All too soon, someone began to pound on the door which Old N had so diligently blockaded. The crustacean demon grunted in frustration. The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Hell tended to be a combination of some very undesirable traits - they were faster than him, gregarious and inexplicably prone to becoming frenziedly devoted to whatever activity was at hand, which usually was "running up to the crab and pestering him". The fact they were so weak and fragile was of little solace; mobs of these things, be they demon or damned, actually required more of an effort to dispatch than single, robust enemies. And now, such a mob had apparently begun to besiege his back. However, their meagre efforts were insufficient to dislodge the massive creature from where it sat, much to the latter's contentment. As long as they did not find a manner to circumvent him, he could remain comparatively at ease, which was all he had to concern himself with for the moment...

However, Old N's tranquillity was not destined to last, and the sound of heavy footsteps soon began to resound through the corridors behind the door. Someone large and very angry was approaching, and Old N was not at all pleased with his conjectures as to who this might be. He braced himself for as brutal an impact as he could imagine as the door was torn from its hinges, but even such precautions were woefully insufficient to withstand the brutal push which, had he been lighter, would probably have sent him flying across the front room. But being covered in a ponderous carapace had its advantages, and Old N was "merely" knocked to the ground, the cracked table lying over him as some sort of overly stiff blanket. Behind him, the guards, as eager to please their master as they were to avoid the fate of their now-headless comrade (which were essentially one and the same thing), rushed forward to neutralise him. 

Fortunately, their excess of zeal did not combine well with the fact there was only one doorway for them to pass through, the result of this concourse of circumstance being that they remained lodged in the frame, frantically attempting to extricate themselves before Nefas pushed them through as well, most likely without a few limbs. This gave Old N some time to react. Bending his main arms backwards, the demon seized hold of the table, and slammed it into the floor before himself, splintering off what remained of its front legs. He then hurled the mangled implement over himself and, presumably, into the door, with a crunching sound followed by moans of pain confirming that it had struck its target, delaying the assailants for at least some moments. 

Now, there remained the matter of getting up - something Old N found difficult even in normal circumstances. Within him, some atavistic heaviness prevented him from putting as much effort as necessary into the motion, even in such dire straits as these. Instead, his intellect, sharpened by necessity, devised an alternative course of action. Slightly lifting himself upon his multiple limbs, the demon spun about, scuttling like some sort of overgrown woodlouse, to face the door, from which the somewhat crushed guards had managed to remove the once again obstructing table. Then, summoning his anger at not being left to sit in peace until everything was finished, Old N charged forward, firmly forcing his foes back with his thick external skull and snapping at their legs with his pincers, while their blows harmlessly, though irritatingly, rattled off his armoured back. Advantageous as it was, this position was decidedly uncomfortable, and Old N hoped the others would soon be done with whatever they had come here to - ah, yes, freeing this "Betty", and relieve him from his function of battering crab.