I asked for Double Vanilla with Chocolate Sprinkles.

Sunlight beamed down hard on the ground, scorching the earth in a lengthy summer heat.

People walked by, sweat beading across their brows as they rushed for their homes trying to escape the searing heat.

It was the middle of summer, June 22nd.

It also happened to be the hottest day recorded that year, and everyone was feeling the effects.

Yet, there was a man positioned on the side of a street selling ice cream; a small umbrella on top of his cart as he put on a professional business smile to sell off his ice cream in the heat of the day.

As he took another sale, he looked down at the wad of cash that he had earned today with a smile.

“Just a little more and I’ll be able to buy that TV I wanted..”

He smiled even deeper at the thought; his own 4K TV to watch shows on when he had a day off!

It was like something out of a dream for a guy like him!

Just as the man was smiling at his earnings, an odd duo peeked their heads out from an alleyway and looked at the cash in the man's hands.

“Uhh are we really going to do this..?”

A small feminine voice softly spoke up in concern.

“Well we need that money for our research, and unless you want to rob a bank instead to afford it, this is our only option.”

A deeper voice spoke up, it was a little scruffy and spoke with a hint of eccentricity.

“You remember the plan, right Dianne?”

“Yes Uncle.”

“Wh- Hey I thought I told you to call me Dr.Yggdrasil..”

“And I told you that I’m never going to call you something so embarrassing, plus you’re a Doctorate in Psychology.”

The deeper voice seemed to be stumped for a bit, pausing as they looked at each other in silence.

“Er..Hush my young apprentice! The plan commences forth.”

The feminine voice sighed and stopped speaking up.

From the alleyway appeared a small girl, about 5’7’’ with an extremely dissatisfied look across her face with her current situation.

This girl was Dianne.

She wore a black hoodie with ‘The end is Nigh’ stitched in white across the front paired with grey sweatpants. Scorn etched across her face as she stepped out from the alleyway.

Dianne slowly stepped up towards the ice cream salesman with a nervous look on her face, her silver hair fluttering around as she approached apprehensively.

“Hey buddy, could I buy an ice cream?” She spoke indignantly as she attempted to garner attention from the salesman.

“Huh? Oh! Of course you can little girl! What would you like?” The salesman put his wad of cash on the side of the cart, just within his peripheral vision as he turned to Dianne.

Dianne’s eyes grew visibly darker at being called a ‘little girl’

“Well, I think I’d like a vanilla double scoop with chocolate sprinkles.”

Diane took her sweet time waiting around as the ice cream salesman made her order, sprinkling a topping of chocolate sprinkles over scoops of vanilla in a wafer cone.

‘She sure has attitude, I was a bit like that when I was younger huh.’

The salesman inwardly sighed to himself as he remembered his reckless youth. He slowly handed over the girl's order with a smile, satisfied with his work once again.

I may not earn a whole lot, but it’s worth it to see the smile on peoples faces!

As he thought that, Dianne stared at him with a deadpan expression, “This isn’t my order.”

“Wh-”

“I ordered a double chocolate with rainbow sprinkles.”

“......right. Sorry about that!”

The salesman grumbled to himself a little as he prepared another cone, placing the one he had just made on the side as he made another ice cream.

Just as he was satisfied with the cone he had newly made, handing it over with a smile on his face, the girl piped up once more.

“What the hell is that? Why can you never get my order right?”

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT THIS TIME?!" is what the man thought in his head; he had to remain professional after all.

“I ordered a double vanilla with chocolate sprinkles. How can you be so thick in the head?”

.....I’m gonna kill this brat.

As the salesman was being bullied by Dianne, the deeper voice emerged from the alleyway donning a long lab coat.

The lab coat had been dyed black with ink stains, and underneath he wore a white collar shirt paired with long black slacks. He slung an eyepatch over one of his eyes and smoothed his hair back despite it still being unkempt anyways. A long streak of grey cut through his hair, Indicating his old age.

This old man wa-

“Call me an old man again and we cancel this novel.” The deeper voice responded angrily and glared up at the sky.

Ahem!

This definitely not old man was Dr.Yggdrasil, a self-proclaimed scientist with a perpetual Chuunibyou syndrome who refuses to use his real name. [1]

“See now that’s better~” Yggdrasil smiled musefully and walked closer to the ice cream cart from behind.

Dianne continued running the salesman in circles, making him make cone after cone of ice cream. As he did so, Yggdrasil slowly snuck around behind him.

He attempted to be as silent as possible while he stepped up towards the wad of cash on the side, and after seeing that the cash was still in the salesman's sight, he made a small hand sign to Dianne telling her to distract him a little more.

She quickly got the hint and had a small confused look on her face for a moment before moving to the side of the cart, dragging the salesman's line of sight away from the cash while pretending to look at the ice cream from a different angle.

“I think you’re making the ice cream wrong..?”

‘I hate the new generation, so..so much..’ The salesman let out an exhaustive sigh and looked to his right for a second, tilting his eyes just enough to see a strangely dressed man with an eyepatch holding his grubby paws around a wad of cash.

‘Hey that’s pretty funny, that looks like my money~’

…

“Ah.”

Time seemed to stall for a moment as Dianne and Dr.Yggdrasil looked at each other, a look of panic streaking across both of their faces whilst the salesman seemed to be in a state of bizarre rage and disbelief.

Before the salesman could even understand what was happening he was already yelling as the pair began running off with the money. Even taking an ice cream cone as they bolted.

“Thief! Thief!” The salesman roared in anger as he began chasing down Dianne and Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil’s lab coat flapped with the wind as he ran as fast as he could, Dianne followed close behind as they both fled to escape from the watch of the public, and more importantly the raging bull of a salesman who was hunting them from behind.

“Can’t we talk about this?!” Yggdrasil ducked past people on the street, Dianne holding onto him from behind.

As they continued to run, they laughed exasperatingly between breaths with smiles on their faces. I suppose it was rather exhilarating to do bad stuff like this every once in a while wasn’t it?

Just as they were beginning to enjoy their escape however, they noticed the salesman was starting to close the gap between them.

He had a look of pure murderous intent across his face as he came closer and closer, smiles shifted away from Dianne and Dr.Yggdrasil’s lips as the salesman’s hand grabbed Dianne’s arm.

“You’re gonna give every last bit of that money back!”

He shouted angrily as he grabbed Dianne’s wrist, pulling her and making her wince slightly at the force.

A feeling pierced through Dr.Yggdrasil’s chest as he quickly jumped back and wrapped his hand around the salesmans.

“Get your grimy hands off my apprentice, you dairy selling dickhead!”
He gripped the salesman's wrist tight and pulled him away from Dianne, and before anything else could happen..

Thwack!

Yggdrasil placed his knee right between his legs with a meaty thud, dropping him to the floor.

All the men in the area reflexively tensed up and offered prayers and condolences for the poor salesman in their hearts.

And if you were wondering why no one was trying to stop them, do you think you’d be brave enough to try and pin down someone shameless enough to kick a guy in the nuts like that?

Didn’t think so.

Yggdrasil grabbed Dianne and continued their run, rushing past people and sailing onwards through the street.

A car was just ahead of them, the back doors were open and someone inside was beckoning them over.

“Hey Uncle, you don’t need to hold my arm anymore.”

“Oops sorry about that.” He gently let go of Dianne’s arm as they ran just a little bit more towards the car.

Yggdrasil got into the car quickly as Dianne got in just behind him, and before they even started driving away he was celebrating their victory.

“WOOOO HELL YEAH!!”

“Scientists with cool names like mine don’t let our apprentices get into trouble with the legal system! We’re above the law!”

Yggdrasil spoke with a grin spread far across his face as he laughed somewhat evilly.

As he came down from his villainous high, he acknowledged the driver of the car and began talking as he did his seatbelt.

“Hey, can you get driving already Subject #001? We might be above the law but I don’t wanna go to jail because my alien getaway driver couldn’t drive, ya know?”

“Doc… for the last bloody time, I’M NOT AN ALIEN I’M JUST BRITISH!”

The driver retorted stressfully as they pressed their foot onto the pedal with a dull thud.

“Yes yes we know your species are called Australians, now get going already!” As he spoke, the car began to drive off. Leaving behind a very sad and unfortunate salesman.

“M-My tv…”

*****************************

“Well, all in all I’d say that was a pretty successful research mission! Let’s check the collected research funds!”

Yggdrasil was happily optimistic about the situation, prompting a quick punch in the face from Dianne.

“So…why did you drag me out into town to commit crimes, Uncle Driz?”

Dianne made herself comfortable in the back of the car, strapping herself into a seatbelt and glaring at Yggdrasil every now and then as a break from looking through the window.

“Okay that’s an even worse name than just calling me Uncle, Dianne..”

“That means it’s working, now answer the question.”

Yggdrasil let out a small sigh and brought out a battered notebook from his pocket. An orange ballpoint pen jutted out from the top, which he quickly picked up between his fingers as he opened the notebook up.

“Okay so here’s a diagram of how awesome I am; I mean just look at me, aren’t I amazing?”

Inside the notebook was a badly drawn page of a figure resembling Yggdrasil with muscles beating up the government and politicians supposedly hiding black tech, this prompted another punch in the face.

“Okay now that one hurt!” Yggdrasil whined as Dianne punched him again.

Dianne just shrugged and pressed him on to explain why they’d robbed that poor salesman.

“He’s gonna show you another drawin’ of him beatin’ people up lass, just you watch.”

The driver of the car spoke up and looked in the centre mirror of the car, peeking at Yggdrasil's notebook from the angle he was looking in from.

“Wh- No I’m not!” Yggdrasil quickly ripped up a page and threw it out of the window in a hurry.

“Anyways, the reason we robbed that salesman and left him dirt poor and crying on the street is for one reason and one reason only..”

Yggdrasil’s aura suddenly changed.

The sounds of life rushing by from outside of the car became almost a hushed whisper as cold sweat began to drip down Dianne and the driver's skin, waiting for his next words with bated breath.

Pressure crept along their spines as a cold tingle of energy threatened to swallow them whole.

…

“Yeah, so we ran out of money ehe~”

All pressure previously there was gone when he made that….weird pose with his fingers pointed to his cheeks like some kind of fictional school girl.

Dianne smacked him and the driver threatened to drive the car into a wall if he tried that again, Yggdrasil laughed and enjoyed the ride.

“But don’t worry! With this money we should finally be able to finish preparations for a test of Project Kitty Cat!”

“Still the stupidest name in the world.”

“Shut it, apprentice! Anywho with the completion of the amazingly named Project Kitty Cat, all of our financial problems will be solved! We’ll become a world renowned science team with billions at our disposal!”

Yggdrasil began to cackle maniacally, to which the driver tried to ignore and Dianne just plugged her ears.

It was gonna be an incessantly long weekend.

✋︎❍︎♋︎♑︎♓︎■︎♏︎ ⧫︎❒︎♋︎■︎⬧︎●︎♋︎⧫︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ⧫︎□︎ ⬧︎♏︎♏︎ ♓︎♐︎ ♓︎⧫︎🕯︎⬧︎ ●︎□︎❒︎♏︎📪︎ ✋︎💣︎✌︎☝︎✋︎☠︎☜︎📬︎