L'EDgendary

by dobanochi

A few years since we last saw any of them, the Peach Creek Boys and the Merry Men run into one another at just the right time, working together to undermine an oppressive city government as well as their burgeoning insecurities. An action-comedy-drama character study about friendship, leadership, self-esteem, and the divide between who we're born as and who we choose to be.

79. Rich Kids on LSD (FtSUN), Pt 4

79. "Rich Kids on LSD (F*** the School Up North), Pt. 4"

Robin had always had a strange relationship with teachers.

The 1985-86 school year was an interesting one in the United Kingdom. After decades of rumblings about banning the practice, that was the final school year where corporal punishment was allowed in British schools - if they received public funding. That meant state-run schools plus any "private" schools that nevertheless got some government money for operations. For fully private schools - or "public" schools, as they were called, because any member of the public could pay for entry if they had the money and because apparently England is some sort of fairytale world where everything is whimsically nonsensical - it would be more than a decade before the different constituent countries of the nation each passed laws telling them to knock it off. And because his illegitimate father who was publicly flaunting him as some impoverished project child he'd symbolically adopted to give a sort of young-man's My Fair Lady treatment to saw it fit, Robin attended one of those wholly private institutions.

But in addition to all the contentious public discourse, that was a year of private tumult for the kit as well. He turned twelve that November; his childhood was ending and he knew it, and the idea of growing up excited him just as much as it scared him. Not helping was that he felt more lonely during this time than at any other point in his youth. The other kids in his grade were still young enough to be enthralled by his unique attributes, but not as much as they used to be, and it wouldn't be long before they went through the age-old tradition of becoming evil once they hit adolescence, whereupon the things they once found so cool about Robin would become a bountiful source of ammunition for ridicule as everyone sought to climb the social ladder by putting others below themselves; at age twelve, Robin was still someone everyone at school considered a friend, but time was ticking before boys and girls alike began to see him as a threat to their status. This was the time when the role of his best friend was vacant; these were the years when Marian's parents thought she'd be better off at an all-girls school until she finally transferred back to Robin's after achieving womanhood; and when Robin went home to Loxley at the end of the day, Much Miller was no longer there to come out and play, the portly lynx avoiding his former fox friend by switching to full-time boarding school as well. As was Robin's half-brother, at a "better" private school than Robin's since Will was their father's "real" son, and though he was probably too young for Robin to have a real conversation with as a peer anyway, the simple fraternal connection would have been nice. Combine that with both Brianna and Oliver working longer hours - in jobs that Robin would later realize were tools for Robert Scarlett to keep the boy's mother and stepfather away from him more, so as to leave more room for the wealthy man to exert his influence on his project child - and it really did feel like that was the era when the young tod didn't really have anyone to confide in. Oh, and puberty, that sucked.

But there were two more big reasons why he really could have used someone to talk to. For one thing, he was still processing the events of that one day the previous summer, the day he'd decided to go be the superhero his village needed along with his trusted sidekick, just to find out it was much tougher than he thought and that Much's heart wasn't much in it. Despite that turn of events, Robin still did have a deep desire to be a hero, someone who used his gifts for the greater good, someone his parents could be proud of. And knowing that he still wanted it after the danger he'd put himself in the first time gave him a question to wrestle with: did retaining this noble goal mean he was resilient, or mean he was stupid? This was still a few years before he'd reunite with Marian and adopt her dream of becoming a professional performer, when he shifted his sights to the more plausible goal of playing the suave and sexy hero on the silver screen just like Errol Flynn had. So during this period, young Robin still had a burning itch to be a proactive protagonist, to not merely be Nice but to be Good, to prove himself to the world he knew. He just had no clue how to go about it without just making things worse for everyone like he did the first time.

In addition, however, he truly was beginning to grow up, in the sense that he was becoming more aware of the world around him. But it was baby steps. Take, for example, these rumblings that they were finally going to ban corporal punishment in school once and for all. He'd caught wind of them, but didn't fully know what to make of them, because he was twelve. He didn't know where this change would apply to, he didn't know how the process of change would work, and the one that he was really struggling with, he didn't know how much this change would affect him personally.

There had been a few frustrated backhands to his shoulder and some open palms behind his ears, but beyond that, Robin had never to that point had a teacher lay a hand on him for the express purpose of punitive pain. Part of it was just that the practice was already on its way out by the time he started school, so while there were some teachers who would dole out such punishments, there were at least an equal number who had resolved to leave such tactics in the past. Another part of it was that, despite all of Robert Scarlett's efforts, Robin was a good boy; he wasn't a complete goody-two-shoes and he did indulge in misbehavior here and there like most boys did, but he never came close to a transgression for which a beating would be warranted. And then of course, there was the fact that… well…

Dear Reader, I beg you, don't read this as accusational, this is purely conjecture. But I feel like when we discuss Robin's upbringing, you might not be visualizing him accurately. And let me be clear, this is understandable, because without photos of the guy as a lad, your brain has no reason to fill in details like these. I mean, you tell me: for the last few pages, have you been picturing this kit as someone who had already reached the average height for an adult red fox tod at the age of, like, three-and-a-half, and then grew to be an extra fifty percent more than that over the course of the rest of his childhood? And that he was an early bloomer so he didn't even need all eighteen years to get to that size? I've been specifically avoiding alluding to Robin getting those gigantic Scarlett genes because I wanted to clean your palate before I asked. And the part where nearly everyone he interacted with on a daily basis before he left Loxley was also a fox.

But, uh, yeah: the teachers were afraid of him. They never, like, verbally said so, but in retrospect, in a school where you could count the non-vulpine faculty on one hand, and the non-vulpine students in any given grade on the other, they were obviously afraid of him. Even if they didn't think he'd consciously fight back, they probably thought that a giant who didn't know his own strength could still deal some damage without even trying to. This was most visible with the more hardass teachers who would strike normal-sized kids for the same infractions that only got Robin a long string of angry words. Maybe it was cowardice on their part, maybe it was simply good strategy, but in any case, it was only upon hearing word that there might soon be a world where such discipline might no longer exist that Robin started to notice this discrepancy.

Out of all of his teachers, though, Mr. Glendenning was notably less afraid of the boy than his colleagues were. A religion instructor tasked with reminding these kits that they were still subjects of the Church of England in that school, he was older, but not ancient, yet his values certainly were. He thought a good smack to keep kids in line was not only not immoral but actively the right thing to do, symptoms of a man who worshiped worldly authority more than he worshiped the deity he gave painfully dull lectures about. Mr. Glendenning likely set the high bar for how much a teacher had been willing to harm Robin, the large lad becoming a sizable target for erasers thrown at him when he was caught zoning out. Come to think of it, he might have been the one Robin had first learned of the proposed law change from; our hero could swear he has a memory of the old fox remarking that no legislation could change his ways as he laid into a kid with a ruler - which, as a reminder for you larger species, is roughly a third of a typical adult fox's body length.

But that wasn't his main weapon of choice. A man of perfect posture in his fifties, Mr. Glendenning walked with a cane that he clearly didn't need; some said he did it as an antiquated fashion statement, but most agreed that he did it to obfuscate his threat level, hoping to seem frail and harmless so students would feel welcome to show their true colors in his presence, and when those colors painted an unpretty picture… he'd have his cane at the ready to lay down the law. Usually, delivering a caning was solely the province of the headmaster for the most heinous of violations. But if you dared to tell him that as he was about to bring that baton down upon you, you could just expect twice as many bruises. Besides, he had too much seniority and respect from the rest of the staff to get in trouble - though some speculated the other teachers and the headmaster were afraid of the crazy old fox, too.

It was either late June or early July - about the same time of year as our main story's at, actually. Robin remembers because he'd once again missed Marian's birthday a few weeks prior and didn't know how to write to her at her boarding school. And it was hot, in an old building constructed to retain heat in the winter in a country where air conditioning was rarely financially feasible. Mr. Glendenning's classes were hard enough to sit through, a level of boring that becomes a genuine existential crisis, leaving you wondering whether nature offers any guarantee that this state of ennui will eventually end, his lessons on heaven and hell truly becoming purgatory; the climate conditions just made it harder still. And the kits were particularly antsy because of a rumor going around about how things worked in other places.

The poor lad's name was Daniel Bush. A good kid, but he could be as mischievous as a school full of fox kits can be expected to be, getting smart with his teachers or playing small pranks on his classmates. But on that day, he wasn't doing anything cheeky. He didn't have the energy for it. And without even meaning to, between the sweltering heat in the air and the uninspiring grumbling at the front of the room, poor Daniel just… fell asleep.

In Mr. G.'s religion class, that was a sin worse than sacrilege. Without even pretending that his cane was meant to serve its original purpose, the teacher walked over and raised it over his student. Daniel likely woke up from the sound of the whole room gasping a fraction of a second before the wood made contact square between his ears.

Robin doesn't remember all of the fine details, but he remembers Daniel almost falling out of his seat as he yelped and clutched his head in pain. Mr. Glendenning hollered some line at him about whether the student thought sleeping in class was appropriate, Daniel argued that he hadn't meant to, the teacher said that was either a lie or a showing of poor resilience through adversity, and a small argument broke out before the old fox gave the kit another strike, this time stabbing his cane onto the tip of the lad's tail on the ground.

The whole class, having tails much like Daniel's, cried out in pain at the sheer thought of it, warranting a warning from Mr. G. to zip it. But that's when things went from bad to worse.

"Why are we even here still!?" Daniel defied him. "Peter's cousin lives in New York! He told us in America, they've been on summer holidays for a month already!"

And Peter Reynolds squirmed in his seat, trying to hide in plain sight as he fully expected the old fox to make him the new target of his aggression. But the teacher only gave him a half-second glance before returning his fiery gaze back to Daniel.

For you see, Dear Reader, Mr. Glendenning hated a lot of things and hated a lot of people. He hated Germans because of World War II; he hated the French for thinking they were more sophisticated when they weren't. He hated the Scots and the Welsh for maintaining inferior cultures when the English offered such a better one, and he hated those uppity Irish mongrels for thinking they were too good for the leadership of the Empire. He hated Indians and Pakistanis on grounds that this narrator is in no rush to repeat here, and he hated Argentineans for thinking they could stand in Britain's way.

And more than anything, he hated Americans and American culture. Those narcissistic Yanks thought they'd built an empire better than their predecessors had. And in true hater fashion, this wasn't a case of Mr. Glendenning being jealous of a country he secretly agreed had outshined his own; he genuinely thought American hegemony didn't hold a candle to what England had and what drew his ire was what he perceived as pure and unbridled hubris. So when he heard a student say anything even remotely flattering about American culture, in the old fox's head, that was tantamount to rejecting the rightful ruler to defect to the side of an overconfident sociopath.

"Well, this isn't America where we only teach enough to raise an army of insipid brutes! Here we don't finish teaching until the teaching is DONE! And now another lesson for you, young man, up against the wall!"

Being poked and prodded by the cane, the pupil did as he was told. Daniel put his hands upon a spot on the wall between two sets of windows, stood bent over with his rear sticking out, and Mr. G. went to town on him. The rest of the class physically cringed for him, but so far, it had been nothing they hadn't seen before.

Then the teacher either let his aim slip or intentionally set his sights lower, but after a strike that impacted both the back of Daniel's thighs and the base of his tail, he was on the ground again. And Mr. Glendenning didn't stop.

"GET UP!" he hollered before another strike. "GET UP!"

The class felt helpless but to sit there and watch as Daniel put his hands up to try to stop the seething pedagogue who just kept striking those hands down.

Because that was another thing about Mr. Glendenning: he was that teacher we all had who was old, mean, and big. In an institution that had always been overwhelmingly red-furred and bushy-tailed, he was very used to being one of, if not the most imposing figure within those walls. Not only was he more sturdily built than a guy in his fifties had any right to be, but he towered, too, and people often said that the bent tips of his ears were from them constantly brushing the tops of the school's fox-sized doorways. To put his vulpine three-foot-six on a more neutral scale, let us compare him to a more "average"-sized species. Um… wolves, let's pick wolves. Hold on, lemme grab my calculator… okay, so if the average male wolf is five-nine or five-ten, Mr. Glendenning would be the equivalent of six-foot-five to his nearly-monospecies students and colleagues. So when he laid down the law on Daniel, the teacher wasn't just an angry adult; he was a large, scary, angry giant of an adult.

But unfortunately for this guy who liked to use his size to belittle whoever he saw fit, that was the year his roll call included a lad who had been the same height as a five-year-old as this guy was as a grown-ass man. Three-foot-six, that's cute, Robin was four-foot-six, and not a complete stringbean, either. If the young man wanted to, he could do some damage to the big bully who wasn't so big to someone like him.

But therein lay the issue: as he sat there, watching from the back where he'd been relegated so as not to obscure the view for his peers with his obnoxious size, Robin did want to give the old fox a taste of his own medicine. But he couldn't - are you mad? He was the teacher! You don't fight the teacher and just get away with it. At that point, a paddling from the headmaster would be the least of your problems; you'd be fretting about your parents beating you within an inch of your life for getting expelled from school. Not to say Brianna or Oliver were the kind to do that, but remember, this was a lad who'd sought to become heroic because he already feared that he wasn't the son they wanted; he didn't want to test their boundaries by becoming even more of a fuck-up. Maybe they just hadn't whipped him with a belt yet.

The impulses telling him not to upset the status quo, however, were quickly losing ground to the impulses screaming at him to use his unique powers to do something. And they just got louder and louder with every strike, with every cry of pain. And at a certain point, Robin no longer saw Daniel and Mr. Glendenning; he saw Robert Scarlett, the one who had given him this burdensome gift, once again using his size to intimidate the errant caterer until the poor man cowered, just as Robin had seen out the kitchen window twelve months before. And he saw that browbeating coming to its logical conclusion as the giant dropped the illusion of decorum and gave the perceived miscreant what he really wanted to give him.

There was nothing Robin could do. But he couldn't do nothing. So he did what he could.

"...Stop it!"

The class's collective blood ran cold on Robin's behalf. He was tempting fate. Mr. Glendenning paused for about one second as he gave our hero a dirty side-eye, not even turning his head, then resuming the punishment.

"...Stop!" Robin repeated, voice less quivery this time. "You're hurting him!"

That was when the old fox came as close as anybody ever had to saying the quiet part out loud. "Mister Hood, you're fortunate that I won't give a caning to a grown adult!" And right back to caning Daniel he went, the boy having tried to use the interval to get up just to get beaten back down.

Robin was terrified, both for Daniel as well as for own inability to do anything about it. Words weren't working, and force? The idea of using force? Mr. Glendenning had a weapon and very much knew how to use it. Robin's only weapon was, well, his size, which he did not know how to use quite so well yet. That and his madness to do what nobody else was going to do.

But nevermind what everyone else was going to do. What was he going to do? And the question that kept getting at him: what would Adam Bell do?

Thwack, thwack, thwack! went the cane; "Ow, ow, ow!" went the kit.

"STOP!" went Robin.

Before Mr. Glendenning knew it, Robin had grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him away from Daniel. Perhaps the old fox needed his cane for more than cosmetics, however, or maybe the young giant really didn't know his own strength. In any case, the teacher didn't wind up on his feet; he went from leaning over forward to leaning over backward, losing his balance, stumbling, and smacking his head on Alice Kitteridge's desk. Really hard.

Robin gasped. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he pleaded as the teacher clutched his head and writhed in pain. But he still couldn't help but sneak a glance at Daniel Bush on the ground there.

No words were exchanged, just a pair of looks. Robin still remembers those eyes. That was the look of someone who knew their life had just been saved.

Long story short, Mr. Glendenning needed to go to the hospital and Robin was in big trouble. The rest of the class tried constructing a lie to save him, saying the teacher had simply had a fall, but Robin - who will be the first to say that he wasn't being a christlike bearer of truth, but merely a kid who was terrified of what his parents would do if they found out he had lied at school - wasn't in on his own conspiracy and accidentally let the truth slip. The rest of his class was briefly in trouble then for dishonesty, but as much as they were steamed at Robin for squealing on himself, they hated Mr. Glendenning more and wanted to take their shot, collectively giving the headmaster an airtight retelling of the events. At this point, the headmaster - who would have been within his legal rights to give Robin the cane, but likely was especially afraid of the boy after that - decided that the most politically savvy thing to do was to let the other kids off the hook but expel Robin, who was deemed "troublesome" and "a danger".

That did not go through. Robin's parents were informed, and while they were of course proud that their son had stood up for what he believed in, they agreed the outcome was nothing to celebrate, either. But the school was also obligated to contact the person whose name was on the cheques paying the boy's tuition, which of course was one Robert Scarlett. And he didn't much like being told he couldn't keep sending his son I mean his symbolically-adopted project child to a public school if he was willing to pay for it.

Administration, at first, told him to cry them a river and find somewhere else that would take the giant freak. And Robert Scarlett just might have, had the only other school he somewhat respected in that region not been where his "real" son was attending, and he still wanted the half-brothers separate to avoid suspicion. And thus, more out of stubborn pride than out of care for Robin's education, The Tall Man reminded them just how much he was paying for things outside of just the lad's tuition.

That succeeded in putting the school in a quandary. Recall that the school was one hundred percent funded by tuition and donations. But recall also, there was a reason Robert Scarlett had sent Will to the "better" school. Robin's school was doing good, but Will's was doing great; Robin's school was okay on money, but without donations like Robert Scarlett's, they'd be doing less good, and falling farther behind schools like Will's which they envied. They could survive without his money, but they wouldn't thrive.

Robin still doesn't know the details of what happened behind closed doors, but he can draw some educated conclusions. What he knew was that suddenly the charges were dropped and he could return to school under the condition of a year's probation - which was never brought up again after school resumed in September. During that 1986-87 school year, the first when corporal punishment was only legally allowed in fully-private institutions such as his, even the teachers known to take advantage of this law suddenly… didn't. True, there would still be bodily raps and thumps a touch harder than the state-run schools would allow, but never anything hardcore - at least not where Robin could see it. There were at least a few instances where it seemed a teacher was about to get physical with a wrongdoing pupil, only to look around the room, lock eyes on Robin… and then settle for doling out a verbal beatdown instead. Word spread that some students were being sent to the headmaster for trespasses that had resulted in a caning the year before, and similarly gotten off with an earful and some relatively mild slaps and shoves instead; witness reports say the headmaster's cane was still present in the office, but it was collecting dust. That part particularly surprised Robin at first, but the more he thought about it, it seemed to make sense; once again, Robert Scarlett probably used more than financial threats to get Robin reinstated, and the headmaster surely knew the boy was his father's son.

Then something unexpected happened. School came and went, and before it came again, in the summer of 1987, parents received a letter informing them that the school had begun to accept some government funding, the subtext being to keep up with the Joneses. And the subtext of the subtext was that, to secure that funding, they'd be obligated to abandon one of the great traditions of English schooling culture. They were a lot more competitive with Will's school after that.

Mr. Glendenning never did return to work. The obvious rumor was that Robin had killed him, but that surely would have been public information, not to mention an offense that no amount of his biological father's bullying could get repudiated. (And if you're as curious as this narrator is, Dear Reader, I asked Robin whether law enforcement ever got involved in this; apparently his young mind had never considered this, but looking back on it as an adult, he could merely shrug and assume he'd once again been bailed out by Robert Scarlett's deep pockets.) No, the old teacher was alive and had made as full of a recovery as could be expected of a man pushing sixty; with the civility politics of the English gentry, he had never been fired, but rather firmly nudged into an early retirement with a comfortable severance package. Not a perfectly karmic ending for him, but Robin liked to think that at least whatever he did to his teacher offset when he'd defended those goth kids in that summer of '85 and likewise gave one of the bullies a severe head injury he hadn't meant to give him. And moreover, there was poetry in it: an archaic institution went down with the archaic man who most embodied it. As an artist, Robin had to appreciate that.

So;, teachers. The first real authority figures that our hero had truly rebelled against, and - though it took some help from an evil man not even meaning to help him - rebelled against and won. And Robin never really knew how to feel about that. He was an adult now and one who sought to spread positivity, so of course he wanted to believe that educators had the best intentions and just wanted to help the newest generation be their best. But with his experience in particular, he found it hard not to conclude that even among the ones with good intentions, the situation with Daniel and Mr. Glendenning would never have happened if teachers had spoke up against the continuation of such practices, if the community of educators had agreed not to tolerate that in their circles.

Even beyond such an extreme, for every case he heard of where teachers punished bullied kids for fighting back or reprimanding entire classes for the actions of a few, call it adolescent, but Robin just couldn't help but feel like… God, it feels so obnoxious to say it, but there really isn't a better comparison than cops. You have some really good ones, a concerning number of really bad ones, but the vast majority of them are just completely agnostic to their own jobs, upholding unjust ways and rules because it's their job to do so and they didn't care, when they could have prevented a lot of unnecessary suffering if they just cared. But then it wasn't necessarily these educators' fault that they were ill-trained to handle conflict, but maybe the onus was on them to do better anyway, but maybe it's shitty to ask them to go above and beyond when their jobs are stressful enough, but then again nobody twisted their arm to keep this job if they're not good at it… it was a lot to think about, and Robin rather wouldn't.

He knew this much: teachers and other educators were just people trying to survive like the rest of us, and few were truly evil. But he also knew that even if you luck into amazing parents, like he fully acknowledges he did, you're still all but guaranteed to run into some adult during your upbringing who will pervert the spirit of the law and screw you over in ways you don't deserve, not because they're evil, but because they just deeply don't care and militantly refuse to be bothered. And there will likely be several of them, possibly a few, possibly many, and the more you encounter, the more cynical and jaded you will be likely to become. For many people, their parents are included in this, but they're stuck in their roles, and there's often only two of them; the majority of these adults who will dampen young spirits will almost invariably be teachers.

When Robin met a teacher, he didn't assume the worst of them. But he absolutely kept his eyes and ears peeled for the telltale signs of someone who wasn't trying as hard as someone in their position should be.

-IllI-

They'd found the big gymnasium right off the cafeteria; most of the doors were locked, but they'd found one that wasn't. Upon getting inside, they quickly located the equipment locker, which was locked up tight with a padlock that even the ursids couldn't just yank open. Lockpicking wasn't either of the thieves' strongest skills, that had always been more Alan's bag, but the duo had picked up some tips and tricks from him over the years - and he didn't exactly get to take his lockpicking kit with him when he got whisked away to prison, so Robin and Johnny could practice with the set and its tattered instruction manual. With smaller hands for the delicate instruments, the foxes worked on the lock while the bears stood guard outside. Ed and Johnny were waiting there a while, but that was to be expected; Robin could pick a lock, but not quickly. That said, it was taking even longer than the length they were anticipating. Time for small talk.

"Sooo…" Johnny began, aiming to kill the dead air. "...How's school usually go for ya?"

There was no progression, Ed's mood just immediately soured at the question. "School is mean to me."

The older bear raised an eyebrow. "Wait, the teachers are mean to you, or the other kids?"

The cub winced, not knowing how to answer.

"...Or both?" offered Johnny. "Or the entire concept a' school?"

"...Yeah," said Ed as he hung his head.

While that didn't clarify what he was saying yes to, Johnny nodded knowingly anyway; he'd had a hunch that this kid wasn't much of a school enjoyer, but he didn't want to assume. He didn't want to pry, either, but he thought he could at least offer some empathy.

"Yeah, it was the same for me, too. I can't even fathom what it's like to be someone who doesn't just feel… shitty goin' to school. What's it like to not have all the other kids think you're lame and all the teachers think you're stupid? Fuck, I can't tell ya."

He paused to account for the cub's expression. The good news was that Ed certainly seemed reassured that his new role model also had the exact same experience in school as he'd had and still turned out to be as cool as he was; the bad news is that one could also tell he didn't want to think about said school experience.

"...I'm sorry, kid, is just bein' in this building stressin' you out?"

Ed seemed confused by the question. "...No?"

"Well, that's a relief," Johnny sighed. "Hey, here's some good news though. Ya said you're, what, goin' into high school next year? Well - in my experience - things get better in high school. Even if that's just less-bad. Way more tolerable than middle school. A lotta the kids grow up and stop bein' complete assholes towards the end, and even the ones that don't? You get better at handlin' 'em. So… you at least a little excited for a fresh start in high school?"

Alas, the cub was even more confused. "...I thought me and Eddy joining you and Mister Robin meant we didn't have to go to school anymore."

Johnny's reassuring smile disappeared as he was now a wee bit panicked that they'd misled this kid. "Oh, uh… I-I'm sorry, bud, we can't let ya do that. We, uh, we commit a lotta crimes, but truancy ain't one we think is gonna help anybody. Um… stay in school, kid; even if they don't know how to teach ya, at least you're provin' to the world that you're tryin' to take your education seriously!"

The older bear knew Ed was misguided and immature, but he also knew the boy wasn't outright stupid. And once again, the look on his face made that abundantly clear. Ed could tell Johnny didn't believe a word of that stay-in-school line, but once again, afraid to tarnish his relationship with the first adult he thought truly respected him, the young man didn't defy his elder.

Time to change the subject. "But, uh… hey, we're flattered that you wanna make this a full-time thing, kid! And here we thought you'd be bored outta your mind because it's, uh… kinda a boring mission today…"

"It's not boring!" Ed spoke up without hesitance this time. "...I get to hang out with my friends!"

And that got Johnny's eyes opening, literally and figuratively. "...Is that also why you're not stressin' out over bein' in a school?"

The cub nodded. "Plus we're getting back at the evil school with the mean kids by stealing their stuff-!"

"Shh, shh, shh, shh, shhhhh!" the older bear warned him. "...Sorry kid, but… not so loud, is that okay?"

Embarrassed, Ed nodded again, but after a moment, the embarrassed countenance melded into something more like… glumness. "I just wish Double-D were here. But he doesn't wanna play with us."

Ah, there it was. Johnny gave a melancholy nod of his own. "Yeah, Wolfie's a cool kid, but… this obviously ain't his bag, this ain't his style. And that's okay, y'know? Rob and I don't think less of him for it!"

But the cub was still dour. "...I miss him."

"...Is he not talkin' to you guys anymore?" asked Johnny with concern.

"No, he is, but…" Ed's eyes were getting watery. "...I wish he was here, too."

His new mentor just nodded and tried to think of what to say. "Well, hey, you guys are just goin' through a little… somethin', y'know? Doesn't mean it's the end. And… even if it is, hey, friends drift apart, it's… it's part a' growin' up, unfortunately. That's a part a' life."

Ed looked up to him. "Have you had friends who didn't wanna be friends anymore, too?"

Oh, it was a struggle to swallow his own grief and ignore the fact that he hadn't had any of these things called friends until the fourth decade of his life. But he had to do it for the boy.

"Yeah… yeah, I have." And he had, albeit a small sample size. "Sometimes… you and a friend stop bein' around each other all the time, but ya still talk, so ya don't even miss 'em because they're still there, they're just not… there," he explained, thinking of a badger who turned out to be pretty cool for an old homeless guy and clandestine Jesus freak. "...Sometimes you grow to hate 'em so much ya stop missin' 'em altogether," he continued, thinking of a coyote who had gone full radical and told the remaining two Merry Men in no uncertain terms that he thought they were stupid and evil for not being like him. "...And sometimes they don't wanna leave, but they have to… and you're gonna miss 'em till the day you die," he murmured, thinking of a fox who, as far as the bear knew, had only stepped out of his life out of an overwhelming feeling of moral obligation.

"...Are you okay, Mister Johnny?"

The older bear was caught off-guard by the question; once again, the young man wasn't an idiot. "...Oh! Oh, yeah, I… I'm good, I'm fine… thanks for asking though." Shit, the twenty-eighth is tomorrow, isn't it?

That was when one of the gym doors opened up and the foxes stuck their red heads out.

"Er, lads?" asked Robin. "Can we trouble you for a few more sets of eyes?"

So, yeah, anyway, there was no archery equipment in that locker. Heightened ursine vantage points didn't uncover anything that the vulpines had missed.

"I'm tellin' ya," Eddy grumbled as they walked out of the gym, arguing that he was neither stupid nor had simply been lying. "Lemon Brook does archery! They do everything!"

"Is it possible they just keep that stuff elsewhere?" asked Robin.

"Probably!"

"Where, then?" asked Johnny.

"How'm I supposed to know!?"

Ed had a theory as they walked out through the doors. "Maybe they hid the bows and arrows in anticipation of our attack, and now an army of mean kids and teachers are about to rain down upon us at any moment, unarmed and vulnerable out in the open!"

Everyone came to a stop to stare at him.

"Lad, we need to harness and weaponize that creativity somehow, it's a waste not to," Robin remarked. "So, er… if we can't find them, do you lads want to cherry-bomb the toilets!? Heh heh…"

"Wait, hollup." Johnny had noticed a map of the school posted on the wall. "...Jesus, this school is so rich they have two gyms!?"

-IllI-

Johnny, on the other hand, fucking hated teachers long after leaving school. None of the judicious ambivalence Robin had towards them, he just plain didn't like 'em.

Ah, yes, this narrator does exaggerate, but not that much. But whereas the fox's issue with educators was that they often represented unjust authority poisoned by indifference, the bear was always more concerned with the question of what the fuck are these people doing with their lives? Take, say, a young woman who wanted to go into early-childhood education because she wanted to get these children a good start and because she thought little children were cute; now there was someone Johnny Little would completely buy was in the field of education with the best of intentions. Same with someone who signs up for one of those programs to specifically teach inner-city kids at failing schools, that was a noble endeavor that someone has to specifically choose. But for most "regular" teachers in comfortable spots, he was just deeply skeptical that this was a career they could possibly be passionate about. Especially the ones who taught tweens and younger teenagers who nobody in their right mind would choose to be around in large numbers under any circumstances.

There was more nuance to his opinion. For one thing, he believed more than he didn't in the old adage that those who can, do; those who can't, teach; Johnny didn't blame teachers for this, but he'd always thought that those best suited to teach were busy doing other things with their lives, and thus the circumstances left the pool of educators to largely be leftovers. And yeah, he knew this wasn't black-and-white, he knew there were some people crazy enough to think they could inspire a seventeen-year-old to stop thinking about sex and parties and start thinking about their future. History teachers were largely off the hook to him because you don't major in history in college unless you specifically want to teach it to the next generation; to a lesser extent, he gave English teachers similar leeway. But when he found out someone was a teacher, his first instinct was to try to sniff out what they had really wanted to do with their lives, because he found it unlikely that education would be anybody's first choice. And he'd always privately theorized that the reason why so many teachers were so goddamn pissy was because they were bitter that they were stuck doing this shit for half a century of their lives.

That's certainly what they were like when he was young. Mount Juliet, Tennessee, is considered a bucolic exurb of Nashville today, but back in the '70s and '80s, it was just straight-up country. And while the education wasn't as bad as it was in a lot of places even farther out in the boondocks, it definitely paled in comparison to what rich kids in the big city were getting. This refers, of course, to both the quality of the education as well as the culture of the schools he attended, places where leashes were short and conformity was king.

Much like the first half-million words of this story before he cared to correct me, nobody called him Johnny back then, they called him Little John on the rare occasion they referred to him at all; he always hated that nickname, but nobody ever cared about his opinion. Even a significant portion of his teachers called him that, assuming that he preferred it since everyone else called him that and never, ever bothering to check. To be fair, though, it's easy to feel safe assuming that something is someone's preferred nickname when even their own brother calls them that without a hint of malice in his voice.

That was a symptom of one of the few things the non-identical Little Twins had in common: neither one of them did very well in school, and as they aged up into middle- and high school and classes soon became segregated by skill level, Little John and Big Baloo still frequently wound up in either the same classes or different sections of the same class, taught by the same teacher during different periods of the schedule. Even then, however, there were stark differences in the vastly visually distinct bear brothers. Big, boisterous, blue-hued Baltimore was in the stupid classes because he seemed mentally incapable of paying attention to anything that bored him, and all those years in school never uncovered a subject he found interesting; Johnny always did wonder whether his brother genuinely befriended the quiet rich panther kid who'd moved to town from India despite their opposite personalities, or if charismatic Baloo was just great at faking it because he needed his perpetual help to avoid failing all his classes. As for the brown-furred cub with the severe physical developmental delay, however, he genuinely tried in school, and he was mostly able to stay afloat by himself, but he never excelled in anything, either; D's and F's were as rare to him as A's were. So while Johnny wasn't completely dependent on outside assistance like his brother was, he was never good enough to pull away academically and separate himself from Baltimore. Long before he met Robin, back when tall, strong, handsome, and incredibly popular Baloo was the living embodiment of everything Johnny wished he could have been, the forgotten Little Twin always took some degree of solace in his belief that he was at least slightly less of a dumbass than his brother.

But what does this have to do with teachers? Come now, Dear Reader, it's a small-town school in the South during the Reagan years; if you weren't good at the subject they taught, if you weren't a star athlete on the sports team they coached, and if you weren't a complete brown-noser, they didn't even pretend to like you. Johnny was regarded as intellectually average at best and had a dwarfish body that made athletic achievements the stuff of pipe dreams, so the first two were out, and because the above put him so low on the social ladder so as to severely inhibit his interpersonal skills, he couldn't kiss a teacher's ass even if he wanted to. At least Baloo had a pretty good success rate of charming female teachers and fraternizing with younger male ones, even when his abysmal grades and poor work ethic got him benched from the football, basketball, and wrestling teams; Little John wouldn't have had any luck getting on their good sides even if he'd tried a thousand times. And so it was that all throughout his years in school, he dealt with uninspired teachers who wouldn't dream of lifting a finger to inspire him. He was small, stupid, and strange, a waste of space who you shouldn't look at unless you wanted to be overcome with depression as you contemplated what nature's fate was for this wretched creature. Surely it's clear where his dim view of educators came from.

But there was one, though. A teacher who definitely wanted to be there. And a teacher who was actually elated to have a mind like John Little's in his class, someone who actively encouraged him and wanted the young bear to be all he could be. Johnny wishes he'd never met him.

As is customary, high school required students to take a foreign-language class. The twins' father thought the French language was for homosexuals and that taking Spanish would encourage the existence of Mexican people, so he forced both his boys to take German, the only other option. It was such an obscure choice that there was only one teacher in the building to teach all four levels of it. But damn if he wasn't qualified, it was his native tongue.

Dietrich Fuchs hailed from the German city of Schweinfurt; he completely defied all stereotypes of how Germans conduct themselves and yes that was his actual last name stop laughing. Literally just the German word for fox, it was supposed to be pronounced to rhyme with 'books' or 'cooks', but if you pronounced it fucks to be goofy, he wouldn't even be mad, that's just how chill he was. And if you pronounced it fucks to be an asshole, he would fight back with a sense of humor that would inspire you to never choose to try to be an asshole to him again. Of course, he was also cool with students just calling him by his first name, Mister D., or even Rich or Ricky, which many of them did as a term of endearment. The fox was living proof that if you really want to garner respect, you're going to have much better results with affability than with austerity.

He actually played off the stereotype when he explained his origin story to his pupils: he was just too cool for a stodgy place like Germany, so he came to America when he was a young man, seeking a culture that was just plain more fun and finding it in spades. He wanted to see as much of it as he could, so his educational career was one big barnstorming tour: after getting his footing with some extended family of his in Wisconsin, he taught there for a few years before answering a newspaper ad for a job in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Then a job at a school in the New Orleans area, then one on Long Island, then San Jose, and after almost taking a position in the Florida Keys, he decided he didn't like hurricanes very much and would rather give the outskirts of Nashville a try, thinking it would be the perfect balance between the Southern mellowness he'd encountered in Louisiana with the small-town charm he adored in Wyoming. Dietrich had been at the brothers' high school for a good number of years by this point, so it seemed he was quite content with it.

It was early in their freshman year of high school, early autumn of 1982. The teacher and his students had known each other for long enough that they had built a mutual rapport, but not long enough that he really knew any of them as people nor vice versa. Herr Fuchs was teaching tips and tricks for memorizing when to use German's different articles, which was to say there were no tips and tricks and you just have to memorize them; he was delivering all this in a manner more like a standup routine than a lecture, and he was hoping that his jokes about coming to the States and realizing how confusing his native tongue was to the rest of the world would themselves be what the students remembered to recall when to use die, der, and das. And as he delivered this monologue, he engaged in his trademark tic: putting a golf ball around the room and having a student retrieve it, nominally to make sure they were staying awake.

"And die wurst is ze vorst!" the teacher quipped as he prepared his next shot. "It vasn't until I started thinking in English, vhy is a bratwurst feminine? A sausage is ze most masculine food zer is, just look at it!"

The boys and girls alike were all compelled to openly and genuinely laugh at that line; even Little John, seated off along the wall, had to chuckle at such a risqué joke made by a responsible adult. While the class was cackling, Dietrich putted his ball down an aisle between seats, where it ran out of momentum just as it hit the far moulding.

"...Jennifer, could you get zat for me?"

The hare got out of her seat, walked to the back, bent over, got the ball, and walked it back up to the fox.

"Sank you, Fräulein Jennifer," Herr Fuchs said as he promptly dropped the ball on the ground just to knock it away again.

Johnny was trying to follow the lesson, but he was already feeling discouraged. This was his first time trying to learn a language that wasn't English; if every subject intimidated him and made him feel dumb, this one seemed like something he wouldn't even have a fighting chance at. Math might have been hard, but at least he knew what numbers meant; he didn't know if he'd ever wrap his head around a cypher where W's were V's and V's were fucking F's.

And what's more, he was distracted. His assigned seat up against the wall was right next to a large map, showing intricate details of the political geography of Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and, of course, Germany - and the other Germany. Maps had always been a point of fascination for him; the Littles weren't outright impoverished, but they certainly didn't have the budget to stray very far from Nashville. So the idea that there was a great big world out there frankly blew his mind. And you could go to these places? It wasn't the physics of such a journey that baffled him, but the thought that there were people who had the time to make such long journeys and did. The idea of venturing to New York was far-fetched enough to him; the sheer concept of New Zealand was just about incomprehensible.

But more than anything, that atlas on the wall was a symbol of temptation. Yes, Johnny Little, there was a world outside of Tennessee, and you could go there. And you could stay there. You can go from a place where everyone already has a preconceived notion that you're an obese forever-cub who lacks street smarts, book smarts, or useful talents of any kind, and start over where nobody knows your name. It didn't even have to be Germany or Austria or Switzerland; it could be England, it could be China, it could be Timbuktu, it could be Nottingham, Delaware, for all anybody cared. But there was a world out there; there were a lot of places on this planet, and most of them weren't Mount Juliet. Some places would surely be worse, but some places surely had to be better than this, and the fact of the matter is he didn't have to be here if he didn't want to be. And he didn't want to be.

…Y'know, looking at divided Germany like that up close for the first time, it really posed a question.

"Similarly! Vhy is der curvy Löffel a boy vhile die pointy Gabel is a girl!?" the teacher kept musing, confident these amusing observations would stick in his students' heads. "Are my utensils an eccentric couple!? I do not judge, I am just confused! And das Messer vants to cut between them, zey want ze best of both vorlds…" Putt. "...Christina, vould you please?"

For any other teacher, the puma would have put up a fight, but since Dietrich was respectful and had asked nicely, she got up, bent down, and walked the ball back to him.

But as she did, the fox's gaze wandered. He noticed the small brown bear's eyes completely turned away from him, staring at the wall.

"...Sank you," Herr Fuchs said as he got his ball back. "...Herr John! Do you find ze map interesting?"

The cub felt like he'd been pantsed. He turned his head to see all eyes were suddenly on him, and the stagefright kicked in immediately. Dietrich had so far seemed like a cool teacher who was slow to anger, but that didn't make the question sound any less angry. Could he have just found the way to genuinely agitate the lovable old fox?

"...No?" he squeaked with a voice that was more befitting of a child half his age.

Indeed, Herr Fuchs wasn't mad; if anything, he now regretted putting the boy on the spot since Little John was clearly so uncomfortable. He tried to salvage it. "You do seem fixated by it. Do you have any geography questions I can answer?"

The bear wanted to say no again, but the truth was that he very much did have a question. He still almost tapped out and pretended he didn't, but then he had a thought: maybe posing a good question would prove to the teacher - and his classmates - that he was in fact capable of complex thoughts. Weakly and meekly, and with a much more pronounced Southern accent than he'd retain as an adult, he answered:

"Uhhh…I-I know they taught us in Social Studies that Berlin was cut in half by a big ol' wall, but, uh… they never showed us a map, and, and I just thought it was on the border… so Berlin is all surrounded by East Germany?"

The teacher nodded wisely. "It is! In retrospect, perhaps my people should have chosen a capital that vas in the middle of ze country!"

"...But if there's a wall all the way 'round Berlin… how do they-all get out?" the tiny bear continued, surprising himself with his bravery. "And I-I'on mean the East Germans, I know they ain't allowed ta' leave, I mean… how do the people in Berlin get ta' the rest a' West Germany? A-and how do the rest a' West Germany get on over there?"

Alas, before the teacher could formulate an answer, someone else piped up. The one who more than anybody was a cause of great anguish for young Little John, and was such entirely without an ounce of malicious intent:

"They're called planes, brother!" Baloo remarked jocularly from across the room, and Mister Big Fun that he was - already looking like a full adult before even hitting his fifteenth birthday and measured a few weeks earlier in gym class to be only eight inches shy of being exactly twice his twin brother's stature - he led the class in hysterics with a bellowing bass-baritone belly laugh.

With that cue from the party-starter, all the other kids joined him.

And just like that, Little John once again wanted to become dead. He was small enough as it was and couldn't make himself any smaller, so he just turned to the wall and took refuge in the map again. They weren't laughing at him in Vienna.

Emboldened, some kids began verbalizing what they thought of the brown-furred cub's social status.

"Fuggin' idiot!"

"Ya little retard!"

"Dumb sum-bitch!"

"HEY!"

Everyone went quiet when they heard the big bear bark.

"Don't talk about my brother that way," Baloo warned them, his famous conviviality turned off until they understood. Taking his threat seriously, the other students immediately ceased the mockery of his brother that he'd inadvertently inspired. Another prime example of the gray-furred Little Twin genuinely meaning well but also just genuinely being dumb.

But Herr Fuchs had never lost his composure. "Ja, ladies and gentlemen: to go to and from Vest Berlin, you must take an airplane. Of course, travel is a luxury many cannot afford, so many are functionally stuck on ze Vest side of ze city as much as on ze East."

Financially unable to leave their hometown? Little John could certainly relate.

"Zat was a good question, Herr John, don't vorry." Putt. Aw, hell, his aim was off and the golf ball dinged off the leg of someone's desk, sending it way away from the direction he'd wanted it. Ah, fine, he'd call on someone else to retrieve it; better to mix it up anyway.

"Herr Baltimore, since you like attention so much, how about you get the ball zis time?"

The bigger Little brother shrugged passively and leaned over to try to reach where it had gone under the radiator.

"No, no, come on, up and out of your seat!" the fox directed him.

Dietrich was a cool guy, and there was nobody Baltimore respected more than cool people, so he played along. The large bruin stood all the way up just to bend all the way over, putting his prominent ursine ass up in the air for all to see.

"Ewww!" Dale Tuber performatively squirmed in the adjacent seat, the weasel doing what he could to demonstrate to his community that he was a good Christian boy who was appalled by the sight of a male's behind; some others, male and female alike, joined him in expressing similar disgust.

Baloo responded to this the only way he would ever choose to. "Aw, don't act like this big ol' thing ain't a beaut!" he declared as he stood halfway back up, then proceeded to shake his rear end like he'd just stepped onto a dancefloor, something he had a long and storied history of doing at every opportunity. Crass as it was, it displayed an impenetrable sense of confidence, something his brother seated at the far wall would just about kill for.

This wasn't even the first time Baloo had done something like this in this class in the month and a half they'd been in school that year. "Vell, vith all ze exercise you're giving zat sing as you call it, I don't know if it should be getting bigger or smaller, Herr Baltimore," the teacher quipped, because it was 1982 and teachers could still make quips like that without going to jail. And because he felt a bit bad that the boisterous boy's shy twin brother had been the butt of a classroom joke, Dietrich decided to level the playing field with another butt joke. "Perhaps they'll let you back on ze team if you tell zem you'll play as a blocker zis time - standing backwards!"

Baloo had in fact been recently booted from the freshman football team, his immense potential no match for his utter lack of desire to attend practice ever. That was a good line, and the class laughed along. But he wasn't offended by the remark.

"Heyyy, y'know what!? That's a good idea!" the big bear laughed along with them as he slid smoothly back into his seat. "If the other team's as afraid a' this thing as Tubey is, they'll run for the hills!"

Cool as a fuckin' cucumber, wasn't he? Little John could barely watch. Moments like this filled him with lament that his conscious mind couldn't have been put in the other body when they were in the womb.

"Herr Baltimore, zer is still ze matter of my golf ball," said the fox, still not annoyed but a bit closer to it than usual.

The blue-hued bruin held up his gargantuan paws. "Hey, whaddaya want from me, Ricky, ya picked the guy with the biggest hands to reach into the tiniest gap!"

The teacher retained his smirk as he rolled his eyes. "Errr… Fräulein Cheryl, since zis is apparently a situation for small paws and smaller claws?"

The Arctic vixen nodded with a smile as she got out of her seat, walked a few rows back, and bent down to reach under the radiator. Cheryl North never minded getting the golf ball for Herr Fuchs; as was the case for many, he was probably her favorite teacher. And she never complained or made sardonic remarks when it was her turn on retrieval duty, quiet girl that she was; everyone agreed that she was mature for her age.

"Sank you very much," the old tod said with a nod when he got his ball back. "But ja, zer are more vays zan just aviation to access Vest Berlin, but zat is indeed ze preferred method so you do not have to deal vith Eastern officials…" He rolled the ball around in his hand before dropping it on the ground again, stopping it with his foot so it wouldn't roll away; it was taking him a second to get back into his humorous routine because the way things had transpired hadn't sat well with him. "...German culture and ze impact of ze division is a part of our curriculum, ve vill, er, get to it eventually… so zat vas as good question."

If he'd said that to inspire his students to apologize for belittling Little John, it didn't work; they ignored him like they usually did. All the better; for the cub, no attention was good attention.

In time, Dietrich did get back into the flow of things, and the class continued as normal. He timed it perfectly so that he delivered his final punchline just in time for the bell to cut through the class's laughter. The students loved his lessons, but school was still school, so when the end came, they hustled on out of there just the same. But the fox found a moment amid the noise to single someone out.

"Er, Herr John? Could you stay for just a moment?"

"Oooh, Little John's in trouble!" some kid jeered.

"Don't let him stick ya with a needle!" cackled someone else, a horse, though he stopped cackling when the cub's bigger twin gave him a good smack on the back of the head on their way out of the room. Baloo gave his brother a friendly nod as he exited, but didn't spare any encouraging words for him.

Little John was terrified. Great, so he had done something wrong and somehow managed to piss off the mellowest teacher in the district. Herr Fuchs approached him to talk once the room had cleared out, but the bear talked first.

"I-I'm sorry!"

The teacher couldn't help but visibly wince at that. "Sorry? Young man, you have nothing to apologize for, I vas going to apologize for, er… not doing more to, er… not make you feel embarrassed ven you shouldn't have. Zat really vas a good question to ask!"

Little John didn't know what to say. If he said I forgive you, would that insinuate he was agreeing an authority figure had made a mistake? Was he even allowed to do that?

"You didn't deserve to be laughed at like zose kids did," the fox continued, "at least you're curious about ze vorld, they're just eating up my jokes vithout questioning anything. You cannot get smarter unless you didn't know something first, ja?"

The bear didn't disagree, he just misunderstood what he needed to hear that for; he was so unused to hearing praise from a teacher that Dietrich might as well have been literally speaking German to him.

In fairness, the teacher didn't know where he was going with this either, he was just saying it because it felt like the right thing to say. "I know zat doesn't take avay ze feeling, but… at least know I'm not laughing at you. Does zat sound good?"

"...Uh-huh…" The cub looked around the room again. "I-I'm sorry, I just… I hafta get to my class-"

"Ah, I'll write you a pass…" Herr Fuchs scoffed as he went to his desk and pulled out a small booklet, ripping a leaf out and filling in the date and time with his and his pupil's names. "I just vanted to… say zat I understand, understand?"

"...I do." He didn't.

"Wunderbar," Dietrich said as he gave Little John his hall pass. "I'll, er… be more careful ven calling on you in ze future, okay?"

"...Okay."

Well, that was odd. But the cub didn't have to think about it for a few days after that, so he didn't. Classes came and went and Herr Fuchs seemed to be paying Little John no heed just as everybody did. But little did the bear know, when the fox putted his golf ball to nowhere in particular and got the rest of the class to look at whoever was retrieving it, Dietrich would use the opportunity to sneak a glance at Johnny, and when he did, the young man would always have his head turned, scrutinizing the map, wondering what was presently going on in those cities where burgers and pretzels and brown mustard came from.

After about a week, Herr Fuchs asked Little John to swing by his office after school for some tutoring. John, terrified that this meant that he was doing even worse in the class than he thought, didn't think he had a choice, but explained to his teacher that he lived far from school outside of town; if he missed the school bus, he had no way of getting home. The fox told him not to worry about it, he could just drive him home afterwards if need be, because it was 1982 and he could do that without suspicion since he was a trusted member of the community. Besides, the small bear might finally feel big riding in a car meant for a fox. Johnny braced himself and agreed.

The conversation started slow. "So… how do you like ze class?"

"It's… okay," the student murmured. "Um… I dunno if I'm any good at it-"

"John, don't vorry about zat, zat is not my concern," the teacher insisted. "You von't retain anything in an environment you don't like."

"...Well, uh… you're a lot more fun than my other teachers."

Dietrich nodded with a big smile. "Glad to hear my efforts are paying off. And I hope my actual teaching is effective, since…" He paused to point at the map again. "...you do seem so fascinated by Deutschland."

"OH-! Oh, I-I'm sorry, I don't mean ta'... ta' not be payin' attention, I just-"

"No, no, I'm flattered zat you have so much interest in my homeland! May I just ask… vat is it about Germany and its neighbors zat interests you so much?"

This felt like an interrogation. Little John was no good at lying, so in hopes to get this all over with, he told the truth. "Well… it's somewhere else."

An eyebrow was raised. "...Just somevere else? Zat's it?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I-I don't mean to say it's borin' or-!"

"John, John, calm down! Zat's a perfectly acceptable answer. Travel is a vonderful sing! Vhy shouldn't you vant to see ze vorld!?"

The cub just blinked and hoped this would all go away.

But the fox had an idea for how to connect this again with his class. "Follow me."

Little John did, and they walked over to the student's seat right in front of the map. Even for as dwarfish as he was, the cub was still a good foot taller than the old vulpine, who climbed up onto the desk to point where he wanted to point.

"It's not Germany, but I sink you vould like it… here," Dietrich declared as he pointed to a city in central Switzerland.

"...Bern?"

"Do you know vat Bern means in Old German?"

"...No?"

With his teacher now looking down at him, Little John felt tiny all over again. Herr Fuchs answered only with a smile and a finger pointed right at his student.

"...Small?"

The fox had to stifle a chuckle he was sure would hurt the boy. "Er… no, it means bear! Vich most people in zat city are! A whole city for your people!"

The cub wasn't charmed by this. This information just set off alarm bells. "Uh, n-no, no thanks, uh… other bears ain't nice to me, I, uh…"

Ah, the teacher was kicking himself for inadvertently hurting this poor boy again. "Because you're… small."

Johnny stopped panicking. Someone finally understood. "...Yeah."

Dietrich nodded morosely. "Ah, I apologize, I should have known zat was ze case. After all, my people pride ourselves in our alliance with yours, I realize now zat I should have understood zat…" He paused as he debated whether he wanted to say something that could come across as touching or corny. "As zey say in my language, ein Fuchs und ein Bär sind ein tolles Paar!"

There were enough cognates in that sentence that the cub vaguely understood it. He had indeed found that uncomfortably corny. "Was that… was that the old 'fox and bear' line in German-?"

"It vas!"

Little John winced. "It… don't rhyme as good as it does in English-"

"Ah, and an ear like zat is why you have a B vhile you brother barely maintains a C! And even vith all ze help he gets from Herr Neal from my other German 1 class, as if I don't know!"

The bear had to stifle a cruel giggle at his brother's expense; Baloo was lucky that Neal Bagheera was even in German class at all. The panther had signed up for French, in which he was already fluent from his ritzy British education in India, and was hoping to rack up four years of easy A's to boost his GPA, but his money-minded parents vetoed his decision and made him learn a second "language of business". Little John knew it wasn't nice, but it was so rare that he got to feel like he was better than his brother at something, and the thought of how screwed the glaucous-furred twin would be if not for someone else's familial interference just tickled him.

And his giddiness made Dietrich smile. "I know it's not a stellar performance, but few of us are gifted to excel at every subject, and I see ze vork you're putting in."

This all begged a question, however. "But… does that mean ya only like me because… species… stuff-?"

"John, please, do you see me giving Baltimore such preferential treatment?" Herr Fuchs laughed.

The cub thought about that. No, he hadn't seen such a thing.

"...Forgive me if zis is none of my business, but… I feel like I can relate to you, young man." The fox pointed to another spot on the map, this time in the south of West Germany. "Do you remember ze name of my hometown?"

Little John squinted at the map. "...Schweinfurt, right?"

"Precisely! And nevermind ze -furt, what does the Schwein part sound like?"

"...shine?"

"Ah, close!"

The bear pondered some more. "...Wh-what, swine?"

"Zer it is!" Dietrich said as he hopped down from the desk. "It vasn't an entire city of pigs, but they vere ze majority, and ze rest of us vere… others. And you especially didn't vant to be an other during ze Var, vhen I vas growing up."

The cub shuddered; he could imagine. "I'm… sorry ya had ta' go through that…"

Herr Fuchs put his hands up. "Ah, it could have been much vorse, zose pigs might have hated a fuchs like me as much as zey hated ze Jews, but vhile I didn't feel at home in my hometown… at least I vasn't forcibly removed from it like some of my neighbors."

Little John was going to say another sorry you had to go through that line, but… that chain of words, didn't feel at home in my hometown…

"Ah, I shouldn't be sharing zis vith you, zis is irrelevant and just depressing," the teacher continued. "John, I'm not saying our situations are ze same, but… I sink I understand vhat you're going zrough."

Not at home in my hometown. "I… think ya might."

The old fox couldn't help but smirk at that. "I'm glad to hear zat, young man. But my point in all zis…" He gestured to the map again. "If you vant to see ze world… learning another language is a great place to start!"

Aaand the cub was nervous again. "Oh, oh, uh, but… I-I might be better at it than mah brother, but I still don't think I know German enough to talk in it for real-"

"Young man, young man, you've only just begun to learn a new language for ze first time!" Dietrich reassured him. "And it doesn't even have to be German, I von't be offended if you find you're better at Spanish or French or some other language! But let me tell you, once you learn one language beyond your native tongue… learning a second or a sird becomes so much easier! And so, Herr John… from one man who vanted to escape his homeland to another… can I offer to help you vith your schoolwork?"

Positive as that was, it still sounded like there was some unflattering subtext in there. "Do you… do ya think I need it?"

Herr Fuchs just gave him an optimistic smile. "If you vant to escape zis place, excelling at something can help you escape. You strike me as a nice young man, John; I'd hate to see you stuck here for ze rest of your life."

That was when it finally struck him that this authority figure was approving of him with no strings attached.

The transportation problem was solved: Little John would stay afterwards for tutoring on the same days Baloo stayed after school for wrestling team practice, that way they could both get a ride home from their dad (who just assumed his smaller son was being forced to stay because he sucked at the class, and that his bigger son should probably have been receiving the same tutoring since there was no way he wasn't also an idiot but was given a pass because he excelled at wrestling, but he genuinely could not be an iota more embarrassed by either of his cubs than he already was by that point). Those three afternoons a week just became Herr Fuchs's office hours, and the bear was rarely the only one there; kids would pop in here and there to make up tests or get the same help that Little John was getting. Cheryl North was a frequent flyer, studious girl that she was trying to get her A-minus to an A-plus. Baloo even showed up for shits and giggles a few times when he was suspended from the wrestling team for sleeping on the bench during practice, and as a self-described connoisseur of all things fun, even he agreed that just hanging out with his brother and the old fox was far from boring. It was a pity that couldn't be maintained to give the brothers something in common, but no matter; the brown-furred cub was still getting positive attention from an adult who actually wanted him to succeed - and believed he could, no less. He was almost bummed out when Winter Break approached.

It wasn't the last day before the vacation, but it was only a day or two before. The only ones there were Little John, Cheryl, and, strangely enough, Baloo's panther friend Neal Bagheera, making up a test he'd missed after being whisked away to India for a wedding in the family. Things were typical for about half an hour, then the teacher asked the cub if he could talk with him privately in the hallway. And he brought his carrying bag with him for some reason.

"Is… everything okay?" asked the bear.

"I assure you, Herr John, it is," said the fox. "Now, vhen ve began regular tutoring, it vas… early October?"

The student thought about it. "...Yeah?"

"Vell, I had an idea a few weeks later for something you might appreciate, but vhen I looked at ze class roster, I noticed… scheisse, your birthday had already passed on ze eighteenth and you hadn't told me! It vas already November vhen I noticed! Vhy didn't you say something!?"

Something he might appreciate? "I… didn't say nothin' 'cause I didn't think it mattered…"

"Vell, on ze bright side, you gave me until Christmas to get it," the teacher said as he began opening his bag. "I'm giving zis to you in private because I don't want Herr Neal to feel excluded and Fräulein Cheryl has already received hers."

That was when Little John knew something good was coming. Dietrich extracted a sizable world atlas book and handed it to him.

"Because it's important to foster a passion," the fox explained. "And you should know more about ze world than just ze places zat speak German!"

The bear was so curious that he forgot to say thank you as he accepted it. He immediately opened it up and started flipping through the pages. It was like a globe, but flat. And in exponentially more detail! He just instantly began poring over it. Did you know that there were two Yemens? And that the Soviet Union touched both Norway and North Korea? And that there was an entire separate country surrounded by South Africa? Now he did.

"I see you like it!" Herr Fuchs noted.

That snapped Little John out of it, embarrassed that he had forgotten to express gratitude. "Uh… th-thank you, but… ya shouldn't a'..."

Dietrich just shrugged and smirked again. "Maybe you're right. Ze world is always changing, after all! Zat sing might be out of date soon. All ze more reason to keep up to date on zat sort of sing and never let your curiosity fade! If I may ask… do you have any idea vhat you might vant to do vhen you grow up?"

Not the first time he'd heard that question, but the cub still didn't have a good answer for it. "Well… my grades aren't good enough for a lot a' things, I guess I gotta work construction like my dad-"

The fox scoffed. "Don't let people tell you you're not good enough to do something! You can be vhatever you want if you vork towards it! Say, you vant to see the vorld?" He pointed to the atlas. "Get good at a language, and you can be an interpreter. Get good at geopolitics, you can even be an ambassador!"

The bear didn't say anything as he tried to envision what such a life would even be like.

"I know you said you don't vant to go to Bern because you don't have ze best relationship vith your own species, but…" Herr Fuchs flipped some pages in the book. "...There are smaller bears in Southeast Asia… maybe you'd feel more at home there?"

Little John wasn't sure. "...Aren't pandas still pretty big?"

"Not pandas, smaller," the teacher nodded. "Hong Kong and Bangkok are especially popular destinations for expatriates!"

"...But I don't like Chinese food," the cub whimpered.

The fox laughed. "Ah, don't vorry, zer's plenty of other places you can go. But if you fear your grades are not good enough… let's try to fix that, shall ve? Say, who's your geography teacher?"

"They don't teach geography 'til sophomore year."

Dietrich's face twisted. "Vell, zen… let us prepare you as much as ve can, ja? I sink I've found my New Year's Resolution."

And the teacher stuck to it. Come January, he was helping his student with more than just German. He wasn't an expert on algebra or biology, but if he knew something, he'd share - and if he didn't, he taught him how to tackle a problem he couldn't solve, and how to take his best shot at a question he truly didn't know the answer to, a life skill no other teacher was in any hurry to teach. The cub still wasn't acing his classes, but he was getting much better marks than he had been as his grades erred closer to A's than D's. He even racked up some personal high scores on tests during this period, and even got his first perfect grade on an exam - in German, of course.

Also of note was that these study sessions weren't just Little John, Cheryl North, and a rotating door of whoever else needed sporadic help here and there. It started when Baloo dropped in again, suspended from the basketball team after slam-dunking and shattering a backboard (which wasn't even made of glass). He received some useful help from Herr Fuchs on his history homework, and as one of the most popular kids in school, he spread word that the old German teacher was coming in clutch. His other students came in for help with other subjects whose teachers they really didn't want to approach for this sort of thing, and a few kids who weren't even in his classes started swinging by, hoping to see if the legends of this guy were true. These afternoons wouldn't be the most exciting thing in the world, but they would be nice, chill times with nice, chill people, and for a lot of those children - like Little John - it was preferable to what awaited them at home. Even if he wasn't a miracle worker who could get all these kids acing their classes, Dietrich was an ace at getting them to have a more positive view of education, and to stop hating the idea of learning itself just because they associated it with their shitty teachers. It certainly worked on Little John.

Unfortunately, there were no dramatic last words that the old fox had for the bear cub. One day in April, Herr Fuchs just didn't show up to work. Okay, whatever, plenty of people called in sick every day; Cheryl North wasn't in school that day either, and she'd had perfect attendance to that point. But then he wasn't at school the next day, either - and neither was she.

Mount Juliet had the character of a small town, but not as small as it once was, so it took a few days for word to spread, and when it did, school faculty felt compelled to address it. Cheryl North was going to be okay, but she'd likely be attending a different school after that, possibly in a different state altogether. And as for the beloved Dietrich Fuchs, well, that's when many of the younger underclassmen at that high school learned what the word statutory meant. Luckily for him, the Norths were city slickers, so her parents were probably the only ones in town who didn't own a shotgun.

And just like that, all of the cub's newfound self-confidence towards education just… went away.

Now, does Johnny Little think that every schoolteacher who's excited about their job is hiding something like his old German teacher was? No, absolutely not, that'd be ridiculous. But after an experience like that, the thought has always, always crossed his mind, and it probably always would. That even reflected on his own bullshit: why do you think he was so paranoid that letting these two teenage boys hang around them might be seen as something far more insidious? If someone accused them of that, he'd be angry, and he'd be more than a little scared of a misled mob coming for their heads… but truthfully, he couldn't call such an assumption all that absurd. So combine that with the earlier question of why would anybody choose to be around a bunch of crazy children for a living? - or, with this context, why else? - and one can understand why he didn't have the sunniest view of the profession.

And even then, he knew it was just a consequence of the situation. Yeah, of course, obviously he'd agree teachers need to exist, he'd be liable to maul you if you mixed him up with the crowd who think they can do a better job and pull their kids out of school to protect them from the evils of secularism and vaccinations and minorities. But that's just the thing: he'd argue very, very few people are actually qualified to teach the next generation, and they're largely all too busy doing more important, impactful, and impressive shit than sitting under fluorescent lights for seven hours desperately trying to convince a bunch of rowdy kids that math was cool. Therefore amid the crop of teachers on the market, most were either sinfully apathetic towards their jobs, sinfully incompetent at their jobs… or were fixin' to use their jobs to commit another sin altogether. And he could only be so angry about it because that's just the way the world was arranged.

Not to say he had any sort of foolproof plot cooked up to remedy the situation. He wasn't too proud to say he was too stupid to dream up an easy answer; after all, the system had failed to make him smart.

He still tried his best in school after a bombshell like that, but all the hope for true academic success was gone; he simply applied himself just because he was sure he'd be more screwed if he didn't. He certainly stopped doing as well in German class; the emergency teacher for the rest of the year was a mean old lady from the next district over who they'd pulled out of retirement, and she was so grouchy you'd wonder if someone was forcing her to go back to work against her will. The new teacher for his sophomore year was some middle-aged guy with the charisma of a bowl of Corn Flakes who similarly left him uninspired, and after his required two years of a foreign language were up, Little John didn't bother with levels III and IV. He promptly forgot virtually all of the language due to the sheer fact that he never had any reason to use it. He did, however, do quite well in the one year of Geography class they taught, despite the teacher being some young guy who was new to teaching and despite seeming to have the best intentions clearly did not know how to lead a class of two dozen teenagers. That was the only class he ever got four consecutive A's in over four consecutive grading quarters - A-regulars and A-minuses, but he'd take that as a W - and let me tell you, Dear Reader, when he did that, he told himself he'd succeeded out of spite for a man who'd betrayed him and betrayed a lot of other people, some far worse.

Because he had to think about it that way; the only alternative was to feel gross about doing well with a talent fostered by a bad man. And because that bad man was a bad man, all that encouragement and positivity… it had to be invalid, right? That encouragement could not possibly have been valid if it came from a bad man. Maybe that was a logical fallacy, but it's what his heart felt, and for matters like those, you listen to your heart before your brain.

Therefore with no encouragement from a mentor - none from a valid mentor - Little John never did flourish academically. He didn't even bother applying for college. He probably could have gotten in somewhere, considering his brother had an even worse grade point average and had still been accepted into an aviation academy, where Baloo was hoping to follow in the footsteps of their famous grandfather (and was probably hoping to use that to crash a few Hollywood parties and parlay that into a successful film career just like Hank had as well); evidently they just let any idiot fly a plane these days. But Little John was just so sick of his formal education by that point that he simply wanted it to be over with already, and what would he even go to college to study, anyway? He still hadn't found any calling he'd want to make into a career; he still wasn't enjoying the experience of being alive, so why would he have enjoyed doing anything for a living? University costs were already creeping up by the time he graduated, so it wasn't worth going just for the hell of it; Harry surely wasn't going to help him pay tuition. Honestly, the only reason he didn't just drop out and get his GED was because he probably would have gotten kicked out of the house even sooner that way.

When the twins were inevitably kicked out of the house days after high school ended, Little John packed up as much of his stuff as he could to go wherever he would go. As he was going through his stuff, he found the old atlas. He didn't bring it with him. The fact that it would take up too much space didn't help, but his primary rationale was what was told to him by the old fox who'd given it to him: the world changes quickly and frequently, and that old thing was probably obsolete by then anyway.

He made his way to the Greyhound station in downtown Nashville, showed them his birth certificate to prove that just because he looked like a nine-year-old didn't mean he actually was one, and asked where he could go with the cash he had. Screw it, Nottingham, Delaware, he could get there with money to spare, and word on the street was that it was a very affordable city to live in. It wasn't the most exciting option. He'd always hoped he could have gone somewhere like Seattle or San Diego or Burlington, Vermont; Santiago or Singapore or Reykjavik, Iceland; maybe even Bern, Switzerland, or West Berlin. But Nottingham was as good as any of these places; it was somewhere other than his hometown that never felt like home. And as he barely scraped by working odd job paying piddly-shit and rooming with a male escort tiger who generously let him pay a much smaller share of the rent in exchange for cleaning up after the feline's "home business," the bear felt completely confident that this was the best he could have hoped for, since every adult he'd encountered during his upbringing had failed to help him learn how to learn.

There is one more thing he asks me to clarify for you, Dear Reader; when the news broke that day, young Little John had realized within a matter of hours that he had never personally been in any danger with the old fox, so you need not fear that he was. Believe you me, some of his peers wanted to say he was just to have another thing to ridicule him for, but the community quickly pieced together that such an event was much less likely. As classmates whispered amongst themselves, they quickly came to the same conclusion: oh, so it hadn't been an illusion, Herr Fuchs really had disproportionately called upon the girls to turn around and bend over to pick up his golf balls.

-IllI-

"And you're sure it's this way?" asked Robin, not trying to be impatient with his friend, merely impatient with the situation.

"Hey, which one of us is good at maps?" Johnny quipped with a bounce of the eyebrow.

"I'm no slouch with navigation, either, now am I?"

"Ain't sayin' you are, man, but c'mon, this is one a', like, three things I'm good at. I got this."

Another telltale sign that Lemon Brook High School had entirely too much money: whenever they felt they needed to expand the building, they never had to hesitate. They could just slap another new wing on the building wherever, with minimal concern for the extant design, all hallmarks of tasteful architecture be damned. In that era, satellite imagery had recently become widely accessible on the internet, and students of LBHS and their rivals alike similarly remarked that when seen from above, the school's layout resembled some fantasy or sci-fi monster whose name surely contained more consonants than vowels. And when inside, the original two wings were simple enough to navigate, but if you ventured beyond that, you'd better have brought a compass, and I don't mean the one you take to geometry class.

So after an about-face, right, up, left, up, left, right, left, right, left, left, left, left, left, Ed I know you're dizzy but please stop spinning in circles, left, right, left, take it back now y'all, to the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left, left, right, left, left, so many lefts that you'll feel like a woman in the 1800s because you have no rights, left, left, oh shit too many lefts, turn around, somehow also left again, right, right, left, right, you start to wonder if David Cowie is gonna jump out at you because clearly this place is a Labyrinth, left, right, right, left, seven, forty-two, Omaha, right, left, loop-de-loop, merry-go-round, left, left, left-

"See!? I toldja it was this door!" Johnny declared, presenting as jocular despite being thoroughly annoyed. He pointed to his fox friend. "And you didn't believe me, haha!"

Robin once again took in the incredibly nondescript entryway they'd surely passed by twice already. "...Heh, can you blame me!?"

"Yes!" the bear affirmed in the same faux jolly tone.

Ah, he was right. Upon closer inspection, there was never any reason why this couldn't have been the second gym, but… hell, there was no reason why it would have logically been a gymnasium, either. The main one has at least six or eight doors all next to each other on one wall alone; this one only had two. And these doors had very narrow, very small windows with no light coming through. And clearly these windows were purely an aesthetic choice, because they were only accessible to the eye levels of someone both a lot shorter than Johnny… and a lot taller than Robin. "Average" mammals, if you will. Yet another example of how life after foxley Loxley would forever give the former giant bodily shellshock, never quite getting used to the idea that he really was still quite miniscule on the world stage.

"Ah, I can't quite see into the peepholes…" the Englishman remarked, trying to play off his frustration by delivering it as a classy quip.

"I'll help you, Mister Robin!" Ed offered, not waiting for permission to pick the tod up by the hips and lift him high enough to peek inside.

"Er… thank you, lad," Robin murmured, shirking embarrassment.

"So, whaddaya see, Mister Night-Vision?" asked the older bear.

"Well, let's inspect!" The fox turned his snout away from the door to get his eye as close to the window as he could. There was a faint quantity of light poking through from the hallway they were in, which his head was paradoxically obscuring, but he still had enough to work with.

It took him a moment, but… yes, there were lines painted on the floor. A basketball court? What did the ceiling look like? He couldn't see it, and that was a good thing, gymnasiums wouldn't have low ceilings. And why was the one wall on the right so jagged?

"...Is that a bloody rock-climbing wall!?" he mused.

"Jesus, how much money does this school have?" asked Johnny.

"If we knew that was there, we likely could have nicked that too…"

"What, stolen an entire rock wall!?" asked the fox kit.

The older tod just smirked. "Never believe we're not masters of our craft, lad."

"So does that mean this is the gym?" asked Ed, putting Robin down.

"I can't imagine what else it would be."

"Then where's the fucking sign!?" asked Eddy.

"Damn good question," remarked Johnny. "Probably a rich-person thing. Like how the fancier the house you're in, the harder it is to find the trash can or figure out how the bathroom sink works."

"Needlessly complicated as a status symbol!" Robin added as he pulled his pick-kit out again. "But you know what isn't complicated? Lock-picking!" And with that, he got to work on the lock built into the door.

After three minutes of standing around him in silence, his bear friend spoke up. "Uh… you good, Rob?"

"Did I hear an oven ding? I believe my humble pie is ready, and I'm famished!"

"So you have no idea what you're doing," the fox kit grumbled.

"Oh, I have every idea what I'm doing, it's what this bloody contraption wants me to do that's a mystery to me."

Johnny rolled a hand in the air. "In other words…"

"This is in fact complicated, much to my genuine surprise."

"You guys are professional thieves and you can't even pick a fucking lock!?" asked Eddy.

"Hey, I picked the one downstairs just fine, didn't I?"

"Should I learn to pick locks so I can be your lock-picking expert?" Ed asked, hope glimmering in his eyes.

Johnny just chuckled through his nose and pointed at the cub while locking eyes with the kit. "Now that's the kind a' attitude ya oughta have!" He finished by patting his younger counterpart on the back, triggering a smile. "Volunteering to learn new skills and not just gettin' pissy someone else ain't got 'em to the level you'd like 'em!"

Deep breaths, Eddy, deep breaths. He wanted to snark back to that, he wanted so badly to snark back to that… but no, people loved these guys and people hated him, so he bit his tongue and reminded himself to keep the eye on the prize.

"You know what… you're right." Oh my God, a little bit of him died inside by saying that, but he hoped that part would be reborn as something better than its predecessor.

Robin stopped fiddling with the lock to join Johnny in giving the kit a look of pleasant surprise, taken aback by how mature that was.

Suckers bought it. Now to keep milking it. "Um… yeah, Ed, good idea, you'd probably, um… make a good lock-picker. Like… what's his face… Vertigordon, the, um, Lock-Picker of… Locks, from… Plattagonia." Yeah, Eddy was bullshitting that name.

The cub was deep in thought. "...I would be like Vertigordon…"

"Well, it's nice to see you're spreading encouragement, lad," the older fox told the younger. "Unfortunately, though, that won't help our current situation."

"You're not giving up, are you?" asked Ed.

"On our goal? Never! On this particular method of achieving that goal, however…" He toyed halfheartedly with the picks some more. "...Honestly, I think the picks might be too big or something, blasted things are stuck-"

"What's stuck?"

That familiar voice only spoke because he found their voices familiar as well and thought they were safe to approach. But as Elliott Russell rounded the corner and saw Robin clearly kneeling before the door to the gym with his hand on picks sticking out of the door's keyhole, the raccoon stopped in his tracks.

And Elliott stared at the quartet. And they stared back at him. And he stared at the fathers and their sons. And they stared back at him. And he stared.

And they stared back at him.

-IllI-

"...And that's my new plan for what to do with the ladies!"

Woodland, Nutzinger, and Hess were all just staring at Mayor Norman as blankly as blank could be. Never had a plan at once seemed so extreme and so underwhelming at the same time.

"Do you gentlemen have any questions?"

The squirrel raised his hand.

The lion resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Yes, George."

"This is stupid."

"That is not a question."

"Then when am I supposed to convey to you how stupid I think this is!?"

"I asked for questions, Deputy, not opinions."

Nutzinger just turned his head to the ceiling and groaned as dramatically as possible. He proceeded to leave and hop off the table; the three others were vaguely curious where he was going, but each expected someone else to ask, so nobody did.

"I just… don't really see what-all the point is," Woodland confessed.

The mayor put on a bitter smirk. "A much better-formulated rebuttal than your subordinate provided. Well, let me put it in the simplest of terms: the plan was to keep the women separate so they could not conspire, yes?"

"Yeah?"

"And the idea was to exhaust them with mentally draining and spiritually unfulfilling work, right?"

"...Yeah?"

The lion nodded, which was a mistake because his top hat fell off his head and he had to spend a solid twenty seconds readjusting it. "...Well, Eddward, that would have worked better had someone not been so bloody UNIMAGINATIVE in finding ways to keep them OCCUPIED, then MAYBE they wouldn't have just spent most of their days lollygagging around and commiserating all the same!"

The hat fell off again on the word occupied but its wearer was so impassioned that he didn't even break his flow. He was pissed at Charles for not finding more pointless busywork to crush the ladies' rebellious spirits.

The weasel/mink/whatever played his role and nodded along, acting the part of a remorseful fuckup who wished oh so dearly that he hadn't disappointed his superior with his ineffable incompetence. He was the furthest thing from sorry. He'd had good reason to not focus on babysitting Marian and Annie, he had been busy preparing for a very special moment coming very soon. Hess's mind had been preoccupied with making sure Prince John followed his directions in such a way that the mayor felt like he was making all of his own decisions, at which point he'd mess up, blame himself with his immeasurably low self-esteem, and seek his assistant for help once again, thereby further strengthening the lion's dependence on the mustelid until the feline was finally out of the picture. But there were a lot of moving parts in all that, so forgive Charles if he'd been derelict of duty for not remembering that he had also been tasked with distracting the ladies. And besides, another thing clogging his mental frequency was the question of whether the girls being in cahoots with their boys would even be a hindrance to his goals, and he was presently leaning towards no.

"Yes, Mayor. I'm sorry, Mayor," the assistant squeaked.

"Which is the appropriate response, but remorse alone won't help us now," the mayor scowled. "Though if you wish to go about berating yourself for your ineptitude for the foreseeable future, it would not be unwelcome, lest we get the impression you're not truly apologetic for your blunders-"

"Mph!" the sheriff's deputy struggled as he summited the side of the desk. Once at its surface, he brought a booklet forward and dropped it square in the mayor's seldom-used workspace.

"...What's this!?"

"What's it look like, it's your scheduling calendar of the month of July! Please tell me precisely when we can pencil in a time for me to explain to you that this new idea is so stupid that it cycles back around to being extremely impactful in the sense that your idiocy level is clearly dangerous to society!"

Mayor Norman just pushed the notebook away. "That won't be necessary, George-"

"What, you booked solid? Pages look blank to me, but okay, let's look at August-"

"Deputy…" John interrupted, "...do I not recall… you, numerous times, dare I say ad nauseam, lamenting having to work with someone you find as contemptible as the likes of Sheriff Woodland?"

Nutzinger just glared at him for a moment before folding his arms. "And you're really gonna be taking away the one part of my job that's actually fun?"

"Perhaps you should have been more careful with what you wished for."

"Oh, shut the fuck-!"

"Mayor."

Everyone looked up at the hulking wolf who'd interrupted rather unexpectedly.

"...The little shit's annoying, but when lookin' fer these outlaws drives me nuts… Nutsy keeps me sane. Gives me someone ta' bounce things off'a. Please…" Woodland appealed as diplomatically as he could. "...I can do mah job better with'm than without'm."

But the lion was unmoved. "But what does that job entail, Eddward? Cruising around aimlessly looking for leads that never come?"

Ward was less diplomatic now. "Aw, you know damn well we find leads-!"

"You don't even do the paperwork meant for the head of the department of which you are the head," Prince John growled. "Do you even want to be sheriff, Sheriff? It seems quite clear to me that you just wanted to be a regular patrolman but with nobody above you to answer to."

Woodland glowered at him, but bit his tongue. He felt very stupid for not having a retort to that very valid point, and that embarrassment made him angrier still.

"...Besides, what I have in mind for you is most assuredly not a two-person job," the mayor continued.

"Wait, what's he gonna be doing?" asked the squirrel.

"What am I gonna be doin'?" asked the wolf.

"I… don't believe you've yet discussed Sheriff Woodland being given a new assignment as well," noted the mustelid.

The lion simply nodded. "Rest assured, Ward, it's nothing you're not used to, simply something you've not done recently. It seems… a member of your proverbial pack needs your help, shall we say…"

-IllI-

Johnny locked the bathroom door, then joined the others inside the handicapped stall and locked that behind them as well, just for an added layer of security.

"Alright, man, the first time we ran into you, it was cute, now this is just annoying."

"And we understand, encountering us twice is most likely just a stroke of terrible luck," added Robin. "But put yourself in our shoes: it's awfully inconvenient to run into a witness twice."

Elliott wasn't tied up or anything, but he didn't need to be. Sat there on the tank of the toilet, being interrogated by a really big bear, an even bigger bear, the biggest fox he'd ever seen in his life, and a teenage fox who appeared to make up for his lack of size with the anger of a thousand suns, he didn't have the slightest inkling to try anything funny.

"And hey, man, for the record, we don't wanna hurt ya," Johnny resumed. "You don't immediately strike us as a bad guy. But we know for a fact that we're not bad guys, either, and we don't know if you know that."

"So it behooves us to ensure you won't be calling in the authorities to punish us as only bad men deserve to be punished," Robin summarized. "So that's where we'll begin: had we not taken action to neutralize you, what would your next move have been? Would you have summoned the police?"

"I-I don't know! I don't have enough information! I probably would have just walked away wondering what the hell you guys were doing…" the teacher answered. "...Wh-what were you doing!?"

The Englishman nodded. "More than a fair question-"

"How do you respond to allegations that this school has top-notch archery shit for kids of all shapes and sizes?" cut in Eddy, the kit wanting to prove to the adults that he could contribute to this conversation on their level.

"Allegations!?" With Mr. Bacon's threat fresh in mind, that diction set off alarm bells in Mr. Russell's head.

"What the lad means is… we've heard that this school is quite well-off financially and has all manner of high-quality sporting equipment," Robin explained. "Can you confirm or deny?"

"Wh-what, were you looking to steal it!?"

"We were," the older tod said with a firm nod.

"W-well can't you just buy that stuff!? O-or at least steal it from a store, not a school!?"

"Ya want us to rob a place full of weapons run by people who probably know how to use them!?" asked the kit incredulously.

"Eddy, simmer down a notch, bud," Johnny chuckled, then turned back to the raccoon. "Kid's got a point, but… there's more of a reason why we're targeting this school. Tell me, teach, what subject do ya teach?"

"...S-sciences, usually physics, but… for the summer I got roped into teaching health class."

"Ah, darn," Robin said with a smirk. "We were hoping you'd say English and Literature. Are you still familiar with things like… poetry and symbolism?"

"...Yeah?" Elliott winced, confused.

"Let's put it this way," said Johnny. "You as a teacher, you ever tell your kids, 'hey, life isn't fair, get over it'? Well… this is our way of trying to make it more fair," he finished with a devilish grin that gave the Englishman's a run for its money.

"...I-I don't say that to my kids, though."

Devilish grin, gone. "W-wait, what?"

"I don't go around telling them 'life isn't fair, get over it,' it just… I don't care if it's true, it just seems so cynical and dismissive. I never liked when my teachers said that to me."

Stunned by that reply, the bear reflected on it before he volleyed back. "...I, uh… y'know what? Good on you, man. I made an assumption, and, uh… that was my biases showing, I apologize."

…What was Elliott supposed to say to that? "...Th-thank you?"

The reason Robin hadn't filled the moment of silence was because he was also taking a moment to question his own preconceptions. "Why would you want to become a teacher then if even as a child, you thought the profession was full of unhelpful pessimists?"

Mr. Russell took a second to answer, not because he was afraid they wouldn't like his answer, but because he already didn't like his own answer. "...I… guess I thought I could do it better than they could, I guess…" He shrugged as he glanced at his reflection in the toilet water. "Overconfidence? Maybe…"

The room was quiet for a moment as the two Merry Men pondered what to make of this guy and Eddy stood there frustrated that he'd been discouraged from speaking.

"...What were we talking about?" Ed spoke up.

"That's a damn good question!" said Johnny.

"What exactly do you want from me!?" asked Elliott again. "I still don't think we're clear on that!"

"A fair sentiment," Robin conceded, "so let us be more precise: we just want to know enough about you to know whether we need to drug you and erase all memory you have of us."

"Like we said," added his bear friend, "we don't have any intentions of actually injuring you. We just gotta know if we gotta put you to sleep for a few hours to stay out of our way."

The subtext of this, of course, being that they might leave him alone if he proved himself worthy of being an ally, but they couldn't say that out loud or-

"Unless it turns out you're cool," Eddy spoke up, "then we might be able to make use of ya-"

"Goddammit, Eddy, don't say that!"

The small kit glared up at the big bruin indignantly. "Why not? You said that was the plan!"

"Yes, but saying that out loud opens the door for him to simply lie and convince us he could help us before double-crossing us," Robin corrected, sounding almost apologetic that he had to.

Another instance where Eddy had to poison his soul with humility. "...That makes sense," he huffed through a deep breath, "I'm… sorry." Ack, gag!

"It's alright, lad, you're still learning."

"And I'm sorry for snapping at you," Johnny tossed in. "But… shit, we're wastin' time, ain't we?"

"Are you just gonna drug me one way or another now because now there's nothing I can say that'll convince you I'm cool?" asked Mr. Russell.

The older bear was already digging in his pocket. "I mean, we don't want to, at this point it's mostly because we're just burnin' daylight-"

"Wait, but before we do…" the Englishman interrupted with his broken arm raised. "...I want to make sure he at least understands what exactly he's stumbled upon."

"Before we… erase his memory," the younger fox noted, trying and failing to put a limiter on his snark.

"Humor me and my conscience," Robin chuckled. "Now, Mister… Russell, if I recall?"

Elliott nodded.

"Mister Russell, you can speak candidly with us. Do we understand correctly that the students here are… a bit more well-off than anybody really needs to be?"

"Spoiled, in a word," Johnny summarized.

While the raccoon fundamentally agreed, he took a second to ponder the best way to phrase his response. "...I would say yes to that, but God knows a lot of these kids' parents still aren't satisfied with what we provide."

The adult bandits nodded at that thoughtful reply.

"Sounds about right," said the bear.

"Well, Mister Russell," said the fox, "we're happy you agree. So we hope you understand that we're taking what we need from here because we're confident that nobody will meaningfully suffer from our doing so. This school is clearly doing well financially, you can buy more of what we take and forget it ever happened shortly thereafter."

"Much better here than screwin' over a mom 'n' pop shop."

"Very well-put, Johnny. Furthermore, we only came for a finite quantity of things, and maybe if we see some more toys and gadgets that we can carry, then perhaps they'll also be rerouted to impoverished people who will, in all likelihood, never be in a position to get them legitimately with the way this world works. That's it, that's all, a very controlled mission with a clear goal."

Elliott didn't know what he was expected to say, so he just kept nodding.

"Does that sound like a satisfying explanation?" Robin was beginning to feel the heat of the ticking clock as well; even if there was no pressing threat, he knew standing around twiddling one's thumbs was never a good idea.

"Uh… yeah?"

The fox nodded, his expression melancholic. "Alright, thank you for your time."

"So, you've mostly been cool," said the bear with a strong note of awkwardness as he held up one of Thor's amnesia pills, "do you wanna… should we take you to the sink so ya got somethin' to wash it down with?"

"Wait, wait…" the teacher pleaded abruptly. "...One more question?"

"Of course," said Robin.

With a glance at the kit, who was silently contemplating how much his new role models liked to hear themselves talk, the raccoon continued: "You said… archery equipment? Bows and arrows and stuff?"

"The very same!"

"...Why? I mean… that's a really obscure sport to steal equipment for! I-I mean, I'm not knocking it, I just… it's like curling, who thinks about archery outside the Olympics!? I-I guess I'm just confused… about that…"

Yes, Dear Reader, though he was too much of a gentleman to verbalize it, Robin was visibly just as offended by that as you would imagine he'd be. Ed actually was also, the cub very much thinking archery was cool since Zebulon Zero and fifty other marginal superheroes he liked implemented it. Eddy was looking off at the wall, biting his tongue near the point of blood as he resisted the urge to say yes, FINALLY, someone who agrees that this sport is dorky as shit! And that left Johnny to answer the question.

"Ehhh, what can we say?" he shrugged. "Old-fashioned shit like that, it's… well, we think it's cool. Medieval weaponry and stuff is… it's just kinda our thing."

Kind of their thing.

There. There it was. That's when the puzzle pieces solved themselves.

"Wait, are you guys the Adam Bell impersonators?" Elliott didn't even mean to say it like that, it just slipped out.

The crew were just as surprised by that statement.

"...So you do know of us!" said a startled Robin.

"Yeah, I used to work at a school in the city until, like, a year ago! Kids talked about you openly!"

"Which school?" asked Johnny.

"Cannon."

Annie Jump Cannon Career Academy. Not a place you'd find students with promising careers ahead of them.

"Holy shit, this guy's legit…"

"My mom says that's the school where they teach you how to shoot people!" said Ed worriedly.

"Why didn't you bring this up earlier!?" demanded Eddy of the educator.

"Hey, it wasn't clicking with me until he brought up medieval weaponry being your-guys' thing," Mr. Russell defended. "But then he did, and I was like… oh, yeah, fucking obviously, that's who you guys are. I remember now: fox, British, bear… Adam Bell, bows and arrows, um… et cetera…"

"Well, this is good information to know," Robin said with a nod of the head and a conflicted countenance. "Dare we ask, did you… have enough information about us to form an opinion about us?"

"You can be honest," added Johnny. "We just wanna know."

Well, saying you all seem like a bunch of communist hippies would be stupid, but saying you guys are doing God's work, truly you are a pair of modern prophets, may I wash your feet and suck your dicks would be suspiciously positive. Thankfully, the truth lay in the middle.

"...Um… admittedly, a tad reckless for my tastes, but… aw, screw it, you guys are doing more than most people are to solve this city's problems. Who would I be to knock that?" A pause as he debated adding a stinger. "...God knows with my teacher's salary, I was kinda hoping you guys would find your way to my door one day."

The gang looked at one another to confer their feelings on that response.

"...A fair assessment from someone who, er… may I assume an economically comfortable background?" asked the Englishman.

"Uh… you mean how I grew up? I mean, we weren't rich, but we weren't poor, either."

"So… middle class," said the Southerner before gesturing to his transatlantic friend. "Which this guy can't call it because apparently in coo-coo-bananas British culture, middle class refers to, like, doctors and lawyers and shit-"

"I understand that 'middle class' is this land's preferred nomenclature of what I'm trying to describe," Robin said with a bitter chuckle, pretending not to find this annoying, "but it just never feels right off the tongue to use that term for what I'd call-"

"Are we gonna drug this dude or not?" asked the younger fox impatiently.

Another round of everyone looking around.

"I don't wanna drug Mister Raccoon," said the cub.

"I don't either," said the older bear. "At least… can I ask one more question?"

Like he had a choice? "...Yeah?" asked Elliott.

Johnny spoke slowly to be careful with how he phrased this. "So… you mentioned being a teacher ain't pay hardly nothin'... so what's the motivation for the job, then?"

Mr. Russell was visibly confused by the query. "Um… I-I'm gonna be honest, that, uh… it surprises me that you're not, um… happy that I'm not chasing money above all things-"

"Oh, nonono, that's good, you're good," the bear insisted with his paws up in alarm. "I just mean… hey, we don't have a problem with people wantin' to not be poor, not like you're tryna buy up a coal mine to get rich off slave labor. So if the money tangibly ain't enough… what keeps you in this line of work?"

Elliott didn't know where Johnny was going with this, and for what it was worth, neither did the kids. But Robin stayed silent, wondering a similar thing and awaiting the educator's answer.

"I mean… heh, someone's gotta teach these kids!" said the raccoon.

"But why you?" The bear certainly hoped he wasn't letting his biases steer him too much, but damn if this question didn't always, always, always cross his mind in a situation like this. "Just… spendin' all day with teenagers? Always struck me as a weird situation for anybody to wanna be in."

Mr. Russell was beginning to see the point of this. But before he could answer, a smartass needed to be a smartass.

"HEY! You're choosing to hang out with us right now!" protested Eddy, offended on behalf of his entire age bracket.

"Yeah, but you're two specific kids who somewhat respect us, somewhat get along with us, and you actually seem interested in what we want to teach you-"

"Wait… these kids aren't your sons?" Elliott had to interrupt.

"Unfortunately not, because they're good kids. But I'm a fair bear: you've got every right to be as suspicious of us as we are of you-"

"Wait, suspicious!?" Robin cut in. "I thought we were interrogating him about not giving an adequate number of fucks about his responsibility of teaching the children!"

"You did!?" Johnny was just as incredulous.

"Well, no, I'm not in it for…" the raccoon answered, "...that which you are assuming I am-"

"I wasn't assuming you were, I was making sure you weren't!" the bear insisted, at once apologetic for jumping to conclusions and frustrated that this was being treated as an unreasonable conclusion to jump to. "Hey. Hey. I'm… I'm from a part of the country where people secretly wish they'd encounter someone like that so they can get away with shooting 'em in cold blood. You'll have to forgive me, man, but these things were programmed to be in the front of my mind."

"Bloody hell," said Robin, "if I knew that's what you were getting at, I'd've stopped you sooner-"

"Oh, right, Rob, because you're the gifted talker between us who never misspeaks so I need you to save me from my own big mouth-!"

"Do your adventures always have this much standing around and talking?" asked the curious cub without an ounce of traceable sarcasm.

Right, head in the game. They all looked back at the teacher.

"Alright, let's make this quick for the kids' sake," Johnny said firmly. "This ain't a loaded question, we ain't accusin' you a' nothin', we're just damned curious. You're working for borderline poverty pay to do unglamorous work and you don't have ulterior motives… so what drives ya then? Honest to God, we're confused."

They wanted a quick answer, welp, he had a quick answer for them. "I… have been thinking a lot about that same question today, if I'm being honest. Can't say I really know anymore."

Not what the crew was expecting but not something wholly surprising either.

"We, er… we're sorry to hear that you've been wrestling with that today," said Robin. "I… think we all have times where we wonder if we've spent far too much of our lives on something." Didn't he know it.

"But… does that mean that at some point, you did?" asked Johnny. "Because… nevermind the other thing, what we were actually afraid of with you was if it was always some bullshit job you just took because, and… man, I think we've all had those teachers who're so bad at their jobs that they turn us off from the entire concept a' learnin'-"

"I-I mean…" That description certainly reminded the raccoon of his porcine colleague, but he had to reflect and consider he might have been that teacher to someone else. "...Kind of, kinda not. I did always have a passion for physics, that was always my favorite subject, but… God, how many professional physicists do you see walking down the street!? Not many. I got good grades, but those jobs went to people who got great grades, or they knew how to wheel and deal their way in, in a manner they don't teach in classrooms. If that makes me stupid, then hell, so be it…" A pause for a frustrated huff. "...So I went into teaching because I thought, 'hey, even if ninety-nine percent of these kids don't care, if I can infect just one out of a hundred with my passion for this subject and they wind up working for NASA or Boeing, then it'll all be worth it,' and… I dunno, some days I still feel that way, some days I don't, but… fuck, what else am I supposed to do for a living?"

Robin and Johnny simply nodded morosely at a sentiment that was all too real. There was nothing they could add to that-

"Why don't you join us!?" Ed beamed at the worst possible moment, tonally speaking.

Elliott looked around nervously, chiefly towards the other adults, who looked mortified that the cub had just said that.

"I don't think I wanna hang out with a teacher," the kit grumbled.

"Aw, but c'mon, Eddy, Mister Raccoon is just like us!" the young bear said as he took Mr. Russell into his arms and gave him one hell of an ursine hug. "He doesn't like school either, he just said!"

"Can't… breathe…" Elliott gasped.

"Ed, lad, put him down now," Robin urged him.

"Alright, big guy, save the hugs for later," Johnny urged at the same time.

Ed released the teacher, who landed on the one side of the toilet seat before nearly slipping into the hole, saved only by the other adults reaching forward to help him back up.

"Apologies for that…" Robin murmured with an awkward smile. "But, er… if I may say something?"

"...You may?" Elliott permitted him when the fox didn't keep talking.

"So… we're in the business of making people happier. And from what you've shared with us… you might be happier if you exit this line of work while you still can."

"I mean, I would if I had another calling, but nothing else seems less miserable than this."

"And we understand that, but perhaps taking some time to explore your options may be time better spent than spending it here," the fox said with a warm smile… or, one might say, an inviting smile.

"Like joining us!" the bear cub proposed again.

Awkward silence ensued.

The raccoon gave the two other adults an impatient look. "Are you two gonna tell him to stop encouraging me to take up a life of crime?"

Robin and Johnny glanced at each other.

"...No," the Englishman said flatly. "That's not in our best interest."

"I mean, we won't pressure ya to join us by any stretch," added the Southerner, "but… we sure as shit ain't gonna discourage ya either. We're always hirin'."

Elliott didn't know how to feel about that. "...Well, I'm honored, guys, but I don't think I'm cut out for it."

"No, no, we understand, most people aren't."

"But it is one of the many options you have!" Robin reiterated. "We're just saying, you strike us as a good man, you don't deserve to waste away in a career you've lost your passion for."

"...Then who will teach these kids if most of the teachers here hate their jobs and quit just like you're encouraging me to do?"

"A revolving door of others like you who give it a try before having their Road to Damascus moment that they could be doing themselves and their community more good in a different line of work," the tod said with a confident nod.

"Because let's be real, dude, the overlap of people who know what they're teachin' and who know how to teach is prettttty small," added his ursine friend. "But that's a big-picture problem with no easy answer. In the meantime, though, you still exist and you have your individual bullshit to deal with… and it sounds like the answer for you is to find something else."

The teacher didn't know if he agreed with that completely, but the two outlaws did make a very interesting and nuanced point. He found himself staring into the negative space between them as he pondered. "...Y'know, most people will, like, verbally say that teaching is an honorable profession, but then we go on strike for better salaries and they all accuse us of not really caring about the kids and say we should be fired… meanwhile, you guys have the balls to actually tell me to quit to my face."

"But for the exact opposite reason as that lot," Robin corrected with a hint of sternness in his voice, "as long as we're clear on that."

"Oh, of course. But… hell, between you and me, I already knew twenty minutes ago that I was done working here, but I mean, like… here, I thought I'd wind up in a different teaching job elsewhere. Now… well, you got me thinking maybe I should expand my horizons-"

"Okay. Cool," Eddy cut in restlessly. "So as long as you're on your way out, let's go scorched-earth. You know another way into the gym?"

"Eddy, chill out, dude!" Johnny scolded him.

"What!? I'm gettin' bored here!"

"This guy just had a turning point in his life right before our eyes and you call that boring!?"

"YES! I didn't sign up for this gig just for ten pages of talking in a fucking bathroom stall!"

The resident artist simply shook his head. "You'd never survive watching a Tarantino movie."

Off to the side, however, Ed was quietly in agreement with his fox friend, though he'd been wise enough to hide that so as to not piss off the adults. "But do you know how to get into the gym with all the bows and arrows and other cool weaponry for defeating the forces of evil, Mister Raccoon?"

Elliott just blinked. "...I do, actually."

The other three stopped bickering and perked up.

"Wait, you do!?" asked the kit.

"Mmhmm. Because Jim… teaches gym… so he's got the gym keys." But Mr. Russell didn't look too happy to know that.

Not that that stopped the four bandits from being outwardly very excited.

"A-and this… Jim gentleman…" Robin began, "...is he here today?"

"He is."

They were just about salivating.

"Do… do you think you could get the keys from him?" Johnny asked with timid optimism.

"...Nope," the raccoon said, flat as a soft drink you didn't realize had been opened. "He hates me. In fact, he just threatened to frame me for, uh… that thing you were worried I might have been."

"What!?" gasped Robin.

"But why would he do that!?" pleaded Johnny.

"Because he's an asshole."

Short, sweet, and to-the-point. Everyone nodded, taking that at face value and requesting no further information.

"Yup, sounds like every gym teacher I've ever had," the older bear quipped as he once again extracted the bag of amnesia pills. "Sorry, bud, but I think we gotta dose ya-"

"WAIT, wait…" Elliott put his hands up, then lowered them as he delved deep into thought. "...God, do I really want to help with this?"

"I think you doooo!" the cub said in a singsong, leaning in for emphasis. "Have an adventure with us!"

"Just think of all the rich kids who treat ya like you're shit on their shoes…" the older bear said with a sly grin that rivaled his friend's.

"...And let all that desire for revenge flow through you," said fox friend finished with a particularly devilish smirk.

Anxiously, Elliott looked around at each of them a few times before speaking when he landed on Eddy. "I might need your help with this."

"Me?"

"You."

"Can I help too!?" Ed begged.

"Eh, I'd love if you could, but you might be too big… wait, actually, maybe you can help with the first part…"

"Holy shit, he's got a plan to help us!" remarked Johnny.

"Eh… don't give me too much credit," the raccoon insisted modestly. "I stole this idea from a kid named Corey."