Patty climbed aboard the vertibird and strapped herself in securely. It had been a long, restless night. Her unnerve with the mission had reemerged during the night, it weighed down on her still. However, with the paladin and the others around her she felt some of that weight seemingly lifted from her shoulders. Before arriving in the Commonwealth proper, she figured she should get some rest - thankfully she had not been ordered to man the guns. Strapped in firmly and upright, she would be able to rest her eyes behind the helmet without being too obvious. Throughout the flight, she found herself drifting in and out of consciousness as she stood strapped against the back of the vertibird alongside the good doctor and Senior Scribe Algarin. Occasionally she would awake long enough to understand what the conversation was about and add her two cents before drifting back into a stupor. She had just begun to drift off to sleep again when the craft was struck by a flash of light. It pitched to the side and Patty woke up with a start, just in time to watch as the paladin and her fellow knights were thrown into the strange new landscape below. “Woah, shit, what the fuck?” Patty’s language was lost in the crunch of metal-on-metal and the shattering of glass that filled the cabin of the vertibird with a cacophonous din. Patty’s field of vision darkened and blurred as her head was thrown back and forth by the force of the impact. When she awoke minutes later her ears still rung and the first words she could make out were Owen’s. “Why didn’t you try to wake us up?” he said. Patty roused herself and removed her helmet. A burst of air whispered out as the helmet depressurized. She blinked wildly and took deep breaths until her vision finally stabilized. Before pulling back the buckles that held her firmly to the cabin of the vertibird, she took a moment to look around the cabin to assess the damage. Everybody seemed fine, a little shaken but nobody seemed terribly injured – even the dog was still kicking for what its worth. Lucky for us. What wasn’t lucky, however, was what she could just barely make out the front windshield the branches of the tree that they had landed into. Panic began to rise in her chest as she hastily undid her buckles and gripped her laser rifle in her arms. Sami came stumbling out of the cockpit, his pre-war SMG gripped in his hands. She made her way past him and towards the front of the ship to assess the situation. In the cockpit, Patty found Frank. She looked him over with sympathy in her eyes; it seemed her cursory inspection of the cabin was incorrect. Blood pooled on the front of his uniform where a tree limb had impacted with the windshield, Frank and clean through the seat behind him like an iguana bit kebab. The first causality - well, at least the first recorded casualty of the mission. There's no telling how the others were faring. Most of them had power armor and it'd take more than a little drop to stop the Brotherhood. She shook her head to snap out of it. She couldn't dwell on them, not now. Her comrades-at-arms needed her here. “We're going to help you Lancer, just stay calm,” she said, rushed. Despite her attempts to stay calm, her own anxiety was close to breaking through the surface. She stopped and took a couple deep breaths. She had been through worse, panic was dangerous in the field. It makes you do stupid things, things that put everyone in danger. She breathed in and out. Refocused on what had to be done, she reached down to her waist and removed the ripper from a loop on the side of her power armor where it had been hanging. The vertibird made a hell of a sound when it came crashing down and the ghouls seemed uninterested in it so far. Seemed safe enough to rev up the ripper for a little bit. She removed the safety and started up the tool’s motor. Revving the chain-blade with a pull of the lever, she worked her way through the tree branches, carving away at the wooden prison that held the pilot in its grasp, but every time the branch vibrated a little too much for her liking she shot a nervous glance in the direction of the ghouls to make sure they hadn't caught on to their presence. If her first-aid training had taught her anything it was that you shouldn't remove a bullet until you can close the wound – same for tree branches, she assumed. She cut away just enough of the wood to be able to maneuver around Frank and eventually pull him out of his pilot's seat while still leaving the branch embedded in the wound. Once a way had been cut, she motioned to Doctor Kinsley in the back of the vertibird to take her place in the cockpit. “Let's go doctor, we need medical assistance up here,” she said, practically barking the order. --- She exited the cockpit to look around at those who remained: the doctor, two lancers, Owen, and herself. They were not ideal fighters, to put it lightly. This crew needed a leader and she was going to give them one. Although technically outranked by both the doctor and Owen, this was a war-zone, a wasteland. This was her domain. If there was ever a time to stand up and show that the Outcasts were more than a bunch of ideologues and renegades. They were true grit, soldiers who knew how to take charge of the situation, and who fought tooth-and-nail for their brothers. Rank be damned, they were in the shit now. “So what’s the play?” asked Lancer Brown. Her hands shook, as much as the servos of the power-armor would allow them. The burden of responsibility weighed down on Patty unlike anything before. Before she let her fears overcome her, she took a deep breath and sent a power-armored fist up to the ceiling of the vertibird, sending a ringing throughout the cabin to calm the panic – both between the remaining members of the crew and the panic building within her own chest. She pointed her other power-gloved finger out the front windshield or what was left of it anyway, cleared her throat and mustered a commanding tone. “We need to take out those god damn rotskins and secure this position,” she said, ‘The vertibird is too damn valuable for us to lose and we’ll need it airborne again if we want to regroup with Paladin Moss and the others.” Patty stood and looked around the cabin once again, this time instead of checking on the status of the crew, she was more concerned with their defenses. Sitting crooked on one of the supports welded to the side of the vertibird was one of the two miniguns that seemingly survived the crash. The other must’ve been thrown out the window along with the paladin or had been smashed against the ground when the bird flew through that tree. Either way, it was gone now. “Seems to still be in working order, for now at least. If we can lure them towards the business end of this bad boy, we can cut the bastards down to size,” she said tapping the top of the gun for emphasis, “Any objections?”