A Botched Arrest [Abalia, Mirja]

Florence was, at least supposedly, a lovely city, and Abalia had to admit this was decidedly true. The area was absolutely lovely, the stunning classical architecture almost overwhelming the senses with a profound sense of scale, and all of it surrounded entirely by the rolling, emerald Tuscan hills. Not a single square foot of land outside the city seemed to be anything other than a verdant green, and within the city a sense of what could only be described as a controlled bustle gave the whole place a definite energy of sorts.

Abalia had, as she always did upon visiting a new city, already completed her application as a volunteer police officer. She would have committed full-time to such jobs if she had the ability, but the last thing she wanted was multiple efforts that would only serve to hinder her and lead to less than 100% of her best effort. Nevertheless, she had pinned the badge to her coat with a definite pride, and taken to a tour of the city that, while certainly a bit of sightseeing, was also most definitely a patrol for any sort of criminal activity.

It was rather odd to her, however, that the first place she had come across a crime she could stop had been in the Piazza della Signoria, not 50 feet away from the front door of the city's town hall. Still within the shadow of the Palazzo Vecchio's tower, a kidnapping was taking place, a young man dressed in almost comically generic thug attire, complete with bandana over his face and a brightly colored jacket, grabbing a young woman by the waist and pulling her along with all the grace of a tractor. Abalia's mind considered only for the briefest of moments that the thug had a definite sense of irony, stealing the girl away while The Rape of the Sabines was well within view, but this was discarded from her mind as she gave chase.

The streets of Florence were hardly conducive to situations like this, as the people shuffled through streets that had certainly never been designed for populations of this size, nor for any particularly quick action, but Abalia gave it her best attempt. Holding her badge in one hand, with the other on the hilt of her zanpakuto, Abalia followed the thug and his victim down an ever-increasingly narrow series of side-streets, well away from the main city and into the outskirts, the city walls within view as they cast a dim shadow over the streets. Finally finding the vermin stuck in a corner, his victim still in hand, Abalia raised her badge and proclaimed quite forcefully, “Polizia! Put the girl down, young man. There is no need to make this difficult.” Loosening her grip on her zanpakuto, Abalia gave him a small, genuine smile. ”Please, simply come peacefully. It would be best for us all.”

As a decidedly less gentle smile crossed the kidnapper's face, however, Abalia was filled with a profound sense of dread. This feeling was only amplified, to say the least, when she found an arm around her neck as she was gripped from behind. She inwardly cursed herself for letting her guard down so easily, but she had been too focused on making sure the arrest went as smoothly as possible. She tried her best to reach again for her zanpakuto, but as she was well within this second attacker's grip, it seemed as though that was a fruitless endeavor. This certainly did not bode well for Abalia, particularly as several more of the kidnapper's friends seemed to crawl from the woodwork. Joy of joys...