Fin could feel his jaw crack as the knuckles of the opposing carapace swung at him in a left hook. The leprechaun toppled over, spitting out blood as he staggered to his knees before promptly doubling over again and spitting out fresh blood- he'd bitten deep into his lip. Fin cursed, staring blurry-eyed at the well-dressed Dersite standing over him.
The other's attention was suddenly diverted as there was some distant yelling, coming closer and closer- It was Trace.
Finally, where had he been? Fin allowed himself a relieved smile from his position on the ground. The rival gangster looked rather unamused as he picked up the dual pieces of his broken cuestick. It had snapped him half sometime back when he whacked Fin across the ribcage with it.
Trace quickly drew a handgun from a holster around his waist, firing three blind shots toward Droog, which missed and shattered a clock behind the man.
Fin drew out a sigh. Trace is not a sharp shooter nor what he calls a 'no scope' at all.
The red hatted leprechaun let out an awkward chuckle as Droog raised a non-existent eyebrow and turned to face the other. An empty, nervous pit was beginning to form in Fin's stomach. He tried to get up, try to catch Droog off guard, but his dizziness wouldn't even let him get to his knees.
Droog was staring at Trace, daring the man with his eyes to take a step closer, see what will happen once Trace is within arms reach. The taller frog-man seemed rather hesitant, but he remembered, Fin's there. He can't back down in front of him- What kind of Hearts Charm would that make him?
Droog waited ever so patiently for Trace to make a move, nearly cracking a smirk when Trace suddenly took a run at him, uselessly armed with only his handgun. The leprechaun made a leap toward the carapace, who stepped out of the way with grace and planted a swift kick to Trace's back. Trace went face-down, making Fin cover his face in annoyance and agitation.
Droog stepped over to Trace, staring down at him with those emotionless eyes.
"It's a shame," He stated. "I didn't want to get my shoes dirty today."
Trace was not verbally responsive, but turned his head to stare at Droog questionably, when he suddenly realized what the other had meant, trying to struggle to his feet right before Droog kicked Trace's side, causing him to let out a yelp and fall back over. Fin winced, watching as Trace was beaten with repetitive kicks by Droog.
With this distraction, Fin was able to make it to his feet, the blood that wasn't in his mouth rushing from his head and making him blank out momentarily. Once he regained himself, Fin dizzily glanced around for anything he could use to fend off Droog. Seeing how there was nothing that would be of use, he looked up, there was that shattered clock not too far from Droog's position, a hard shove could knock him into that.
Fin muttered an apology to the absent Crowbar, before sprinting at Droog, who was still distracted kicking the barely-conscious Trace, he must of assumed that Fin still had been down. The shark-looking man grabbed Droog's shoulders, knocking the off-guard, but now rather shocked man into the broken glass of the nearby grandfather clock.
Fin couldn't hold Droog there for long, just enough to make contact before he scampered back near Trace, who was badly bruised and curled up on the ground, letting out pained groans.
The mobster was able to push himself out of the broken glass, some must have broke through his carapace because blood was trickling to the ground in little drips. Droog brought his hands to his face, trying to wipe off whatever shards had been leftover after he pulled away. Glass, along with more blood hit the ground as Fin watched silently from his spot next to Trace.
It wasn't as if Fin and Trace were the only ones in the Manor dealing with shit.
Stitch was up to his hyperbolic neck in repairs, flying across the room from effigy to effigy, down to patching the big old dummies with mismatched fabrics and all but ignoring the damage everyone was doing to the overcoat.
The entire west wing was ablaze, the back door and kitchens were practically nonexistent, and no one knew where Fin and Trace were in the confusion. Of course, Scratch was holed away in his office like some big bald rat, giggling something about not changing history.
Matchsticks realized- somewhere in the middle of playing firefighter- that this time, they were well and truly fucked. If that's the case, he mused, might as well get a few more a' me to the party, yeah? The more the merrier and all. Every match he tossed into the flames popped a few more stitches in the coat that the tailor was ignoring.
The rumbling in the hall must have been Cans come to save him, Itchy figured, thank fucking goodness. It took every last ounce of his being to drag himself to the door.
Half an hour ago, he'd been zipping around the room, avoiding that midnight asshole and spewing insults. On the verge of waxing poetic, he would even look back and say that the point his life flickered forwards, spiraled away from him, and went into flames like overexposed movie film was the moment that godforsaken bug of a man caught onto his unintentional track and blew his damned legs off.
Of course, Itchy would never wax poetic like that, and instead watched in stunned silence as his charred knees bled and bled and bled.
Clubs Deuce thought watching the other bits of his legs go flying and hit the wall was kind of funny. He grabbed them from where they had fallen and, gesturing for the man dragging himself towards the door to look over at him, shoved his little feet into the gore up at the top and waddled around on the legs like stilts.
Itchy gagged, hoping more than anything for Stitch to replace his legs. Instead, for the moment, the blackened, singed flesh wrapped over the bone and meat and sewed itself nearly shut. Fuck.
"Look! Look, I'm tall." Deuce laughed, trying to do a little jig like his friend Clover did sometimes. "You hurt me, and now I get to be tall." He added- he didn't want to hurt his friend's friends without it being justified, and he definitely thought the knife jutting out from between his carapace's plating was a good reason to blow his legs off. Itchy's face felt wet- he was crying, those were his legs, damn it! He wanted them back!
The rumbling passed by the door, all of the newly summoned Matchsticks from universes where there was no raid happening tonight, and quieted. Cans wasn't coming to save Itchy, Cans was busy looking for Fin and Trace, arguably the two more important members of the single digits.
Doze was safe, Clover was Clover, Die was with the morons- affectionately nicknamed- and Crowbar was more than capable of taking care of himself and the timeline infractions that he could reach.
They all figured Itchy was running around like usual, being a nuisance. Not a single one of them would have expected him to be locked away in a parlor, watching the littlest, least threatening of the Midnight Crew walk around on stilts made of leprechaun legs.
With the clarity of a man near death, Itchy realized that they weren't coming for him, and promptly passed out.
Familiar screams could be heard down the hall from where Crowbar was facing off Spades Slick himself, but at this particular moment, Crowbar couldn't care any less of what was happening that wasn't here. The fight between him and the leader of the Midnight Crew was about even, but Spades had the upper hand, just slightly.
He'd managed to back Crowbar onto the balcony of one of the upper levels of the mansion, holding one of plenty knives to Crowbar's neck.
The red-hatted Felt member had his lower back against the wooden gate of the balcony, swallowing his breath.
"Any last words?" It's the most cliche thing Slick could say.
Crowbar of course, did not respond to the question, feeling rather nervous as he was leaning further onto the gate. There was a cracking noise, causing Crowbar to flinch and jolt back a bit before catching himself. Spades looked confused, but kept his knife up. Crowbar then quickly pulled up his namesake, swinging it towards Slick.
He missed, blindly swinging it in front of Slick's face, just barely grazing where would be the carapace's nose. Startled, Slick pushed Crowbar back. That's when the fence suddenly gave in, sending Crowbar falling down three stories, before landing on his shoulders on the roof of the first floor of the manor, Crowbar's neck snapping and killing him immediately. Blood leaked out from where he had made impact, running smoothly into the gutters.
The leader of the Midnight Crew overlooked the broken balcony, staring down at the bloody mess below him for a moment in shock, before cracking a pleased smirk and heading back inside. This was going perfectly.