In the deli, one round caught the Tazmanian Devil in the arm that was reaching for Fenson, tearing it to shreds.  The second scored in his right side, pockmarking his flesh with bloody gaps.  The third missed wide past his head.<br/><br/>Enraged beyond the point of pain, the Devil spun at Baz.  From each of his fingers, long, thin blades shone in the fluorescent lighting.  The artificial claws were drenched in blood, but still as sharp as the day they were forged.  The Tazmanian Devil was puzzled when he saw his opponent was a fellow fur - a short rat wearing a kilt.  If he could think past the desire to kill, he would have stopped to ask questions.  Instead, he went to catch the approaching rat's fury in his claws--<br/><br/>--then he was knocked sideways by the other creature he had mistaken for an ally.  The large serpent's weight threw him off-course, and he had to swing to hit the rat.  His mutilated arm curled up to slash at the serpent's eyes, and a foot rose to assist from below...<br/><br/>Fenson had sunk completely into shock.  He barely moaned as Chiro took him under his wing.  Janus lay limply at the foot of the dent in the wall the Devil had made with his body.<br/><br/>Outside the hotel, O'Toole gunned the engine of the garbage truck as Halvorson jumped onto the cab beside her.  She pulled up alongside the front doors, some twenty feet away.<br/><br/>"Now, what, sergeant?" she asked.<br/><br/>Halvorson held the harpoon-gun in one hand and the revolver in the other.  He stepped off the truck and leaned back against it, watching and waiting.<br/><br/>On the roof of the hotel, Collins picked up a Molotov and lit the cloth hanging from it, hurling it at the window Bane had broken out.  "No chance of them coming after us," he breathed.  He slid down the fire escape's rail, holding his machete.  "Pass me another one!" he called up behind him.  A soldier dropped one down to him, which he caught and held, then descended another level to a window not yet broken.  No furs were on the other side.  He descended another level.  Clear.  He slid down to the last level and lowered the fire escape stairs he had come up not half an hour before.  Then he ran back up and ushered the medic and the lieutenant ahead of him.  "It's clear," he said.<br/><br/>Out front, Halvorson watched as the building began to glow from within.  It was burning.  "Not much time before the whole thing catches," said O'Toole from the truck's cab.  Howls and animal shrieks started pouring out of the building a few floors up.  Shadows played on the windows, silhouettes of furs within trying to avoid the flames.<br/><br/>Out back, Collins watched soldiers file past him down the fire escape.  Through the burning window-frame, he could see furs backing away from the barricades, avoiding the fire.  He slid down to the floor below and saw shadows moving past an open door - the furs were retreating down the stairs.  "BANE!" he screamed up to the roof. "THEY'RE GOING DOWN THE STAIRS!"<br/><br/>Halvorson looked into the hotel.  The animal noises were getting closer, somehow.  With the upper floors beginning to burn, that only made sense.  He cocked the revolver and shored up his shoulder against the harpoon-gun.  "O'Toole," he said lowly.  "Get your ass out here."  O'Toole slid out of the truck, bringing her quarterstaff to the ready.  "They're coming down," Halvorson told her.  "You!" he said to the other man in the truck.  "Get behind the wheel.  When I say 'go,' you make us go.  Got that?"<br/><br/>"Got it!" said the man, getting behind the garbage truck's wheel.  He figured out which pedal was the accelerator.<br/><br/>Across the sidewalk and into the building, the sounds of over a dozen very angry furs filtered down to their ears, closer and closer...