Mira had been trying to rest, but with everything going on around her, sleep was full of feverish dreams, and when she woke occasionally, she wasn't sure what was real and what was a dream. Hadn't she heard or dreamed about Indy ripping Senna a new one? And who were these other people? Wasn't there a lizard or dragon of some sort, and hadn't she heard Javert's name mentioned? And how did Indy vanish to be replaced by NT? She was just coming awake again when two people approached her.
Mira shuddered when the smaller of the two gently touched her shoulder. She opened her eyes and looked over to see NT standing beside her and Capri walking away.
"Are you Indy's friend NT?" Mira asked timidly.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry for everything."
"Never mind that," said NT, "Just because things ended badly in that townhouse doesn't mean Indy's mad at you still."
"You should be, though." said Mira. "I once told Indy that of all her friends I ever met, you were my favourite. And then I - " she swallowed, "and Nick…"
NT tried to reassure her. "Shhhh, I'll never understand what all went on with you and Nick and that Treize thing. But Nick's in the slammer where he belongs, and prison can keep him for all I care. It isn't your fault he's such a failure at being human. Anyway, nothing excuses or justifies what Senna did."
Mira could hardly believe it. They really didn't hate her and side with Senna after all that had gone wrong? "Senna is right about me. I am a Mary Sue and in the worst way."
NT stood firm. "I'll never understand what you could see in Treize or why you'd want a bunch of guys attracted to you like a piece of candy. But - "
Mira looked right at NT. "That's exactly what Indy said to me. I couldn't make her understand, I don't understand it myself. I walked right into this."
"No, you didn't. Senna barged in where she doesn't belong."
NT's brusqueness about this, caused Mira to laugh, and then flinch as the laughing caused her wounds to smart.
NT continued. "You've made mistakes, we all have. But it's past. There is no excuse for Senna's cruelty, none…"
Mira continued as NT maintained a touch at her shoulder, trying to pick up Angelica's magic trace. "She said she was only getting started when your friends came. She said what was coming to me would make the lashing feel like a day at the beach."
NT's face turned red as her anger arose once again. A couple of rocks at her feet, jumped up, reminding her to watch her magic. She checked herself and took a moment to calm down. "That girl will be sorry if she - " and then, NT suddenly looked as if she had an idea. "She's not doing another thing to you or anyone else. Now, do you remember anyone with her? Anyone with Senna besides Bamatabois?"
"I didn't even see Senna at first." said Mira. "I remember this little girl at a library, she dropped her book bag, and was having trouble trying to pick it up. When I went to help her, she seemed so thankful because no one had stopped to help her out before. Probably because she has a very misshapen back. When I went to hand her the books, she reached out and lost hold of them again, but grasped my sleeve. After that, it went fuzzy, then I found myself alone here with Senna and this - guy who tied me down, and then - " she shuddered and looked away. "I never saw the little girl after the fuzziness."
"What, besides the deformity, did the little girl look like?"
"Really sweet baby-face, deep blue eyes, long golden hair, she would've been such a model for a cherub if it wasn't for her back. And she had this worn-out pink dress on."
NT shuddered at the mental image. "She was a little girl, not a tall woman?" she asked.
"Yes."
NT furrowed her brow. Angelica had looked different to Senna, but that was to be expected with a magic trickster.
"I think I have some idea now." said NT, giving Mira's shoulder a quick reassuring pat. "Thanks for your help. Now, try to rest up. It's the best way to heal from these injuries."
"Thank you so much." said Mira.
"No problem." NT replied with a smile before walking away to join the others.
As Pippi was making her way back to join the others, a shrill whistle startled her. It was not the sort of whistle she was about to welcome, either. She stopped to look around.
Presently a man stepped out from behind a tree and approached her. "That was worth seeing, have you ever considered selling your act?"
"What act?" Pippi eyed him suspiciously.
"I don't know how you managed to toss her up there," he pointed back in the direction Pippi and Senna had been. "I love to watch girls having a good tussle, but this!" he whistled again.
"I'd hardly call it a tussle, sir." Pippi said icily. "And it wasn't for the sake of pleasing you."
"Wow, I like that!" he laughed. "What spunk!" He saw her look at him with disgust, as if he was something that had been stepped in. "What? You can't take a compliment?"
"Is that what you call it?" Pippi said, advancing on him. Tell me, sir, that girl you saw tossed up in the tree - have you seen her before? She's just the sort who could provide a small minded individual such as yourself with hours of tussling entertainment."
The man bristled at getting so soundly called out, but said, "Yeah, though I don't know why it matters to an obvious genius such as yourself. Early this morning. And by the way, if and when she gets down from that tree, she still has to pay me a little something more for something I helped her out with."
"You," Pippi suddenly turned menacing, "are coming with me, Bamatabois!" and with that, she grabbed a fierce hold of him and flung him over her shoulder. She carried him back to the camp, and he protested, flailing about, looking particularly angry and undignified.
"What's going on now?" Javert asked irritably as Bamatabois's yelling could be heard from a long way off and kept getting nearer.
"Maybe Senna got turned into a guy?" Madonna Gale quipped.
"Uh, no." said Ameh, laughing. "Not unless NT or Capri set it to happen when they weren't with her."
Pippi came into view, shaking a hapless man thoroughly before releasing him into Bez's and Capri's custody. This was enough to make him be quiet for at least a few moments.
"We now have Bamatabois." Pippi announced.
"Bamatabois…" Javert said, giving the man a looking over. After some time, he continued with a frown, "I should know this man."
"You bet you should!" NT said, advancing toward Javert. "Do you remember him making out a report of being assaulted by - " she hesitated, trying to think of how to put it, "what you might call - a woman of ill-repute?"
Bamatabois gaped at NT.
She glared back at him and turned her still hostile expression on Javert.
"Why so shocked, Bamatabois?" Gretel sniped, "Don't like having it revealed what you do in your spare time?"
"What of it?" Bamatabois retorted.
Bez snorted disparagingly.
Bamatabois glared at her and continued. “Anyway, I don't know why she's got such a problem with it," he pointed at NT, "She's not my type anyway and the one that attacked me was blonde."
As if the subject had reminded him of something, he searched through the faces in the group, his eyes settling hungrily on Sigma.
She met his stare with a sharp glare and sharper slap.
After some chuckles of approbation faded, Capri continued.
"She didn't just 'attack' for no reason. He made that up - and because she was among such women of ill-repute, Javert, that was all it took for Bamatabois to make you and anyone else in charge believe she just suddenly attacked for no reason."
"I might remember if this woman had a name to go with the description." said Javert.
Before Bamatabois could respond, NT moved a few steps nearer to Javert and looked him full in the face. "Her name was Fantine, and it was Bamatabois who attacked her!"
"That was not how it looked." Javert said, looking evenly down at NT.
"He killed her!" NT hissed.
"I didn't kill anybody, you crazy little - "
"Crazy little - what?" NT glowered at him. "Out with it, show everyone here what a trash-talking, misogynistic scumbag you are!"
"Whoa, ouch!" Bamatabois shrilled.
Capri hurried to approach NT, "Hey, you're right, but cool it." She gave NT's hair a tug.
NT didn't subside, but looked at Capri and whispered something.
Capri nodded.
NT wrung her hands.
"Why don't you see if Mira's okay? I'll take the explanation from here." said Capri.
NT didn't respond, apparently reluctant to leave things hanging.
Capri took up the explanation. "Fantine was not in her situation by choice. Bad men, like you," Capri rounded on Bamatabois, "put her there."
"I don't believe this," Javert said to Capri, he was trying to rationalize what had gone on. "She could've married instead."
He winced suddenly because NT still couldn't get her magic reactions under control.
Capri ignored this, becoming suddenly frighteningly stern. "If that worthless waste of skin hadn't up and abandoned Fantine along with her child, she WOULD HAVE married! She wanted to marry him!"
Bamatabois sneered. "Look, I can't help it if some girl deluded herself into the belief that I wanted to marry her."
"Not you, stupid," Capri snapped, "this was some other jerk who left her high and dry before you slithered along!"
Madonna nodded at Capri and snickered.
Hoping to both condescend to and provoke Capri into a shouting match with him, Bamatabois sniped at her, "Hardly my problem, sweetheart."
NT began to storm again. "Your problems are just beginning, mister! - "
Completely ignoring Bamatabois's snide comment, Capri looked at NT. "You, go see to Mira, NOW!" She barked. Turning a menacingly angry stare on Javert, her voice rising in a frightening crescendo, "And YOU - one word in defence of that scoundrel's actions and heads are going to roll!"
This figure of speech is harmless enough if you are Capri or Bez, but coming from a very different background and society, it took on a whole different and frightening meaning for Bamatabois and Javert.
Both froze. Javert's eyes went wide for a long moment, but Bamatabois turned white as chalk.
Gretel startled for only a moment, and then, looking at the reactions from Javert and especially Bamatabois, something seemed to dawn on her, and she had to expend considerable effort not to laugh.
Satisfied with Capri's handling this and the two men shaken, the stern-faced NT finally moved off.
Still unaware of the impact that threat had, Capri continued firmly though considerably quieter. "Mr. Javert, I shouldn't have to remind you about the various desperate situations people get into that are not of their own making. You have only to remember your own childhood to know that sometimes people are cruel just because they can be."
"Perhaps," said Javert, "but I didn't become a convict."
"Only because you were lucky and smart enough to get into your line of work - and - you're a man. How many women do you know in this career, aside from present company?" Capri probed.
"None. But I never gave that any thought." Javert answered her honestly.
"Of course not, but things are different now." said Capri.
Javert gave an almost imperceptable nod.
"Well," Capri said with a calming down sigh, "the main concerns right now are what to do about him," she gestured in the general direction of where Pippi was still holding Bamatabois to keep him from running away, "Mira, Senna and Angelica."
"Speaking of Angelica - "
"NT, I thought I told you to see to Mira."
"She's asleep. " NT approached. "But we were talking earlier, about Angelica, and Mira's description of Angelica is different from Senna's. She says Angelica's a little girl with a deformed shape - something the matter with her back."
"What?" Capri's eyes went wide a moment.
"But didn't you say something about a little con-artist bothering Heidi, Capri?" Pippi asked.
"Yes, exactly. This girl's obviously up to no good."
"How come I feel this is going to be like Cherie all over again?" said Madonna.
Ameh groaned.
"Oh, for the love-!" Bez exclaimed, remembering the unpleasant encounter with Cherie. "That's the last thing we need! Cherie-2.0! It's like a bad clone movie..."
"Who's Cherie?" asked Bamatabois.
"None of your concern." Madonna snapped irritably.
"Somebody you actually deserve!" NT snapped back coldly.
"I wouldn't even wish the likes of you on her, though. But never mind, she's history." Capri added bluntly.
Bez snickered. "Oh, yeah. Major history."
Bamatabois shuddered and darted nervous glances this way and that, trying to avoid both Capri and Bez.
Pippi shook with suppressed laughter.
Capri seemed to get an idea. "If you'll all sit tight for a few, Mr. Javert, come with me." She said rather tersely, indicating a secluded space a little way off.
Javert nodded and slowly followed Capri until they were out of sight of the rest of the group. He had no idea what she had in store for him, still, it wouldn't do to let his thoughts or nerves get the better of him and let any of it show outwardly.
Bamatabois paled again and he bit his lip. It was if he was awaiting some kind of terrible punishment and knew Javert was about to get it first, but then he would be next.
Sigma noticed this, and, building on her already intense dislike of Bamatabois, aimed an acrid comment at him. "I wouldn't worry too much about him." She snapped. "If worrying about anyone but yourself is even possible for you." She narrowed her eyes at him. "You're nothing more than a gutter-brained sleaze, and I guarantee, whatever happens to you, you deserve it!"
"Hey, what did I ever do to you?" He whined, apparently unaware of how sick everyone was of hearing that lame old excuse.
Sigma had expended her last measure of patience talking to Bamatabois, so the only response she gave him was a glare intense enough to feel like a slap.
He subsided to glum silence.
"I don't think discussing Fantine any further with you," Pippi hissed, " will be anything but a waste of time. It's clear what you're guilty of there, and what your attitude is. So let's talk about Senna and Angelica. Did either of them pay or promise to pay you for helping them torture Mira?"
"Yes."
"Money or favours, or both?"
"Both, and Angelica said she'd get me a position at a factory, they need a foreman, the last one got killed in a battle."
Pippi frowned. "Here?"
"Not too far from here."
"That means Angelica could be skulking around somewhere."
"And you can forget about any payment." NT put in sharply. "Unless a kick in the head counts."
Another snicker from Bez.
"You really don't like me, do you?" Bamatabois looked puzzled at NT.
"Duh! How perceptive of you!" she shot back.
"I've never seen you before, what is it about me you hate so much?"
NT scoffed. "Never mind, your worm-brain could never grasp anything beyond 'gimme gimme gimme'. You'd probably sell the nose off your own face if somebody paid you enough."
Gretel laughed out loud. "Oh, the mental image."
"It'd be an improvement to his looks anyway." Madonna sniped, looking about to boil over. "Not that he's exactly a nosferatu or anything - but you're ugly if your attitude stinks no matter what you look like."
"I really don't understand why you all - "
Bamatabois was cut off by Madonna, who advanced toward him with a mean scowl, and she let him have it.
"We don't like exploitive greedy lying bullies that go up to sick women and demand they disrobe, then throw snow down their dresses and cause such women to hit back in SELF-DEFENCE and then go crying about getting hit by these women to law enforcement like big babies! If I could, I'd hang you from that tree by your toes for the better part of a day!" Madonna jabbed in the direction of a tall pine tree with large limbs that looked sturdy enough to hold a man's weight easily.
Pippi, Ameh and even NT looked at Madonna in astonishment. Never before had they seen her temper flash, she was usually so merry that it was hard to imagine her getting annoyed let alone enough to issue a sudden tirade.
Bez laughed and clapped a few times. "Yeah, and ain't that the truth!" She said. "And you know what, I wouldn't go tryin' any funny business, bub, or we'll be more than happy to string you up."
"Yeah, Bammers," Gretel chimed in derisively, "we have the means."
Bamatabois shuddered again. He wasn't at all used to being put in his place, and never expected it to come so forcefully from people he had never met.
* * *
"Let's sit down here." Capri said once she and Javert were at a suitable section of good clean grass.
Both sat silently in the grass, and then Capri looked at him. "You've never known any real caring, have you?" and her tone and expression were so difficult to read that Javert didn't know how to answer her. She definitely didn't seem to be displaying pity, real or mocking, and neither did she seem to be judging him.
"Have you ever been sick? Ever wished you could just take a day off and felt rotten that no one else gave a hoot enough to take your place until you got well?"
He sat pensively for a moment. "And who doesn't feel that way once in a while?" he finally said.
Capri nodded. "But you always got better, and you never lost anything or anyone dear to you."
"Because I never had anyone dear to me." he said, then added with a slight sneer, "Not that I needed or wanted, so I am not asking for your pity or patronization."
Capri nodded and grinned back at him. "Oh, you can make yourself easy about that, Javert, I don't pity you - or most people for that matter. Pity can be such a needless drain on a person. But back to the subject at hand. Fantine didn't get better. She died in the care of a doctor, but if Bamatabois had his way, she would've died in jail. Do you remember what it's like on the inside?"
Javert allowed himself to scoff at Capri. "Of course I do, I have worked around cons all my life."
"Do YOU - REMEMBER," Capri emphasized firmly, "what it was like before you got out and landed a job catching and putting cons away?"
Javert frowned. "That was a long time ago. I do not bother with such memories."
"Who can blame you? I'd want to put it all behind me and try to forget it too if I was you." said Capri with an air of someone making lively small talk. "There are things in my own past I wish I could rub out as well, but no matter, they wouldn't interest you."
"Oh, really?" Javert challenged her.
"Well, you know," said Capri, "The usual people being mean and dishing out all kinds of stuff, but that was just me in a free society. That's bad enough when you get picked on and lose people you care about there. But growing up in prison, now that's got to be a whole new level of mean."
"It is long past and none of your concern - " Javert began to protest, but Capri continued.
"Rotten food, people stealing from you what little you could get," As she speculated, Javert's memory was being jogged, and he started reliving his past experiences as vivid as any dream.
Javert could no longer see Capri, he found himself feeling like a small boy among convicts in horrendous conditions and no one was willing to help him get a scrap of food. Then he remembered how some jailbird had taken away a little stick man toy and together with a few other cons, tossed it about, refusing to give it back. In the end, they broke it, and laughed at Javert's tears.
"Watching people getting branded and lashed and flogged, guards threatening you with the same if you made one wrong move, even before you knew what all the wrong moves were,"
Javert thought he'd hardened himself to this type of memory and spectacle, until now. He recalled such memories from his childhood, all the initial feelings came back as well. Fear of the guards, initial pity for those being punished, later this turned to numbness and even contempt for the punished, and a quiet thankfulness for every day he had managed to escape such punishment himself.
"Cons making you do things to break some rules and then ratting you out just to save their wretched skins," said Capri.
Javert remembered how he'd been coaxed and dared to try and steal a coin from one of the guards, and when he was caught, the cons who had put him up to it, put all the blame on him, and he got a terrible lashing and sent to one of the darkest cells to spend that night.
"cons pushing you around,"
Javert remembered learning to fight for literally everything, and how he was so sick of older people telling him what to do all the time, always followed by threats of very nasty consequences for disobedience.
"always putting up with starving, stinking conditions, hotter than blue blazes in summer, freezing your skin off in winter, getting threatened with branding irons - "
Capri had speculated correctly at this too. There had been a time when a particularly ill-tempered guard got mad at Javert for some little thing, and chased him with a hot branding iron.
"That is enough!" Javert finally made a shuddering outburst.
Capri continued, "no one giving a fig for you, everyone picking on you and taunting you about your parents who were either dead or just gave you up - did you ever find out why? Was your mother a woman of ill-repute? Was your father a crook - "
Javert's memories of some nasty guards and cons mercilessly taunting one another about various things, and Javert was also ridiculed for being an orphan.
He remembered one loud-mouthed convict in particular, saying "You'll never get out of this hole. You don't even have a family to come visit you! You were born here and you'll be here forever, you're just like the rest of us!"
"No I'm not!" he had cried out. And this was met with nothing but derisive laughter from prisoners.
"Yeah, little Prince Javert's daddy cut and run leaving him here after his trampy mother got sick and died!" said another prisoner.
"I said, enough!" Javert shouted at Capri.
Finally, his vision swam, the filthy jail scene disappeared, and Javert could once more see Capri sitting several feet away.
"No one cared."
"You made your point, Christine."
"It's Capri." she corrected.
"Well then, Capri," he said, still trying not to let on any more than absolutely possible, "What exactly was the point in this little memory exercise?"
Capri gave him a wry smile. "It's not for me to say, is it? But since you're so inquisitive about what I think,"
Javert snickered quietly to himself.
Capri grinned and continued. "I'll tell you... I think you probably tried your best to forget the bad memories from your childhood and youth, and not allow yourself to let any weakling emotions to get in the way of meeting out justice once you got out of there and could really stick it to that lot who'd given your life such a rough start."
Javert nodded.
Capri stood up, approached Javert and gave him a quick little jab on the side of the head.
"What was that for?"
Suddenly he and Capri were standing somewhere else. They were looking at a happy group of people on some sort of outing, several young men and women.
All too abruptly, the happy scene changed when the group of young men announced the special surprise they had for their girlfriends - they were going away, leaving them.
The excited squeals of laughter turned to bitter tears.
Javert frowned. "What is this?"
"It's a collection of selfish chumps who thought they'd amuse themselves at the expense of these girls." said Capri.
"And just why should it concern me? I was not one of those men."
Capri's tone became icily perturbed. "Did I say you were?" She subsided after a few moments and continued. "In a way, you were luckier than those girls, you never loved, you never were loved, and never let yourself get close enough for anyone to hurt you."
"That does not mean I was never - " Javert shook his head, seeming unable to say out loud what had been done to him in his childhood prison and how it made him feel. He looked at Capri. "Forget it."
Capri nodded.
The scene changed.
All the other girls had gone. Only one remained, and she was on her own, with a baby she loved and tried her best to take care of.
Javert saw the struggles, all the dead ends, the doors being shut on her again and again, the illnesses, the doctors, the girl finally in an act of desperation placing her beloved daughter with what had appeared to be a good home, arranging to pay them for her upkeep. Then, the child's life going from merely impoverished to abject mistreatment by the foster family who was supposed to care for her. The mother and her own two little girls loved one another, but they all treated the foster child like dirt, and the infant son was also woefully neglected and treated like a big annoyance and inconvenience by the woman. The foster girl's mother taking on a factory job with a crude foreman who mistreated his workers, and especially her.
Then a scene where she sold whatever she could to send money for supposed medications to treat her sick daughter. And then, the scene changed, to reveal that it was not her daughter who was sick, but the other two little brats that belonged to the moose of a woman who had taken the little girl in for money.
Javert's frown intensified at this.
Then, the scene with the poor woman getting sacked and without other options, and then the lewd Bamatabois came on the scene, and Javert saw what had really transpired with him.
Then there was blackness.
After a few moments, Capri and Javert were back in the secluded area.
"The little girl was a lot like you as a child, living in a place without any love for her. at least you were in a place where they all pretty much hated one another. This little girl was singled out, the only one to get picked on by that poor excuse of a family. She eventually got helped out of their clutches but her mother, Fantine, was dead by then. True, none of this would've happened if Fantine and her other friends hadn't fallen for those rogues, but think about it; there wouldn't even be women of ill-repute around, and girls with broken hearts without men of ill-repute - and there wouldn't be desperate situations, and dysfunctional homes, and children getting mistreated at all if it were not for the Bamatabois, the Thenardiers, and other such people of really bad intent and selfish motives, setting these tragedies in motion." said Capri. "I'm not blaming you for what happened to Fantine. But whatever mistakes she, or Valjean or you or I or anyone make out of desperation, you can be sure there are always truly cruel and evil people around helping the rest of us to royally muck it up."
Javert looked down at his hands, trying to work all of this out, and he still wasn't sure if Capri intended to bring him up on a charge of some kind and have his life ended in a gory disgrace.
After a punishing pause, Capri spoke up. "If you want a little time to yourself, take it, and then come back and join us. We'll be waiting for you."
With that, she straightened and walked away.
* * *
Bamatabois let out an audible shuddering gasp and he turned white once again when Capri returned to the group without Javert.
Bez smiled wickedly and decided to mess with Bamatabois. "Ah, you see? That's what happens." She tutted and shook her head. "Such a shame, really."
"What do you mean?" Bamatabois asked quickly, glancing nervously in the direction Capri had come from.
"Oh, maybe nothing, maybe something." Bez said. "All I'm gettin' at is..." She rested a hand casually on her Burner. "You're next."
Bamatabois cracked. "Oh, come on, please!" He sobbed pathetically. "Come on, what- what did I ever do to-"
"Oh, shut up, you whining self-centered brat!" Sigma shot. "You just can't get it through your fat head that you don't have to do something specifically to someone for that person to hate you, can you?"
"No kidding!" Ameh put in.
"What's the matter with him?" Capri scoffed, "He's become completely unglued."
"Please," Bamatabois pleaded. "Have mercy."
"Mercy for what?" Capri demanded sharply with a definite air of disgust. "You're carrying on worse than a drowning kitten and for much less reason. Well, you're not crying your way out of this!"
Bamatabois, feeling that getting beheaded was worse than being a wet kitten, just continued to blubber incoherently, which only earned him more scorn and more than a few disgusted looks. He would have continued on this way if he hadn't caught a glance of Javert returning solemnly to the group.
"You! They didn't- you're still-? But I thought-?"
"Unless you plan on finishing any of those sentences," Javert cut him off. "I suggest you keep your mouth shut."
Pippi held her breath, trying desperately to keep from laughing out loud.
Gretel did her best to mask her outburst of laughter with a fit of fake coughing.
Bamatabois lapsed into a stunned silence. He had expected Javert to be more sympathetic to him.
But there was a new resolve in Javert's eyes, as if he had started to realize something that had always lingered just beyond his grasp.
"Our chief objective," Javert began. "Is to bring this man and his cohorts to justice." He looked around the group, the faintest shadow of uncertainty in his eyes. "I offer my full cooperation. Where shall we begin?"
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