“W-what are you doing! Let go of me.” The man, who was a bit taller than me, tried to lunge out towards me with his other hand but I just stepped out of the way and twisted the arm I was holding behind his back, grabbing Claire’s wallet out of his hand and holding it behind him. “Here, this is yours.”

“Thanks.” Claire cautiously took her wallet back, put it in her purse, and then hugged her purse close to her chest.

“Let me go! Don’t touch me!” The man started yelling and tried to reach for his pocket but Alessia beat him to it, taking a knife out of it before the man could get to it.

“I don’t think that’s a very smart move.” Alessia then looked around, a small crowd had started forming around us. “Emma, if you’d be so kind to please call the police and tell them we got a pickpocketer in a civilian arrest at Rue de la Commerce number 50.”

“Ok.” She nodded and took her phone out of her own purse, starting to call the police pretty much immediately.

The flow of the crowd slowly began moving again, although a couple of people came running towards us too.

“I think he has gotten my wallet as well.” A lady held her hand against her chest, the man next to her looked pretty angry.

“Alright.” Alessia replied. “Let’s stay calm and wait for the police to get here.”

Luckily, that didn’t take very long. Presumably a couple of people had already called the police about pickpocketing earlier so they managed to get to our location in just a couple of minutes.

It were three police officers who approached us. One of which looked pretty familiar too me but I couldn’t really place her at this moment.

“Thank you, young lady, you can let him go now.” One of the male police officers took over from me. “Did you hurt him?”

“No, I just held his arm behind his back because he tried to take a swing at me.”

“He also tried to reach for that.” Alessia pointed out the knife that was laying on the floor.

A couple of the people who’d stayed around confirmed what Alessia and I had said.

The police officer nodded and took out his handcuffs to start handcuffing the guy. In the meantime, the second police officer bagged the knife and put it away.

The third police officer, the woman who looked familiar, was looking quizzically at our group. “Haven’t I seen the four of you before?” She asked.

“Hmm… I can’t really remember but you look familiar to me as well.”

Claire nodded. “We were at the scene of a traffic accident some time ago.”

“Oh! Now I remember.” I nodded as well.

“Right.” The woman nodded too. “Do you make a habit of involving yourself with incidents?”

“We try not to. We were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I’d say that it’s debatable whether or not you were at the wrong place.” The police officer pointed to her colleague, who was just emptying the pickpocket’s pockets. Pretty ironic that. He had at least thirty wallets there and quite a couple of smartphones too. “Now all those people will get their things back thanks to you.” To drive the point home, she gave back the wallet to the lady who spoke to us a bit earlier.

“Yes, thanks a lot. She opened her wallet and came up to me to show us something. “This might sound stupid, but I have a couple of photographs in here from my cat who died a couple of years ago, and they hold a lot of sentimental value. I do have them digitally as well but I was still very sad to think I’d lost them.”

“I understand. I have a cat myself as well.” I smiled.

“So if you’d want a reward…” She went into her wallet once more, but this time to look for some money.

“You really don’t need to do such a thing, really.” I waved my hands in front of me. “I’m just happy that you have your things back and that no one got hurt.”

The man who was with the lady gave me a friendly nod.

“Do we need to stay much longer, officer?” Alessia asked the policewoman.

“No, we have everything we need.” The police officer replied. “Do try to not make it a habit that I run into the four of you.” She looked at us seriously for a couple of seconds before that look turned into a sincere smile. “Try to enjoy the rest of your day.”

“We will.” Alessia replied.

I waved goodbye to the couple I’d helped and we went on our way to go and get some well-deserved hamburgers.

“Thanks for saving my wallet there, Aurora.” Claire replied as we were a bit away from the crime scene.

“That guy chose the wrong person to pickpocket.” I smiled in return.

“So he did.”

“Good job for spotting that, Aurora, I didn’t see it in time.” Alessia admitted. “I was paying too much attention to the stores.”

“That’s probably why pickpockets like busy places. People aren’t always paying attention.” Em said.

“Yeah.”

“And now that’s all over, we can get our hamburgers!” Ria commented with a small cheer.

“Indeed.” I walk next to Ria and start holding her hand, while Em joins me at the other side. So we can walk the remaining distance hand in hand.

Despite the business in the street, the WcRonalds is surprisingly calm. It must be because we waited a bit until after lunchtime to visit. We walked over to a kiosk to fill in our orders.

Em and Ria insisted on taking the lead to tap into the kiosk what our orders are.

“What do you want, Claire?” Em asked.

“A medium WcRegal menu please.” Claire replied.

“Uhhh… Okay, let’s try to figure this out.” Em started going through the menu, with Ria occasionally pointing her in the right direction. It was pretty funny to see them figure it out. All in all, it doesn’t take too terribly long for them to find the right options to get to Claire’s choice.

“Which drink and sauces do you want?” Ria asked.

“Mayo and for the drink a bepis.”

Two taps from Ria later and Claire’s order was complete.

Both me and Alessia decided to go with the same thing Claire went with, as it was kinda the standard choice I went with anyway. For Em and Ria it took a bit longer to decide but in the end, they also picked the same thing, albeit with different drinks. And Ria decided to go for a strawberry milkshake as well. We also ordered some twenty chicken nuggets to share amongst the five of us. With Alessia paying our bill.

“Such a diverse order.” Claire chuckled. “They must think we are very adventurous today.”

“At least we picked some different sauces, right.” I smiled.

“The diversity in life is like the different sauces you pick with it.” Em replied, she was clearly mocking Claire a little bit there.

“For that is very true, my dear friend.” Claire decided to roll along with it. “It’s the small things that can make a big difference.”

“And you could say they could potentially also add some spice.”

Claire smiled. “That’s both beautiful and also very true.”

I winked and took our order triangle from the kiosk. “Let’s sit down before they wonder where we are at.”

We picked a table near the window that looked out on the shopping street, right in time to see the police officers from earlier take away the pickpocketer to their car that was presumably parked nearby.

And just as we were getting comfortable, our food arrived. Showing us the true definition of fast-food once more. The waiter took away the order triangle and placed our food on the table.

“Wow.” Em replied as I gave a box with a hamburger to her. “How did they even know where we were?”

“There must be some kind of tracker in the triangle they took away.” I looked as the waiter walked away. “Well, I think so, at least. Might be for show too and they just remember where you sat down. I don’t know anyone who worked here, so it’s not like I can ask.”

“You’ve not worked here?” Claire asked as she opened her box and took a bite of her burger.

“No. Is that surprising?”

“You’ve done a lot of part-time jobs, right? I figured you would have at least done one at WcRonalds too.”

“Nah, I prefer doing work at small supermarkets or grocery stores.” I took a bite out of my own burger, too. Such delicious averageness, even without the hunger, it was still a fine meal.

“There’s one thing you can’t deny about WcRonalds though.” Alessia continued. “Wherever you go, you can be assured that when you order a WcRegal it will always taste the same, even if you are on the other side of the planet.”

“Have you been on the other side of the planet Alessia?” Ria asked as she clumsily opened her own box.

“It would be easier to name the places I haven’t been.”

“Wow! I’d be happy to hear a few stories of your travels then!”

Alessia smiled. “In time. But you can be assured that there will be plenty of traveling in your own future as well.”

-As long as I have my girlfriends with me, I’m sure that will be an amazing time regardless of where we go!-