"Perhaps it was too much to hope for." Firebrand said as he watched the machine charge up its attack. He would have to miss the finishing blow, however. A hole opened up in space and his enemies slithered out out. Loyalists had appeared. He supposed it had to happen sometime.

If the exploding arrow and the advancing men didn't make their decision for them the probing tendrils certainly did. The demons shared a look, turned, and threw themselves off the roof. The red arremer took flight as the tendrils shot after him, waving nimbly through the air as they shot after him. He dived and rolled and took neckbreak turns, managing to keep barely one step ahead of them but leaving him no time to counterattack.

Firebrand wished he was still small enough to fly like that. He was too big and too old, and the weight of his armor pressed down gravely on his skin. He would never be able to evade like that, not now. So where the younger demon had gone up, he gripped the wall and swung himself down. There would have been a shattering crash had the windows not been lost long ago, and Firebrand was inside the building.

Once upon a time this floor had been an office farm. The toppled remains a cubical walls lay scattered on the floor, barren desks and overturned chairs being the only remnant of what this place had been used for. Someone had come in and looted all the computers, but after that this place had been left almost alone. Someone would surly be living here if the elevators in this building still worked. Firebrand wasn't looking for any of that through. What he was looking for, thankfully, obvious even as he rolled into the room and broke into a run. They stuck out like trees in a field. 

Behind him the tendrils snaked their way inside and shot after him. He thought about the fire in his gut, breathed in, and compressed it. He felt it grow hotter, more combustible, and as he ran and spit it at the farthest of the white columns that dominated this corporate landscape. The flame, his brilliant blue Buster, shot like an arrow across the room and slammed into his target with explosive force. The column was obliterated, what wasn't blown to bits reduced to molten slag. He fired again and another column met its end. He looked around the room and fired again, again, again, never stopping even for a moment as his shots flew true. He could feel the tendrils at his back aching for him, gaining ground, felt their touch on the back of his wings. Without breaking stride he adjusted his course, ducked underneath one of the derelict desks, heaved upward, and heard a satisfying crunch as the tendril threw the obstacle off to continue their pursuit. That had at least bought him time.

Cracks where already beginning to form in the roof as he took out the last of the structural supports. He dove, twisted in the air, and fired three or four more busters into the roof for good measure. He saw back into the room he'd sprinted across, saw the tendrils still reaching for him, then gave his wings a mighty beat. This time there was a satisfying shattering crash as he burst through the opposite side window and back into the sun.

He rose up over the side of the building behind the enemy, raining busters down on them as the roof destabilized.