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When Pluey bursts into the bar, the situation is both better and worse than she'd thought it would be. Better because oh, a bar fight! and worse because shit, a bar fight!
She ducks under a spray of bullets, jumping for cover behind an overturned table. When she entered she'd caught sight of Jongler rearing back to suckerpunch a shadowguy, and now, as she scans the fray, she sees Battat winding his hands around the neck of a zapper twice his size. There's a pair of pippinses huddled under the table to her left; she isn't surprised to hear them placing bets. I got my points on that zapper with the hat. How long you think Greenie'll hold up?
One of them catches her eye and winks. "What a rush, eh, Mike?"
She was out in costume when Battat paged her, terse voice interspersed with explosive interference: We need back-up! And then his voice had cut out with the sound of cannon-fire. She'd booked it straight to the bar after that.
As she ran, she had half-formed thoughts of trying to throw her weight as Mike to deescalate. Hearing Battat's fervent cursing and Jongler's grunts of exertion now, though, she changes tack. She likely wouldn't have had much luck, anyway; if the shadowguys had joined a brawl there was next to no hope of stopping it without a show of force.
She pops up from behind the table, intent on summoning her gun. Immediately she has to dodge: Jongler had bodily heaved a shadowguy ass-over-teakettle off of themself. It crashes to the floor behind her, a groan wheezing out of it, hand still clutched around its gun.
Jongler only has enough time to breathe a quick sorry, Plues, before they're ducking under another zapper's punch. Their surge back upright flows into a full-body kick at their assailant, forcing him to the ground in one move.
Pluey is already turning away, content to know they're handling themself. A streak of green takes her attention; she sights Battat attempting to flee a tracking hail of gunfire and summons her saxophone almost on instinct, playing as vicious a barrage as she can. She's a half-second too late—a bullet catches Battat in the arm and severs it from the elbow down, oof, he's going to complain for hours later—but her attack still strikes true, sending the shadowguy who'd been shooting at him sprawling.
Around them, the din grows louder, amplifying the afterimages of her attack. She spots Jongler's hand falling from their buttons to give her a hasty thumbs up before they're blocking another blow. An adrenaline-laced tremor of a grin grows on her face, and she takes advantage of it to turn her song on the same pair of pippinses from earlier, now creeping up on a downed and cursing Battat. The music of her attack draws their attention—damn!—and they flinch away, staggering. Battat takes the chance to lunge at one of them outright, seething straight into its face.
"Why don't you mind your own business," he snarls. Before he can do anything (he's so angry Pluey thinks he might even call one of his Mike attacks for the higher damage) a zapper plucks him up by the poncho. Before she can do anything, a bullet rips a hole through her costumed cheek.
Her mind lights up with indignation to mirror Battat's. Her fur! She whirls around to put whoever'd shot her in their place, swapping out her instrument for her gun, seconds away from shooting their smug grin off when the second pippins yanks her tail.
Dirty move! Just low! Pluey hisses and shoots it in the face without remorse; her opposing shadowguy summarily shoots her tail off. She can hardly keep track of what happens after. She runs out of bullets and re-summons her saxophone. When she runs out of breath, she resorts to using it as a bludgeon.
How the fight started, she doesn't know. What she does know is that it's the three of them against everyone else, and that's all she needs, really.
Battat flings the pippins he was throttling overhead, taking out another shadowguy and zapper with it, and tackles a shadowguy taking aim at Pluey; Jongler dodges a zapper's uppercut, their left shoulder tense; Pluey dashes in to knock the LED off another zapper skulking up to them. She's alight, her saxophone held high above her head, when a loud BANG cuts into the chaos.
"Just WHAT," booms the voice of one Mr Ant Tenna, larger than life and growing larger still in his irritation, "do you think you're DOING?"
They freeze.
He's standing in the doorway, incensed and disapproving. A delayed detonation from one of the pippinses' attacks sounds. Then silence. A zapper—the one who'd been going after Batts earlier, she notes, fur bristling—slowly points at Battat and Jongler. "Deys started it, boss."
At once, she's a flurry of protests. She can't speak as Mike, her voice a dead giveaway for what she is, but she shakes her head in an emphatic no, crossing her arms for good measure. She points accusingly at him and turns to Tenna, entreating. She's his favorite! Surely he'll side with her?
But then comes a scoff: the pippins who'd pulled on her tail. Jackass! Glaring at it fixing its necktie, she recognizes it as the one who'd wondered how long Battat would last. Well, she knows whose poncho to drop maice in now. It says, "Mike's full of it! He was playing on their side the whole time!" JACKASS!
Tenna, oddly, is silent. He's been cataloguing the damage, she realizes. So does she. Hmm. There's her tail strewn around. There's Battat's arm. Jongler's hat, riddled with bullet holes. Jongler listing into Battat's side, the die pushing back into them, looking murderous and pale. Their opponents, she observes with animal satisfaction, are worse off than they are.
And then she takes in the craters pockmarking the walls, the overturned tables, the wrecked chairs, and thinks, uh-oh.
"Mike," says Tenna, a clenched-jaw smile on his face. Again, she thinks, uh-oh. "Friends. Could I have a WORD?"
Battat is miserable as he trudges into step next to her, Jongler following close behind. As they pass the jeering faces of their beat-up coworkers, though, Pluey makes sure she gets one last spiteful shot in: she sticks her tongue out at them right as the door falls shut.