Midi challenge anyone?

Here's the deal. My friend and I want to play together on two Macbook Pro laptops as a team, but we can not figure out the best way to hook everything up. If anyone has suggestions it would be great :lol: (Laptop 1) Traktor Pro 4 decks, two x-1's. (laptop2) Abelton, Maschine, Traktor Scratch Pro. I have heard of a few different ways to sync everything, but I have some questions about it. Has anyone ever heard of using firewire for syncing? Do we need physical midi controllers to act as 'inbetweens' for the laptops? If so, why can't we just run a usb cable direct from laptop to laptop? We also have an audio 8, 2 audio 2's, Korg drum machine, and a 2x2 midisport. Given all the equipment what would be the best way to put all of this together? We're using a zone 92 mixer right now, which is only 4 channel, so I think we'll prob need another mixer too? I'm so overwhelmed with all this any help would be a Godsend!

 

Set up next to eachother and combine your outputs on a mixer to one output?