Rescue vs. Minions/Victims
Pike had been about to continue his assault on Andrea. He hadn't attended the quipping school of combat. Quipping while fighting, in Pike's experience, wasted time that could be used dodging or attacking. Sure, he could joke around before and after, and if he had some help he could make toss an occasional joke during a fight, but usually he was all business. So instead of responding to her, he just advanced, prepared to continue the fight for as long as he needed to.
And then something hit him, and the spilled jigsaw puzzle of his mind snapped back into sharp relief.
His eyes widened as the dark lifted and the crawling went away. Suddenly he could form coherent thoughts again. The dark fog that had settled over his mind from the minute that hellbitch reached into his mind was gone. With sudden clarity, he knew what was happening.
He'd just struck a friend. Dawn was going to be bled dry. He'd been forced to relive all the feelings from Detroit. He'd dropped the l-word with Faith while crazy, which might color any future attempts to make her believe it was true. Maybe even ruin things.
Most of the people here would probably have mistaken Pike for a mostly harmless hanger-on, great for moral support but probably not as good of a hunter as he thought he was. Pike certainly had never come across as dangerous to anyone here. The one fight he'd been involved in, he'd gotten stabbed. It didn't give the impression of someone that could actually be dangerous.
That was a misconception that anyone who saw him during this fight would probably not believe again.
He was still standing in full view of Andrea, but he wasn't seeing her. His eyes narrowed, his heart sped up and thudded in his ears like a heavy metal war drum, and something dark, cold, and flinty replaced the usual open, laid back look in his eyes. His face reddened, his fists clenched, and he literally shook with fury.
He was going to kill as many of these scabby little bastards as he could. And he was going to enjoy it.
He spun on his heel, away from Andrea. He needed a weapon, and that scabby little bastard with a short sword about ten feet to the left was a great source. Without so much as a second thought, he charged it. The sword swung, but Pike ducked under it, stuck out his arm, and slammed the demon into the ground with enough force that the impact could probably be heard over the din of the fight. Without missing a beat, he lifted one booted foot and brought it down in a vicious stomp directly at the center of the demon's throat.
There was a sickening cracking sound and the demon began gasping for air. Pike just leaned down, plucked the sword from the demon's suddenly frantic hands, and stepped over its body. The fact that it would die a slow death of suffocation pleased him more than it should have, but right now, all Pike could feel was white hot fury. There was no room for guilt.
A demon came at him from the right with a piece of road clutched in both hands. Pike batted the clumsy attack aside with the flat of his new sword, lashed his hand out, and buried his thumb in one of the disgusting little thing's eyes. It screeched and stumbled back, and Pike thrust his sword into it's throat and tore it out the right side, sending demon blood and gore out onto the street. A third demon stared at him and Pike just walked up and cleanly decapitated it.
Then he turned and proceeded further into the crowd of demons, looking for more to kill.