough to figure them out and brave enough to play them to your advantage. I'll help you out by telling you: this can be one of them."

That sounded like utter bullshit, but Eddy knew that if he wanted these guys' respect, he'd have to humor them. So he replied with a tight nod.

"My man," Johnny said, sounding pleased. "Alright, bud. En garde!"

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. No news was good news: while uneventful, Eddy was blocking the shots pretty well, overhead, sideways, and diagonally, even as Johnny slowly started picking up the pace. He was even keeping his arms stiff and straight just as instructed. After a time, Little John thought it was appropriate to make it more complex.

"Alright, now both you boys listen: here's some tips for when things get rough. So when that archery contest went to hell a few years back, me and Rob were basically the only ones there who knew how to use the medieval weapons correctly, but we still had a challenge against all the mayor's lackeys and their brute force. I could still beat them because I knew what the hell I was doing, but when there's rhinos and elephants and shit coming at you with fucking tent poles, their strength was enough to make it a challenge for me even if they had absolutely no real skill about them. I wanna demonstrate something I had to do to get them off me. Eddy, be a doll and put your stick up in defense position above your head?"

Eddy did, and Johnny gently put his staff upon it perpendicularly.

"Alright, so here we are in a static position. Now do me a favor and bend your knees so your whole body sinks? And keep keeping your arms straight."

Eddy did, and the stock and staff sunk with him.

"Oopsie! What's that?" Johnny narrated as he started listing forward melodramatically. "I was already putting all my weight into that, so now that you're sinking your knees, it's throwing me off-balance! Alright, Eddy, same thing, keep your arms and back straight and push up with your knees!"

It was a bit of a strain, but Eddy did it, and Johnny went through the motions of getting thrown off of him and stumbling backwards.

"Oh, no! You fucked with my equilibrium and now I've been knocked on my ass!" And to put the icing on the cake, Johnny did let himself fall upon his actual ass. "You guys see what happened there?"

The Eds nodded, intrigued by this big-brain strategy.

"Even I'm learning!" Robin called out encouragingly. "Staffs were always more Johnny and Tuck's thing, lads. That was clever, Johnny! I'd never have thought of that!"

"Aw, I can't take credit for it, I just got that out if that book you got us about it," the teacher said with self-deprecating snark. "Alright, now let's try it for real this time! Ed, you got to go first last time, so we'll give Eddy the chance to start now. I'm gonna actually try applying some force this time, so it won't just be a pantomime, got it? Ready, pardner?"

"Yeah… yeah, I'm ready," the kit said with a determined scowl. As cheesy and ridiculous as all this circus-sideshow old-fashioned weaponry training was… Eddy was actually getting kind of a kick out of getting the chance to prove himself.

Eddy got into position. Johnny put his staff down upon the boy's and started pushing, and the young fox actually started having trouble keeping his arms straight. But he bent his knees and took the bear's balance with him, and with all his might, he pushed back up.

SNAP!

THUD.

"OW, FUCK!"

Wouldn't ya know it, Eddy's tree branch broke when it tried to push against Johnny's sturdy staff, and the force from Eddy pushing his knees up all went to thunking his head against the steadfast staff.

"Oh, shit, kid, you okay!?" the accidental assailant yelped as he dropped his own stick to tend to the kit collapsed to his knees and clutching his head in pain. Ed and Robin also hurried over just to make sure the kid wasn't concussed.

"Aw, I'll be fine," Eddy insisted, grumbling as he got to his feet, still rubbing his head.

Little John let out another sigh of relief. "Kid, you are a fuckin' trooper."

"Well, I suppose that'll be enough stick play for today…" Robin mused.

"Well, wait," Eddy countered, "ya taught us defense, but ya never even got around to telling us how to hit people with these goddamn things!"

The adults looked at each other, seeking guidance. The kit had made a very good point.

"Uh… you saw all those swings I was takin' at ya, right?" asked Johnny.

"Yeah."

"...You gonna remember them tomorrow?"

"...Yeah?"

The bear pondered if he had any better answers before throwing his hands up and deciding he didn't. "...That. Do that. That's your lesson for today. We'll elaborate when we find you a staff that suits you, but for now, heaven forbid you need those skills tomorrow for whatever reason, just… copy me. Or, fuck it, just try to get the hell out of the situation if that's an option."

"We can also get Eddy a stick for his birthday!" Ed recommended. "Mister Johnny can get Eddy an Eddy-sized stick, Future British Eddy can get Eddy an Eddy-sized bow, Ed can get Eddy a-!"

Ed was cut off by the sound of Robin suddenly cackling like a madman.

"Oh, bloody fucking hell, ha ha…!" he chuckled under his breath. "That's another birthday that's completely slipped my mind!"

"Uh… whose?" Johnny asked reluctantly, the boys just as curious.

"Marian's," Robin said rather nonchalantly, still seeming to be troublingly amused by his faux pas. "It was on the Seventh. Took me two entire weeks to realize I'd missed it, didn't it? Heh, heh… oh! Did I even remember it last year!? Or the year before that!? Or did I just come to associate the entire goddamned month of June with my brother!? Ohhh, blimey…" And off he walked again, with it understood that he needed another few moments alone.

The other three watched him walk off, not knowing what to do in the meantime.

"...I thought he said his brother's birthday was in July," said Eddy to Johnny.

Little John just took a long, deep breath. "You guys are gonna have to excuse him, he's had one of the worst weeks of his life, he's not gonna be himself for a little while."

"Does he need a hug?" asked innocent Ed.

Johnny just shrugged. "Mine don't seem to be working on him. Nothing against you guys, I think he's holding out for one from a certain somebody."

The boys nodded quietly. They were old enough to get it.

-IllI-

"Lesson Number Four: Slingshotting!"

Ed and Eddy seemed confused.

"Did they have slingshots in the Really Long Ago times?" asked the cub.

"Er… no, they didn't," said Robin, "or maybe they did since it's a rather simple weapon, but not something like this-"

"Then where'd the slingshot come from?" asked the kit.

The elder fox blinked. "So… do you lads remember us telling you about our old friend Alan who'd been haphazardly wandering the country when we found him?"

The boys nodded.

"Well, he happened to already have one in his truck when he met us-"

"And now we're giving it to you because we don't like him anymore and he's an asshole and we hate him and he sucks and we don't respect his property and he's busy getting raped in prison right now anyway so he's not coming back for it anyway and fuck Alan," Johnny growled.

Robin wouldn't have said it that callously, but he agreed with every word the bear said. "That's about as well as I can put it."

"That's a slingshot?" asked Ed, more confused about the strange shape of the weapon than its origin.

"Oh, yeah, of course," Johnny muttered as he turned the contraption over in his paws.

"It don't look like any slingshot I've ever seen," Eddy scoffed. "Ain't they supposed to look like… the letter Y or something?"

"Eddy, if you have a slingshot at home that looks just like the one Bart Simpson carries around in his back pocket, feel free to start bringing it along when you come hang out with us," Robin replied with a smarmy smirk. "But this here is - supposedly, if you can trust Alan - a hunting slingshot! One you wear around your wrist!"

"And it is still Y-shaped if you look at it from the right angle…" Johnny mused as he held it up so the boys could see it from the front. Imagine a classic twig slingshot made instead of plastic and metal with an extra strap in the back meant to leverage it on your arm; from the side, the whole thing looked L-shaped.

"You see, lads? It's all a matter of perspective! A lesson to live by, really."

"I wanna try!" Ed hollered.

"So… about that…" Johnny mumbled as he kept inspecting the thing, "...this thing's too small for my arm, there's a decent chance it won't fit on yours, either." And to validate his claim, he walked over to the cub, grabbed his paw, and tried to slide it through the slot on the arm strap, and sure enough, there wasn't a chance of it fitting. "Sorry, bud, I think us big guys are out of luck with this one."

And Big Ed was visibly distraught that he wouldn't get to play Slingshot, but he knew he had to be a big boy about it.

"But this balances things out!" said Robin. "We might have found something perfectly suited for Eddy!"

"Yeah, Alan was the smallest out of all of us," Little John muttered absentmindedly as he knelt down to help Eddy put it on.

"I thought he was a frickin' coyote!?" Eddy asked, both annoyed that that detail had been deemed relevant to the conversation and confused by how it could possibly be true.

"Yeah, well he was a short coyote - and it didn't help that he hung out with two frigging gigantic foxes," Johnny explained as he fiddled with the instrument. "...Contrary to popular belief, kid, ya don't have to be tall to be a hero."

Eddy scoffed. "Sure helps, though."

And much to his surprise, Johnny seemed to scoff and roll his eyes in agreement. "Pfft, man, tell me about it."

That… seemed a queer thing for this giant to say, as if he could ever know what it was like to be someone like Eddy. But while the kit refused to believe that the grizzly bear actually had any way of empathizing with the plight of the vertically challenged - no matter what he'd said earlier about "not always being big," Eddy was still a fox and Johnny was still a bear - Eddy could appreciate what seemed like a genuine effort to show empathy… or, wait, was it sympathy? Whichever term it was; Little John seemed to want Eddy to know that he could imagine what it felt like to inhabit the boy's tiny shoes.

...So, yeah, if it wasn't obvious by the fact that they had the time to say all those sentences, they were having trouble actually getting the slingshot on Eddy's arm.

"Uh, Rob, a little help here?"

"Oh, don't tell me you can't figure it out!" the fox chuckled as he made his way over.

"Then you figure it out, genius!"

"Fine, I will! Heh heh… Hrm, it looks like you've mostly got it right, just have him grasp the handle, and…"

"Okay, but then what's the point of the strap if it's just sitting over his arm?"

"I believe that's supposed to make it more comfortable for him-"

"Well it'd be a hell of a lot more comfortable if the entire leg of this thing wasn't there. It already goes damn-near to his elbow!"

"Er… maybe that's all there to make sure it doesn't slip off his hand so easily?"

"Well, look at this," Eddy muttered as he slipped his tiny paw out of the hole with no physical or geometrical resistance.

The Merry Men simply stared at his arm for a moment, ogling at how impossibly small and skinny it was.

"Okay, fuck it, you're too small to use the slingshot either," Little John grumbled as he stood and walked away, hands thrown incredulously in the air.

"Goddammit," Eddy swore under his breath.

"Well, it didn't seem… impossibly large for you," said Robin, trying to make things right but not really believing it himself. "...Though I could understand if it proved to be… uncomfortably large…"

"So, really…" said Johnny as he walked back and presented the slingshot to Robin's face, "...the only person this might fit on is you. Put it on, I just wanna see if we can get it working at this point."

Robin raised his busted arm with a coy smile, flailing his fingers to wave at his friend. "Unfortunately, Johnny, I don't think my arm's in quite the condition for-!"

"Not that arm, dingus, your other arm!" Johnny went ahead and grabbed Robin's good arm and slipped the paw through. "Archery rules, brother, dominant hand gets reserved for driving, not for planting."

"I'm honored you think I'm strong enough to fight through the pain, Little John, but I don't think shooting a pebble would be worth the agony."

"Then I'll shoot it for you, motherfucker! Kids, grab me a rock or something, will ya?"

Almost immediately, Ed materialized at their side with a very sizable stone, probably a bit too big for the slingshot, but Johnny was growing impatient.

"Alright, boys, stand back. Rob, pick something to aim at."

Robin steadied his arm and pointed it around, just as he would a bow. But he didn't know what to aim for.

"Not much around here but trees."

"Pick a tree, then."

And so he did. He spotted a hanging branch with a few fingers of twigs sticking out and locked in on it. A very thin and narrow target, if this were to be done with a bow and arrow, it would be an impressive trick shot - one he knew he could make.

"You ready?"

"Ready, Johnny."

But wouldn't you know it, aiming and shooting with a slingshot that's mounted to someone else's arm - a slingshot neither party fully knows how to use, no less - is going to be very hard to do well. Little John put plenty of his ursine strength behind the shot, but the accuracy was nowhere to be seen.

Thunk! The rock ricocheted off the base of a tree.

Thunk! The rock ricocheted off the bark of another tree.

Thunk! Now you see, something deep down in Little John still had a mental self-image of a tiny bear and wasn't used to being big now, so in moments like this, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he genuinely didn't know his own strength.

"SHIT, HIT THE DIRT!"

Thunk! Thump! Thwack! Thwap! The rock kept circling them, bouncing from tree to tree at just the right angle to keep the cycle going until eventually the projectile mercifully started losing steam, hitting lower and lower on the trees' trunks until it found something else to bounce off of.

"OW!" yelped Johnny as the rock bounced off his head as he lay in the ground with his paws over his eyes.

"ARGH!" yelped Ed as the rock bounced off his head as he lay in the ground with his paws over his eyes.

"GAH!" yelped Robin as the rock bounced off his head as he lay in the ground with his paws over his eyes.

"FUCK!" yelped Eddy as the rock bounced off his head as he lay in the ground with his paws over his eyes.

And the rock slowly skipped to a stop on the ground between their four-pointed star before peacefully coming to its rest.

"...Well, Alan got his revenge on us for touching his stuff," groaned Johnny as he pushed himself up off the ground, rubbing his head's fresh sore spot.

"That was cool," said Ed, picking himself up.

"It woulda been if we were trying to do that!" grumbled Eddy as he sat up and rubbed his own head.

"Well, then…" beamed Robin, "let's just tell the world that we were! How would anybody ever know?"

...Wait. Oops. Sorry, guys.

-IllI-

"Lesson Number Five: Cardio!"

"Excuse me!?" Eddy sneered. "What is this, gym class!?"

Robin nodded a little while Little John shrugged.

"Honestly, kinda, yeah," said Johnny.

"It's a harsh truth," said Robin, "but… nothing we teach you boys will actually matter if you're too uncoordinated and unathletic to be physically able to actually do them."

"And when we say 'athletic,' we don't mean like a fucking Olympian - I mean, look at us!" Johnny shook his rotund belly to make it jiggle while Robin played along and rolled up his sleeves to show off biceps that would probably have been fairly remarkable by his people's standards but would have been considered scrawny and pathetic to virtually any species larger.

"We just mean literally a baseline level of physical aptitude you'd need to do the things that we do," explained Robin as he pulled his sleeves back down. "Neither of us is Jack LaLanne ourselves and we can't pretend to live the most active lives on a day-to-day basis, but when our big moments come and it's time to perform… if you're plainly unfit, you simply won't survive with us. It's more for your safety than anything else."

"And wouldn't ya know it, when you're wanted criminals, ya spend a lot of time running," said Little John, looking like he wasn't any less annoyed by that fact than the boys were. "Believe me, I almost told Rob to shove off when I first joined him and one of his first ideas was that we oughta start running sprints and cross-country just to train ourselves… but then I made him start lifting weights, so I had my revenge!"

"And I'm glad you did, because I needed that!" Robin said as he again flexed with a goofy grin and kissed his slender arms. "But in all seriousness, lads, yes, most of the training we do with you will be to foster general athleticism and not much specific to our weapons of choice."

Ed looked sad and Eddy looked mad, but they accepted this as an occupational hazard of the lives they were hoping to live. Besides, with all the trouble they were used to getting into, they were perfectly good runners, running wasn't an issue for them - they just didn't want to have to run for the sake of running.

"Now, Eddy," Johnny began, "you and Rob, your people are distance runners by design, you guys can probably run a mile without really getting tired enough to slow down."

"The trade-off, however," added Robin, "is that you and I simply don't have the sheer power and force as these big blokes do."

"Exactly," Little John said as he turned to his fellow bear while leaning over to gesture to his own thighs and calves. "Ed, you and me aren't just fatasses, we've got some muscle on us if we know how to use it, and that includes down south-"

Robin tried and failed to stifle a sudden laugh, and then Johnny, too, realized exactly what he'd just said.

"Oh, holy shit, sorry, guys!" the bear guffawed. "I did not mean to make it sound that suggestive!"

The boys seemed lost.

"...Oh," said Eddy eventually, "oh, now I get it."

"But… heh, heh… but seriously, guys, I meant… I meant your legs, Ed. You and me are built for sprinting in short spurts, and we're good at it."

Ed just nodded, determined to retain this information to make this kind man proud of him. (And I know I keep using the word "determined" but I do need to stress that this was perhaps the most seriously either of these boys had taken anything in their lives.)

"We've found ourselves on high school running tracks quite a few times," said Robin, "and we've challenged one another to a race on plenty of occasions. I have absolutely no shame in saying that Johnny here can outrun me over short distances, every single time, no doubt about it. He has a much higher top speed than me and it's not even close. But if it's more than, say… a lap and a half?" He chuckled as he patted his friend on the back. "If he runs at top speed, he won't stand a chance! Needs to pace himself or he'll run out of steam quite quickly!"

"So when we're running from danger, I'll let Rob be the lead runner so I have someone to pace myself with," Johnny explained. "Because while our people aren't just fatasses, Ed… yeah, we're still fatasses who have nightmares into adulthood about running The Mile in gym class. Or at least I do, but I can't be the only one."

"And while Johnny's behind me huffing and puffing, my end of the bargain is to push myself to run at my absolute fastest so as to not waste his time and slow him down," added Robin. "His lungs will be on fire, my legs will be on fire… sounds like an even deal, don't you agree?"

"Uh… yeah, I guess," Eddy muttered. He wasn't completely disinterested, he just didn't get what the point of all this was.

"So when you guys are running," instructed Little John, "Ed, I want you to focus on pacing yourself with Eddy, while Eddy, you focus on pushing yourself to your limit for as long as possible, alright?"

"Got it!" Ed said with a salute.

"Yeah, but uh…" Eddy looked around the forest, not seeing much of a logical footpath. "...where do you want us to actually run, though?"

Robin shrugged while Johnny winced.

"As long as you lads don't get lost or trip on a tree root, we don't care!" said Robin.

"It's the freaking woods, guys!" said Johnny. "Have fun with it! Just… run in circles for all we care!"

And so Ed patted Eddy on the shoulder exactly once.

"TAG, you're it!"

And off they went, running a ring around the perimeter of the clearing.

"Remember, Ed, let the fox lead so you can use him for pacing reference!" Coach Little hollered.

Ed had indeed forgotten, but he was out to impress these guys, so he made himself focus. He stopped on a dime, leading to Eddy crashing into his big posterior, before grabbing the kit's paw and using it to pat his own.

"TAG, I'm it!"

Therefore they started running clockwise instead of counterclockwise, giving it all they had to prove to these heroes that they were tough enough to hang with them.

And the Merry Men had no trouble recognizing these boys' efforts and seeing that running would be no obstacle to them, but they also noticed that these two were rather… unorthodox in their form.

"Should we say something?" Johnny asked Robin quietly. "I mean… they're still running just fine, so…"

"That they are, but…" Robin was also rather speechless in disbelief. "...I… I can't imagine that's good for their backs… Oh, boys?"

Upon hearing him beckon, the boys stopped running and looked toward Robin.

"So it's clear to us that running will be no issue to you, but, er… Eddy, do you always run with your entire body leaning forward at a sixty-degree angle?"

"And your arms out in front of you like you're tryin' to grab something?" added Johnny.

"And with your tongue hanging out of the side of your mouth?"

Once again, Eddy didn't see what the big deal was. "Uh… yeah, why? Is that bad?"

"And Ed," asked Johnny, "do you… do you always run with your body leaned way back?"

"And your arms just hanging dead at your sides?" added Robin.

"And your… knees… leading?"

Ed looked from face to face trying in vain to get a read on what the issue was. "...Uh-huh?"

Robin and Johnny didn't know what to say.

"We… mayyy have to fix that," Robin suggested timidly.

"Because no offense to you guys, but… you guys have the running cycle of a weird cartoon," added Johnny.

(Meanwhile, this narrator just can't stop thinking that if Ed and Eddy combined their styles, they'd run like Naruto.)

-IllI-

"Lesson Number Six: Transferring the Phone!"

The weasel just shook his head while the attention wasn't on him. He knew what ridiculous route this was taking.

"When someone has a question that only Charles can answer, you are to hold the phone to his ear while he speaks, not just place it in the crook of his shoulder!" the mayor continued ranting; as long as Marian was late to report to duty, Prince John figured that he might as well thoroughly dress Annie down about all the things she'd done wrong on her first day as Hess's morning assistant. "The poor man has no bloody arms, he's helpless! Don't make him fend for himself, that's what you're here for!"

"Uh-huh," the ewe muttered, trying desperately to stay awake as she stood swaying side to side, trying not to pass out and fall over. The girls had agreed that Marian should take the night shift - her people were natively nocturnal, Kluck's weren't, and since Robin would be most likely to make an appearance at night, it might be more useful to get Mari used to working second shift to be awake during that time instead of spending her evenings passed out and exhausted - but that didn't make it any easier to wake up at four in the morning to tend to a weasel who clearly didn't even want to be tended to.

"Excuse me, Mayor…" Charles piped up, feeling himself raise his hand but being acutely aware that the Phantom Limb Syndrome would probably never completely leave him. "I actually told her to simply leave the phone on my shoulder. I would actually rather not feel quite so helpless and would prefer to help myself whenever possible." He'd felt the need to say something to this effect to enlighten his boss about how it felt to be disabled, but despite his best efforts not to sound too indignant, he eventually slipped up and let all his frustration out during the course of those two sentences. Honestly, the preferable course of action with the phones would have been to just have Annie back off and let Hess do it himself, but Charles knew he had to put up the veneer of needing help around the clock.

And just as anticipated, Prince John had steam coming out his ears as his assistant was refusing to do everything he could do to make himself look as helpless - and therefore needing of two entire people's help - as possible. This ruse was only going to work if the ladies got the idea that their employment was somewhat justified - they were never going to get that idea, because they knew better, but the lion knew he still ought to do his best to make the charade believable.

But no matter. "Regardless," the mayor continued, "it should never have come to that! Mr. Hess is busy assisting me, and you, Anne, are to assist him by erasing as many of his duties as possible! Why should he have to come to the phone at all if you could simply dismiss these pesky callers!?"

Annie told herself that saying something might help her stay awake. "Buh… whah ih it's… a'portant?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"What if it's important!?" she overcompensated. Uhhh, no, nope, exerting the effort needed to speak just made her feel even more tired.

The lion scoffed with an exaggerated lemony look. "Oh, there's no call that's so important as to distract me from my work!"

Oh, WHAT work!? But scathing thoughts weren't enough to keep the sheep's brain firing on all syllables - I mean cylinders, fuck. (Sorry, Dear Reader, writing about all this is making me tired myself.)

"The people downstairs know that if it's an actual emergency, they'd best come upstairs personally and knock on the office door - which you would then answer!" John huffed. "If you wish to succeed at this job, Anne, then you'd best figure out some creative ways to tell people to bugger-"

Knock, knock, knock.

"...off," Prince John finished before composing himself at his desk. "I believe that's for you, Miz Clutch."

Annie took a second to get her legs in gear, but eventually the sheep did leave the inner office to answer the door to the main room. That left the lion and the weasel alone.

"It's enough to wonder if I'd wanted actual assistants if they'd be as incompetent as these two," Prince John grumbled.

"As they sssay, sssire, good help isss hard to find these daysss…" Hess hissed, mostly just easy something but using the opportunity to sensualize him again with some stretched esses.

"And don't you think I'm not grateful for having lucked into finding you," John said with a suspiciously sincere smile; note that Prince John hadn't actually "found" Charles so much as he'd inherited the weasel's services from his brother's administration after Richard had brought Hess aboard as a PR assistant in what many believed was a strategic pity hire. "I thank you again, Charles, for reminding me of that brilliant idea I'd had yesterday that I'd have otherwise forgotten all about! If only we should all be so lucky as to have someone to watch out for us as you watch out for me!"

"Pleassse do not ssstrain to mention it, sssire," Hiss replied, "it is my pleasssure to ssserve you…" Sucker. Of course, now Charles was already feeling the pressure to start brainstorming another new plan to breed disorder, but he felt it was safe to revel in a clear victory for at least a moment. "...but I must asssk, sssire," he continued, suddenly looking demure, "what motivation would these women have to do their jobs properly if they know this is all but a sham?"

The lion let out a nasal chuckle. "This is why it's important to maintain appearances of legitimacy, Charles! If nothing else, confuse them! And if that stupid vixen ever bothers to show up to work, play up your helplessness! With any luck, giving them contradictory directions may just have an amnesia-like of effect - ah, yes, that's exactly what it will do! Glad I thought of it! You may have made a mistake, Hiss - a silly mistake, a foolish mistake, a stupid mistake! - but with an opportunistic and resourceful mind like mine, one never need to worry about-"

The door opened and in came Annie with Marian in tow, and as viscerally exhausted as the ewe was, the vixen didn't look much better. She too looked like she was about to collapse, with her clothes and fur rumpled and dirty and… was that a twig stuck in her tail fur that she hadn't noticed?

"Marian!" the mayor said sternly. "It's two-twenty-two! You're nearly a half-hour late to your first day of work! If you weren't my family, I'd be forced to fire you on the spot lest I foster a lazy and unpunctual workplace!"

Charles, however, decided to play Good Boss to John's Bad Boss. "Are you alright, Marian? I don't wish to embarrass you, but you do look rather… disheveled. I'm concerned."

Marian seemed to be catching her breath before she spoke. "Oh, you'll have to excuse my tardiness, gentlemen, but… I confess to being overconfident in both navigating my way out of that enormous mansion as well as in finding my way to City Hall without asking directions. I thought I remembered my way around from my last time living and working here, but I suppose I didn't! Lots of lost wandering, all on foot. Ah, you know what they say about us women, terrible with directions!" She forced a smile as she tried to appeal to her uncle's misogynistic side, as much as it killed her to do so.

The part about coming here on foot was mostly true - the agreement was that Annie would take the car in the morning and Marian would take it back at night - but she hadn't exactly taken a direct path. She'd been stirred by the sounds of Annie getting ready before dawn to start her own day, and Marian never really got back to sleep after that (this was really reminding her of why she had to break up with that radio deejay who worked the morning drive - a pity, because Ricky was arguably more attractive than Robin on the strength of his sexy broadcasting voice alone). But realizing that she wouldn't get any more quality REM cycles, Marian had decided to be proactive with her time instead of just laying in bed and doing nothing. Therefore she set out to take a bus to Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve, where she arrived at about 9:30 and proceeded to spend the next four or so hours scouring for any sign of Robin, his friends, or their camp.

She found absolutely nothing. She checked both sides of Sherwood Forest Road and even ventured south of the First State Freeway toll road running through the woods. She kept searching even after she got genuinely lost and kept trucking anyway. She even found the creek at a certain point and tried following it in hopes that it would eventually lead to the waterfall and the small pool beneath, but either she was following it in the wrong direction or she'd found an entirely different creek that she'd never even known was there.

At one point, she even ran into some people who recognized her as Robin's legendary love, and the strangers gave her directions to where she could find the Major Oak. Well, either these people didn't remember correctly either, or they didn't actually approve of the Merry Men's exploits and we're seeking to mislead her, because their help wasn't very helpful.

And there was a chance that she might have crossed paths with the boys had she been there five minutes earlier or later; after all, they were frequently out and about on the town, weren't they? She knew there was a risk she'd just get unlucky and she was okay with that. She was glad she'd still made a point to try. He was probably putting three times as much effort into finding her; the least she could do was try to find him instead of waiting for her man to find her.

The mayor didn't know exactly what Marian had done to make her arrive so late, but whatever it was, she clearly hadn't enjoyed it, so he could feel confident that she hadn't been spending her time doing something that might later inconvenience him - or, wait, was it just her acting prowess making it seem like she'd not gotten whatever result she was looking for in whatever she'd been doing? Ah, can't get too paranoid.

"Well, Marian," said the lion, "since we know your work ethic from your last stint working with us, I believe we can safely say that you are a better worker than not and that this surely is an outlier-"

"WHAAAuuuAAAHHH!"

Annie had snapped back awake when she realized she'd been falling over, but in her fatigued state she couldn't regain her balance in time before crashing sideways into the -

THUMP.

- wall.

-IllI-

"Lesson Number Seven: Swimming!"

It seemed with every new lesson, the boys found these conditioning activities more and more frivolous. (#6 had been doing sit-ups to strengthen their core; the boys did okay and nothing really interesting happened.)

"...Ya want us to go skinny-dipping just to prove to you guys that we can swim?" Eddy sneered.

"Oh, no, lads, you boys can keep your undergarments on or whatever else you don't mind getting wet for the sake of privacy," said Robin, "and we have some spare towels ready to go afterward."

Eddy glanced skeptically at the pool of water at the base of the falls. "Just so ya know, we already know how to swim…"

"Do you, though?" asked Little John, holding the aforementioned towels. "Just passably, or good enough to swim for your lives if you have to? Because we've found ourselves in the water more times than we can count, running for our lives."

Again, the Merry Men didn't know that the Eds had gotten up to their own fair share of trouble that required them having to take to water at this point or that, but the boys weren't going to tell on themselves.

"I dunno," said Eddy, looking annoyed, "I don't wanna walk around the rest of the day in soggy underwear-"

But Ed understood his duty to prove himself to these men, and he thought he could probably show his own leadership by inspiring Eddy to do the same.

"C'mon, Eddy, it'll be fun!" Ed said as he picked the kit up and threw him in the water with no attempt at asking for permission.

"ED!" SPLASH.

"CANNONBALL!" SPLASH.

The fox and the bear left standing on the shore as the boys came to the surface, treading water without trouble, although the little fox looked like he was singlehandedly raising the temperature of the pond from the sheer anger he was exuding.

"You guys wanna play Splish Splash, Take a Bath!?" Ed called to the grownups on shore.

"Er… we'll pass, lads, but thank you," said Robin, trying to be polite. "Well, good to know you two can swim, that'll save us some time!"

"Yeah, the last thing we want is to have a kid drown on us," said Johnny. "That would be… well, that would suck."

"I thought you said the last thing you wanted was us getting hurt on the first day?" asked Ed innocently, again displaying that he had indeed been paying attention.

"Man, there's a lot of last things we want!" Little John retorted with a jocular smirk. "Those are like 1a, 1b, 1c on the list of things we don't want! I've already seen a kid drown in my life, I don't wanna see it again!"

The other three were not at all expecting that.

"...Wait, you have?" asked Robin in shock.

"Yeah, back home when I was a kid." It didn't seem to be much of a big deal to him.

"You never told me that either!"

"Because again, you're too happy of a person and I just assumed you wouldn't want me to kill the mood with depressing stories," Johnny said matter-of-factly.

"How's about we talk about something else, then," said Eddy. "You guys got a fur dryer?"

-IllI-

"Lesson Number Eight: Balance!"

"I'm still soaked, y'know," Eddy muttered to the bear, still withholding towels high above his reach.

"Well, why would we bother drying you off when you might just get wet again?" Johnny asked as he gestured to the log bridge over the creek.

"We're not gonna fall in the water!" the kit insisted. "We can balance just fine!" He was very tempted to tell them how he'd basically walked a tightrope for hours on end the other day, but he was afraid that might beget a rabbit hole of questions eventually leading to the Merry Men finding out the… shall we say morally-gray way Eddy had acquired yesterday's cache of cash.

"And I'm sure you're not too bad at balancing, Eddy," explained the older fox, "our people are nimble after all, but much like with the swimming question: can you balance well enough to do what we do?"

Eddy looked out at the log bridge. "Honestly, I'm more afraid that thing'll break under Ed's big ass."

Off in the corner, Ed looked saddened by that remark.

"Oh, come now, Eddy, don't disparage your friends that way!" Robin chastised the kit in a rare moment of genuine annoyance. "Especially if you know better than us that he'd find that comment upsetting!"

Eddy wasn't proud to have pissed these heroes off, but his concern had been genuine. "I wasn't even trying to be mean, I'm actually worried about it snapping."

"Oh, c'mon, kid!" Little John groaned. "It can support me, it's plenty sturdy! And I know it'll support me because it's the same log bridge me and Rob sparred on when we first met!"

Eddy took no comfort in this. "So… it's been sitting here rotting for seven years… possibly more."

The adults stared at him, once again struck by what was a very valid criticism.

"Well fuck you and your logic!" Johnny scoffed as he himself waltzed onto the log to demonstrate its structural integrity, standing in the middle before hopping back and forth from one foot to the other to prove his point. "There. Freshly reappraised: it's good as new! Rob, get on here!"

Robin obliged and they did a goofy fake ballroom dance, spinning in circles on the cylinder that couldn't have been much more than maybe two feet in diameter.

"Seems safe to me, lads!" Robin said as he hopped off, his bear friend following not far behind. "And if you want to join us on a fuller breadth of our adventures, you'll need to start trusting our judgment eventually!"

Well, hard to argue with that. "So, what, just… cross it?"

"We'll make it more complex some other time, but for now this is a good place to start," said Robin encouragingly.

"Whenever you're ready," said Johnny.

Eddy looked at the log again and shrugged. "Here goes nothin', I guess…" He walked at a leisurely pace onto the bridge, not in any hurry as he approached where the roots of the tree converged.

"I wanna dance on the bridge with my wittle fox friend, too!" Eddy hollered as he ran up the tree's other roots and bumped into his fox friend right at the junction.

"ED!" SPLASH. Eddy fell into the water almost immediately while Ed tried and failed to recover, flailing and swaying back and forth for about five long seconds before finally falling into the water himself. SPLASH.

Robin and Johnny again looked on with a strange feeling of awe - but not entirely the good kind of awe.

"Johnny, does that… did the way they fell not remind you of the way you and I bumped into each other that one day we ransacked the mayor's limousine?"

"I was just about to say… Honestly, it's almost… kinda creepy how much these kids are reminding us of ourselves."

"I'm trying to tell myself that this is a good omen and not think too much about it beyond that."

"Probably a good idea."

-IllI-

"Lesson Number Nine: At Work!"

"Okay, I'm already at work…"

"Tu travailles à l'usine?"

"Too tra-vye all loo-zine. What's a l'usine, is that a car wash?"

"'Do you work at the factory?'"

"FUCK!" George swore at the police cruiser's sound system. "Wait, was the L sound just the le in front of a vowel? Jesus, I hate this language. Y'know, as a little kid, I thought I had this genius idea: I was gonna take the English language… and make it so that the improper way we slurred our words… became the correct way to pronounce the words! Officially. Because everyone's just gonna keep saying it the way they say it, right? Then I grew up and realized French already did that and the results are fucking disastrous."

Ward wasn't listening. Ward didn't care. He was still angry at the universe for the last twenty-four hours of his life.

"Why do you even wanna learn French if y'ain't never gonna use it?" the sheriff grumbled.

The deputy, naturally, found that question to match Woodland's personality to a T. "Of course you don't see the point in learning something for the sake of learning something. Of course you don't," Nutzinger said as he paused the tape. "Y'know, Ward, it ain't just about knowledge being practical. You really oughta want to learn for the sake of learning! Some people out there can't learn, Ward. Some people out there are retarded - and not retarded like you, Ward, actual short-bus retarded. People with legit learning disabilities that put a cap on how intelligent they can ever be. And I guaran-goddamn-tee you that every single one of those people would love nothing more than to be broken free of the chains in their mind. And I'd bet every one of them who isn't handicapped to the point of lacking cognizant thought is fucking sick of willful ignoramuses like you who just choose not to learn when they'd give anything for the ability to learn all that you could learn. I don't think you're actually mentally handicapped, Wolfie, I just think you're stupid because you're too lazy to teach yourself and too much of an asshole to care that you have what other people would kill to have and you're just choosing not to use it. Do you hate retarded people, Ward? Do you laugh when the short bus drives by? Or when there's a grown man with Down's face playing with Hot Wheels by himself at a park bench? Is that why you're doing the equivalent of burning money in front of a poor person!? You sick fuck. You probably do hate retarded people! Go to hell, you sick bastard, mocking the handicapped, what a big strong man you are. Is your momma proud of you?"

Sheriff Woodland's momma was not proud of him, nor was his poppa, after all those years struggling to keep his grades up to stay on the football team and almost getting put in Special Ed himself just to waste all that hard work and drop out anyway to support a baby sister who was outshining him in every meaningful way then and still was to this day. He wanted to tell Nutsy off and confess that, yes, his "why are you bothering to learn" comment came from a deep-seated place of bitterness and insecurity about the fact that he did identify with those who didn't feel like they could learn just anything, but such an admission might give the squirrel the ammunition needed to conclude that his boss was actually retarded, and Ward didn't want another person thinking he was actually retarded. So instead he just said, "That don't answer my question."

"I'm not gonna answer your question," said George, who was content to drive in tense silence before he was inspired to ask a question of his own. "So… speaking of the mentally handicapped… did Prince John let you in on what exactly his new big huge plan is? to make the Merry Muchachos hate each other? Because he didn't tell me shit beyond that."

Woodland just shook his head as he stared out the window. "Nope."

"Figures," the squirrel muttered. "...Hey, speaking of… not answering questions… ya never did tell me why you smell like perfume bought from Kmart."

"I-"

*Wait, no, not Kmart!" Sniff sniff sniff. "Not Kmart! Big Lots!"

"I don't wanna talk about it…"

And Ward sounded so incredibly bummed out that Nutzinger almost didn't want to poke and prod further.

"...You have a bad date with a girl who turned out to be even trashier than you?" Hey, I said almost.

"I don't… wanna… talk about it," the wolf repeated firmly.

That was enough to give George inspiration to back off.

And besides that, nothing interesting really -

PBBBBTTT.

"...Jesus Christ, dude, that sounded wet! Did you just… did you just shit your pants!?" The deputy sniffed the air as he rolled down the window, but he couldn't smell anything… too repugnant.

"That wasn't shit, Nutsy, that was blood. Why d'ya think I'm in a bad mood?"

George returned his eyes to the road.

...so yeah, as I was saying, not much happened to these guys that day.

"...Or does Dollar Tree sell perfume?"

-IllI-

"Lesson Number Ten: Upper Body Strength, Part 2!"

(Part 1 was push-ups; again, nothing really cool happened besides both boys having no clue how to keep their backs straight.)

"Now, when we said we didn't expect you boys to be Olympic athletes to hang out with us, we meant it!" Robin assured them. "But this is probably the only thing we'll ask you to do that your average person isn't physically capable of doing. And it's kind of an important one."

"Whether you fall down a gully you need to get out of, or if you gotta climb a wall or a fence or a gate, or if you just gotta… y'know, climb a tree that don't have many good footholds…" Johnny said as he gestured to the nearest arbor, "...you gotta be able to pull yourselves up by your arms, guys. And in my experience, most people can't do that."

"In fairness, I could easily pull myself up once before I began this journey," Robin explained, "but hitting the gym and doing multiple reps of pull-ups? Wasn't happening, absolutely not. Now I can do about half a dozen, though - don't fret too much if you're not already in perfect shape, lads, because it turns out this lifestyle is great exercise!"

"Of course, this skinny little shit's got kind of an advantage," Johnny joked, "because even though he's got skinny arms, he weighs, like, seven pounds so he ain't got much to lift! And that's what I remind myself of so I don't feel bad about myself when he does shit like climb brick walls like a fuckin' squirrel."

"Oh, bullshit!" Eddy scoffed. "Nobody can climb a brick fucking wall! Prove it!"

Robin smirked a sly smirk as he replied: "Review lesson, Eddy! Can you tell me what this means?" And he gave one more V sign to complete the rule of threes, right to Eddy's face, also doing the job of prominently displaying that his arm was still in a cast as he held it straight up with his left paw in the crook of his elbow.

"No, it's true though," said Little John. "But us maulers have a different situation: yeah, we got big-ass arms, but we got big-ass everything else and if we don't work on it, we might not necessarily be able to lift our own big-ass bodyweight. And for what it's worth, I couldn't do a pull-up either for most of my life until I got a job working in the warehouses down by the docks when I was, what, twenty-four? Twenty-five? Had to lift big-ass loads of shit, and… hey, it turned out to be a great arm workout." He omitted the part where he'd undergone the most dramatic growth spurt of his life while he worked that job, which probably helped his testosterone production immensely, but he just didn't feel like including that information. The bear rolled up his sleeves and displayed his enormous arms. "Again, don't be too impressed, if I were any smaller than this, I'da starved to death. Plus my brother's arms are fucking huge, and that cocksucker never even worked out-"

"Johnny, if you're so unimpressed by your own musculature, I'll gladly buy some off of you!" Robin teased.

"Hmph. I wish. Well the moral of the story is that there was a time in my life when I woulda died if I had to pull myself out of a hole, because I couldn't… but now I can! And you can too!"

Eddy looked around for where he was expected to perform such a feat himself. "I don't see any pull-up bars."

Robin scoffed. "Who needs a hunk of metal when you have nature's pull-up bars!?" he said as he gestured fancifully to the forest around them.

"They're not even level - HEY!"

"Good!" said Little John as he picked the kit up and carried him to the Major Oak. "All the more practical experience!" He put Eddy up in front of a branch as the little fox refused to put his arms up. "C'mon, bud, up and at 'em."

Eddy took a deep breath, seeming frustrated.

"C'mon, Eddy, are you embarrassed of failing? I'll tell ya what's more embarrassing: being too afraid to fail."

While Eddy didn't know if he agreed with that sentiment, he reminded himself: he needed to show that he was willing to work if he wanted to earn these guys' respect - and he most certainly didn't want to be outshined by freaking Ed. Therefore he surrendered himself to the branch and felt all his weight come into his arms as the bear let go.

"Remember, I'm right here for ya, kid."

And Eddy trusted that Little John wasn't seeking to hurt him, but he didn't know if he had it in him to save himself. But he couldn't quit already, now could he?

"Remember, bud, there's no shame if you can't do this - that honestly just makes you normal."

All three watched enthralled as the kit put all his strength into trying to pull himself up onto the branch. They saw every ounce of his body strain to reach for every bit of resolve he had in him, the angles of his elbows tightening ever so slowly.

And then his paws went numb and he felt himself drop a foot or two before the big bear caught him.

"Ya did your best, bud," Johnny said paternally as he turned the fox around to face him. "You should be proud a' yourself."

"Goddammit…" Eddy could help but grumble to himself.

"Hey!" Johnny suddenly snapped at the kit in his paws. "Think of it this way: you like the feeling of improving at something, don'tcha?"

"Uh… yeah?"

"Well, how can ya get better at something unless you used to be less good at it?" the bear said with a wise smile as he put the boy down.

...Eddy couldn't argue with the logic of that one. Of course, he much, much preferred the feeling of already being good at something - which the bear had earlier agreed with - but again, like several other things these two had said that night, Eddy could respect that they were at least trying to be a warm and positive influence on him and Ed. These guys were already much warmer than Eddy's own parents, definitely so compared to the Brownes.

"You're so full of wisdom today, Johnny old boy!" Robin applauded, either forgetting that Johnny had admitted a few hours ago that he wasn't impressed by anybody who had to work hard for their talents or conveniently ignoring it. "I'll have to use that line myself sometime!"

"Why, thank ya, sir!" Johnny said with a bow. "Ed, you ready?"

Ed put on a tough look and marched over to the Major Oak, his arms up and hooked down in right angles like he was trying to show off his guns.

"Ooh, I like the determination!" Robin remarked.

"Uh, maybe he should use a different tree?" asked Eddy. "You guys said this one's kinda fucked, right? I dunno, maybe you guys don't want him breaking a branch-"

"You know what?" Johnny thought out loud as Ed picked a branch that went above his head. "That's actually a good idea-"

"Ed, wait-!" Robin called, but it was too late.

Ed was straining to pull himself up, curling his body like a shrimp as he tried in vain to raise his lower body, before he seemed to have a vision. He let his arms go slack as he hung from the branch, then pulled up with all his might.

And as the branches rustled, the cub seemed to disappear.

The others were stunned.

"Well… at least the branch didn't break," Johnny mumbled.

No, instead, something arguably worse happened.

"Look what I found!" Ed called from up in the tree, then jumped down and landed on his feet, pointing a broadsword at them. "Teach us how to play with this next!"

Eddy, while terrified of a hyperactive guy like Ed holding a sword, actually kind of agreed that learning the ways of the blade would be pretty cool; certainly the most badass medieval weapon and ya gotta put the swash in swashbuckling somehow.

But the adults, as you can imagine, strongly disagreed. And nevermind even the dangers of teaching children a sword - they especially didn't want to teach them with that sword.

Johnny got very nervous very quickly. "Uh - no, no, Ed, no, that's not a toy, we don't play with that-"

Robin, however, was completely frozen bar one part of his body: his unfittingly authoritative voice. "PUT THAT SWORD DOWN RIGHT NOW!"

Ed, now himself paralyzed in fear from being yelled at for reasons he didn't understand, let go of the handle.

"No, no!" Johnny squealed, "Don't drop-!"

It landed on the ground, but the sword was a well-made one and the "rusty" red blade didn't seem to take any damage from the fall.

"...it."

Ed remained petrified. "Did I do something wrong?" he begged for clarity, sounding like he was about to cry. "I know it's not a toy, Mister Johnny, but it's a thing you haven't taught us yet!"

"And, uh, and you're completely right, Ed," Little John stammered, paws up, trying to be gentle. "And, and we know you didn't know any better, but we weren't gonna teach you how to use that for a very good reason-"

"THAT SWORD HAS KILLED PEOPLE!"

Johnny looked just as terrified the Eds did when Robin snapped at them. Ed glanced at the weapon, stepping away from it a bit, fearing its power. And even Eddy couldn't pretend that he was too cool to be unnerved in the presence of an instrument of death. Hearing about a kid drowning was gnarly enough; actually seeing a physical souvenir of a fatality was simply surreal.

"It has?" Ed asked, sounding like he was even closer to the precipice of bawling. "...I dunno if I wanna play with you guys anymore…"

"I, uh… actually might be having second thoughts, too…" Eddy confessed, eyes still locked on the sword and beginning to realize that the red stains weren't just oxidization.

"No, no, guys, guys…" Johnny didn't ask for permission before giving Ed a hug to calm him down. "Remember that guy we told you about? He used it on himself, on purpose. And the only reason we couldn't stop him was because we didn't know what he was gonna do."

Robin gave a nearly imperceptible nod. "Yeah… yes, that's right." One must wonder if he would have corrected Johnny had the kids not been around.

"So you guys don't have to worry about that," Johnny continued as he knelt to give Eddy a pat on the shoulders. "And to be safe, we were keeping it away from you guys anyway. Hey, if you guys want some time to rethink this-"

"No," Eddy said suddenly. "Naw, we… we've wasted too much time dicking around already… we gotta get going. We trust you'll have our backs. Or at least I do."

Little John turned to Ed. "...How you feeling, big guy?"

Ed was still transfixed on the weapon, but he forced himself to look at His Future Self. "...You promise you won't let us get hurt, Mister Johnny?"

Little John responded by gesturing to the sword on the grass. "Hey. We made that mistake once and we learned from it. You can bet for damn sure we're not gonna make the same mistake again, especially with some kids."

The cub wasn't sure, the idea of actually dying was deeply frightening, and rightly so. But Ed was getting a real kick out of finally meeting another bear (a guy, no less) who was actually kind to him, and he really, really wanted to believe this guy's vow of protection, even if his brain would disagree with his heart's decision.

"...Okay," Ed finally said, "I think you'll do your best, Mister Johnny."

Mister Johnny let out a sigh of relief. "Well it's great to hear that," he said as he gave the cub another quick hug. "And… I'm sorry, guys, I'm gonna hafta ask you guys to just… excuse Robin for jumping down your throats like that. Uh… if you haven't figured it out yet, it was his brother who, uh…"

"Oh. Shit," Eddy said to himself. "Yeah, I, uh… fuck, I think I remember you telling us about that now."

"I'm sorry, Mister Robin," said Ed, now feeling much more understanding of the situation.

Robin seemed to have most of his composure back. "...Ahhh, oh, no, Ed, you have nothing to apologize for and you need not excuse my outburst," he said at the end of a long sigh, hands folded behind his back. "I apologize, that was extremely uncalled for on my part, grief or not, and you have my word that I'll do better to control myself if something like this comes up in the future." Even on the edge of a complete breakdown, Robin knew how to be a gentleman; it was the only way he knew how to be.

"Man, don't worry about it," said Johnny, "what's done is done and it had a happy ending, didn't it? Nothin' to worry about now. So, uh… you wanna step away with the boys for a sec while I put the sword back?"

"Oh, no, Johnny," the fox insisted as he picked up the blade himself. "I want to do this."

"And normally I'd let ya, but… how ya gonna climb a tree with a busted arm, dude?"

Robin looked at his arm, his mind having been so far elsewhere that he'd almost forgotten the constant pain. He looked at his friend. "Some help up then, perhaps?"

"Sounds good." Johnny picked Robin up and got him into the tree while Robin made a point to hold the blade as far away from anybody as he could. Once Rob was up there, Little John turned back to the boys. "So the only other lesson we had planned today was practicing fistfighting-"

"Which I'm completely useless to teach you lads even with a functioning arm and which you'll hopefully never need to know, the entire point of the weapons training being that you'd never need to resort to bare-knuckle boxing," Robin said from above. "We can save it for another day, you lads have worked hard enough today and you've earned a break. Besides, it's a wonderful summer's day! You don't want to spend all your time with us, do you? And when do your parents expect you home for dinner?"

Dinner? Eddy had almost completely forgotten that he'd been expecting something around this time of day.

"Aw, don't, uh, don't worry about it," said the kit, "our parents get home late anyway - workaholics, remember?"

"Latchkey kids. Called it," Johnny quipped as he turned up to the fox in the tree.

"But, uh… there is something I think we oughta do today while we have a chance…"

-IllI-

I'ma be real with you, Dear Reader, we haven't had many Double-D updates here because his last few days had just been depressing.

Edd was depressed. There were no two ways about it. He'd probably admonish me for being so blatant and unsubtle about saying so, but I'd tell him right back to stop being so goddamn needlessly wordy and pedantic all the freaking time and just convey a simple idea with simple words instead of turning it into a masturbatory exhibition of the scope and breadth of his vocabulary (lol, like I'm one to talk; I actually got an email asking if this was Double-D writing this thing, and I replied saying that that surprised me that someone would think that, as I'd think Double-D to this day is too much of a sheltered little fucking bitch to use as many naughty words as I do - and Edd was cool with me saying that about him because he understood the humor in that statement). But yes, Dear Reader, Eddward Marion Lupo was depressed. He had just found out that his life was on entirely the wrong track, possibly past the point of correcting course, and that made him feel depressed.

He'd always been an indoor kid, but these past forty-eight hours or so, he'd been a complete shut-in. He'd tried taking his mind off of the situation as best he could; reading books, watching documentaries, tinkering with gadgets, focusing on his chores. But the intrusive thoughts just kept coming back, and he found himself hurrying his household tasks just so he could have more time to hop online and double-check the mental checklist of all the traits a loveable rogue like Adam Bell had that Edd did not believe himself to have.

I know we've discussed this before, Dear Reader, so I will try to keep it brief, but if we may quickly recap the long list of adjectives attributed to that outlaw of old (with emphasis on the Sidney cartoon human version): brave, bold, daring, dashing, smooth, charming, charismatic, calm, cool, collected, cool in the other sense of the word, inspiring, influential, a natural leader, someone with conviction, effective, resourceful, clever, crafty, cunning, fearless, resolute, strong, athletic, tall, handsome, sexy and so goddamn hot. And I'm probably still forgetting a bunch of important ones. But Double-D couldn't stop Rolodexing through this list in his mind and dwelling on how he completely failed to stack up.

Yeah, there were some Edd would have thought he could maybe say he was; he'd always fancied himself as brave for standing up in the name of knowledge in the face of rampant anti-intellectualism, he'd always tried to be calm when addressing a problem (well, after getting the freak-out out of his system), and… well, his mom always said he was handsome. But what's the point of having a high opinion of yourself if nobody else in the world agreed that he was these things? That's why Double-D - who had sought to please authority figures since the day he was born - refused to follow the theory that true maturity entailed not caring what others thought of you; sometimes being held in check by the opinions of others was the only thing keeping you from being completely delusional.

But let's examine two particular adjectives on that list that made a fascinating case study: clever and its cousin crafty. Clever and crafty implied that someone was intelligent, and of course Double-D was the one coming up with all the Eds' gadgets and doohickeys. But absolutely nobody would say that Adam Bell was a genius in the same vein as the wolf boy; indeed, much of this conflict lay in how Double-D had suddenly been confronted with the fact that he'd put all his chips onto book smarts and none onto street smarts. Therefore Edd had to ask himself: how clever or crafty could he ever have been if he hadn't been clever and crafty enough to have people see him as anything other than a spineless nerd? Hey, aren't "the brains" of an operation supposed to be the ones in charge? Adam Bell sure was, but Double-D certainly wasn't. And if Edd was so clever and crafty, why couldn't he lead Ed and Eddy away from the Merry Men like a leader would? Oh yeah: because that wasn't in his skill set, which was beginning to look far more limited than he'd ever realized. And he may have never realized it had he never met somebody who was the closest to a real-life Adam Bell anybody could ever meet.

All he knew for sure he was good at was thinking - and right now, he was overthinking.

Double-D was depressed because he realized he was not becoming the person he thought he'd grow up to become. There were many things he'd hoped to gain in his pursuit of science and technology, and while certainly not the only thing he craved, admiration was one of them. But he'd had to ask himself: is your lay man more likely to idolize Albert E., or Adam B.? Edd could no longer pretend that your typical person would ever value research and discovery as he himself did. He'd seen what your average person actually admired, it sickened him to come to terms with the fact that he couldn't have it both ways, it mortified him that a couple of guys emulating a fictional criminal were tangibly improving the world far more than a rule-follower like him was, and it frightened him that even if he did try to find a way to bring Adam Bell's charming traits into the field he wished to enter in the hope of using them to make learning and intelligence cool to the mainstream, he may have already been too far behind to ever truly catch up.

So when the doorbell rang and he received a slew of heavy packages with his home address printed on the shipping label but with Eddy's father as the listed recipient, Double-D welcomed the intrusion. Now this would take his mind off his newfound self-loathing. Some of these packages were clearly more of the things Eddy had bought for the aborted fake ID scam/scheme/hustle/plan, but others were wholly unfamiliar. And the fact that Eddy had had them shipped to Edd's house even after their schism must have meant that Eddy still wanted to at least be on speaking terms with him, so that was good - actually, no, wait, come to think of it, Eddy could very well just be expecting the wolf to be the pack mule he siphoned his contraband through, all while not otherwise engaging with him as a friend. Now if Eddy were to do something that shitty, Double-D would just say fuck it and call the cops.

But Eddy didn't prove to be that much of an asshole. He stopped by, explained what was in the boxes (notably without actually opening them) and what he was planning on doing with them, asked what his new friends would need to bring, asked if said new friends could come over before Mr. and Mrs. Lupo got home, and stressed that he understood this was a big order and consequently was willing to pay Edd beaucoup dinero for his troubles.

And as Double-D waited, he wondered: should he just open the boxes? He knew they were Eddy's, he knew they were things he was expected to work with once they were opened, he knew there was very little risk involved in doing this, and he knew it was something Adam Bell wouldn't be afraid to do. But he also knew opening other people's mail was against the law.

The pup decided not to. He told himself that he shouldn't let his bitter jealousy of Adam Bell drive him to becoming someone he wasn't. And besides, Eddy might flip the fuck out on him.

"You're sure he's cool with us coming over?" asked Little John as they approached the house on the corner.

Eddy was beginning to find the Merry Men's skepticism annoying. "I told you, he-"

"You're sure?"

"Yes!" Eddy still thought they were worrying too much even after they'd thoroughly described the events of Saturday. "He says don't worry, he doesn't think you guys are evil anymore, he says he's given up trying to be great by being a nerd."

"What was that!?" Robin squeaked in surprise.

"He says he's given up," Eddy repeated, not knowing why that would be anything worth getting worked up about.

The kit didn't bother knocking; the door was unlocked. And in the living room sat the wolf boy, staring at the wall and sipping orange juice as the unmolested packages lay next to him on the couch.

"HI, DOUBLE-D!" Ed shouted.

"Er… hello there, Eddward!" Robin greeted as he entered.

"Hey, Dubs!" Johnny added as he squeezed through the door. "Uh… how's it goin', bud?"

"Oh, I'm quite alright, and yourselves?" He wasn't looking at them. He wasn't looking at any of them. He just stood and took his finished OJ to the kitchen. "Pardon me, I'm just going to wash my glass-"

"Oh! Nuh, um, no dude, that's fine! Don't let us rush you!" Johnny insisted.

"My! Er… your family certainly has done a good job of cleaning up the mess!" Robin said, trying to keep the mood light as he looked around the room and up the stairs.

"Yes, we have good home insurance," Double-D muttered from the kitchen. "We count our blessings." Still no eye contact for anybody. Really, his eyes didn't seem focused on anything at all, and while his eyes weren't exactly half-shut, his lids did look heavy.

Okay this was getting creepy. Eddy still didn't seem to care, but Ed did.

"Is something wrong, Double-D?" the cub asked as the pup walked back into the living room.

"No, nothing's the matter, Ed," Edd replied. "All is well. All is as it should be." Double-D then came close to looking directly at the Merry Men, glancing at the space between them as he gestured them over. "If you'd like to carry the supplies up to my room, we can begin the various processes."

Ed and Eddy grabbed some of the boxes, and Little John felt compelled to grab a few as well, handing Robin the mailbox full of their documents to carry with his good arm.

The boys were all silent as they walked up the stairs, and the adults wanted to say something but didn't know what to say. All day before that, Ed and Eddy had been awkwardly silent in Robin and Johnny's presence as if afraid to intrude on their preexisting dynamic; now the script had been flipped. But the Merry Men had never been the kind to be too afraid to do what was right, scary as it may be.

"Hey, we really appreciate you doing this for us, bud," said Little John.

"Don't mention it," Double-D said with all the fizziness of flat cola.

Robin, however, was not content to merely express his gratitude; he felt like he needed to make amends.

"By the way, Eddward," the Englishman spoke crisply and clearly, "I do wish to apologize for my conduct the other day, I-"

"You've already apologized for the damage," said the wolf. "Water under the bridge. No need to repeat yourself."

"I… wasn't going to say that," Robin murmured. "I would like to apologize for that… ridiculous argument I found myself making right before your uncle showed up, that… quite frankly callous notion of what disqualifies one from being heroic, I'm ashamed of myself for speaking before thinking it through." (Which was his way of saying that he kinda-sorta still believed it, even if he admittedly didn't do the best job phrasing or defending his argument.) "Some say I have a silver tongue, but you've seen first hand, just because the words may sound nice coming out doesn't mean they necessarily make any sense!"

"And you know what?" added Johnny. "If I can piggyback off that… we just wanna say we hope that trying to prove to you that we're good guys hasn't… y'know… that it hasn't given you the feeling that you're any less of a good guy just because you do something different than us. Because you are, man! You're a good dude, that's why you're helping us out right now!"

"We know our arguments that one needs to be active against evil might have come across like we were saying you weren't doing anything good, but, er… don't think we meant that just because you're not leading a revolution means you're not doing important good work!" Robin finished with a bang. (Jesus, this was a long staircase. What was with all the houses in Peach Creek and their weird geometry?)

But then Double-D said said five words (well, technically nine, but four of them were duplicates) that scared the living shit out of them.

"No, you guys were right," Edd said as he reached the top of the stairs and turned a corner. "You guys were right…"

Robin and Johnny exchanged panicked looks.

"Hey, er… Eddward, do you mind if we use the toilet? We haven't had a clean place to go all day!"

"And you know I won't forget to flush!" Johnny chuckled awkwardly.

"By all means." Double-D wasn't even turning his head at this point.

Still, the fox and bear took their recess to walk to the far end of the hallway and have a private chit-chat.

"Hey, Rob, did we… accidentally completely shatter this kid's spirit?" Johnny asked as he leaned over. "...And his sense of self-worth… aaand his sense of self in general?"

"I'm trying really hard not to think about that," Robin confessed. *You know I'd usually be the first to say let's stop what we're doing and help him, but… we need him to do some work for us quickly, so I don't think we've much time to spare."

Little John groaned. "Can't we get Thor to do this? He's kinda good with computers."

"What, and ruin the plot?" Robin forced a chuckle despite not being in the mood for humor himself. "But in complete seriousness, Johnny, he's not that much of a tech whiz, is he? Besides, at this hour he's probably still asleep."

"Or jerking off until his dick bleeds."

"That, too."

The bandits entered the wolf boy's room, which was still noticeably catawampus but not nearly as trashed as it was when they'd last seen it. There had even been a new window put in already. And speaking of the window:

"By the way," said Johnny, "ya got that backpack I dropped in later that night, right?"

"Yes, it's been taken care of," Edd answered cryptically as he sat at his desk and opened his computer.

"Oh! And before we forget…" Robin opened and dug into the backpack Johnny was wearing and pulled out a short stack of Benjamins. "...Let us compensate you for your-"

But Double-D just put a hand up in their general direction. "Please don't bother with payment. You two are doing good work and need my help; it's my moral imperative to provide it free of charge to the likes of you. It is my place to serve those above me."

This only made the Merry Men grow more concerned, but they did need his help, so if he was going to refuse payment and do it for free, they wouldn't fight it.

Meanwhile, Eddy sat on the edge of the bed, opening the boxes, swinging his feet together as he did so his shoes tapped together, and Ed was off in the corner naming the ants again.

"...and you can be Shapiffany, and you can be The Ooga-Booga Cougah, and you can be Dominatrix, and you can be Mustard Seed Man, and you can be Nichelle, and you can be Chappie, and you can be Darling, and you can be Big Mickey, and you can be Tim the Tool Man, and you can be Gasoline Head, and you can be Ophelia Bidet, and you can be Jake the Cabbage Farmer, and you can be Lana Lotion, and you can be Steve, and you can be The Real Slim Shady, and you can be Peppercorn, and you can be…!"

Robin and Johnny stood around, not really knowing what to do, certainly not feeling comfortable to invite themselves to sit down after all the tense moments they'd had with this kid.

"Do you have your documents?" Double-D seemed to ask the universe at large.

"Er, yeah, they're in here," Robin said as he handed over the mailbox.

Edd carefully extracted all the relevant items: their real driver's licenses, their real birth certificates, Robin's real passport and green card, et cetera.

"Eddy, please make space for our guests to sit."

Eddy grumbled as he scooted over to make room for the fox and the bear, and didn't seem to regret his politeness any less when the bed massively sagged under Johnny's great weight. Eddy was used to this, of course, from all his time spent with Ed, but that didn't make it any less annoying.

"So we got the special paper, the special printers, the special plastics, the special laminates…" Eddy narrated as he pointed to the opened boxes. "...special all kinds of shit."

"I can do most of this by myself tonight," the wolf explained to his computer screen. "Mr. Hood, Mr. Little, do you have any objection to taking new photographs for your licenses today? I recommend you do, it will likely make it tougher to track than just using your old ones."

The Merry Men hadn't known what to expect coming into this, so any question Edd could have asked him likely would have confused them. They looked at one another to see if the other had any qualms about that, and neither seemed to.

"Uh… no?" said Johnny. "I think we're good for… that."

Double-D nodded silently. Why was he helping them? Hey, why not at this point? They won. They'd proven that they were better and moreover more effective individuals than he'd ever be, so he might as well fall in line behind them. As he told Eddy, he'd given up. And as they say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em; he didn't really want to join them, but with what a powerful and dominating force they were, he didn't feel he had much of a choice.

"What are your names?" he asked.

The Merry Men didn't understand the question but Robin took a stab at it, very much taking the query at face value. "Er… Robert Edward-"

"No, sirs, the names you've chosen for your aliases," the wolf said as he gave the outlaws a direct look for perhaps the only time that day before he quickly turned back to his computer. "The fake identities you're choosing to assume. Have you picked your names yet?"

The guys looked at one another, curious if the other had; they had not.

"My apologies, Eddward, but we haven't," said Robin. "It was just yesterday that Eddy told us that this was even an option, and we haven't had the time to brainstorm yet."

Edd nodded. "I understand I'm putting you on the spot, but I'm going to need you to pick new names in the next few minutes. For best results, please pick something you'll remember and which you can soon train yourselves to answer to."

A reasonable request, but still one that was going to make the next couple of minutes a wee bit stressful.

"Do you have any names ready to go?" Johnny asked Robin.

"Er… I can think of plenty of names but I can't say for certain I'll remember any of them tomorrow…" Robin thought as he pondered. "What are the streets off Peachtree leading up to here? Bedford and Harris? Do you want to be Mister Harris while I be Mister Bedford?"

"No, no, too easy to figure out."

"Argh, I agree, I'm just trying to think 'easy to remember'..."

"...Didn't your mom have a name that was almost a guy's name?"

"Er… yes? Brianna, not even remotely as common a name back home as it is over here. Named for her late brother Brian who died while my gran was pregnant with her. Why?"

"Well, there ya go! My mom's name was Philomena of all things, people just called her Phil - you be Brian, and I'll be Phil!"

Robin turned it over in his head. "I'll be frank with you, Johnny, I'm not going to remember to call you that."

"Yeah, me neither."

"Would be fitting though!"

"Just like how my voice actor's name is Matt Hill, just like my parents!" Ed declared from over by the ant farm. To this day, we don't know what the fuck he was talking about there, some has even speculated from this line that Dr. Burroughs may have failed to diagnose Ed with some sort of depersonalization/derealization disorder that made him think he was a cartoon character, but it did get the Merry Men's attention.

"Ed!" said Robin. "You're good with names! Would you like to do the honor of naming us?"

Ed gasped and started jumping in place excitedly. "Oh boy, would I!" He walked up to the Merry Men and gave them a good, hard look, like an artist trying to look at the tools and elements at his disposal to find inspiration for what to make. "Okay, you Mister Rob can be Jehosephat Aloysius Rodger Dodger McGillicuddy MacGyver Jones, The Taker, The Giver, The Lover, The Liver! And Onions! Hark! Hark, the Harold Ramis Angels Sing From the Halls of Montezuma's Revenge! Kilroy Was Here! Sousaphone and Hardy! Absalom, Absalom! No, Absalom, It's Such a Lonely World, Don't Make It Lonelier! I Want to Be Made of Marinara Sauce, Too! If Every Day Were Closing Time, I'd Sleep the Night Away! FISH! I Am the Chop Suey Chosen One, and You Shall Know Me When You See My Name Written in the Night Sky! For I Am… A Fox Called Goldilocks! - or 'Jay' for short!" Ed then hopped over to his fellow bear. "And Mister Johnny! You can be, um…" Ed seemed to stare into space for a good fraction of a minute, pulling down violently on his lower lip as he thought before it came to him: "...Sixteen!"

"...Sixteen?" Johnny asked.

"Sixteen!"

While Eddy and Edd weren't seemingly moved by Ed's proposals, the Merry Men were looking at each other, hoping the other would find a polite way to convey that despite an undeniably vast quantity of creativity on the cub's part, those names were completely insane.

"...We'll make those our middle names, lad," Robin eventually said, "but thank you for a bang-up job."

Proud of his achievements, Ed hugged himself. "I helped!"

"That you did, Ed."

But Johnny was off in thought. If was capable of snapping his stubby fingers, he would have snapped them. "I've got it."

"What have you got?" asked Robin.

Now Johnny himself was wearing a wide, self-impressed smirk. "Let's just trade names, dude."

Robin didn't get it. "What, you wanna be Robin Hood and I'll be Little John?" he asked with a wince.

"No, you idiot!" the bear said with a teasing scoff. "I'm saying… I'll be Bobby… and you be Jack."

Robin turned to stare off into space and think about that one. He couldn't tell if that was stupid or genius.

"What, nobody ever ask if they can call ya Bob, Rob?" Johnny continued.

"Yes, and it's an annoyance my brother and I bonded over!" Robin answered. "Especially in America, people always see my name on official documents and ask me if I go by Robert or Bob, with him they asked if he preferred William or Bill, and we joked about how ridiculous it was that everyone always acted like there were only two options!" The fox chuckled; he was starting to think this idea was so stupid that it became genius.

"I get the same shit with 'Jack'," Little John explained. "But you know what? I'd bet that if we keep calling each other Bobby and Jack, people probably won't even make the Robert/John connection. And if they do? Fuck, our names are common enough! I already share one with the fuckin' mayor, don't I? Plus Bobby's a good name for a good ol' boy like me, and Jack? I can see Jack being the name of, like… like a British sailor in World War One or something."

This was starting to make too much sense. "You really think of an old-fashioned Englishman like me when you think of the name Jack?"

Johnny rolled his eyes, still smiling bright. "Naw, man, when I think of the name Jack, I think of a fucking Mexican dude, y'know?" he laughed. "Hey… maybe this is all the dumbest idea you've ever heard… maybe you would rather just embrace stereotypes and you can be, like, 'Nigel Alistair Pennybridge' while I be 'Jim Bob Fuckbucket' or something like that… but I kinda wanna leave a huge clue like that under the law's noses just to fuck with them."

Robin saw Johnny smiling like a child hoping for a Christmas miracle. He just couldn't say no to a face like that.

The fox extended the paw of his broken arm, which the bear very gingerly accepted.

"I agree this is a ridiculously brilliant and brilliantly ridiculous idea," Robin said with a smirk as they shook hands gently. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you, Bobby."

"Glad we could come to a mutual understanding, Jack."

"Are you two sure ya ain't drunk again?" asked Eddy.