71. "Without Fear and Beyond Reproach (The Good Knight), Pt. 4"

Johnny promptly bent over to help Robin back to his feet, Mari and Annie coming over to help. Surely it goes without saying that at this point that everybody in the restaurant had their eyes on them.

"Rob, talk to me, you alright!?" the bear asked, stern with concern as he and the ladies put the fox back in his seat.

Robin's head was swinging back and forth, and he seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes open, but it seemed more like he had a really bad migraine than a concussion. "Arrrgh, he knackered me good, I'll admit…" he mumbled.

"Robin, dear, look at me!" the vixen pleaded to her tod.

"I… I-I'll be alright, my love." Robin was doing the best he could to speak clearly despite his throbbing head. "Just… just give me a minute, if you please."

"We won't be giving you a minute."

The quartet looked up to see the Californian kangaroo approaching, hands behind his back and looking composed and dignified, not an ounce of apprehension to be found as he confronted the infamous criminals.

"Who the hell are you!?" Johnny growled.

"Now, you I can understand not recognizing me," Mr. Underdown sneered, "but your friend? Hmph… he met me face-to-face, he met all of us face-to-face, but maybe if we weren't simply generic targets to him, he'd've remembered us."

"'All of us'!?" demanded the sheep for clarification.

Ashley nodded as he gestured around to all the other rich couples who'd been robbed at Towers Beach earlier that day - the deer, the muskrats, the boars, the bearcats, and more, probably ten or a dozen couples altogether. And they were spreading out around the restaurant to encircle their enemies, making a point to grab all the medieval weaponry off the walls before the experts in the room could get to them.

"You'll have to pardon my, uh… my associate's utter lack of tact and decorum," the kangaroo continued, "he decided to go rogue. But to his credit… it was one hell of an icebreaker."

His girlfriend came to his side and filled in some of the blanks: "That bloody pom robbed all of us at the beach today! Stupid Ronnie mighta jumped the gun, but you cunts were gonna get it one way or another while we had the chance!"

The criminals and their lady friends needed no further explanation. And as much as each of them wanted to chide Robin for getting distracted by romance and not being more observant throughout the evening (including Robin, perhaps more than the other three, wanting to verbally chastise himself), they knew they couldn't waste time on such silliness. They had to figure a way out of this dilemma; they were more than a wee bit fucked.

Since they weren't talking as the barons awaited an answer, this opened the door for the closest thing to an authority to speak up: Julie, the maître d' and acting manager, who knew she needed to say something but just had absolutely no idea what - not even to speak ill of her leadership skills, this just wasn't a situation she ever expected to find herself in in a million years. Can you blame her?

"Alright, wait, everybody chill out," the hippo said as she walked up to the scene, hands up to halt everyone. "I don't know what happened between all of you earlier, but I'm not letting you solve it by trashing our restaurant!"

"That big fat asshole already trashed your restaurant by throwing my husband through a table!" Marcia protested, pointing at a bear who wasn't pleased to be described that way but was nevertheless used to it.

"Yeah, after your husband assaulted one of our paying customers who was minding his own business!" the maître d' shot back.

But Ashley was keeping his cool. "Telling that you're siding with them," he observed. "You know, a few couples among us saw when these four entered your establishment, apparently they got to cut in line because they were friends with the owner? Is that so?"

Julie's confidence evaporated on the spot. Part of her wanted to keep arguing that yes, they actually were friends with the owner, and to keep up the ruse that they were genuine civilians… but much, much more of her knew immediately that that'd be a waste of breath. These wealthy victims had figured it all out, and she knew it.

"Hey!" Johnny snapped at the patrons who were raising swords and pointing bows loaded with arrows at them. "You put those things down! You already cold-clocked the kid, you think this is a fair fight to go after him when he's down!?"

"Och, have none a' ya's ever been taught that fighting dirty is cowardly!?" added the Scottish sheep, who knew well the code of brawl conduct.

But the kangaroo just scoffed. "You know what we think is cowardly? Robbing us blind behind our backs." Having maintained a dreadfully blank and formal expression up until this point, Mr. Underdown was now allowing himself to smirk. "You've wronged us, greatly so, and we have an opportunity to pay you back. You think we want a fair fight? Pfft… the legends about you guys is that you're a couple of Don Coyote types obsessed with old-fashioned chivalry, social codes that no longer exist, if they ever really existed at all. You really must be living in Fantasyland if you think anyone's gonna give a shit about honor in combat when doing away with you leeches."

The bear, the ewe, and the vixen all had looks of disgust on their face - in part because they were genuinely taken aback by these people's brazen refusal to play fair, but a big part of it was also to hide any signs that they were truly concerned about their situation. Yes, they'd fought their way out of situations like this before where they'd been outnumbered by antagonists with weapons - but this time there were only four of them, all unarmed, and one of them was drunk and crippled.

But then, amid the tense silence, the drunk cripple started chuckling groggily.

"Heh, heh, heh… I'd like to see any of you lot know how to use those," Robin dared the wealthy weapon-wielders who surrounded them.

Unbeknownst to the four of them, however, they had allies after all.

"Shiiit, this is not good, this is NOT good…" Christian the fisher murmured under his breath as he peeked out the kitchen door, while above him, Desmond the tiger was waving over all the other servers stranded on the sudden battlefield to very carefully make their way towards them. "This is two days in a row that a giant fight's broken out while I'm at work. Is it me? Should I buy a lottery ticket?"

"Chris, hush!" Kwame spat at the sardonic mustelid while Desmond and Trent helped shuffle Lillian, Kayla, and Gaëtan into the safety of the kitchen, joining them along with the three cooks and Zach the busboy. But without even having to converse out loud, they all understood that they weren't meant to take shelter there for long.

"Alright, those guys need our help," the zebu said authoritatively. "Whaddawe think, do we got time to form a strategy or are we just gonna have to guerrilla-warfare this?"

…Ah, excuse me, Dear Reader, I guess there was one among them who didn't feel called upon to throw themselves into the fight:

"Alright, if this isn't the right time for someone to explain who these people are and what the hell is going on, I don't know what is!" Jace said to his coworkers, looking each and every one of them in the eye as he did, defying any of them to break their coyness about their controversial guests.

They didn't want to, they really didn't, but they wordlessly agreed that it would probably be prudent to actually fill him in now that all this was happening. The one among them who'd spoken to all four of the mysterious diners volunteered to do the explaining:

"Alright, sooo…" Trent took a moment to brainstorm the best way to phrase things. "...The fox and the bear. Those two dudes are… thieves."

"Thieves!?" Jace had vaguely remembered the others alluding to Kayla's parents narrowly avoiding being robbed by these strangers, but he hadn't thought that that would be the strangers' main trait. And that wasn't the only thing he remembered: "And these guys are popular!?"

"F-for a good reason!" the Arctic fox stammered; he wasn't afraid of Jace hurting him so much as he was afraid of Jace waltzing out of the kitchen and joining the villains if the waiter didn't make his point quickly enough. "They don't just rob anybody for the fuck of it, they… they target greedy rich people. A-and they even let the rich people off the hook sometimes if they get the vibe that they're actually not bad people! Like if they do philanthropy and shit!"

"Unless they're obviously just doing it for tax purposes," the tayra cut in.

"...What Dom said. But anyway!" the server continued. "They don't just keep what they steal, though! They give it out to poor people - the British fox was famously inspired by Adam Bell and he's playing it completely straight."

But far from being shocked, disgusted, or even perhaps pleasantly surprised, the buck was simply confused. "Adam Bell, RINGS a bell, but I don't actually remember who that is."

Everybody among them was even more confused than he was. Amid a chorus of wait, what?s and what the fuck?s and you're kidding, right?s, the porcupine tried to genuinely elucidate him:

"You know, Adam Bell!" Lillian stressed, clearly frustrated. "British guy who steals from the rich to give to the poor!? They've made fifty bajillion movies about the character!? Our generation mostly knows the Sidney cartoon version where they're all humans!?"

The deer's face scrunched up a little more before he suddenly clocked something and started chuckling. "Oh! Yeah, never saw that. My mom didn't want me watching a movie where the hero was a criminal, and my dad didn't want me watching Sidney movies in general because he thought they were for girls and he didn't want me to turn out gay."

Some rolled their eyes, some facepalmed, many of them groaned, and a few just gave him blank, unimpressed stares.

"Eh, in his defense, I didn't have it on tape either as a kid," Domingo noted boredly, "VHSes were luxury items growing up. But listen, Jace…" He paused to get back into a serious tone and expression. "...You're just gonna have to take our word for it that these guys they got cornered out there… are the good guys who need our help." He paused again, this time daring to peek out the door to see if anything else had transpired, but the combatants were all still talking, still as statues. "Fuck, we got a Mexican standoff in a French restaurant… French, Mexican, standoff, there's a Cinco de Mayo joke in there somewhere-"

"The hell does all this got to do with Mexican Independence Day!?" demanded an offendedly perplexed Kwame. "Y'all got your independence from Spain, not France!"

The tayra shut the door and looked like he was trying to hold back laughter. "...Homie, Cinco de Mayo isn't Mexican Independence Day, that's in September."

The hippo instantly looked mortified.

"Now you're gonna be getting Racism Points, K-Dog!"

"Why the fuck am I gettin' Racism Points for not knowin' some shit about Mexico most people who ain't Mexicans prolly don't even know!?"

"Would you not be giving Jace Racism Points if he thought that Kwanzaa was African Independence Day?"

"Wait," the buck cut in, "If Kwanzaa isn't African Independence Day, then what is!?"

"BOYS!" Kayla barked at them. "This isn't the time for this! Are we making a plan, or are we improvising?"

The chefs stopped their bickering and looked around at each other, visibly annoyed and not saying a word for a moment.

"...Well, can't make a plan until we know whose side Jace is gonna be on, now can we?" Domingo sneered.

"Jace," Zach said, stepping forward towards the deer, "we're sure you've been raised to believe that rich people are good people who've earned everything, and poor people are bad people who're stupid and lazy, but we do not have the time to explain to you why everything you've probably been taught about society and economics is completely retarded. But I wanna stress something…" The zebu put his hooved hands together, then gestured them as one towards his subject. "You might identify with the rich people, but your parents disowned you and now you work here, you're one of us now. We ask you: recognize that, and side with the people who are actually your people."

Jace did not seem to think that was some profound line of logic that shook his beliefs to their core; rather, for the second time in that short period, he started chuckling, sounding very confident and self-satisfied.

"And you know what?" he snickered. "...You're right, Zach! I am broke now! I am one a' you guys! But…!"

He turned and faced the others, looking at each and every one of him as he spoke with the conviction and body language of a preacher at a pulpit:

"...Does that mean I always have to be?" he proposed. "Does that mean any of us have to always be broke? Because I might be relatively new to this, but shit, I learned fast, it is not easy to get out of this hole! But is it… impossible?" He smirked as wide as his mouth could go. "I don't think it is. By siding with these criminals who're just keeping the poor people comfy and not inspiring them to do more, you're saying that you're resigned to be poor forever! But whereas these rich people… hell, I'm not saying they're saints, but can they all be evil? Is that even possible? In siding with the successful people, you're sending a message: I can be like them one day! I'm not gonna write them all off as monsters, I wanna join them! I'm gonna strive for better things in this life instead of just accepting the cards I've been dealt! You're saying I'm not giving up! Now, then…" A dramatic pause as he made eye contact with each and every one of them. "...Are you all gonna join me in striving for better things… or have you all given up?"

His audience was stunned, and for a moment, you could hear a pin drop.

Then they all started talking over each other, and while we've lost track of who said what, those there that night recall remarks such as these:

"...Was that supposed to be profound?"

"No, just no…"

"Jesus, how embarrassing…"

"Did he actually just say all that?"

"Look at that satisfied look on his face…"

"Dude, are you a fucking cartoon character!?"

"He actually thinks he gets it."

"Really, Jace?"

"You would, Jace."

"I'm gonna kick your ass for this, Jace."

and

"FUCK BUSH!"

The buck just put his hooves on his hips and huffed. "Do you people want me to not stand up for what I believe in!?"

"We want you to believe in something else, dipshit!" hollered the zebu. "Like reality!"

"Wait, wait, Zach, chill out," Domingo told the busboy, hand up to stop him, "...I think I have a proposal. Jace…" the tayra stressed as he turned to face the deer, giving an air of complete seriousness, "...if you help us fight off the rich people and save this city's secret heroes… we'll erase all your Racism Points."

The others collectively gasped at such an extreme offer.

But not Jace; he was sure there was a catch. "And you're not just gonna add them right back five minutes later?" he asked with narrowed eyes.

"Correct," Domingo vowed.

"...How can I believe you?"

"I'll admit, you're gonna have to trust that the integrity of my word means something to me-"

"I want it in writing."

"JACE, WE DO NOT HAVE TIME TO PUT IT IN FUCKING WRITING-!"

"Hollup," the hippo interrupted casually, then turned to the buck. "...Since we'd be fightin' off a bunch a' wealthy types… we'll also take away your Rich Kid Points."

Jaws dropped, Dear Reader. Jaws dropped.

"Those are hard to get rid of!" observed the Arctic.

"I can vouch for that!" agreed the moose. "I'd know, I've tried!"

"We're talkin' the Rich Kid Points you don't lose just from your parents cuttin' you off," Kwame elaborated, his face like stone and his voice like ice. "The Rich Kid Points that never leave you because your brain just plain formed different from ours 'cause you ain't never had to really struggle for a damn thing like even middle fuckin' class kids had to at least once in a while. So… what's it gonna be, J?" He raised an unimpressed eyebrow, daring the deer to prove him wrong.

Alas, the buck's head and his heart seemed to be quarreling inside him. Appearing no more pleased with his lack of a decision than anybody else, Jace simply buried his lips into the crook between his thumb and forefinger and turned to face the floor to have a good long think.

"Alright, well, while you ponder the easiest decision of your life," the tayra resumed, "there's only one other person among us whose loyalty is up in the air." He turned to the chamois, clearly not trying to be cynical but clearly not expecting much. "Frenchie: can we count on you to side with us on this one?"

Gaëtan hadn't said much since they'd all huddled in the kitchen; one could be forgiven for thinking he wanted no part of this. But in truth, he was just letting the Americans amuse him with their silly squabbling before the real action began. When the chicano asked for his loyalty, the Frenchman simply smirked at the foolishness of the question.

"Ah, but of course!" the chamois exclaimed proudly. "Do we French not have a strong reputation of refusing to tolerate the abuses of the bourgeoisie elites!?"

And everyone else in the kitchen immediately started giving one another utterly bewildered looks, wondering what the hell this guy was talking about.

"Uh… no?" Domingo answered timidly. "Uh… I mean, guys, correct me if I'm wrong, but I just… I just assume all you Europeans are fancy-schmancy types who worship rich people. You guys with me on this?"

He looked to his fellow Americans, all of whom nodded or verbally agreed in some capacity.

"I-I mean," Trent spoke up, "I know I always thought that the 'French surrendering' stereotype had such staying power because your culture was dominated by rich people who couldn't handle going to war themselves if they didn't have poor people to fight for them."

"Yeah," added Jace, taking a break from his contemplation, "after 'surrender' jokes, when I think of French people, I think of British people but even gayer. With their little hats. What're they called? Toupées?"

"Go back to pondering, Jace," Kwame grumbled.

"Okay."

Meanwhile, Gaëtan just kept glowering at everybody else. "There is this event in history, it is called the French Revolution, perhaps you have heard of it!?"

Another round of sheer and undiluted confusion from all the staff members.

"Well…" Lillian spoke up, "...at my high school, European History was an elective class…"

"Yeah, mine too," Desmond agreed, "and basically no one ever elected it because… why would they?"

"They do not teach you Americans about the French Revolution in school!?" the chamois snapped.

"Why would they teach us about the French Revolution in American schools, motherfucker, it's an entirely different country!" Christian retorted without missing a beat.

Gaëtan huffed and turned to the moose. "Mademoiselle Kayla, you with your monied, well-to-do education, surely you know of the French Revolution!?"

Kayla couldn't help but look a tad embarrassed. "Ehhh, there was a European History class, but that was on the advanced track, and I, uh… well, I wasn't, heh heh," she explained bashfully.

"Yeah, same with me," added Jace, "the Euro class was for the AP fags."

"Goddammit, Jace, do we need to add Gay-Hating Points!?" said the tayra. "I mean, no homo, but the way you said that word so automatically, I'd bet you hate them, too!"

"Hey, it's not like I actually think AP nerds are all gay, it's just a word you use to describe-!"

"Did you make up your mind or not?" the hippo asked, crossing his arms and looking even more pessimistic than before.

And the deer took a deep breath through his nose before replying. "...I think I've made my decision."

Some among them found their eyes popping open in anticipation, others looked as excited as a student in math class. And Jace met all of their eyes as he scanned their faces.

"So to recap… I'd lose all Racism and Rich Kid Points… without immediately getting them back?"

"That's right," said Kwame firmly. "You might get them back further in the future if you fuck up again, but… grace period first."

The buck looked at each of them once more… before locking eyes with Desmond. "Throw in T-word privileges, and I'm down."

"JESUS CHRIST, JACE!"

"HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK, DUDE!"

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?"

And there were still other exclamations in the same vein, but none of them came from the jungle cat himself. Instead, Desmond simply walked forward and grabbed Jace by the back of the neck.

"Wait, what the hell are you doing!?" the buck protested as the tiger started walking him towards the swinging door.

"Des, what are you doing?" the tayra echoed, while others asked similar questions under their breath.

Desmond didn't bother verbalizing his reply, instead choosing to let his actions speak louder than words. Like a barkeep tossing out a drunkard, he threw the deer out of the kitchen door and into the warzone outside, Jace stumbling and crashing into a table that collapsed almost as loudly as he'd yelped when it did.

Everyone saw him; the good guys, the bad guys, and all the innocent bystanders in between. And as he looked up from the rubble, he looked around and saw all the expressions they were giving him; some shocked, some appalled, and some very, very curious.

Interestingly enough, it was the stag from the unrelated deer couple who spoke first: "Who the hell are you?"

"Looks like one a' them chefs!" hypothesized Lisa.

Her date scoffed. "Seeing how clumsy he is, it's no wonder our food's been taking so long."

"And why it sucks!" added the boar gentleman.

"We got our food and it tasted like cigarettes!" said the binturong woman.

"I don't think I want someone like that handling my food anyway, just look at him!" spat the muskrat wife.

Jace wasn't saying a word. He was simply too mortified.

And as he looked around the room, he saw all the glares of the armed and armored wealthy patrons, and he knew then that they saw him as someone somehow… beneath them. Never had he ever thought that his own people would see him as an other like this.

But then he laid eyes upon the four guests who had been the center of so much attention: the ewe looked astounded to see the poor buck take such abuse; the empathetic vixen looked like she was about to start weeping for an innocent casualty caught in the crossfire; the tod drunkenly trying not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation; and the bear giving him the blankest look anyone could have possibly given him. And with such an agnostic tone, with just a little hint of singsong in his voice, Johnny looked Jace dead in the eye and asked,

"Which side are you on, boy?" Not too aggressive to scare the deer off, nor too desperate to tip off that he was trying to recruit him, the bear called upon the buck's inner sense of justice and morality by invoking lyrics from an old folk song Alan had been fond of singing, particularly when the coyote's own personal politics started to skew much more radical before his incarceration. "...Which side are you on?"

And Jace could feel something deep inside himself scream an answer to that question, an answer that seemed right but felt so wrong, an answer that seemed so alien to the person he was raised to be. But he couldn't spit the words out, and since he couldn't answer Johnny, Ronnie did instead:

"Aw, whose side do you think he's on!?" the antelope hollered between seethes of agony as he slowly stood from the wreckage he'd come to lay in. By some miracle, he hadn't broken his back - and a good thing he didn't, because after that racing horse became a quadriplegic in the last multi-part chapter, that would've been really redundant story-wise.

The bear twitched for a moment, evidently wanting to shut the antelope back up before remembering that they were surrounded by people with weapons, at least a few of which must have known how to use them.

"Look at him!" Ronnie jeered, wobbling on his feet as he pointed to the cook. "He works here, for Christ's sakes! He's clearly just some whitetail trailer-trash, of course he's gonna side with these assholes! If he came from any kind a' respectable background, his people woulda gotten him a better job than this - unless he's just that much of a fuck-up!"

It was then that the young buck knew whose side he was truly on.

"YOU SON OF A BIIIIIIITCH!" Jace screamed at the top of his lungs as he stood himself up, put his head down, and before the antelope could ready his own natural weapon, the deer had used his antlers to scoop Ronnie up and throw him down through yet another table.

"FUCK!" Mr. Hurd screamed after getting slammed through a hard surface once again.

And off on the sidelines at the door to the kitchen, Kwame and Domingo were watching.

The hippo just shook his head for a moment before speaking: "Man, we absolve this whitetail boy of Racism Points and the first rich dude he attacks just happens to be the antelope brother."

"Didju expect anything less from him?" asked the tayra.

Everyone was startled by the sudden attack, and the armed rich people all turned to their leader, hanging on his permission to start their attack. In turn, Mr. Underdown looked to the bear, the vixen, and the tod - themselves appearing livid, aghast, and inexplicably chipper, respectively - and without wasting too much time before kicking their asses, the kangaroo indulged in a quick quip to taunt them.

"Well, that settles that question!" Ashley sneered. "Now…! We're gonna make you regret-"

POP!

"GAAAH! FUUUCK!" the barons' ringleader cried out as he collapsed to his knees, clutching his scalp as blood ran down into his eyes and mouth.

Grinning like the mad lass that she was, Annie threw down the remaining neck of the wine bottle she'd just broken over the kangaroo's head, shattering that as well on the varnished wood floor as she looked around and each and every one of their enemies. "OCH, DO THE REST A' YE LADDIES WANNA DANCE!?"

And that was about the precise moment when shit went down.

Now, I'm going to have to beg for your understanding, Dear Reader, as surely you can understand that a whole bunch of wacky hijinks happened more or less altogether at once. But as I try to sloppily cobble together a bunch of overlapping events into something resembling a linear narrative, there is one action taken during this commotion that should be addressed first.

It began with all the restaurant staff running out of the kitchen to fight alongside their heroes. They didn't have a plan, but all of them had been winging it in life so far and were still breathing, so why should this moment have been any different? But there was one among them who seemed to be staying behind - at least for a moment.

The hippo was the next-to-last to leave the room, seeing it as his duty as the big guy to keep his people in his line of sight as they rushed the battlefield. But he stopped in the doorway and turned to the one who seemed to be hanging back.

"...Dom, you not comin'!?" asked Kwame, puzzled and a bit worried by his coworker's lack of urgency.

But far from succumbing to cowardice, Domingo had a plan to further fluster their enemies, as well as to prop up their hero. "Hey, if Dom wants to hear some American music, I've got some American music! I'll be there in a sec, I think you're gonna like it!"

The hippo shrugged and hurried out the door, and the mustelid made his way over to the sound system.

The speakers in the dining room had been hooked up to a boombox with a satellite radio player installed, set to a French Oldies station. But one could easily turn the player off and play something from a CD. Domingo grabbed his backpack and flipped through the discs of pirated music he kept in a thick carrying folder, until he found the one he wanted.

The song he had in mind was probably the last thing any outsider would ever call appropriate for scoring the soundtrack to a brawl in a French restaurant. But Domingo had been correct in saying this song was an American classic: an early-Seventies pop cover of an early rock-'n'-roll staple, from the first solo album by arguably the most famous American singer of all time, a young version of that zebra from Gary, Indiana, who had grown up singing Motown songs with his big musical family, a performer whose black stripes faded to white as his stardom grew to a godlike status. A controversial choice to be sure, since it was… uh, lemme Google this… shit, earlier that month that this guy had been acquitted of being a child molester, again, but hey, Dom was gonna play this song on Le Bon Chevalier's speakers to honor a local legend; it seemed only fitting to the tayra that another legend should be the one providing the background music. Besides, the song had the hero's name right there in the title. Literally, how could he not?

The song was only two and a half minutes long, which might not have seemed like very much, but it was plenty for the fast-paced fight. He popped his CD in, set it to the right track, and turned the volume all the way up.

Tweedily deedily dee… tweedily deedily dee!

Tweedily deedily dee… tweedily deedily dee!

Tweedily deedily dee… tweedily deedily dee!

Tweet! Tweet! …Tweet, tweet!

In the dining room, the barons had just begun closing in on our heroes when they stopped just as fast, frozen in their tracks by their sheer befuddlement at the song now blaring over the house speakers. But a certain fox recognized the tune immediately - beyond just having his name in it, the song had come out around the time he was born and had always been there in his life; it was one of his favorites.

"Hey, this is my song!" he beamed, and despite his intoxication, he still had the coordination to hop up onto the nearest table to give himself some high ground. It was time for Robin to start rockin'.

Right off the bat, the boar gentleman charged at him with a sword. Whoops, wrong idea, buddy; the Englishman might have been known as an archer first and foremost, but it had always been fencing and swordfighting that his biological father had put the most effort into making the lad good at - effort that had most certainly paid off.

Having no sword of his own, however, Robin had to get resourceful, and grabbed off the table the first sword-shaped thing he could get his paws on: an uncut baguette. The boar surely didn't take the blade of bread seriously at first, but after the fox started blocking every swing he took at him, you could see the boar quickly lost his sense of assured victory. This was all against a fox who was pretty well hammered and was using his left hand since his right arm was busted, holding a baked good.

"Ah, the bread is mightier than the sword, eh!?" Robin cackled as he and his opponent kept sparring; the baguette was getting some chunks hacked out of it, but otherwise was a formidable foil for trading blows. It helped that the bread seemed to have been out and oxidizing for a while, so it was much firmer than it looked.

But the boar soon enough grew frustrated and tried turning his sword in his hand slightly for the next time the two weapons made contact, and it paid off immediately: the blade sliced deep into the bread, not enough to completely cut it in half, but it was hanging on by a thread. For the briefest of moments, Robin did indeed panic as his weapon had been compromised. But then he realized that he could use this crisis as an opportunity.

The fox ripped the two halves apart, and just as the boar was about to bring the sword down on him, Robin tossed one half of the baguette up in the air at just the right trajectory that it would plunk his enemy in the head as soon as it came down.

"Think fast, lad!" Robin warned him, pointing at the projectile.

The boar looked up and saw that he was probably about to get smacked in the face by bread, only for him to be-

"OOF!"

-smacked upside the head. With bread.

Pretty hard bread, which Robin had thrown at the underside of the boar's chin as he'd looked up, hard enough to knock him over. The porcine foe fell to the ground, whereupon he made the great mistake of screaming in discomfort - leaving his mouth open wide enough for the fox to jump down onto his chest and shove the loaf of bread down his throat, choking and gagging him until the boar tapped out for mercy. Robin got off the boar, but left the man to figure out how to get the bread out of his mouth by himself as he leaned over him:

"HA! Feel the pain, you daft bastard!" he jeered down at him. (Do you get it? Pain? Bread? French? Or are you, like me, distracted by the fact that this motherfucker has more coordination and wherewithal while drunk than most of us have when sober? It's alright, Dear Reader, we can all be bitter about that together.)

He rocks in the treetops all day long!

Rockin' and a-boppin' and singin' his song!

Concurrent to all that, Annie was trying to encourage Mari to hold her own:

"Come on, lass!" the sheep rallied her. "I spent the last four years teachin' ye how tae fight!"

And she had; after the shitdisco at the Archery Contest four summers ago, the tomboy ewe had made a point to teach her vixen friend better self-defense so she wouldn't have to be her tod's damsel-in-distress again if they ever found themselves in another similar situation - and, well, here they were. That hadn't been Marian's proudest moment, and she'd been taking Klucky's tips and tricks seriously, but all the lessons in the world don't mean anything without real-world application, and now that there was an angry boar sow charging the duo with a bow and arrow… the fox froze.

Sensing that she needed to defend her friend, Annie stepped in front of Mari and confronted the sow. "GO ON! STRIKE ME, LASS! DO YOUR BEST!"

But now that she was being called out for it, the sow quickly realized that she didn't know how to actually use the weapon; at no point did she realize she needed to thread the butt through the string, nor did she know how to effectively pull back said string, so the arrow kept falling out of the bow altogether. But after a couple instances of her having to pick the arrow up off the ground - during which time Annie would have gladly just tackled her if not for the very real chance that the arrow's point was actually sharp and could stab her if she bodied the boar at a bad angle - the assailant quickly found herself assailed by something else.

"AAH!" she yelped as she held up a hooved hand in a vain effort to shield herself from some strange ammunition raining down upon her, falling to her knees and crawling away. "Someone's throwing rocks at me!"

The sheep was no more privy to what the hell the little pebble-like things were, and turned to find the vixen triumphantly holding a plate of escargot.

"One of the lads I dated was very into sport," she explained to her friend, "and as he put it: the best defense is a good offense!"

"Offense THIS!"

The ladies turned to see the Vietnamese bearcat woman running at them, holding in front of her a shield emblazoned with fleurs-de-lis; not quite a battering ram, but with enough speed, getting plowed into with that thing could probably feel not unlike getting hit by a car.

Unfortunately for her, Annie was built like a rugby player, and the sheep received very little resistance when she simply held out her arm with her elbow locked, shortly after which the binturong ran straight into the ewe's hoof and bounced off of it, falling backwards and landing on her behind. Wasting no time, the sheep grabbed the shield, yanked it out of the bearcat woman's hands, and started beating her enemy over the head with it repeatedly.

"OW! OW! OWWW!" the binturong cried as she started crawling away in the same direction the boar sow had gone.

All the little birdies on Jaybird Street

Love to hear the Robin go tweet, tweet, tweet!

Johnny wasn't entirely pleased at the music choice that was clearly meant to singularly honor his friend as the Big Hero alone, but he had bigger things to worry about. Nevertheless, that frustration with feeling slighted proved quite useful in channeling his anger into something more kinetic.

"I'VE GOT THE SIDEKICK!" the wealthy stag called out, feeling it was his duty as the biggest of the barons to take on the biggest of the bandits. He got a clear avenue to the bear, put his head down, and just like Jace had to Ronnie, prepared to gore the shit out of him.

But Johnny Little was simply in no mood. "I'M NOT THE FUCKING SIDEKICK!"

Hearing that grizzly roar at the top of his lungs got the buck to stop actively trying to run, but the big guy was already carrying too much momentum and couldn't stop his collision course with the oft-overlooked ursid. As soon as he got close enough, Johnny grabbed the buck by the antlers - but curiously enough, did so by reaching over and above. Using the deer's momentum, the bear swung him around, clearing him off his feet… and then kept swinging. And they spun, and spun, and spun, faster and faster, first like a top, then like a whirlpool, then like a hurricane, the cervine enemy splaying out completely horizontal like the blades of a ceiling fan, Johnny keeping his eyes closed and not even looking at the guy, until suddenly…

…Johnny felt the load suddenly become much lighter, and as he felt himself fall square on his ass, he heard quite the sequence of sounds: glass shattering, then metal crunching, then a car alarm blaring, then a man hollering in agony.

The bear opened his eyes to see that the buck had flown through the window into the parking lot, and was now lodged deep inside a crater formed in what had once been the front of a Toyota Previa. And as the deer screamed bloody murder, looking like someone you'd see in a video on LiveLeak, Johnny had to stare at the scene in rapt fascination before he had the thought to look down at what he still felt himself holding.

"...Oops," he said to the antlers in his hands.

Rockin' Robin! …Rock, rock,

Rockin' Robin…!

Blow, Rockin' Robin,

'Cause we're really gonna rock tonight!

Off in one corner, the muskrat couple were having trouble with their weapons, which were proving to be a tad too big for the rodents. The wife was at least able to figure out the basic mechanics of archery, but couldn't pull the giant bow back far enough to make it go more than a few feet, while the husband pridefully kept trying and failing to lift a sword in one arm and a shield in the other, knowing full well they were meant to be used by a horse. But then along came some other small species who'd figured out a creative way to utilize resources made for someone much larger.

"Man, you put that shit down!"

The muskrat man found the items smacked out of his hand by the arm of an equine suit of armor… with a pair of feet and a weasel-like tail sticking out. He looked up to see an Arctic fox's head sticking out of the neckhole, waddling in the top half of the metal suit; meanwhile, judging by what was sticking out of the sleeves, one could surmise that the two tube-shaped mustelids were commandeering the arms… with their butts sticking out. Turns out Trent was holding Domingo and Christian by the arms inside the arms, so when they knocked the sword and shield out of the muskrat's paws, that had been a combination of the tayra getting speed with his feet while the fox guided his body.

"You too, lady!" This time it was the fisher in the other arm who jumped up to kick the bow and arrow out of the wife's hands.

"HEY!" her husband barked. "DON'T YOU RAISE A HAND TO MY - GAH!"

As he'd protested, the Arctic fox pulled his arms together and up in front of himself, signaling for the tayra and the fisher to run together and jump up, resulting in the equivalent of the muskrat gentleman getting his head boxed in while also getting two-footed kicks to both sides of the face. And just like a switch had been flipped, the guy was out.

"'Don't raise a hand to my wife, nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh NYEH nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh!' SHUT THE FUCK UP, BITCH!" Trent yelled at the unconscious man, before cheerfully leading the small species' medieval mech-suit thingie away for further adventures. "I can't believe this is actually working!"

"This was a great idea!" cheered Domingo from inside one of the armor's arms.

"This is the most retarded thing I've ever done and I love it," added Christian from the other.

Every little swallow, every… chickadee!

Every little bird in the tall oak tree…!

But another diminutive coworker of theirs couldn't find a place in the suit. Lillian was trying to use her attributes to her advantage, laying herself flat on the floor and actively hoping someone would step on her. But either all the combatants were aware of the porcupine on the ground and successfully missed her, or she just got stupidly unlucky; either way, nobody was laying a foot upon the living spike strip. Frustrated but determined, she started slowly army-crawling across the floor, hoping that moving around might increase her chances of intersecting somebody. But perhaps she ought to have been careful what she wished for.

The sole of a shoe fell upon her, but almost as quickly retracted.

"What the bloody fucking hell!?" Lisa growled, the kangaroo raising her foot to extract the single quill that had stuck in the bottom of her high-heel's heel. As soon as that was done, she glared down at Lillian and pulled her foot back to kick the porcupine like a football (both American or European - though ironically, if I understand correctly, you would never kick an Australian football that's touching the ground in any capacity. Pfft, wasted opportunity).

Convinced that this crazy bogan lady was actually about to kick a person covered in needles - and, to Lillian's credit, she was probably right - the rodent curled up into a ball and covered her face, bracing for impact.

"WAIT!"

Lillian opened her eyes to see Lisa freeze in place as Marcia approached, looking worried, surely coming to inform the kangaroo that punting a fellow mortal would be an act of extreme cruelty.

"You'll hurt your foot that way!" the antelope warned her sister in arms.

…Well, then.

Letting herself get angry as well, Marcia picked Lillian up by the throat, not unlike how Johnny had picked up Ronnie. And as she lobbed the waitress across the room, the angry wife screamed,

"YOU HURT MY HUSBAND, MAULER!"

It was more the sound of Lillian screaming as she flew through the air that got the bear's attention than anything Marcia had said, but in any case, confused by what he was hearing, he turned his head at just the right moment to get walloped in the forehead with… aw, you're smart, you can figure it out.

People who were there that night still vehemently debate whether the big boisterous bruin or the panicking porcupine was screaming louder.

"FUUUUCK!"

"I'M SORRY!"

"WHAT IN THE SWEET FUCK!"

"I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY!"

"JESUS LORDY CHRIST ALMIGHTY!"

"I'M SORRY, SHE THREW ME!"

"YOU THREW A FUCKING PORCUPINE AT ME!"

"I'M SORRY, I DON'T WANT TO HURT YOU!"

"YOU THREW ANOTHER FUCKIN' PERSON AT ME!"

"I WAS TRYING TO HURT HER!"

"A PERSON WHO'S COVERED IN FUCKING SPIKES!"

"SOMEONE HELP ME OFF HIS FACE!"

"AT MY FACE!"

"HELP US, PLEASE!"

"DO YOU REALIZE SHIT LIKE THIS IS WHY WE'RE FIGHTING YOU RICH PEOPLE, RIGHT!?"

"BEFORE I GET TOO STUCK IN HIS FACE!"

"I STOPPED BELIEVING IN AN ALL-LOVING GOD SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE YOU EXIST, YOU FUCKIN' PSYCHO!"

"AND I FEEL AWKWARD FOR BOTH OF US THAT MY BUTT IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS FACE!"

"I KNOW HOW YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT, YOU RICH BITCH! YOU'VE PROBABLY GOT GOOD HEALTH INSURANCE THAT PAYS FOR AMBIEN!"

For her sin of assaulting the ewe's crush, the antelope promptly found herself getting decked, Annie beating the absolute tar out of Marcia while Marian stood by, pointing a loaded bow and arrow at her head if the fists' recipient dared to fight back.

The wise old owl! The big black crow!

Flappin' their wings, singin' "Go, bird, go!"

"Hold on, hold on, I've got you!" Desmond ran over to where Lillian was stuck on Johnny's forehead, and with one good tug, the tiger managed to separate them. Thankfully the grizzly had a thick skull and got hit where his skin wasn't very deep at all, so only three or four quills stayed stuck when the porcupine was extracted.

Lill yipped just a bit as said quills popped off her back, but otherwise turned to face the bear with an apologetic look as Desmond put her down. "Uh, s-sorry again about that! My plan backfired…"

"Aw, I know ya didn't mean nothin' by it," Johnny said as he rubbed out the blood that had run down and pooled around his eyes. "...Can't but think that's my karma though for plunking the county sheriff with a cactus."

Desmond chuckled at this line, but was transparently nervous as he did; amid all the chaos, he decided that this was the best chance he'd ever get to ask the bear the question that the tiger's mom never wanted him to ask. "Uh, b-by the way, Mister, uh, Littlejohn, sir, um - d-d'you know a guy named Tom O'Malley? Tiger?"

Johnny didn't understand at first, but still answered with a wince. "Who, that male escort who looks like a real-life version of the cartoon on the Frosted Flakes box? Yeah, he was my roommate for like a decade before I met Rob. Why d'you…?" He trailed off for just a moment before finally noticing the resemblance and instantaneously becoming infuriated. "GodDAMMIT! A-a-and I'm not angry at you, kid, just… Jesus Christ Almighty, how many illegitimate offspring does that cat have!?"

Desmond knew immediately that Johnny knew the tiger's biological father well, considering how the bear had correctly assumed that Desmond's dad hadn't been in his life without him even having to say so. "...Well, for half-siblings that I know of, there's-"

THUMP.

"OW! What was that!?"

"Hm?" Johnny turned and faced the direction the projectile had come from, only to be smacked in the face by something for the second time in less than a minute. "AARGH! What the-!?"

Dear Reader, if you thought that the bear and the tiger having witty banter in the middle of an active warzone as though nothing bad could happen to them was an act of hubris that could not go unpunished, well, Lisa thought the same thing, too. She'd found herself a large tray of croissants and was throwing them like boomerangs at her targets - but, like, boomerangs that weren't supposed to come back, and boomerangs that were soft and buttery and flaky and delicious and son of a bitch, now I want a croissant.

But as Lisa kept whipping the bready crescents at her enemies, assuming that anything thrown hard enough would be painful, little did she realize that somebody else was craving some French pastries.

"Get outta here, ya stripey cunt!" the kangaroo yelled as she hurled her next croissant at Desmond with as much force as she could - which, in fairness, was actually a disarming amount of force. Just ask Desmond, who could have sworn in that moment that he saw an orangey-brown missile hurdling straight towards him.

"BWAH!" he shrieked; had he had an extra second to react, he probably would have let himself collapse, but far from his legs turning to gelatin, his body had the opposite impulse and his knees locked. All he could do was put his paws up and hope to deflect the crescent of death.

"NOOOOOOO!"

And to the utter astonishment of the assailant and the target alike, the big brown bear suddenly leapt forward, diving across the tiger's body, right in the path of the croissant. But rather than taking a blow from the baked bullet to any part of his body… Johnny caught it in his mouth. And after he landed on a table that collapsed with a deafening crash, he propped himself by his arms, chewed the pastry maybe half a dozen times, locked eyes with Lisa, swallowed… and looked very satisfied.

"THROW SOME MORE AT ME, DO IT!" he roared as he stood back up, beating his chest as he did. "C'MON, I'M A FATFUCK WHO AIN'T HAD DINNER YET!"

But the kangaroo accepted the dare; in her head, this self-described fatfuck had bountiful surface area for her to make injurious contact with, and Lisa had thrown enough boomerangs in her life that she trusted her arm to make it hurt. She shot off three croissants in quick succession, all aimed at different parts of his body.

He caught all three of them; one in each hand and the third in his mouth. If you blinked, you might have missed him devouring them all in short order.

"GIMME MORE!" he bellowed, running straight at the kangaroo with his arms out, not having any intention to grab her - he just wanted to grab the tray of croissants. "PAPA BEAR'S FUCKIN' HUNGRY!"

Lisa shrieked as she tossed the tray in the air and ran away - leaving an empty space for Johnny to occupy and catch said tray, along with most of the croissants, easily more than a dozen in all, which he proceeded to inhale without prejudice. (Y'see, this is why Johnny's my favorite person to interview for this stupid blog, he and I grew up with the same unhealthy eating habits and nobody expects shit from us by looking at us, in contrast to Robin who keeps regrettably flexing his athleticism on me without even meaning to, before doing a terrible job of hiding his disappointment that I can't relate to his heroic capabilities as he earnestly but sloppily tries to apologize.)

And somebody else who greatly appreciated witnessing the bear consume his health boost during this boss battle was Annie, who heard the sounds of ravenous eating and had to look up from the antelope she was pummeling, only for the sheep to find herself completely enchanted by the sight of that man and his healthy appetite.

When Mari noticed her friend's fluttering heart had caused her to completely forget where she was, the vixen gave the ewe a good smack on the shoulder. "Klucky, control yourself!"

"Och, mind yer business, lass-! OOF!"

Klucky really should have controlled herself, because her lapse in assaulting Marcia allowed the antelope to throw the heavy sheep off herself. No sooner had she gotten back on her feet than she'd grabbed the bow and arrow to take another swing at it.

But the archery expert among them took no notice; he was having a laugh at his friend finding time for a snack in the middle of a battle.

"Ha! You see, Johnny!?" Robin chuckled. "You have plenty of talents I could never hope to have-!"

"LOOK OUT!"

Hearing the porcupine scream, the fox then noticed the arrow coming straight towards him; it wasn't a perfect shot, but its aim was still too close for comfort. And it was close enough that he could tell, it was real, and it was sharp.

"YIPE!" he yiped as he dove behind a table turned on its side as a protective barrier - though given their track record that night, perhaps a table wasn't the strongest layer of protection. A firm thump indicated that the arrow had indeed stuck itself into the wood surface.

Robin breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, ma'am!" he said to Lillian.

"Oh, uh… heh, no problem…" the starstruck porcupine stammered.

"Did you see who shot that?"

"Uh… the, um, antelope lady?"

Just then, they heard another whiz of an arrow cutting through the air, followed by the faintest of whimpers from Robin as it stuck in the ground beyond the boundaries of the table - grazing the fur of his thick tail in the process.

The fox tried to reel in the big target he'd left exposed, but the arrow had gotten just deep enough into his fur to ever-so-slightly pin his tail to the ground. He quickly reached to grab the arrow and free himself before retreating back behind the table.

"Bloody hell, she's getting the hang of it!" he remarked of the antelope, and for the briefest of moments, he was fearful… but then he remembered what he was holding in his hand.

He peeked above the edge of the table just long enough to see that Marcia was struggling to find another arrow to shoot. Well, paragon of charity that he was, Robin decided to give her one.

Imagine her surprise when an arrow landed right between her feet; the antelope thought for a hot minute that this was an opportunity for more ammunition, but soon enough she realized that she should probably be questioning where it had come from - and how improbable it was that it had stuck in the ground, like, perfectly between her legs.

Looking up, she saw the Englishman reaching over the table to extract the first arrow, and armed with nothing more than a well-practiced flick of the wrist, he sent it flipping end-over-end through the air, sailing right between her ears.

"WAH!" she squealed as she flinched.

The fox was cackling as he ducked back under the table. "Oh, Johnny hates it when I pull a Surprise William Tell on him!" Alas, the adrenaline rush was too much to resist, and Robin immediately wanted more ammo for more fun - and something elastic-y for more precise shooting. And observing his environment, he quickly hatched a plan. "...Excuse me, ma'am, but may I borrow your scrunchie?"

Lillian didn't know why Robin wanted the accessory she used to keep some of her head-quills neat, but she trusted that his ideas went beyond most people's understanding. "...Sure?"

Marcia saw Robin jump out from behind the safety of the table, seeming to be going very intently towards another table which was still rightside-up. He picked up something she could barely even see from her distance and placed it in something she could hardly see much better, and almost instantaneously after he stretched back the little purple thing, she saw something small but sharp fly right at her face and graze her scalp.

"NYAH!" she yelped again, but she regained just enough of her composure to pluck out what she'd realized had stuck in her head fur. When she realized she was holding one of the porcupine waitress's discarded quills, Marcia's eyes popped open so wide that her face immediately began to ache.

She flinched again when she felt another quill graze her left arm. Then her right arm got brushed. And petrified in horror, when she looked up at him across the room, he seemed to be taking a second to decide where to shoot his fourth and final quill.

The antelope had completely forgotten that she'd still been holding the needle; she was reminded when the last needle flew in and knocked it out of her hand.

Marcia found herself compelled to face him once again; and there he was, out of ammo, but nevertheless standing there with his hands on his hips, wearing a smirk that some would call cocky, and that others would simply call confident, but in any case a face that was unmistakably victorious.

It was a face she regarded as evil; she couldn't let him win. And if she had any say in it, she could still see to it that he wouldn't. Feeling like she was grasping at straws, she panickedly scrutinized her environment for something, anything physical or metaphorical, that might let her get even with him - but quickly she realized that her misfortune might have just needed some recontextualizing.

"Ha!" she forced herself to scoff as loudly as she could. "You missed every shot!" Anything she could do to cut his confidence down.

Yet Robin was undeterred. "Oh, come now, madam!" the fox giggled, waving his paw at her dismissively. "Did I miss? I hit my targets perfectly and had the effect I needed! I was never going to actually strike a lady, that simply would not be gentlemanly of me!"

For a second there, Marcia was completely drained by this rebuttal. But then, finally getting back on his feet after plucking the shards of glass out of his scalp, Mr. Underdown took that humblebrag and weaponized it:

"HEY, LADIES!" he called at the top of his lungs as he struggled to stay standing. "ATTACK THE BRITISH GUY! Don't worry about weapons, just rush him! He can't fight back! He's a GeNtLeMaN!" The kangaroo got these words out just in time before the fox's bear bud clobbered him in the back of the head with the now-emptied croissant tray - which I'm now realizing I never had a chance to mention was made out of tin. So yeah, Johnny did the equivalent of hitting Ashley's head like a baseball with a flat metal bat, and the result was as good as a grounder.

Rockin' Robin! …Rock, rock,

Rockin' Robin…!

Blow, Rockin' Robin,

'Cause we're really gonna rock tonight!

But the kangaroo's words had been heard, and his point had been made. The idea made an uncanny amount of sense, and the wealthy women in the restaurant collectively decided to give it a shot. Perhaps it seemed insane, but hey, nothing else was working to defeat this crafty fox, who was perhaps the most surprised out of anybody that they were actually rushing him from every direction.

"W-wait…" he murmured as his brain struggled to make sense of what was happening.

Was he paralyzed with worry about the ethics and optics of physically fighting back against women who were assaulting him, as Mr. Underdown had predicted? Maybe a little, sure. But much more than that, he was struck by the fact that somehow, some way, they were actually going through with this, with the intent of putting him in an unwinnable position. And they were successfully closing off any logical escape path for him - at least any path his addled brain could think of. Overwhelmed by the absurdity of the situation within an even more absurd situation, he froze, and he stayed frozen until his eyes popped open and he opened his mouth to scream.

"...AaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Lisa got to him first and shoved him to the ground; he flopped down without resistance. She no longer had her tin tray, but she had her fists, her feet, and her fury; she delivered a few punches to his face and stomach before deciding to simply focus on kicking him in the ribs.

The other women came to surround him in little more than a few seconds. None of them were armed, nor did they feel any need to be; they felt assured that they could take as many swings at him as they wanted without any resistance, because he was a gentleman who would never raise his hand to a lady, not even a lady who was whaling on him.

"STOPPPPP!"

Look at him squirm, they all thought to themselves as they kicked and stomped at him, he's afraid to defend himself because he's even more afraid of how it'll look if he does. And to be fair, as far as they knew, it made perfect sense: he'd accidentally shown his cards, and now he was surely regretting it. Look at him, about to start crying, they jeered in the privacy of their minds as they made him pay for his arrogance, he's just now realizing how much he's made poor choices.

"PLEEEASE!"

And yet he was grateful they didn't know the real reason.

If they hadn't been blinded by rage, they'd have realized that as he was looking up at them, his eyes kept going to the three largest women: the doe, the antelope, the kangaroo. Despite his size, they still dwarfed him; they made him feel small, in that way that at once seemed so alien to him after never knowing it for all of his youth, but which now felt all too familiar after leaving his vulpine village. And laying on the floor, looking up at all these women who were like skyscrapers to him, it looked exactly as he'd imagined his greatest phobia would look if it ever came to pass: feet coming down upon him, quickly, carelessly, incessantly; people closing in and squeezing him down into a smaller and smaller space until there was no more space at all and he was reduced to nothing more than the dirt beneath their shoes; and his entire life and all he had tried to accomplish while he had it ultimately culminating in such a pathetic, insignificant ending as if he were never even there. The pain of the blows he was taking was almost imperceptible compared to the hurt he felt realizing that this must have been how they felt, all those people who'd died down the hill from his home when he was a lad of fifteen, wondering how it could be that their gift of life could ever lead to something as senseless as this.

"No…" He could only whimper at this point.

"Take that!"

"Serves you right!"

"You get what you deserve!" the women shouted at him as they kept smashing him down into the ground, as if hoping soon enough he'd disappear.

At a certain point, he couldn't look at them anymore at all, and simply closed his blurring eyes, waiting for it all to be over. If they really did beat and trample him to death right there, then fine, let the secret of his cowardice come with him to the grave. They could think he was afraid of breaking the rules all they wanted; as long as they didn't realize he was afraid of what a little piece of nothing he'd become.

"Keep crying, fox!"

"You did this to yourself!"

"No one's here to help you!"

And yet something about all those female voices made him think of one specific woman, the one who had been working as a nurse in the emergency rooms on that fateful day in Sheffield sixteen years before. All Robin could do as he laid there and took their abuse was wonder whether, despite all his efforts to be the great man he wanted to be, he'd only succeeded in disappointing her.

One word squeaked out of his lips: "Mummy…"

"Aw, you want yer mummy, ya bloody pom!?" the kangaroo mocked right before she gave him one good kick to the side of the head. "Ya shoulda thought a' that before ya - AAARGH!"

Lisa had been so focused on punishing Robin that she didn't even hear Julie come up behind her, so it came as quite the surprise when the hippo put her in a headlock and threw her away from the fox.

The other women beating on the Englishman ground to a halt when they saw it; before they could even flinch, Kayla arrived as well, the moose grabbing the antelope by the shoulders and tossing her away from the bandit, and as Julie got to work on the doe, all the smaller women dispersed, just to find the likes of Lillian and Annie awaiting them for a beatdown.

Robin was still for a second before he opened his eyes and slowly sat up; something inside him wanted to be very careful before assuming it all was over. His head aching all over again, he looked around in a daze as Marian ran up to him and knelt at his side.

"Robin!" she cried as she hugged him. "Are you alright!?"

Staring off at nothing in particular, he breathed a few times before answering: "...I've come close to feeling that way a few times before… but I was really hoping I could go my whole life without feeling like that."

She heard this and simply buried her face in his chest. She knew what he was talking about, and watching it all play out over the course of seconds that felt like hours, she'd been just as afraid as he'd been that he was right to be afraid.

Pretty little raven at bird-band stand,

Taught him how to do the bop and it was grand…!

Johnny came over to make sure as well that Robin was okay, or at least as much as could be expected, but when he saw that he was, the bear figured it was safe to pick up the kangaroo gentleman and carry him over to the kitchen door before slamming it on Ashley's head repeatedly. Meanwhile, Kayla and Julie now found themselves fending off pretty much all the other rich people in the building, men and women alike; apparently the husbands and boyfriends figured defending their wives and girlfriends from two gigantic women was more noble than abstaining from fighting a woman at all. That said, the moose and the hippo seemed to actually have it covered as they flicked everyone away like flies, affording the other employees the opportunity to personally check on their vulpine hero's wellbeing. The little guys even got out of their suit of armor as a showing of respect.

But as the crowd gathered around the two foxes, Kwame stood head and shoulders above everybody else, and found himself looking distractedly elsewhere, enthralled by the sight of the maître d'oing an excellent job of maître d'efending herself.

"Oh, someone has a crush, now don't they!?"

The chef immediately shot his gaze downwards at the Englishman, who was looking up at him with a cheeky grin - between glances that confirmed that Kwame's line of vision connected with Julie.

"Ah, not to embarrass you, lad, but I'd recognize that look anywhere!" Robin continued.

Understandably, Kwame became embarrassed anyway - as did everybody else in the small gathering, including Marian, who lamented that her punch-drunk and regular-drunk fiancé felt the need to bring this up at a moment like this. But sensing that he was expected to reply (and conceding that the fox had his number), the hippo mumbled an explanation: "...I… well, yeah, I like a girl who can fight."

Robin chuckled again. "Why not ask her out?"

Kwame was reaching levels of mortification he rarely showed himself to be capable of. "...What, right now!?"

"If not now, when!" It wasn't a question.

The vixen decided to intervene: "Robin, dear-"

"I proposed to my girlfriend in the middle of a fight!" the tod beamed. "And she said yes! Isn't that right, my love?"

Marian didn't say a word. She simply blushed - while trying and failing to contain a wide smile.

"Methinks it was the showing of bravery in that moment that she found so attractive-"

"Robin!" she giggled under her breath with a playful shove.

"-so I say, let's get back in the ring, and you show her what a fearless man you are!"

Everyone else looked up at Kwame, waiting to see what he was gonna do and not caring how obvious their stares were.

But he didn't mind. Because you know what? The fox actually made sense.

"LET'S GET 'EM!" And off the hippo led the charge to help Julie and Kayla be rid of these pests.

Ronnie was back on his feet and was charging with his horns down at the maître d' who had just maître d'isposed of his wife by picking Marcia up and throwing her against the nearest wall. Julie turned to see him when it seemed almost too late, it seemed like she was about to get impaled on the antelope's antlers. But then along came another hippo to ensure those events stayed seemed.

"Aw, ya like fightin' women, huh!?" Kwame hollered as he intercepted Ronnie, grabbing him by the horns. "What a brave man YOU are!"

"Oh, what now!?" Mr. Hurd moaned as he accepted he was about to be humiliated again.

And admittedly, Kwame didn't actually have a plan beyond that point, but thanks to some quick thinking, nobody would ever know (at least, y'know, not until I wrote and published this). He threw Ronnie up as hard as he could, and sure enough, the antelope got his antlers stuck deep in the ceiling. And as he dangled there, the hippo saw no reason not to treat the wealthy bastard as a literal punching bag, rattling off a dozen blows or so while his victim oofed and owwed, with Kwame finishing off by giving Julie a smirk, complete with a suggestive raised eyebrow.

The female hippo covered her mouth and smiled as she failed to hide just how charming she found that - then she broke that look to give the binturong guy who was charging her a good kick to the stomach, but then resumed appearing absolutely smitten.

"You wanna go out with me sometime, Jules?" Kwame asked as he casually backhanded the boar to the ground.

Julie stopped looking smitten. "Kwame… you work here."

Any suaveness Kwame had built up was drained from him immediately. "...OH, uh… y-ya can't date a coworker," he stuttered, "that, uh… 'ight, I guess that's fair-"

"No. Kwame," Julie said sharply and sounding rather offended by the sheer thought while the muskrat lady ran into her and bounced right off. "...You work here."

Okay, now he was offended. "What, you won't gimme a chance because I'm poor!? You work here too, woman!"

The maître d's 'professional' manner of speaking was gone as she'd code-switched back to how she'd talk outside of work. "I'm salary, you dumb-ass tigga! You work for tips!"

Kwame was now boiling with anger and took it out on Ronnie, giving the hanging antelope a good sock to the gut that probably ruptured something in there.

Jace found this particularly amusing. "Watch out, Julie! He might call you a ho for rejecting him, he likes calling women that!"

Before Kwame even had time to stammer that the deer was lying, Julie took the initiative to smack his broke ass across the face as hard as she could, which was enough to knock him down, much to the chagrin of the muskrat guy he landed on.

Jace and Domingo fell to pieces laughing at the sight, quite literally collapsing from their knees going weak. The hilarity was so overpowering that they couldn't even stop cackling when Kwame got back up, looking about as livid as you'd probably expect.

The hippo began by picking the buck up by the antlers, not unlike he had with the antelope. And speaking of him…

"K-Kwame, w-what're you-!?"

The answer was that Kwame put Jace's horns down and, like a pull-back toy car, reared him up before sending him charging into the suspended Mr. Hurd.

Oh, and also the deer's antlers were at crotch-level for the antelope. I feel like that's an important detail I haven't mentioned yet.

"...AAAAAHHH!" Ronnie sang like a soprano at the moment of impact, but the moment wasn't exactly over yet.

"Uh… h-help, I'm stuck!" Indeed, Jace's antlers had somehow gotten tangled in Ronnie's belt, and it was at just that level where the buck was partially hanging off of the antelope himself, too high for Jace to be able to sit but too low for him to stand up, and far too awkward of a level for him to get his footing.

"Get your horns outta my groin!"

"DON'T YOU THINK I WOULD IF I COULD!?"

The tayra could only watch the scene in horror. But why hadn't he just run away from the angry hippo?

"Uh… Kwame, you're… stepping on my tail."

Which was a very deliberate action to ensure Domingo didn't get away. Now that it was his turn, Kwame picked the mustelid up and started forming him into a ball, despite the tayra's protests. But now the hippo needed a target, and nailing Ronnie in his manhood again would simply be redundant. But as they say, when one door closes, another opens - sometimes literally.

"Alright… I'm back!" the now antlerless wealthy stag announced as triumphantly as he could without passing out; he'd extracted himself from the minivan and was now staggering in through the front door, trying not to let the profuse blood loss bother him. "Who's ready to fuckin' FIGHT-!? DWUH…!"

Ding ding, he got plunked in the head with a tayra-ball from across the proverbial court and went right back down.

They started going steady and bless my soul,

He out-bopped the Buzzard and the… Oriole!

In the time it took for this to transpire, Trent had had the idea to raid the kitchen for long knives the smaller species could use as scaled-down swords. But as the Arctic fox was making his way back out to the dining room with weapons for several of them, he saw that his detour into the back rooms had inspired another one of his coworkers to make more creative use of the space.

On the wall between the kitchen and the dining room was a window for servers to pick up food, but between Chef Beach's decision that it looked gaudy in a French restaurant and the fact that half the waiters and waitresses couldn't reach the serving hatch without a stepstool, it was rarely used. But even though the iron gate was always closed, nobody ever bothered to lock it, a fact of which the chamois was taking advantage.

"So, you are the leader of the rich people, Monsieur Kangourou?" Gaëtan asked of the dazed marsupial who he'd taken off the bear's hands, presently slumped with the server carrying him under the arms. "Tell me, s'il vous plaît, how much do they teach of the French Revolution in the schools of Australia!?"

"For the millionth time, I grew up in LA!" Mr. Underdown grumbled groggily.

The chamois simply huffed. "Tell me then, Monsieur Hollywood!" he continued as he lifted the gate up and heaved to put Ashley's head over the sill. "Are you familiar with… LA GUILLOTINE!?" And without further theatrics, Gaëtan slammed the door down on the kangaroo's neck.

"AAAaaaahhhhh…!" Whatever part of Ashley that was keeping him somewhat standing gave way and he fell backwards, head slipping out from under the gate and the iron crashing down onto the sill soon after.

Trent couldn't pretend not to find this a tad disturbing. "...Jesus Christ, Gayton, we're just tryna kick these people's asses, not, like… permanently sever their spinal cords!"

But the chamois simply gave the fox a dirty look. "Pah!" he scoffed. "Speak for yourself." And he walked off to go find somebody else to behead.

The Arctic just stood there for a moment, blankly watching Gaëtan walk off, before shaking his head and remarking under his breath: "Shit, note to self, do NOT fuck with Frenchie - GAH!"

It was very nice of the mysterious entity who'd bodied him to hit him at an angle where Trent wouldn't fall atop the knives he was carrying and get stabbed - and that's not my typical trademark irreverent quipping talking, it turned out that had actually been a calculated act of courtesy from the tackler, who turned out to be the American-born adult son of the Vietnamese bearcat couple. The knives were knocked loose, Trent and Duy got right back up and each grabbed one, and promptly got to sparring, both physically and verbally.

"I don't wanna hurt you, dude," the binturong said to the waiter, calmly but firmly. "I don't have a horse in this race! I'm just siding with them because my dad can ruin my career if he wants to!"

"So what!? You're a fucking adult!" the Arctic fox shot back as their knives kept clanging. "Stand up to him!"

"Well listen, Whitey, you don't know the culture I grew up in!" Duy retorted. "My people are Vietnamese, you don't just stand up to your parents in Asian families! Now c'mon, man, just play along-!"

CLASH!

"WHAT THE FUCK!?" the bearcat shrieked as the sword was knocked out of his paw.

You see, Dear Reader, Trent had left the kitchen with three knives: one for himself; one for Christian, which Duy now had; and one for Domingo, which had successfully found its intended owner.

"¡Oye! ¡Chino!" the tayra hollered in the binturong's face with a wild grin after knocking Duy's sword away with his own. "You're not the only one here who grew up in an immigrant family where talking back got you an ass-whooping! It don't matter what your parents want outta you, this is about right and wrong! Stand for what's right or get the fuck outta here!"

Well, with a blade in his face and no weapon of his own, the choice seemed pretty clear. "...I'm getting the fuck outta here!" And he ran off, getting the fuck outta there.

Domingo just stood there and watched, shaking his head. "Pfft. Pussy. And any other time, I woulda agreed with him that pissing off immigrant parents is scary as fuck and not worth it, but… c'mon, here? Now? Still?"

But an outside observer had thoughts about the things that had been said. "Wait…" Jace spoke up, still tangled in Ronnie's belt, "uh… Dom, d-did-? I-I took Spanish in high school, chino means Chinese, I remember 'cause it's like the pants! Did you just call that dude chino? Like… right after he said he was Vietnamese?"

The tayra's expression quickly went from some mix of determined but annoyed to nervous and uncertain. "Uhhh-"

"Hey, I heard that too!" noted Trent. "And I know you heard him say he was Vietnamese because you were directly replying to that part of what he said."

Dom was clearly worried that this could go poorly for him, but he did what he could to stand his ground. "H-hey! All us Hispanics call Asian people chinos! It-it's nothing prejudiced, it's just what we do!"

"But it was prejudiced when I called that Venezuelan singer Mexican?"

"D-do I have to give you Racism Points again for telling the Mexican guy how to act!? Yeah, Jace, way to stand up to us minorities, very brave of you-"

"HEY, KWAME!" the deer screamed giddily across the restaurant. "DOM JUST GOT HELLA RACISM POINTS!"

The tayra turned his head down and put a hand over his eyes. "Oh, goddammit…"

"What he do!?" the hippo bellowed as he walked over.

"He knowingly called a Vietnamese guy the Spanish word for Chinese and then said it was part of his culture not to care about the difference," Jace explained cheerfully. "That's not just racist against Asians, I'd argue he was dragging other Latinos down with him!"

"We do all do that though!" Domingo kept protesting skittishly. "B-but we do it because we're just being casual and chill, y'know!? W-when Jace does it, it's because he's fucking ignorant! It's not the same!"

The other three just stared at him without saying anything for a moment, giving the mustelid a chance to figure it out by himself, but he never did.

"Uh… naw, dude, Jace makes a good point on this one," Trent said, shaking his head as if he was saying sorry. "Regardless of intent, it's basically the same thing in practice."

"That is the most fucked up thing I've heard in a while!" Kwame spat in disgust. "How the hell'd you out-racist Jace!?"

"Now Dom'd be in the lead for Racism Points whether I was absolved or not!" Jace cheered.

Domingo didn't know what else he could say or do, so he just hung his head and waited for the moment to be over.

"Is anybody gonna get me down from here!?" bitched the antelope who the stuck was buck to - wait, buck, I stucked that up.

"Man, shut the FUCK up!" the hippo roared as he delivered another haymaker to Ronnie's stomach to give him even more internal bleeding.

That said, unbeknownst to them, Domingo's challenge to Duy hadn't gone unheeded, it was simply a delayed reaction. The bearcat got to a safe distance away from the chefs and caught his breath, using the moment to look around the restaurant and assess the state of the battle.

And what he saw alarmed him. As he made a point to note the status of the combatants, he couldn't help but to begin to see some correlations that he didn't care to see. Firstly, the people he'd been pitted against: if he knew nothing else of the conflict and hadn't been informed that they were wanted criminals, he would have assumed they were the good guys, strictly based on their conduct. Between the bandits, their dates, and most of the employees fighting alongside them, even despite the violence and chaos, there was a weirdly positive vibe coming off of them. There was a sense of optimism in their demeanor, that they believed that they weren't just here to defeat their enemies, but to actually build something better than what already was. They were determined to accomplish this goal, they were creative in their improvised battling, and they sure appeared to be having at least a little bit of fun as they waged war against the wealthy. They seemed cool, the kind of cool that even a grown adult - hell, especially a grown adult - would be jealous of and should strive to be in life.

Then there was the side Duy had been conscripted to fight for: perhaps these people had been wronged on paper, and recently at that, but they were fundamentally the status quo. These people weren't here to change anything for the better, they were strictly on a punitive mission of solipsistic revenge. And they weren't giving off one iota of suggestion that they were happy, either in this scuffle or in their lives in general; all of these rich people projected an aura of being full of sheer emptiness, whether they realized it in the fronts of their minds or not. While the outlaws fought for something they believed in, the barons had everything they wanted and needed, and consequently had nothing left to hope for. As the binturong observed his parents and their associates, he couldn't draw the conclusion: they were mean-spirited, they were miserable, they were entitled, they were narcissistic, they were unimaginative, they were boring, they were joyless, they were hateful… and most importantly, they were getting their asses kicked. The young man knew then what he had to do.

"...Thầy!" he shouted to his dad in American-accented Vietnamese, cutting through the maelstrom to find his father. "Thầy!"

"Nó là cái gì!?" the older bearcat asked when they intersected, annoyed that his time was being wasted like this.

Duy didn't actually speak the language well enough to tell his dad anything profound, but he said something arguably even more poetic by punching his dad in the mouth without pretense or hesitation.

"HA!" the son cackled as he pointed down at his father, who was on his knees choking on a newly-dislodged tooth he'd swallowed. "That's for threatening to kill me when I threatened to call Child Protective Services on you like the American kids at school all told me I should do!" And when the elder binturong coughed up the molar, Duy kicked it across the room.

He rocks in the treetops all day long!

Rockin' and a-boppin' and singin' his song!

Of course, all fun shenanigans must come to an end eventually, so once Kwame was bored of laughing at Domingo's faux pas, he decided that it was time to finally free the stupid buck by undoing the antelope's belt while the tayra watched. Jace collapsed onto his backside, but Ronnie honestly seemed more annoyed than the deer was.

"Seriously!? You're taking off my belt!?"

"Did I say you could talk?" the hippo replied sternly as he helped his coworker to his feet.

Said coworker was giggling as he got up. "Hey, y'know what we oughta do since he have his belt off? Let's pull his pants down and make fun of his dick! I bet it's tiny! And after that, we can use his ballsack as a piñata!"

Kwame and Domingo were giving him a pair of very strange looks.

Ronnie, meanwhile, was incensed. "You think I have a small dick!? Boy, I bet it's bigger than yours, whitetail! I ain't seen a lot a' dudes' dicks to compare, but I ain't never had a woman who wasn't more than satisfied by it!"

The deer looked up with a smirk at the dangling antelope. "Have you ever had a woman, period?"

"I'm married, you dumbass!" Ronnie growled as he tried to kick Jace in the head, only for the chef to successfully dodge it, causing the antelope to swing back and forth in place as his momentum went wasted, taking a few more fruitless shots at the buck as his penduluming petered out.

"So!" the stag continued triumphantly. "Shall we?"

"...Uh… Jace?" the hippo asked with a distinct note of awkwardness. "...Why you wanna see this guy's dick so bad?"

Jace no longer looked triumphant.

"I think he wants to lose Gay-Hating Points after using the word fag earlier by suggesting he might be one himself," theorized the tayra.

"H-hey, it's not gay if we're doing it to belittle his manhood!" Jace protested.

"You also said ya wanted to touch his balls," noted Kwame.

"With a stick! To assault him!"

"In my experience, going straight for a guy's nuts in a non-emergency situation is the domain of females," Domingo added, sounding like a college professor as he did. "And men who act like females."

"Do you wanna waste this opportunity or-!? GAH!"

Now Ronnie made contact with the buck's head.

All the little birdies on Jaybird Street

Love to hear the Robin go tweet, tweet, tweet!

But back in the largest theater of the war, the skirmish had devolved into something far less sophisticated, and most everyone was in on it: good old-fashioned fisticuffs. Most of the belligerents were now just straight up bare-knuckle boxing someone else - or, in Lisa the kangaroo's case, kickboxing, versus the bear who was trying to defend and deflect without actually having to actually fight back; beyond just trying to repeat the trick of putting Johnny in an unwinnable position by having a woman attack him, it seemed an unspoken agreement among the rich people that Lisa was the most capable fighter among them anyway and the best bet to give the grizzly a run for his money, which she was doing. Besides them, Annie was taking on the doe woman while simultaneously coaching Mari on how to spar with Marcia, Christian had the muskrat gentleman while Lillian had the muskrat lady, Trent and Gaëtan were teaming up against the boar, Duy was pummeling his dad while his mom tried and failed to break it up - and all the rest of the wealthy patrons had either successfully commandeered the equine swords or stolen the Arctic fox's idea to use huge kitchen knives, using them to hold off and corner Zach, Kayla, Julie, and Desmond so they could neither intervene nor procure weaponry of their own. That just left one major player.

At this point in his life, Robin was as close as he'd ever be to making peace with the fact that outright fistfighting was his Achilles heel as an aspiring real-life action hero. Not even to say he was terrible at it by any stretch, just, y'know, he didn't need to ever learn it growing up because he was bigger than everybody in his life, then he left foxy Loxley and suddenly he was smaller than seemingly everybody else so knowing how to block and punch would have been a moot point anyway, then he finally had someone try to sit down and teach him in the form of a guy reciting tips and tricks he half-remembered from his brother trying to teach him as a cub (and who also had never won a fight until he was in his twenties when his body finally figured out how to produce growth hormones), but the disadvantage of that was that said friend was several more magnitudes larger than Robin and was (eventually) physically gifted in the corporal violence department, so he was both an inappropriate partner to practice sparring with and also not the greatest teacher since it's hard for anybody to put into words what comes naturally to them. So while now the fox had a pretty decent baseline of aptitude in the subject, the fact of the matter is that the type of people who'd choose to resolve conflict with their fists were probably stronger and more experienced at it than he was, plus, y'know, he was still a fox, being a bigger-than-average fox ain't saying much when being short and skinny as a rail is the default. And did I mention his arm was broken? We covered that, right? Okay, just making sure.

Therefore Robin was trying to fight with his brain since using his body would be over before it began. Seeking to engage in some more artistic swashbuckling than the brutish brawling laid out before him, he decided the best way to win the war waged in his name - and to keep from getting cornered or captured - was to keep moving from matchup to matchup, helping where he could before being on his merry way to the next one.

He ran up to the muskrat battling the fisher and gave the bad guy a flying elbow to the side of the head. Then off to the boar pitted against the Arctic and the chamois, giving the guy a southpaw uppercut before running off. Grabbing a large glass vase of water and climbing up the bear's back so he could toss the water in the kangaroo's face, then using his high elevation to jump and swing from a hanging light fixture, whereupon he threw the pitcher down onto the ground between the doe and antelope assaulting his fiancée and her friend, spooking both of the villains and affording the heroines a few good extra punches. Finally, to the binturong family in the middle of a feud, where Robin found it prudent to grab the patriarch by the shoulders from behind-

"Oh, you two should kiss and make up!"

-and gave him a good hard shove into his wife, knocking them both over. And off he went for another round of battle barnstorming.

Of course, some would call such a strategy of coming in, taking an unexpected cheap shot, and running away without owning his punches, frankly cowardly. And you know, maybe it was; Robin knew that even as he was doing it, and he lamented that it had come to that. But hey… it was working. He was helping his soldiers win while preserving himself, knowing full well that as the general, he was the biggest target. And besides, this was no longer just a fight, this was a full-fledged war, and in war, all that matters is winning without violating the Geneva Convention too much; these cheap shots were all fair game, since the game of war was inherently unfair. And this war had gone on for long enough; even the two-and-a-half minute song was almost over.

Rockin' Robin! …Rock, rock,

Rockin' Robin…!

Blow, Rockin' Robin,

'Cause we're really gonna rock tonight!

"...I wonder what the next song on the disc is," Domingo murmured to himself.

"...Didn't you burn the CDs?" Kwame sneered.

"Yeah, but not… recently." The tayra along with the hippo were helping the deer back up after his rendezvous with gravity. "...Shit, when I put that song on, I really thought it'd all be over by the end of it. Like they'd all run out of adrenaline by now."

"This really isn't gonna end, is it?" Jace mused as he took the scene in before turning back to his cohorts. "Guys, we really gotta do something to end this before somebody gets hurt."

"What, more than they have already?" Kwame scoffed.

"J, did you just space out when that dude got thrown out the window and got impaled on the hood of a minivan?" asked Domingo, hardly even joking.

The buck rolled his eyes. "Before someone we care about gets hurt. But… hrmmm…" He put a hooved hand over his mouth as he looked down and thought for a moment before looking at each of them again. "...It kills me to ask this, boys, but… did either one of you bring your guns to work today?"

The other two's eyes popped open as their jaws went slack.

"...Our guns?" Domingo demanded.

Jace just looked annoyed that they weren't answering. "Yeah, y'know, your guns! I usually have mine on me, but I was in a rush this morning, and…" Now he just seemed annoyed with himself. "...Yeah, I know it feels like cheating, bringing a gun to a knife-fight, but look at that! If you guys brought yours to work, I won't judge, I-"

"Why you assuming we own guns, Jace?" Kwame asked forwardly.

The stag was confused. "...You don't own guns?"

"No!" answered the tayra. "Now why did you assume we have guns!?"

The stag was more confused. "...Doesn't everybody?"

"NO!" answered the hippo. "Now why the fuck'd you assume we own guns!?"

Jace's mouth hung open for a second as he looked back and forth at the two of them, initially looking skeptical, as if these two surely had to be screwing with him. But as his head kept swiveling, that look of indignation fell away and was replaced by a look of one who'd just sharted his trousers on a date.

"I… just… got all my Racism Points back, didn't I?"

"Mmmmmmm-hmm," replied Kwame.

"And then some!" added Domingo.

And in the privacy of his mind, the deer wanted to rebut that he'd meant it when he said doesn't everybody carry guns? But instead of getting defensive, his spooked countenance dissolved further into looking downright ashamed of himself.

"...I'm never gonna get this right, am I?" he moped to his shoes.

"Evidently," the hippo muttered.

The deer glanced awkwardly at the tayra. "Am I a puto?"

The chicano rolled his eyes. "Okay, for one, you're getting puto mixed up with pandejo, which you are! But I'm not gonna go around using Spanish words in front of Whitetail Anglo-Saxon Protestants who don't even know what they mean because I'm not a fucking Hispanic TV character written by gringos who've clearly never met a Latino in their lives!"

And Jace looked bashfully up again. "That's even more Racism Points, isn't it?"

"You're a lost cause, Jace," Kwame muttered.

Despite the commotion on the far side of the dining room, he and Dom saw fit to just glare at the stupid overprivileged motherfucker standing before them and make him feel bad for who he was as a person.

Then the stupid overprivileged motherfucker shrugged. "…Maybe you're right," he confessed to the floor.

…Kwame and Dom stopped glaring.

"...I'm a lost cause," Jace continued, eyes still cast down, "...I'm a stupid piece of shit who's never gonna figure it out and that's why I'll be working in a shitty restaurant kitchen my whole life-"

But then he stopped, and looked puzzled at the floor for a moment; not long after that, Jace looked up again, and had a look of bewildered wonder on his face as if an angel had just spoken to him.

"...Wait…" The word barely escaped his lips, and before the other two could even begin to guess where this epiphany was coming from, the deer took off running for the kitchen.

"Jace, where are you going!?" Domingo yelled after him.

"I'VE GOT AN IDEA!" And then Jace went through the door and was out of sight.

Dom and Kwame just looked at each other and shrugged, not knowing what that was all about but figuring it was probably best they didn't worry about it, there was a war going on and they needed to be on the front lines. Little did they know, however, that as they were burning oil while chastising Jace, the battle was already reaching its climax.

It began with Robin being finding some sizeable knives that he could throw to the big employees who'd been corralled without weapons by the small rich people who had many weapons; creative as ever, he was able to get these makeshift swords to his allies without getting close to his enemies or giving them a chance to intercept the gifts by simply throwing the knives into the wall behind them, high enough that the hippo and tiger and zebu and moose could reach and extract them but nobody else. With these, they were able to effectively start fighting back against the wealthy people who'd simply been holding weapons at their navels and daring them to move; sure, the employees' blades weren't very lengthy, but between their new arms and their actual arms, they had the advantage of reach, and the enemies guarding them quickly dispersed.

The consequence of this, however, was that as they scattered, several of them realized that this meant they were now free to occupy themselves otherwise. And at least one of them, the boar sow, realized she had a clear shot at the wily fox.

Wielding a sword she could just barely carry over her shoulder, the sow was almost dragging it as she sprinted straight at him, Robin being none the wiser as he seemed to look in every other direction besides hers to pick which battle to assist in next. Was she simply seeking to put the fear of God in him? Or was she actively hoping to kill him? Blinded by rage as she was, one could surmise, Dear Reader, that she hardly knew herself. All she did know, all she needed to know, was that she had something hard and sharp and an unsuspecting target who looked soft and fluffy.

But someone who was debatably softer and fluffier was very much suspecting.

"ROBIN!" the bear roared at the top of his lungs, the second he saw his friend in danger and not a moment later. But this warning came with a pair of conflicting consequences.

For one thing, Johnny wasn't content to just verbally alert his comrade. He hopes you can forgive him for this, but seeing the fox in immediate danger told him to throw chivalry to the wind and use the woman assaulting him as a weapon. The kangaroo reared up to give him another two-footed kick to the gut, but the grizzly who earlier that night had lamented that he wasn't in great shape like his Adonic friend was suddenly very glad that he wasn't.

"...What the HELL!?" Lisa yelped as she bounced off the bruin's belly-bump, perfectly angled so that she found herself flying right where the sow with the sword was running. (Hey, just like Robin with the binturong couple, you still can't say Johnny ever laid a hand on that woman.)

"...AAAHHH!" The sow similarly freaked out when she realized the kangaroo was about to land on her, and ran forward to try to get out of the way - and technically, she succeeded. But she just barely made it, and with the sword dragging behind her-

"YEEEOUUUUUCH!"

-Lisa landed atop the blade, snapping it clean off the handle.

But not all was well, Dear Reader, for between Johnny's warning and the kerfuffle with the sow and the kangaroo, Robin, who had just started running off towards another opportunity to help his warriors, turned his head to see the source of the ruckus without stopping his feet.

"GAH!"

Tripping over the overturned chair wasn't too bad in and of itself, but when the fox landed, he landed on his broken arm. While it wasn't bad enough to visibly reinjure him, it hurt like a bitch enough that he was incapacitated for a good hot minute there.

And the sow noticed. The porcine woman took off running again, still holding the handle of the sword, which despite its now-evident cheap construction quality would probably still be firm enough to brain the bandit with.

But the bear noticed that she'd noticed Robin writhing in pain. Therefore, with no other line of defense, he threw himself in her path. No intention of crushing her, just to block her path and maybe make her think twice about messing with them.

She did indeed have to do a double-take when Johnny landed on the floor in front of her, and she looked terrified when he hopped up to his feet and rose above her like a mountain rising out of the earth.

"YOU LEAVE HIM THE FUCK ALONE!" he roared down at the sow. And for a moment there, it seemed to do the trick.

But the woman below soon realized that she had a way out of this spot, and she promptly showed that the disconnected handle of the sword could pack quite a wallop all by itself if used like a pair of brass knuckles.

Thump.

"...GeeeeeYYYYYAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Yeah, that shriek and the sound of him hitting the ground were the two loudest individual noises of that very noisy night. Everybody stopped what they were doing to ogle at the sight. The poor bear hadn't spent very long standing up before he again found himself on the floor, paws grasping a part of himself that couldn't be helped at this point.

"Why've I been getting crotch-shotted so much these last few days!?" he seethed in pain that this narrator feels like he doesn't have to describe.

"Because…" came another voice groaning through agony, "...not only is it the only way to defeat you… it's an extremely easy way to defeat you."

Johnny was able to open his eyes and see Mr. Underdown hobbling to his feet. The kangaroo was having trouble standing straight, and he seemed to be taking great pains not to move his neck, but he still looked intimidating, especially with the bloodstains still striping his face from getting a wine bottle cracked over his head when this skirmish all began.

"...We'd be fools not to take that option," Ashley concluded, leaning down over into the bear's face. And although Johnny knew now how to keep from showing it, he was always going to have that self-image of a dwarfish little cub looking up at bigger animals who wanted to take advantage of him, and never would having someone glare down at him in anger not send a pulse of terror to his heart.

"Yeah," the bear scoffed, "real fuckin' manly of ya - MMPH!"

"SILENCE!" the kangaroo barked as he kicked the bear square between the eyes. And you just know that Johnny wanted to retaliate, but in little more than an instant, he realized why none of his allies were doing the same.

Looking up, he saw that his distracting spectacle of pain had caused many of them to forget where they were for just long enough to leave themselves vulnerable - and for Marian and Annie, that meant Marcia and the doe were able to grab them around the neck and hold up swords to their throats.

The bear looked at this fox friend, who was likewise frozen in ashamed helplessness at the sight. The rich people didn't need to exposit what would happen if anybody on the bandits' side made any sudden movements.

Ashley helped Lisa to her feet; she was able to stand, but was badly and obviously still cringing in discomfort. The gash running diagonally across her back wasn't particularly deep, but it had quite literally made its mark.

"Congratulations, you upstanding gentlemen," Mr. Underdown sneered, "your actions directly led to my date getting severely lacerated. Are your mothers proud of you?"

Proud. Mother. Oh, that was the last thing that the languishing vulpine rebel wanted to hear. "Pfft, you know damn well that this violence all could have been avoided if you hadn't-!"

"Does it look like it's a good idea to get snappy with me, little fox!?" the kangaroo asked as he pointed repeatedly at the vixen and the ewe.

Robin shut his mouth, and while he didn't look pleased about it, he kept it shut.

"...Now, then," Ashley continued as he took a step back to reach down and carefully pick up the dislodged blade, which he inspected for just a moment to make sure it was up to his standards. "Clearly not a real sword, but still sharper than a mere prop. Rather irresponsible of them to have this stuff on the walls, isn't it? But as long as it's here, and as long as it's mine…"

He gave Johnny another kick, this time to the throat, and stepped around the bear towards the fox, eyes locked and intentions clear.

"Is this who you choose to be in life?" the Englishman growled, his outrage outweighing his copious terror.

"I could ask you the same question," said the kangaroo as he approached, "and I have a funny feeling we'd both say yes and neither one of us will change our minds or learn anything and nothing will be accomplished. And speaking of wasting time…" He paused to briefly scrutinize the blade again, deciding which side it would be better to hold it by. "...I grew up in Hollywood, fox, I've seen plenty of TV and movies. I'm not gonna make the classic mistake of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by farting around and grandstanding to you. I'm gonna kill you right now, I'm gonna get away with it because important people like me don't go to prison…"

He raised the blade above his head like an enormous dagger.

"ROBIN!" Marian cried out in terror, only to get punched square in the eye by Lisa.

"...And with any luck," Ashley concluded, "in your final moments, you'll realize how inconsequential all your actions have been, Mister Adam Bell."

Inconsequential. Damn this man and his ability to hit Robin right where it hurt, again and again. The fox knew that with his work incomplete, his death in that godforsaken restaurant would indeed have been in vain and his life would have amounted to nothing; to answer Mr. Underdown's earlier question, Robin would feel confident in saying that his mother would not be proud of him if it all ended there. Nor would his stepfather, he felt, nor Marian, nor Johnny, nor his poor brother, who may or may not have been waiting to give Robin a stern talking-to if there was indeed somewhere we go after this world runs out of use for us. And he most assuredly would not have been proud of himself, how little he'd accomplished and how much he'd left undone.

But if he had to die, he was determined to do it bravely; he had one chance at this, and he was going to do it right. Cloaking his fear in a look of righteous indignation, he looked up from the ground, first straight into the kangaroo's eyes, and then further up towards the handleless sword, in the well-polished blade of which he could just barely see his own warped reflection.

Ah, good old steel; perhaps it was from Sheffield? The pride of the city that had brought him into this world now seemed poised to take him out of it. How fitting that would be; the perfect sense of closure and symmetry of it all actually gave him a strange sense of comfort, and for a moment there, he was accepting of his fate.

But then, for reasons he may never fully understand, the moment the blade started coming down, he was struck with a thought that made his brave expression disappear: a sword was one of the last things Will saw as well. And as Robin's countenance melted from a look of fearlessness to a look of one being devoured by fear, he was overcome by the notion that the red-furred face he saw glaring back at him in the silver steel might not have been his own.

"HEY, MARSUPIAL McFUCKNUGGET!"

…Well, with a line like that, Ashley had to stop what he was doing and see what the hubbub was about. And coming out of the swinging kitchen door was Jace, running right at him and holding a… holding a, um… what the fuck, really?

"...What is that?" The kangaroo surely wanted to say something more intimidating, but he was simply confused as he pointed at what the deer was holding, which was… uhhh… Jesus, I can't believe Jace actually did this, but I have Ashley Underdown's medical reports from that night right next to me to confirm that he did.

Tweedily deedily dee… tweedily deedily dee!

Tweedily deedily dee… tweedily deedily dee!

If the buck couldn't lose his Racism Points, he could at least lose his Rich Kid Points, and if taking out the leader of the wealthy didn't accomplish that, he didn't know what would.

"IF YA CAN'T STAND THE HEAT, STAY OUTTA THE…"

He heaved.

"...KITCHEN!"

SPLASH.

Tweedily deedily dee… tweedily deedily dee!

Tweet! Tweet!

"AaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUURGH!" Still not as loud as the scream from the bear getting breezeblocked in the gonads, but definitely the most disturbing scream of the evening. The fact that the skin around his mouth was melting together probably helped give it a particularly unnerving auditory quality like something that shouldn't be coming from a mammal's lips.

"WHAT HAPPENED!? I CAN'T SEE!" Ronnie asked, antlers still stuck in the ceiling with his back to the commotion.

"OH, MY GOD!" Lisa hollered as she came to her beau's aid, and several others from both sides of the trenches ran over to inspect the damage, circling around the kangaroo now collapsed on the ground, covering the space where his face used to be.

"JACE, WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO!?" Kwame demanded as he caught a sight that he tells me he still sees in his nightmares on occasion to this day. The rest of the Le Bon Chevalier crew were invariably stunned just the same.

The deer didn't see why his own allies were responding with such disgust and negativity. "Threw some boiling cooking oil on his face," he shrugged, "shit went down fast, we never had the chance to turn the stoves off, I remembered that I had a pot of oil I hadn't had the chance to put anything in yet… I made use of my resources, so what?"

"DUDE, WHAT GOES ON IN YOUR SICK, TWISTED LITTLE HEAD THAT MADE YOU THINK THIS WAS OKAY!?" demanded Christian.

Now Jace felt outright disrespected. "Uh, the fact that he's the bad guy, genius! We do what we can to defeat him, that's all that matters!"

"But this is overkill, Jace!" Trent shrieked. "Y-you just basically did Hiroshima to his face!"

"Did he not deserve to get Hiroshima'd to the face?" the buck winced.

"Y-yes, but-!" Domingo couldn't even answer that question. "Goddamn, Jace, when you ran into the kitchen, I thought you were gonna, like… start cracking people's skulls open with a skillet or something! At least that wouldn't feel like a fucking war crime!"

Jace just rolled his eyes. "I'm just surprised I was the first one to have that idea! It seemed so obvious when it came to me!" And he gestured over the huddle towards the outlaw fox, currently embracing his beloved and making sure she was okay after that hit. "Hell, I was convinced for a second there after I already had the idea that the British guy had the same idea, like, two seconds after I did and was gonna beat me to it, but then he just sort of… didn't. So thanks for letting me be the Oil Throwing Guy, British Guy!"

The British guy in question couldn't help but narrow his eyes in bewilderment; relieved as he was to be alive, the sight of Ashley's new face-like feature was almost enough to make him wish he wasn't. "W-what did I do to make you think I'd do something like that!?"

"I dunno, people are always talking about how crafty and creative you are, and how you work fast…" The buck shrugged again. "Just seems like the kind of thing you'd do. You're welcome for saving your life, by the way."

Robin gave Johnny and Marian a look as if to get confirmation that he was indeed hearing this, then his eyes narrowed further still. "Thank… you…?"

But then something almost magical happened: all at once, everyone got quiet, as they realized that the background music had stopped playing. Even Ashley stopped screaming for a second. Then the next song on Domingo's mixtape started playing:

Well, life on the farm is kinda laid back,

Ain't much an old country boy like me can't hack!

It's early to rise, early to the sack…

I thank GOD I'm a country boy!

All the employees turned to give Domingo one look or another, some amused, some embarrassed, some repulsed.

"...WHAT!?" the tayra demanded as he ran off to turn off the tunes. "I GREW UP IN FUCKING IOWA!"

Mr. Underdown started screaming in agony again. Whether the country music exacerbated the metropolitan kangaroo's discomfort may forever remain a mystery.

"I still don't know what's going on," the suspended antelope grumbled.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?"

Now that nobody saw the source of at first, but of all people, Ronnie saw first what was happening before anyone else. Just barely able to perceive it in his periphery, he noticed one of the restaurant's front doors opening - by itself, and very, very slowly. After a moment, everyone else in the restaurant had figured out that the shouting had come from the entrance vestibule, and as the music abruptly stopped and they all went quiet, they could faintly hear the hydraulics of the door until it came to a stop, finally open wide enough for a wheelchair to roll its way in.

"The old phoque himself…" Gaëtan muttered under his breath at the sight of the enraged pinniped.

Until its user stopped rolling. "...MY RESTAURANT!"

Well, after that line, it wasn't just the employees who knew who this seal was, but one tough customer still demanded an introduction. "And who are you now!?" hollered the antelope.

That simply added insult to Chef Daniel Beach atop his business's injury. "I just said my restaurant, you dumb motherfucker, use context clues!"

"Uh… hi, Danny," Julie squeaked with a meek wave, "wasn't, uh… expecting you."

"YEAH, because after you mentioned on the phone with me an hour ago that we were having a historically busy night, I thought I'd drop in and surprise you to witness it myself!" the seal barked as he wheeled closer to the crowd. "And hell, I am glad I did to see whatever this all is!"

"S-sir, you need to call me an ambulance!" the scalded kangaroo screamed from the floor, still surrounded by his soldiers. "Th-the deer cook threw hot oil on my face! I'm burned bad!"

There wasn't even a modicum of surprise in Chef Beach's expression, nor his tone: "I'm sure he did, Jace is a dumbass, he only works here because I'm fucking his mom!"

Every single person in the restaurant who was physically capable of doing so turned to look at the young buck, and they could see that this was clearly news to him. Nobody even wanted to make fun of him for this, they just all felt bad for him.

"Aw, don't act like ya didn't know, Jace!" the seal continued. "Or are you like your father who coulda figured it out years ago, but the arrogant son of a bitch just refuses to entertain the thought that his wife would ever hook up with a guy with no legs!?"

Jace just stood there staring blankly while several of his coworkers gave him a group hug of condolence, even Kwame and Domingo; Jace didn't hug back or acknowledge any of them in any capacity.

But Daniel's was surely a rhetorical question, because he switched right back to the previous topic. "Now somebody explain to me who or what the hell caused all this!" he ordered as he gestured broadly to the cataclysm that surrounded them.

The dangling antelope stuck a thumb backwards. "The fox and bear robbed all of us at the beach earlier today, so we were tryna get even! They fought back, we fought back harder!"

The chef turned to where Ronnie was pointing and locked onto the accused. "Is that so?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

But the boys were very used to thinking quick and improvising.

"Oh, that is a baseless and frankly ridiculous accusation!" Robin protested in a very good American accent. "They're jumping to conclusions because apparently we somewhat resemble some fox and bear who may or may not have done them wrong! And was there ever any proof that this mysterious pair are guilty of what they're accused of!? I'm not sure that was ever clarified!"

"And hell, let's just say it," Johnny added, "I think they're just assumin' we're the same guys because we're a fox and a bear! Prolly 'cause these ignoramuses don't realize our peoples hang out together a lot specifically because we keep gettin' accused of bein' the bad guys by the rest of the world! Everyone thinks his people're shifty scammers and my people are big bullies, so we confide in each other since no one else'll let us, and whaddawe get for having the audacity to have a species alliance!? A world where every fox-'n'-bear pair's the same to these bigots!"

"We try to defend ourselves, and they drag our dates into it and gave my poor fiancée a black eye!" Yankee Robin continued, gesturing to the shiner developing on Marian's face while she dutifully turned on the waterworks to play along. "Even if we were guilty, who does that to a woman!? You really think we're the bad guys here!?"

Thus the rich people began counterprotesting: an overlapping chorus of they even admitted they hated rich people!s and some people here have already been robbed by them before!s and the fox was fucking British two minutes ago!s swirled together into a loud buzz of disgruntled malcontentment. But the lack of auditory fidelity was no issue; Chef Beach needed no convincing from them anyway.

"Enough!" the seal yelled to cut them off, holding up one hand to signal a stop while using his other to reach behind himself into a backpack hanging off his wheelchair, from which he extracted a stubby firearm. "I have all the information I need."

"What is that, a sawed-off shotgun!?"Johnny growled as he and Robin raised their hands when Daniel pointed said shotgun at them. "What, are you more of a redneck than I am!?"

"I thought those were illegal in this state," whispering, the fox from a culture with few guns consulted the bear from a culture with many guns.

"They ARE," his friend whispered back, "in a LOTTA states! They're basically instruments of country-fried terrorism-"

"HUSH!" the seal snapped. "Talking about legality and terrorism, that's rich coming from you two! …Or did I offend you by saying the word rich in association with you?"

Rob and Johnny just winced in confusion at first, but in no time at all, both had come to realize what he was about to say anyway:

"I know who you two are," Chef Beach explained. "...Not too well, but well enough. Being around broke restaurant workers as much as I am, you're gonna overhear some things." He looked around to confirm that nobody on any side was gearing up to do anything funny, and when he was satisfied, he turned to his maître d'. "Julie, call the police."

"B-but Danny-!"

"Call the police, or you're never working in a restaurant on the Eastern Seaboard again!"

A beat of silent stillness passed, but Julie ultimately did what she was told. Daniel watched her walk off towards the phone at the seating station to make sure of it. Robin looked disappointed but reluctantly understanding, while Johnny just looked disbelieving at something.

"So…" the bear whispered again to the fox, "when we made up the name 'David' for the owner… we weren't far off."

"How about instead of talking, you two listen," the seal commanded the criminals. "You see boys, I-"

"SIR!" the downed kangaroo yelped. "PLEASE, BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING! CALL AN AMBULANCE!"

"Hush, will ya!? You participated in fucking up my establishment, too!" Chef Beach spat before turning back to the Merry Men. "Guys, I have enough familiarity with your work to understand your M.O.: you punish greed and help the people who need it-"

"AMBULANCE!"

"-In and of itself? Noble goal, commendable even, but you walk a very thin line with what you do: the task of not getting innocents caught in the crossfire. Those of us who don't deserve it. Like me, I, who did not deserve to have my life's work reduced to this-"

"I NEED AN AMBULANCE!"

"Because guess what? I grew up underprivileged myself. Not big-city poor, small-town poor - yeah, Grizzly Adams, I am a redneck just like you, I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, probably not far from where Chief Woodland - or, Sheriff Woodland or whatever, where he grew up. He's a son of a bitch, but I get why he went into law enforcement, there are no other lines of work down there. So while you might or might not believe it… I did earn everything you see here-"

"MY FACE IS PEELING OFF!"

"-Yeah, part of it was luck, no shit, but I still busted my ass to make the most of that luck, and I always played by the rules on my way up. Moved to the closest big city, got a crappy job at a restaurant, got good at it, got less-crappy jobs at less-crappy restaurants, paid for culinary school on top of a scholarship I got after my boss recommended me… aw, I'm sure you can fill in the rest of the blanks. My point, gentlemen? No shit a lot of people don't play fair, but I made a point to play fair-"

"WHERE ARE MY EYELIDS!? WHERE! ARE! MY! EYELIIIIIDS!?"

"-so I don't very much care for being grouped in with the ones who haven't. Maybe I haven't started a soup kitchen on the side, but I never cut anyone else down to get where I am, I pay my fair share of taxes, and I let my staff take extra food home because I know they can use all the help they can get! …Hell, I make a point to hire people who can't get a job anywhere else! Charity cases like the deer, illegal immigrants like the French guy, convicted felons like the snow-fox!"

Nevermind Jace and Gaëtan being called out, everyone's eyes went straight to Trent.

"...Hey, I only tried armed robbery once!" the server protested to his coworkers. "It's… it's harder than it looks…"

But Rob and Johnny didn't care. They just glanced nervously at one another, trying to process the fact that after all they'd done to win this battle, they'd just gotten unlucky with someone showing up who had a right to feel wronged - and the means to get back at them for it. And off to the side, Marian and Annie similarly wore those expressions of fear and incredulity, horrified by the situation as much as they were by the stupid misfortune that had led to it. Was the chef going to shoot anybody who made a move? Or was he just doing a very good job of ensuring nobody would? Regardless, Daniel was doing well to maintain control of the situation by keeping them guessing.

"I don't think you came here intending to destroy my restaurant," the seal continued, calm but surely fuming, "but you still did when your pickpocketing or whatever got exposed-"

"We weren't pickpocketing!" said Robin, his bear friend looking just as vexed by the accusation as the fox did. "Truly, we were just here for a night out with our lady friends!"

"And then they jumped us when they found out who we were!" Johnny added.

"Okay, and!?" Chef Beach shot back. "You still willingly put yourselves in a situation where you knew you'd be in close quarters with people who might not like you, and when things went south, instead of taking it outside, you took it out… on me." He closed his eyes for a moment, breathed deeply through his nose… and began caressing the shotgun in a way that made everybody in the room uncomfortable. "You two destroyed a-"

"ARE YOU GONNA CALL ME A PARAMEDIC OR-!?"

"SHUT THE HELL UP! Anyway… you two destroyed… something that…" The seal paused and stroked his gun again as he seemed to swallow what may have been a lump in his throat. "...something I'd spent my life building, and doing so legitimately, specifically so I could be proud of doing so and say I wasn't like them."

Scared for their lives and their freedom as they were, the fox and bear could privately admit, this guy had successfully made them regret making his business collateral damage of their class conflict, even with the illegally-modified shotgun pointed at them.

"Something… beautiful," the chef continued, "something more beautiful than I ever thought I'd be capable of. Something higher above my station than I ever thought I'd be allowed to have my name associated with. Something… something nice for once in my life! Something that said hey, I can succeed, I can create, and that thing I successfully create can be classy…" Another gulp. "...and enjoyable… and popular, and of the highest quality-"

"YOU CALL THIS THE HIGHEST QUALITY!?"

To everyone's surprise, that outburst came from the antelope still dangling from the ceiling.

"...I beg your pardon?" asked the owner.

"ARE YOU DEAF!? I'm calling you out for running a shitty restaurant!" Ronnie continued indignantly.

To this, many of his allies started trying to dissuade him from taking the negative attention away from the criminals, chiding him with shushes and don't, don't!s, but Mr. Hurd must have truly had the heart of a warrior when it came to standing up for what he believed in.

"The service sucks, the menus look like they were designed for fucking illiterates to read, the decor is tacky - brilliant fucking decision to have actual weapons on the walls, by the way, how much can you really blame us for a medieval fuckin' war battle breaking out…" And Ronnie paused to conjure up an extra layer of anger for his main point: "...and the food is terrible! Not that I hardly know what it tastes like, it took so long for me to get served that I barely got two bites in before shit started popping off! But I wasn't impressed, and neither were any of the rest of us!"

He gestured at his faction of wealthy guests, all of whom visibly looked either embarrassed, annoyed, or both.

"Ronald, you clown, don't piss him off!" Ashley warned him despite his difficulty speaking. "...Someone ask the hippo lady if she told the cops to bring an ambulance when she called them."

But Ronnie was undeterred. "It tastes boring! It tasted like something I could just hire a private chef to make! Which I probably should! And a couple of us said the food tasted like fucking cigarettes! And I believe them! Look at your cooks! They're not French! …Besides that one goat-like guy, whatever he is. And wait, shit, he's not even a cook, is he!? He's just a fucking waiter! The fuck kinda ghetto and trailer trash you got cookin' for ya!? Authentic my ass! This is your life's work!? This is what you're so proud of!? I'd be embarrassed if this is what all my effort amounted to! And - hell, you realize we're all only at this dump tonight because the swiper and the mauler robbed fucking all of us so we couldn't afford to go to the good restaurants we wanted to go to, right!? You realize you were our collective emergency contingency plan, right? Your restaurant is nobody who matter's first choice! And Jesus, what the fuck is a seal from Virginia doing operating a French restaurant!? Why are you not dealing in seafood!? Is every decision in your life this stupid and nonsensical, or are you marginally less retarded in whatever else you do!? Hell, are you even smart enough to answer any of the questions I just asked you!?"

Mr. Hurd finally shut his mouth and gave Chef Beach a chance to respond, everybody waiting with bated breath to see how the incensed seal would answer. It took a beat of tense silence for something to happen, but Daniel did not disappoint.

"...You son of a BIIIIIIIIITCH!" He lunged out of his wheelchair and jumped up at the audacious antelope; the chef dropped his shotgun as he did, causing it to discharge as it hit the ground, and despite the screams and shouts of everyone else in the room, it shot up at high enough of an angle that nobody was in danger besides Ronnie, for whom the bullets traveled past just a few feet away from his antlers. He had no time to yelp at that, however, as he soon found himself getting bodied by the seal, who the antelope didn't think could even jump that high, let alone jump with enough horizontal force to pull him out of the ceiling - a big chunk of the ceiling coming out in his antlers as they hit the ground.

"RONNIE!" Marcia cried as she ran over to her husband, she and several others trying to pull Daniel off of him, but the seal was just too slippery. And with all of the rich people and employees either huddled around the creature who'd once been a kangaroo still agonizing on the ground or Chef Beach absolutely beleaguering Ronnie (several of the staff helping to kick the ass of the antelope who'd called them assorted types of trash), that left our four heroes with a very simple choice:

"...I suppose we'd best see ourselves out!" Robin remarked, trying to sound characteristically smooth as he did but still too jittery from the madness playing out before them. Regardless, the other three agreed without saying a word, and they amscrayed.

"WAIT, STOP THEM!" Lisa yelled, pointing at them as they made for the exit. "THE BLOODY OUTLAWS ARE GETTING AWAY!"

But wait, Dear Reader, it gets better:

BEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP…!

"JACE!" Kwame hollered. "Did you never clean up that lit cigarette you threw behind the stove!?"

"WHEN DID I HAVE TIME TO!?" the buck barked back at the hippo. "YOU SAW HOW FAST SHIT WENT DOWN!"

"In his defense, like he said, we never had time to turn the stoves off, either," the tayra noted, "so maybe it was one of those instead-!? OH, SHIT!"

That was roughly the moment when the flames started making their way out of the kitchen.

"FUCK!" Lisa screamed. "HELP ME CARRY ME BOYFRIEND OUTTA HERE!"

"NO!" answered Marcia. "HELP ME GET THIS GUY TO STOP BEATING UP MY HUSBAND AND CARRY HIM OUTTA HERE!" Indeed, the fire alarm going off was doing nothing to slow the seal down in his malice.

"WHAT ABOUT MY HUSBAND!?" demanded the doe woman, whose buck was still unconscious on the floor. "HE'S HEAVY, WE NEED A LOT OF PEOPLE TO CARRY HIM!"

And as the rich people argued about who should help who with what, and the employees argued about the ethics versus the pragmatics of assisting people who had three minutes prior been trying to make them actually die, the double-date diners made a quick escape with nobody chasing after them.

-IllI-

They got a few blocks away down a side street before they stopped running and turned back to see whether they were being followed; as far as they could tell, they weren't. While they couldn't see the restaurant from their vantage point, they could faintly see smoke rising into the night sky, and they could hear the commotion of people clamoring in panic and confusion at the scene. The red and blue lights of emergency vehicles could be seen peeking through the houses and floating through the neighborhood like phantoms, while their sirens disrupted the quietude of the sleepy suburb; fortunately, the quartet were off the major roadways, and with the cops and other first responders having bigger problems to deal with, there was no immediate need to fear being seen. Now having a moment to do so, they all caught their breath; even a good runner like Robin was winded after an emotionally exhausting evening like that.

"...And before we get too far ahead of ourselves…" the tod said as soon as he felt it appropriate to start casual conversation, "...thank you all for saving my tail back there. Each of you, truly. I… hell's bells, I don't think I'd have made it out of there without you all. I didn't perform as well in that situation as I would have liked."

"Aw, whaddaya talkin' about!?" Johnny scoffed. "Ya held your own as good as anybody coulda in a shitstorm like that!"

"I'd say better!" Marian added, holding her beau's broken arm gently in hers and giving him a kiss. "Especially considering that you had at least a full bottle of wine in your system!"

"Mari's right, lad, ye have nothin' to be ashamed of!" Klucky tossed in as well. "You did your best and got the result ye needed!"

The tod looked unconvinced. "Can I say I did my best though?" He gestured to his vixen's bruised face. "It'd be a poor showing if I did my best and you still got tangibly injured, darling, I can't be proud of my efforts if the result is-"

"Robin," the vixen stressed as she put a hand on his shoulder, giving him her best smile of encouragement. "That was a strange situation. You couldn't win, I cannot blame you, and what's important, love, is that it all turned out alright!" She capped it off with a light giggle. "And besides, Klucky's teaching me how to be a big girl about these sorts of things, I can handle it! In a strange way, it actually feels a bit good to experience it at least once!"

"I told ye I'd take care of her, Robin," the ewe added with a smirk. "She's in good hands."

Seeing her insisting upon being happy was enough to compel him to at least half-smile with one corner of his mouth. "Well, Marian, what's marvelous is how you still look stunning even now - to say nothing of your enchanting tenacity!" But he had to surrender his reluctant sunniness when he turned to his friend. "But still! Johnny, you didn't deserve to get… t-to get spiked in the face! Not one, but two of my favorite people got hurt under my watch - would I not be shying away from accountability if I said both of those things weren't my fault-?"

"Rob. Robin. Mellow out," the bear instructed as he put both paws on his friend's shoulders and bent over to get closer to his level. "First things first… just like Marian said, I'm fine, it's fine, we're good… and shit, now I get to say I survived death-spikes to the face! Heh heh…"

A pause as he waited for Robin to stop moping and look up at him again, and then the bruin said what he really wanted to say.

"But secondly… yeah, by all means, be a good friend to me, be a good husband-to-be to her, be a good… uh… ex-college-roommate to Annie, and back us up if you can - if you can, though. Remember, man…" Johnny took his paws off to gesture broadly to everyone. "...We're all equals here. You're not responsible for us. You don't have to be the captain of the ship, Rob. In a situation like that, there ain't no hierarchy in there. We trust in each other enough to understand we'll help each other as much as we can, and… and that's the best we can do, ain't it? That's what you did, Robin. And you did it good."

The foxes and the sheep went quiet for a second, the ladies looking at first at Robin, who appeared even more crushed than before, but in a way that he seemed to understand that he needed to hear that; then at Johnny, who looked like he took no pleasure in further dampening his friend's spirits, but did seem to have a great weight lifted off his shoulders. And indeed, after trying what seemed like a million different ways to get the idea across to him in the preceding weeks, the bear was privately relieved that one upside of this skirmish was that it helped perfectly illustrate his point in practice - and Annie, with what she knew now of what was going on between the boys, was relieved with him.

And it wasn't lost on Robin, either. With a deep breath through his nose and a painstaking smile, he finally answered:

"...I've done it again, haven't I, old boy?" he asked with a manufactured chuckle. "Assigned myself the starring role again when it simply wasn't appropriate, haven't I? I…" He looked down and around for a second before sighing and resuming: "...I-I'm sorry, Johnny, you're right, you're right, you don't deserve that, that was no place for me to be regarding myself as a war general." And with a look to the ladies: "And to you two as well, none of you deserve me treating you as pawns on my chessboard, that was wicked of me. I-I suppose I just felt the need to, er… to see myself as-"

"Hey. Hey…" the bear said as he pulled his friend in next to himself with one paw and gave him some firm, reassuring pats on the chest with his other. "Don't worry, bud, we know ya didn't mean nothin' by it." And while he rubbed up and down on Robin's upper arm, he gave a knowing glance to Annie in particular: Because he's too stupid to realize what he was saying, but the poor son of a bitch needs a hug right now.

Mari didn't need to be told, however; with Johnny holding Robin in such a way to leave a lane open for her, she took it and fully embraced the man she loved. "It's better to want to be the hero than to not even try to be the good guy, you know that! I would never hold that against you, love. And we all know you're an excellent leader of men; I'd trust you to command an army any day."

While the vixen gave the tod a kiss, the bear and ewe gave one another still another glance: Did she really just have to undermine our point?

Robin seemed moderately brightened by that, but he still had a distinct look of melancholy about him. "Ah, and perhaps that assurance is it: I…" He looked up to his friend. "...I suppose big group battles like that remind me of… remind me of when there were still five of us, and… when I'd been fortunate enough to have found four lads crazy enough to follow my lead and fight alongside me in my crazy mission to nowhere…" A phantom swallow and he looked off into space. "...And I… I suppose I just wish I could go back to those times-"

"Well, who's to say they can't come back?" asked Johnny. "Or that even better days can't be ahead? I mean, hell… ya got your good-luck charm back!"

And as the big brown paw passed in front of his face and guided him to the big brown eyes looking up at him yearningly, it clicked that for all his yearning for the past, the tod wasn't duly appreciating the present.

"...I do suppose you're right, lad… I have my favorite people here with me, what more do I need!?"

"Attaboy!" the bear cheered as he pulled both of the foxes in tighter, then looked up to the sheep. "Aw, Klucky, get in here!"

Likewise agreeing that Robin could use it, Annie joined in on the group hug, and the four of them just stood there under the light of a streetlamp with the gentle breeze of a warm summer night swirling around them. It had been an exhausting night on all fronts; they could use another second to feel each other's pulses as their blood ran and their lungs expanding and contracting as they breathed, so that they could be physically certain that they all still had their blood in their veins and lungs that were still breathing.

"Hey… think of it this way," Johnny proposed: "because of all the things we've done over the years, we…" A pause. "…you just inspired a bunch of strangers to stand up for what they believe in and fight alongside you! Kinda like the old days, ain't it, Rob? And all because you were a legend in their eyes."

The tod thought about it and couldn't find any fault with the bear's logic. "...I… I suppose I did, didn't I!?" And he smiled the widest he had since the fight had broken out, a smile that his vixen found irresistible as she giggled a little and gave him an Eskimo kiss.

"You're supposin' a lot tonight, ain'tcha!?" the bruin laughed.

Johnny felt a pat on his back; judging by the location and texture of the hand, he quickly enough realized it was Annie. He looked down at the ewe, who had very much caught the bear start using the word "we" to the fox before switching to "you". And she understood now how much that little difference in words meant. She mouthed some words up at him: Are you okay?

He wasn't the best at reading lips, but that message was simple enough to decipher. He mouthed back: He needs it.

"...That was a nice thing to say, Johnny lad," Annie said aloud.

The bear just nodded. He meant what he'd said to the sheep; moments like this made him seriously wonder if poor stupid Robin needed to feel admired more than he himself needed to feel like Robin's equal, and if that were the case, the only option that aligned with their mission's values was to let the fox feel like the leading man in this adventure movie. Johnny had wanted to say "we inspired them," he really did, but he just thought that collective diction wouldn't have the same effect for solving what was fundamentally Robin's personal troubles, and besides… it probably wasn't inaccurate to say he had inspired the employees to fight, not they. Johnny wasn't happy with that, just like he never was with that, but he was telling himself to be a big boy about it and grin and bear it for his friend's sake. He hoped this was the correct and mature decision.

In any case, one thing's for sure: it certainly worked. Robin was now outright beaming, giggling giddily as the group hug broke. "I did, didn't I!?" he repeated, trying to savor the moment, the likes of which he'd been starting to think might never come again. "And I reckon it's safe to say that we won that battle!"

"Hell yeah, brother!" said Johnny.

"That we did, Robin!" said Mari.

""Ye'd better believe it, lad!" said Annie.

If the tod's glee could be contained, then he simply didn't want to. "We defeated those greedy bastards!" he cheered with his fist in the air.

And the others cheered with him.

"And that was with my bloody arm in a cast!" he continued. "They never stood a chance against us, did they!?"

Again, the other three cheered, and the four of them high fived and pumped their arms at each other and just generally reveled in their success. And as they did, one of them decided to make sure nobody felt left out. The sheep looked up at the towering bruin; with him being the only one nowhere near eye-level to the other three and couldn't as easily participate in the sharing of triumphant looks, he was just dancing and goofing off with his eyes closed. Annie thought that he deserved to be more involved, and needed a physical signal to get his attention. And so, since her hand was already in the vicinity (and perhaps because once she found the nerve, she couldn't resist), for the second time that day-

"Och, you too, ye big, beautiful bastard!"

-Johnny got a friendly but firm smack on the ass.

In the course of precisely the next one second, the bear stopped dancing, looked and located the one who'd struck him, bent over to get into her face, pointed at her nose, looked her in the eye, scowled, and growled:

"DON'T YOU EVER TOUCH ME LIKE THAT EVER AGAIN!"

A deafening silence ensued for a moment, the foxes stunned and staring as the bear huffed hot air out of his nose and onto the sheep's. Ah, earlier Johnny had been worried that he was making Annie feel afraid of him when in reality she was feeling nothing of the sort; now he didn't give a damn how she felt, and she was terrified.

But that was hardly a second or two; Robin soon enough found it prudent to break the tense silence: "J-Johnny! Don't-!"

"DON'T YOU TALK TO ME LIKE I JUST DID SOMETHING WRONG!" Johnny roared back at him.

The fox already seemed vaguely nervous, as one might when confronting an angry bear, but it was getting more noticeable as they carried on. "N-no, I-I-I mean, you can't be-!"

"I CAN'T WHAT!? STAND UP FOR MYSELF!? SET MY FUCKING BOUNDARIES!?"

"Th-that's not what I mean! I mean y-you shouldn't-!"

"IF I DID THAT TO HER, I'D BE IN FUCKING JAIL! SORRY I'M NOT THE GEN-TLE-MAN THAT YOU ARE, BUT I'M LETTIN' HER OFF EASY!"

"JOHNNY, YOU LOUDMOUTH, THEY CAN HEAR YOU SCREAMING A MILE AWAY!"

…Well, that shut him up. The bear dropped his fury and looked worriedly off towards the restaurant, just in time to see some shadows rounding the darkened corner and running towards them.

"HEY, WAIT!" one yelled at our heroes.

"GODDAMMIT!" Johnny swore as the four of them ran off down the block.

"NO, FOR REAL, WAIT!" another one implored them. "WE COME IN PEACE!"

Now that one sounded familiar. The quartet stopped and turned to see the group was running under a streetlight, and now illuminated, they could see that the group running them down were several of the employees of Le Bon Chevalier, their charge led by the Arctic fox.

"...I, uh… realize that was a kinda weird way to say that," Trent continued as he and the others drew closer, catching his breath as he did. "I just couldn't think of another, uh… efficient and effective and, y'know… quick way to say 'hey, don't worry, we're not the cops, or… or the rich people…'"

"I was gonna say, we come in peace?" remarked Christian. "What are ya, a fuckin' alien?"

"Why didn't you just say 'we're not the cops or the rich people'?" asked Zach.

"Did you seriously hold up a Wawa?" asked Kayla.

"It wasn't a Wawa, it was a Royal Farms!" Trent corrected. "I would never disrespect Wawas like that!"

"Who holds up a Royal Farms, just rob a 7-Eleven like a normal person!" scoffed Jace. "Royal Farms are the dumpiest gas stations around, do they even have money to steal!?"

"I THOUGHT THAT WOULD MAKE IT EASIER TO ROB! But then some elephant waltzes out of the men's room and kicks me like a soccer ball-!"

"Uh, guys," the bear said flatly to interrupt their squabbling. "...It's nice to see you guys again, but, uh… what's up? Everything okay?"

The employees all looked at each other, seeming to nonverbally negotiate who should answer that question.

Domingo finally answered for them. "...We just wanted to say hi."

"And bye," added Lillian.

"Yeah, we didn't know when else we'd cash in our rain checks to meet you," Trent explained.

And all four of them seemed pleased to hear that they were admired to such an extent, the boys particularly being overjoyed by the statements of adoration… but it felt somehow inappropriate.

"W-well, lads, we're chuffed to absolute bits that you'd chase us down to say hello," said the Englishman, "but, erm… it seems to me that this simply might not be the time for it."

"Yeah," the Southerner added, "couldn't you all get bopped by the cops for runnin' away from the scene instead of stickin' around to file a witness report?"

"Aw, Julie's covering for us," Desmond said with a dismissive but friendly wave of the paw. "She's telling them we were all afraid the place would explode."

"Were you followed here?" asked Robin.

"Pfft," Kwame chuckled, "those dumb motherfuckers are havin' trouble just gettin' outta the got-damn restaurant!"

The two couples were visibly relieved to hear that.

"So, uhhh…" the zebu busboy spoke up carefully, "...what's this I hear that Trent and the cooks got signed wanted posters and the rest of us didn't?"

"Hey, I didn't get one either!" exclaimed Jace. "A-and now I especially want one because I can appreciate who these guys are now!"

The fox and bear pair feeling the best they'd felt all night. "Oh, well how can we say no to faces like that?"

"A-and, uh, if… if it's not too weird to ask…" The jaded fisher actually seemed shy as he gestured towards the vixen. "...ma'am, can I get yours too? F-for my little sister. She, uh, she's ten now, but four years ago when she was six, we were at the archery contest and… shit, seeing you with him, she thought you were like a real-life Sidney princess."

Marian had to clasp her hands together and almost hug herself, overcome by how precious that sounded. "Oh, I would love to make that little girl's day, darling! I'd be honored!"

"Hey, don't forget the sheep chick!" the hippo tossed in. "She's a badass too! Can I get yours added to the poster I already got?"

While Klucky chuckled, Rob and Johnny shared a proud glance.

"Dude, we shoulda brought more posters," the bear observed.

"We, uh, we might need a writing surface, though," the tayra noticed. "...K-Dog, can we use your back?"

Kwame rolled his eyes but turned around all the same. "Fine, but I'm doin' it for them."

And thus an impromptu autograph session took place under the streetlight. Everyone was dutiful in checking every few seconds that no authorities were coming to break their party up, but the employees had been right, they'd done a very good job of getting their enemies off their tails. And among all the niceties exchanged, one conversation seemed particularly noteworthy.

"So… Mister Trent, my fellow fox," Robin began gently as he signed someone else's poster, "if you don't mind me asking, erm… this, er, cornershop you tried to rob… pray tell, was that inspired by us and our antics?"

The Arctic appeared nervous, apparently unsure whether the truth would please or displease this heroic figure. "Uhhhh… not gonna lie, I was gonna keep the money for myself and some people close to me to, y'know, pay my bills and shit, but, uh… yeah, you guys kinda made it look easy. And cool."

The redhead nodded, neither looking glad or mad but rather sad in a way his fan couldn't immediately understand. "...Well I'm flattered beyond words that I could inspire you in such a way, my friend, but…" He stared off into space and remembered the rough conversation he and Johnny had had with that porcupine woman Sarah, something that had occurred just the other day but already felt like ages ago. "...please be careful. What we do isn't easy for anyone, please leave the crime to the experts."

Trent looked crestfallen himself as he nodded back, head up at the tall tod but eyes cast down. "Yeah, I… guess I already figured that out the hard way."

"And that's nothing against you, sir, it's just…" A pause before a sigh. "...I beg you not see me as boastful for saying this, but what Johnny and I do is a skill he and I have honed to perfection over the years, civilians like you simply aren't going to have the same success as we are. Why, even our friend Tuck found out the hard way that he can't incite rebellion all by himself; the entire reason we needed to instigate that jailbreak four summers ago was because he got himself arrested trying to take on the Sheriff alone."

The smaller fox nodded again, but didn't say anything, just looking down and appearing vaguely ashamed; making Trent feel this way was nothing Robin was proud of, but he felt it had needed to be said.

"Yeah, okay, but what kinda lesson is that?" Johnny spoke up. "Rob, you saw how well these amateurs held their own in there! Hey, Trent buddy, all y'all!" He paused to make eye contact with as many of the employees as possible. "If you're sick a' yer crappy jobs and thought that was fun, we are always recruiting!"

The restaurant staff looked at one another, once again giving those looks of who wants to tell them? But eventually, they all spoke at once:

"I don't think my girlfriend would like that."

"I've got a kid, actually…"

"Yeah, so do I."

"I was hoping to go to college one day."

"I mean, I've got really bad asthma, I have to imagine that'd be a liability…"

"That was fun, but I don't think I'd wanna do it on the regular…"

And bringing up the rear was the tiger: "Uh… for me, my mom doesn't have much good going on in her life besides hoping I make something of my life after the trouble she went through raising me by herself, so if I were to disappear off the grid, I… n-not even being dramatic, I think she would actually kill herself if I went missing when I joined you guys."

With everyone's eyes on the bear who'd made the proposition, few noticed the vixen hugging her tod, who sure enough was taking a deep breath through his nose, relating more to Desmond's worry than he liked.

"Last I heard, your mother's still alright," Marian whispered into her love's ear.

Johnny still had his attention on the tiger. "...If I tell you where your dad lives so you can go confront him for abandoning her, would that make her feel better? I know where the guy hangs out, I can probably find him pretty easy."

Desmond didn't look hopeful that it would. "I think if she finds out I contacted him, she'd kill me."

"You want me to kick his ass? I can do that, I'm bigger than him now."

The server was about to say no before he clocked something strange in that statement. "...'Bigger than him now'? W-what, did you used to be smaller than him?"

The bear realized he'd said too much and rolled his eyes. "Long story…"

"But hey," Trent spoke up again, addressing the famous duo, "...I wanna say something. I… know it's probably harder for you guys than it looks. All this that you're doing. Might seem like you've… like you've already invested more time and energy than you ever thought you would into this, and there's still no end in sight, and it might seem like nobody notices or appreciates what you do, so you might want to cut your losses and quit and… hope to salvage something respectable of your life after wasting so much of it doing this-"

"Wait, wait, hold it, hold on there…!" Robin interrupted with his broken arm up to signal a halt. "...Where on earth did you get the impression we were feeling like that!?"

The Arctic wasn't fazed by the interrogation. "I was circling around the restaurant while you two were having an intense conversation and I… overheard some stuff, and filled in the blanks on the rest," he explained. "...Your voice carries more than I think you realize it does."

"Dude, your voice does not sound like I imagined it sounding like," Zach added, and several of his cohorts added statements of agreement. "Like, honest to God, I heard you talking when the rich people started confronting you and I was like, wait, does this guy always sound like this, or is he making his voice deeper to sound tough to the people threatening him?"

"So I heard you loud and clear," Trent concluded.

"...Errr…" The Englishman just shrugged with an awkward smile.

"But as I was saying… please… PLEASE don't give up on this," the server implored his fellow vulpine and the underappreciated ursine. "Maybe you'll never get your due credit and maybe most people'll never realize just how good this great big thing you're doing is, but… for those of us who do… it means the world to us, guys. It really does. This project of yours has changed our lives for the better and… and we love you guys for that. Yeah, it's corny to say it out loud, but we love you. We do. Both of you. And we wouldn't wanna live in a world where your work didn't exist."

His coworkers murmured in agreement.

The Merry Men were speechless for a moment, but their growing smiles were telling enough of a story. Johnny took a step or two over and put an arm around Robin, the fox wrapping his arms around the bear's big arm in appreciation.

"You crazy kids… have no idea how much we needed to hear that," said Johnny.

"In that case, Mister Trent…" said Robin, "...we'll do it for you."

Trent nodded a little, as did a few of the others. None of the chefs or servers said anything more. Because what else was there to say?

Well, the bear thought of something to say that was perhaps befitting of a guy like him: "Welp! Croissants aside, I still ain't ate dinner yet, and neither has the lady! Not to be a passive-aggressive little bitch to the… to the, uh…" He looked around the now-confused employees, searching for the chamois. "...Where's the French guy?"

"Oh, he ran away away," explained Jace. "He didn't wanna talk to the police."

"Yeah, our boss wasn't being edgy when he said Gayton was illegal," added Desmond, "his student visa is expired and we think he's afraid of getting deported."

Johnny just blinked as he processed that. "...Oh. Well fuck that guy, he was an asshole anyways. But hey! I'm hungry, anybody else up for Checkers!? Yeah, yeah, all the Checkers are in the brokest neighborhoods in town, but hey…" And with a dramatic pause and an eager look on his face, the bear unbuttoned the middle of his dress shirt to reveal a holy-shit-sized wad of cash, wallets, and credit cards that had been blending in with his belly. "...we're going there anyway!"

And the crowd of employees were just as amazed and excited by this revelation as you might expect - but the three people he'd had come there with were simply confused.

"W-wait, Johnny…?" Robin stammered in confusion. "...W-when did you find the time to grab all that?"

"And how!?" Annie asked as well.

But the bear just looked at them with a paw on his hip and a don't be silly expression on his face. "Oh, come now. A magician never reveals his secrets! You're not the only master thief here, Rob!" A quick break for a deep guffaw. "But for real, guys, I was barely doing anything during that fight while the staff all seemed to be holding their ground pretty good - what'dja think I was doing whenever I wasn't doing something else!?"

Nobody else could fault that logic, so they all just shrugged and smiled and snickered in agreement that that was a pretty slick move. (And if you're curious, Dear Reader, Johnny today doesn't even remember himself what he did to procure the money, it was honestly one of the less noteworthy parts of the evening as far as he was concerned, but since everybody else I can track down recalls him pulling that money out from his shirt, I guess we'll have to conclude it was legit.)

"Alright, so who wants ta' join me in pigging out on junk food!?" Johnny asked the group like a colonel rallying his men before waving them to follow him as he walked off. "C'mon! I know a good one right off the Green Line in Georgetown and we ain't far from the station in Roxana Village-!"

"B-but wait," Domingo spoke up. "Uh… hey, we'd all love to, dude, but… all our cars and stuff are still at the restaurant-"

"Och, it's a beautiful night out, lad, and the tube'll be runnin' for at least four more hours!" the Scottish sheep cut him off to rile him up a little. "Now c'mon, do ye all wanna join us or not!?"

Through a mix of solid convincing from the corpulent couple and some good old-fashioned peer pressure from one another, that got all the employees present on board with the idea of a greasy victory feast.

"TO CHECKERS!" Johnny bellowed, probably waking up some of the neighborhood residents in the process, but as he led the cavalcade along down the sleepy suburban street, nobody would bother calling the cops on them.

And the vixen was ready to join along in the crowd, but as she set off to follow, she noticed her steadfast tod gently tugging on her arm.

"Give them a moment, Marian," Robin said sweetly, "let Johnny feel like the head of the pack for a little bit. He deserves it."

Recalling their earlier conversation and some things she'd overheard the bear say during the skirmish, she simply nodded without saying anything and accepted her love's offer to put his arms around her once more. And when they were once again locked in an embrace, Robin looked longingly into the eyes of the woman he'd missed for so long, then off towards the gaggle of friends who'd been inspired to fight for what they believed in all because of him, and then finally up into the night sky; Bayard was far enough away from the city lights of downtown Nottingham that one could actually make out the stars, celestial bodies filling him with warmth like the eyes of angels smiling down upon them in approval, and after tasting the sense of victory that had become so hard to taste in the preceding days and weeks and months and years, those stars struck him as particularly beautiful that night.

He took a deep breath and let out a long sigh that was as exhausted as it was satisfied. "...I'm back, baby."