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“And then I told them to stop, but they didn’t, and I got really freaked out, god I hate spiders…” Marius was saying to the camera while walking down the street. It was a Sunday night, so there weren’t many people around, even if he was in the centre of Paris. It was cold and windy, typical on November, but he wasn’t wearing a jacket because he had forgotten it on his friend’s house. But well, what could he do now? Just keep on walking and talk a little to the camera.
“Anyway, the jacket is probably there, in the basement, serving as a spider house now. I don’t think I’m gonna go get it back. Ever. Prob…” he cut himself off when he heard a really loud noise and someone yelling to his right. He turned, camera still in his hand. There was a large group of people with spray cans writing something on the wall of the building he was walking right next to. The building was the headquarters of…HOLY SHIT, these guys were gonna be in trouble if they got caught.
“Who’s that?” a guy on a red hoodie yelled, notably angry. “Courfeyrac, I told you to monitor if someone was coming, for fuck’s sake!”
“Sorry, sorry, Éponine was about to fall off Feuilly’s back.” A dark haired guy with a brown leather jacket gesticulated while pointing at a girl on a black trench coat and a ginger dude.
“Stop saying names, you idiots!” Another guy with glasses yelled, all of a sudden. The rest of the group looked surprised by it.
Marius then noticed that by who that was the guy on the red hoodie meant him. Well. Shit?
“I think he’s got a camera!” a man with dark hair and a really lazy looking beard in a blue feather coat noticed, and one guy with no jacket and the girl ran towards Marius, who was frozen there. Not knowing what to do. Were they dangerous? Could he explain them that he could edit the video and that he wasn’t going to show anybody? Would they listen to him? As he was not sure, he started running too. Probably not a good idea.
“Wait, guy, we just want to talk!” the girl yelled.
“Not if he tries to go away.” The other guy said.
“I won’t show the video to anyone, please!”
“Wait…! Agh, for the sake of everything sacred.” The girl on the trench coat said, stopping, and throwing something on Marius’ direction. The thing (apparently, a boot) made Marius stumble, and he fell on the pavement. Both of his captors reached him quickly.
The first thing the two did was take his camera, but Marius had turned it off and put the memory card in his pocket not long before being chased. Not a good idea either.
“Where’s the memory?” The guy said, while the girl put her boot back on.
“Shit, he’s probably taken it.”
“Register him.”
“Fuck no.”
“Come on, it wouldn’t be the first time you rob someone.”
“Only to people who deserve it.”
“He was gonna sell us out!”
“How would you know?”
“Why was he running then? Or…or why did he take the memory card off the camera, huh?” the guy with no jacket sounded pretty convinced.
Now that they weren’t looking, Marius started getting up, slowly and in absolute silence. He wasn’t interested in selling these people out, but in his memory card there was a lot of stuff he needed, including footage for a class work, one of the most important on the semester, and he didn’t think they would be so kind to let him save his files before smashing the memory card to the ground.
“Go call the others, I’ll try talking to the guy.” The girl sighed.
“Not if he goes away.” No-Jacket quoted himself and pointed at Marius, who was almost up.
“I’m not gonna sell you to anybody, I… I just want to go ho…ah!” they guy with held Marius’ arm behind his back. “Oh, come on, I just wan…”
“Where’s the memory card? Give it to us, please.” The guy said. God, it was a really big dude.
“I can’t… I mean, how do you even know there is one?” Marius stammered, a little scared for how strong the guy holding him appeared to be.
“You just said I can’t, that’s how.” The girl on the trench coat intervened. “Now, please, do what he says and we’ll just walk away like nothing of this has ever happened, ok?” she smiled at the end. A twisted, somehow kind, smile.
“But, ahm… but I can’t, it’s… my work, it took me a lot of time.” Marius stuttered, nervous, with his arm being held tighter and tighter.
“Bahorel, leave the poor guy alone right fucking now or I’ll do to your languid penis the same thing you’re doing to his arm.” Marius swallowed hard. He didn’t know which one of them was worse. “And go call Enjolras, we need civilization.”
Bahorel ran up the street again, to the place his friends (or allies, or whatever that was) were.
“I don’t think we…” the girl started talking, but Marius was already running. He heard the girl sigh and her steps towards him. Then he felt a cold hand on his shoulder and next thing he knew was that he was on the ground again. “Don’t interrupt me, man, that wasn’t very nice of you.” She sighed again.
But Marius could barely hear her, because he was slowly fading away. His back hurt and his head too and his eyes, his eyes couldn’t…keep opened… for much longer.
“Oh shit.” The girl whispered.
“Éponine, for god’s sake, tell me he’s just sleeping.” Another fading voice said.
“Ahm… I hope so?” Those were the last words Marius heard before completely fainting.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
“-s insane!” a voice yelled.
“Calm down, Enjy, god.” Another voice begged.
“No. Yes. You… you are right. I’m calmed. Everything is fine. We just have to decide what we do with the comaTOSE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM!” the voice yelled again, smashing something on a table.
“Your hysteria is getting us nowhere…” a more calmed, almost mocking voice said.
“You shut your whore mouth, Grantaire!”
“I love it when you talk dirty.” The calm voice said followed by a teasing laugh.
“Grantaire, please, you’ll make him explode.” Another voice said, this one sounding more serious. “Enjolras, think, what do we do?”
“You expect me to solve the problem? Just like that? You have ruined everything taking the guy; we should have left him on the pavement.” the angry voice was angrier with each breath. But at least it wasn’t screaming anymore. Not as much.
“You are the fearless leader, you always know what to do.” The Grantaire guy continued.
“Come on Taire, shut up. It’s not the time for your flirtations, we could end up in jail.” A female voice that Marius recognized as the trench coated ninja that had put him in the state he was, said.
“Enjolras, if we had left him there someone would have found him, he would have told them what had happened, the police would have gotten involved, he… he even saw enough of us to give a description. It was better to take him here.” A new voice summed to the whole.
How many of them were there? Marius tried to remember how many he had seen. There was brute-guy, or Bahorel, trench coat-ninja or Éponine, red hoodie-guy, apparently called Enjolras (Marius was just making assumptions as the screams sounded pretty similar), teasing voice, also known as Grantaire, and then there was serious voice, nice voice and worried voice (who had just talked.).
“Yeah, he’s right, we did the right thing…kind of…” nice voice said. “It would have only meant more trouble.”
Someone sighed (Marius couldn’t tell who. Sighs aren’t that recognizable. He could tell it wasn’t the ninja.). “Okay, we can… if he doesn’t wake up, Joly can take him to the university’s nursery and…”
“And tell them what? He is not a student here, or at least he doesn’t have an identification on him right now, and they would ask questions we wouldn’t be able to answer. Like ‘what were you doing in the centre at 3 am on a Monday?’ or ‘How did he get knocked out?’” the serious voice said, slightly irritated.
“I don’t think those are such difficult questions. We can excuse the first one with a party or something like that, and the second one… he fell, and Éponine tried to catch him and that’s why there’s a bruise in the vague shape of a hand on his shoulder and...” Enjolras said, a lot more calmed than before.
“Yeah, fine, cool, great answer, no need to call the cops ha-ha. Now here’s a difficult one, leader, what if he wakes up?” Grantaire said, scornfully.
A “tsk” was made and Marius felt the need to show them how awake he was. But he didn’t follow that need, he wanted to see where the whole thing would end.
“Then keep on trying to wake him up with water. Even if it hasn’t been doing anything until now.” Enjolras sounded really tired. “Or…”
“Or…?” a lot of the voices asked at the same time.
"Or...we...get rid of him." Enjolras proposed.
"You need to have some sleep." Serious voice said calmly. "We are gonna handle this, and not kill anybody, ok?"
"But-"
"Ok?"
Marius heard a few steps and someone falling on (what he supposed it was) a sofa.
“I think he’s awake” a not identified voice said. It didn’t have an special sound but the owner smelled like cigarettes. He felt something on his cheek. A cold hand grabbing it. The hand pulled down and Marius’ eye opened a bit, against his will. “He’s awake.” The voice said, victorious.
He heard the angry sigh again. “Yay, amazing, that is fantastic. Now we are gonna have to talk him not to sue us.”
Marius opened his eyes, now that his cover had been blown. He blinked and tried to filter the shapes and shadows on the room. A nicely lighted room. What time was it? Was it already morning?
“It’s Monday, it’s 6 am, and you are in my flat. Well, my flat and that guy’s flat. I’m Courfeyrac, nice to meet you…” nice voice said, really fast. Maybe too fast. Marius couldn’t really focus the figures, but he could see the guy that had his face almost resting on his non-hurt shoulder.
There was a silence that lasted a few seconds after Marius realized that Courfeyrac wanted him to say his name. “Ahm…Marius?”
“Are you asking us?” Grantaire said, mocking again.
“Uh… No, I…”
“God, Éponine, I’ve seen you leave guys to the trash, but this one’s a record.” Nice voi…Courfeyrac said.
A common laugh filled the room.
“I don’t know who you are, but… but I wasn’t going to show anybody.” Marius felt the need to say.
“We are a group of activism, and…” The cigarette voice started saying. Marius couldn’t identify the owner, as it seemed it was behind the chair he was laid on. “Ah!”
Someone had punched/kicked the cigarette voice.
“Yeah, go on, tell him also where we live, OH, and if he wants to join give him a code name and a t-shirt.” Marius could recognize Bahorel’s voice on that sarcasm.
“What’s the matter anymore? I mean, I think it’s even better if we tell him everything and maybe if he knows what we are doing he won’t tell the police.” Enjolras said from the sofa he was comfortably laying on, with the guy with glasses to his feet.
“What if he isn’t in our side?” Éponine asked, narrowing her eyes towards Marius.
“Then we follow Enjolras’ previous plan and kill him.” Worried voice said, joking. Hopefully.
Marius had his eyesight back and could see everything more clear now. He was in a living room, there was a small TV and two windows, the walls were made of bricks and with wooden pillars on strategic points. He was sitting on a brown armchair next to one of the windows, with the TV to his left. In the wall in front of him there was a door. It looked like the principal door, as it had a peephole in it. There was a sofa. A large one, with glasses-guy and Enjolras on it. And next to it, a puf with the guy with the weird beard and a ginger on it, fighting for the place. Behind him were standing Bahorel and cigarette voice. The rest of them were spread around. Marius could count at least six persons.
“We are a group of activists. Les Amis. We do the kind of stuff you caught us doing.” Enjolras stood up and got next to Marius’ side.
“What, painting on private property?” Marius asked, still a little confused.
“We are like batman but for real and cooler.” Courfeyrac said, sitting on the arm of Marius’ chair.
Enjolras gave him a look and growled “If you want to put it that way. But we are a serious organization and we’ve been on the newspapers more than once.”
“Really?” Marius said, maybe sounding more surprised than he intended to “I mean, I’ve never heard anything about y…”
“Last year on the protest against the (tala de árboles) to make vineyards.” A new voice said. It was property of a tall, bald guy. “We destroyed the excavator that broke the rest of the machinery.”
Everyone nodded, proudly.
“Wow. I remember reading about that on the papers. How come the police did not catch you?”
“Because we do things right and we plan them.” Glasses-guy, who happened to be serious voice, said. “As you can imagine, this situation wasn’t planned. We didn’t even think about the possibility of it happening.” Glasses-guy threw a scolding look at Courfeyrac. “He was supposed to monitor while we did the painting.”
“Éponine almost fell off Feuilly, goddammit.” Courfeyrac got up. “I went to help her. What’s the use of a bruiser if it’s on the floor with her back broken?”
“Hey, I’m much more than that.” Éponine says. “Who’s the expert on computers here?”
“I am.” The ginger guy said.
“I said expert, not wannabe, Feuilly.”
Marius jumped up, suddenly. “Shit!” he patted all of his pockets. His memory card. They had probably taken it and destroyed it and… fuck.
“Are you looking for this?” the cigarette voice said. The cigarette voice was from a boy with a really long soft brown braid on the side. He had a flowered sweater. “We haven’t touched it yet. If you are willing to cooperate you can save whatever it is you have here.”
Marius sighed in relief and let himself fall back on the armchair.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever you need, I just… want to go home.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “I’ll delete, erase and destroy the video. No one will ever know you were… what exactly were you doing again?”
“You know whose building that was, right?” Éponine asked.
“The ultra mega rich powerful tobacco company? Yeah, I know about them.”
“Do you know what they’ve been doing?” Enjolras asked, really serious.
“The layoffs to pregnant women for no proper reasons other than being pregnant? Or the discovery of the president’s secret bank account?” Marius asked back, equally serious. He may not be an activist, but he knew what was up.
“The whole lot.” Courfeyrac said with a smirk, sitting on a table behind the sofa.
“Yeah, I’m familiar with it.” He made a pause. “What were you writing on the wall then?”
“Well, the plan was to tickle where it hurts. It was a drawing of a pregnant lady on a limousine, smoking.” Worried voice said. Worried voice was standing next to the puf, arms folded and slightly smiling. “We got rid of the security guards…”
“Don’t ask how.” The bald guy said. He was standing next to Worried voice, with an arm on his shoulder.
“And we were about to start the painting when we noticed we didn’t have our latter. Because SOMEONE forgot it.” Everybody looked at cigarette guy, and he just kind of shrugged and grimaced.
“So we had to jump on someone’s back and pray for the odds to favor us.” Grantaire said, with a marked sarcastic tone. Marius noticed the green bottle in his hand. Was the guy really drinking beer at 6 in the morning on a Monday?
“And then you appeared. And the worst is that it wouldn’t have been this much of a problem if you wouldn’t have had a camera.” Enjolras said exasperated, kicking a cushion out of the way.
“Yeah, what were you doing with a camera on the centre of Paris at 3 am?” Éponine asked, sitting on the armchair’s arm.
“Going back home after being with a friend.” Marius replied, a little intimidated by the girl.
“I still don’t understand the camera.” Feuilly said from the floor, as he had lost the fight for the puf.
“I always carry it with me.” He shrugged.
“Why?” Éponine asked, folding her arms.
“Because I do daily vlogs on youtube and study image and communication?” He replied, kind of annoyed.
“Don’t say it as if we were supposed to know about it, freckles.” Courfeyrac said, still standing on the wall.”
Marius sighed “Did you do the painting?” he asked, legitimately curious.
“Nah, we left it.” Cigarette voice said. “Without the latter, with a K.O. stranger laying on the ground… the chances of getting caught were too high.”
“We’ll have to plan everything all over again.” Enjolras stated, making it clear to everyone that the subject was not to be forgotten.
For some time, they kept on talking about what they had done as activists and Marius intervened a few times to tell them how he admired their work, but how he just wanted to go home already. And it would have probably been like this for a lot more time if glasses guy hadn’t jumped off his seat (in the which he had fallen asleep a while ago) to remind them that some of them had class. Once panic was avoided and the ones with early classes had left (including Glasses guy, Worried voice, Feuilly and Bahorel), someone finally got out a computer and let Marius use it.
“This one it is.” He said, victorious. “Now, I delete it and…done. Woah, yeah, we totally needed an hour and a half to do this.”
Marius felt a friendly punch on his shoulder. From ninja girl, obviously.
“Thank you, uh… Marius, was it?” Enjolras said, patting his back. “You know, if you ever want to help us, your influence on the internet could come in handy.”
“Aww, Enjolras, how sweet of you to ask him out.” Grantaire laughed from his puf. The guy wasn’t going to leave that place, was he? Everyone else had just moved to the sofa except for him and cigarette guy, who was on the armchair now, reading something, absolutely indifferent of the rest.
“You are really childish.” Was the only response Enjolras gave.
“Well then, I think I’m off to my house.” Marius got up and gave the laptop to Courfeyrac. “Just call me Courf” the guy had previously said with a wink.
“Think about the offer, you seem like a cool guy” Courf said putting the laptop on the table.
“Yeah. I’ll think about it. You have my number, I have yours… Call me for when you decide to do the graffiti again, I’d hate to miss it.” He said to everyone on the room.
He left not long after that, Éponine accompanied him to the closest bus stop.
“Well, camera guy, it was nice meeting you.” The girl said, while waiting for the bus to appear.
“Yeah, same.” Marius smiled. “I really admire what you guys do.”
“I’m glad you do, because other people would have sued us right away.”
“It’s not worth it.” He laughed. “You don’t need to wait with me.”
“Nah, don’t worry, I almost killed you, it’s the least I can do.”
And she was probably right.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
“And this is Grantaire, he draws and drinks a lot, I don’t know much more about him” Marius explained, grabbing Grantaire’s shoulder and smiling.
“Are you doing your vloggy thing?” the guy asked.
“Yup.”
“What do I say?”
“Whatever you want.”
“The day England wins Eurovision, I’ll get a tattoo of the Apple Store logo.”
Marius laughed and the camera almost fell off his hand. “Ok, right, thank you for your kind words.”
He left Grantaire and went looking for someone else to jump on and force them to do the vloggy thing. There was loud music and bad illumination. Something usual on parties, but really annoying when you are trying to film things. He had already introduced his camera to Éponine, Jehan, Feuilly, Bossuet, Enjolras, Ferre, Joly and Grantaire. Only Courf and Bahorel were left.
He could locate Courf, but he was making out with a 6 feet tall basket player on the kitchen, and they didn’t look like they could be interrupted. As for Bahorel, he was doing a pulse with a group of people on a corner of the living room.
“Hey.” He arrived next to it and started filming. “Shit, that didn’t even last five seconds.”
Bahorel laughed and friendly patted him on the side. “Marius, you wanna try?”
Marius laughed nervously. “Ahm… you kind of scare me, physically talking, you know? So…”
“Come on, I’ll take it easy, ok?” Bahorel laughed, teasingly.
“I haven’t step on a gym in ages, I think even that bag of crisps could defeat me.”
But, of course, they did it anyway. And Bahorel let Marius win. Probably to compensate for the arm thing. A few moments after, Joly ran all the way from the bathroom to there, screaming “La liberté!” And he wasn’t even drunk.
What kind of madhouse had he gotten in?
And this is how Marius joined The Amis.
Fin.