55. "Trailer Park Girls"
It's funny how people you know exist could still achieve an almost mythical status. That was the case for the three teenage girls who lived smack dab in the middle of the trailer park: something about their ways and their story didn't add up, and people who had seen them with their own eyes - as the students at Peach Creek Junior High had on a regular basis for the last two years - would still question if it was even possible that they could be real.
Let's assess the facts of their situation, beginning with a breakdown of who the Kanker sisters were.
First there was May, the yellowish-beige opossum who, like many of her species, had bad luck in the dental department, suffering from a profound overbite that made every word she spoke sound like she was drowning in her own saliva. She was probably the closest thing to a nice one among them, which made her an easy punching bag for the other two. May really did seem to have a good heart deep down, but this was countered by having just absolutely no backbone about her nor seemingly much intelligence, leading her to follow along whenever her sisters were wreaking havoc. And you just know that when the prize was getting to make out with her teddy bear Ed (many joked that the two of them were certainly a good match in terms of IQ and odor), she was more than happy to fall in line with her sisters and let her feminine urges drive her.
Next was Marie, the raccoon with a shock of blue dyed fur atop her head which lay over one of her eyes in some sort of vaguely punk/goth/emo aesthetic. Some said she was the least-ugly of the three; others said fuck "least-ugly," she was hot; and still others said dude, she's a teenager, you shouldn't be thinking about her in terms of her attractiveness, that's not okay. In any case, the consensus was that she was definitely better-looking than the other two, who were frequently accused by boys and girls alike as looking actively repulsive. There was also a consensus that she was either the least-stupid of them or perhaps even actually smart, not so much because she exuded genius but just sort of the vibe you got off of her, you could see it that she was probably the only one of the three actually passing her classes. Not to mention, her attraction to Double-D had to come from somewhere; that skinny, skittish wolf didn't have much going for him in terms of physique or a particularly manly personality, so it must have been his intelligence that had Marie hooked.
Then there was Lee, a rusty-red coyote who also had the gene that made the fur on the top of her head grow longer than the rest, wearing this hair in such a way that it completely covered her eyes (some joked that she had three of them); she was the de facto leader of the trio, and while the other two didn't exactly consent to let her have such authority, she was definitely the toughest and roughest of the girls and often exerted her power by force. Between her demeanor and her fashion sense (or lack thereof), many upon meeting her would assume this young lady was bound to grow up to be a lesbian, but they'd soon bear witness to her ravenous libido and realize the opposite was true: she liked men she could dominate, and many theorized that her crush on Eddy was because she found it adorable that the loudmouthed little foxxo thought he could be a leader of men and she got a kick out of overpowering him.
Already, you encounter an incongruous situation: these three sisters belong to entirely different species. Yes, adoption was a thing, but you rarely see more than two species in the same nuclear family unless it's an outright foster home, and even then people living in such squalorous conditions are not usually approved by the courts to take in children. The common theory was that the three sisters were all connected through the same mother figure, Mama Kanker, who had at one point or another been with all of their fathers.
But who was Mama Kanker? Was she any of these girls' biological mothers? If she had to have taken in at least two of them from prior relationships, who's to say she didn't just adopt all three? Actually, did she legally adopt any of them? And perhaps a better question, where were the girls' fathers? Because Ed, Edd, and Eddy could attest that they'd seen three robes labelled "Bubba", "Rod", and "Butch" in that trailer that the sisters claimed were their fathers'; did this mean Mama Kanker kept these men's robes as a sort of big-game trophy? Or was it a polyamorous arrangement centered around the queen-like Mama Kanker and all three dads were still present in their daughters' lives, but were rarely spoken about due to the girls' reverence for their mother? Or… did Mama Kanker kill the three men? Was Mama Kanker a man-hating murderer? A logical long-jump to be sure, but you must admit, Dear Reader, that would go a long way towards explaining the girls' attitudes towards men and towards people in general.
And you know what made this all the more complicated? Nobody had ever seen Mama Kanker. Not a soul. For all the times the Eds were dragged kicking and screaming into their abode, they'd never so much as seen a picture of her on the walls. Oh, you want it to get worse? The school didn't even know this lady. One of the English teachers let slip that their mother had been repeatedly called in for a parent-teacher conference to talk about the girls' terrible grades and all the fights they'd been getting into, and not only had she never shown up, but the school had never even gotten a hold of her on the phone; said teacher also strongly hinted that administration wanted to send the cops or CPS or somebody to check up on the girls' home lives, but since the sisters weren't truants or anything, they didn't have enough to justify such an extreme action. Hopefully by now you can start to see why some people genuinely thought that there was no Mama Kanker, and that the sisters were actually a trio of petite adult women who'd bonded over their shared inability to find a man their own age who would take them, and in turn plotted an elaborate scheme to pass themselves off as middle-schoolers so as to prey upon prepubescent boys - hey, it made about as much sense as anything else about them.
But most people thought that Mama Kanker did exist and was present in some capacity, and following Occam's razor, the girls were likely just trailer trash of the highest order, the daughters inherited by a frequently-absent woman scorned time and time again by men, her anger toward the unfair sex rubbing off on the girls and leading them to believe that the only ethical way to satisfy their libidos' urges for their male oppressors was to oppress them back in the process. Oh, and some held this belief with the caveat that anywhere between one and all three of the sisters was actually a lesbian and just took advantage of the boys for fun like feminist stereotypes taken to the extreme (some adding Mama Kanker as another potential lesbian pretending to be straight as well if the speaker also believed the Serial Killer theory about her), but that's really neither here nor there.
"We appreciate the exposition, boys, but you're really not doing anything to make me wanna stop being so tense and angry about these girls before I even meet 'em," Little John grumbled as the two bears and two foxes meandered through the trailer park with a bag full of dough.
"And while I'm a bit skeptical that they're quite as bad as you make them out to be," added Robin, "you lads are clearly stressing yourselves out thinking about them so much. The point of us visiting all these other homes before we meet them was to take your minds off them, boys."
And they were indeed taking the most indirect path possible towards the Kanker household in the center of the trailer park, stopping at other homes along the way to spread some joy before being bombarded by whatever negativity might come from that trailer.
"Hey, I'm just warning you guys!" replied Eddy, transparently annoyed that Robin wasn't buying their stories. "These three don't just mess with us! They'll mess with whoever they want, and nobody ever knows how to stop them! They've gotten suspended for trying to fight the teachers! And if they're not trying to fight you, they're trying to fuck you! I even have this recurring nightmare that ends with them dragging my brother into their house and raping him."
"Oh, my lord," was all Robin could say to that.
"Jesus, I knew boys in school who would fight the teachers, but not girls," said Johnny.
"It's true!" Ed moaned in terror, quieter and more composed than earlier but that wasn't saying much. "One time they lost their ship-inna-bottle and they broke into every house in the cul-de-sac looking for it and they bound and gagged my baby sister Sarah and locked her in her toybox!"
"Christ, they beat up little kids?" the older bear hissed in disgust. "Rob, we might hafta put in an anonymous call to the cops depending on how bad this goes."
"We'll be doing nothing of the sort," his fox friend said calmly but firmly. He was seriously wondering what was wrong with Johnny that he was believing this implicitly.
"Fuck you, you ain't the boss a' me!" Little John hollered back, genuinely and unabashedly livid. "If you don't, then I will!"
"Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it…" Robin looked around for another trailer with a light on, or with an open window, or with an air conditioner running, or something to indicate that someone was home. "Ah, this one looks promising!" he said as he pointed toward a trailer that had its screen door shut but not its main door, the sounds of a TV playing faintly seeping out. "Come on, lads, some positive vibes ought to clear your heads."
As the boys reluctantly followed, Johnny dragged his feet as he sized up the home. "I already don't like whoever this is."
"Why not?" asked Robin.
Little John just gestured to the adjacent flagpole, where under the Stars And Stripes hung the Stars and Bars.
"Oh," Robin mumbled, a bit disappointed to have seen it. "Confederate flag. I see."
"...Huh?" The bear did a double take at the flagpole. "...Oh. Well… yeah, also that, I guess, but… man, I grew up always seeing that flag, it doesn't even register as something noteworthy in my head anymore. No, I meant that."
He gestured again and the other three realized he was referring to the third flag on the pole: a black field with a white italicized 3 behind an photo-traced illustration of a smiling skunk wearing sunglasses, fists in the air and arms raised in a V.
"If the Rebel flag weren't bad enough," the Tennessean explained, "I don't like that this is the kind of person who flies a fuckin' Earnhardt flag outside their house."
The Englishman openly guffawed in slight embarrassment before turning to the confused cadets. "Oh, you'll have to excuse Johnny here, lads, he needs to geek out about his vroom-vroom race cars from time to time or he'll simply explode!"
"It ain't geeky, motherfucker, it's the farthest thing from geeky! The entire sport was borne from fuckin' rum-runners and moonshiners tryna out-drive the cops! They were outlaws just like us, Rob! Ya oughta have more respect for them!" Then Johnny seemed to kick the energy down a notch as he gestured once again to the black flag. "But don't respect that guy, he was a fucking asshole. Here's the CliffNotes version for you uncultured heathens: he had absolutely no hesitation in his head to push and shove other people out of the way, half the time he'd fuckin' wreck 'em, but… I'll freely admit, he owned it and he looked like a badass doing it, and he was such a damned good driver that he didn't even need to take people out if he didn't want to, so everybody loved him."
"So you could say he was a lovable rogue?" asked Robin, smiling because he was confident his answer was correct.
But Johnny was glaring. "I mean, I guess it ain't wrong to say that's what his fans thought of him, but the difference between you and him, Rob, is he never helped anybody but himself doing what he did."
Because he figured Little John wanted him to, Robin stopped smiling.
"Oh, and you wanna know the worst part?" Johnny continued. "When he died a few years back… I was ecstatic for like, ten minutes before I realized, wait, FUCK, this wasn't him getting what was coming to him, this was him getting martyred and immortalized! Now the sport's fan base treats him like this valiant war hero who died on the battlefield. Hmph! ...Just goes to show, if we want people to think of us as heroes forever for doing this shit… we just gotta get ourselves killed in the process…"
His vulpine friend nodded morosely, at once bored of this ramble but also genuinely bummed out because he didn't like seeing his friend so flustered. "Ah, so a legend like Senna with the personality of Schumacher. Understood."
Now, Robin was used to this, it all sounded faintly familiar and he was fairly certain he'd heard this rant before, but Ed and Eddy were staring at Johnny with horrified looks as though they were hearing the ramblings of a dangerous and genuine madman.
Little John recognized this and sought to rectify the discomfort. "Hey… I don't wish death upon many people, I didn't even wish death on him, but… I'm not gonna pretend I'm sad that that crash happened. And don't go around saying that to just anyone, because there's a lot of people in the South who would actually want to kill me for saying that. But it just goes to show, kids… you gotta choose right now whether you care about what people think about you after you die and choose your actions accordingly."
The boys just blinked at him.
"Y'know…" said Eddy, "...we were more worried about the part where you said that we oughta die for this."
"What!? Oh, nonono, I just meant me and -"
"Hey!" hollered a voice from inside the trailer with all the flags before a skunk (no relation to the man on the flag) burst open the door. He seemed to immediately know whose voice was whose and directed his anger at the bear whose accent was the closest to his own. "What's this I hear about you being happy Big E is dead!?"
"I didn't say that, motherfucker, I just said I'm not sad he's dead!" Little John screamed right back. Although he did realize maybe saying all the things he'd said at full volume when the skunk's door was wide open may not have been the wisest decision in retrospect.
"Don't you dare disrespect Dale where I can hear ya!"
"Why not!? I'm not fuckin' afraid a' you!" Johnny turned to Robin and mumbled, "Rob, get the kids outta here, this guy might have a shotgun."
"A shotgun!?" Ed gulped.
Robin didn't fight this one. "Right-o. Come along, lads," he said as he shuffled the boys away from the scene. "This doesn't concern us!"
"Hey, I can get my shotgun if that's what I need to get!" the skunk taunted. "You take a step closer to my house, fatass, and I'm gonna get it!"
"Don't think for a second I'm afraid of you, you little shit!" And Little John raised his staff, ready to fight a belligerent guy a fraction of his size. "I know you didn't just like Earnhardt because he was another skunk, you liked him because he's a successful asshole like you wish you were!"
"Oh, yeah? And who do you think was a better driver than Dale!? Hell, you're probably a fan of that little limp-wristed pussy from California! I'll have you know I'm a founding member of Fans Against Gordon!" (Note the acronym there, Dear Reader; for further context, it didn't help that California kid's reputation among the sport's largely conservative fanbase that he drove a car with a literal rainbow on it for the longest time. Johnny specifically wanted me to make sure to explain the mythos of his obscure favorite sport to my audience and I couldn't think of a smoother way to clarify that, so blame El-Jay if this spot seems clunky.)
"Buddy, I don't even care for Jeff fucking Gordon!"
"Then who do you think is better!?"
"Johnny?" Robin called from a few dozen yards away. "Perhaps it's best to leave this gentleman alone."
The bear agreed in principle, but there were a few more things he wanted to say. "You think I wanna root for whoever's already the best!? Man, fuck that, I wanna root the little guy! The underdog! That's who I can relate to! And you should too, Guy Who Lives in a Literal Fucking Trailer! I don't relate to someone who has their way with anybody and still gets what they want without consequences! I relate to people like… like that polack from Wisconsin who had to fight and claw for everything, and then he got it, and then he died in a fuckin' helicopter crash anyway! Or… hell, or whoever's driving that piece of shit Kodiak car ever since they stopped sponsoring Rusty!"
The skunk was quiet for a moment before he burst out laughing. "Kodiak hasn't been in the sport for years, man! Have you been paying any attention!? Or did you see Dale get killed and think 'okay, I'm satisfied, that's enough of this sport for one lifetime'? Heh, I guess I shouldn't have expected more from someone who's a fucking Stacy Compton fan just because there's a poorly-drawn cartoon of a bear on his car, ha ha! Shit, you probably don't even realize he's back on the Busch Series!"
The bear wasn't embarrassed. He was just seething.
"Johnny?" Robin pleaded from noticeably further away than last time. "Care to join us?"
Little John realized he ought to wrap this up, so he sought to go out with a bang. "You know what? I bet he'd be kicking ass if he ever had a chance with decent equipment! But he hasn't, and that's why I -"
"He has had decent equipment now that he's back in the Busch Series and he still hasn't won a race in years of trying! Fuck, you really aren't watching anymore, are ya? Some fan you are!"
"WELL HE'S PROBABLY STILL MORE TALENTED THAN YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!" the bear roared as he started walking off to join his friends. "And take that fuckin' Rebel flag down! While you're in there sitting on yer ass drinking Budweiser just because they sponsor Junior, we're actually fighting the fucking power in this world! I'm more of a rebel than you'll ever fuckin' be! AND DELAWARE WASN'T EVEN IN THE CONFEDERACY!"
"Yeah, walk away, ya liberal crybaby…" the skunk jeered as he slammed his screen door shut.
Little John was taking deep breaths through his teeth as he rejoined the other three, all of whom looked moderately to severely concerned for his mental state.
"I'm sorry about that," he said when he was within indoor-voice range. "I'm just… man, those stories about how mean those girls are to you guys, it just… I'm tense right now. I don't like bullies, man. Just don't like 'em. And I saw that flag and I thought, oh, here's someone who admires a bully because they wanna BE a bully, and… sure enough, I was right!"
"And you know what, Johnny?" mused Robin as they got moving again. "Good on you for that. Don't tolerate bullies. In fact, I'm open to the idea that I was too lenient on that geezer by not telling him off like you did. I think you and I are going to make good role models for these boys."
While Ed was still silently confused by everything, Eddy just rolled his eyes at the weird, campy, after-school-special turn this conversation had taken.
"Thanks…" Johnny said as he breathed a little more. "Man, you know what's worse than a bully? Someone who wants to be a bully but who's too pathetic to actually be one. That's like a double whammy of being a loser. I wouldn't get into a pissing contest with that skunk."
And speaking of a skunk…
"...Did the mean guy with the shotgun try spraying us?" Ed observed.
"What do you mean?" asked Robin.
"No, wait…" Little John sniffed. "Yeah, that's not a skunk. It's skunky, but it's not a skunk." He located a trailer with an open window and pointed to it. "There."
Once again, the bears' sense of smell proved better than the canids'. A few moments later, the foxes' noses caught up.
"Ah, I smell it now," Robin nodded. "You lads… know what that is?"
"Uh…" Eddy stalled. He was pretty sure he knew what it was from a couple times his brother partook in it, but he wasn't certain, and he was afraid he'd look stupid if he was wrong - and afraid if they didn't want him to answer correctly lest he seem to corrupted for them.
"Well if you don't know, it's dope," Johnny said flatly.
"Hey, I knew that!" Eddy protested.
"Relax, Eddy," the elder fox said calmly, "you needn't try so hard to make us think you're cool! We already like you lads!"
"I'm not trying to make you think I'm cool, I'm just -!"
"Well, now that we know somebody's home here!" Robin said as he went up to the trailer's stoop and opened the screen door to knock on the main door.
"Hold on!" called a voice from through the adjacent window, followed by a few coughs, and a few moments later the door opened to reveal a gray fox answering the door in jeans and a wifebeater. Now, gray foxes had a much narrower size range than reds, but they averaged out to being a smidge smaller than their crimson cousins - Google tells me an average gray male would be about the height of an average red female while still weighing less. That said, this gentleman seemed about average height for his species, maybe a little on the short side, and when he opened the door, something didn't seem right as he was getting a vulpine aura in his olfactory from the gentleman whose chest and stomach were right in front of his face. His bloodshot eyes creeped slowly up the figure until meeting the pair of eyes two feet above his own.
"Why, hello there, sir," the towering figure greeted as an even larger brown figure walked up to tower over him. "My name is Robin."
"And I'm Johnny!" beamed the bear looming behind him. "And we're your neighbors from next door in Sherwood Forest!"
"Our apologies for taking so long to introduce ourselves, but it's a pleasure to finally meet you," the Brit said with a warm smile.
The resident of the trailer put on a dopey grin and started chuckling. "Heh… yeah, I know who you guys are!"
Thank God; it had been years since they'd had to completely introduce themselves from scratch to so many new poor people in one day and they'd gotten rusty at it. The original plan for the day had been for Ed and Eddy to knock first before Robin and Little John introduced themselves to the residents of these trailers, but it quickly became clear that that wasn't working so they switched to Robin and Johnny doing the introductions after about two doors; a few residents had been friendly to them, yet despite the rearrangement, the fox and bear were finding it difficult to convey who they were and what they were all about before a lot of these skeptical and distrusting locals slammed their doors in their faces. Just like in the days of old when they were first getting their start and nobody in Nottingham knew who they were, the Merry Men's charm could only get them so far with the jaded people they were trying to help. But both had strove to stay positive, and now encountering this guy who already knew their legend was a breath of fresh air.
"Ah, have you now?" Robin asked. "All good things, we hope!"
"Yeah, I used to live in Harbeson," the gray fox explained, "I just moved out here a year or so ago because… man, it is just so much cheaper than living in the city! Actually, I was just back downtown the other day to meet my dealer, and… I saw they actually put up wanted posters of you guys? Maaan, what's that all about?"
"And we're not too proud to admit that they had us worried for a quick second there that they were about to have a real go at us…" Robin began.
"...But then we thought: hey! This is them admitting to the world that we've got 'em by the balls!" Johnny finished.
"They're like ants!" the Englishman continued. "We needn't be afraid; they're more scared of us than we are of them!"
The Southerner produced a poster himself as well as a Sharpie. "Can we interest you in a signed photograph?"
"Shiiit, I'd love one!" said the resident.
And so the Merry Men made their marks on the poster. Again, both found cursive to be a wee bit classist and a wee bit elitist, so they both wrote in calligraphic print: the bear wrote "JOHNNY" and "LITTLE" on top of one another with "'LITTLE JOHN'" sandwiched in between, while today the fox was in the mood to write the "H" in "HOOD" really big and turned the crosshash into an arrow underscoring the O-O-D. They presented the autographed paper to the gray fox, who accepted it like a treasure.
"Wow…" You could tell from where his eyes were pointing that he was looking at their stats. He looked up at Robin. "Y'know, I was curious how freaking tall you were, but I was afraid to ask… four-ten for a fox, goddamn!"
Robin shrugged playfully. "And a quarter, but who's counting?"
"Still, I've heard people guesstimate you were, like, five-three, five-six, I've even heard people say you're six-foot, but… still, pushing five is a lot! And it's weird, because you don't look that tall from far away, but up close, it's like, Jeeeeesuuus!"
The tall fox chuckled. "Funny you should say that, because I've also been told that hanging out with this big old geezer completely negates my size and makes me look tiny all over again!"
The gray fox looked up at them with a mind-blown look as though he was seeing the secrets of the universe revealed to him. "I can kinda see that, actually! Fuck, imagine how short you'd look with him if you were normal-sized!"
"Hey, kids!" Little John said to the Eds. "Get over here! This guy's cool!"
About a dozen feet away, Ed was busy staring in apprehension in the direction of the Kankers' trailer, while Eddy had successfully taken his mind off the lecherous ladies by focusing on how much all this talk about size and stature was pissing him off. But they both did walk themselves over to the strange fox's door to say hello.
"And you really are from Tennessee!" the gray fox continued. "Yeah, because you kinda have a Southern twang but not the strongest one, so we all wonder where you're from… was that you arguing about NASCAR with Keith?" He gestured over to the belligerent skunk's home.
"Yeah, but don't worry about that asshole, I dealt with him," Johnny said with a dismissive wave toward that malcontent's abode. "Say hi to our friends," he said to introduce the boys.
"Hey guys, what's up?" The gray fox seemed puzzled, though. "...Are these your sons?"
"Ah, one day we may be so lucky as to have living legacies, but not quite yet!" said Robin. "These are just a pair of lads who wanted to join us in our journey. I guess you could say… they reminded us of ourselves!"
"C'mon, boys, say hi!" Johnny urged them.
"Uh… hi," Eddy mumbled, waving awkwardly. He knew he had to make it look like he wanted to be there if he wanted the Merry Men to take him under their wing, but even beyond this easily being the part of the job that interested him the least, he still didn't know what to actually say in these situations.
"Heh… hello…" Ed murmured with an anxious look; he also knew that he was expected to be more enthusiastic about the "actually helping people" part of this, and he otherwise would have been, but he couldn't help but dwell upon the terrors and horrors awaiting them just a few doors down.
Their discomfort wasn't lost on anybody. "You guys alright?" asked the resident. "You guys don't look alright."
"Oh, they're just bashful!" Robin insisted. "Lads, don't you have something you'd like to say to our new friend heeere…?" He trailed off while side-eying and gesturing to the gray fox at the door.
"Oh. Miles," said the resident, who was just now realizing Robin's arm was in a cast. "Shit, dude, what happened to your -?"
"Um, hello, Mister, um, Miles," the big cub stuttered, "we're glad to, uh, meet you, um… neighbor."
"Yeah, uh…" The kit tried to pick up the slack, but he didn't have much of a better idea where to take this conversation - and quite frankly, with some time for the height angst to melt away, that left room for Ed's nervousness about Them to rub off onto him all over again. "We, uh, we're from right here in Peach Creek, and, uh, yeah, we met these guys and said we wanted to tag along, and, uhhh… and we decided that, uh, y'know, people ain't just having a tough time in the city, they're having a tough time out here, too, and, um… uhhh…"
"And we are here to, um, help, uh, help our own low, local… come, cuh, uh… community!" Ed finished, looking like some self-pride was trying but failing to peek through his fear.
"And don't you guys have something you'd like to share with this gentleman?" Little John suggested. This entire conversation felt like a couple of parents teaching their kids how to order food at a counter-service restaurant.
"Oh yeah! Um…" Eddy presented the bag and opened it to show Miles what lay inside. "Can we, uh… ease the burden of life for ya a little?"
"Oh, sure, man!" the gray fox beamed as the smaller fox grabbed a wad of cash and handed over forty or fifty dollars without counting too closely.
"'Can we ease the burden of life for you,'" Robin mused as he pondered Eddy's word choice. "My word, lad, you're making it sound like you're offering to mercifully euthanize him!" he chuckled.
"Or maybe offering to sell him something that'd make life a little more bearable!" Johnny added before putting some fingers in front of his mouth and making a sucking sound to imitate a good long toke - not that he'd ever partaken himself, but he'd picked up enough to have a decent idea of what it was like.
Miles sure thought he did a good job of pantomiming his favorite pastime. He spat out a laugh and offered the bear a fist bump. "Aw, yeah, now this guy gets it!" he laughed, but trailed off as he looked at the vaguely uncomfortable teenagers. "Looks like these two could seriously use some. You guys sure you're okay?"
"Oh, they'll be fine once they're used to this!" Robin answered for them. "Hey, who among us never feels at least a wee bit nervous when trying something for the first time? Happens to the best of us!"
Miles looked unsure. "They ain't afraid of me, are they? Because if their parents - you say they ain't yours, right? - if these kids' parents brainwashed them into thinking stoners are murderers or something -"
"Naw, man, don't sweat it," said Johnny, "it ain't you they're afraid of."
But as, uh, clouded as the gray fox's head was, he was still picking up on much of the subtext left on the table. "So… you're saying they are afraid… of something… besides me."
Robin, not wanting to embarrass the boys, tried to steer the conversation away from that. "Yes, just like we said, it's a simple case of beginner's performance anxiety -!"
"THEM!" Ed yelped without warning. "Kankers! Sisters! THE! Three! Trailer! There!" The cub pointed urgently to another mobile home down the way. Honestly, knowing Ed, it's a miracle he didn't have an outburst like that earlier.
Miles looked like the wires were slowly connecting in his head. The Merry Men chuckled awkwardly as Eddy tried glaring off into space before his ears started twitching with embarrassment.
"So, uh… yeah, I guess you could say they're also nervous about a, um… some girls they know who live in the area and who they, uh… you said you have a history with these girls?"
"We do," Eddy grumbled without looking at anyone.
"They have a history with them, and, uh… all bad things, they tell us."
"I am not doubting their claims," added the englo, "but I personally suspect at least part of it is sexual confusion, you know what it's like to be their age -"
"Oh, shut the fuck up, Robin!"
"-while Johnny here thinks it's a severe case of girl-on-boy bullying that requires adult intervention, so either way, we figured we'd best go investigate it while we're in this neck of the woods. And we haven't made it there yet, so the anticipation is killing them."
Ed looked like he was about to pee his pants, Eddy looked like he was trying to stay angry so he wouldn't look afraid, and Little John just let out a deep sigh in acceptance of the fact that Robin had once again hijacked the conversation from him. But he decided this was as good a time as any to take it back.
"So… we weren't gonna ask you this, but as long as it came up anyway… you know that family? What was their name, Kanker? Like the sore? These kids got any reason to worry?"
Miles seemed to give the question a good hard think for a few seconds, looking back and forth between the trailer down the lot and each of the four figures in front of him, before nonchalantly answering, "Oh, yeah, those chicks are crazy."
Upon hearing this, Robin immediately stopped smiling, Johnny bopped Robin lightly on the back of the head while wearing an agitated look himself, Eddy looked even more agitated as he threw his hands in the air and rolled his eyes, and Ed simply hollered to the heavens:
"AAAAAHHH!"
"Surely they can't be as horrid as these lads make them out to be," Robin muttered in disbelief. "Surely they can't. How could such girls exist!?"
"Alright, just to make sure we're on the same page here," said Little John, "let's pretend we hadn't heard anything about them from these two. What can you tell us about them?"
Miles looked off toward the dreaded dwelling once again, but he wasn't dreading it very much. "Eh, three teenage girls who live together, all different species but apparently they're sisters, I dunno how ya figure that, but… yeah, they moved in about two years back, always loud, always fighting, always damaging property and threatening their neighbors… and each other… and man, they are horrr-NY! I dunno who raised those girls to be that way, but they're always sexually harassing people just for shits and giggles. The one girl, she's the biggest, she's a coyote or something, she even jumped me once and held me down and tried, like, tongue-grooming me, but… heh, I hadn't taken a shower in like, three days, so apparently my fur was just too funky for her taste. Apparently she's got a thing for foxes -"
"I could a toldja that…" the smallest fox grumbled.
The mediumest fox gestured towards the largest fox. "Hey, you especially be careful around 'em. And I still don't know what happened to your arm."
"Ah, a long story involving guns, chainsaws, and a tree," Robin spat dismissively. "But with any luck, they'll go easy on me for my injury."
"Do these girls have no freaking parents or guardians or anything?" asked Johnny.
Miles again looked like he was pondering that question the best he could. "I honestly couldn't tell ya. I've never seen them with an adult and I've definitely never seen an adult walk in or out of there. I know I've heard them refer to their mom before - everyone here's heard them talk about their mom because that's just how loud they are - but… like, not even trying to be mean, I think their mom's a prostitute? Like, hey, I can't prove that, don't take this as gospel, I'm just guessing because she's never around and… well, it'd explain the girls' libidos, too, I guess…"
"She's a hooker and she's never home?" said Johnny with a raised eyebrow. "I roomed with a self-described 'alley cat' for the better part of a decade - which is to say, a freelance male escort - and he always brought the clients back to our place to his fuck dungeon."
"Yeah, but you said he was a guy, right?" asked Miles. "Things are different for ladies. They gotta decide, what's less dangerous? Entering a strange man's house…" He made a weighing gesture with his paws while putting on a wise smile. "...or inviting a strange man into their house? What's more likely, getting kidnapped and murdered in a stranger's house… or some creep showing up at your place uninvited because he remembers where you live? Especially when you got daughters at home. Y'see? Guys don't gotta worry about that."
"Well…" Johnny grumbled, looking frustrated and facing the ground as he spoke, "...women can be creeps, too…"
"Eh, yeaaah, but…" The gray fox again put in a dopey grin as he shrugged. "How often does that happen, man? Do you know a guy who's actually been fucked with by a woman in heat?"
"As a matter of fact -"
"Alrighty, then!" Robin said with a clap of his hands. "Thank you very much for the information! I think we're now as prepared as we'll ever be to meet these girls and see what's really up about them!"
"Can we go now?" Eddy growled, still looking off in the distance away from the Kanker house. "Let's get this over with."
"Eh, probably a good idea," Little John agreed as he looked at the house of legend and infamy. "I'm honestly getting pretty worked up just thinking about it myself, I'd like to quit dicking around and just go for it."
"Hrmmm, do we have to!?" Ed moaned in what could perhaps best be described as a squeal.
"Now, Ed, my friend," Robin said gently to the cub as he put a hand on the lad's back, "we understand it's going to be tough, but we'll be here to help you through it. And you'll be better afterwards for having done it! Don't you want to be brave?"
Maybe Robin was a miracle worker or maybe Ed was just that easy to sway, but he suddenly turned to the Kankers' trailer with a determined (and furious) look on his face. "Ed is not afraid of you, Mean Touchy-Feely Girls!" And off he started marching towards their home.
"Ed, wait!" Eddy yelled as he ran ahead to stop him, betraying just how terrified the kit really was. "Don't go without our reinforcements!"
And said reinforcements were just about ready to say toodle-oo to their new friend, but first they had to wrap things up. While they were of course aware of and sympathetic to the reasons why an impoverished person might choose to spend their scant money on intoxicants… they wanted to make sure that these people didn't spend the money they gave them on intoxicants.
"Well then, Sir Miles, it's been a pleasure to meet you," said Robin cheerily, "but… if we could ask just a small favor of you…"
"Oh, sure!" Miles smiled. "What's up?"
"So… we don't wanna sound like prudes or anything, we just wanna set a good example for these kids…" the bear said in a whisper as he leaned over to get closer to the foxes, "could you just… you know… verbally confirm for us that you're not gonna spend the money we gave you on grass?"
"We were hoping to ask you before the boys took off, so they could hear it from the man himself, because we don't know quite how these middle-class boys were raised to think of poor people…"
"...but this way we can at least tell them that you aren't some hopeless pothead who's just gonna blow the money we gave you on more weed or other… stuff… and, y'know, then we wouldn't be lying about it."
"So could you please just agree that not a dollar of that sum is going to go toward anything that isn't essential?"
The Merry Men were smiling kindly at him as he smiled back, looking between them with his eyes half shut, before he chuckled.
"Heh… well… I'd call it essential!"
The Merry Men tried desperately not to frown.
"Er… what we mean is… nothing wasteful!"
Miles wore a smug grin. "I wouldn't call it wasteful!"
"What we mean mean is…" said Johnny, "...we gave you that money specifically to be spent on the bare necessities of life - can you promise us you're gonna do that?"
They really couldn't tell whether this gray fox was toying with them, but he was certainly amusing himself. "I'd say having something to take the edge off is a bare necessity of life, wouldn't ya think?"
Now even Robin's patience was wearing thin. "Sir… can you please stop beating around the bush and just say that you're not going to spend that money on hash?"
Miles's smirk was so strong that his cheeks were pushing his lower eyelids up to almost meet the top ones. "Well, I wouldn't wanna lie ta' ya!"
"Dude," said Johnny, "are you fucking with us, or are you actually gonna burn all that money on drugs?"
And while the resident still seemed content with himself, he did seem markedly less content after that remark. "Oh, I'm gonna be burning something, alright!"
"Oh, come on, man!" Little John moaned to the sky. "Those kids busted their asses to get that money to help their neighbors and you're just gonna throw it away to score some dope!?"
Now Miles looked like he was only smiling to present himself as calmer than these two. "Alright, man, I dunno what part dope means in Tennessee, but here, dope means heroin, and I ain't fucking with heroin. I'm not injecting anything, I'm not snorting anything, I'm not peppering my blunts with fucking crack rocks, I'm just relaxing, alright? And I gotta say, at first I was wondering, do these two somehow not smoke? But I thought, naw, they gotta, they're too cool not to, too in-touch with the crowd! But now you got me wondering whether you two are some puritans deep down who don't like marijuana."
"Jesus, dude, we told you we weren't prudes!" Little John growled. "But a lot of people in this world think if you give money to a homeless or just poor person, they're gonna go use it to go abuse substances instead of trying to improve their lives!"
"In other words, Miles," added Robin, "we're asking you not to be a stereotype."
The gray fox's smile was now completely gone. "Don't they call you two the Merry Men because you guys basically get wasted every night?"
"Not every night! And we even gave that up for the longest time!"
"Well, whaddya think is worse for ya, alcohol that'll give ya brain damage if you mix it with basically any medication under the sun or a little green that'll ease your mood and leave you on your way?"
"You're not addressing the part where we said that gift was contingent on you spending it on bills and stuff," Little John muttered, palm over his eyes.
Miles responded by digging in his pockets and pulling the wad of cash out. He counted: two tens, three fives, and a dozen singles. "Forty-seven bucks. What the hell can I buy that's important with forty-seven bucks?"
"GROCERIES!" the Merry Men screamed in unison.
"Have you ever tried buying groceries?" Miles shot back. "Shit's expensive!"
"Then shop at fucking Walmart instead of Harris Teeter, man!" Little John yelped like he was getting his teeth pulled. "Hell, you live alone, right? Shop at Aldi and forty-seven bucks'll probably last ya two weeks!"
The stranger was smirking again. "Oh, I'm fine on groceries. Like I said, living here is dirt-cheap. I'm just saying you can't buy nothin' much with forty-seven bucks."
"Then why did you take the bloody money then!?" Robin snapped.
"Because that's what you do! I'm not gonna say no to free money! Y'know, Merry Men come to your door, offer you come cash for your troubles, you'd be stupid not to take it…" He chuckled again. "It's what you do! Man, you guys are a lot less chill than I thought you'd be."
"Why do you assume we're fundamentally not chill as people just because we have a good goddamn reason not to be chill right now?" Johnny probed.
But Miles thought again for a second before answering. "...Have you two ever smoked weed?"
"No," Little John said flatly. "I was never cool enough for it."
Robin took a breath before answering. "Never struck me as appealing."
Miles looked back and forth between them again before giving any sort of reaction. If anybody was asleep in the trailer park, they woke up at the sound of the gray fox cackling. "Man! People think you guys are cool and y'all ain't even ever smoked weed! Ha ha! Hey, maybe you guys oughta try it sometime, you two could use it to lighten up! Heh heh…" And he shut the door and that was that.
"...I don't like how much that guy reminds me of my brother," remarked the bear.
The Merry Men caught up with their protégés and resumed their slow walk toward the trailer of terror.
"...So we overheard he's gonna just use the money to get high," noted Eddy boredly.
"Yeeeup," answered Johnny.
"How are you lads feeling?" asked Robin.
"Ed is gonna be brave today!" Ed declared. "But, uh… only because Ed has friends with weapons this time."
"Well, a step forward is a step forward," Little John mused. "Eddy, you good?"
"What's even the point of this?" the little fox asked. "They're gonna try to jump us, you're gonna stop them, they're not gonna change, nothing's gonna be different. I guarantee it."
"Ah, don't go jumping to conclusions, Eddy!" Robin warned cheerfully. "You never know when they'll learn their lesson!"
Eddy just grunted. "Y'know… they're probably gonna be really confused about Double-D not being with us."
"Oh! Speaking of!" went Little John. "Did you guys know his uncle was the fuckin' chief of police? ...And now the sheriff?"
Ed and Eddy looked at each other.
"Uh… we knew he was a cop of some kind, but, uh… no, didn't know how high-ranking he was. He said he never talked to his uncle."
"Well, good for him that he kept his distance from that arsehole," said Robin, who was now aware of much of the background of that story. "Not to be unfair to him, Eddward seemed like a perfectly good lad, but if his hesitance to join us wasn't enough of a red flag in itself, knowing who his uncle is… we don't think we'd allow him to join us even if he came back tomorrow begging us."
"And this is absolutely none of my business, but… what's with the hat?" asked Johnny. "Like, seriously, kid, why're you wearing a beanie in the middle of June? The kid's way too clean-cut to be dressing like a thug. Man, I hope I'm not saying all this and it turns out he had cancer or something and lost a bunch of hair on his head like a certain maneless lion we know."
"Naw, it's not that!" Ed chuckled, seemingly feeling much better as he thought about his wolf friend. "What's under Double-D's hat is -!"
"Welp, there it is," Eddy said, pointing.
"My god, how can a family live in a place that small?" said Robin as he looked upon the tiny silver-blue oblong-shaped aluminum dwelling.
Indeed, now that he was really thinking about it, the trailers in this trailer park were less mobile homes and more tiny little campers that could be towed by a pickup rather than a semi. Robin had never been to a trailer park in his life so it hadn't really registered with him that these weren't normal until he thought of an entire family of four living in one, and as for Little John, he had noticed that the dwellings were practically studio apartments on wheels, but he'd seen worse squalor so he just accepted that this was a particularly crappy mobile park. And the boys were simply used to it.
"Jeez, no wonder Mama works away from home," quipped Johnny, "there's no space in there to take the johns to fuck!"
"Oh! Sorry, guys!" Ed suddenly said with a placid smile. "I forgot to be scared! HUUU-AAAAAHHH-!"
The bigger bear put a paw over the big cub's maw and tried to mellow him out. "Shhhh, shh shh shh! It's alright, kid! We got ya covered!"
And for a brief moment, Ed calmed down and looked at Little John with hope in his eyes. "You promise?"
"Of course I do, bud," Johnny said with the utmost sincerity. "I wouldn't let anybody hurt a kid in my charge."
And as rare as it was for Big Ed to have an adult express a devotion to caring about him - especially a male, one who looked like him, no less - the cub couldn't help but smile upon hearing that. "Thanks, Mister -"
"I'm telling you, I hear my boyfriend outside!" came a young woman's voice from inside the trailer, spoken with a lisp that would make the mayor's assistant blush. And by the sounds coming from inside the door, you'd almost swear they were clambering downstairs.
"Oh, shit," Eddy said as he looked like he'd just done that himself.
"KANKERS!" Ed cried.
"Johnny!" Robin called over in a harsh whisper from around the side of the trailer. "Come here!"
"Okay," Little John grumbled as he jogged over, "well thanks for informing me of the fucking plan!"
"HEY!" Eddy yelped. "You guys need to be here to protect us!"
"We need to see how they treat you when they think you're alone!" Robin insisted. "Don't worry, we'll be watching!"
But the boys did worry, turning towards the trailer door and feeling like they were about to pass out from the panic. There was no time to faint, however, as the action rose too quickly to give them time to do so.
The door swung open and an opossum jumped out, landing on the bridge of Ed's snout and holding on like a facehugger. The bear spun and stumbled trying to get her off, but to no avail.
"Hey, Big Ed! Why didn'tcha tell me you'd be home early!? I'da made ya some tuna casserole!"
"ED IS ALLERGIC TO FISH!"
"Ohhh dear," Robin whispered to himself from his hiding spot.
"Lee, Eddy's here, too!" May announced.
"Is that so?" a voice screamed back, harsh in tone but almost seductive in its slow cadence.
"AAAAAHHH!" Eddy screamed as he tried to make a break for it, only to scream even louder as a large cinderblock hurled from the open doorway landed on his long tail. "YEEE-OWWWWWWWCH!"
A red coyote with hair in her eyes calmly walked out the door and waltzed up behind Eddy, paws on her hips and a foot on the cinderblock. "Heya, Eddy!" she taunted as he dug in her pockets. "There's this new thing called a doorbell so you don't have to SCREAM to announce that you're HERE!" And as Eddy screamed out in pain again, Lee applied her lipstick.
"What the fuck!?" Johnny asked himself what he was seeing.
"Where's my Pumpkin at!?" called one more voice from within the house of horror, and out coolly stepped a raccoon with her head fur dyed blue. She looked around at first with a smirk on her face, but then quickly came to look frustrated. "No, seriously, where is he!?"
"Where's Wolfie at, Eddy?" the coyote asked the fox she had in a headlock as she nibbled on his ear.
"AAAAAHHH!"
"Okay, fuck it, no more waiting!" Johnny growled as he stood and walked around the corner of the home.
But Robin was too shocked by the scene to get himself going. He was paralyzed by perplexion.
Marie noticed the looming figure walking around the side of her trailer and turned indignantly to face him. "Who the hell are you?"
Little John pointed his staff at the three of them. "You girls leave these boys the FUCK alone, right now! They don't deserve to be harassed like this!"
"Aw, what're you gonna do about it?" Lee scoffed.
"You really think you can take on all three of us, fat boy?" Marie mocked.
"...Ed… is that your dad!?" May… cooed? Is that the right word? What I'm trying to say is that May sounded like she had just found something better than her Ed.
And that "something better" heard her loud and clear.
"Uh… no, no, I'm not his dad, I'm just, uh…" Little John stammered with his paws held out as he slowly backed away, then spun around and took off running - only to promptly accidentally dig his staff into the ground and faceplant when he couldn't let go of it in time. Before he could get back to his feet, he felt something small pounce upon his posterior and crawl up the back of his shirt. "NO! NONONONONO! GET OFF ME! GET OFF ME!"
And many would say it was deplorable that Robin didn't realize this sooner, absolutely, that would be a valid argument. But ever the optimist, Robin just couldn't believe that this situation was as bizarrely dire as it seemed on the surface. What changed his mind, however, was seeing his friend Johnny - this big, strong giant of a bear who had done so much to come out of his shell and had proven himself to be a truly brave man in his own right (and who would still rather get angry than show when he wasn't feeling brave because again, he's a friggin' grizzly bear) - completely collapse in fear like a tormented child. That was when the fox knew that this was for real.
Robin stepped out from around the trailer. Then he realized he had no idea what he was gonna do after that, and the absurd situation was causing him to draw a complete blank.
"Now who's this!?" demanded Marie.
But Lee welcomed the stranger. "...Oh, hello, handsome!" She made her way over to the tall, dashing fox - but not before disposing of her current fox by throwing Eddy over her shoulder through the wall of the nearest trailer.
"AAAAAHHH!" Crash.
"AAAAAHHH!" A woman shrieked.
Eddy opened his eyes to find he had crashed into a muskrat's bathroom - while she was parked on the toilet.
"GET OUT, YOU FUCKING PERVERT!"
"I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY!" he screamed back as he tried to clamber out of the rubble.
Meanwhile, Lee parked herself mere inches in front of the big red fox, looking straight up and literally sizing him up as the wry smile she carried with her grew wrier still.
Robin, for his part, was trying to project confidence and show no signs of fear, but deep down he was panicking, trying and failing to think quickly to answer the question: how the hell could he and should he defend himself if violently attacked by a teenage girl? Between the sisters' adeptness at false imprisonment and the friends he needed to defend, simply making a run for it didn't seem like a viable option.
"Hubba hubba," said the coyote. "What's your name, Stretch?"
Robin had been taught his entire life to handle even the most hostile situations with class and tact, and while he'd been known to put that aside in extreme circumstances, he just couldn't bring himself go off on a literal child.
"Er… hello, ladies, my name is -"
Uh-oh. There it went. Robin realized it immediately. The three girls were immediately smitten by his accent.
A gasp could be heard from under Little John's shirt as the opossum peeked her head out. "That accent! He's from France!"
"Erm… sorry, young lady, but that's not quite right -"
"ROBIN, WILL YOU QUIT BEING SO FUCKING DIPLOMATIC AND JUST SMACK THEM OR SOMETHING!?" Johnny screamed as he kept rolling over trying to get May off of him.
"Smack us!?" the raccoon spat. Robin then realized Marie hadn't been occupied with a man. Ed and Eddy were themselves incapacitated now, and it must have been Marie's doing. Ed had one of those big Home Depot buckets stuck over his head and was repeatedly running into the Kankers' trailer as he stumbled around, and then there was poor Eddy.
Robin didn't know how she did it to him, but Eddy had been hogtied.
With his own tail.
Interviewing him about it today, Eddy doesn't remember either how that came to pass; it just sort of happened before he knew it.
"Oh, so you would smack a lady!?" May demanded as she stopped to smack Little John across the snout herself.
"AAAAAHHH! THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT, STOP HITTING ME!"
"What a baby!" Lee scoffed before turning back to Robin and starting to feel him up from the waist down. "But a big strong fox like you wouldn't raise a hand to a lady, now would ya? After all, you're a classy British gentleman!"
"Aw, he's too old and big for you!" the raccoon laughed. "Sorry, Jeeves, but Lee here's a pedophile! She only likes foxes who look like eight-year-olds like Eddy!"
"CAN IT, MARIE!" Lee answered with a kick that would impress a ballerina, effectively uppercutting the raccoon with her foot and knocking her down.
"Fine, I don't want him anyway!" Marie retorted as she picked herself off the ground. "He's too goddamn tall, he just looks like a freak! And his accent isn't that impressive anyway, his voice is too deep and it just looks weird coming out of that face! His voice is deeper than the grizzly's, that's just weird!"
"Er… I'm sorry, what?" Robin knew he had a lower voice than most of his notoriously high-pitched species but the notion that it went lower than Johnny's was one he'd never heard before.
"Are you fucking tone deaf, little girl!?" Little John hollered at her, his fear of being sexually assaulted by three flirtatious females outweighed by his ursine refusal to entertain the thought that a little fox had any manlier body parts than a bear like him, even if the body parts in question were just the vocal cords. "Are you getting pitch mixed up with timbre!? The only thing my family's ever been good at is singing, I know this shit better than you do!"
May turned around, seemingly having forgiven her new beau for his earlier poor choice of wording, and scratched him gently under the chin with one finger. "It's okay, Big Bear, I still think your voice is sexy!"
Johnny rolled over again and tried crawling forwards, but the opossum just kept impeding him by pinching him in the ribs. "AAARGH! GET OFF ME! LET ME GO! ME AND MY BIG MOUTH!"
The raccoon seemed to find this intriguing. "Eh, maybe I don't know what your voice really sounds like because you've been screaming like a girl this whole time!" She turned to Lee as she walked over to Little John. "You can have Winston Churchill all ya want. I think Grizzly Adams here's just scared because he's never had a woman love him right in his life - and I think he's big enough to share, right, May?"
"SHARE!?" Johnny yelped and forced himself to his feet, and he ran about a yard before he collapsed again in pain. "AAARGH! SHE BIT MY TAIL, SHE BIT MY FUCKING TAIL!"
"Aw, don't pretend ya don't like pain-play, big guy!" May teased as Marie joined the dogpile on top of him.
"Hm. Kinky," Lee muttered before she realized her new English gentleman was trying to slowly slip out of her grasp. "Where do ya think you're goin', bub!?"
And to keep him still, she reached for a new spot to grab him and squeeze tight: his crotch.
"EEEEEYAAAAAAAHHH!" Robin sang like a soprano as he tried not to pass out and collapse from the pain. His voice definitely was nowhere in the ballpark of Johnny's anymore.
"Oooh, I like what I felt there! Let's see if your package is as impressive as it feels!"
"No, no, that's not necessary -!"
But the coyote had already grabbed Robin's belt and pulled it apart until it broke, and she made short order of undoing his fly and pantsing him.
"Aww, I love a man who's confident enough to wear briefs! Really shows off your junk!"
"This is why I'm not wearing fucking briefs!" Eddy hollered from the sidelines, still stuck in a self-contained circle.
"Shut up, Eddy, you're just jealous because he's hotter than you!" Lee scoffed before turning back to Robin - or, more specifically, turning to his aforementioned undies. "Let's see what ya got under the hood!"
Robin realized niceties were getting him nowhere, but neither were his legs with his jeans like handcuffs around his ankles. He tried being sterner as he held out his right arm to stop her and tried shuffling his feet gently backwards. "No. You… you need to stop right there. I don't want you -"
"Oh, what happened to your arm?" Lee asked now that the cast was right in her face.
"He's been wearing a cast this whole time, you stupid bitch, have you been paying any attention!?" Marie screamed as she and May held Johnny's legs to the ground as he tried desperately to crawl forward back to the scene.
"ROBIN! HELP. ME."
"Ya poor thing," the coyote cooed, "you need some tender loving care, don'tcha!?" She took Robin's right paw in both hands. "Why don't ya come inside?"
Robin tried ever so gently to extract his hand from hers. "Oh, that's, that's not, we don't need to do that -"
"I said, why don'tcha come INSIDE!?"
"AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!"
Once upon a time as a lad in England, when he was about twelve, Robin had been playing soccer-football with some other Loxley lads, the great majority of whom barely made it up to the bottom of his chest, and when one of the kits tackled another in a funny way, it sent the recipient stumbling forwards and head-butting poor Robin at full speed right between the legs. For years that stood as the high-water mark for the most physically painful individual moment the fox had ever experienced. That record was broken on the Twentieth of June, 2005, when a teenage girl violently yanked on his recently-broken arm. Hell, even the act of actually breaking his arm hadn't hurt this much thanks to the adrenaline rush he'd been experiencing when that happened. For the record, Dear Reader, the earlier nut-squeezing Lee had given him stacked up at a strong third.
Robin dropped the bow he'd been holding in his other hand and flopped on the ground, screaming in pain at the top of his lungs, writhing around and flailing his good arm around while keeping his broken arm to his chest, trying his best to immobilize it and failing. (I actually showed Robin, Johnny, and Eddy that clip of that baseball player Tony Saunders's arm spontaneously snapping in the middle of a pitch and all three agreed that Robin's reaction looked remarkably similar to his, just with the arms switched.)
"Aw, c'mon!" the coyote protested."How's a tall strong man like you gonna be crying on the ground like a sissy!? Welp, guess I need to really show ya some TLC now!" Therefore she grabbed Robin by his bushy tail and started dragging him.
"AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!" Or perhaps this moment of the double-dose of agony was the most painful individual moment Robin had ever felt, but in any case, he would have tapped out if he had such an option. But he wasn't that lucky.
His quiver having slipped off and his back now flatly on the ground, he faced the sky and saw no God who would save him. So instead he turned to the world around him. And for a moment, he thought saw someone who would show him mercy.
"Miles!"
Robin saw the gray fox down the lane, standing in front of his trailer, smoking something that surely wasn't a tobacco cigarette. Miles waved at them.
"Miles! HELP US! PLEASE!"
Miles took a drag of whatever he was smoking before answering. "Sorry, I'm useless! I'm just a stupid stoner, remember?" And then with a content smile, Miles walked back inside.
"MILES, GET OVER HERE AND HELP US!" Little John screamed, still on the ground. "YOU FUCKING COWARD!"
...Cowardice. That was a bad thing. Courage. That was the opposite of cowardice. That was a good thing. Another word for courage… was bravery. Dear Reader, rejoice: Ed's brain was working.
Ed stopped running into the wall, paused to regain his wherewithal, and pulled the bucket off his head. "STOP HURTING MY FRIENDS!"
"HUH?" was all you could hear of Lee before Ed slammed the bucket down over her, trapping her like a spider under an overturned cup.
"Hey, what the hell?" asked Marie as she and the opossum looked up from the bear.
"COME AND GET IT!" Ed challenged with his arms outstretched and his foot atop the bucket.
And so they did, taking off running and leaping to knock Ed off the bucket containing their sister. But Ed had other plans.
At just the right moment, Ed pulled the bucket up and caught the two other sisters as they flew through the air at him, the two gliding in perfectly like a ball into the net of a lacrosse stick. And he put it right back down to trap them once again.
Robin knew what to do. He was gonna scare them into fleeing. He picked up an arrow, picked up his bow, knelt to get a good angle, threaded the arrow, pulled back and…
"...AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!" He began hopping up and down, flailing his right arm violently as if trying to shake the pain out of it. He was ambidextrous with a bow and arrow, but he knew switching arms wouldn't make it hurt any less.
"I got it!" Johnny picked up where Robin left off. He grabbed the bow and arrow, knelt, got into position (left-handed, as was his preference), and pulled back. "Now, Ed!"
Ed lifted the bucket. The sisters saw the weapon staring them in the face. And they saw the determined look on Little John's own face.
Now, Robin was a master of archery. Despite a very real effort to research his options, he wasn't able to figure out how to qualify for the '96 Atlanta Olympics for Team GB while living in the USA, but everyone who knew him agrees he would have handily won gold if he had somehow found a way in. And they agree he would have smoked the field in any other Olympiad past or future, or any other archery competition at any point in history with anybody else except perhaps Adam Bell himself. It was like the guy was born to shoot a bow and arrow. Now, Little John? He wasn't at that godlike level, absolutely not. But you still didn't want to fuck with Johnny when he had a bow and arrow. Because he could say one thing without an ounce of doubt: he'd learned from the best.
The arrow whizzed through the air and stuck itself squarely in the coyote's thick, curly hair. Precisely what he needed to do to prove that he didn't wish to harm a young girl, but that he for damn sure wasn't afraid to send a message: he didn't like bullies, no matter their age or gender.
The coyote, the raccoon, and the opossum all screamed.
"He's an axe murderer!" screamed May.
"He's a psycho!" screamed Marie.
"He's not worth it!" screamed Lee. "They're all not worth it! Let's run, girls!"
And so they did, running inside their trailer and slamming the door behind them. Such a simple solution had worked.
Ed stared blankly at the door, wondering whether he'd just successfully scared the Kanker sisters off for good. And as he stood there, his fellow ursid stepped over and wrapped him in a big ol' bear hug.
"Holy shit, kid, you're a fucking lifesaver!"
"...I am?" Ed liked the sound of that, but was afraid to show it in case he'd heard it wrong.
"Damn straight you are, kid! You're our hero!" Little John repeated as he gave the kid one good pat on the back.
"...Hero?"
"Hey, Rob!" Johnny said as he surrendered the hug with the cub to check on his fox friend. "How ya feelin'?"
Robin was still sitting on the ground, nursing his busted arm, rocking back and forth with his eyes squeezed shut and making very harsh breaths. Nevertheless, he forced himself to stand. "Ed… Johnny… thank you lads so much, that was quick thinking, truly brilliant… argh! ...Especially you, Ed my friend, you proved that you have what it takes to hang out with us!" He was leaning halfway over, still clutching his cast and seething through his teeth.
"I am!?" Ed was more excited this time.
"Jesus, Rob, you don't look too hot," Johnny observed as he walked over. "Hey, don't be too proud: do you need me to take you to Geoff's again?"
"No, no, I -"
"Don't be too proud, man."
"No, Johnny, he'll surely throw a fit if we come back there again. He'd probably sooner lop the blasted thing off than fix it again… But he drilled screws and plates into the goddamn bones to keep them in place, didn't he? I'm sure they can't move after that. I'll be fine, Johnny, just… may I have some extra pain medicine?"
Little John was hesitant, but he just saw what had happened to his friend and decided such an action was justified. He pulled out the Ziploc bag and produced one. "I ain't got nothing for you to drink with it, though."
"Oh, I can suck it up," Robin grumbled as he accepted the pill and seemed to take three or four tries to swallow it. "Well… that certainly was something… but you know what? We got through it. We've survived, boys."
"Amen!" said Johnny as he pulled in both of the guys around him by the shoulders. "And with any luck, those little psycho chicks'll finally leave you guys alone! Yeah, it took a little threat of violence, but hey! Whatever gets the job done!"
"And a job well done at that!" cheered Robin.
And thus the three of them stood there, staring at the den of the three-headed monster the three of them had defeated, together, as three. What a great trio. Yup, there were three of them. Uno, dos, tres; un, deux, trois; one, two, three. No more, no less. Three (3).
...Notice anything missing, Dear Reader?
"...Where the fuck is Eddy?" From his high vantage point, Little John looked around and tried to find the loudmouthed fox who nobody had heard from in a while. He couldn't see him. "Where the FUCK is Eddy!?"
And as if to answer his question, the terrific trio heard from inside the trailer:
"AAAAAHHH!"
While Robin and Ed's faces quickly filled with dread, Johnny's just got angry.
"...WHEN!?" he demanded explanation from the universe as he threw his arms in the air. "WHEN? First they were under the bucket, then they ran inside - when did they have time to grab him!? THEY DIDN'T! How is there any logical way they grabbed him!? Is this a fucking cartoon!?"
Neither Ed nor Robin had a good explanation for him. Nor does Eddy, who after all these years can't remember huge chunks of that affair; it's funny how trauma can linger while erasing the memories of that which caused the trauma in the first place. But Eddy certainly does remember that he wound up inside the Kankers' trailer, and the other three all remember him shrieking:
"HELP MEEEEE!"
The three of them all stared at the dwelling with looks showing some blend of anger, confusion, and fright.
"Well… I guess we'd best go help him…" said Robin, still having trouble breathing from the pain that was a long way from subsiding. You could see from how glassy his eyes were that he'd been weeping from the sheer excruciation of it. "Are you boys ready?"
It was in some ways a good thing that the sisters had given Little John a valid reason to be angry with them, because that was probably the only thing outweighing his fear of entering that hellish home. "Uh… I don't think it matters whether or not we're ready… I ain't ever gonna be ready for this, you guys probably aren't ever gonna be ready for this… we just gotta go."
"Very well put, Johnny, but, er…" The fox raised his casted arm. I'm sorry lads, this arm will not stop throbbing, it kills me to say this but I'm going to be a liability in there."
"Robin, if it still hurts, then you really need to see a doctor."
"Oh, we'll have some whiskey after this and it'll feel better then. But for now…" Robin paused to size up the grizzlies. "Johnny, you hang onto my bow, heaven forbid we need to use it. Perhaps Ed can man your staff?"
Not an unreasonable request, Johnny handed the large stick to the large cub. "You know how to use this thing, bud?"
"My mom says I can't fight girls," Ed answered.
"And you know what? She raised you right for that. Your mom sounds like a good lady. But you're not gonna fight 'em. You're gonna fend 'em off and defend yourself. All you gotta know is…" Johnny took the staff back for a second to demonstrate. "...Both hands, hold it across yourself, use that to block anything they might try to hit ya with." He handed it back. "Sound good?"
Ed tried to do it himself. "Like this, Mister Johnny?"
"Yeah! That's exactly right!" Little John gave Robin a sly smirk as he went to pick up the quiver. "I'm starting to like this kid! But, uh… I don't think this thing is gonna fit on me."
Robin extended his good paw. "Then I'll be your arrow caddy." He accepted the quiver and put it on his back, but gave one arrow to Johnny anyway. "I'd say keep one on you just to have."
"Fair enough." Johnny took the arrow and threaded it to have it ready to go. "So… we got a plan, or are we just bumrushing them and hoping for the best?"
"CAN NOBODY HEAR ME OUT THERE!?" For such a little fox, Eddy sure did have a loud voice.
The trio all looked at one another. Well, that answered that question.
"Alright!" Little John declared, trying to make his anger supersede his fear. "Let's go and -! Um… wait…" He was staring at the trailer, looking oddly worried. "Uh… guys, I… this, this isn't me just being a pussy, I think I might have to hang back in this one while you two just go inside."
"Why?" asked the fox.
The bear didn't say anything, instead just looking at Robin while putting his paw up flat and level to the top of his head, then sliding it to the roof of the trailer to demonstrate that they were about even. Then he pointed to the small concrete stoop in front of the door, which drew attention to the fact that the floor of the trailer was at least a foot off the ground.
"Honestly, I think even Ed would have a tough time navigating in there," Johnny said, sounding genuinely dejected that he couldn't go in there to save the kit.
Robin couldn't argue with self-evident geometry, but he knew he couldn't just tell Little John to suck it up without offering a tangible solution. "Well, then… as the only one here under seven feet tall, I'll keep my head turned up to watch for ceiling hazards if you lads keep your heads turned down to see if they're going for my arm again."
Again, not unreasonable, and Johnny knew he needed to be there for this kid to earn his status as a hero. "Alright… sounds like a plan. Ed, you ready to go save Eddy? Ya wanna go have an adventure?"
An adventure. That was the ticket. Ed felt the call of duty. He turned his head up a little as he put on a determined look and saluted the distant sky. "Sir, yes, sir!"
"You don't have to call us sir, lad, but we admire the spirit," said Robin before he turned to the adult bear. "Now Johnny, how might we best get -?"
He was cut off, however, by the sounds of screeching metal, and the duo turned to see Ed had taken the liberty of tearing the door off its hinges and throwing it halfway to Timbuktu. "Come on, guys!" he urged as he waved them forward.
"...inside," Robin mumbled.
The large cub ducked through the door and the fox ran right in behind him. This left Little John, who took a deep breath, power-walked towards the entryway, ducked down, turned sideways, sucked his gut in, and once inside, kept his eyes shut and a paw on the back of his head as he raised himself again very, very slowly, waiting for the point where his head would hit the roof.
As he approached what he was sure would be the ceiling, he went even slower so as to minimize any unpleasant thump against his skull as much as possible.
But then at a certain point he realized his back and neck were almost completely vertical. His eyes popped open as he looked around to try to see if this was real, and he looked around before looking straight up.
The ceiling was only a few inches in front of his nose, but there was definitely space between the two.
"...AM I IN THE FUCKING TWILIGHT ZONE!?" In a desperate quest for understanding, he went back to the front doorway, ducked his upper torso through and put his paw on the roof just to confirm. "Is this house bigger on the fucking inside!?" He came back inside and looked around the home as his head spun. "This doesn't make any goddamn sense, how am I taller than this godforsaken trailer on the outside and now I'm standing straight up with a fucking extra foot of clearance on the inside!? HOW!?"
Robin, however, found this panic quite amusing. "But are you standing straight up, old boy?" he chuckled. "Stop slouching, Johnny, I hope your posture isn't getting that much worse!"
But Little John looked dead serious as he walked right in front of the fox to put their sizes in perspective. "How badly could I possibly be slouching that it makes me two fuckin' feet shorter?" he asked, gesturing to the ceiling before gesturing to his friend. "And where you still only go up to my elbows?"
Robin stopped to truly observe the setting and quickly realized that things were not as they seemed. "That's… actually a very good question, Johnny. I, er… I don't have an answer for you."
"AAAAAHHH!"
Another cry of anguish. Ed got the Merry Men's attention and pointed in the direction the voice was coming from. "They're up there!"
Robin and Little John looked where Ed was pointing. He wasn't pointing right towards the rest of the kitchen, nor was he pointing all the way to the left to the living room. He was pointing just slightly off to the left through the living room entryway, almost straight ahead.
"...HOW THE FUCK ARE THERE STAIRS IN HERE!?" Three guesses as to who said that, Reader. "WHERE ARE THOSE STAIRS GOING!? IT'S A TRAILER! THERE'S NO ROOM FOR THERE TO BE ANOTHER LEVEL! I TOUCHED THE GODDAMN ROOF!" Johnny turned to Robin. "How're you gonna tell me that this isn't wigging you out at least a little!?"
Robin couldn't look at Little John to respond; he had his eyes fixed on the flight of stairs, him looking just as perplexed as his friend. "Never said it wasn't, Johnny," he said as the unsettling aura of the house started to seep into his head as well. "But between the need to save Eddy and the immense pain I'm feeling right about now… I simply don't think I have time to dwell on it."
Johnny couldn't say the same. The drive to save the kit had been displacing his anxiety about dealing with dangerous females, but now that the home itself was something that defied the laws of nature… fuck it, fear was winning again.
But he desperately didn't want the great heroic Robin to think he was a coward, so he took the first steps himself towards the staircase and let the others follow.
"Alright, we're comin' ta' getcha, kid!" the bear bellowed up the stairs as he slowly but steadily made his way forward. First foot on the first stair, other foot on the second, first one now coming up to the third… and right about this point of having all his weight completely off the ground floor, he started to not feel quite so steady anymore. Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA!" THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, THUNK.
"LITTLE JOHN!"
"MISTER JOHNNY!"
The two came to the aid of their friend who was now a huddled mass at the bottom of the stairs.
"FUCK, that hurt!" Johnny groaned as he rubbed his many sore spots. "The one time I try to take the lead, the ONE time!"
"Are you alright!?" urged Robin. "Please tell me nothing's broken."
"Hell, it'd better not be! I know your little ass can't carry me outta here!"
"I can carry you!" Ed said suddenly before squatting down and backing up to the bigger bear.
"Ed, what… what're you…!?" Johnny trailed off as he felt Ed's arms hook under his armpits and over his shoulders before the cub stood up and got Little John almost to his feet. Ed was straining, but he was indeed carrying the largest member of the team and was walking toward the door rather briskly. "Ed, it's alright, I'm fine!"
Ed heeded the call and stopped shy of the door, sliding Little John off his shoulders like a backpack. Johnny got his footing and rubbed the elbow he'd landed on when he'd slipped down the stairs.
"So, uh…" Johnny mumbled as he regarded the kid who'd just done what was thought to be impossible, "...in an emergency, Ed and I can probably carry each other… good to know, I guess…"
"What happened?" Robin asked as he walked over. "Did you just… trip?"
"Naw, man!" Johnny said in an oddly high register as he came once again to dwell on the sheer evil they were dealing with. "They greased the fuckin' stairs, dude!"
"They DID!?" The fox hustled over to the staircase again and touched the steps. He didn't even need to rub it between his fingers. "Oh, blimey, what kind of forces have we come into contact with? ...Hold on, I have an idea."
Fast forwarding a few minutes, the trio soon found themselves ascending the staircase with their shoes wrapped in several layers of paper towels, hanging onto the handrail for dear life. It was a struggle, but it was working.
And normally Johnny would have been pissed that Robin's plan was working flawlessly after his own attempt at rallying the brigade had literally fallen flat after all of three seconds - and he still was a little pissed about it, but there was no time for such selfish thoughts when he needed to help save Eddy. And besides, he had another, third set of thoughts to focus on.
"...You know what this is?" he mused as they climbed the stairs, which seemed to go up an impossible distance. "...This is that fuckin' house in that stupid book Thor loaned us. It was bigger in the inside, it kept changing shapes, there were never-ending hallways and staircases and shit in places where they weren't physically fucking possible…"
"Johnny, I don't disagree the similarities are… uncanny, to say the least…" Robin said as he pulled himself up along the handrail, "but… I, for one, just can't be thinking about such things right now…" He was straining himself doubly as much as the bears since he was dragging himself up one-handed, his right arm as good as dead.
"Were there monsters in that book?" asked Ed.
"Uh…" The truth was that even the text of that strange little book intentionally didn't make that answer clear. Plus, y'know, the Merry Men hadn't exactly finished the book and really didn't have any urge to do so, so it wasn't like Robin or Johnny really knew the ambiguous answer themselves. But as Johnny pondered the answer, he had a better question:
"...Why do you ask?"
"Because if that house had monsters and this house is that house then this house has monsters, too!"
Yup, just as Little John had suspected. "Naw, bud, there weren't any monsters in there."
Robin, from the lead position (because of course he was in the lead position), glanced back and looked Johnny in the eyes to give him a firm nod of approval.
Little John nodded back. He needed that.
"I always wanted to hunt monsters, guys, but I'm ready to do that yet!" said Ed. "My training is not yet complete!"
"Don't worry, lad," said Robin, "this is your training. And you're doing great."
"The only monsters in here are those demonic fucking sisters," added Johnny, "and it sounds like you're already pretty familiar with them."
They slowly but surely made their way to the top landing, where thankfully the floor was carpeted. As they regrouped, they couldn't help but notice an empty bottle of something laying on the floor, apparently once containing the substance used to slick the stairs. And it wasn't a regularly-shaped bottle.
"...So this is what they used," noted Robin.
"They put fucking Astroglide on the stairs!?" said Johnny, trying not to panic at the thought of these girls' sexual appetite. "Where do teenage girls even get Astroglide!? Would they sell it to minors?"
"What's Astroglide?" asked poor innocent Ed.
Robin and John looked at one another awkwardly.
"Er, it's, er… it's a lubricant, Ed," answered Robin carefully. "Just a, er… a lubricant."
The cub did not seem fulfilled by the answer. "For what?"
Another awkward glance between the adults.
"Well, uh… hell, I guess, technically, you could use it to lubricate anything you wanted, couldn't ya?" mused Johnny.
"Is it called 'Astroglide' because it's used to oil squeaky doors in spaceships?"
"I'm sure that's one thing you could use it for!" Robin replied, but he and Johnny looking down the upstairs hallway signalled to Ed that they were done with this conversation. The house had been eerily quiet besides the intermittent scream, and now that they were upstairs, it was even quieter. It was almost like a low-budget horror video game that doesn't have the cash to add ambient noise… but accidentally makes itself far more unnerving in its sheer silence.
That's when Little John saw it.
"Ohhh, God…" he murmured as he grabbed the fox by the shoulder to turn him to face what he was seeing. "We're in a cartoon… I was right the first time, we're in a fucking cartoon…"
"What're you talking about?"
Johnny pointed down the hallway at one specific door. "That's the room we have to go into."
"How do you know?"
And Little John was chuckling like a man losing his mind. "Because it's drawn differently, dude… That door has a thicker outline."
"Johnny, what on earth are you -!?" But then Robin squinted. "...Oh my God."
"You see it!?"
"I see it."
Johnny again chuckled as the horrors of this home pushed him deeper into madness. "We're in a fuckin' cartoon, we're in a poorly-drawn cash-strapped cartoon from 1973 and you can tell what's gonna move 'cuz it's drawn differently!"
"That's the Kankers' bedroom!" Ed said, not happy to have known that.
"It is!?" said Johnny, his voice beginning to shake. "Shit, you really do know this place better than you'd like to, don't you?"
Ed nodded. "...I'm scared, guys."
"And you know what, kid?" Little John said as he put an arm around Ed's shoulder and pulled him alongside. "I'm scared, too. And Rob here won't ever admit it because he's afraid we'll lose faith in him if he does, but he's scared, too. But here's the secret, kid…" he said as he looked the young man in the eye, "...bravery and courage ain't about never being scared, they're about being able to overcome how scared you are and doing the brave thing anyway. And I'm gonna do my best to be brave, and so is Rob… and I know you will, too, Ed."
Ed simply nodded with an enthralled look on his face, as though he had just heard the word of God.
"That was very well said, Johnny!" said Robin encouragingly.
But the bear just spun around, leaned over and pointed in his face. "And you. You listen here, you little shit!" Johnny snapped. "If I ever find out that you think I'm a terrible role model for this kid because I was gutsy enough to admit I'm afraid -!"
"Johnny, Johnny! Stop! Where is this coming from!?"
"Because you know my history with females like them…" Little John said as he pointed down the hall, "...and I know your philosophy on leadership! And if I ever find out that you would dare think less of me because I happen to have a different philosophy on it than you - or heaven fuckin' help ya if I ever find out you still think I'm being a pussy right now when you know how hard I'm trying not to let it get to me -!"
"Johnny, please, calm down!" Robin didn't care to be spoken to like that, and he would have started brainstorming what he'd want to say to Johnny in response as soon as they were alone to tell him off for how incredibly rude that was, but… he knew it, Robin had been thinking incredibly rude thoughts himself about his friend recently, so he could understand the argument that he probably deserved this. And he'd admit that Johnny had been 100% right about the 'Robin would think admitting fear, even in this context, is bad leadership strategy' part, as much as the fox felt called out by it. "I have nothing but the utmost respect for what you've been through and I see you doing an amazing job of overcoming your fears. Both of you."
That seemed to calm Johnny down, but he was still scowling. "And I'm sorry for going off on you like that, but… between these boys' history with these girls and my history with a woman like these… I ain't sayin' this is a cakewalk for ya, Rob, but after your recent comments on what you think is and isn't heroic, I wanna make damn sure you appreciate that this is a bigger battle for the rest of us than it is for you."
Robin replied with a determined look and a tight nod. "I'm here to have your backs. You lads ready?"
Johnny looked at Ed. "How ya feelin', bud?"
Ed was clearly still terrified, but he was trying to take this man's words to heart: don't be afraid to be afraid, just be brave enough to be brave anyway. "I will not fail you, Mister Johnny! I'm braver than I am afraid!" he answered with a look like he was about to open a can of proverbial whoopass.
"That's right, Ed! Be angry that they dared to make you feel scared for even a second, because good people don't do that!" Johnny rallied. "At least not to good people like you who don't deserve to be afraid!"
"Let's get 'em!"
Little John turned to Robin. "How's the arm?"
"Hurts like hell but I'm trying to ignore it. I'm ready when you are."
"Alright," Johnny affirmed, "lemme just…" Then, seemingly randomly, he tucked Robin's bow into the crook of his elbow so he could scratch one arm with the claws of the opposite paw. "GAH! MotherFUCK!"
"Johnny, why did you do that?"
"Because I literally have no other way of proving to myself that this ain't some bizarre nightmare."
"Er… didn't you feel enough pain to know you were awake when you slipped down the stairs earlier?"
"What, you never fall outta bed and feel yourself landing and just sleep through it like it's part of your dream?" He raised his paw to display his claws. "Ya want me to scratch you, too?"
Robin thought about that for a second. "Er… no, thank you, Johnny, I can do it myself." He leaned over and scratched his calf with the claws on his good arm. "HRRRMMMMM… yes… yeah, I'm awake."
Upon closer inspection, there was a (somewhat) logical explanation for the "outline" surrounding the bedroom door: it was soundproof padding so thoroughly layered that it was puffing out of the other side of the jamb. And it seemed to be doing its job, because even with their ears to the door, the trio couldn't hear a peep.
"I certainly hope they didn't escape with him through a window or something," said Robin. "I have to wonder if they heard us screaming."
"What fucking windows!?" asked Little John. "You saw the outside of the trailer just like I did! There ain't no fuckin' second level of windows!"
"Johnny, you're not wrong, but that information isn't helping." Robin turned to the other bear. "Ed, you know this hellish place better than we do; what should we expect in there?"
"They do all kinds of things!" said Ed. "They give us hugs and kisses and footsies and makeovers and dress-up -!"
"Okay. Kid. Um…" Little John struggled for words. "...How do I ask this delicately? Have they ever… taken your underwear off you guys?"
Well, off the top of his head, Ed did remember that one time the Kankers stripped him and his friends naked when the girls forced them into a wedding in that spooky house on the next block down. "Yeah."
Johnny and Robin's eyes popped open.
"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ…" Little John whinnied as he started dancing in small circles like he needed to pee. "This ain't fucking good. This is not fucking good! I didn't know it was this bad!"
Granted, Johnny had asked a yes-or-no question that Ed had answered without a chance to explain that the sisters had still kept it PG-rated, but that still sounded dire, and the Merry Men couldn't pretend not to be deeply concerned.
"Now, Ed," said Robin, "are you sure this is the room they're in?"
Ed nodded, looking like he had a lump in his throat. "Uh-huh!"
"Alright!" Little John barked as he threw his arms in the air. "Here goes nothin'!" He took a dozen steps back, readied his shoulders while keeping the bow back, and made his running start.
THUMP.
"JESUS! What the hell!?"
The door hadn't budged.
Robin tried pushing on the door just to get an idea of how sturdy in place it was. "If I didn't know better, I'd think that were part of the wall."
Little John got to his feet and looked at his fellow bear. "Ed… you wanna help me out?"
Ed nodded. He knew what he had to do.
"Now, remember, Ed…" said Johnny as they stepped back to get another running start. "...use your anger for good. Hit with your shoulder, and to make sure we don't squeeze each other in the doorway, you go high and I'll go low, sound good?"
"Roger, sir!"
"Good boy. And don't call me Roger."
The fox stood back as the two behemoths charged the door, holding his breath and hoping they'd make a breakthrough.
Crash.
"Um… okay, that worked, but now we're stuck." Again, Johnny had had a good and logical plan to prevent the two of them from getting squeezed into the doorway, it just didn't work out.
"You lads need help?" asked Robin.
"...Hold on."
The two bears tried to raise their heads to get a look around the room. It looked like it could have been a normal bedroom when it wanted to be, but right now it wanted to be anything but. The regular lights were turned off, and instead the room was illuminated by red bulbs in fixtures duct-taped to the walls, given some help by scented candles around the room that smelled more like burnt rubber and ketchup than flowers or perfumes. Not to say there weren't rose petals strewn across the floor, which there were, along with Black Ice air fresheners hung from each blade of the ceiling fan, which stood perfectly still. And don't let me forget to mention the numerous hand-drawn portraits of the girls with their respective crushes, which would be pretty impressive as illustrations if not for the disturbing nature of their existence. What there did not seem to be, however, were an opossum, a raccoon, or a coyote, and an open window (to God knows where) with red curtains billowing in the breeze suggested they weren't there anymore. But what remained, however - or rather, who remained, was a tiny red fox kit, barely visible from the bears' vantage point near the ground as he was tied taut to the top of the mattress with each limb anchored to the closest bedpost.
"EDDY!" Ed and Johnny both yelped when they realized he was hidden in plain sight.
"Mmmph mph mph mmmph!" They couldn't see it yet, but he'd been bound and gagged so he couldn't scream anymore.
"He's in there!?" asked Robin, who couldn't see over the ursine mountain that was bigger than he was. "Is he alright!?"
"Hold on - Ed, get yourself off me!" Johnny instructed, a tad sterner than he would have liked but things had just gotten real. "Grab the sides of the door to pull yourself up!"
Ed followed the orders and was able to pick himself up off of Little John. This allowed Johnny himself to push himself up, squeeze and twist through the door, and make a break for the poor kid. "EDDY! - BWAHHH!"
The back of Johnny's head smacked the ground as his foot was pulled out from under him and up to the ceiling. For the second time in a matter of minutes, the bear had been lifted off his feet in ways that were very unexpected to work on a guy his size. He'd fallen for their trap exactly as they'd planned it.
And that wasn't the only thing that fell. Apparently somewhere along the line, probably when he was getting dogpiled outside, his t-shirt had gotten untucked, and with him suddenly thrust upside-down, gravity turned it inside-out as it slid down off his stomach and chest and came to cover his "upward"-positioned arms as well as his face.
"Well, ain't that a sight!?"
The blinded bear heard a voice. Female, and with a salival lisp.
"'Tween you and me, big guy, I like a guy with a belly!" the opossum drooled as she started climbing the grizzly's back, digging her claws into his skin to get her footing. "Now that's what I call manly!" She parked herself precariously on the space between Little John's suspended leg and his dangling one - in other words, she was perched on his upside-down taint. And if the pressure of someone sitting on his crotch wasn't uncomfortable enough, imagine how much he didn't like it when she slobbered all over her finger, leaned down, and stuck her claw right into his belly button.
"AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!" Poor Little John was flopping like a fish as he screamed bloody murder, unable to see a thing nor to mover his arms with his shirt pulled down over him. "GET OFF ME! GET THE FUCK OFF ME!"
Robin hadn't been simply standing around idly as this happened. He'd entered the room and was willing and able to do something to help his friend, but not only did he not know the moral and ethical way to force away a young girl, he was also worried about where the other young girls were.
"Ed! You help Johnny, I'll look for the others!"
"Yessir! Um…" Ed similarly had no idea how to deal with a girl who was being physical and simply wouldn't quit, especially when simply escaping wasn't an option.
But he couldn't do nothing. So he did what he could.
"Cease and desist, unwanted bringer of unwanted affection!" Ed went up and screamed in May's face, finger pointed at her nose. "YOU ARE OUTNUMBERED!"
"Don't point your finger at me, ex-boyfriend!" May chided back, wagging the finger that once swirled around in Johnny's navel. "You're just jealous that I have a new boyfriend who's even manlier than you, and he's gonna beat you up!"
"No I won't!" said Johnny.
"No he won't!" said Ed.
But May found a way. She punched Johnny in the gut, and despite his thick pelt, he hadn't been expecting it and that made it hurt much worse. As one does when hit in the stomach, he groaned and keeled over, but since Little John was upside-down, that meant he'd actually be suddenly jerking his head forward and up. And since Ed was standing right in front of him… man, do I even need to finish this?
"AaaaAAAAHHH!" Ed screamed in an ascending crescendo as he reached to cover the affected area and collapsed to the floor.
"What did you do to him!?" Johnny demanded, still completely blinded. "What the FUCK did you do to him!?"
"Don't worry, honey!" the opossum answered with a sickening sweetness. "Now we have time to be alone!" And she resumed fingering his belly button.
Robin witnessed this all and simply felt helpless; shy of putting a hand on a child, there was nothing he felt he could do to help his friends.
"Goddammit, where are the other two!?" he swore as he threw open the door to a closet, the only place he could think to find them. Nobody.
Okay, this was a waste of time. There was no defeating these satanic sisters; Robin realized his best option was to grab his friends and get the hell out of there. And that began with Eddy, laying on the bed where he was stuck but at least he seemed to be safe.
Robin ran over to the small fox and undid the bandana tied around Eddy's head and through his open jaw. He tried to use his injured arm as little as possible. "We're getting out of here, Eddy! I don't know where those girls went, but as long as they don't get us, I don't care!"
"Mmmph mmmph mmmph mph mph!" Upon closer view, Eddy also had the initials "LK+EW" finely shaved into his chest fur.
He pulled the bandana away and extracted the pink pair of panties stuffed into the kit's mouth just to hear Eddy say:
"THEY'RE UNDER THE -!"
"AAAAAAAAHHH!" THUMP.
A pair of voices cackling drowned out the sound of Robin screaming as the girls pulled his legs out from under him, knocked him over, and dragged him under the bed.
"NO NO NO NO NO! STOP!"
But they had no interest in doing so. Lee and Marie had an impeccably handsome English gentleman in their grasp and had no plans to let him go. And what a big and strong fox he was - surely he was enough for both of them.
"How's it goin', Austin Powers?" the raccoon teased as she started unbuttoning the partial placket of the fox's polo shirt. "Let's take that top off, it's gonna get hot in here soon enough!"
"Why stop at the top?" said the coyote as she once again undid his jeans. "As much as I love a man with a broad chest, all the fun stuff's downstairs!"
As Lee sat on Robin's pelvis and pulled off his shoes and trousers, Marie had her knees on his stomach and slipped off his shirt along with the quiver of arrows that had almost slid off anyway when they dragged him under. Now having him down to his britches, they rearranged themselves to pin him on his back by kneeling on his elbows; well adept at maximizing misery, they surely knew that that much pressure on any joint would hurt like hell.
Of course, he probably could have just willed himself up and tossed them off his body. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. Robin was just too much of a gentleman for his own good.
"AAAAARGH!" he groaned. "What on earth are you girls going to do to me!?"
"We understand a man's needs!" said the raccoon as she drew a red heart on the white part of Robin's chest with lipstick. "What we don't understand is how a good-lookin' guy like you ain't been with a woman in a while, but we can just tell it's been a long time since you've received physical attention! Let's just call it women's intuition!"
"You're too young!" Robin protested. "You don't know what those things are! You don't know what any of those things are!"
"Hey! Don't you question our maturity!" Marie snapped as she slapped the fox across the snout, scratching him with her claws in the process. "Do ya want us to show ya some loving or not!?"
"NO! You're never mature enough to go around molesting people!"
"Aw, don't worry, hotshot," said the coyote, "we won't do anything that ya can't do in a show on Cartoon Network!"
But this was false. This was a lie. They were lying to him.
Before Robin could rebut, however, Lee found her attention between the fox's legs. She gasped; "Oh, look at how long and thick this thing is!" She reached down and pulled up Robin's long, thick tail. "What a man! Puts Eddy's to shame!"
"What are you doing with my tail!?"
"What, you never heard of a little tail-play?" asked Marie as she finished rubbing massage oil onto Robin's chest and stomach, concluding with two firm pats of the paw on the space between his navel and his groin. "You really are deprived of attention, aren't you?"
"LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"Let's see how far this thing can reach!" said the coyote as she reached the fox's tail up towards his face. "Huh! I dunno what's more impressive, the girth or the length!" And then, just to fuck with him, she did something to embarrass him.
"Oh, not again… ha-CHOO! (Yip!)... ha-CHOO! (Yip!)..."
"Don't fight it, big guy, a woman only feels comfortable once the man's feeling vulnerable!" Lee jeered before growing bored of tickling his nose with his own brush. "But you ain't enjoying this, is ya?"
"No, I'm not enjoying - what the hell are you doing?"
What Marie was doing, Dear Reader, was dripping the massaging oil onto Robin's forehead like Chinese water torture.
"Just tryna stimulate all yer senses!" the raccoon explained.
"But if ya don't like a little feather work, we can get your nose involved in other ways!" said the coyote as she picked up a lit candle.
"Erm, er…" Robin stammered, "is that candle supposed to smell of…" Sniff, sniff, sniff… "...Buffalo chicken wings?"
Lee just chuckled. "Aw, that ain't the smell that gets me in the mood! Let's put a little bit of ourselves into it, huh?"
And with that, the coyote snickered as she pulled Robin's tail back and held the very tip over the flame.
"OH! OH, NO! NONONONONO! OFF! STOP! STAHHHHHP!"
"Oh, c'mon!" Lee taunted. "I know you're more of a man than that!"
And if the sizzling tingle he felt at the very end of his tail's nervous system and the faint but pungent smell of his own burning fur wasn't enough to get him panicking, it all got much worse when his chest felt the searing heat of a molten wax drip onto him from the candle.
"AAAAAAAAHHH -!" THUNK. The intense pain was enough to get him to sit bolt upright and force the two sisters off of him, but at the cost of promptly hitting his head on the bottom of the bed, causing him to collapse right back down and clutch his head in agony. This experience all rolled together may have been the fourth most pain he'd experienced to that point.
"WHAT'RE THEY DOING TO YA!?" Little John hollered, still completely arrested. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO HIM!?"
Meanwhile, Ed was just starting to regain his footing after getting breezeblocked. He held himself up against the wall as he stood to see May standing straight up on Johnny's crotch in order to nibble on the toes of the bear's hoisted foot, Little John wiggling desperately to shake the opossum off but to absolutely no avail.
"Ed…"
The big cub spun around to find the source of the voice. It was Eddy, laying steadfast on his makeshift rack on the bed.
"C'mon, Ed…" the little fox mumbled weakly. "You're the only one who can get us out of here…"
But Ed was nervous. "I'm not allowed to fight girls, Eddy!"
"Then don't fight them, numbskull," said Eddy, "fight them off."
Ed got that determined look again.
He picked up the bow and the single arrow that Johnny had dropped. He lined his shot up, and May noticed him doing so. If his aim was true, Ed would sever the rope winching Johnny up without hurting him, May, or himself.
...Eh, his aim was speculative at best. Hey, go easy on the kid, this was literally his first time firing a bow and arrow and he did it without training, it's amazing he even timed his release mostly right.
What the arrow did wind up doing instead of cutting the wire was fly straight toward May's face, which she saw coming and decided to jump off of Little John as a result.
"Hey, you tried to shoot me!" the opossum protested.
"SHE SPIT A LOOGIE DOWN MY PANT LEG!" Johnny screamed; it didn't add anything to the conversation, he just wanted to put that out there.
"I was not hitting you, I was trying to hit the rope!" Ed hollered, terrified that people might think he actually had been aiming for her if he didn't loudly clarify otherwise, before picking up Little John's big fucking stick and pushing her around on the floor. "I am not hitting a girl, I am keeping a girl away from me!" Jeez, talk about keeping something away with an eight-foot pole.
Back under the bed, Lee and Marie had been busy using a jet lighter to singe another heart onto the fur on Robin's left bicep, this heart with an arrow through it since apparently this British guy liked archery so much.
"STOP, STOP, STAHHHHHP!"
"Will you hush and let us tattoo ya?" grumbled the raccoon.
"Yeah, quit yer whinin'! We stopped using the drippy candle, didn't we?" added the coyote. "...Goddammit, Marie, your heart just looks like a nutsack!"
"That's 'cuz you're lookin' at it upside-down, ya dumb bitch! What, you think you can do a better job!?"
That's when they heard the commotion in the room.
"Hey!" Lee demanded as Marie put the lighter down. "What's going on out -!?"
"AAAAAHHH!"
The third sister suddenly came crashing in at the end of a big fucking stick that was hooked under her shirt, pushed along like the head of a mop. And indeed, that's exactly what Ed was going for.
"I am not fighting a girl, Mom and Dad, I am, uh, cleaning!"
Ed pushed May around in every direction he could in order to disperse all the sisters off their captive fox. And Robin got bumped around himself, but seeing as it successfully got him out of the girls' grasp without him having to do anything drastic himself, he welcomed it.
When the opossum fell off the stick and Ed felt the weight removed from it, he pulled it out, and Robin grabbed on to get himself out from under that bed.
But his feet slipped in the massage oil spilled on the floor from when they were water torturing him, not helped by the fact that he no longer had his shoes. In retrospect, what was about to happen may have seemed obvious.
Ed pulled out the staff and Robin let go, but his feet kept sliding and he collapsed to the ground with all the inertia of the freakishly strong kid yanking him out of there.
"WATCH OUT -!"
No time. Robin bowled through Ed's legs and the cub was upended, landing on his face. Robin, meanwhile, kept sliding until he crashed into the closet he had opened earlier in search of the sisters.
May emerged from under the bed and hugged Ed around the neck. "Aw, you really did want me back, didn't ya, Teddy Ed? I'm not mad anymore, Honey Bun - I know what was Cupid's arrow you were trying ta' shoot me with!" And she began kissing her crush all over his face, not at all seeming to mind that Ed was unconscious.
As for Robin, he climbed out of the mountain of dirty clothes he'd landed in just to see the coyote and the raccoon standing over him with wicked smiles on their faces.
Marie had herself a seat on Robin's back to pin him down while Lee squatted in front of his face to gently scratch him underneath the chin.
"Ya didn't think we'd pass up the opportunity to get with a guy like you, didja?" the coyote said with a sinister chuckle, her eyes locked on the target of her affections.
Robin expected to encounter many challenges and hardships when he began his life as an outlaw, but never in a million years would he have expected to be sexually assaulted by some teenage girls. Oh, and heaven forbid if they somehow turned this around and got the authorities to believe he and the rest of the boys had initiated it; after everything they'd already done, these three absolutely seemed like the type to fabricate accusations for shits and giggles. To save himself and his friends, Robin only had one last idea in his head: dissuading them with lies. Very, very graphic lies that he wouldn't usually be comfortable telling around minors. For the love of God, Dear Reader, even more than a lot of things in this chapter, please, please don't take the next few paragraphs out of context.
"No, no! You don't want me! I, erm, I'm not clean! I have STDs! STIs! Venereal diseases! Er… herpes! Gonorrhea! Syphilis! Chlamydia! I might even have HIV verging on full-blown AIDS! And, and so does Johnny! We're gay! Really gay! We have sex every morning and every night and share all our diseases!"
"That's right!" Johnny yelled, seeing where Robin was going and deciding to play along. "We got all our STDs from when we had a three-way with the mayor of Nottingham! And we take turns fucking each other up the ass but between both of us having chronic hemorrhoids and all the open sores on our dicks, there's blood and pus and stuff evvvvverywhere every single time! And then we put our cocks back in our pants and they heal onto our underwear so every time we need to pee, we gotta peel them off, and then there's even more blood!"
And to spare the lads: "And you shouldn't touch Ed or Eddy either because, er, they have all these diseases, too! Because, erm, we gave it to them! We raped them! Repeatedly! We're child molesters! That's why we were with them and why we were trying to hide before we saw you were trying to take our little boy-lovers away from us!" (Honestly, Dear Reader, I feel like I'm going to go to jail for writing this chapter.)
And to wrap things up, Eddy decided to get in on the… no, no, I'm not gonna phrase it that way. "Ohhh, yeahhh, fuck me harder, Daddy Robin!" (Yup, definitely going to jail for this. Thanks for reading, everybody.)
Still sitting on Robin's lumbar and compressing his lungs, Marie just found this whole production cute. "Nice try, boys, but you really think we believe that?"
Lee, however, was not so amused. "...What did you say his name was?" she asked, pointing to the Brit.
"Robin!" Eddy repeated. "Apparently it's a guy's name in England! His name is Robin and he fucks me better than my brother did!" (Jesus Christ, Eddy.)
The wheels were turning in the coyote's head, and she was wishing they didn't. "...Robin!?"
Marie was the first to get it. "...That was the name the doll said!" the raccoon shrieked as she jumped off Robin's back.
And May, saying the full explanation out loud more for her own comprehension than for anybody else's, chimed in at the end: "He's the person the British ghost told us about when he possessed Eddy Junior!"
And the sisters screamed at the top of their lungs.
"GET OUT!" We don't even know which of them screamed this, all we know is that May and Marie pulled Robin out of the closet and Lee gave the oily outlaw a good kick in the ribs.
"AAAAAAAAHHH!" Robin hollered as you do when you're kicked in the ribs hard enough to send you crashing through a door, sliding down the hallway, ricocheting off the wall several times along the way while also getting killer rugburn against the carpet until you reach the stairs where you tumble down and keep sliding across the ground floor until you burst through the front door, bump your way down the cement stoop, and finally come to a rest on the dirty ground outside.
"THAT MEANS ALL A' YA'S!"
Apparently their sense of urgency wasn't exaggerated, because they picked up their entire king-sized bed with Eddy still tied to it and threw it out the window, creating a large hole in the wall in the process.
"WAIT, WAIT, UNTIE ME FIRST -!"
They did not untie Eddy first, and as the bed flew out the second-story window, its pieces flew apart, and the mattress landed upside-down with Eddy's face in the dirt -
"Whoa, WHOA, WHOA -!"
- which thankfully meant he didn't take the full brunt of Little John's gigantic mass coming crashing down in the exact same spot. Apparently they'd given him a few good swings on the rope before cutting him loose at his apex to send him flying out the same way.
"...Are you lads alright?" Robin asked as he walked over to Eddy and Johnny, straining as every part of his body ached. But before either of the boys answer, he heard the girls from above:
"One… two… THREE!"
"AAAAAHHH!" THUMP. The Kanker sisters were two-for-two for dropping a grizzly bear onto an unsuspecting fox.
"...Where am I?" Ed asked drowsily as he started to come-to. Little John grabbed him and rolled him off of the flattened fox, who was dazed but conscious.
And then all four of the boys felt themselves rained upon by things both hard and soft: Robin's bow and quiver, Johnny's staff, and both of the foxes' clothes.
"And don't any of you ever come back!" the opossum screeched as the sisters scowled at them from the gaping hole in the trailer before walking away.
Needless to say, none of them had any plans to do so.
-IllI-
People in the suburbs of America really did lack a sense of community. If they had what they needed, they didn't bother their neighbors. So when they faintly saw a poster in a store window or on a telephone pole, they didn't look too closely. It didn't matter if it was advertising a community get-together or begging for help finding a lost pet parakeet or warning of a pair of wanted criminals; it was probably none of their business and they didn't care.
What I'm trying to say, Dear Reader, is that when the Merry Men took Ed and Eddy to The Candy Store in downtown Peach Creek to buy them a treat for their troubles, they were initially worried that some nosey busy-body would recognize them, but they quickly came to realize it would be a lot easier to blend in than they thought. Just to be safe, though, they left their weapons at the van, and they consumed their snacks in the alley behind the store.
Ed had gotten a Budapest jawbreaker while Eddy chose his preferred Japan flavor, while the adults decided to treat themselves to some sweets as well.
"Alright… let's see if I finally remember this right…" Robin said as he gingerly and delicately unwrapped his candy bar, doing so the classy British way by pulling it apart along the glued sides instead of just tearing it open. "So… your Milky Way is our… 3 Musket- no, excuse me, your 3 Musketeers is our Milky Way and your Milky Way is our… Mars bar?" He took a bite and was elated to find that the nougat was indeed accompanied by caramel. "Oh, thank you God!" he praised with a full mouth.
Little John, meanwhile, was going to town on a three-pound tub of Bit-O-Honey; yeah, yeah, it seemed predictable that the bear would get honey, but he didn't even love honey that much, it was just that Bit-O-Honey was hard to find these days and he wanted to get something he couldn't get just anywhere. "Y'know, you can just read the label and it'll tell ya what's inside, right?"
Robin swallowed and chuckled. "But where's the fun in that, Johnny?"
Johnny turned to the boys with their cheeks full of sugary spheres. "I'm surprised you guys still like that candy considering… y'know… that the kid who beats you up's dad's a big-shot there."
Eddy seemed unfazed. "I'm surprised you guys still eat name-brand foods and give money to huge companies considering… y'know… that you guys steal from the rich for a living."
The bandits stopped chewing their candy and glanced at each other, completely stumped.
"This kid makes a good point," said Johnny. "...I mean, we ain't gonna stop, because it's damn-near impossible to buy food in this country that doesn't go to gigantic corporations, but… it's a damn good point."
"Agreed," said Robin, "we could use someone like that around to keep us in check… and about that…" He trailed off as he very neatly unfolded and straightened out the wrapper as if to put the second half of his Milky Way away. "Johnny, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Johnny was not. "What're you doing with the rest of your candy bar?"
"Saving it for later."
"What the -!? It's gonna melt in your pocket, dude!"
"Well, I've had enough for now. Can't go over-stuffing myself, can I?"
Little John scoffed and rolled his eyes. "I swear to God, you drink like a fish and eat like a bird."
"Well, I am a little red Robin, aren't I?" the fox chuckled as he tucked the twisted end between his fingers and spun it around lackadaisically. "A little red Robin who loves to abuse alco-"
Then he seemed to remember the Eds were right there.
"Oh, don't let us interrupt you," said Eddy.
"Well… anyway, lads… after a day like today, I've come to the conclusion… and, and Johnny will surely agree with this without me even needing to ask -"
"He's probably right," affirmed Little John, already ninety percent sure he knew what his friend was about to say.
"Right. So…" Robin knew exactly what he wanted to say, but he was frankly in disbelief that he was about to actually say it. "Er… let me put it this way: you lads really want to come play with us, don't you?"
And the boy's faces lit up.
"More than anything!" Ed squealed. "I wanna have adventures and fight bad guys and save people's lives and exact justice and laugh in the face of danger and bring smiles to people's faces and, um… whatever else you guys do!"
"Uh, yeah! Uh…" Eddy mumbled, still looking attentive if speechless. "What he said, except, uh… yeah!" He just barely caught himself before outright saying that what he really wanted was the power and adoration that the Merry Men enjoyed.
Robin and Johnny nodded. "Just as we thought," said the fox. "And… I'm sorry, boys, I'm usually more eloquent than this, but I just can't help but think about how greater society would tell me - probably rightly so - that it's… ridiculously, shamefully irresponsible to drag a couple of kids into this life, but…" Robin crossed his arms and looked up and to the right as he searched for the best way to put this. "...What you showed in that trailer park… was nothing but pure and undistilled bravery. You two knew exactly what you were getting into, you knew precisely how bad it was, you tried to warn us, we were too stupid to listen to you, and you marched in there anyway because like loyal soldiers, you trusted the leadership of your generals. And…" Robin was now looking off to the side again, but down this time; he seemed to be upsetting himself. "...and even when we failed you…"
Johnny took up the mantle. "And even when we couldn't protect you like we thought we could… you still trusted we were doing our best and you still did all you could to protect yourselves. And you still didn't just, like… give up and tap out or anything. Seriously, you guys had plenty of opportunities to just run away and abandon us, and you chose not to. You guys stuck it out. A lot a' guys your age wanna think they're tough - man, fuck that, they'd start cryin' if they went through all that. You two actually proved how tough you guys can be."
"Um… thanks," Eddy forced himself to say. Jesus, had these two been paying any attention? He wasn't proud to admit it, but Eddy thought it was pretty obvious that he'd wanted to quit as soon as the Kankers opened the door. But hey, if these two were taking a liking to him and Ed, Eddy wasn't going to protest.
"And… I mean…" Robin whisked his hand in the air, facing the sky as he sought the right words, before eventually just gesturing to the boys themselves. "...Just the fact that you two still want to hang out with us after that… it really tells a story."
"Yeah, like… hey, did you guys at least kind of enjoy giving back to the community?" asked Little John. "Because - hey, if you didn't, that's fine, you can tell us, we'll still be impressed by how much balls you guys showed today."
"I wanted to be happy I was making people happy, but I was scared about the Kankers," Ed explained, looking ashamed.
"Hey. Kid. That's fine," Johnny insisted, paws up and eyes wide like he was afraid of making this cub doubt himself. "Like we said, you guys were right to be afraid and we were idiots for not taking your word for it that these chicks weren't gonna be reasoned with. You're good, Ed."
Ed did indeed seem to feel a little better after that.
Robin gestured to his fellow fox. "Eddy, did you get any fulfillment out of giving to the poor?"
Eddy felt very put-on-the-spot, but he knew he had to tell them what they wanted to hear - and in a way they'd believe. "Oh! Yeah, yeah, it felt good to give back, I just… like Ed said, I had the Kankers on my mind, and… y'know, not exactly… used to knocking on people's doors and just giving them shit…" ...Wait a minute…
Little John gave a firm nod. "Understand completely. I remember how weird it was when I had to go ringing people's doorbells for when I worked as a census-taker back in… what, 1990, I think? Yeah, it was 1990, it's every ten years. Man, what a job that was. Quickest way to find out which of your neighbors are anti-government nuts. Like, seriously, how wacky do ya hafta be to distrust the Census Bureau, for fuck's sakes? I still remember this one lady -"
"WHERE THE HELL DID THE MONEY GO!?"
The other three took a second to realize Eddy was right: none of them had seen the garbage bag full of cash since they entered the Kankers' trailer. They each glanced at each other as if in some vain hope that someone else among them had it and they just hadn't noticed this whole time, but nope, it was gone.
"Bloody hell, they actually took off with the money, didn't they?" said Robin, uncharacteristically dejected. "My God, lads, I'm dreadfully sorry, I feel terrible that we lost the money you fought so hard to get."
But Johnny just threw his hands up. "Y'know what? Fuck it. Yeah, I'm bummed the kids lost the money they worked for, too, but however much was in there was worth the price of our lives. I mean… I don't think they woulda actually killed us, but you know what I -"
"I actually beg to differ. Here's one of the two places they set me on fire…" Robin explained as he raised his sleeve to show the incomplete heart the coyote and raccoon had tried burning into his fur, something he planned to cut off with some scissors at his next convenience; then he lifted up his shirt to show the solidified glob of goo on his torso. "...and does anyone know how to get wax out of your coat?"
"Jesus Christ, I stand corrected!" Little John said with a cringe. "Fuck, for once I'm glad you're the hot one and I'm the ugly one between us!"
"For the millionth time, Johnny, you're not ugly -"
"Well if you ain't hot in this country, you're ugly! Welcome to America, that's just how it is here!" Johnny huffed.
But Robin just smiled and put a paw on the bear's arm. "Johnny," Robin said quietly, "project some confidence in front of the boys, eh?"
...Well, hard to argue with that. Johnny turned to the Eds. "...Are we boring you? Because if you guys hang out with us, you're gonna have to get used to circular, non-constructive banter like this."
The cub and the kit just shook their heads awkwardly.
"Uh… no, no, we're… we're fine," Eddy stumbled.
And the Merry Men nodded with satisfaction. "Well then!" Robin beamed. "With not much more to say, I suppose this is as good a time as any to propose a formal offer for you lads to come join us!"
The boys' eyes widened in anticipation. They were starting to wonder if they'd ever get this far.
"Our end of the deal," Robin continued, "is that we'll respect the fact that you are still young boys and we'll vow to never put you in any sort of situation we wouldn't feel right putting our own children in!"
"And if at any point you don't feel comfortable with doing something," Johnny said before clapping his paws together, "man, you two say the word and you're off the hook, without judgment, no questions asked. Most adults would piss their pants doing what we do, we sometimes feel like we're gonna shit our britches doing what we do, there ain't no shame in taking us aside and saying 'hey, I'm honored you think I can handle this, but I just don't feel safe doing this.' Absolutely no shame. Sound fair?"
The Eds nodded.
The Merry Men smiled.
"Then it sounds like we have ourselves a deal in place!" Robin announced as he extended his hand for a shake - then retracted it when he thought better of it. "On second thought, that might hurt like hell," he said of his broken right arm.
"Oh! One last question, I just remembered," added Little John. "...You kids okay with leaving Wolfie behind? Because we don't wanna tear you guys apart."
"Oh, we're not leaving Double-D behind!" Ed beamed. "We're just making more friends!"
"Yeah, and honestly… Sock-Head could probably use the opportunity to meet some new people."
Robin chuckled but seemed to feel bad about doing so. "Ah, sorry to say, but I have to agree with that!" He put his paw forward - the left one this time, and spread out flat, leading Johnny to put his own paw on top. "What do you say boys? 'Merry Men' on three?"
Ed enthusiastically put his paw in. "Yeah! C'mon, Eddy!"
Eddy was all for putting his paw in the circle but he wasn't so sure about an emphatic cheer. "Uh, sure."
"Now, kid, don't you go acting like you're too cool to do something corny like take part in a cheer!" Little John said with a daring smile directed at the kit. "If you think you're too cool to just go with the flow… then man, you're not cool enough to hang with us!"
Eddy nodded. "Alright… I'm in."
"Alright, lads! One!"
"Two!"
"THREE!"
"MERRY MEN!"
"THE MERRY MEN!"
"MERRY… the… um…"
"...Wait, were we supposed to say the… 'The'? Did we agree on that?"
"..."
"..."
"...MERRY CHRISTMAS!" Ed cheered to break the silence.
And they all laughed heartily.
"Ohhh, lads," said Robin, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful partnership!"
"Yeah!" said Ed.
"You bet yer sweet ass, it is!" said Johnny.
"Yeah…" said Eddy. "By the way, uh, just, just to be clear… you two were just messing with the Kankers when you told them you guys have sex with each other, right?"
-IllI-
"Do you think I did a good job with the boys today?" Johnny asked as the Merry Men approached their new home in the junkyard.
Robin gave him a warm smile. "I think you did an excellent -"
"No! Wait! Lemme rephrase that!" the bear said with a sly smile and a finger in the air. "Ahem… I think I did do a good job with them. Any notes from you? There! I convey a sense of pride in my actions while also leaving the door open for constructive criticism and hopefully some validation that I desperately need!"
Robin chuckled as he opened the back hatch of the van. "Ah, you're learning, Johnny!"
Little John smiled back. "Maybe one day I'll finally figure out how to be like you!"
The fox scoffed playfully. "Johnny, don't worry about being like me when it's plenty enough to be yourself!"
"Then stop being so goddamn irresistible, motherfucker!" Johnny replied, grinning despite only being half joking. "When people flock to me like they flock to you, then I'll be happy!"
And Robin again chuckled despite recognizing that was a bit of an alarming statement. "Well for what it's worth, Johnny, I don't understand why they're not already doing that and I, for one, think they're missing out!" He really did want to make his friend feel better, but he certainly didn't want to dwell on the subject self-esteem issues - a subject Robin was starting to privately have more trouble with than he'd ever had before, hence why part of his hesitation to talk about it was a worry that he didn't have all the answers he once thought he had - so he switched gears: "But seriously, old boy, you you got along excellently with them! It seems like you particularly took a shine to the grizzly lad!"
"Well, yeah, he reminds me of myself - and not just because, y'know, bears, roar roar."
"I was going to say, if the time comes when we have to pass them off as our sons, you and Ed could pass for father and son much, much easier than Eddy and I could!"
Johnny snorted at the ridiculous comment. "Man, I bet deep down we still all look the same to you!"
"Hey, your fur is both roughly the same shade of brown and neither of you have those ridiculously squat and wide faces so many other bears are cursed with… what else is there?"
Johnny was still smiling, but he was rolling his eyes at all this. "How's the arm?"
Robin kept smiling his famous smile, but he looked like it was a chore to do so. "It hasn't gotten much better, to be honest… it pains me to ask, but can I trouble you for another pill?"
Now Johnny stopped smiling. "If you need more medicine, it means you need to see a doctor, Rob."
"And I appreciate your concern for me, Johnny, truly I do, but -"
"But you're not gonna listen to me because you're you and I'm someone else and you trust your own judgment over mine."
Robin's smile looked a bit awkward now. "Aaand… I understand why it might have come across that way, but genuinely, I'm just…" He sighed. "It's my pride, Johnny. My foolish pride. I can't treat myself like a helpless cripple or I might start to believe that's who I actually am."
Johnny winced. "Bro, one broken arm doesn't make you a fucking invalid."
"Yes, but you know how my biggest fear is losing my abilities, physically, mentally, or otherwise. This injury hasn't been good for my head, Johnny, and the more I coddle myself, the more I'll feel like I'm losing control of my person."
Actually, Little John didn't know that was Robin's biggest fear because Robin had never told him anything of the sort, but considering the fox wanted to be an action hero, ergo someone with stellar control of and ability with their mind and body, a deep-seated fear of becoming handicapped made sense. Not that that made it any less worrying or… kind of pathetic, as Johnny's face showed.
"So… you want me to treat you like you're fine… instead of confronting your fear of -"
"It's not just that, John, it's also just in general, we mustn't be so reliant upon Doctor Fort, should we be? It's a miracle we found him in the first place, I'd hate to abuse his kindness and scare him off!"
The bear blinked. "Aaand completely disregarding his medical advice by fucking up your arm even worse isn't gonna piss him off more?"
The redhead cracked a nervous grin. "I'll tell you what, Johnny, you give me a few days to see if it gets better all on its own and if it doesn't, you can say you told me so! Eh?"
...Well, this was going nowhere. "So… did this love quest do anything to help you figure out what you're gonna do to get with Marian?" Little John asked as he reluctantly handed the fox one more pill.
Robin snapped his fingers and pointed at Johnny, looking excited. "In a most roundabout way, yes! Nothing to do with the lads and their girl problems… but when we finally got to the room and found Eddy, already branded by them. It just served as a reminder: don't wait for things in life, or you might wait too long! If you know where they are, go get them now! Don't risk losing them because you were too patient!"
Little John was happy that his friend was happy. "So you're gonna go get her first thing in the morning then?"
And the fox just chuckled, waved a hand at the bear, and shook his head with his eyes gently shut. "Ohhh, no, Johnny… I don't have a plan yet! Do you have a plan?"
The bear shook his head with a soft smile to match his friend's. "Can't say I do."
"Splendid! Then my plan is to make a plan - and to not waste a moment doing so!" With that, Robin bent over and started rummaging through the many bags of beer and liquor - oh yeah, did I mention that they'd returned there with a half-dozen paper sacks full of more booze? Crap, I might have forgotten to mention that. But yeah, they had more alcohol to get wasted on, and Little John had been carrying most of it because, y'know, Robin's arm was fucked up.
"Sounds like a plan!" Johnny goofed as he got involved with the cans and bottles. It was going to be another merry night. "Just, uh… go easy on the liquor when you take those pills, alright?"
Several hours later, as the sun set over the hills and mountains of refuse, long after the junkyard's posted closing time, the fox and the bear found themselves reciting the great male/male duets from the annals of music history (and some crossgender ones added to the mix for flavor). When he came upon them, Robin was taking the role of Mister Jones since David probably had the stronger English accent between the two singers anyway, while Johnny took over for Mister Bulsara, feeling he could use the opportunity to practice Farrokh's high notes. But they weren't being too strict about whose line was whose and frequently sang the same lines together as they freeze-danced haphazardly to the cadence of their a capella.
"...THIIIIIS IIIIIS ouuur LAAAAAST DAAAAANCE! THIIIIIS IIIIIS ouuur LAAAAAST DAAAAANCE…!
"... IIIIIS OUUUR laaaaast DAAAAANCE! THIIIIIS IIIIIS…"
"... IIIIIS ouuur SELLLLLVES…!"
"... SELLLLLVES!"
"...uuundahh PRESH-AH!"
"...UUUNDERRR press-ure!"
"Da, la, da, diddle dum dum!"
"Doo, doo, doo, diddle um dum!"
"... PRESSURE!"
"Da, da, da, diddle dum dum!"
"Doo, doot, doo, diddle um dum!"
"Yeah, my dad likes that song."
The Merry Men froze in their tracks upon hearing that voice - and since that wound up being them frozen in weird positions leaned over this way or that and standing on one leg, so they each had to stumble and catch their balance before turning back to the little fox.
"Oh, hey, buddy!" Johnny beamed. "What's up, man?"
"Uh…" I probably don't have to explain too thoroughly how awkward Eddy felt at that moment, do I, Dear Reader? Good, that'll save us some time. "...I, I can come back some other -"
"Oh, no no no no no!" Robin insisted with a welcoming smile. "You're perfectly alright, lad! Anytime's a good time to see our friends!"
"Yeah, what can we do ya for?" asked Little John, who seemed to be wobbling in place a little bit.
Eddy just glanced back and forth between them, trying to gauge how cognizant these guys were but completely unable to tell whether they were merely relaxed or completely sloshed. "...I was hoping to talk to you guys before you guys got drunk -"
"Hey!" Robin snapped. "We're the Merry Men! We get drunk all the time and we're good at it now! We can still do anything we can do now that we can do sober! I can still hit Prince John between the eyes with an arrow - hell, I can't even SEE the stupid bastard and I can probably still hit him from here!" Robin picked up his bow and an arrow and pointed them in a vaguely southeastern direction. "Which way is downtown? This way?" He pulled the arrow back maybe two inches before he dropped the entire structure and flailed in pain. "AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH! Bloody fucking HELL, that hurts! ...Hey, maybe I can pull it back with my teeth -!"
"No, no, that's enough playing Adam Bell for today," the bear said as he grabbed the fox and stopped him from hurting himself again.
"Alright. Sounds good."
Johnny looked at Eddy again. "But for real, kid, we're not that blitzed, we're still all here upstairs and we'll still gonna remember whatever you tell us come morning. Hey - hey, Rob. What's the capital of France?"
Robin had a blank look on his face before a wry grin suddenly came upon it. "...Machu Picchu!" And he devolved into a fit of laughter.
Little John just shook his head with an eye roll and an embarrassed smile. "No, sir, that's not correct."
"But does EDDY know that!?" the fox cackled before his giggling trailed off and he regarded his fellow fox. "Oh, I'm just taking the piss, lad! In seriousness, then, Eddy, what can we help you with? Don't worry, we're… er… cogent? Is that the word? Cogent?"
That was not the word, but Eddy didn't know that. He wasn't in much of a mood for hemming and hawing, so he decided he might as well pop the question if they insisted so badly that he did. "...You guys need a new place to live?"
The Merry Men looked at once confused but intrigued. "Uh… whaddya mean?" asked Johnny.
"Well, you guys said the tree you lived at ain't safe anymore now that the cops know where it -"
"We did!" said Robin with a grateful smile. "And then you and your friends were so kind as to let us take shelter in this van you lads acquired via squatter's rights -"
"No, no, like...a place to live besides this hunk a' junk."
The Men winced.
"...Again," Johnny repeated, "...whaddya mean?"
"Yeah, where are you going with this?" asked Robin.
They'd read him like a book. Eddy saw little point in stretching this out any further, so he cut to the chase:
"So…" he sighed; Eddy could swear he'd have less anxiety about asking Nazz out right in front of Kevin's hospital bed. "...My parents are getting ready to rent out a room in our house. Has its own bathroom, has its own door to the outside. They haven't started advertising it yet, so I'm wondering if you guys wanna be first in line to ask for it."
This probably isn't medically sound to say, but Robin and Johnny both swore they sobered up immediately after hearing that.
"Er… wow, erm… that… that sounds like a generous offer, Eddy, and we're thankful you're watching out for us like that, but, er…" Robin seemed like he was terrified of making the boy regret daring to be so kind. "... I can't see any way of that working out."
"Yeah, uh…" Johnny was similarly trying to be delicate. "It would be amazing if it could work out, but… that just seems like we'd be asking for trouble. We feel weird enough bringing other people's kids into this thing we're doing, I can't imagine also sleeping in your parents' house and eating their food."
"Fine," Eddy said with a nonchalant shrug. "We won't tell them we're working together. You guys are good at disguises, aren't ya?"
The outlaws seemed almost spooked by how calm Eddy had suddenly become about this now that they were trying to deny him.
"Well, yes, but… we can't keep up a disguise forever, lad!" said Robin.
"Why not." He didn't inflect it as a question.
"Well, shit, they're probably gonna wanna know our names and history if they were gonna let us live in your house!" said Little John.
Oh, if only these two knew what scheme Eddy had cooking before he'd met them. Eddy didn't have the resources for it anymore, but he could probably scrape some together and he still knew how to do it - or knew a guy he could cajole into doing it. "Alright. I can help you guys get fake documents. Start thinking of new names you wanna call yourselves."
"Er…" Robin stammered, "surely they're going to want to see pay stubs to make sure we're good for the money -"
"They won't care as long as you have the money."
"I know it might seem like that to you, dude," explained Johnny, "but to an adult, they -"
"I know my parents better than you guys do. They're not gonna care. And I can loan you guys some cash I got from my brother if you need some collateral cash or whatever."
The adults glanced at one another again. Man, was this kid actually that gung-ho about letting them crash with his family?
"As long as you're not doing anything illegal on their property, they ain't gonna care where the money comes from as long as you have it," Eddy continued. "Don't be so surprised; we're foxes, remember? We're fine with playing fast and loose with the rules as long as we get done what we gotta do."
"A-a-and that's another thing!" the bear pointed at the sky. "You're foxes. Hell, Rob here'd be lucky to fit inside your family's house, there ain't no way a big motherfucker like me -"
"Medium-sized house, eight-foot ceilings, I know that number offhand because my parents complain about it every time they gotta buy Ed's or Double-D's dads a beer just to change one of our lightbulbs. But they still don't regret it because it's a status symbol, and honestly, if anything, they might like having a big guy handy around the house so they don't need to grab the stepladder every time they wanna get the fancy seasonings."
Johnny was stumped. "Well… there ya go! A smidge too small for me is still too small for me -!"
"I thought you said you were used to being in houses with ceilings that size." Again, not intonated like a question.
"...Yeah, visiting one! Not living in one forever! That'd be murder on my back!"
"Aren't you gonna be outside of the house most of the time anyway? It's a safehouse, basically."
"Well you certainly wouldn't want us attracting the police to your house, would you?" Robin warned.
"Then don't attract them."
"And for Christ's sakes," said Johnny, "your parents know Double-D's parents, and his mom is the sheriff's sister!"
"Sock-Head's parents don't talk to his uncle."
"And they'll want to know what we do do with all of our time," said Robin, "so they'll -"
"Again: make shit up. Tell 'em you work in community relief or something. Won't be much of a lie. Or if you have a better story, go for it, don't let me stop ya."
"...And just how the hell would I fit in your bathroom!?" Little John demanded. "Maybe I can use your toilet, but - I dunno if it's a tub or a shower stall -"
"Shower stall that they're already debating taking out and replacing with a tub anyway to make it more marketable, if you show interest they might lean into getting a big one for someone your size, worst comes worst you can volunteer to take a shower at the Y or in the backyard with a hose and they might just feel so bad for you that they offer to help figure something out for you. Just play up how poor you are and how desperate you are for a place to stay."
The bear put his hands on his sides and glared down at the little kit who barely made it up to his waistline. "You just have an answer for everything, don't you?"
Eddy nodded, his poker face undeterred. "Gotta have a plan when you enter a pitch meeting."
Robin nodded. "Good advice for life, that," he murmured as he pondered this proposal. Surely this was too good to be true. "Well, lad… it boils down to this: one way or another, your parents will surely find out who we are. And when they do -"
"No they won't. I trust you guys to be smart about keeping secrets."
The Englishman looked a bit annoyed by that compliment. "We're honored you have such faith in us, but - humor us, lad - how do you think they'd react if they did find out? And that we were taking you with us? And that you orchestrated putting dangerous criminals in your home?"
Eddy sighed and seemed to show some vulnerability for the first time in a few minutes. "So… I was too young to remember this, but my parents and my brother'll tell ya… my family used to be dirt poor. Flat broke. Living in a shitty apartment in the city. Then Mom got a promotion because her boss was impressed that she was so functional at work right after having her second kid and my dad got a promotion after busting his ass to support another son. I was lucky enough to never experience much of that, but… what I'm tryna say is I'd bet my last quarter that even if they did find out… I'd bet they'd support what you guys are doing. If anything, they'd be mildly annoyed you guys weren't around yet to help them when they needed it."
Once again, the Merry Men gave each other another Are we hearing this right? look.
"Sounds to us like your parents are some a' those 'we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps, so can anybody' types," noted Little John.
Eddy just scoffed. "Pfft, nah, they might act like that on the outside, but deep down they're bitter that they had to work that hard for that long just to have a decent life. And they're starting to realize that working all the time destroyed their relationship with my brother and turned him into a shifty shyster - they didn't stop being workaholics, but at least now they know that's why that happened. Plus my mom came from a pretty huge family where the money was spread thin and my dad… he didn't grow up poor poor, but definitely blue-collar. They know they got lucky to get outta that. They might be pissed at first, but honestly, just keep talking them through it and convince them to let other people have it easier than they did. I've seen you sly suckers work magic on people, I know you can do it."
...This kid sure did seem to have all his bases covered, didn't he? Much like the tough decision to let the boys join them in their activities in the first place, Robin and Johnny were starting to get the impression that Eddy here wasn't giving them much of a choice.
"I'm just sayin'," the kit continued, "you guys are all about helping the poor… well, you are the poor, and I'm tryna offer you something my family doesn't need to help ya. Hey, it'll still be a few days before the room's ready, you can take some time to think about it -"
"We'll do it," Johnny suddenly blurted out.
"Johnny!" Robin was shocked at his friend for talking out of turn, but the fox had to admit the offer was starting to sound tempting.
"I mean… we'll give it a chance. You wanna help us construct fake identities from scratch, kid? Fine, go do it, and we'll use it to talk to your parents in the renter's interview. If we don't get along with your folks, then that's that, and if we get along with them great… then we'll take it from there."
Robin was hesitant, but he eventually began nodding slowly as he turned back to the boy. "That's a pretty fair way to approach it," he conceded. "If you insist, we'll play along and see if this really is as much of an easy solution as you swear it is. If we get any bad feelings about it, we'll abort mission, but if we both get a sense that it could honestly work out -"
"You realize you're just regurgitating everything I just said, right?" Johnny grumbled.
Robin did now realize this but finished anyway: "...we might just take you up on that offer."
Eddy was in shock. He didn't think that would actually work. "Uh… alright, sounds great! I'll, uh, I'll let you know when they're ready to put the room on the market so you guys can hit them up."
"But… seriously, lad," said Robin, "we're going to need you to come through with what you said about helping us build fake identities, because we can't do that on our own. We could probably find somebody to fabricate some fake IDs for us in we needed to, but asking a near-stranger for a fake ID and a fake birth certificate and fake whatever immigration papers I'll need because there's no way I can put on a fake accent for weeks on end without ever slipping up even once… it's just a tall order, you know? Especially on short notice."
It was indeed a tall order especially on short notice, and probably more than he knew how to do offhand from his brief venture into manufacturing fake driver's licenses, but Eddy had the wolf. Double-D was smart, Double-D was resourceful, and most importantly, Double-D didn't have anything better to do now that he wasn't hanging out with Ed and Eddy. Maybe the fox would have to bribe him with some money or some candy, but Eddy had faith in his power of persuasion.
"Oh, sure, yeah, no, no problem," said Eddy, "it's… hey, it's the least I can do to make it worth your while."
"And it's the least we can do to play along and hear you out after we dragged you to a rape dungeon that you tried to warn us multiple times was a rape dungeon," said Little John, half-joking, half-serious. "And don't get us wrong, as much as we don't think this is going to work out… damn if we wouldn't love it if it did!"
"Absolutely!" said Robin. "Electricity, indoor plumbing, a nice bed to sleep in… all in a nice, safe, unsuspecting location in the suburbs that's not too far from Sherwood and the city. Wouldn't that be a dream?"
"Plus we might need a better place to hide than this van after the shit we pulled after dropping you guys off," Johnny giggled a little to himself.
Eddy, however, had no idea what the bear was talking about. "...What shit you pulled?"
Robin and Johnny both looked like they'd just done goofed by saying too much. They turned to one another one last time, hoping the other would do the duties of explaining.
"Uhhh…"
"Errr…"
"You ever finish that chocolate bar?"
-IllI-
He was just glad to have an excuse to get himself out of that godforsaken office and get back on the streets where he belonged. The fact that this may have been a lead towards catching those wily criminals was just icing on the cake.
The 9-1-1 operators had told him they'd gotten a pair of calls from two very distinct voices reporting seeing a very large red fox and a great big grizzly bear, matching the descriptions of the bandits in the wanted posters, walking into a blue trailer in the Park 'N' Flush mobile lot in Peach Creek. Granted, the two callers both called from payphones and hung up before they would identify themselves, leaving the area before the NPD could contact a nearby officer to locate said payphones and find the callers, but the two calls had been made two minutes apart from payphones nearly a mile apart, so there was some credence to believing they were legit and were each both afraid of staying on the line and wasting time when they had to warn their neighbors - as each independently said they had to do as they hung up the phone. Furthermore, if these people lived in trailers - not even mobile homes, but camper-style trailers not intended for permanent residence - it was entirely possible that they legitimately just didn't have a landline at home to use.
And he could believe that. He'd been in plenty of trailer parks before, but this one seemed even dumpier than most, not just due to the depressingly tiny digs but also because of the sheer lack of any semblance of order; there were no distinct lanes for vehicles, just a hodgepodge of trailers on a plain of dirt with negative space in between. Hell, the place was only accessible by driving through either an abandoned construction site or the junkyard - not that you'd know where one ended and the other began, since there was even more trash and debris in this place than in a regular trailer park. And who would choose to live in a place calling itself the "Park 'N' Flush"? These residents weren't trailer trash, they were trailer toxic waste.
But he wasn't afraid. He could certainly relate to rural trailer trash easier than he could relate to urban ghetto trash. He hadn't grown up in a trailer himself, but he'd grown up with plenty of people who had. Poor small-town folks were his people.
Not to say he got along well with all of them. He walked by one home where the resident skunk didn't seem to have any inhibitions about sipping from his tall can of Budweiser right in front of the law while sitting on his small concrete stoop. The guy even raised a paw to give a bored wave at him. The audacity.
He pointed at the man. "One step off those stairs with that beer and I'm slappin' you with public intoxication, ya hear me!?" He was just in no mood for even the slightest acts of disobedience.
The skunk's face scrunched up as we quickly went from disinterested to disbelief. "...Where is this comin' from!?" he demanded with his arms out in disgust.
"You not know the law or do you just think it doesn't apply ta' ya!?" he snapped back before he realized this man could be useful. "You seen a fox and a bear 'round here or not!?"
The skunk, of course, was no longer in any mood to cooperate. "Maybe I did and maybe I didn't! I wouldn't remember, I'm just a stupid drunk!"
He stopped walking and huffed. "Figures! Go back inside your crappy little trailer or I'll slap ya with a Public Intoxication!" he said, pointing at the man's door.
Annoyed, the skunk stood up and put his hand on the handle. "Only because I wanna get away from you!"
But before this stranger could leave, he noted the man's flagpole. "And you take that Dixie flag down, y'hear!? Y'ain't got no right to fly that up here!"
The resident stopped to again give him a twisted look. "Well with an accent like yours, I'd think you'd appreciate the Stars and Bars!"
"I'd appreciate it if I were back home in Virginia, but this ain't Virginia! This is a state that was too chickenshit to secede and fight against Northern aggression! Y'ain't earned the right to fly the Rebel flag when y'all ain't rebelled against nothin'! Stop stealin' our culture when y'ain't even one a' us!" He then noted the third flag on the pole. "And y'ain't special for bein' an Earnhardt fan! No shit you're an Earnhardt fan, everyone was an Earnhardt fan! But if he was your favorite that's damn near the same as bein' a Crimson Tide fan!"
"Why would I support anybody but the best!?"
"Because at a certain point it gets borin' when the best wins all the time!"
"Then who's your favorite driver!?"
"Ricky Redd!" He'd always rooted for his fellow Eastern Virginian.
The skunk dropped his beer from laughing so hard. "Aw, you mean that fox who's had the personality of an old man since he was a young man? Wow, what he's not at all a boring guy to pull for, now is he!? And now he is an old man and his career's over, so he ain't never winning a championship now! Man, you might as well be a Geoff Bovine fan! Ha ha! Go back to doing that lion's dirty work for him, tigger-lover!" The skunk kept cackling as he picked up his beer can and walked inside his trailer; it was rare that he had anybody to talk stock-car racing with anybody here in suburban Nottingham, so he was amazed he'd run into two separate people on the same day with strong opinions on the sport, opinions he found hilariously ridiculous.
As for him, though, the skunk was a pest but he wouldn't let this guy distract him further from his mission. He had to admit, though, the skunk did just make him angrier, but if he was about to confront his greatest nemeses, that anger might just be useful.
Less than a minute later, he found it. The blue oval-shaped trailer the fox and the bear were rumored to have entered. Were they still there? Was this a trap to ambush him? Were the residents in on it, or were they innocent bystanders whose home had gotten broken into? In any case, he had his gun ready to go.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!
"Police, open up!" he barked.
He heard footsteps pounding inside; if he couldn't see it was obviously a tiny trailer, he'd swear they were walking down a flight of stairs. Moments later, the door flew open.
It was a trio of teenage girls; a coyote, a raccoon, and an opossum. They must have been friends, because surely they couldn't have been related. They looked annoyed upon opening the door, but within a matter of seconds, each of the three of them was looking wide-eyed and… shall we say, "fascinated."
Now he was regretting knocking so aggressively since it seemed these girls were the only ones home - whosever home this was. They didn't seem like they'd just had their house invaded by unwelcome intruders, so either they were in cahoots with the villains or this was simply the wrong blue ovular trailer. But the only way to figure it out was to ask.
"Uh… hello, young ladies," he sputtered, trying to be kind and polite to these children. "I'm -"
"Hold on right there," said the coyote in a voice that was a lot rougher and gruffer than you'd expect from a teenage girl. "We ain't done lookin' at ya."
"...Uh…" What?
But you must understand, Dear Reader: from the perspective of these girls, this stranger had Eddy's temper and sense of authority, Ed's size and strength, and… well, this guy could probably pass for Double-D's dad or uncle or something. Between personality, build, and looks… he had a little something for each of them.
He was the perfect man. And there was enough of him to go around.
"Alright, you girls get the legs, I'll get the neck!" the coyote ordered very matter-of-factly while the raccoon and the opossum were busy salivating.
"Wait…" he stuttered, "what, what're ya -!? AAAAAHHH!"
Exactly as promised, Lee jumped onto his chest and used his protruding gut to climb up and around his head while May and Marie both clamped down on his feet to immobilize him.
"You've had such a long day of hard work, haven't ya?" the coyote teased as she sat on his shoulders and gently squeezed a nerve in his neck. "How's about we give ya a little break?"
"Yeah, a little afternoon delight!" said the raccoon.
"A big boy like you might like a slice of our cherry pie!" said the opossum.
"No… no no no!" he whimpered as he started sinking to his knees. "How're ya doin' this!? Whaddya doin' ta' me!?"
"Aw, don't worry your little head off!" Lee taunted as she hopped off him just before he finally collapsed on the ground. "It's your first time, so we'll play nice before you can handle the fun stuff!"
"FUN STUFF!?" He tried rolling himself over onto his stomach to push himself up, but they just had too good of a grip on his feet.
He could still see up and behind him, however, and there he saw a gray fox casually watching from his front steps.
"Uh… you! You there! HELP! Help me! Get these crazy girls off me!"
The fox, however, simply chuckled. "Not until you legalize it, dude." And back into his trailer he went to count the cash he'd found laying on the ground in a black trash bag.
"Wait! STOP! DON'T YOU LEAVE ME HERE!"
By this point, they had his feet inside their home, but they were having trouble getting his corpulent belly through the door. May and Marie kept pulling on his ankles as Lee tried to force the flab through.
He stumbled grabbing his walkie-talkie. "Uh - dispatch! Officer down! I -!"
Yoink! The coyote grabbed the radio from him and severed the cord with her sharp teeth, snarling monstrously as she shook her head side to side annihilating it. "...There! We don't want any distractions killing the mood, now would we?"
"AAAAAAAAHHH!" The thought crossed his mind that he had his taser, his baton, and his gun all on his person. But using a weapon on a child? A child who wasn't a minority? Everyone at the department would call him a coward for the rest of his days.
Perhaps he should have used them, though, because time would tell that these girls would use two of these three items on him, neither for their intended purpose.
Lee eventually had the idea to stand on his back and yank him up by the shirt collar to at least get his torso vertical. He howled in pain again as they wrenched his spine and tugged on his tail, and with a few good pushes and pulls, they finally got the big bad wolf into their home. The coyote shut the door behind them, but not before hanging something on the door handle, a small placard taken from a room at a Super 8:
Do not disturb. Thank you!
