***
Magnus was leading the way through the undergrowth, it was much more humid on Lazarus b10and as such he’d decided to just wear a combat vest. He had standard green and black camouflage smeared across his face, along with a dark green bandana. The other members of the group were similarly garbed, rifles slung across their backs, machetes out in hands, ready for anything.
Harvey and Indy on the other hand, were still wearing casual clothes. Indy had managed to find a nice Hawaiian shirt, a bright azure blue with orange palm trees. Harvey was wearing a yellow t-shirt with a picture of a disco fox wearing sunglasses on it.
High above them monkeys swung through the forest, horrendously offended by the sight of Indy’s shirt.
“I must say,” a top-hat wearing monkey called Harris said to his friend that was swinging alongside him. “I thought that humans were well dressed.”
“As did I my friend,” Maurice, a monkey with bright gold teeth and sunglasses called back. “Obviously we were wrong, I shall show my dismay by flinging dung at him.” Maurice tried throwing dung mid-swing, but due to the sunglasses he missed massively.
“Raarrghhhhh!!” screamed a large creature rising up out of the undergrowth only feet away from Indy. “That was my eyes!!” The standing bear was clutching at his face. He slowly stopped, lowered his hands and looked down at the collection of terrified faces below him. “Oh crap.”
Turning around he ran on all fours over to a bush by a tree trunk, pulling it back to reveal a super sporty motorbike. The bear jumped on the motorbike, kicking it into life.
“Quickly, get on these bikes and chase him” Magnus shouted, pointing to a collection of bikes hidden in bushes around the bear, who quickly sped off, creating a cloud of dust and mud.
They all jumped on the numerous motorbikes, Magnus had a super neat motocross bike with all skulls painted on it, Leo an old army bike, with Ginge in the side car, Alex had a sports bike similar to the one the bear had rode off on and Indy had picked a moped with hundreds of mirrors.
It was until they’d got a few hundred meters through the undergrowth, dodging trees and following the muddy track left by the bear, that Harvey realised he’d got on a push-bike. He jumped off and onto the back of Indy’s Vespa style moped. The fixed gear bicycle rode itself upright through the ferns that covered the ground, bumping along, until eventually it hit a tree, exploded, and the tree slowly begin to topple.
The bear managed to duck underneath the falling tree as it crossed his path, slamming down across the track. Undeterred, Magnus and the other rangers leapt their motorbikes over the fallen tree, doing all kinds of sweet tricks, Indy and Harvey did a backflip. Everyone was impressed.
The bear kept disappearing and reappearing as the track twisted through the endless forest, the trees became just a dull brown blur at the speed they were travelling. In an attempt to throw them off, the bear rode through a pile of conveniently place boxes, sending cardboard flying everywhere. Fortunately the rangers were all super-duper motorbike riders, and only Indy had to slow down to weave around the boxes.
Suddenly, and without warning, the bear slammed his brakes on, rear wheel locked up, skidding from side to side through the mud. The following crowd did the same thing, almost all crashing into one another. The reason for the Bear’s emergency stop soon became apparent, standing in the middle of the track, one wing held out flat towards them, was a very official looking flamingo. His pink feathers were offset by a high visibility jacket and a very official looking dark blue hat. He looked at them all very disappointedly.
“you do know why I’ve stopped you right?” the police flamingo asked, rhetorically. They all had the same thought, oh crap, regardless of what rules were broken however, this was between the rangers and the bear, possibly. In actual fact, none of them really knew why they were in a motorbike chase, but that was no longer the point. They all shook their heads slowly.
“Ok, I’ll tell you why, what’s going to happen if one of your crashes?” The group huddled together, conferring with the bear as to the appropriate answer. The bear turned to the flamingo.
“We’re all going to get brain damage and die.” He said like a child who’d been caught breaking the rules.
“Exactly, now where are those helmets?” sheepishly, they all opened up the under-seat compartments and put helmets on. The bear’s had a big lightning bolt across it, Magnus was jealous.
At this point Indy eventually caught up with the rear of the group, blasting out ‘Fuck Tha Police’ by N.W.A. The flamingo looked outraged and went to pull his notebook out of his jacket pocket. Magnus shouted at the Bear.
“Quickly! Go!” The Bear revved his bike and sped past the flamingo, spinning him round comically in the process. The rest of the group then resumed their chase through the undergrowth. Only now they had a flamingo flying up behind them.
“Oi, stop that, seriously, don’t make me count to ten! Or five, whichever number strikes more fear into your hearts!” After a few minutes of berating, the flamingo became bored of attempting to uphold the law and flew off. Most probably to go and practice standing on one leg, seeing as that is a flamingo’s greatest skill; balancing awkwardly.
Back in the chase, a pair of people were walking across the track holding a large glass pane between them. The bear didn’t’ see the pane of glass because, well, it’s glass, the singular interesting property of glass is that it’s see-through.
The bear smashed through the glass in slow motion, shards flying everywhere, glinting from the dappled light that filled the forest. Everyone not travelling in slow motion stopped to watch the spectacle. Once the bear had finished, he sped back up to normal time, and the chase continued.
Alex looked down to Ginge, who was sitting in the sidecar, wearing some really old style googles. “Hold the bars!” he shouted down to her over the sound of the engine. She did as he asked, swerving awkwardly from her lowered position to miss a tree. Alex, using his free hands then unfolded a trident from his backpack, leant back and threw it with one arm towards the bear.
It missed, but only just, skimming the fur off the Bear’s back. Instead it struck a startled deer that was standing in a bush by the side of the dirt track. Leo, picking up on Alex’s lead, pulled the pin on a grenade he pulled out his jacket pocket, one handed. He held it, counted in his head, and then let loose, throwing it far ahead towards the Bear.
The grenade bounced off the Bears helmet and into the undergrowth, where it exploded, rocking the forest. A large gaggle of birds left their peaceful roosts as flames engulfed the forest to the left of them. This quickly changed to a thick smoke, although the undergrowth was now on fire.
“Woah” the Bear shouted back over his shoulder. “You guys are wildly over-committed to this!” Realising he had no choice but to end this fiasco, the bear looked down and flicked a large red switch positioned on the middle of his handlebars. “I’m sorry!” He called back, while a numerous amount of banana skins covered the track behind him.
The chasers rode straight over them with no real negative effects, apart from Indy losing control slightly, but then he looked very uncomfortable on the moped anyway.
That’s weird, the Bear thought, I was certain that was going to work. He thought back to his education at racing college, where every lesson consisted of observing and participating in the racing simulation of Mario Kart. That education had no way near prepared him for the real world.
Up ahead, through the trees, he noticed Death gorge, 200 feet deep, and 30 feet across. He pulled back harder on the throttle and headed for it. Meanwhile, two motorbikes behind him, Ginge was loading up a rocket launcher down in her sidecar.
The Bear broke though the treeline, and was racing across the 20 foot of open land before the edge of the gorge. Situated nicely, dead in front of them, was a natural ramp, pointing up into the sky over the Gorge.
The Bear was the first one into the air, soaring over the gap, a slight dust trail showing his path through the
sky. Soon afterwards all of the motorbikes were in the air. Ginge fired off a rocket that sailed under the Bear, flying off into the forest to cause another huge explosion. The Bear looked behind and saw Magnus’s determined face looking back at him.
Almost as soon as they’d gone up, they came back down. The Bear landing first and speeding off back into the other side of the forest, then Magnus landed, speeding after him. Following was Leo, leant right forward on his motorbike, then Alex and the Ginge in the sidecar and at the back was Indy and Harvey.
Almost straight away after going back into the forest they came across a clearing. The Bear had stopped and was off his motorbike, both paws in the air. His brown shaggy fur was full of bits of sticks and leaves. He looked incredibly shook up, and a bit angry. The other guys all pulled up as it started yelling.
“Seriously? What the hell is wrong with you people? I can understand the chasing, but throwing grenades!? And rockets! And, I’m quite certain I saw a trident. I mean, come on! Who throws a trident?!”
From the back of the group Harvey piped up, “I agree with the bear, throwing a trident was harsh, and the explosives were a little bit over the top.”
“Thank you” the Bear said, hands still up. Ginge and Alex both looked down at their feet sheepishly.
“Sorry,” they mumbled under their breath.
“Now then, you most probably want to know why I sped off so quickly. I’ll tell you, I was asked to watch you foreigners, can’t be too careful and whatnot.” The Bear spoke, in a growly way.
“We figured that bit out ourselves, but why did you speed off so quickly?” Magnus said with his jaw set firmly.
“Well, I was hoping you’d just go back to what you were doing and I could sneak up on you again. That’s how it works on all the simulations I’ve done before. If you set the alarms off, you run away, hide, and wait until everyone goes back to what they were doing before.”
Leo looked at him perplexed. “Did you get all your training from computer games? That would definitely explain the bananas.”
“I told you, simulations.” The Bear tutted, “Games? They are very serious representations of the real world!” The Bear then quickly started speaking under his breath. “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start.” He closed his eyes and tensed expectantly. When nothing happened he opened his eyes again to see the group of people looking very confused.
“Did you just try to cheat?” Magnus said, trying to understand whether the Bear was really stupid or just culturally different. Now feeling very embarrassed, the Bear replied.
“No, pfft… who would be that stupid?” He rolled his eyes, “that was um, some secret language I have, you people wouldn’t understand.” The Bear inwardly congratulated himself on thinking of a brilliant answer really quickly.
“Yeah, whatever” Magnus decided the sooner they were away from this Bear, the better. “Can you tell us where to find the Great Bear?”
“You mean papa? Yeah sure, hop on and follow me. No rockets or tridents this time.” He shook a finger at them, put his helmet on, jumped on the motorcycle and rode off and out of the clearing. The gang followed.