Chapter Text
Fft.
Fft.
Fwoom.
A tiny flame glows in the pitch black of night. The murmuring of the confused and panicked crowd below breaks into a gasp before crescendoing through the street. The cops in front of the precinct scramble to regain control.
“HEY!” a gruff voice yells. Must be the big burly one . “WHO TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS?”
Chip hums a small laugh, his smirk illuminated by the pinch of fire between his fingertips.
“SHOW YOURSELF!” the voice calls again. Dumbass cops .
“Apologies, officer!” Gillion shouts as he scrambles onto the roof, dark skin and darker braid blending into the shadows. “But your unjust curfew will have to wait!”
“Shh, Gill!” Chip whispers. “We talked about this! Let the music speak for itself.”
“Oh, right,” Gill whispers back. His volume doesn’t change.
“Both of you shut the fuck up,” Jay hisses from behind her xylophone, two mallets clutched in each hand. Her red hair is almost ablaze in the dim firelight. “Gill, grab your guitar.”
Gill nods and pulls the strap over his head. The tiniest bit of feedback thrums in the air. Chip gets ready to drop the match.
A breath in. A breath out. Let’s rock.
The match falls into the barrel with a—
Dink,
Dink,
FWOOM .
Gill lets loose a single chord as the trash in the barrel ignites. The crowd goes even more apeshit—more gasps, more shouting, some oohs and ahs—as they turn toward the light and the sound. Once suddenly shrouded in darkness, they are suddenly awash in fire. A few start to cheer.
A breathless little laugh escapes Chip. I’ll give ya somethin’ to cheer for.
Like he read Chip’s mind, Gill strikes another chord, then another, before launching into a dizzying solo, one foot on the edge of the roof as he bends over his guitar. Only a month on the road, a month of teaching him guitar, and Gill’s skills have already surpassed Chip’s. This is fucking awesome.
Chip starts in on a simple baseline, Arlin's pick solid between his forefinger and thumb, and Jay leads them into the first verse as Gill's solo winds down, her mallets flitting across the bars.
“HEY, STOP RIGHT THERE!” the burly cop yells again, still on the ground in front of the precinct just across the street, his voice loud enough to be heard over the amp. Hm. He looks a lot bigger when Chip can see him. “THIS IS OFFICER JOHN MARSHALL, AND YOU ARE UNDER ARREST!”
“ Under your bootprint no more ,” Jay sings into the shitty mic. The poor quality only makes the lyrics sound more scrappy.
Chip had to scrounge and scavenge for all their equipment on his own. To his chagrin, nobody wants to throw out a good microphone, much less a decent stand to go with it.
The crowd screams. Chip thinks it all worked out alright.
“ Take a stand, take the town, kickin’ up a storm! ” Gill joins Jay in singing the verse. He doesn't need a mic for his voice to carry enough for the whole crowd to hear.
“ And I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know what led you here. ” Chip’s heart pounds in time with the pre-chorus. “ But you, you, you, you, you, you, you better kick it into gear! ”
“ You! Don't! Own! Us! ” Chip shouts with his bandmates. “ You! Can’t! Drown! Us! ”
“ We won't disappear. ” Gill is having the fucking time of his life, bouncing around with a wide fucking grin on his face.
“ We! Will! Rise! Up! ” Chip starts head-banging. “ Take! This! High! Up! ”
“ We’re on fire here. ” And Jay… Jay is finally untensing, thank god. It's like she's just been itching to let loose since Chip found her.
“STOP!” The voice comes from behind them. They all whirl around and come face-to-face with one Officer Marshall, panting for breath after scaling god-knows how many flights of stairs to the roof.
Fuck and piss and balls is the most eloquent thought in Chip’s brain. He thinks Jay shits her pants.
But Gill, for whatever fucking reason , keeps playing, stepping toward the guy who wants to arrest them.
“ So take my hand or take the piss ,” Gill sings.
“Gill!” Chip whispers, pleading. “What are you doing? ”
“ You’re either in or out of this ,” he continues. “ Make it right or make my list. You’ll hear my voice with every fist that flies— ”
“Chip, grab the shit,” Jay whispers, frantically folding her xylophone. “Grab everything so we can go .”
Chip starts unplugging everything, swinging his bass onto his back as he carelessly bunches up chords, grabs the mic stand, and tries in vain to haul the heavy-ass amp. This is why Gill carries it!
Meanwhile, with the still-roaring crowd behind him, Gill sings the last line, meeting Officer Marshall's eyes unflinchingly, “ We’re on fire tonight! ”
“GILL, GRAB THE AMP, AND LET’S GO!” Chip yells and his voice cracks but he doesn't care because they're about to be arrested and oh god, why did I think this was a good plan?
“Alright!” Gill spins around to get the amp, and they get ready to fucking run.
But Officer Marshall's still blocking the door to the stairs. “Wait, kids, let’s talk for a second—”
“Move or be moved!” Jay shouts, xylophone under one arm and mallets and chords in the other, and kicks him square in the balls.
“ Augh! ”
“Oh shit,” Jay says. “I’ve never done that before.”
“ Ooh ,” Chip winces, smirk slowly returning. “Nice one, Ferin.”
“Looks like you hit them both! Well done!” Gill says.
Officer Marshall falls over, writhing in agony, and Chip motions for them to get a move on. “C'mon!”
“They’re up here!” More voices sound from the stairwell. “Get them!”
“Shit.” Chip slams the door closed and nudges Officer Marshall's body in front of it with his foot. “Plan B.”
“The fire escape!” Jay says, running to the edge of the roof.
“Does this place even have a fire escape?”
“What kind of city building doesn't have a fire escape?”
“What’s a fire escape?”
“All that matters,” says Jay, reaching the edge and hopping down the rickety metal stairs three at a time, “is that it's an escape. ”
Chip follows Jay and Gill down the fire escape, heart still pounding in rhythm. The crowd is still chanting for them, “ You! Don’t! Own! Us! You! Can’t! Drown! Us! ”
The door to the roof bursts open just as they reach the bottom.
“Where's the car?” Chip asks.
“Where we left it, dumbass,” Jay says, sprinting down the alley toward the busted-up SUV Chip calls home.
“She’s right,” Gill says, racing after her. “Pretzel! Start the car!”
Pretzel, with her rose gold curls and her bright pink service vest, disappears from her perch in the driver’s side window, and not a second later, the car comes to life.
“Good dog!” Chip yells as he dives into the back seat after Gill.
Jay slams the passenger door closed. “Now drive!”
And they're off, speeding down the alley and onto the main road, getting as far away from the precinct as they can.
It’s silent in the car as they catch their breath, save for the sounds of traffic outside. Jay hugs her xylophone to her chest, her Guns & Roses t-shirt damp with sweat. Gill sits upright and alert, his green eyes wild and his braid frizzy. Chip leans his head back against the seat, his arm resting on the amp next to him. He's warm in his sweatshirt and his hair is more of a mess than usual and his ax earring is digging into his neck a little uncomfortably—but he feels so alive.
“That,” he pants, “was fucking awesome.”
Jay lets out a little hysterical laugh. “Yeah, that was… that was something.”
“That was glorious!” Gill beams.
“That was awesome,” Jay mutters, starting to smile.
“That was glorious, Gill.” Chip turns his grin toward him. “Those people will know our names and our song for years to come.”
“Do they know our names?” Jay asks.
“Yeah, of course they—” Chip says. “Ah shit, we forgot to introduce ourselves, goddammit .”
“But they know our song,” Gill says, laying a hand on Chip’s shoulder, “and it will guide them in their fight for freedom.”
“Yeah, we inspired them, alright,” Chip says, clasping his arm. “Now, next stop—”
Sirens cut him off. All three heads whip to the back window to watch the flashing red and blue in the distance get closer and closer.
“Jay! Step on it!” Chip yells.
“I'm not driving!”
“Then who’s—?”
“Pretzel!” Gillion yells. Chip's stomach sinks. “Step on it!”
Chip peers over the driver’s seat. Sure enough, Pretzel, with both back paws on the gas pedal and her mouth on the wheel, weaves in and out of traffic as she tries to ditch the cops.
“God help us,” Chip mutters.
“You mean goddesses help us.”
“No, Gill, I don't—whatever,” Chip groans. “Why are the cops chasing us? Again?”
“Oh, I don't know, Chip,” Jay says, and Chip can feel a lecture coming. “Maybe interrupting the public announcement of a police-mandated curfew by cutting off power not only to the precinct but to the entire fucking street and then lighting a trash fire on the roof of some private property and making a loud demonstration with intent to incite a riot wasn’t the best idea. ”
“Hey!” Chip jabs his finger at her. “ You agreed to it!”
Jay opens her mouth, then shuts it. “You know what, fair enough. You got me there.”
“They're gaining on us!” Gill says, gaze still tracking the cop cars behind them. “We need to slow them down!”
“Yeah?” Chip yells over the wind as Gill rolls down his window. “How do we—? Gill, put that down. Put down the amp! ”
Gill crawls out the window with the amp in tow until he's half-outside the car, sitting on the edge. Chip can only watch helplessly as Gill hurls the amp at the cop car leading the pack, and it crashes through the windshield, causing the car to swerve and crash into the others, creating a massive pileup in the middle of the road. They leave them in the dust as they head for the docks, traffic thinning out around them.
Chip's jaw drops, mad and amazed and mad. “Do you know how long it took me to find that?!”
Gill climbs back in the car. “They are gone!”
“I’ll never get over how good your aim is,” Jay says.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Chip mutters. “I’ll just find another one as soon as we get to—WATCH OUT FOR THOSE LEMURS!”
A group of gray, stripey, furry things sit in the middle of the road just watching as the SUV speeds toward them.
“Those are raccoons, dumbass!” Jay yells.
“They look like lemurs!”
“Why would there be lemurs in a city? ”
“Turn left!” Gill yells.
“No, right!” Chip yells.
“Just step on the brakes!” Jay screams.
Pretzel swerves the car left toward the boat docks, narrowly missing the furry whatevers , before tipping over the curve and tumbling wheels-over-roof into the water.
“ Shit! ” Chip cries as they start to sink. “Everyone, save your instruments!”
“Pretzel!” Gillion dives toward the front seat as Chip and Jay bust out of the car.
Chip holds his bass above his head as he kicks his way to shore, and Jay does the same with her xylophone on his right. Gill swims behind her, carrying nothing, Pretzel paddling at his side.
It's whatever , Chip fumes. It's whatever, it’s whatever, it's whatever.
After they make it to land, sopping wet with two dry instruments—watching the car and all their stuff and all their equipment submerge into the waves forever—Chip wants to scream.
“So,” Gill says, for once not boisterous and cheerful. “What do we do now?”
Pretzel shakes herself dry. Chip doesn’t flinch, too focused on trying not to cry.
“Well,” Jay says gently, “we’ll figure it out. Just roll with it, y’know?”
Chip takes a deep breath in. A breath out.
Then he says, as steadily as he can, “We are never playing in Canella again.”