The cobblestone streets of New Florence City were especially lively. The rush hour heralded packed sidewalks, and masses of cars pippiting and popping throughout the streets. All condensed between high-rising buildings that defied any semblance of uniform or order. Many leaned in over the streets, and many yet were patched with polyester-soaked sheets that wrapped around their entire form.
A girl walked these streets. She was in her late teens, with flowing, knee-length raven hair and a bass guitar slung over her shoulder. The sidewalks were packed, and yet she negotiated them with ease, slipping and ducking past the clumsy, sloppy peoples inhabiting the streets with grace and precision.
Bodily waste fell from the upper stories of buildings, and splashed all over near the middle of the street. She looked to the left, across the street, and spotted a man dressed peculiarly like a clown. He wore an obnoxiously colored tunic with an oversized beret. As he moved along the walkway, he hopped, and hopped again, in and out of an awkward, flexible stance, only to advance again upon the next hop. A young woman, ahead of him, was frantically trying to push through the oblivious crowd as she kept looking back at him. He continued to advance on her, hop after hop.
A police officer, leaning against a lightpole, was looking straight at this scene. Satisfied, the officer went back to reading the paper.
As the raven-haired girl continued along the sidewalk, her own obnoxiously dressed assailant popped out of an alleyway, and began hopping at her. She heard him go "whoo!" with each hop up, and a "paa..." on each landing. He got close to her.
Wham!
The assailant was on the ground, his nose crushed against his face. The girl walked on, indifferent thereafter.
Continuing along the street, she heard a different chant, coming from the next alleyway, she stopped to look, and saw a slight clearing in there. A circle of adolescent boys sat on their knees in a circle. They were all pale, frail, and wore glasses. Moving in sync, they ended each movement with all pointing their arms withing the circle, going "paa," at the same time as pointing. Then they went into a new set of arm movements, ending at another pointing forward, "lii!"
The girl moved on as soon as she saw what was going on in there. Nobody went into those alleyways; they were quite hazardous.
She moved on, eventually reaching her destination: a clearing in the buildings.
A huge television screen loomed over the clearing, which had a wide roundabout in the road, with a web of walkways and benches in the round center. The street veered off in a dozen different directions. A tightly packed crowd was growing in this broad intersection, all their attention was focused on the television screen.
It was almost time for the recently re-elected President's fifth inaugural speech, which would be broadcast all over the United States. The President was extremely popular. Anybody who missed a speech or public appearance was considered a weirdo.
She with the bass guitar heard two sets of footsteps approaching in a beeline directly toward her. Her hearing had always been unusually acute, and she could tell that these footsteps, out of the hundreds of footsteps around her, were heading directly to her position.
She turned, and smiled when she saw who it was.
Two men, the first was tall and slender, with a head of thick, golden hair. The one at his side was not much taller, but had a much wider build, and his face was so hideously ugly it was almost a work of art. Hard wrinkle lines formed along his mostly round face to the point of warping it. His face conveyed, in every sense, the word 'bulldog.'
"Finn, Jake." She said to both of them in salutation as they stopped in front of her. Finn and Jake, also known as the Werecanine brothers, were her friends. They worked for an institution called the P.S.S. And she occasionally hung out with them. The P.S.S. Was an agency recently formed by executive order. It had a bit of a reputation for allegedly employing a bunch of morally questionable psychotic thugs, but she didn't see any of those rumors come to life in her friends.
"What's up?" Said Finn easily, "how's your father doing?"
"Thank you for asking." She said flatly.
"Is there anything-"
"Thanks for asking is enough." She cut him off.
"So..." Jake walked in front of his younger, significantly more handsome brother, eager to change the subject. He looked at her bass guitar. "How's your music career going?"
She sensed the tension between them. Someone had recently tried to kill her father; an event that made news. That's why they were uneasy around her. She smiled at them, trying to knock away the ice. "It's okay, guys, you don't need to walk on eggshells with me."
"Still..." said Finn, talking past Jake.
She sighed. "I'm not at liberty to discuss my family, or its business." They were her friends, but they were still technically cops. Jake had it in him to let certain things slide, but Finn could never keep a secret from his superiors, it was against his nature.
"But aren't you a civilian?" Said Finn incredulously. Jake looked him in the eye as if to say 'let it slide,' but he kept his attention on her.
"Yes, and so I don't get involved." She replied to him. "If I talked about it, that would be getting involved." She shook her head, then, shook it more rapidly. "We're putting this in the past, now, got it?"
"Please stand by for the fifth inaugural address." Spoke a mechanical voice that boomed smoothly throughout the streets.
She turned, and saw the huge screen had turned on. It showed a huge stage, the centerpiece of which was an exquisite podium with dozens of microphones. Standing next to the podium was a short, bald man in a tailcoat, whose eyes bore a look of blank dispassion. He raised an arm at the podium, and spoke: "Ladies and gentlemen, President Bonnibel Bubblegum!"
Camera flashes could be seen on the TV, and the crowd on the street roared in applause as a young woman walked onto the stage. Her thick, ankle-length pink hair was done into two large curls at the side of her head. The rest hung back off her head. Her attire looked like it belonged in the sixteenth century, its gaudiness suppressed only by its pink monocolor.
President Bubblegum waited for the crowd to settle down before beginning to speak. Her voice sounded like it belonged in wonderland; impudent, yet also soft, and easy on the ears. "It is with tremendous honor, and humility that I accept the position as your president, with all the power, and responsibility that entails. I am truly humbled that you, the people, have seen fit to elect me a fifth time."
The crowd attending the stage on TV clapped in resounding number. Then it died down.
She continued. "It has been nearly two centuries since our forefathers won their, and by extension our freedom from Italian rule, and established a nation of freedom and justice for all." More clapping erupted again. She spread her arms. "This nation is one of unparalleled prosperity..."
The raven haired girl looked over, and saw more bodily waste being dumped on the street from an upper window.
"Culture..."
She saw someone being arrested by an overweight cop, the suspect was a perfectly respectable looking person who wore a white collar suit.
"Dignity..."
She spotted an American flag hanging off a government office. Its proud red, white and green were bleached to nothing from overexposure to sunlight.
"Beauty..."
Numerous buildings in the city had been recently painted, a splash of rich, bright color that couldn't be more offensive to the eyes if they were covered in excrement. Some of them were.
"And love."
The girl heard something, over the quiet made by the airing of the address, it was steppings on the street, in a pattern entailing a struggle. She looked in the direction of the sound, and saw something unlike anything she saw that day, something sinister.
Far down one of the streets, there was a glimpse; a young woman was being taken into an alleyway. It was only glimpses, but she saw physical signals that she was under the influence of drugs. The men pushily taking her into the alleyway did not look like the clowns who openly wandered the streets. They were real thugs. Everybody's attention was focused on the speech, and they didn't notice this happening.
She looked at Finn and Jake, who in turn noticed her looking at them and took their attention off the screen above. She indicated with her head for them to follow her.
Seeing the serious look on her face, they didn't raise an objection, and followed her.
She slipped through the still crowd, their eyes still glued to the television. Needing to move fast, she sped up, taking the risk of hitting somebody.
A wandering pedestrian was walking sluggishly, obliviously, into her path.
"Move!"
As though puppeteered, her exclamation caused him to not only notice her coming his way, but jump out of the way to let her move unobstructed.
It was only a hunch, she thought to herself. What she saw were merely glimpses, and patterns that could be easily owed to chance. But still...
Once free of the main crowd in the round intersection, she bolted for the alleyway she saw the glimpses in. Finn and Jake were right behind her. She reached the alleyway.
What she saw not only vivified the hunch in the edges of her mind, but did so to a horrifying degree, intensified by how close she was to disregarding it. The young woman was up against the wall, surrounded by five or six ragged-looking men. She was laughing uncontrollably, wanting to jerk her head around. Indeed, she was drugged. And the men crowding on her wore the sort of smiles that entailed a supreme lack of intelligence, and also the will to use violence to compensate for that.
The raven haired girl walked into the alleyway. "Hey! What the hell are you doing!"
The thugs all turned at her, unhappy with being interrupted. Several of them pulled guns, aiming them at her. "You better piss off, little girl!"
She saw Finn and Jake enter the sides of her vision with their own guns. Their handguns glinted like chrome, and had highly advanced laser sights. "P.S.S.!" Shouted Finn, holding out a badge with his other hand, "place your weapons on the ground, now!"
The girl with raven hair saw where this was going, the thugs weren't the type to allow themselves to get arrested. This was going to be a Mexican standoff.
She stepped forward, past Finn and Jake, who had moved in front of her to shield her in the event of a shootout, and then she placed her hands on their arms, calmly lowering their guns. Her bass guitar was hanging by its strap behind her back. She looked all the thugs in the eye. "My name is Marcelini Abadeer, daughter of Hunson Abadeer."
Every one of the lowlife thugs recognized that name. The Abadeers were a renowned organized crime family. And Hunson Abadeer was one of the most powerful men in the city. Seeing her face, they began to panic. If they shot her, it would be the end of them.
Before they did anything, Marcelini spoke to them again. "Walk away, all of you, and you will not be accountable. You have my word."
They understood her offer, and knew they could not refuse it. They lowered their weapons. Finn walked up on them, probably intending to arrest them, but she grabbed his shirt, stopping him.
He looked back at her, as if to say 'what the flip?'
"Didn't you hear me?" She said to him. "I said they're not accountable."
"They're criminals."
They were walking in the other direction, leaving the woman, whom they drugged up, alone. "I just saved your life, Finn." She said as she let go, and walked over to the victim, placing a hand on her forehead. She was no doctor, but it was worth checking. Marcelini turned back to Finn and Jake. "This woman needs help, can you guys report this to someone?"
"Already did," said Jake as he flipped shut a portable radio with a built-in camera. "Ambulence'll be here in a few minutes."
She walked past them, back toward the street. After standing at the border between the alley and sidewalk for a few seconds, she let her body sag. The adrenalin of the moment was wearing off.
Finn came up beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You all right, Marcelini?" He'd been in situations like that before, and understood how nerve-wracking they could be.
She laughed lightly, wheezily. "That was actually... really scary."
He smiled at her. "You saved our hoochas back there, as well as that woman. She could have easily been hit if that situation went south." He had to say it, to make up for his attitude a minute ago.
Marcelini looked to the right along the street, and saw the ambulance coming. "Well, it's over now." Thank Glob. She looked at Finn and Jake together. "My day is open, what about you guys?"
They both nodded.
"Let's hang out then." They let the paramedics coming out of the ambulance van see to the drugged up woman in the alleyway as they walked along the streets of New Florence City.