The talkative newbie has a lot of feet to put in his mouth, Isabella thought. She stifled a giggle as he was dressed down by the XO. He certainly was an interesting character, one she would have to keep her eye on in the future: assuming he made it of course. Only time would tell with most of the new blood. She shrugged to nobody but her own thoughts and shuffled out towards the hangar bay with the others.

During the short trek she began to feel it. The stomach tying itself in knots and the slightest trickle of adrenaline. It was time for action. She picked up her pace, suddenly filled with purpose and managed to make it just in time to see Bernard rise out of his cockpit and spook one of the others. She openly guffawed at that and waved her hand at the old man. "Hey gramps, fell asleep at the wheel again? They aught to take your license away for good." Her words were punctuated with a doofy smile to her squad mate and fellow prosthetic pincushion. Her Handau sat resting in the spot adjacent, so she got to work giving her machine a fin spot check without waiting for a response. 

She brought up the maintainance log for her [i]Ghost Killer[/i] with her eye and checked it against what she saw. She trusted the mechanics more than she trusted herself, but it was better to be safe than sorry and helped to kill a half hour. Content with what she found and didn't find, she gently caressed the chest art of her FRAME. She'd seen people with elaborate murals, pin-ups, shark faces, the works. Hers was simpler, a smiling little ghost like a pinched napkin with a hole blown clean out of the top corner of it's head. The thing was hardly larger than her splayed out hands, but she was proud of it. She had drawn it herself and had been happy to find that having mechanical digits made art infinitely easier than it had once been. Her pre-operation rituals complete, she popped the cockpit and climbed aboard. She thumbed the drive start and felt her FRAME growl to life. She flicked through all of the pre-launch steps like an old pro, which compared to some of the new blood in the Panthers she supposed she was. Everything came out green and she let out a sigh and emptied her mind. It was go-time.