Icarus Guild: The Renaissance Incident

DON'T PRESS THE RED BUTTON...OH, YOU DID THAT.

Reno had expected a nuclear-reactor powered bike zipping through the streets.Even a camouflage jeep with anti-craft missiles and tracker bots would have been fine. A world created by one's subconscious mind, should at least have one of those, right? Besides he had been assigned the job of handing over this super mysterious Sceptre of Apocalypse to a super mysterious guild.It was common sense to have some high-tech gizmo on the scene.

What Reno had not expected was taking the train downtown, cramped between two burly guys who reeked of sweat. (Though to a certain extent their perspiration had masked his own.) 

"Elsa?", Reno started, wondering if he would get slapped for talking.

"Hmm?", Elsa replied.

"Um, isn't this dangerous?"

"What is?"

Reno pointed to the ice cream stick in his hand. It seemed pretty obvious to him.

"Oh, that."

"Yeah, if it is that dangerous, why are we taking a train?"

"This is the fastest route. Beside the traffic on the road is horrible today."

"You sure this isn't defective?"

"Nah, it has only blown up twice in the previous hundred years."

Reno looked at Elsa's face. She showed no sign of joking.

"You are kidding, right?"

"Not at all. Let me see, the last two times were at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was nothing much,some small scale explosions. Apparently some guy named Jiseka mistook it for a cigar."

Reno had never been good at History,but he was pretty sure that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not small scale explosions. Till date it remained the most horrific and bloodiest incident of war. Countless peace treaties and stuff had been made

All this for some ice cream stick??(Some part of Reno wondered what happened to Jiseka. Did he get lung cancer?)

Suddenly Reno wished he had worn a Titanium Armour or something before volunteering.

"So what if I drop it?"

" It will raze everything within a 29 mile radius,including us. So don't."

Reno looked at her. Either she had got an excellent poker face or she was being perfectly serious.

Meet Elsa Steiner. Seventeen year old, female. Worried about traffic jams, but not about destroying the city.

And to top it off, Reno was supposed to be hallucinating. He was totally convinced that if the ice cream stick didn't kill him, this overwhelming dose of weirdness would.

The train jerked round a sharp bend as it entered a tunnel. Reno hanged on to his dear life, cursing Newton for Inertia.

" Let's go.", Elsa got up.

" Where?", Reno asked as he carefully untangled himself from between the two fat guys.

" To the Guild, of course.", she said in a matter-of fact voice as they inched towards the exit.

Reno wanted to point out that they were cramped near the door of a downtown train travelling at one hundred and ninety six kilometres per hour with the next station still ten minutes away.

" Um..."

" Jump.", Elsa interrupted.

Elsa jumped. Kinda literally. She jumped at the door and vanished, leaving Reno's mouth hanging open.