Some of the Cop Speeders did not enter the club at all. As aforementioned, they stayed outside and immediately gave chase to Geoff and others, all the way to the van, and directly into its side.

Yes, at least a few of the annoying little five-foot-long hovercrafts rammed into the van full force, jostling and scooting the also-hovering larger vehicle sideways. At least one Cop Speeder tried to enter the van itself and ram its occupants.

Of course, by then, Midian was already flooring it, or... well, trying to. The Cop Speeders' concerted effort to push them around made driving a hovering vehicle kind of hard, and caused them to turn involuntarily in a direction no one wanted to go, pointing their vehicle's nose awkwardly at the side of a building while he struggled to get right and get going some way that would actually get them out of there.

"These damn...!"

*Bomp, bonk, bramp, KRUNK* went the Cop Speeders continuously, pushing while their sirens screamed in everyone's ears. Midian's complaint disappeared under all this crap combined with the whirring of engines and noise of wind as they went hurtling and twisting down the street... and sidewalk... (There were also the noises of all kinds of things one would normally find on a sidewalk being run over.)

One of the Cop Speeders, whooping and bleeping, nosed its way through the a set of double doors into a kitchen which was—

empty of people.

For the next four seconds that the Cop Speeder was functional, it saw a large plastic pail that might have once held some cleaning product, duct taped shut. Beside the plastic pail were a few dozen unlabelled cans that had been crushed until they split open, dish soap, string, matches, a couple bottles of different things, an unravelled roll of tin foil, and an empty cardboard box that looked like it was labelled—

there was a POW, and then bucket erupted

then there was a WHOOMF-BOOM, and the air was filled with fire.

The walls of the kitchen bowed out like a soap bubble, and dissolved into splinters. The roof above the kitchen peeled open, and a huge cloud of tar-black smoke curled into the air. Fire splashed out across the club floor near the kitchen. Seat upholstery charred and shrivelled, varnish began to peel off the tables, and the room began to burn.

A little later that night, after a great deal of struggling against Cop Speeders, Buzz Bombers, and everything else under the sun, their van finally escaped notice long enough to whiz into a partially-demolished parking garage, where they came to rest somewhere around a corner on the fourth floor and lost their pursuers. The van, which had started the drive mostly pristine, already looked ready for the junkyard.

It had been a harrowing experience. For the first time, Midian had gotten pretty cranky with his cohorts, when most everyone seemed happy to ride, yet few to none seemed inclined to get rid of the Cop Speeders ramming them nonstop at first. At one point he had blurted something pretty much incomprehensible that sounded like it was at least intended to be English but came nowhere identifiably close. Nonetheless, the way he said it had made it clear he wasn't too thrilled with their prospects.

Once they stopped, though, he seemed to center and simmer down a little. He still ditched the vehicle and went striding off elsewhere in the garage as soon as the engine cut.

And so, it was suddenly quiet. Sirens faded from earshot and were replaced by nothing but the sounds of a vanload of stressed people unloading in a barren, rubble-filled parking garage. The cityscape all around them, beyond the parking garage's "windows" (or rather, open spaces between levels), continued on as before, with smokey factories churning (as they did all hours of the night, now), cars whooshing by, and robots patrolling.

The question that had to be on everyone's minds: What now?

Coop hopped out of the van awkwardly.

He straightened up and stretched, his back making a noise like a string of distant castanets as he did so. He had landed on the roof of the van shortly after it left, and had been cooped up¹ for a long enough time that his spine had assumed, for all purposes of consideration, what might as well have been a complete pretzel shape.

He twisted around, back, forward; crackle cronkle pop.

“So,” he said, “wow. That could have gone better. Now what? Wait for it to blow over, or is there something we can do with our time—anybody know whose van we stole?"




¹ahahahaha lol

“Hrmph,” the eagle grunted, in agreement, “and... what happened there, anyway? I mean. I get,” he smiled a bitter, lop-sided smile, “that you attacked that monkey. Believe me, I’ve been there; he has a really punchable face.”

“I guess that explains why you look the way you do, too. Hrngheh.”

He stood up. He stumped about ten paces into the open space of the parking garage and looked around, aimlessly.