Fire some preliminary shots as they come in close!

The two monsters rush towards you and Cameron, and you don't want them to arrive, so you fire off a few shots as quickly as you can to try stop them in their tracks early. You're rushed to shoot, and the monsters are extremely fast, so the first three shots you fire go all over the place, sending puffy clouds of dirt clumps flying as they land in the ground and detonate.

The fourth and final shot you fire, the one that hits its mark by catching the creature in the side of the torso, goes off with a loud BOOM which echoes loudly throughout the room. The creature screeches horribly and stops its rapid movement for a moment, and as the small puff of smoke from the boom powder clears away, you can see that you've just blown a fist-sized crater into the chitin armour of the monster. And blown off its left scythe arm in the process. Where the arm once joined the body, there's now a wet orange patch of what it probably supposed to be red and look like blood for the simulated monsters.

Woohoo! As you have a mini-celebration, and remind yourself to definitely give Rhys a big thank you next Equipment Maintenance class, your celebrations are cut just slightly short. The monster you hit is still reeling and screeching loudly in shock, but its partner has not slowed whatsoever, and you can barely react in time as it leaps forward to reach you and Cameron.

As you start to raise your shield in a **** attempt to block the hit, an attempt that you most certainly began way too late, Cameron steps in front of you and uses his left shield to deflect the scythe, comboing it into a heavy punch from his right shield into the monster's flank.

He goes to blows with it, pummelling it with one arm as he uses the other to block its frenzied strikes and swapping when necessary. His punches have a lot of power, and he's doing a very good job of defending himself, but his strikes are all landing on the monster's chitin armour, meaning that his blades are just sliding off uselessly and his impact is lessened. Still, he's definitely got it busy for the moment, and the other one looks like it'll be recovering and joining in soon -- you only have one of your explosive shots loaded into your gun right now, so you're going to need to think fast.