58. "Pleasure to Meet Me (The Interview, Pt. 2)"

Eddy had gone straight home from the junkyard so as to create a time buffer between his arrival home and the Merry Men getting there; Terry probably wouldn't figure out anyway that the three already knew each other as more than near-strangers who discussed a flyer once, but just to be safe, they took separate paths to the house in the cul-de-sac. Eddy had been debating just spending the duration of the visit holed up at Ed's place, but he eventually decided he'd rather be around to know immediately about the decision - and to possibly help swing the odds in the outlaws' favor in any way he could. Therefore he was going to just try to sneakily linger at the top of the stairs, pretending to be hanging out in his new bedroom but actually listening in on the whole conversation, making himself available if and when he was needed like a guardian angel on standby.

But then his dad had other ideas.

"You really want me to just sit here and watch you have a chit-chat with these guys?" the kit moaned from the couch.

"Hey, you're free to participate in this conversation, too, kid, as long as you're not talking over the adults," Terry said nonchalantly as he gave the ground floor another once-over just to make sure there wasn't anything unflattering hiding in plain sight. "Because they're not gonna live in my house if my son isn't comfortable with them… besides, I thought you already had more rapport with these guys than I do. You talked to them before I did, and it sounds like for longer than I did."

Eddy didn't say anything. He'd honestly forgotten about that fib.

"The fact of the matter is, Eddy, you're growing up fast," Terry continued as he sat himself down next to his son, "and before you're an adult, you gotta learn how to talk to people like an adult. And since most adults actually aren't the best at that, you'll have a massive advantage if you can just handle yourself better than they can. It's amazing how easy it is to pull people in when you just project that you're somebody who's well-put-together."

Eddy just looked grumpy. "And you really think I'm the only one of our kind who doesn't have this naturally?"

His father stayed firm in his expression. "I'm not saying it isn't, son, but I'm absolutely saying it might not be, and I respect you enough as a young man to tell you honestly: it does kind of alarm me that you haven't shown signs of an intrinsic foxy charm to you yet - your brother was a little asshole, but he did clearly have it already by your age."

The son was clearly fuming at this, but the father felt this conversation needed to happen.

"Because I see you and your friends, I know the little schemes you guys pull - God knows the yeens and the bunnies won't quit bitching to us about it - and I know you're the guy in charge like a fox should be. That's all well and good. But I've seen you wheel and deal, Eddy, and it really does seem like you're trying to copy what you see me and your mom and your asshole brother do as opposed to just having a native understanding in your head about how to win these idiots over like the three of us do. And I know you're pouring your heart into those plans, son, but…" Terry suddenly trailed off, turned to look into space, and sighed before continuing, looking a little vulnerable for the first time that day. "...you come close to replicating what we do, Eddy, but you're not good enough to fake it, and that's why your plans never succeed. Because… hard work is bullshit, Eddy - excuse me, lemme rephrase that: the idea of getting ahead on hard work alone is bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Hard work is important, it's extremely important, that's why I'm always gonna push you not to be a lazyass, but while hard work is a prerequisite for success in this life, the idea of getting ahead by working hard is bullshit, the idea of independence is bullshit, and in our interdependent society, the only way to truly excel is to find the people who can help you and make them want to. You know why it was easier for your mother and I to raise a family of four than a family of three? Because after grinding for a decade and getting nowhere, something about you being born inspired us to nut up or shut up - and far from shutting up, we both opened our mouths and told our bosses that we deserved promotions, and said it in such a way that they actually wanted to give them to us. If there was one good thing about hesitating for as long as we did to work up the nerve, it was that it gave us plenty, plenty of time to rehearse what we were gonna say, and it worked. We knew exactly what to say the whole time - we were just too unconfident from all that time spent being failures to actually pull the trigger."

...Sooo,… Eddy found himself thinking as he maintained his irritated countenance, ...has the thought crossed your mind that maybe my brother hates you two because in his head, you guys coulda worked your foxy magic to get us out of poverty at any time and waited until I was born to actually get around to doing it?

"If the intuitive knowledge of how to do that just isn't inside you, Eddy, that's not your fault, it's just… it is the way it is, y'know? And you'll have to work hard - there it is again, hard work is important - but hey, I'll be here to help you!" And Terry put on a smile - not a sly foxy grin, but a warm paternal smile - to let his kit know that he loved him and was here for him.

...Yeah, no, Eddy knew all too well that his father was a self-described swindler and a proud one at that, he didn't buy that smile for a second. (See? I toldja foxes know each other too well to trust other foxes.) Now hating his father more than usual, Eddy really wanted to get the bandits in here soon; he desperately didn't want Terry to be his only male role model.

"Say… let's say you and these guys hit it off and you make an offer today… how soon do you think they can -?"

"Oh, there's absolutely no chance I'll make them an offer today," Terry said plainly.

"What!?" Eddy snapped. "Then what the hell's the point of all this then?"

"There's plenty of points! I'll satiate my curiosity about who these overeager weirdos are, you'll have a class about how to be classy, I'll have something to kill time on an afternoon I'm not working… and c'mon, Eddy, your mom's not here, and she kept her last name when she married me. Not even like I had some impossible complicated last name like Ahrenhoersterbaeumer or some shit like that, she had the weird foreign name that was impossible to pronounce, and she still kept it! Does that sound like a woman who'd be cool about her husband making big decisions without her?"

Eddy just crossed his arms and huffed.

Meanwhile outside, their expected guests were out standing on the sidewalk, not hesitating to knock on the door or anything but rather taking in what seemed to be a modern art installation on the front lawn.

"Was… was this here yesterday when we were at the wolf kid's house across the street?" Johnny asked the world around him. "...and we just somehow didn't notice?"

"...Well, in our defense, we had no reason to look in this direction," Robin said, not any less confused as he tried to make heads or tails of the pile of rubbish, which chiefly included a replica of a pre-evolutionary camel with its eyes plucked out, a fez superglued to the crown of its head, a toilet seat around its neck like those pillows they sell at airports, standing in a pile of broken bricks and metal prosthetic arms among other things in the back of a… "What's this car called again? Pardon my ignorance, Johnny, but we didn't exactly have this car back in England."

"Naw, you're good, you're off the hook," Johnny said as he made his way around the back of the vehicle. "I thought for a quick second there it was an El Camino with its trunk open, but…" From his high vantage point, he could read the back of the trunk lid while it was sticking straight up in the air. "A Plymouth Fury? Never woulda guessed. Or, did they… did they create some kind of Frankenstein car by welding two together? Hm. Still, nice ride. I gotta say, though, Peach Creek never really struck me as the… 'car on the front lawn' kind of suburb… then again, I guess we're across the creek from a trailer park…"

"But is it meant to be driven, is it rubbish, is it art…?" Robin realized the house's drapes were wide open, but whoever was home, they weren't watching them through the window. "I hope they won't mind us poking around their stuff, but it isn't quite something you see everyday."

"Aw, it'll be a nice conversation starter," Johnny quipped as he walked towards the front door.

"Good way of thinking, Johnny!" Robin said as he caught up.

"Speaking of which, you want me to let you do most of the talking? You can probably communicate with this guy better than I can."

"Oh, come now, Johnny, where's this coming from?" Robin asked as he gave his friend a pat on the back. "Don't tell me that phone call spooked you that badly! You're a much, much better conversationalist than you were when I first met you. You can hold your own with me just fine."

Johnny had an awkward look as they stopped at the front door. "I mean… part of it is this idea that people would say I'd never be quite on the level as someone just born with the gift of gab like you were, but… naw, man, I was talkin' more like they're your people, so -"

Robin put a paw up. "Johnny, please, don't disparage yourself. And especially don't assume that all foxes get on with one another. Believe me, I know this. You don't exactly get on with all of your people, do you?"

"...I don't."

"Well, there you have it! And don't forget, Little John, your people are my people's closest allies in a world that trusts neither of ours; if anything, there's a very real chance he'll like you better."

The bear winced. "'Better'?"

"Than me."

Then it clicked with him. "Alright… if you say so," Johnny said with a cautious shrug and a nod before glancing at something on the ground. "What's this?"

He tapped the doormat with his foot and Robin took a peek at it himself. It was one of those customized welcome mats you buy out of catalogs, this one reading "A HOUSE DIVIDED" with Mickey and Minnie Mouse playing hockey, Mickey in a Bruins jersey in front of a yellow background and Minnie in a Canucks sweater before a field of dark blue.

"Alright, don't tell me," Robin muttered, "the 'B' is… Baltimore -?"

"I'm, like, ninety percent sure Baltimore doesn't have a hockey team. I'm pretty sure that's Boston and, uh… San Jose? No, wait… I think that's Vancouver? Dude, I don't know hockey, I'm a redneck, that's a Northern thing! Man, why do two different West Coast teams both have shark-themed logos? That's too confusing."

"Better than I could have guessed," Robin shrugged.

"Well I'm not much more of an expert, Nashville might have a team now, but I sure as hell ain't from Hockey Country…" Johnny trailed off as he stood back up. "But Eddy was right, his parents are sports nuts, that oughta be helpful to know. Glad we picked the fake address we did."

"You're going to have to help me with that, then, Johnny."

"Alright, fair enough." Johnny's eyes then wandered to the door that stopped well below his chin - but still dwarfed his overgrown fox buddy. "Jesus, a fox family lives here? If this place is almost too big for you, I can't imagine how a normal fox lives in this place."

"And considering Eddy's stature, I'm somewhat expecting a bloke about me mum's height - maybe not even that," Robin said, "but he did say his family thought of it as a status symbol, so I can see that…" He put a finger on the doorbell - the lower of two. "Ready, Bobby?"

Johnny took a deep breath. "As I'll ever be, Jack."

Inside, Terry was watching a matinee baseball game, specifically avoiding the urge to look out the window even as he thought he heard voices at the door because that would be creepy and you can't teach your son to be classy if your guests think you're creepy. Instead, he waited around playing dumb with his son until they rang the doorbell.

Diiing-donggggg.

"Watch and learn, Eddy," Terry said confidently as he hopped off the couch and made his way to the door. "Watch how I casually control the conversation without making it seem like I'm being aggressive about it and make them want to let me take control - of course, I'll have an advantage because I have a commandingly tall presence, the bear will notice that about me just fine from up on high, but the fox's jaw is gonna drop as he looks up at me in awe."

Eddy couldn't help but feel like his father was callously making fun of his own son's greatest insecurity while bragging about an attribute of his own that their people weren't typically gifted with, but as Terry turned away to walk to the door and Eddy rolled his eyes and shook his head behind his father's back, the kit told himself not to worry: stupid Terry didn't realize what he was in for.

"And remember, son," the father said, hand on the doorknob, "I don't care how formally or informally you talked with them the first time you met, this time around, watch your goddamn language. Profanity does not make a good impression, Eddy." And with that, Terry unlocked and opened the door, only for his jaw to drop as he looked up in awe. "Holy SHIT!"

"Uh, heya, Terry!" Johnny greeted with a wave. For a brief moment there, he'd thought Terry's outburst was directed at him, as if he hadn't been expecting a bear quite as big as him to want to room with some foxes. But while Terry's eyes were indeed twitching in Little John's direction every so often, it soon became clear that the fox more than a half-foot taller than most men of his species had his gaze mostly focused on the fox more than a whole foot taller than him.

Robin, of course, recognized this immediately, and attempted to ameliorate the awkward situation with his own winning charm. "A pleasure to meet you, sir! The name's Jack…" Robin extended a paw for a handshake, never minding its injured state. "So you must be this Terry fellow who I've heard so much about -"

"And you're fucking BRITISH!?"

"What was that about keeping it clean, Pops?" Eddy chuckled from the couch.

The Merry Men didn't find this quite so amusing, though. They weren't panicking or anything, but this could very well be a bad sign. And the only way to find out whether this was actually leading to something bad was to push just a little further to feel it out…

"Ah, yes," Robin forced a chuckle of his own, "I know I'm not quite someone you see every day -"

"Yeah, it's not every day I run into a fox who's, what, five fuckin' feet tall and British!"

...Okie dokie, now the Merry Men were a little worried, Robin especially so. Because this guy was fixated on what were perhaps the Englishman's two most distinct qualities: his stature that quite literally made him stand out like a sore thumb and his unmistakable accent - two things this guy could have conceivably gleaned from the wanted posters had Terry been the only person in this goddamn town who had bothered to take a gander at the papers on the posts. And with Eddy saying his family had once been impoverished but managed to pull themselves out… Terry seemed like the kind of guy who'd be very protective of his money and the possessions that testified to his success, didn't he?

There was a slim possibility that Eddy had also been some sort of sympathizer for the rich and that this had been an elaborate, brilliant, and (dare this narrator say) foxy long-game setup to lead them to a father whose son knew he'd report them - it would be a stretch of a theory, and it would rely on making weird and cynical assumptions about all the interactions the bandits had had with the boys to that point, but it was a theory you could make - but there was a far greater possibility of Eddy just being fucking stupid and not realizing he was wrong when he said his dad wouldn't recognize them and probably wouldn't even give a shit if he did. Robin and Johnny were not the kind to brutally murder a child in cold blood and bury him in a shallow grave, but if Eddy - with his promises of a safe place to stay representing the first cool things to happen to the Merry Men in years - had somehow managed to trap the two of them by sheer freaking accident more effectively than the city police could after nearly a decade of deliberately trying, they might just make an exception for him. Assuming they survived this. Hey, maybe this was bogus, but with Terry's background living in an ambiguously dangerous neighborhood, it wasn't inconceivable that he had a shotgun under the couch cushions ready to go.

"Uh… ex, excuse me, I… you caught me right as I was on my way to the, uh, the facilities. And, and it can't wait. Be right back! Uh - Eddy, you entertain them!" And off he ran out of the living room, deeper into the house - but was he really going to the lavatory?

In the span of hardly two seconds, the fox and bear shot one another a look, understood that the other was indeed thinking what they were thinking, and stepped quickly inside (well, Johnny just stuck his head in) to confront Eddy.

"Alright," Robin said in a harsh, scratchy whisper, "you have five seconds to convince us that your father hasn't recognized my height and nationality from our wanted posters and isn't going off to call the police on us as we speak!"

"Otherwise, we're running right the FUCK now while we still can!" added Johnny.

"Guys, guys, calm down!" Eddy said as he stood up on the couch and held his paws up to signal for them to slow their roll; the kit was clearly taking exception to their accusational tones. "He's just freaking out because he's used to being the tallest fox around! Hey, don't tell him I said this, but he's probably kind of afraid of you for that. Wouldn't be surprised if he tinkled his pants just a little right now."

Robin seemed to not be buying it, while Little John just seemed confused.

"I thought you little dudes didn't care that much about how tall you were."

"We usually don't," Eddy said with an eye roll.

"We usually don't," Robin reiterated with a different inflection to get a similar but separate point across. "Right, what's all this fuss about my accent, then?"

"Like he said! It's not every day you meet a British person, especially in this part of the country. Besides, my dad kinda hates British people."

The Merry Men's eyes popped open.

"Wait, he does!?" asked Johnny incredulously.

"Well, that would have been bloody useful information to know beforehand!" Robin growled, throwing his arms in the air and trying not to raise his voice too much. "Were you ever planning on telling us this!?"

"Relax, will ya!?" Eddy shot back. "He isn't gonna kill you in your sleep or anything. It's just, y'know, an Irish thing. Irish people say they hate British people, it's what ya do."

Robin calmed down a little at that; it wasn't an ideal situation, but he at least understood it. Being of mixed blood himself, he knew well the tension between the British Isles, and he remembered working on that tour bus in DC, often finding that Irish tourists were a lot more open to him after he introduced himself and casually mentioned and explained that his dear gran was from their land and that her maiden name had started with an O-apostrophe. If Robin had to carry that detail of his background into his character of Jack Wigglesworth, then so be it, he could do that just fine. But it did leave one question on the table.

"...Has your father ever even been to Ireland in his life?"

Eddy scoffed. "Hey, are you gonna pay for the plane ticket?"

"Eddy!" Terry called suddenly from somewhere deep inside the house, "I hope you were polite enough to invite them in instead of making them stay out there! I, I'll be out in a few more minutes, guys!"

Eddy responded by gesturing towards his father's voice, giving the Merry Men a look to say see? "Would he say that if he didn't want you guys to stay a while?"

"That sounds exactly like what he'd say if he was trying to trap us, Eddy," said Little John.

"Why would he trap you inside his house if he was so afraid of you!?"

"Lad, the reason our enemies haven't been able to keep up with us is because intelligence and competence are in short supply; bravery and brazenness are not," Robin explained with a serious look. "With their foolishly bold tactics, the people we consider villains truly embody the old warning of don't be a hero."

As much as Eddy liked the idea of these guys recognizing his father as an overconfident idiot, he was still a tad annoyed that they were pushing back so much against him. But instead of retaliate, he just kept calm and explained, "He's afraid of your size because he considers himself the manliest fox around, which is why he's so embarrassed that I'm short, and he doesn't like the British because his dad told him that once upon a time a colonizer from England basically forced a woman into marrying him against her will and that's why our last name isn't even Irish."

Little John had questions about both halves of that explanation, but he decided to focus on the first part first: "He's embarrassed that you're short?"

"Yup. He'll never say so, he probably doesn't even realize he is, but you can tell."

Johnny just shook his head slowly. "I don't like that." And you know the big bear meant that.

"Well I admit I was surprised that he was anywhere near as tall as me," said Robin, "but… my lord, it is bloody shameful that he makes you feel that way. I'm sorry, Eddy, if I'd've known, I wouldn't have dressed you up like a toddler yesterday."

Eddy just shrugged, still looking annoyed. "It's whatever."

"But what is your last name?" Johnny asked his second question after finally squeezing his way in and shutting the door behind him. "Because he never actually told us."

"Let's find out the old-fashioned way," Robin said as he grabbed an issue of Sports Illustrated off the coffee table and read the mailing address. "Er… 'Vook-oh-vicks?' That… that sounds neither Irish or English."

"That's my mom's," Eddy said flatly. "It's a Serbian name spelled the Hungarian way. She never changed it after marrying my dad."

"...Hm. Interesting." He put the magazine down and realized that right next to it had been a Sporting News that wasn't addressed to an "ANTONIA", so he picked that up next. "...Ah! Are you lot related to Oscar? He was another Irish fox with the same English surname!"

"Who the hell is this Oscar guy and why do people keep asking if I'm related to him?"

The Englishman chuckled. "I suppose not, then… or perhaps you're related to Kim! Are you and your mates not Kids in America?"

"Though I'm pretty sure we ain't in East California," Johnny quipped. "Sure as hell ain't in South Detroit or the east side of Chicago."

"What the hell are you people talking about?" Eddy demanded gruffly.

But before they could answer, they all heard a toilet flush. Apparently Terry really had used the restroom. (Or had he called the old bill from the toilet!? ...No, no he hadn't.)

"I'm not sure I'm gonna get along with this dude at this point," Johnny whispered to Robin.

"Neither am I, but we have to try," Robin replied as Terry walked back in from making sure he hadn't pissed his britches.

"Gentlemen! Please, have a seat, make yourselves comfortable!" Terry said as he arrived, wringing his soggy paws. "For size reasons, how about… I'm sorry, remind me your guys' names?" Notably, he was facing Johnny as he finished that question.

"Bobby Van Bommel!" the big beaming bruin bellowed. "Pleasure to meet ya!" He extended a paw for shaking and quickly engulfed the homeowner's, but Terry didn't seem intimidated. Being smaller than a grizzly was just normal.

"Terry. And the same to you, sir." Now he turned to Robin: "Jack, right?"

Robin chuckled, feigning coyness. "John Wigglesworth, but who has time for government names? Heh heh… I'd offer a handshake, but my favorite shaking hand isn't in quite the condition -"

"Oh, my oh my," Terry remarked as his vulpine guest held up a broken arm. Do note that he was making a point to watch his vocabulary now. "What happened here?"

"Ah, fell off the stage while rehearsing a very intense combat scene," said the actor. "Suffice it to say it got intense, and the injury didn't hurt nearly as much as the fact that they were forced to bump me from the cast for it - never mind whether I could handle a rapier with a busted arm, they didn't have casts like this in medieval times!"

"Oh, that's gotta be rough," Terry lamented. "So you're an actor?"

"We both are!" said "Bobby". "Hence why we're kinda strapped for cash and need an affordable place to crash! 'Specially since Jack here just got robbed of a paycheck."

Terry nodded along, but he couldn't help but look puzzled. "In Nottingham of all places? Why not, y'know, New York or L.A.? If I may ask, because I gather by your accents neither of you are from around here."

"And we'd love to make it to Broadway or Hollywood one day," said "Jack", "but for now, we feel like we'd get the best experience being a pair of big fish in a small pond!"

Robin was only pausing to give Terry a chance to speak, and he was fully expecting him to ask why Nottingham specifically? or at the very least well, what play were you rehearsing for? - after all, Eddy insisted that his father was just as much of a smooth talker as Robin himself, and Robin knew from his training that a key tenet of getting someone to like you was to express genuine interest in their history and hobbies - but Terry never did.

Instead he just chuckled. "Well, I'm sure that medical bill couldn't have helped any, especially if you guys aren't fortunate enough to have insurance. But hey, as I was saying, let's not just stand around, let's -"

"You want me and him to take the couch?" asked Johnny, breathing an internal sigh of relief that he'd had the mind to say him because he'd accidentally almost said Rob.

"Oh, no, I was actually gonna say Bobby, you take one end of the couch, I'll join you there with my son, and Jack, you can have the armchair. I think that would be the most fair division, spatially."

The guests murmured in agreement as they took their spots, and Terry scooted his son over to sit between him and their ursine guest - "between" being much closer to Eddy's side than Johnny's.

"And by the way, Jack, I feel like I ought to apologize for my… foul-mouthed freakout earlier, I just was not expecting a guy your size when I was told I was expecting a fox - with a British accent, no less!"

"Oh, it's quite alright," Robin insisted with a playful dismissive wave. "I'm no stranger to shocked reactions."

"Yeah, but… man, I'm three foot nine - my license says I'm four foot even, but what the government don't know won't hurt 'em, eh? I'm considered a giant for our people. I can't live in a fox-sized place because I'd have to duck under every doorway in the house. But you… between that and… even for your size, you have a deep voice for a fox, and…" What followed was an awkward moment where Terry was clearly looking at Robin's chest and arms to try to tell through his shirt whether his guest was ripped - which was especially weird because as fit as Robin was, anybody in the room could have looked at Terry and told you without hesitance that that guy was easily even more buff for a fox, but apparently the jarring height thing was scrambling his brain - but he seemed to come to realize he was embarrassing himself and making his own masculine insecurities clear, so he moved on. "...I've just never seen one of our people quite like you. Like, holy Moses, Jack, how tall are you?"

"Hrm, in imperial, I think I'd be four-eleven?" he said as he pulled out the fake ID Double-D had whipped up for him which had given him an extra inch, just as Johnny's also had, lest anybody try to scrutinize their similarities to the stats on the wanted posters. "Ah, yes I am! But I'm not that special back home, Terry. Plenty of foxes in the British Isles means plenty of opportunities for one my size to pop up here and there. Not to say it wasn't a hassle sometimes, and I know from experience that even at your size it can be difficult to fit into vulpine society - three-nine, you say? Yes, I remember how big I was when I turned seven."

And while Terry looked like he'd just soiled himself for real this time, Eddy - who you'd otherwise expect to feel peeved that Robin was bragging about how he'd towered over most of his species since early childhood - was smirking at his father's mortified look. Indeed, that line was for Eddy's benefit - to make his father feel like a very small man for daring to literally belittle his own son.

"...Wow," was all Terry could say for a moment before continuing: "...But, uh, hey, speaking of driver's licenses, you guys mind if I see yours? Just so I can see you guys are legit."

"Oh, sure!" Johnny said as he and Robin presented their new documents. Perhaps because he was already next to him, Terry took Johnny's first.

"Van… Buh-mell? Is that Dutch, sir?"

"Van Bommel. And yes I am - among plenty of other stuff, too!" said "Bobby". "America's a melting pot, ain't it? I even got a good chunk a' native grizzly in me somewhere!" Little John's alias surname was indeed Dutch in origin, Robin pulling the name from a long-running and very highly-regarded Dutch comic strip that most Americans surely would have never heard of but which Brits from a few generations back might recognize - and when I say a few generations back, I mean Brits Robin's stepfather's age. His dad was fond of the series on the rare occasion he could find its English translation in the booksellers', and the fact that a main character was an ambiguously American bear named Oliver sealed the deal that this was to become Johnny's new name.

"Yeah, us foxes are the same way," Terry said. "Mixed with the natives as soon as we got off the boat because for your people and mine, the world distrusted our species more than our pilgrim and injun counterparts could distrust each other." But then he noticed something. "...2004 North Boston?"

"Yessir! Nice digs, but we just can't afford the rent anymore."

Terry nodded. "...I think I like that name and number," he said with a smile as he returned the card.

And as the interviewer walked over to his fellow fox, the bear gave Eddy a wink to thank him for tipping them off to his dad being a massive Red Sox fan.

"Hello, sir, have you your Green Card?" Terry teased as he accepted Robin's fake.

"I have it if you need it!" said Robin, who knew it was supposed to be a gag but didn't want to try to build off the joke lest this become one of those vulpine charm battles. And considering that Terry here seemed to be more of the 'smarmy but smooth and you can't help but love him' types in contrast to Robin's genuinity, those battles get especially messy when the two opponents have entirely different but equally effective philosophies of charisma.

Sure enough, Terry replied with, "Aw, don't worry, I was just messing with ya," before moving on to note "Wigglesworth, now THAT'S a fun name!"

"Indeed it is! I often tell people my ancestors must have been good dancers, because they always got their wiggle's worth, ha ha!" Robin realized now he was sneakily playing the game - a key strategy to it was to not even attempt to one-up your opponent because that simply wouldn't be classy and to instead simply wait for your own chance to make yourself look witty like a classy fox indeed - but this one indulgence was enough.

As for his new surname, whereas he'd chosen Johnny's, Johnny had picked his. Inspired by a conversation from years ago wherein Tuck made a point that foxes and bears were often paired together in fiction and the gang all brainstormed as many mainstream and obscure vulpine/ursine pairings as they could think of, Tuck had recalled a cartoon from the 1960s about a fox and a bear hanging out with a talking frog, the trio all seeking their fortune on the fox's shoddy schemes and inventions (three characters repeatedly trying and failing to get rich on scams? That's a stupid idea for a children's cartoon), and while Johnny couldn't remember the bear's name for the life of him (that cartoon was from before his time), he remembered all he needed: the fox's surname was Wigglesworth, a fittingly cartoonish name that was hard to forget. Hey, it was either that or that other even more obscure 1960s cartoon also about a fox and a bear engaging in get-rich-quick schemes, the one based on that indisputably racist old Amos & Andy radio show, but while Johnny could remember the fox was dubbed "the Colonel" in that one, Johnny couldn't at all remember that Confederate-flag-sporting fox's real name.

(Oh yeah, and I have to explain the new birth dates, too, don't I? Yeah, long story short, Johnny just picked his mom's birthday, while Robin, who was being indecisive about what fake birthday he wanted, was assigned August 8th by Double-D, the wolf noting that it should work regardless of whether or not Robin remembered he was in a country that put the month first - and the Englishman privately agreed this was a good idea, since he was known to still report his birthday as 08/11 if he forgot where he was.)

"But, uh… yeah, that's the other thing," Terry said as he gave back the card. "You're… literally the first British person I've encountered in years. And I definitely never expected to see one all the way out in suburbia where I can't think of a logical reason for you to be out here. And - may I be candid for a moment?"

"Surely."

"So - some would call this a social faux pas to bring this up, but it would give some context to the earlier outburst, and if you were to live with me, it'd come out eventually -" Terry sat himself back on the couch between Johnny and Eddy. "...My father was a proud Irish-American, and if he were here, he would not be talking to you solely based on your extraction. Sorry to say, but that's gonna rub off on a man's kid and it's never gonna totally come off. If you know your history though and understand why that is, you and I shouldn't have a problem."

But Robin put a paw up with a smile and said the magic words. "Already well understood, my friend. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that there's a lot of mixing going on between those two islands, and believe it or not, I'm actually of a quarter Irish ancestry myself."

Terry looked visibly relieved like a man who'd just barely made it to the toilet before disaster would have struck. "Glad to hear that. And I'm actually the opposite; my last name ain't Irish. And I'm sure you can imagine the… coercion that that implies. It's part of the reason why… I'm not opposed to using my last name by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll always introduce myself with just my first name before revealing my last name when asked." Then he shrugged coolly and seemed to relax a little in place. "And I gotta say, a lot of people seem to kind of prefer going straight to the first-name basis, y'know? Part of the reason they call me 'Classy Terry' - or 'Terry Classy' if they wanna gimme a new last name!"

Robin just nodded, confirming to himself that Terry here was going the 'smug and clearly loving every minute of it' route of winning people over.

"Couldn't help but notice your last name there, on that magazine, Terry," said the bear, pointing to the coffee table. "Hope you don't mind I took a peek through it while we waited."

"Ah, you into sports, man?" Terry said as he patted the bear on the back. "And they say theater people don't like athletics!"

And after what may have seemed like a string of coincidences, Dear Reader, this moment marked that this had become an indisputable trend in Terry's behavior. Can you tell what I'm talking about?

"Well, I'm from the South, man, I ain't really got much of a choice!" Johnny answered.

"Yeah, I was gonna say, you definitely had a Southern twang on the phone, but not, like… violently Southern, just kinda like… I've heard the term 'plantation Southern' tossed around, but I… I can't imagine that's very politically correct, is it? I've also heard 'educated Southern', that's probably more flattering…"

"Well, hey, I'm from Northwest Mississippi right up there by Memphis, I'm suburban country, I'm not 'down in the boondocks' Southern, so I grew up in a place with at least a somewhat functioning educational system!" Johnny chuckled along.

And Robin, expecting that a guy called "Classy Terry" would have the social acumen to ask his other guest where specifically he was from as well, waited patiently for him to inquire so he wouldn't have to cut in.

"Memphis, that town only has a basketball team, right?"

"Yeah, but they've only been there, what, a few years? It's still classic Southern college sports territory - because we only like our athletes when they're working for free!"

Terry laughed heartily at that one. "I'm guessing you ain't into baseball?"

"Eh, it's not the biggest sport back home, but I can appreciate it. Grew up watching Cubs games on WGN every so often - the Braves were on TBS, too, but you know the fact that they were called the Cubs definitely helped win my family over!"

Terry laughed again. "Hey man, I'm from Rhode Island, I'm a Red Sox fan - don't tell the people back home that I've been backing the O's out of an insatiable need to get something to get behind, but the only teams on TV in this town are Baltimore, the Phillies - and Philly sports fans are clinically fucking insane and I don't wanna associate with them - or the Nationals, who still don't feel like a real team to me," he said as he gestured towards the game on TV, where the Washington team that had been based in Montreal this time the previous year was tied at four midway through a game at Pittsburgh.

...And Robin, who knew it wouldn't be very charming to interrupt a conversation these two seemed to be enjoying, waited patiently for the topic to turn to a subject he could actually contribute to.

"Aw, don't worry, bud, I won't tell. I'm in the same boat. I don't have any way of watching Ole Miss or Saints games up here, and… I don't wanna watch the fucking Redskins, I love my fox buddies too much and I don't wanna support a team named after the practice of skinning y'all for your pelts!"

"Heh… I mean, that was more of an issue for Natives specifically, but hey man, on behalf of all of us with bushy tails, we appreciate it!"

"Right you are, Terry!" said Robin, hoping he didn't sound too desperate for inclusion. "You know, I -"

"But… tell me, Bobby," Terry continued, "you been able to pay attention to the MLB recently? Because I've heard some people say the White Sox of all teams are suddenly contenders this year? Like apparently they've just been hanging out in first in their division since Opening Day and nobody's noticed because… y'know, because they're the White Sox? I definitely don't remember half the time that Chicago has a second team. But hey, good for them that they're magically good all of a sudden - I dunno how you feel about that as a Cubs fan -"

"Well, hey, Chicago's got the Cubs, the Bears, the Bears Tower so named for the Bears and Roebuck Company, and a helluva lot of actual bears! Probably our biggest concentration in a major city in this country… man, if they're reppin' Chicago, I got their back!"

Terry chuckled along. "Well, hard to argue with that! But speaking of Cubs rivals… out of the NL, I'm hearing people say Houston? I mean, I know they kinda mounted a charge last year, but they're even more of a nobody team than the White Sox are! They're a team that's supposed to just fill out the field and make money off of stupid fans who don't realize that the league has no interest in their team actually winning - not unlike the Expos, who couldn't afford to stay in Quebec after their fans wised up to the fact that their Nos Amors weren't ever supposed to be the main characters and they stopped buying tickets," he said as he gestured once again to the new Washington team on the television. "C'mon, the only way the Astros are ever gonna win a World Series is if they pull off an elaborate cheating scheme - if I had to guess, I'd say sign-stealing."

"Heh…" Johnny elbowed Terry. "I guess you could say the odds of them winning are… astronomical!"

It took Terry a second, but he soon got it and keeled over into embarrassed laughter at that brilliantly terrible joke. "Did… did you come up with that?" he asked as he sat back up, still hugging his own ribs. "Did you get that from somewhere, or did you come up with that? It's so perfect but it's so simple, I feel like that joke has to have been done before!"

And as he looked on at the two having witty banter, Robin was quickly losing the energy to keep smiling.

The conversation was not naturally meandering to a topic Robin could display genuine interest in and contribute to meaningfully.

Terry was clearly favoring the bear over his fellow fox.

And Johnny - poor Little John, who Robin knew had gone so much of his life without feeling like anybody truly cared about him - was obviously absolutely loving every second of being the undivided center of Terry's attention.

While Robin didn't want to ruin his friend's fun… this was not good. If they were gonna live with this Terry guy, he and Johnny had to be equals in their landlord's eyes. There couldn't be a clear favorite and unfavorite, that simply wasn't going to work. There needed to be parity in their treatment.

But you may ask, Dear Reader, why did this matter so much? If it was the best arrangement for everyone, why couldn't Robin just tell himself that he didn't care what Terry thought and quietly tolerate being the less preferred? Well, it's quite simple! You see, uh… um… y'see… uhhhhh… fuckin', um… hey, shut up. Would you want a long term living arrangement where you were unambiguously the third wheel? Nope? Didn't think so. Robin wasn't bitter. He wasn't bitter at all.

And you could tell Robin genuinely wasn't bitter because he wasn't just stewing in his bitterness like Bitter Bettys are known to do; he had a plan. They told him in those goddamn etiquette classes: sometimes a conversation will go somewhere you can't follow it, and that's not your fault, but it's not a good look to be the quiet one, so your best bet is to get creative about how to insert yourself back in - and, failing that, politely, smoothly, but firmly move the talk into a different direction. Robin was gonna try to do a little of both.

"Are you well-rounded enough of a sports fan to follow Premier League soccer, Terry?"

Terry looked up at the Englishman with a look that wasn't quite unfriendly but certainly not very interested. "Ah, nah, ya got me there. Ya wanna catch me up to speed?"

...And Robin - who'd had no way of watching football from back home since he left for America - drew a complete blank on what to say next. "Oh, I was just asking rhetorically to make a point," he chuckled. "So tell me, Terry, what do you do for a living?"

Terry giggled and turned to his new bear friend. "Bobby, I think you and me are boring the British guy!"

And Johnny guffawed, making Terry just laugh harder.

"Oh, no, no, you're not boring me, this is a fascinating -"

"But to answer your question, Jack, I sell cars for a living, so not the most interesting line of work. But hey, that's not the only gaping hole in my sports knowledge." Terry turned to Johnny. "Now… please stop me if I'm stereotyping, but… you said you're from Mississippi. Is it safe to assume that's NASCAR country?"

And Robin's heart sank as he saw Johnny's face light up.

Terry had just stolen his friend's heart.

"Oh, you know it brother!" the Southerner beamed. "Actually, from the very place I grew up… I, uh, I wouldn't blame you if you never heard a' this guy, and I don't even think he's still on the top level anymore, but this pig from my hometown, Bobby Hamilton… he never won any championships or anything, but he got to the Cup Series when most people don't! I actually think his son's racing now, too."

Terry seemed intrigued. "Really! No shit, huh?"

"Dad, you said a swear again," Eddy muttered, not even looking at the adults as he stared disinterestedly at the TV.

"Uh, yeah, because we've built rapport with each other and now we're comfortable with each other, so that makes it okay!" his father chided with an explanatory finger and a snarky tone.

"Aw, mellow out, Eddy, we ain't a bunch a' fuckin' prudes!" Johnny bellowed, and he and his new friend laughed and gave each other some firm pats on the back.

"But that's pretty cool that someone from your hometown made the big leagues!"

"Yeah, I mean… I wanted to be a racecar driver as a kid, but…" The bear gestured to his own mass. "...as a mauler, man, I never had a chance. You don't ever see huge animals driving racecars - nevermind that there ain't no doors on the goddamn things and a fatasses like me can't fit through the windows, if the entire point is to go fast, there ain't any car that won't get slowed down if ya weigh closer to four digits than two! We're just like horse jockeys like that. That's how it works in a lot of the South: guys from big species grow up wanting to play football, guys from small species wanna grow up to be racecar drivers, and if you're in the middle, you might be able to swing either way… but if you're the right species for one and you wanna be the other, you're S.O.L. - unless you're from a family with hereditary dwarfism like the Bovine brothers, but they're from upstate New York, they don't count, heh…"

Terry let out a light chuckle. "Well I wanted to be a quarterback in the NFL, so I completely get where you're coming from."

Johnny nodded with what could perhaps best be described as an awestruck look on his face. Ever since he left Tennessee, he'd rarely had anyone to talk to about this particular hobby of his - and that skunk asshole from the other day in the trailer park didn't count. And while Terry wasn't exactly salivating for information about it, he was listening. He was certainly doing a better job listening about it than Robin ever had; Robin was usually a very good listener even when things didn't necessarily interest him - a skill they probably taught him in those classes as a lad - but apparently he just found the idea of oval stock-car racing so profoundly boring that he could rarely fake having heeded a word whenever Johnny attempted to share an interest with him, always clearly seeming bored and usually making a remark about how hilariously stereotypical it was the bear from south of the Mason-Dixon line was passionate about the Non-Athletic Sport Centered Around Rednecks before shifting the conversation elsewhere. Maybe, if Johnny was lucky, Robin would sometimes make a joke poking fun at both of them equally, the fox saying he was ignorant of American motorsports and American football while the bear was ignorant of European motorsports and European football, but Robin could never really take his friend's talk about his obscure interest seriously. In fact, despite sharing nearly everything else about his past with him, Johnny had never told Robin that when it looked like the poor cub was going to stay tiny forever, the one thing that he even remotely enjoyed about it was that it could have meant he'd stay small enough to be a racecar driver, but whereas all those racers you see on TV got their start as kids driving karts that their parents had either bought or personally built for them, Harry had absolutely no interest in lifting a finger to support his diminutive son's dream; Little John would have loved to have shared this information with Robin, but the fox could just never maintain his attention on the subject for long enough for Johnny to get that far.

Some would argue that's not a moral failing on Robin's part, sometimes you just can't fake curiosity about something that viscerally bores you even despite excellent listening and conversation skills like Robin had, but one way or another… if Terry was similarly disinterested in this talk, he was doing an amazing job of hiding it. Hell, Johnny felt so comfortable talking to Terry about this topic that he didn't even worry when he realized that, oops, while it was true that the aforementioned porcine pair of racers were also from the Nashville/Mount Juliet area, Johnny's persona of Bobby Van Bommel was not. Hopefully Terry wasn't going to fact check whether the Hamiltons were actually from Mississippi, because it would ruin a conversation that Little John was very much enjoying.

Terry was not going to do that, however, because Terry didn't care. Yes, New England did have its own motorsports culture, but that was mostly in the rural areas outside of the big cities - and this narrator is fairly certain that the entirety of tiny Rhode Island is legally classified as a metropolitan area for statistical purposes. Terry had no inherent desire to hear any of these things. But he did have an inherent desire to bond with whoever he could, because he knew that you'd never know when you'd need someone to be your friend. And besides, he knew how to make a potential buyer feel special.

"But… for posterity…" Johnny began again, giving Terry a very earnest look, "...it wasn't just a matter of… big people do this, little people do that. We had each other's back. Small species watched football, and us big dudes still showed up to the races. Hell, my dad used to take my brother and me to the races at the Nashville Fairgrounds twice a year -"

"Really? Nashville all the way from Memphis?" Terry asked, genuinely curious about this one. "I mean, I ain't the biggest geography expert, but… those two are a ways away from each other, right?"

...FUCK. But Johnny could save it. "Eh, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana thereabouts were all dead spots for racing venues, Nashville was probably the closest." (As far as I can tell, Dear Reader, that's actually accurate.) "Besides, the drive was worth it. And although there weren't any of our people we could back… and it wasn't a situation like the Chicago Cubs or the Chicago Bears - or as your doormat so kindly reminded me, the Boston Bruins…!"

Terry burst out laughing and gave the grizzly a friendly elbow to the gut. "Now that's what I'm talking about!"

Johnny trailed off laughing and continued. "But yeah, as I was saying… so when I was a kid in the Seventies, you had basically two guys dominating any given Sunday. Ya had Richard Petty… that tall, skinny hound dog always wearing his cowboy hat with the buckle on it, always smiling and making you wanna smile, too… man, everybody knows who Richard Petty is! You probably even know who he is!"

"I can confirm!" Terry nodded.

"...But then you had David Pearson… and they called him the Silver Fox. Heh… three guesses why they called him that?"

Terry tilted his head coyly. "...Was he an elephant?"

They laughed again.

"... But this guy Pearson… he wasn't exactly like Petty. Petty had a huge personality, but if the cliché is that you guys are able to talk anybody into liking you, Pearson musta decided that'd be a waste of his time. No-nonsense guy, very much a loner and a… not even a cold personality, but he definitely wasn't warm either. More someone you'd want fixing your car than coming to your party. But if the other stereotype about you guys is that y'all are smart… hot damn, I dunno how to describe it to someone without a working knowledge of stock-car racing, but his driving style - like, how efficiently he made his way around the track to go faster than other people would in the same equipment, how easily he could pass people, how he hardly ever wrecked or even got a scratch on his car - you could tell this guy knew exactly what he was doing. He was the only one for the longest time who could consistently give Petty a run for his money - and people hated him because he was the quiet boring guy who kept beating the charming friendly guy they all loved!"

"Heh, sounds about right."

"But you know what? My dad instilled an appreciation for Pearson in me. Because as he told me… 'that guy's actually the best, and these people wouldn't be hot and bothered by him being better than their beloved King Richard if ol' Davey wasn't a fox.' And he used Pearson to teach me: there are some species out there who people don't like - they might like us one-on-one, but as a group? They still won't trust their people deep down - that's why it seems like every fox can get anybody to like them but usually don't really have too many close friends."

Off to the side, Robin blinked.

"And on that list of species, my dad told me, that the world don't trust," Johnny continued, "just to name a few: foxes… and bears."

Terry's smile suggested he knew where this was going and was greatly enjoying the ride to that destination.

"The world's gonna lessen our achievements, my pops told me, like they did for The Silver Fox, Pearson, because they just don't like us… but we recognize you guys going through that as everyone thinks y'all are a bunch a' tricksters, and you guys see us gettin' it when the world thinks we're a bunch a' dumb brutes and bullies. And that's how my old man taught me: be nice to foxes, and they'll be nice to you. Because we got each other's backs.

Robin looked as the two of them gave each other a look like two guys who… well, not unlike two guys who'd lived in the woods together for seven years and were now like brothers who trusted one another implicitly. This couldn't be happening.

"Sounds like your dad taught you well," said Terry, oozing sincerity.

Little John replied with a laughing scoff. "Yeah, among other lessons like 'don't drink as much as I do' and 'don't beat the crap outta your kid if you want them to talk to you after you kick them out of the house'!"

Terry was dying from laughter. "Oh, ain't that right! Man, Sixties dads were something else, weren't they!? You probably had more physical contact with his belt than with him, right!?"

"Aw, no, he manhandled me pretty good! Like when he busted me not washing my hands so he ran the hot water till it was frickin' scalding and made me wash up in that!"

"Oh! Man, I was talking about getting more whoopings than hugs, but yeah, I guess that counts as physical contact, don't it? My old man was a fan of grabbing me and my siblings by the collar and yanking us outta bed when we were oversleeping the mornings before church!"

"Oh, fuck! Y'know what the worst part about that is, though? It probably worked!"

More roaring laughter.

"That it did, that it did!"

"Hey, your dad ever lock you in your room when he was pissed at you? My dad did that once and then beat my ass all over again when he saw I pissed on the floor - like, DAD, THERE WAS NOWHERE ELSE TO PEE!"

"He never locked us in our rooms, but he once banished my older brother to the basement by throwing him down the stairs."

"No way! He threw him down!?"

"Eh, it was more of a firm shove to get a move-on that made my brother immediately lose his balance and tumble down. Found out a week later that he fractured his arm."

"And he wouldn't take your brother to the hospital any sooner because he wanted him to man up, right?"

"Exactly!"

The two gentlemen went to pieces about all the ways their dads beat the shit out of them, as people of the last era of socially-acceptable corporal punishment are known to sometimes do as they reminisce in good humor about a time gone by. But then as they chuckled off, Terry turned to Robin.

"How 'bout you, Jack!?" Terry asked eagerly. "How'd your dad kick your ass? Or were people in England too polite to do that?"

...So it seemed that the conversation had shifted from American auto racing, a topic Robin could not contribute to… to nostalgia for being abused as children in a time and place when everyone's parents beat the tar out of them, a topic Robin could not contribute to. If he was really on his best game, he could have made up stories on the spot of a father who did not exist, or even played to type and manufactured a tale about attending a proverbially draconian English boarding school that didn't hesitate to smack the living daylights out of a flippant pupil well into the 1980s. But after being excluded from the conversation for so long… Robin just didn't give a shit to try that hard.

"Oh… no, I was very fortunate," Robin said blandly. "My father never laid a hand on me like that."

The other adults stared at him with blank expressions.

"I mean…" he continued, "me dad surely got angry with me every so often -"

"That's boring!" Terry suddenly exclaimed before he and Johnny broke down into laughter all over again.

...So this is how it felt. So this is how Johnny felt for most of his childhood, just being invisible ninety percent of the time and having people seem to regret having interacted with you on the rare occasion they do. Robin had finally experienced it firsthand now, but if this was what needed to happen for him to be able to truly understand how his friend had always felt, Robin would rather have remained ignorant.

As a refresher, Dear Reader, things like rejection and loneliness weren't completely alien concepts for him. But they'd never felt quite like this. There had been when he was a lad and how he'd never felt like anyone's favorite friend when Marian or Much weren't around - but he still was friends with all the other kits in Loxley who wanted to make the acquaintance of the village giant, even if he was nobody's biffle. There was the way he spent much of the early years of the Merry Men's existence wondering whether Johnny and Will preferred each other's company over his, rendering him again as nobody's favorite in the group he'd founded - but in retrospect, he was probably worried about nothing, because he was still the center of the team, and the friendship issue - for better or worse - had ultimately solved itself. And there were plenty of passing moments where someone would simply ignore him or find him boring - but those moments never lasted as long as this.

And what made it worse was that this exclusion didn't seem to be intentional. It would almost be better if it were - no, it would absolutely be better if it were. When he was a teenager and all the other kids suddenly decided to shun him, that sucked and all, of course it did, but those were shitty kids being shitty kids. That wasn't his fault. This, however… this felt like a failing of his own.

And speaking of success and failure, Robin had to be fair: Johnny was doing everything right to win Terry over himself. But Jesus, how were both of them so content to just ignore the third guy? As they taught Robin in those infernal lessons: if you really want to charm someone, prove you're compassionate enough to go out of your way to include those who are otherwise being left out of the conversation. Did these bloody idiots not know that!? Or was Robin suddenly so off-puttingly boring that neither felt offended that the other was ignoring him? Robin had specifically been trying to seem a little less gregarious so that he didn't come across as a charisma threat to proudly classy "Classy Terry" - had Robin overdone it!?

Actually, sod it, better question: how the bloody hell was Johnny buying this!? The bear had said after talking to Terry on the phone that the used-car salesman's charm seemed fake - a damned good fake making a valiant effort to seem genuine, but a clear fake all the same. So, what, was Johnny suddenly falling for it now? Did he not care because he was enjoying being the center of fraudulent attention for once in his life? Y'know what, that could have been it… or maybe after this Johnny would insist he was just trying to practice his own conversation skills so as to further narrow the gap between his and Robin's. Or maybe he'd say he was just playing along to win Terry over in order to get them a place to live - having been silently well aware the whole time that Terry was rudely excluding his friend, but rolling with it to appeal to Terry's ego. If Johnny said any of the above were true, Robin would feel like an arsehole for ever being mad at him… but Robin might always stay mad at this situation. After all he'd been through in the last two weeks, after everything that had gotten him beginning to wonder whether he was losing the ability to truly be heroic… he didn't want to be made to feel like he was losing the ability to get people to like him, too.

Robin was not one of those people who considered himself a "natural leader" who always needed to be at the top of the food chain. No, absolutely not, he regarded such people as arrogant arseholes. But he absolutely considered himself someone who had the ability to climb to the top of nearly any social ladder he felt compelled to climb, and while he didn't have the insatiable need to always be on the top of the totem pole like some people did, he was most assuredly used to being close to the top; he had never been the one plainly on the bottom. The fact that this was merely a gathering of three and could not be considered a sufficient sample size did nothing to comfort him; he didn't like this. This was the first time that two people had, without an ounce of malice, mutually and wordlessly decided that he wasn't worth being included. So this is how Johnny had felt for thirty years? How did that bear make it so long like that? If you were to show Robin scientific proof that he'd somehow completely lost his magnetic touch and that the next thirty years of his life would be like this, he'd have quit on the spot.

Robin was not going to accept any offer to live with the fox family. He'd refuse to enter a situation where he was destined to be blatantly overlooked with no hope of changing his fortune. And if Johnny asked him why, Robin would tell him plainly: Robin didn't feel like he was strong enough to feel like Johnny had for so long.

Robin looked over at Eddy. Yes, Dear Reader, Eddy was still there, sitting next to his father on the far end of the couch, and Robin recognized that the kit hadn't said much either. Robin was hoping to get some sort of acknowledgement out of the lad, like some eye contact accompanied by a look of get a load of these two chuckleheads.

But Eddy just kept staring at the TV, looking bored out of his mind, taking in a game he probably didn't care about either.

Oh, and to make matters worse, Terry and Little John went back to talking about sports all over again. They discussed things like whether Tiger Woods was too clean-cut to ever do anything scandalous, whether Johnny's insider information as a Southerner could help Terry figure out whether Atlanta had any hope of making their chance at an NHL team last in the long term, and whether Tom Brady - who Terry loved because the guy was an underdog before suddenly becoming good and because of that blue-collar spirit would surely never be seen walking around in gay little fashion boots like an out-of-touch celebrity and most assuredly would never vote for let alone befriend a millionaire Republican - had any chance of having anything close to a long career (hopefully all spent in New England) before the magic inevitably ran out and everyone was reminded why he was once a late-round draft pick.

Honestly, this conversation went on for the better part of an hour, and we can probably fast-forward until right about the point when Terry said

"Hey, Jack!"

...Robin wasn't in the headspace to remember his new moniker.

"Jack!" Terry repeated.

"Hey, Redcoat!" said the bear. The Englishman's new nickname from those insidious boys seemed to be sticking, and it did indeed snap him out of his trance.

"Wah! Oh, I… I'm sorry, gentlemen, seem to have spaced out there for a moment."

Terry pointed to the TV that Robin had been vaguely facing. "He's trying to learn our ways!" he joked, and Johnny laughed along. "But, uh, no, Jack, I actually have a question for you. I know you were bored to death by us talking about NASCAR earlier but, shot in the dark, you know anything about Formula One?"

...HMMMMM. What a turn of events this was. Had Robin just been misreading the tone earlier and they did want to include him but simply couldn't? It's possible, he was only a mortal; on the one hand, those etiquette classes had given him a ridiculous ability to read people, but on the flip side of that, he was so used to being right in his gut feelings about people that he could rarely convince himself that he was wrong.

And right now he was convinced that this was a trap on Terry's part. It seemed clear to Robin that Terry had no use for him. Was Terry's sense of masculinity threatened by a bigger fox? Was Terry seeking a new bear friend and wanted to steal Robin's? Could it be both? Robin felt like it was both. He could have been wrong, Robin knew he could have been wrong. But it just felt so right. Besides, Eddy had to have gotten that douchiness from somewhere.

"Why yes, I do, actually!" the Brit beamed. "In fact, I was just telling my friend here earlier that back home, people often said I looked and sounded strikingly like the great James Hunt!" (Jesus fucking Christ, Robin, stop rubbing it in! And I know you're reading this comment because you read the last chapter and told me 'you don't sound very confident here, lad, and you ought to know that you're not ugly and your voice is just as manly as mine and Mister Hunt's' to which I say, Robin, people keep calling you handsome while I've never been called that in my life and your voice is "sexy" deep while mine is "sex offender" deep. I know you've been through a lot, Robin, I know because I'm writing your fucking story, but unironically, man, check your fucking privilege. And this would never have happened to me if you hadn't dogged me into Googling some dead pretty boy you resemble in the first place! And you know what? I'm still annoyed from when I found out a few chapters back that Boss Hogg wasn't the sheriff in Dukes of Hazzard! Jesus, for my mental health, I think I need to let myself be a shitty narrator and just not fact-check things.)

But anyway, Terry came to my existential rescue by pulling the rug out from under Robin's humble-brag. "Hm. Never heard of that guy. Is he good?"

Robin took a second to try to recall whether he'd said the word "great" to describe the guy, and he was pretty sure he had. "Well… he was before he became a broadcaster… and passed."

"Passed what?"

...Was Terry forcing an awkward moment to make Robin look awkward by proxy? "...Away."

Terry looked like he'd just seen the light. "Ahhh. Oh, sorry to hear that," he said as though Robin had just lost an uncle (well, God knows those English foxes resembled each other enough). "Anyway, my question… so my neighbor Hilary - who's a guy, apparently Hilary was a guy's name before it was a girl's name, but nobody told his parents that we don't live in the Before Times anymore - he was flipping through the channels on Sunday and he came across a Formula One race of all things, he'd never seen one before, I've definitely never seen one before, and he tells me… apparently there were only, like, five, six cars on the track? Is that normal? That doesn't seem right to me."

Robin looked confused. Living in the woods and not residing in an area where that motorsports discipline was widely followed, he didn't know any more than Terry or Hilary about the Indianapolis, uh… controversy… about… tires? Something like that? (I could Google it, but I'm not going to!) But here's the thing, though: Terry looked just as confused.

Or maybe that wasn't the right word. But he didn't seem as comfortable and confident as he had talking with Johnny. He seemed… well, I hate to overuse the word, but, awkward. Like talking to Robin was a deeply embarrassing act that he was just doing out of obligation and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Was this genuine because he found Robin thoroughly dull? Or was this a mindgame just to fuck with him? Robin didn't know, and if he had any notion, he'd just ignore it; if his charm was failing him, who's to say his ability to read people wasn't faltering, too?

"Er… no, that doesn't sound quite right. I… I don't know what that's all about, actually. Perhaps he was watching a lower series race?"

Terry just shrugged. "Hey, it was more his question than mine. But hey, if you guys wind up sticking around, you might wind up meeting him eventually, and he can tell you more details about what he saw." And then - for the first time since he'd laughingly asked Robin whether his father beat the bejesus out of him - Terry smiled at Robin. "Well, I just figured I'd include you since, y'know, you ain't said much."

...It wasn't the words he used; those were in and of themselves pretty innocent. It was the words combined with the shit-eating grin that made it all seem clear now:

Terry was playing the game. He'd been playing the game this whole time. And while Robin had thought he was being civil by refusing to entertain the thought of playing the game, in doing so he'd just fallen far behind. Maybe this was the frustration with being excluded from talking talking, but to Robin, it felt like a truth written in stone: Terry was jealous of Robin's body (relatable tbh) and perhaps also less than pleased with his ethnic origin, and now he was getting back at his guest by flexing his social muscles and stealing Robin's bear bro. For Christ's sakes, Terry had segregated Robin away on the armchair while taking a spot next to Johnny on the couch, how could Robin have been so blind!?

Robin had to wonder if anyone saw his eyes narrow. So this is how it was gonna be? Fine, two could play at this game. Robin may have had a lot of catching up to do on the scoreboard, but he had all the confidence in the world that he could mount a comeback. This vulpine charm battle was about to become a charm bloodbath.

Eddy walked back into the living room from… somewhere, who knows. Nobody had really even realized he'd left. Once he got a seat back down on the couch, Robin got ready to go on the attack.

"Eddy, how are you doing on this fine day?" Robin asked. "We've not had much opportunity to talk since we met yesterday."

All three guys sitting on the couch seemed very surprised that Robin was addressing the kid in the room.

"Uh… fine?" Eddy replied.

"Alright, lad," Robin said with a warm smile. "Just checking in!"

"Are we boring you, Jackie?" Terry asked, still looking rather unsure as he spoke to Robin.

"Oh, no, sir! I'm quite enjoying myself. Why do you ask?"

Terry didn't know how to politely say the quiet part out loud, so he didn't say it at all. "Nothing, just… you seem bored, is all."

But Robin did not look bored; if anything, he looked eager. "Suffice it to say, Terry, I had the same thought about Eddy, and I just wanted to make sure he didn't feel excluded in the conversation. The way I was brought up, I was taught that it's a tenet of good leadership to make sure nobody feels left out!"

DAMN.

And that was absolutely a risky move. If Robin had delivered that small paragraph with even the slightest bit of wrong inflection or tone, it could have come across as a transparently backhanded insult. Instead, he'd stuck the landing perfectly; it made himself look like a great guy who was trying his best to look out for everybody and who wasn't bitter about having been largely boxed out of the discourse so far, while also still being a stealth insult telling Terry to his stupid face that this stranger was doing a better job of supporting his son than he was.

Fox to fox, Terry knew exactly what this was. His own eyes narrowed now as he put on a devilish smirk. It was fucking on.

From this point forward, Dear Reader, you can just assume the two adult tods were wearing self-satisfied smiles unless otherwise noted.

"And you know what? Good on you for taking initiative like that," Terry replied, seeming sickeningly sincere. He was leaning forward in his seat to look around Little John's pudgy panniculus - which, come to think of it, might have been another strategic barrier he'd set up between himself and his vulpine rival. "The world needs more people unafraid to step up to the plate like that… I just wish you hadn't waited that long to do that! I encourage you, Jack: don't be afraid to speak up more! You're among friends!"

Ooh, complimenting and encouraging his opponent while also calling Robin a friend; Classy Terry wasn't fucking around. He might not have wanted to charm Robin earlier, but he was proving that he could live up to his nickname when he wanted to.

"Ah, but you two were having such a nice banter about sports that I couldn't add to, and as much as I wanted to join in… I didn't want to derail the conversation just for attention! Besides, I know that just because I'm not talkative in one setting I'm not qualified to speak in doesn't mean I'm not capable of holding a conversation!"

A self-deprecating joke and a statement subtly exhibiting his high self-esteem all dusted with a coating of complete sincerity? This Brit was a boss.

"Aw, and y'know what?" Terry suddenly looked remorseful, but still maintained that winning smile. "Absolutely. In many ways, you're probably more self-contained than a lot of people. You know who you are and you won't let an off moment get you questioning if you know yourself, and I envy that… but I can't help but think, first impressions are first impressions, my good man, and here I was thinking that you were all too content to hang out in the background and let us do all the talking. I agree, it takes self-esteem to be content with yourself, but we're both here to make a good impression on one another, so there's nothing wrong with speaking up and saying we're boring you -"

"He did do that." Eddy with the assist for Team GB!

Terry shot daggers at his son for a brief moment before realizing that wouldn't be… classy. He knew he'd had a weak turn that round. He'd repeated his and you know what? opening line as though it were a catchphrase and tried to recycle his encouragement strategy, all before talking himself into a corner.

"What an observant lad you have there, Terry!" Robin indulged in some snark. In the school of thought he followed, scathing sarcasm usually wasn't considered the best move, but this ought to give Terry a taste of his own medicine. Besides, Robin arguably wasn't being sarcastic - that was very observant of Eddy.

But Terry figured out a way to turn this crisis into an opportunity. "Y'know what?" he said for a third time, effectively owning it as his opening tagline. "...I'm a man. I can apologize. Jack, you're right, I was having so much fun talking with Bobby here that I completely blew past the signs that you weren't having any fun. That was entirely my bad. Pfft, and I had the nerve to go on about the importance of first impressions!"

Robin knew a good move when he saw one and had to concede. "Ah, apology accepted -"

But Terry wasn't done yet. "And Eddy," he turned to his son, "Jack's right, you are observant. I'm sorry that I kept you down here when you clearly aren't getting much out of this. You can head off to your room if you want."

Eddy's eyes were wide open as he looked around the room. "Uh… no, I… I'm good." He was seeing the sparks fly and wanted to be around for it.

So let's recap: Terry had delivered not one but two apologies, arguably the most positively-masculine thing you can do, both laid out perfectly by plainly stating what exactly he'd done wrong, all mixed in with an offer to fix at least one of the problems, a self-mocking joke of his own, stole a compliment from Robin for Eddy and made it his own and buttered up Johnny so as to get the audience on his side? What an absolute baller move. Round One went to the Rhode Island Red.

And then he made it even better.

"Sorry, Jack, buddy, I made it worse by cutting you off again, didn't I? You were saying?"

Robin had been so blindsided by Terry's brilliant move that he was rendered temporarily speechless. All he could manage to say was "...I accept your apology, Terry… and I commend you for being brave enough to do so!" He'd almost not had the thought to put that extra tidbit of one-upmanship in there, thankfully he'd realized at the last second to toss it in.

Terry shrugged coolly. "Why thank ya, sir. I'm glad I'm surrounding myself with men who know and recognize what true bravery is!" Complimenting them while calling himself brave - oh, you son of a bitch, Terry!

"Well, I'm just glad we could talk this out like men," said Johnny, who faintly understood that there was some subtext of something going on with all of this, but heaven help him if he knew what it was.

"Now, where were we?"

"European sporting culture!" said Robin. "And if I may say, I teased you earlier, Terry. Would you genuinely care to know something about English football?" Offering to impart knowledge, always a safe bet. He didn't know where he was going to go with this, but he'd rather play a shaky offense than play defense.

Terry couldn't say no to an offer like that while still looking good - but he didn't have to say yes, either. "Hey, if you'd like to share something with me, I'm all ears! Whaddya wanna teach me?" Painting himself as open to enlightenment while setting up Robin for embarrassment by giving him the vaguest prompt possible so he'd stumble aimlessly thought a wide subject and make himself look like a little kid ranting and raving about their new obsession. Dear Reader, am I doing a sufficient job of conveying just how violent this battle is getting?

And Robin realized he should have formed a better plan before playing offense. But he could salvage this yet. "Let's start here, Terry: if you could ask any question of a soccer fan, what would it be?" This would neither advance nor detract Robin's position on the board, but it could buy him some time.

Terry recognized that the classy move here was to again play along, so he did. "Alright, I'll bite. I guess the classic question us here in Freedomland have for the rest of the world is… what kinda fulfilment do you get out of a game that ends nothing-nothing?"

Robin gave himself a second to think of a good answer. "It simply boils down to a love of The Beautiful Game and a respect for the players fighting and clawing for ninety minutes and doing everything they can to try to make the score not nil-nil!" Alright, this bout of conversation might not give either tod the advantage, but hey, that could be a good thing! If Robin intentionally dragged Terry into a stalemate without realizing it, Terry might gas himself and Robin would be able to conserve energy for an easy victory in Round 3. "In fairness, we have the same question for you lot with several of your sports, not the least of which this stick-and-ball sport you've come to call your pastime!"

"Whaddya talkin' about? Baseball is psychological torture on a field! Guy with a ball toys with a guy with a stick; guy with the stick knows he has to hit the ball if the guy with the ball throws it across an invisible plane but there are places in that plane he can't hit the ball well and the guy with the ball knows that so that's where he's aiming, so the guy with the stick has to pretend to 'accidentally' hit the ball out of bounds until the guy with the ball either gives him something he can drive or keeps missing the invisible box until the boss man says the guy with the ball loses. What's not to love!? And yeah, I totally concede that running for ninety uninterrupted minutes is an athletic feat, but conditioning yourself to run for that long or learning how to kick a decently-sized ball is so much easier than learning how to hit a tiny ball with a narrow stick!" He'd conceded points to his opponent while also poking playful fun at his culture in a way that didn't seem too jingoistic, all while making a competent and confident argument about something for which he was passionate. Many would call that charming. He gestured to the game on TV. "Shall we observe and I'll dissect?"

Robin could see the script had been flipped on him, but now it was his turn to just play along lest he look uncharming. "Shall we!" And this Round Two ended in a decisive draw.

And so the four of them gave their varying degrees of attention to the game on TV. Bottom of the seventh, one out, man on second, pitcher's spot was up to bat, and since (as Terry explained to the Englishman) pitchers typically can't hit for shit, they swapped a lion named Josh Fogg out of the game and put in a buck to pinch-hit for him, some scrub Terry had never heard of before in his life, but the name was certainly one he'd heard before (and I didn't believe this either, but I suffered myself to look him up on Baseball Reference because I just never fucking learn my lesson to stop investigating things, and sure enough, there was a guy with this name playing in that game that day): Bobby Hill. Hey, it's a common enough pair of names.

And so Terry, unaware that he was fraternizing with a pair of guys who hadn't had the luxury to regularly watch television since 1998, decided to make the obvious joke, one of those jokes that everyone understands isn't exactly funny but you make it anyway to demonstrate that you don't live under a rock and that you know what the obvious joke is. Hell, he didn't even watch the show that much himself because he thought it was for rednecks - but for that same reason, he assumed that the bear he understood to be from Mississippi surely must have been a fan.

"Dangit, Bobby!" Terry elbowed Johnny's gut as he put on a doofy smirk and a terrible accent to imitate the father of a fictional portly Southern child named Bobby and draw the connection to this portly Southerner whose name he thought was Bobby. "That boy ain't right!"

Johnny, however, had only one word to say to that: "...What?"

The air of confidence quickly evaporated from Terry's face. "Oh, uh… you don't watch that show?"

"I have no idea what show you're talking about." And at the time, he didn't; with the benefit of hindsight, Little John can confirm he did at least know of that show since it premiered about a year or so before he disappeared into the woods with Robin, but come 2005 he certainly hadn't seen it recently enough to get any references like that or have it cross his mind in general. "What's the show?"

Of course, now Terry didn't want to make himself seem any less metropolitan by giving them the impression he was a regular viewer of that redneck show, so he played dumb. "Aw, it's just… grown-up cartoon Simpsons clones, except it takes place in Texas instead of… whatever state Springfield is in. Illinois? I just thought, eh, Southern guy watches the show for Southerners." (Man, I desperately wish someone in that room knew the obscure fact that The Simpsons canonically takes place in Northern Kentucky near Cincinnati, which would probably mean it's set closer to both Johnny's real and fictional hometowns than something set in Texas.)

Terry was clearly embarrassed. And Robin smelled blood.

Not to say Robin was about to attack, because Johnny had something to say to disadvantage Terry further.

"Man, Texas ain't the South! And I ain't just saying that in the sense that they're too proud to call themselves Southern - hell, people in Texas would call themselves Texans before they called themselves Americans - but even beyond that, they think they're better than the rest of the country, not just the South! They bitched up a storm to get permission to fly their flag at the same height as the American flag! I don't pretend that my part of the country is full of geniuses, that's why I left, but Texans are on a different level of stupid, and combine that with their arrogance? If there were ever a state that was so self-assured in its backwardness that it tried to… I dunno… try to overturn Roe v. Wade and tell the Supreme Court to its face that it couldn't stop them, it'd be fucking Texas."

"And before you ask, Terry, I'm not much a fan of Austin Powers myself," Robin said sardonically, thinking back to the trailer-trash raccoon girl the other day for an example of pop culture that Americans of that era might associate his countrymen with. "My teeth are in far better shape than his!" (Okay, now that part might not have been true, not because Robin had some stereotypical gene for shitty teeth but because, as mentioned earlier, the guy just hadn't been to the dentist in donkey's years.)

Everyone could see that Terry had realized he'd erred in saying numerous things that were socially baffling, but he still had a war to wage, and surrender never won a war. "And… yeah, all fair points, I concede, but I just… I've tried watching the show before, I didn't get it, and since - you can agree that Texas is still a lot more like Mississippi than Delaware, right, Bobby? I know I've got a couple coworkers from North Carolina and Georgia who love it, that's where I learned the reference from - I figured it was a show for your part of the country, so I gambled on maybe you knowing it."

It was a shame the Merry Men had lived away from mainstream television for so long, because it would have put Terry to bed if they could have turned the tables on him and invoked a different sitcom from that late 90s/early 2000s adult animation boom that took place in the New Englander's home state.

But they couldn't, so Eddy did: "Dad, that's like saying you watch Family Guy just because you're from Rhode Island," sneered the kit whose age-inappropriate viewings of that show's reruns on Adult Swim probably helped contribute to inspiring the Fox Network to revive that show that very same year.

"What the hell is Family Guy?"

And nobody answered Terry.

And nobody said anything else either.

He'd been put in his place.

Game, set, match.

He dared to peek around the bear to sneak a glance at Robin, who gave him a heroic smile in return. And as he did, Terry could swear he heard three words telepathically spoken in his head, the Englishman's voice in his fellow fox's mind's ear sounding even more unsuitably deep and manly to the point that it would send a chill down even Tobin Bell's spine:

You lose, Terry.

...Trouble was, though, Terry wasn't one to agree to an armistice if he wasn't the clear victor. He would have to literally, physically be killed before he accepted defeat IN HIS OWN HOME!

"Come to think of it, it'd have been a helluva lot more fitting if that guy was a bear," Terry said, gesturing at the screen as the umpire called ball four and Bobby Hill took his base. "I already mentioned my neighbor, Hilary, a.k.a. Hill; Bobby, Hill, you, him, the two most prominent ursid gents in my life at this particular moment… ya gotta admit that'd be just a liiiiittle bit spooky, don'tcha think?"

Johnny got it, but he wasn't laughing. "Yeah, I guess that'd be pretty weird…" But then he thought about that phrasing a little more. "...Wait, am I already your number two mauler?" He sounded a little bit flattered… and a little bit confused, too.

Terry had meant exactly that and was hoping it came across as a compliment and a testament to how well he and the bear were hitting it off - which, before a few minutes ago, they had been. And now Johnny was at least a little weirded out. Terry knew he'd have to gamble to get out of this hole he'd dug for himself, but he didn't think his gamble would lose. So he'd have to keep gambling until he got himself killed. Only upon death would he stop fighting.

He took a quick look at Robin, smirking in satisfaction, before turning to Johnny.

"Eh, honestly, you just might be. You know how it is, our peoples usually have one friend of the opposite and that's our pair, I've got my one, that leaves the door open for Number Two -"

"It's telling, however, that you never did refer to this Hilary chap as your friend, merely your neighbor," Robin cut in with a cheeky smile; with what he felt was an insurmountable lead, he could afford to goof around a little and hotdog his way to the finish line. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to steal my bear friend out from under me!"

And Johnny, in an attempt to ease the vague tension, decided to throw in a quip: "...Hey, yeah! Mister Will-Dee, you're tryna seduce me!"

Terry's expression… eh, some would say that he looked called out dead to rights, others would say he was legitimately confused by that comment. In either case, nobody could argue that he was the furthest thing from speechless.

"What? Is that what it's coming across like?" he asked incredulously. "Oh, no, man, I would never try to steal someone's friend out from under them like… like some catty teenage girl! I'm content with my social life, and while Hill isn't the greatest friend… Jack, fox to fox, you know how it is, the world don't like us so we gotta work twice as hard to get ahead in this world, friends are nice to have but we ain't got time for more than a few good ones, y'know? That's why it blows my mind that you think I'd pull something like that on you, I wouldn't take one of another working man's few good men away from him."

Robin nodded, silently accepting Terry's rebuttal. Alright, a lot to unpack there; Terry kind of stepped with one foot over a boundary in assuming Robin very much lived up to the "friends to many, close with few" archetype - even if Robin was closer with fewer than he'd have preferred, and it kind of irked him to be reminded of that, but Terry was correct in this assessment and Robin couldn't penalize him much for that. Everything else, however, seemed genuine… or maybe Terry was getting so good at faking authenticity that even Robin was starting to fall for it.

In the meantime, though, Terry continued. "And besides, Jack, if it seemed like I was favoring Bobby here, it's because you struck me as someone who wouldn't think that just because the focus wasn't on you automatically meant that you were invisible. We're foxes for Christ's sake, Jack, running shit while hiding in the shadows of the shadows of the night is what we do."

"How can there be shadows if it's at night, though?" Robin remarked; Terry had made a very good move in praising his opponent, but wit was always a winner.

Terry forced a fake chuckle. "You're a clever fox." This dry, annoyed statement did more to make it seem like he held Robin in contempt than anything he'd done prior. But nevertheless, he turned to Johnny without wasting another moment. "Whereas Bobby here… with no disrespect to the ursine race, it's to my understanding that a lot of them grow up in… not the most sociable environments, so I figured he could appreciate having, y'know, a healthy conversation turned onto him for once to make up for a lot of lost time… and I'm glad I did, because judging by the look on his face, he never thought he'd hear a damn yankee like me express a curiosity about NASCAR of all things!"

Johnny gave another belly laugh at that one before gesturing to his British friend. "Well hey, according to this guy, we're both yankees!" Again he hoped that he was diffusing this conflict he could hardly understand and that he wasn't showing too much favoritism one way or another - he'd love to have Robin's back here, of course, but he also really wanted a nice indoor air-conditioned room to crash in long-term, especially now that it was mosquito season, and those pests had always found his pelt to be particularly palatable.

He and Terry laughed as Robin snickered a little himself. Okay, so Terry seemed to be crawling back from the dead here. But it was merely a case of the loser scoring easy points in garbage time to make their defeat look more respectable while the apparent victor stopped caring to play adequate D. Robin wasn't worried. His advantage was all but impregnable.

"But I can't fault you if that's just how it came across to you, I can't fault you," Terry continued, "if intentions don't come across, it's always on the communicator for miscommunicating, you know that's how it is. So if my attempts to, y'know, be friendly to you guys and charm you a little come across like I'm cutting in between you guys, it's on me forgetting that we live in an era where people just don't react normally when you treat them nicely."

The passive aggressive subtext of that comment was so loud that even Eddy perked up when he heard it.

"Jesus fuck, Dad, talk about a backhanded apology!"

And yet… Terry didn't seem embarrassed this time. He looked confident, like he was standing his ground in his remark. Even after saying the word charm out loud and basically outwardly admitting that the game was afoot, breaking the first rule of Fox Charm Battles (that being that you don't acknowledge a Fox Charm Battle is taking place or you automatically lose on the grounds of being tacky), he seemed like he harbored not one iota of regret for anything he'd done in the last thirty seconds.

Robin couldn't believe this. This delusional swiper was acting like he still stood a chance even after he'd committed not one but two infractions that constituted a TKO. And maybe Terry did know the game was over and was trying to prove his nickname wasn't a misnomer, that he really was that classy even when he wasn't expressly trying to one-up another class act. But what he'd just said hadn't been very classy at all, and Robin saw no issue with doing something similarly unclassy in telling Terry off.

"In that case, if you're struggling so much with being charming, I'll help you out," the Englishman said smugly. "That comment you just made certainly sounded like a not-so-subtle way of expressing that you think you did everything right but we were behaving irrationally in misinterpreting your praises. Not to say you meant that for certain, but seeing as it came across that way anyway… surely you can agree that such a sentiment wouldn't be seen as charming nor classy, could you not, Classy Terry?"

Terry looked furious. And this is where the sports metaphors again get a little fucky. Because what Terry was about to do could be seen as the equivalent of a losing boxer getting up and Kamehameha-ing the winner below the belt with enough force to knock him out, a sort of scorched-earth move that most certainly get Terry banned from future competitions but would also absolutely ensure that Robin regretted ever daring to beat him. From Robin's perspective, however, he was beginning to wonder whether he'd been overconfident again; what if all the things Terry had done to torpedo himself had lost him individual rounds but not the entire match? As sloppy as it may be to draw a connection between the British guy and the most American of American games, this narrator can't help but think of all those clips of gridiron players running with the ball, wide open in space with nobody having any chance to tackle them, knowing they were safe and showboating on their way to paydirt - only to let the ball slip out of their hands before they actually crossed the goal line because they simply weren't paying enough attention. Upon Terry's next couple sentences, Robin surely felt like one of those receivers who realized too late that he'd celebrated prematurely before reaching the end zone and had to deal with the consequences of squandering a sure victory. Indeed, after a mistake like this, he was wondering whether getting hit in the head with that pigskin the other day had caused brain damage.

"Is that so?" Terry sneered. "Kind of like how you thought it was somehow even remotely socially appropriate for a couple of grown men to take a strange thirteen-year-old boy's school email address and communicate with him without his parents' knowledge? You wanna explain to me what's so charming and classy about that?"

…Robin was silent. His feeling in that moment was not unlike that of a basketball player getting dunked on, a gridiron football player getting his ankles broken by a swift running back juking him out, a baseball player getting plunked in the head with a line drive, a hockey player getting his throat slashed open with another player's skate blade like what happened to that Blues goalie back in the Seventies or Eighties, a golfer getting electrocuted when his club acts as a lightning rod, a jockey getting thrown off of and subsequently crushed by their equine race partner after getting run into the rail, a professional bowler stepping over the line onto the slippery part of the lane and breaking some bones as he landed, a professional pool or snooker player getting stabbed repeatedly with a broken cue stick, a professional swimmer having their butterfly stroke interrupted by a regular stroke and drowning, a professional gamer suffering a seizure, a racecar driver getting spun out by an opponent and fatally crashing like I know offhand has happened at least once in the Mexican NASCAR series around 2009 I think but realistically has probably happened many more times than that in different racing disciplines around the world, an association football player collapsing on the pitch and dying of cardiac arrest like I know offhand has happened many many many times in probably just this century alone… and a boxer getting bonked between the legs, altogether at once.

"That's not charming, Jack, that's just inappropriate and creepy," Terry continued, his face expressionless like a teacher trying not to be too stern as they explain to a child why they messed up, "and it's very hard to be charming or classy when you're doing inappropriate and creepy things. I don't very much care for being lectured about how to be charming and classy by a guy who doesn't realize why that wasn't a good decision."

And as much of a point as he made, the others were starting to worry about how angry this guy was getting. Including his son.

"Uh… Dad, chill, uh, chill out-"

"Well, hey, Terry, Terry," Johnny urged, "like we said! We didn't want to do it that way, but we were desperate!"

"Yeah!" said Robin. "What Juh-uh… what Bobby said! Desperate times, desperate measures, we had to do something that was less than flattering to us!"

"And you know what?" Terry began. "I don't doubt you were. And are. And while that was already a push, I was willing to forgive you if I was able to get along with you guys otherwise. And that was the case before you decided to start trying to one-up me in my own house! You were already on thin ice, and you wanna push your fuckin' luck by making me look like a chump!? Hey, let's just say the quiet part out loud here: of course I want to be the center of attention in a situation I'm hosting! Don't try to fucking outshine me when I'm trying to be the charming one!"

"Terry, I was taking a back seat the entire time!" Robin insisted. The fact that Terry had blown the lid off their little Cold War wasn't doing anything to bring Robin comfort; he was very worried that Terry was actually going to call the authorities. "But you just kept ignoring me and I couldn't be quiet forever!"

"Yes you could have! And you should have!" Terry jumped off the couch and went up to say this to Robin's face. "You know what's actually classy, Jack? Understanding when it's your time and place to just sit in the back and be quiet and be seen and not heard. What host wants to be shown up by their guests!? I wouldn't come into your house and try to be the life of your party! Or do you not have the opportunity to be the life of a party you're hosting because you're fucking homeless and you don't have a place to host them!?"

"Terry! Mellow out!" said Johnny. "We all just wanna be friends here! Ruh-uh… reeetarded Jack over here, bless his heart, he just figured he couldn't impress you if he was just sitting quiet in the corner!"

"Aw, shut the fuck up, Bobby, I thought you were cool," Terry spat. "I didn't want to be impressed with him, I wanted him to be impressed with me! You don't get it, Bob. He and I are foxes. We wheel and deal and put on an irresistible smile to get shit done. We don't have a use for more than a few useful friends." He turned back to Robin. "No shit I was trying to steal your bear friend! I need a new one because my neighbor Hilary's a stupid fucking asshole who I'd never choose to hang out with! But I have no use for another fox in my circle! You wanted to live here? Part of the deal was always going to be that me and your mauler friend get along while you be the bottom guy on the pyramid. That was always the only way that this was gonna work!"

Robin had to admit one thing: in all the excitement of the battle, he'd completely, genuinely forgotten they were here to convince him to rent out a room to them. Completely slipped his mind.

"Terry," Johnny said sternly. "...I really don't appreciate you tossing around the M-word so willy-nilly."

"What, mauler? Foxes can say it, that's part of the deal."

"Foxes with bona-fide bear friends can say it," Johnny grumbled. "By the sound of it, you don't actually have one."

And Terry just glared at him for a moment before his son spoke up and said what many of you are probably already thinking:

"Dad," Eddy said firmly, "you're making yourself look like an asshole."

Now Terry glared at him for a moment before asking the question burning in his heart:

"WHOSE side are you FUCKING on!?"

"THEIRS-!"

Maybe it was unwise of Eddy to confess his allegiance to these so-called "strangers", but even if so, he was granted a new lease on life. Nobody really heard his answer over the sound of tires screeching in the driveway, and all four of them turned to face the door as they heard a voice swearing to herself outside.

"What the FUCK is going on in there!?" A key could be heard turning in the lock - only for the user of the key to realize it was never locked - and the door swung open, Toni looking ever so pleasant and - dare one say - charming as she glanced at the strangers and her family. "Oh, hello, gentlemen!" she greeted the guests with a wave and a paw held up to her chest. "Antónia Vukovics - but I insist, call me Toni."

Nobody knew exactly what to do, so the Merry Men just went with the flow.

"Uh… Robert Van Bommel, call me Bobby," Johnny said as he leaned over towards the door and extended a paw for shaking, not wanting to stand up and tower over her like some sort of monster.

"Nice to meet you, Bobby," she reciprocated.

Robin, broken arm and what have you, instead opted to simply gesture to himself much like she had, paw up at his chest. "John Henry Wigglesworth, but please do call me Jack," he said as he did the polite thing in deciding to stand up and tower over her like some sort of monster.

Toni just stared up at him for a second. "Huh… well there's something you don't see every day."

"I already asked him, he's four-eleven," said Terry.

"Good to know, but not what I was gonna ask," the vixen said as she turned to her tod. "Oh Terrance, my love… what's this I hear that you got along so well with these two gentlemen that you went behind my back and offered them a room in our house without consulting me, your beloved wife?"

"What!? No I didn't! What in the hell gave you the impression I -"

"I called her and told her you were about to," Eddy cut in. "And I wasn't lying, when I called her, it seemed like you were about to any minute now."

And while Toni did look displeased that she had bailed on work all because her son had jumped to conclusions, Terry was simply stunned that Eddy had done that.

"You told her what!?"

"Did you not hear me on the phone in the kitchen? I was talking at full volume!" He leaned in a little to make a point: "I got a read off you guys. We're foxes, we get reads on people and we make decisions based on them. Ain't that right?"

Terry sputtered a bunch of nonverbal vocalizations as he tried to process the best move to make next.

"What's going on here, Terry?" asked Toni, looking unamused.

Her husband composed himself before gesturing to the guests. "Suffice it to say, Toni, that things were going pretty swimmingly between me and these guys before we had a little disagreement and now there's basically no chance of peaceful cohabitation! So all of this is an enormous moot point!"

Robin and Johnny gave one another a dejected look.

"Uh, we can, uh…" Little John mumbled as he stood up slowly, careful to mind his headspace, "we can see ourselves out if that's what's best -"

"Wait," Eddy said firmly. "Dad,"

Terry glared at his son. "Whaddya want now?"

Eddy spoke slowly and calmly, trying his best to sound like what he thought an adult sounded like. "What I want… is for you to man up and admit you were being an asshole to these guys, and that they didn't do nothing wrong but play along in your little Asshole Game, and that they ain't done nothin' to deserve getting kicked to the curb when they spent the first gigantic chunk of the conversation trying to get you to like them so they could stop being homeless. That's what I want."

To nobody's surprise, Terry's eyes narrowed. "You really do have their backs over mine, don't you?"

And now Eddy was willing to totally drop that "mature adult" tone to display his own unbridled rage that his father was making him to be an asshole in front of a couple adults he already respected far more than his own parents. "Jesus Christ, Dad, did you or did you fucking not want me to grow up to be a man who stood up for what the fuck I believe in!?"

"I wanted you to be a man who stood up for what I believed in! Every parent in the world wants their children to be like them! Any parent who says they want their kids to think for themselves is lying to make themselves look good!"

If Toni hadn't been blocking the doorway, Robin and Johnny would have silently excused themselves by now. They weren't entirely sure they wanted to live under this guy's roof anymore anyway.

"Terry!" the vixen snapped. "I don't know how you were acting like an asshole before, but you're definitely acting like an asshole now!" She turned to the prospective tenants, who she deemed to be more rational than her husband. "What exactly kind of a 'disagreement' did you boys have?"

Eddy answered her before they could: "Dad got pissy because he met another fox with better social skills than him."

Terry's neck nearly snapped with how quickly he jerked it back around to face his kit. "I will put a fucking muzzle on you!" he hollered, finger pointed. "Your mother and I still have the one those shitbag kids put on your brother! It'll probably still fit on a tiny little shit like you!"

"TERRY, WHAT THE FUCK HAS GOTTEN INTO YOU!?" his wife shrieked.

But Eddy was back to calm again; his father had given him ammunition and he knew exactly what to say.

"...Do you wanna lose me like you lost my brother?"

Terry still looked livid, but he looked confused just as much now.

"Do you wanna blow your second chance at a good relationship with a son?" Eddy continued. "You can say all you want that my brother was a little asshole who was never gonna respect you guys no matter what you two did, but that doesn't matter right now. Because right now I'm telling you exactly what you need to do to earn my respect - not just as my father but as a man. And maybe you think I'm just a retarded kid and you don't care about my opinion like you say you don't care about my brother's… but if that's the case, I'm not gonna care what you think about me, just like my brother."

You could see it in his eyes: Terry was conflicted. But he'd never let his son see that he'd gotten to him. "If you don't care about my opinion while living in my house while I pay for everything, are you prepared to get the fuck outta here like he did!?"

But Eddy - helped by the fact that he was trying to impress the noble rebels in the room - refused to back down. He took a deep breath. "...Welp… if it comes to that… I'll figure something out. We're foxes. We're smart, we're clever, we think, we use our heads. But if my own dad is willing to throw me outta the house for having the guts to stand up to him, then maybe I'd rather be homeless. Either be man enough to accept that your son is right to call you an asshole or don't, Dad, but you can't force me to respect you, and if you gotta demand respect, it means you ain't earned it."

Terry couldn't believe this. That little speech seemed far beyond anything his younger kit was capable of. What - or who - had inspired him to become like this? But maybe his son really was growing up before his eyes. That didn't change the fact, however, that Terry stood by what he'd said - he'd defy you to find him parents who would encourage their children to develop a worldview that was not only opposite their own but which actively painted said parents in an antagonistic light, every parent all but demands they get to be their child's hero. So… lordy, this was all so conflicting. And it was as he was struggling with all these feelings, his face scrunched to make it clear to all that he was lost and adrift in a stormy sea of thought, eyes staying locked with his stern-faced son who wasn't showing an ounce of fear of him, two voices spoke up:

"That's a helluva boy ya got there, Terry," said the Southern bear. "Ain't afraid to stand up to nothin' and nobody."

"You should be proud of him," said the English fox. "I'd certainly be proud to have him as a son - not to suggest I'm here to steal your family from you, Terry."

Robin and Johnny (who were briefly worried back there when Eddy alluded to a brother who'd been "lost" due to Terry's arrogance and they each separately feared that this other son had committed suicide to spite his father or something) truly did not want to cohabitate with Terry at this point - but if they had the option to, they would take it, not for Terry's benefit, not even for their own comfort, but for the boy. For all they knew (and hoo boy, the things they didn't know), Ed's parents might have been even worse, and the wolf boy's parents certainly raised some… yellow if not red flags. But from what they could see here and now, this kid had a shitty father, and Eddy was clearly, blatantly begging them for some new male role models. So - if, let us pretend, Terry came to his senses on the spot - they were offered a place to stay, they'd take it, because even if they themselves weren't the best examples for the lad… goddamn, they wanted to stick around to keep Terry in check. Like, they had no evidence of physical abuse going on here, but considering the look that he gave his son? Just in case. Even if Robin couldn't kick Terry's buff-for-a-fox ass, Johnny sure could.

And the Merry Men were glad they'd said what they'd said, because the proud smirk that Eddy gave them afterwards, the smirk of a teenage boy who wants to genuinely smile but would feel uncool doing so, made it all worth it.

It was a smirk Terry saw, too.

"Whaddya say, Dad?" asked Eddy. "C'mon, you ain't even tried negotiating with them yet. You haven't even shown them the room yet!"

The sound Toni made before speaking genuinely almost sounded like a record scratch. "-You boys haven't even looked at the goddamn room yet!?"

And all three men all seemed just as shocked by this revelation.

"Uhhh…"

"Ummm…"

"Errr…"

"What have you guys even been doing this entire time!?"

Terry shrugged after a beat and gestured to the TV. "...Talkin' sports."

Toni just glared at him.

"Ahem," went Eddy, and upon catching his father's eyes, he gestured to his bandit friends.

Terry turned to them and gave them an uncertain look before deciding to just say whatever came to his mind, otherwise he'd never get around to saying it if he thought it through first.

"Alright, boys… I don't know what came over me, but none of that was appropriate. Uh… I'm sorry that that happened… God knows I'm gonna have to apologize to myself because I did everything I could to make you two think this is who I always am… um… That said… I believe in forgiveness… I hope you guys can find it in yourselves to be gracious enough to lend such forgiveness to me… no pressure if you can't… or don't want to… a-and if, uh, and if like my son here, you have a list of specific things I can do to make it up to you - I mean, I can't imagine you guys would still wanna see the room-"

"Aw, no, dude, we're desperate," Little John cut in. "Water under the bridge if it means we don't have to keep crashing on couches."

"As long as it's not covered in mold and there's not a bit of the floor missing, we're interested," Robin added. "...Preferably no holes in the walls or ceiling either, but we're flexible."

Terry looked greatly relieved. "Well then I'm glad we could reach an understanding, gentlemen," he said as he extended a paw for a handshake, very deliberately directing it towards Robin first, presenting what could perhaps best be described as a… classy smile. "Don't worry. I'll be gentle."

And Robin surrendered his broken arm for a very soft handshake indeed, returning a smile of his own that seemed to say Now you definitely lose, Terry.

Shut the fuck up, ya limey pig bastard.

...I'm sorry, did you just call me a pig?

It's a Northeastern thing, get used to it.

I don't know why you feel the need to explain this, Terry; this isn't a telepathic conversation, we're only conversing like this in your imagination.

...You lanky little limey son of a bitch, you shut the fuck up, okay?

After Terry shook Johnny's hand likewise (minus the part where Terry had a bitter conversation in his head), but then seemed to stand around proudly with no clear goal after he was done. Not knowing why and not caring, Toni gently pushed past her guests and led them to the spare bedroom.

"This way, boys. Let's show you the room."

And the guests saw no reason to stick around in the living room, so they followed her lead. Eddy was about to jump off the couch and join them before realizing his father was walking over to him.

"Uh… you gonna go with them-?"

But he soon found himself wrapped up in a hug that he most assuredly wasn't expecting, even more confusing because his father didn't seem to be enjoying it very much himself. Terry wasn't smiling or anything. Eddy didn't return the embrace, he just let his father hold him like that for a good long moment, during which time Terry whispered something into his son's ear:

"Don't ever leave us like your brother did. Your mother and I wouldn't be able to handle losing both of you."

Eddy did not know how he was supposed to respond to that statement, so he didn't.

-IllI-

"You're sure the ceiling's not too low for you there, Bobby?"

"No, ma'am, it isn't."

"You're sure?"

"You've asked me this several times now, Terry, and the answer is still no."

"Well we don't know if that's the desperation talking or if that's actually how you feel. We don't wanna con you out of your money just for you to be stuck miserable living with us, then we'd all be miserable, too."

"No, guys, guys, I…" The bear looked down at the four red and orange figures looking up at him, awaiting his answer; he'd spent so long yearning to be a giant, and now that he'd finally become one, half the time it felt downright awkward to have people just staring up at him. "...My posture's trash anyway, and I've visited friends in places with ceilings this high, I've lived in places with ceilings this high… same with the width of the door-"

"I was just about to say the door."

"Don't worry about the door-"

"Ducking is one thing, ducking and squeezing every single time you wanna leave the room to go to the bathroom, I can't imagine-"

"I insist-"

"Actually, speaking of the bathroom-"

"You said this house was built ten, fifteen years ago, right? Unless they built these houses out of Legos, the toilet should be modern enough to support two of me."

"...I wasn't gonna say the toilet, I was gonna say the shower stall."

"...Oh."

"I actually was gonna say the toilet, but more the, uh… like… the horizontal width between the toilet and the-"

"So you're worried I'm too fat in a different way. Volume-wise instead of density or something."

"...Not the word I was gonna use, but I think you get my point by now."

Johnny just rolled his eyes.

"Er… we can likely just get passes to a local YMCA," Robin insisted, "it's no worry-"

"Yes, yes it is," Toni cut him off, "that's absolutely no way to live and we'd feel like slumlords if we made you exist that way. Terry and I used to struggle for money plenty ourselves, we don't wanna be like the landlords we had to deal with if we don't have to. Tell 'em, Terry."

Terry was looking around the mostly-barren room and peeking into the ensuite bathroom that had been similarly stripped down. "Well… our landlords never did make us an offer quite like this. Uh… boys, how desperate are you?"

"Pretty… pretty desperate," Robin sputtered, not sure where Terry was going with this and letting the strangeness of the situation get to him.

"Alright… you said you've been spending all day looking at other apartments out here?"

...Crap, the duo had completely forgotten about that. But Robin could still say "That's right!" without knowing what that was leading to.

"What kind of prices are they offering?"

Precisely what Robin was afraid of.

"Oh, for the both of us?" Johnny came to the rescue. "A thousand combined, minimum. Still cheaper than the city, but… man, not by much!" That's about $1400 with inflation, Dear Reader. (Little John knew that Robin, who had never actually had to pay his own rent, didn't know offhand how much a decent apartment would cost; Robin certainly knew what a crappy apartment in a crappy neighborhood would cost from all the conversations they'd had with their public, but Johnny didn't want to risk his friend coming up with an unrealistic number).

Terry nodded. "It's freaking extortion. I'll tell you right now, I'm not gonna charge you an application fee-"

"Why would you charge us an application fee!?" (Do you wanna guess which of the two said that?)

Terry and Toni each gave a strange look for the one who'd said it. "Uh… the other places not charge you application fees, Jack?" (If you guessed the furious comment came from the fox who not only would have passionately stated that charging a fee for a housing application was indeed an act of violence towards the poor and who had never actually applied for an apartment himself, then you'd be right!)

The bear cut in to save him for the second time in twenty seconds. "Oh, sure they did! Just, uh… Jack here doesn't really handle our finances, I do… he's, he's definitely the more successful actor between us, so with how busy his schedule is, he just trusts me with his money to pay his bills for him since, shit, I ain't got nothin' better to do, heh heh…" He elbowed his buddy as he chuckled nervously. "Yeah, we met when he was still in college on his parents' dollar so he's never had to go through the process by himself before, lucky schmuck, heh heh…"

Eddy's parents seemed a bit weirded out by that explanation but they just nodded through it, telling themselves that artists weren't the easiest people to understand.

"Well, as my husband was saying, we weren't going to charge you an application fee."

"Because - as we found out when we were renters - apparently that money's supposed to be used for conducting the background check, and we don't know how the fuck to do that. That said… if my ability to read people hasn't waned, I don't think we need to!"

"Aaand let the record show that I'm just as confident in my own ability to read people as my husband here, I'm just not going to unsubtly brag about it like he will. But I think despite the weird circumstances of our meeting… I think I'm getting good vibes from you guys. Now, you said you two were desperate?"

The pair nodded again, knowing that question was obviously leading somewhere else but still not knowing where.

Terry glanced at his wife. "You think over my plan?"

"It's not as messed up as I thought it was at first," she replied, "as long as they're actually consenting to the terms and not feeling forced into it."

"Are you guys gonna charge them up the ass because you know they're desperate?" Eddy cut in, looking preemptively displeased at what he assumed was up here.

That was not, however, what was up here, and his parents were startled that he'd even suggest such a vile idea out loud.

"What the f-!? Oh, God, no!" said Toni. "That would be really messed up of us! ... Although come to think of it, the way your father and I were talking could have sounded like… well, no, gentlemen, ignore our son, that wasn't what we meant."

"And it wouldn't make any sense anyway if we charged you more than other places for a pad that's… let's just be real here, this is gonna be pretty under-the-table," said Terry. "What we were getting at was… hey, as long as we gotta basically remodel the bathroom and doorways and buy new beds and such… not just for you two, but it might be nice to have it like that even after you guys leave, if we wanna entertain larger guests or whatever... we were gonna say, if you guys wanna help us redo this place and… maybe pitch in to the expenses of whatever new stuff we gotta buy… we can probably say that balances out to covering a month's rent or so, right? Hell, maybe more depending on how much your labor is worth. How's this sounding so far?"

And the Merry Men (and Eddy) certainly looked intrigued, all kind of in disbelief that this was actually happening. Why, yes, that did sound a very reasonable arrangement - especially since, upon further inspection, the room really wasn't in any state to be on the market yet.

"Uh… we're… we're open to working with something like that, yeah," said Johnny.

"It's an intriguing proposal, Terry," said Robin. "Er… how do you see this actually working out in practice? By that I mean… when do you wanna draw up a contract, when do you want us to help with the remodeling, er…?"

Terry put his paws up. "Oh. Boys. No. We've looked into doing these things legally… we ain't interested. Too much work. We're foxes, Jack, we work smarter, not harder. We aren't gonna do a contract because it'd be pointless showing it to a judge just for them to realize we were mutually agreeing to something off the books… are you guys still comfortable with that?"

The Merry Men nodded. If they were civilians, they absolutely wouldn't be, but considering their legal status… they knew it was probably better this way. Honestly, it was a miracle Toni and Terry were even open to this arrangement themselves. Apparently Robin and Johnny had both managed to thoroughly charm them, despite everything they'd been through.

"And none of us in this agreement are gonna piss each other off because all parties are gonna understand that it's in our mutual best interest not to," said Toni.

"And much like how I know some guys who can get this place remodeled by… what is today, Wednesday? I can probably get this place ready for you to move in by Friday night, honestly. But with that same network of connections…" Terry got very serious all of a sudden. "...if you guys turn out to be shitty tenants, I know some guys who can make sure you'd come to regret being that way, as does my wife. With the understanding that I don't doubt you guys know plenty of guys who could do the same thing to a shitty landlord. This all sound fair?"

The thinly-veiled threat was not the most comfortable thing to hear, but given the circumstances, it was understandable; that said… did this guy just say…?

"...Friday night?" asked Robin. "That soon!?"

"Yeah, I know, it's a bummer it can't be sooner, but Toni and I gotta work so we'll have to squeeze it all in around that. Might have to pay them extra handsomely to work overnight, which I'd rather not do, but… hell, at this point, I'm just growing impatient with being patient about all this, I'll pay extra to hurry it up. I mean, Jack, our people are nocturnal, aren't we?" Terry moved over to put an arm around his son. "Eddy, you won't mind if they're hammering away till sunrise, right? You'll be up all night anyways watching porn, won'tcha?"

"Terry!" Toni snapped. "Don't embarrass your son in front of the guests like that!"

"No, Toni, what you don't understand is that the other four people in this room are guys, so we know that's a completely true statement, and arguably nothing to even be ashamed about! At his age, it'd honestly be even more alarming if he wasn't exploring what made his dingle tingle! Ain't that right, son!?"

Eddy shrugged, still looking pissed. He was wondering how much longer he could pretend to give a shit about his father.

Toni huffed. "Well if his new computer gets an e-STD from downloading something unclean, I'm not buying him another one." She turned to the prospective tenants (with whom she had gotten to know for fifteen or twenty minutes in a scene we cut for time, wherein she got along very well with the strangers and indeed was a much kinder person to talk to than her husband, taking the time to actually ask Jack and Bobby about their acting careers and such). "So… I think I speak for the both of us when I say that… there's a little alarm going off in both of our heads saying this is completely ridiculous of us to allow some people we've known for a few hours combined into our house, and… hey, for all we know, maybe you guys are notorious criminals and you're just that good at hiding it; we'd never know."

"I stopped watching America's Most Wanted when I heard that apparently the actors playing the criminals in the dramatizations kept getting arrested because people thought they were the criminals, and I found that just a little bit too fucked up to keep supporting that show," said Terry.

"But two things are true," his wife continued. "For one… we both consider ourselves pretty good at reading people, and we both got a pretty good read off you guys - even if there were some, ahem, hiccups along the way in the form of my husband instigating a dick-measuring contest -"

"Hey, lady, I didn't start anything, there couldn't have been a contest if he hadn't consented to participate! Woman, I wouldn't even argue that that's some troublesome male shit, but us guys are sitting here thinking your passive aggression is some troublesome female shit!"

Toni just kept rolling. "And secondly… guys, Terry and I have been in positions like this where we desperately needed a place to stay and we wished we could find a landlord that wouldn't ask too many questions and would just let us have what we needed at a reasonable rate… and, you know, being sneaky foxes, being scary predators in general, it couldn't have helped our case, I can't imagine it's helping you guys much either. We were never fortunate enough to find a housing situation that just made things easy, but this world ain't gonna start becoming a better place unless we start acting like the people we needed, now is it?"

The Merry Men had to smile at that. Hey, what she'd just said had been the entire ethos, pathos, and logos of their mission, wasn't it?

"And it warms our hearts to hear someone actively trying to go above and beyond to make this world a more bearable place, Miz V," said Robin, who could not for the life of him remember the rest of Antónia's Serbo-Hungarian surname of lupine origin.

"And if we may say so ourselves," added Johnny, "it ain't the desperation talking, we really are getting a good feeling about you guys, too. Yeah, we kinda hit a speed bump, but… eh, we're guys, we get it. I think it's safe to say they right now, we'd both be pretty comfortable rooming with you guys." (Well, one more than the other, and it was absolutely at least a little bit of the desperation talking.)

"Y'know what?" asked Terry. "Can I add a third thing?"

"Of course," said Toni.

"Alright, so… for better or worse, you two seem to get along well with my boy," Terry said as he patted his kit on the shoulder. "I mean, that's the important thing, isn't it? We're adults, but he's still a kid, and now he's gonna have completely random people living in his old bedroom. But he didn't seem creeped out when you guys approached him about the room or took his school email, he just… honestly, he seemed excited to do something grown-up like modify the house to make some extra money! Hey. Eddy. These guys seem cool to you?"

Eddy had zoned pretty far out, but he snapped back into reality when he heard that question. "Huh? Oh, oh yeah, uh… yeah, I'm cool with them. They seem chill. Uh… not afraid of them or nothing, if… that's what you're asking." Wow, he had just… he'd just successfully convinced his parents to do something stupid and irrational for what they didn't know was his benefit, didn't he? Stunning. Absolutely stunning. Never had he ever.

Terry shrugged, seeming resigned to this fate that these two guys who he had flipped the fuck out on were indeed good dudes, and that especially after his outburst, they deserved his generosity.

"Well, there you have it," he said. "If he's fine with a couple strangers hanging out in the room that used to be all his… ain't our place to complain, now is it? You guys gonna be available to help do some remodeling around… eh… 6 p.m. tomorrow?"

Of course, after all that fuss about which fox was the foxiest, Robin was still tongue-tied in the sheer disbelief that this was actually coming together so easily, and Johnny wasn't much more eloquent himself.

"Er - we can make ourselves available!" Robin beamed.

"For a steal like this, we can move some things around!" Johnny chimed in.

"Awesome," the patriarch remarked as he made his way to the door. "You guys wanna head to the kitchen so we can hammer out the details? Rule number one: I'm the top fox in this house!"

"No, I'm top fox," Toni said flatly as they all left the room, "as evidenced by the fact that I'm not so insecure that I have to remind people of it apropos of nothing. Ain't that right, boys? Deep down you both know that you each lost your little Foxy Charm Fight the second you chose to participate in it, right?"

The two tods came to a complete stop to give her a petrified look while she just kept walking, giving them both a bored glance.

"Yeah, that's right, I know that's what you two were doing. I know how tods are."

And between the kit who was still too young to fully understand his people's culture and the only guy in the house who didn't have a long red tail sticking out of his pants, they gave one another a glance and a shrug, neither having a clue what the heck the three adult foxes were on about.

-IllI-

"This still doesn't feel real," Johnny said as he and Robin walked away from the vulpine household about an hour later, all the I's dotted and T's crossed as much as all involved parties cared to have them. "And I still don't know if… crashing into some kid's house and taking over his family is a good decision - and I mean that as in both a smart decision and a moral decision."

"Come now, Johnny, do you really think these same thoughts aren't crossing my mind, too?"

"Uh, considering that you insist on doing your best to even convince me, your closest confidante, that you're one hundred percent confident in every decision you ever make… I honestly don't know anymore."

"Well the answer is yes, I am wondering whether this is an enormously stupid decision. But the fact of the matter is…" He held up his broken arm to take in once again all that it represented. "...I simply don't know how much longer we can coast on the same old luck. We need to mix things up - might as well take an opportunity for a better living condition while we can get it. Might help us better recharge our batteries for battle. And as much as I'll miss sleeping outside under the stars on a warm summer night… my lord, if I never have to relieve myself in a coffee can or take a bath in a river again, it'll be too soon."

Little John had to chuckle. "Man, I hear that!"

"Honestly, Johnny, what I'm feeling is that… this year needs to be the last year we do this. We can't do this forever. Either we need a conclusive victory this summer, or we need to figure a way to reintegrate into the civilian world without ever being found out. I have no idea which one would be easier, I've no idea which one would be the right path to take, but I just can't shake the feeling that we need to wrap this operation up soon or we'll really start going mad."

His friend was understandably nervous about hearing this. "And I totally get what you're feeling - God knows I wanna go back to being a free man, too, dude - but… I know I asked this the other day, even though it feels like a few years ago at this point, but what is next for us after this? Is it good? Is it bad? I agree, we can't stave it off forever, we have to face the future eventually, but… hey, maybe I'm just being a pussy about all this and I'm too comfortable with our miserable situation to actually make a move and take a risk for something better that might turn out worse, but man, courage and cowardice exist in all of us, and I'm definitely feeling both right now."

"And that's a very good way of putting it, old boy! I'm feeling the same way. I'm feeling the strength to finish this fight, but goddamn am I anxious about what's waiting for us after this. And perhaps that hesitance to see how this ends is why we've been subconsciously afraid to change our status quo for years."

There was a silence for a few moments before the fox decided to clarify something:

"I mean, this is why I've made no attempt to go easy on my arm. Am I damaging it further? Quite possibly, but if we're to go out with a bang -"

"Oh, Jesus, Robin, that's what I was afraid of!" the bear said as he came to a halt to give his friend a disapproving look. "There's being ballsy and sacrificing yourself for the people you're defending, but forcing yourself to use a body part that's not a hundred percent functional anyway in a way that's prolly just gonna permanently cripple you is more stupid than brave."

But as he often did, Robin just played it cool. "I'll tell you what, Johnny; let's get these lads up to snuff so they can do the grunt work for me! Or better yet, let's not lose hope on finding some adults to come join us at the last minute. As much as I'd love to take part in one more thrilling battle, I'm not too proud to step aside if it means we can get this done sooner - but first we must find someone to take my place before I step aside!"

Johnny had to nod along as he started walking again. "Alright, fair enough I guess… aw, now you got me thinking about Geoff again."

"Have I now? And all his heart-wrenching stories of dead children? My apologies for putting that negativity in your head, old chap."

"No, not that, more the - well, okay, fuck it, now I'm thinking of dead kids again - but more the part where he called us out for demanding some respect from that lady at the drive thru."

"Ah, I see. Hey, do you think that perhaps might have been the same cheetah woman who went off on us in the apartment in Hermosa Park?" Robin still wasn't proud of the retaliatory thoughts he'd had when he'd encountered that woman, but he still didn't know if anybody could face that much hostility without fantasizing about returning such hostility; he just hoped that the fact that he hadn't chosen to act on such thoughts was the best outcome he could have reasonably striven for.

"Naw, man, I fully believe that people who're beaten into bad attitudes like that aren't as rare as you'd like to think. And like you and I know, it ain't their fuckin' fault that they got dealt a shitty hand in life that gave them personality issues and didn't give them any reason to want to behave themselves - and Geoff knows we know that, but even he still thinks we need to be even more patient with them? Man… Rob, it's enough to get me thinking: is it that he's right and we really aren't being as patient as we should be with people like that who we're trying to help… or is the truth here that no mortal fucking person is capable of harboring such saintly amounts of patience with someone like her? Even if we know entirely that she has good reasons for being the way she is. Is it that our best isn't enough… or that nobody's best would ever be enough?"

Well, hell, there it was again: much like with the lady in the apartment, here was the notion that nobody short of a messiah could do better than simply make the least of several bad options in response to excessive negativity, and that they'd done the best as mortally possible - and he hoped this was the case, because he didn't want to believe that there was a better route in either case that the duo just weren't capable of taking. Robin wanted so badly to believe that he was doing the best he could and that his best was indeed enough, because he wanted to be a true hero to these people.

...Did this mean that if someone else came along with more skills, more patience, and more moral decision-making than he had and did a better job of performing heroics than Robin did, that Robin would reject that person for outshining him and making him feel inadequate, even if that hypothetical person's existence would have benefited the poor and desperate of this city more than his own did? Oh, Dear Reader, you silly goose, this is Robin Hood we're talking about; his self-confidence was far too strong for him to waste his time dwelling on such useless questions and troubling thoughts that could lead him to a position where he might have to ask himself whether he was actually a terrible person.

"I'll say one thing, Johnny: you are most assuredly the more reflective one between us. Probably something I should try harder to learn from you," the fox insisted, as much as the idea scared him to be as stuck in his own head as the bear was. Remember, Dear Reader, some very talkative people are very talkative because they don't want to be left alone with their own thoughts.

But ironically, Little John heard this fairly generic answer and interpreted it as Robin telegraphing that he didn't want to bum himself out by talking about the White Castle Incident anymore, so Johnny just dropped the subject altogether. And in doing so, the conversation ground to a halt and nobody said anything for a time.

Thus leaving Robin all alone with his thoughts. Y'know, speaking of potentially having to confront the fact that the content of his character may have included something that was a wee bit fucked up and arguably even evil, in a roundabout way, this had kind of lined up with his theory from the other day: that in a world where all species had evolved to seek things to enjoy in one another and to bond with each other over, if nobody found anything to like about you, then you simply must have been unlikeable. It wasn't quite a straight example, but in the context of that living room, wherein he had volunteered to let another man have the spotlight and willfully turned off his trademark charm - a trait which, if he was being honest, still baffled him in how it came across as genuine to everybody when he knew damned well that it was merely a learned habit, apparently they'd just done that good of a job at conditioning him in those blasted lessons - once this one key trait was removed, a trait that someone like Johnny would begrudgingly insist was truly something built into him but which Robin himself did not feel was anything truly special or intrinsic to him as a person, there seemed to be nothing to draw people toward him. Simply put, nobody liked him in that room not because he was actively repulsive or anything - just because there was nothing to actively like about him.

And you, Dear Reader, may well be reading this and thinking that our friend Robin here is jumping to insane conclusions over what really shouldn't have been that significant of a moment, but you must understand that this is where his head was capable of straying when he didn't have somebody to distract himself with over conversations of other, better, happier things.

He was thinking now about how Marian had once confessed to him that their old roommate Annie never really found him to be the most interesting bloke - not incapable of being interesting for a time or of doing interesting things, both of which Annie would freely admit Robin could do and had done, but in her head, she didn't see that as quite equivalent to being a fundamentally interesting guy. At the time, the tod and vixen had scoffed at the ewe's assessment of him; they thought her logic was illogical and her standard of interestingness too impossibly high, and living with him and being around for his mortal dull moments like everyone has had certainly skewed her perspective of him, as had her knowledge that he had indeed learned much of his ways in a classroom.

But whereas Marian was of the opinion that those lessons merely taught Robin how to use something that was already inside him and therefore that charm was genuine… in a weird way, Robin had kind of wanted Annie to be right. He didn't want to believe that this major part of his personality that so deeply resembled that of his arsehole father was something in his DNA because he didn't want any more of Robert Scarlett's DNA than he already had; if the price for that was accepting that all his attractive qualities were in some way rooted in this artificial persona and that he'd have nothing left to brag about without it, that would have been a price he'd have been willing to pay. Because at the end of the day, the main thing those lessons taught was self-confidence, and with that the students could do anything: they'd have the courage and strength to do bold things, they'd have the mindset and fortitude to teach themselves anything quickly and accomplish anything they put their mind to, and, lest we forget, they'd have the ability to get anybody to feel so enraptured by them that they could get anyone to do anything from sucking their dick to dying in a war for them. With a clear mind, Robin was more than happy to have those attributes, but there was always a little something in the back of his head that made him wonder whether he'd feel more himself without these things he'd taken after Robert Scarlett, even if that left him without very much at all.

Well after today, he had to conclude that he'd be better off being a spitting image of his biological father than not, because that little experiment seemed like proof that he really was empty without that. Yeah, you could argue that that was an extreme statement because he'd basically turned off his entire personality for the sake of Terry's ego; but in moments of anguish like these, he couldn't shake the feeling that all these things about himself that he thought were either reminiscent of an evil man or downright fraudulent were the extent of his personality. What did Robin have about him that his father didn't? He could think of one thing: a desire to be a good man in this world - and Christ, even that could be construed as that classic Scarlett Family narcissism taking the form him wanting to be known as a hero like Adam Bell, not at all a far cry from Robert wanting to be known as a rich and powerful man. For the longest time he'd wondered which reality would give him more peace: a reality where all the traits everyone loved about him really were fake, or one where they were in his blood as a prenatal reminder of from whence he came. He'd already decided that neither of those options was particularly appealing, but now add this seeming confirmation of his sneaking suspicion that he'd be nothing without these beloved qualities… he wasn't going to sleep well tonight.

Long before he'd run off to be a crusader of justice but after he'd quit his TV job over working conditions, Marian had joked that Robin was such a radical egalitarian that he didn't want to accept that his charisma was a natural trait of his not because of any association to his father but because he didn't want to believe he had an unfair advantage over other people, Mari of course being one of those people who firmly believed - at least in Robin's case - that he was just born with that it factor, this being one of the things she adored about him. Well, Marian, you may have gotten your wish: if today showed he didn't naturally have anything to make him interesting without using that charisma as a crutch, he might just have to hang onto it and own it as his own. He still didn't think it was 100% natural, and God knows Johnny would flip shit if Robin confirmed the bear's anxious suspicions on the matter, but after today's experience, wherever that charm came from, Robin didn't want to lose it ever again.

So… this is how it felt. To be fully rejected. To see other people having fun and just having no way to work yourself into it. What an eye-opener that maybe he did want to be the center of attention more than he'd be proud to admit and would lose his mind if he was completely deprived of it. Robin would wish to remind you, Dear Reader, he'd had his moments of rejection and isolation before, absolutely he had, but they had never been this extreme. Teenagers trying to make you feel bad out of general wayward antagonism isn't quite the same as two mature adults doing it completely without meaning to just because they're clicking with each other and not getting anything out of you; with the teenagers you can look back on it as a grown-up and rest assured that it was nothing wrong with you, but with the adults you have to wonder what you're failing to offer them that they've found in each other.

He'd been bullied, he'd been beaten, he'd been ridiculed and embarrassed, he'd been told to fuck off and had others not think he was worthy of being told as much, he'd had job interviews end with him being told he wasn't getting hired and auditions go down in flames so badly that you could write a dramatic play just about them themselves. But in all of those situations, he could think about it and identify a specific cause or causes: the other person was an arsehole, he made a bad play in a game, he said something incorrect a little too confidently, he could have tried harder to charm the other person or he could have backed off the gas when the charm clearly wasn't working on someone who couldn't be charmed by anybody, he could have exaggerated how qualified he was for a job instead of doubling down on making himself look eager to learn and he might have gotten that role had he not made the choice to play what was supposed to be a supporting character like the star of the show. In almost every moment like that, he could either conclude it wasn't his fault or find something he could fix for next time, and while others might fret over the mistakes they make, Brianna and Oliver had taught their son well to believe in himself enough to fix these errors, so as much as these experiences were unenjoyable in the moment, they had never bothered Robin for long.

This time, however, there hadn't seemed to be a clearly identifiable misstep he could have remedied. Maybe if he thought a little more about it, he could just say Terry was being an arsehole by ignoring him and that Robin could have tried a different tactic to be gregarious, but in that moment, watching a stranger instantly win over his friend and his friend completely ignoring him in favor of this stranger, their connection seeming so genuine, Robin knowing the entire time that he held the ability to steal the scene at any time if he wanted but consciously deciding not to because he thought that would be a wicked and selfish move like what his father would do… in that moment, it didn't seem like anybody had done anything wrong, it just felt to Robin like something was wrong with him, because through no fault of his own, they just didn't seem to like him. There had been understandable reasons for when he hadn't been a hot commodity for a pickup football match or not the right casting choice for a student play in university, but when the contest was a simple matter of being likeable? In the game of likeability, he certainly hadn't always been picked first - but he most certainly had never been picked last. And he most assuredly had never gone without being picked at all.

So this is how poor Johnny felt for his entire life, eh? How did he ever do it? How did he tolerate living this way for this long? Robin couldn't imagine. Going through that feeling of nonexistence for thirty minutes was hellish enough; to do so for thirty years? That would simply be no way to live. Alright, Little John, you got what you've always wanted, I finally have some modicum of an understanding of what it truly felt like to be you before I met you… and that if I weren't my father's son, that could just as well have been me, too. And hadn't Johnny said the other day in the tree that he often feels he's just the product of his environment too and that he doesn't think there's anything deep down inside of him either? Perhaps they weren't so different deep down, and Robin was merely better at playing the character of an interesting person, those acting classes and that fancy exotic accent likely doing a lot to help (his charm had always been a lot more potent on this side of the Atlantic, after all). Y'know, maybe that's why this fox and bear gravitated towards one another so greatly: neither of them knew who the fuck they were but saw the other seeing them as the people they wished they could be: true heroes and true friends. Whether that's beautiful or just depressing is not for this narrator to say. Because before they had settled on The Merry Men, they informally called themselves a merry band of misfits, and Robin hadn't just been playing along to be nice; as a result of his upbringing - his outlandish size and stature, his unorthodox family situation and dual class membership, and his belief in heroes and drive to become one in a world afraid to bring fantasy into reality - the fox really did identity as a misfit, a very well-adjusted misfit who could still hit it off with normal people and frequently did, but a card-carrying weirdo nonetheless. Now, however, Robin had to wonder whether he'd sort of appropriated the term "misfit" from the real oddballs of the world who were often shunned in ways he'd never been unfortunate enough to be, but hopefully now that he'd spent a day in their shoes he'd have at least a little bit toward penance.

And perhaps the worst part about all of this was that Robin knew for a fact that Johnny was probably feeling fuckin' great and Robin just wasn't able to be happy for him. The bear had yearned for oh so long to be seen as just as interesting as his famously fascinating fox friend - and now he'd been treated as someone so interesting that Terry didn't even want to look at Robin? Little John had probably been giddy as a schoolgirl the whole time all while his euphoria came at Robin's expense. You know, Robin really did believe that his bear friend had come such a long way since they'd met that somebody would probably call Johnny all those nice "C" words he wanted to be called - not everybody would call him that and not all the time, but Johnny absolutely had his moments of being charming, charismatic, cool, and all those words that he'd convinced himself Robin was and that he needed to become too, words that most certainly would never have been used to describe the bear seven years ago. And Robin was fully aware that he was probably standing in his friend's way; he played coy, but the fox knew that people did indeed see him as those things, he knew this because he had been raised to be these things. Robin thought Johnny could surely shine on his own if he could figure out how to get out of the fox's enormous shadow and stop comparing himself to someone who'd essentially had the personality of a compelling leader surgically implanted into their brain, and if they were just regular friends and not brothers in arms, Robin wouldn't blame Johnny if he decided to amicably stop hanging out with the fox in an effort to find his own people and lead his own way - something Robin knew his friend was also capable of because Johnny had certainly led him through some dark times when he needed him.

And that's why Robin hoped Little John wouldn't exercise his right to see himself out when all was said and done here. As much as Robin would have loved another friend around to relate to in ways he couldn't relate to Johnny, he still wanted to keep him around. Just like had been mentioned in the tense conversation: foxes seemed like they could all spellbind a crowd but still seemed to choose a select few for their closest relations… and now that Robin was confronted with his own ability to be boring, he was starting to wonder whether that wasn't as voluntary on the vulpine race's part as they'd like to think. So the stereotype is that foxes are charming? Well, hell, how can they all be charming? Here's an idea: maybe Robin's wasn't the only one whose charm was pretty generic and shallow. Maybe foxes had mastered the ability of coming across as these fascinating fellows and making it seem real for just long enough to get what they wanted before the person they were working their magic on figured out that it was all a ruse and that there wasn't really anything there. Maybe that there was another reason why the vulpine peoples had historically bonded with a family of species who stereotypically were the opposite of charismatic; foxes liked to think they chose their bear friends, but perhaps their bear friends were the only ones who would take those foxes. Two weeks ago Robin would have scoffed at the thought, but he was now wondering if his ability to make friends - actual, real friends, not just people who'd find him appealing at first but eventually tire of him when the charm grew stale - wasn't as strong as he once thought. And for that reason, he really didn't want to lose his bear.

And you could well be sitting there, Dear Reader, reading this long, twisted, cynical, bizarre extended internal monologue of his and wondering how the hell a guy like Robin Hood could ever come to think this way about himself when a quantifiably large amount of people still did think he was a lovely and genuine guy; hell, this narrator certainly thinks that a lot of this is ridiculous and would still kill to be a lot more like him (and given our circumstances, it would seem clear to me that his ways really are mostly nurture rather than nature if not for the fact that I can't seem to learn it myself even with his help - though he's of the opinion that there has to be at least a little bit of it somewhere in my nature but a nurtured sense of anxiety is suffocating it). To that, Robin Hood in modern day says this: that is just how disturbing it was to sit on that armchair in Eddy's house and feel for the first time what it was like to be blacklisted from his own reality.

(Plus, y'know… let's not forget that he was approaching the five-year anniversary of when he involuntary-manslaughtered his brother, it wasn't at the forefront of his mind or anything but it was certainly casting a pall over his mind. Shit, you wanna argue he's a disgusting narcissist who'd just be bitter if a better hero came along? I'll help you out, toss the thing about Will in there for bonus points.)

Seriously, though, this little paraphrased soliloquy has gone on long enough, don't you think? Not that Robin disagreed, he just couldn't stop thinking about it, and it didn't help that Johnny was staying dead silent, believing that Robin didn't want to talk, and Robin just couldn't think of anything else to say with these thoughts so densely clouding his mind. He desperately needed something to distract him from the moment when he finally experienced firsthand how Johnny had felt all those times in his life when he'd felt erased from existence.

"...What the fuck is this?"

And he got it.

"What the fuck is this!?" Johnny repeated, getting Robin's attention.

"What is it?" the fox asked as he turned to see what had gotten his friend's attention.

"I'm gonna kill him," the bear growled as his eyes burned into the sheet of paper on the lightpost. "I'm gonna actually fucking murder him."

And now even more than he would have a few hours ago, Robin understood why his friend would feel that way. Robin's head really must have been fogged over if he didn't even notice he'd walked by a picture of his own face staring at him.

WANTED
NOTTINGHAM CITY AND COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE

Robert Edward
"ROBIN" HOOD

`"?c,. '! '
MMMc ?MMh. .'`!
MMMMMMM ?MMMMMc `!. ``!
?MMMMMMh MMMMMMh. ``!;, `!;
MMMMMMM.`MMMMMMMMcc ```'''`!
MM.?M"Mh MMMMMMMM" ,cccMhccc, ````'`!
MMM'M MM ?MMMMMP zMMMMMMMMMMMc ?Mhcc,,.```!
MMMc`r?M MMMMP JMMM" _,. "MMM`MMMMMMMMcc,``!
`."?c,`P JMMMM JMMF ,MMMMh MMM',MMMMMMMMMMMh. `!
`?cd' ,cMMMMM.`MM JMMP"" MMF JMMMMMMMMMP"".,. `';,
.,,ccMMMMML,,.." "?M zMP zMMMMMMM"".zcMMMM z.'`'-
,MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMc,. -=="". "MMMMM" ,JMMMMMMP MMMMMcccccc,.
,JMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM zccr _`"?M" zMM"' "MF,MMMMMMMMMMMMMMcc,.
zcMMMMMMMMMMMM?MMMMMMMP""`"""?MMccC JM",ccMMc JFMMMMMM?""',.,,cccc=
-)MMMMMF ,.`".,nmnn,.`""'.xn$$" "?M "? `MP""`,MF`MMMP",cdMMMMMMMMM"'
,P"MMMMP $$$$$$$$$$$ . C$$$$$$, "h.. " JM"M" zP""''_,,MMP"
' MMMMM `"$$$$$$$$$$$$ 4$$$$$$b ?MM "'ccMMF P ",c?MMMMMMP"
-,MMMMMc J$$$$$$$$$$$$L $$$$$$$n .xh ?Mh.`"?",Jh MMMMM?"""
zMMMMMMF $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ `4$$$$$$b.,,nm$$$$b MMMMMccMMMM ?""',,="
MMMMMMMM."$$$$$$$$$$$$$ ; "4$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P,MMMMMMMMMMMc-?"
,MM?""""? `$$$$$$$$$$$$,' - ,;;,`4$$$$PP "'`MMMMMMMMMMMMh
`" )$$$$$$$$$$$$ !. .' .n$x;,`?MMMMMMMMMMM%
$$$$$$$$$$$$,`!;,'' u$$$$$$$n.`"?MMMMMMMMc
$$$$$$$$$$$$$x `' .,n$$$$$$$$$$$$n."?MMMMMC"
,$$$$$$$$$$$$""$$n$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$br MMMMF.
J$$$$$$$$$$$$$n,,.xn$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$' .,cMMMMc
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$' JMMMMMM?M
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P ?" `" '
; `$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P
; 4$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P

;!; 4$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.!;

WANTED FOR ARMED ROBBERY, BURGLARY, ASSAULT, CONSPIRACY, DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC PROPERTY, VANDALISM, AND DISTURBING THE PEACE

ROBIN HOOD
is the leader of a gang of thieves known to target wealthy and powerful individuals.
Thought to be living in or around Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve.
Gang known to use medieval weaponry; Hood said to carry a bow and arrow.
Other members unknown but thought to answer to Hood.

ROBIN HOOD is a red fox, stands approximately 4'10" and is a native of Great Britain.

ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS
IF SEEN, CALL 9-1-1 IMMEDIATELY!

A message from the Nottingham City and County Sheriff's Office
And the Office of John L. Norman, Mayor of Nottingham

There were no other names and photos on the poster, nor any adjacent posters referring to anybody else.

"Johnny, I'm sorry."

"I'm gonna fucking kill him."

*A.N.* Y'all in the mood for a gigantic, rambling author's note? I'm feeling a gigantic rambling author's note.

-This wasn't supposed to take so long after posting Part 1 and I wouldn't have posted that as early as I did if I'd have known that it would take so long to wrap it up. Eh, with any luck, most people reading this will have stumbled upon it far into the future and the release timing won't make a difference to them. Watch this story pop off in popularity in five years' time lol.

-The references I was referring to in the author's note last time was whether anybody would get the super obscure sources of the Merry Men's new last names. Didn't get them and wanna try again? Tell me why I made the Pittsburgh pitcher a lion.

-Speaking of the baseball game, I'd already had the idea to have a dumb little line where Terry makes things awkward by making a "Dammit, Bobby" joke - but then looking into a baseball game he'd have logically been watching that day, I came across a Pirates player I'd never freaking heard of called Bobby Hill. I love when things just work out that way.

-And on the topic of grown-up cartoons, that King of the Hill joke led to that discussion of adult animated sitcoms from that turn-of-the-century boom, leading to the line about Eddy watching Family Guy on Adult Swim; just the other day, long after writing that line, I found out that Family Guy had just stopped rerunning on Adult Swim the other day because Disney pulled the rerun rights away from Turner. Among other topical jokes (e.g. Texas), that one was not intentional.

-Some corrections: I could have sworn Eddy's brother's car was an El Camino. Apparently it's canonically a Plymouth Fury. I sloppily fixed it and now we'll never see the car again. Sue me.

-I also realized while writing this that I have no idea if I'm using the word "smarmy" correctly but I can't think of a better word so I'm sticking with it. Sue me.

-And it took me way to long that for all of the references to Robin's "etiquette classes", oh yeah, Brits tend to say "lessons" over "classes". Sue me baby one more time.

-Last correction: Johnny's line towards the end there about "are we not patient enough or could NOBODY be patient enough?" was supposed to be a line from Geoff last chapter. I just… forgot lol.

-ASCII art from here: .uk/art/robhood though I had to modify it for a white background. I wanted to actually use one from here: /topic/fox (scroll down until you see the portrait of a fox in a suit and tie) but it just would NOT format correctly.

-Randomly came across this while in the writing process: watch?v=qEV9qoup2mQ&t=328s Toldja he wasted a dude.

-Also stumbled upon this meme horoscope while writing and I gotta say, for both Robin's and LJ's "real" and "fake" birthdays, it matches pretty well memegod786305/posts/174593754776854

-And Facebook KEEPS SHOWING ME THIS MEME memegod786305/posts/174259821476914

-Johnny, I see you, too TheDopeAMeme/posts/262235499235906 I can do this shit all night long, son.

-Also during the writing process, two things happened: Hurricane Ida happened, which I feel weird about because I had JUST had a chapter refer to 2005 being a terrible year for hurricanes (although apparently 2020 was even worse and nobody noticed!?). A little late, but if you feel so inclined, I encourage you to toss some money to the Red Cross or something; I'd put a link here but I've heard of stories getting removed from AO3 for posting links to places asking for money? Also the twentieth anniversary of you-know-what passed, that event being another key event in my fic's mythos for undoing all the Merry Men's progress. That said, I spent the whole day just thinking… man, did my teacher REALLY not have the TV onto the news that day like all the other teachers in the country did? I mean, okay, we were in first grade, but I feel robbed of a key American experience for not seeing it live when everyone else did and I'd've been old enough to remember it (I had just turned 7 a few days prior - y'know, it's messed up, but as a kid my favorite number was 11 and I distinctly remember being a little kid (less than 7 of course) telling my mom or gramma or someone that I wished my birthday was a few days later on September 11th instead). Ya wanna know the worst part though? As I was trying to remember whether or not the teacher had the TV on that day… my first instinct was to Google it. This isn't normal.

-And finally, everyone say hi to A***, my friend who knows about this fic and insists he wants to read it now. He's never gonna read this because he doesn't wanna read it on AO3 because he thinks this website will give him viruses or something. But he's actually been helpful in writing this section. A Southerner himself, he helped me find the terms "plantation Southern" and "educated Southern" to describe Little John's faint but unmistakable accent. He also was the first person to confirm to me what I'd been suspecting for a while: that Robin's in-movie voice is WAY. TOO. MOTHER. FUCKING. DEEP. Certainly much, much deeper than he remembers to the point that it does not match the fox's face. Here's a clip to judge for yourselves if you don't believe me (with some sophomoric censorship thrown in for fun!): watch?v=bPbnmIwlUuE Like, for context, the very day before I had him watch that clip, my vocal coach explored my potential singing range and concluded that it's actually comparable to Little John's (keeping in mind that singing and speaking voices aren't always the same, but neat!), and then here comes A*** saying "No, Doby, Robin Hood's voice is even deeper than yours." Aw, c'mon, A***, my voice is like my only manly or attractive attribute, don't tell me that I lose to a cartoon fox on that front, too! lol. But then again, this is a guy who hadn't thought about Disney movies in a while and was operating under the impression that Robin Hood… and The Jungle Book… were the same movie? Like, apparently he genuinely thought that Robin Hood (only the furry version though!) legit hung out with a naked bear named Baloo and that "The Bare Necessities" was from the Robin Hood movie. Uh… dude. Maybe I shouldn't be taking his opinion as gospel. Yeah, no, A***, I agree that Robin's voice, nice as it is, doesn't match his character design, but you are smoking crack if you think it's *significantly* lower than mine when I get told that I sound like an old man and when it's enough to offset my Andy Milonakis face and stop me from getting carded at liquor stores. A*** would be pissed that I'm saying this about him but he's never gonna get this far. Anyway, with my suspicions confirmed, I will now be adding Robin's impossibly manly voice to the list of his impossibly great attributes that drive our narrator (who has been established to not be quite the same as me) stark raving mad.

Alright, that's all I got for ya. Peace and love, everyone.