The standoff continues for several moments, the creature's blades twitching in arrhythmic feints and your crew rooted to the ground in anticipation of its first real move. You offer a few fakes of your own, none of which draw a reaction. Time to upgrade it to a Mexican standoff.
With clear, deliberate movements, you return your bayonets to your sleeves and pull out the club, twisting it like this. You point the thing upwards and fire a brief shot, which does manage to draw a flinch from your opponent. With a grin, you lower the barrel until it's pointed at the Wet Nurse's chest. The serpentine head swivels to look behind it for an instant and, despite the lack of any kind of facial features, you can tell it knows exactly what you're planning. As soon as it snaps back, anger rippling through its form, you pull the trigger.
The thing curls in on itself, putting as much flesh as possible between the child and the beam of righteous combustion. Burning cloth spirals into the air and the pressure wave sends feathers streaming from its wings, but it does not falter. You only release the trigger when your gloves start melting into your flesh, and you don't even have a chance to swap ordnance before six sickles come screaming at you atop rapidly extending limbs. Smoke trails from one of the arms, charred and torn down to the bone, and in the compressed time that permeates your life-and-death struggles you see its grip on its weapon faltering.
Eldritch steel clashes with Amygdalan chitin as you struggle to keep your molten weapon between you and the pissed-off beehive of blades. It's doing a remarkable job of making sure you can't block more than a couple at once, though your retreat forces it to settle for glancing blows that barely have time to bleed before they re-seal themselves.
Just as the pace appears to be picking up, the main body closing in on you, one of its arms drops to the ground and it lets out a piercing shriek. One of your posse, a swordsman, leaps away with blade bloodied as his companions bear down on their wounded quarry. Immediately, the other five arms retract and turn the area surrounding their owner into the sort of blender 1:00 AM infomercials dream about. A torchwielder goes down without a leg, but the rest do an incredible job of either slipping just out of range or somehow parrying the onslaught.
It makes sense, you realize. No matter how diverse the arsenal, a fighter is always going to have some patterns it prefers. You generally figure them out after getting cut to shreds a few times, but for those without bullshit regeneration, there's always spending decades watching dozens of your compatriots die to the same opponent.
The multitasking prowess that lets it avoid cutting its own arms off shows itself as you put your weapon on your shoulder for another shot. One of the two weaponless arms lashes out and grabs your wounded teammate, alternately whacking the others with him and dangling him between itself and you.
Points for improvisation, you suppose.
[] Write in...
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CURRENT STATUSES:
Anderson: Peachy
The squad: One currently bleeding out after losing several important arteries and being used as an improvised shield/bludgeon
The Wet Nurse: One arm gone, one severely burned