He kept getting the feeling he was losing track of the conversation here. R struggled gamely along. The fact was he didn't really feel like jumping Orc and Orc hadn't clobbered his head in, so they were basically at a stand-off.

"Why...hurt him?" R didn't jump to saying you should stop because he was the last person to start regurgitating stuff like that out. He'd almost taken a bite out of Howard himself, after all.