Abi had at some point lost her humanoid shape entirely and was now a grinning tanuki clinging to the porch railing.

"He's gonna get creamed," she said. The fight did seem rather one-sided; Hawk got off a solid wallop to the buffalo man's gut that seemed to wind him for a second, but immediately got bludgeoned in return by the buffalo man's elbow. Parker grabbed the railing next to Abi and leaned forward.

"K-Kick his ass, Hawk!" she yelled. Teige jumped--the peryton had shuffled up next to him, feathers stil angrily on end.

"Fuck you, Dimitri!" he shouted furiously, as Hawk fell to his hands and knees, stunned by the elbow to the skull. "Leave that poor kid alone!"

Hawk managed to duck around the next head-sized fist that came his way and got behind the buffalo man, scrambling up onto his back and wrapping his arms around the buffalo man's thick, furry neck. And then, with everything he had in him--and blood running down his face from his nose, and his jaw set grimly--he locked his hands together and squeezed.

For a brief instant this seemed to work. The buffalo man reeled backwards, gasping through Hawk's grasp. Then, however, he merely tipped backwards; Hawk had a split second to realize what was happening before the full weight of the buffalo man slammed down on top of him, knocking the wind out of him entirely.

The force knocked his grip loose--the buffalo man rose, breathing hard, leaving Hawk lying flat on his back in the grass, groaning. The shadow of the buffalo man loomed over him, and he looked up at the hulking, seething shape above him.

"Little fuck," the buffalo man grunted, but Hawk was no longer looking at him. Behind him, a pole with a siren at the top rose into the pink hazy night. There was something sitting on top of it. He thought it was an owl.

He had a fleeting moment before the siren clicked on when he remembered--the owl, the siren in a darker bluer night coughing into life above the trees, and then, a lurid wall of fire and the dark dry grass.

The siren in the here and now went up with a howl. A hundred monstrous heads raised quizzically to look, no one immediately sure what to make of it, while Hawk was paralyzed with fear in the grass.

Everything hung for just an instant, and then there was a defeaning, thunderous crack--the bar was gone in the blink of an eye, taking all the pink light with it and leaving its bare foundation and the porch and the crowds of monsters behind, and a hiss of smoke or mist that rose in the sudden moonlight from where it had stood.