Unfortunately, their lack of momentum in the opposite direction has Tamatoa catching up extremely quickly. Have I mentioned that he is extremely massive? As he gets close to the van that fact becomes more and more obvious, until his striding legs are pretty much right over to of the van, caging it in for fear of one of his legs accidentally stabbing it through the middle when hitting the ground.

Meanwhile, Tamatoa is trying to reach beneath himself with his claws to crab the van like someone trying to gather papers that are blowing in the wind.

"And what's this?!" he coos to himself, apparently not considering that the van is already filled with people, quite yet. He didn't really get a close look at Lapis yet, because he's frankly quite distracted. "Some kind of metallic contraption - ? Hey, you stop that. Stop spinning around this instant."

A claw plunges into the sand in front of the van.