Last Dropoff
by: Jason Tandro
"Reno!" Elena barked as her red haired companion hauled ass down the icy street in one of the three-wheeled buckets that Shinra was calling an economy motor. "Slow down! It doesn't matter how fast we get there if we're dead!"
Reno's haste was brought on by the sort of last-minute panic induced when a person with severe social anxiety is asked if they want paper or plastic. An entire sack worth of "letters to Santa" had piled up over the day's holiday event, and despite Rufus's initial suggestion of chucking them all in the fire was beginning to look like the better option, Reno had chosen to make it his personal mission to see to it that each of these letters was answered. He wasn't going to do it himself of course. He was kind enough but his altruism extended exactly as far as was needed to build up enough good karma that God didn't feel the need to hurl meteors at him on a regular basis.
He'd learned that when letters are mailed "to Santa" there is an answering service that sends the children a reply letter. However the letters had to arrive by the 23rd in order for the children to receive their response by Christmas. Which means they had to be mailed express by the 22nd. Well it was the 22nd and the post office closed in 10 minutes.
"This is just something I have to do. You didn't have to come with me!" Reno called back as he negotiated a particularly slick corner, punctuated by a series of foul curses as the metal pinball bounced off the bumper that was an unusually sturdy streetlight.
"Look, I have to say I'm amazed that you want to do this, but I just don't really get it."
"What, you don't think I can nice?"
"Didn't you break up with a girl at the party?" Elena asked, crossing her arms for just enough time to show her contempt before reflexively grabbing onto the passenger-side arm-rest for support.
"I would have done it tomorrow but it's her birthday," Reno explained.
Elena rolled her eyes. Reno somehow noticed this despite his intense focus.
"Look, I know I'm not exactly Mr. Nice Guy or anything, but when it comes to kids, I have a soft spot. Especially around Christmas."
Elena still seemed skeptical. Reno elaborated.
"Look, I grew up as an orphan. That's how I wound up in the Turks. I know how much it means to just want one day to turn out perfectly. I didn't really ever get into the whole Christmas thing. But I feel like it's important for kids who aren't like me. You know just to be able to reliably go 'every other day might not be great, but today is special.' So I figure if I can do something to make their lives a little bit better, maybe I'm not such a bad guy after all."
Elena softened. Then she broke. She burrowed her head into Reno's shoulder.
"I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have been so mean," was what she wanted to say, but unfortunately her
emotional outburst had the unintended consequence of throwing Reno's concentration.
In a whimsical ballet of catastrophic physics the car was flung starboard up a snowy set of stairs and crashing through the window of a closed department store. This would have been plenty bad on its own, except they had the bad luck to sail through a gaudy display at the front featuring the prominent antlered mount of the season, whose head spikes were now logged deeply into the hood of the truck. There was a sputtering sound, followed by a whirring. The engine shrugged its metaphorical shoulders and kicked off.
"Are you okay?" Elena asked.
But Reno was already out of the car frantically looking around for a solution.
"Help me find something!" Reno shouted.
"You need a bandage or something?"
"No I'm not letting a simple crash stop me from this. We have to get those letters to the post office by 5, which gives us... four minutes."
"Reno, okay, you're scaring me now. We crashed. We need to call the police out."
"This, perfect!" Reno said. Ignoring Elena was his usual setting, but it had never taken on such an inconvenient form before now. He grabbed a wheelbarrow from the gardening section of the store and loaded the sack into it.
"You only have three minutes, you still have four blocks to go, you'll never make it."
"Sure I will, it's downhill," Reno said, strapping a set of skis on to his feet.
Elena rubbed her head. "You're going to die."
"Well have a Merry Christmas then," Reno said before pushing himself out the window.
The makeshift snowmobile was actually quite easy to control for the first two hundred feet. It was the last 1800 that were the problem. Had the course been straight downhill of course, it would have been trivial. But as the post office was at the end of a T intersection immediately following a 60% bend, Reno's arrival at the post office was akin to two particularly vengeful Newtonian forces turning his spine into a Christmas cracker.
One of the clerks bent down over him. "Are you okay son?"
"Is it too late for outgoing mail?" Reno asked weakly.
"No, we don't close til 6. We stay open late tonight since we're off on Christmas," he explained.
Reno cursed silently to himself. "Could you not tell my partner that when she gets here?"