[indent]
Kinsley looked into Chowder’s eyes, and placed a hand either side of his neck and scratched him vigorously the way that she knew he liked. His tail wagged, and a quiet but excited whine came from his mouth in between his pants. He knew he was going to be set to work. The doctor bit her lip nervously, it had been Alex who had done all of the training with their dog, and she’d only watched and half listened when he told her how to send him out.

It was all in the arm motions, and Chowder was a good dog who understood them, and not only that, but her [i]enjoyed[/i] being put to work. It was as she’d said, he was made for this. “You be good now,” she whispered, and he returned her words by bringing a paw into her lap, closing his mouth. He moved to look at Patty, and then back to Kinsley. Several times he looked between them. He wanted her to be safe, for Patty to keep her safe while he was gone. 

The two approached the door quietly, and still slouched low, Kinsley made a gesture with her arm - throwing it out in a straight direction, before bringing her forearm into her chest - her elbow sticking out. He shot off across the distance. He was fast, like a bullet and left dust behind him.

Chowder wanted to be good, to do good. That would make Kinsley happy if he did a good job. He approached the ghouls, taking a slide at the crowd. He barked three times, getting the attention of most but there was still a decent distance between them. He would give them a good chase. After the barks, their silence was broken and the anguished screams and groans from their necrotic lungs rang out through the mist. Spluttering. Wheezing. [i]Screaming[/i]. They came for him, and with the same motions he ran off again, he would take them in circles but before that he needed to move them from his humans. 

To keep them on his tail, he barked intermittently throughout his chase…

Back in the body of the vertibird, Kinsley listened for his barking. Counting them and listening for the decrease in volume to quantify how far he had taken them. “Brown, my ears aren’t so good - keep count of his barks when he gets further, won’t you? And if he stops barking let me know…” 

“You got it,” Patty said. She reaffixed her helmet and nodded towards the doctor before turning her attention to the horde of rotskins that lay ahead. Her power-armored hands gripping tightly to the minigun’s two handles. The belt-fed weapon was locked-and-loaded and trained on the ghouls incase they tried any funny business.

As Chowder zooms off, herding the bulk of the horde and keeping them busy, it seems that his barking has stirred up something in the remaining ghouls. Those who don’t claw and lunge their way towards him, turn their heads and take notice of the big metal craft and the two humans inside. Their rotting faces twist and snarl with rage as they realize what was happening just out of earshot.

Their emaciated and rag-draped bodies began to move like they had a mind of their own, limbs flailing wildly as they ran full-speed towards the vertibird. First one or two bodies made their way, but they brought the attention of more and more - now eight or nine shufflers sprinted down the ravine towards their position.

“We’ve got company! Weapons hot!” Knight Brown yelled.

She swiveled the minigun to line up with the front-most of the group and squeezed the trigger to spin the barrels. The weapon sped up to a blurry mess before emitting a terrible screeching sound and suddenly locking up. The motor of the gun strained against itself as it tried in vain to spin the barrels - only managing to produce a puff of smoke and a lot of heat.

“Oh, goddamn it all,” Patty screamed, dropping the handles in frustration. She reached behind herself to grab the laser rifle she slung over her power armor and jumped down from the vertibird’s carriage.

“Doc, put that pistol of yours to use and blast these damn rotters a new one.”

Without much more thoroughfare, Patty began to fire off bursts of automatic laser fire in the direction of the approaching swarm. Several beams of light impacted with the leader, burning away at its rotten flesh before it was nothing but a pile of ashes.

An eloquent choice of words that could have only come from the mouth of a Knight, Kinsley thought as she brought out her own pistol. It was no fandangled piece of weaponry like the fancy thing that Brown was holding, firing off with absolute confidence. The shimmering lights that were so beautiful in a way until they made contact with the ghouls. The bodies that were simultaneously bloated and emaciated at the same time. Blowing up in a spray of rotten flesh - the smell was something else entirely. 

She took aim with her own weapon, so bland in comparison. Taking her time to wait for the right moment before she pulled the trigger, the screeching of them drowning out just about anything else. “Shut your hollering,” Kinsley commented. It wasn’t a yell, like what the words should have been - and it would have been had they come from the mouth of someone with the kind of chutzpah that Brown clearly possessed. Still, there was enough grit in Kinsley’s tone to allude to the amount of danger and fearlessness that she harboured under the surface. 

Her while timed single shot cracked a ghoul in the head. It didn’t create quite the overall blasting effect of the energy weapon - but the putrid skull still exploded in spectacular fashion. The legs continued on their forward trajectory until the momentum ran out and they buckled.

Despite their combined efforts, the ghouls still closed ground. One rushed Patty and lunged at her, swinging its arm in a wide arc and slapping against her power armor. She raised her rifle and bashed the ghoul back and fired off several laser beams point-blank into its torso. The grotesque creature howled in agony before falling onto its back dead. Patty breathed a short sigh of relief as the thing collapsed, which was soon interrupted by a smack on the back of the head as another one of these things got a blow on her.

Patty swiveled around as the ghoul prepared to swing once more and gave it a firm kick with her power-armored foot, sending the abomination rolling across the dusty ground. As the ghoul rolled back onto its feet, Brown mustered a charge and plowed full-speed into the ghoul smearing its gore against her pauldron and slamming it against the ground again - this time it didn’t get up.

“Yeah, how’s it feel you disgusting sack of shit?” If Patty didn’t have her helmet on, she would’ve spat. 

Levelling her rifle, she looked around to see if any ghouls had slipped past her and towards Kinsley. That was her main goal - didn’t matter how many hits she took, if any of the others got hurt it was on her. She’d put her body on the line to keep them safe - and the power armor helped, of course.

While she was lost in her own thoughts, Patty began to feel a weight pull against the servos of her power armor. Looking down, a couple of ghouls had taken hold of her waist, clawing feebly against the plates of metal trying to pull her down while a few more closed in to overtake her. Their arms flailed wildly as they battered Patty with powerful strikes - each one dealing an almost superhuman amount of damage to her armor and more importantly her pride.

Kinsley fired off a few unsuccessful shots into the air, and each bullet disappeared into the glow of the atmosphere around them until her little pistol was fresh out. For the most part, and to her credit, Brown had kept the creatures at bay. Now it seemed that she was being thwarted. Broken creatures stumbling around and grasping at the woman, trying to pull her down into their new domain - their eyes ravenous and skeletal fingers desperate for her.

One of them stumbled around with a clumsy foot - trying to make purchase on her power armour as if it were a ladder to victory. Kinsley wasn’t prepared to let it, and there was a degree of a special kind of recklessness involved in her quick decision. She reached for a long piece of broken pipe, rounded at the end, and she moved to the distracted ghouls.

She gripped the pipe tightly at the end and gave a wholloping golf swing with it, taking the ghoul’s head clean off its shoulders with an almighty whoosh - sending it hurtling against a solid metal wall. The thing simply cracked like an egg and slopped down the wall, a viscous mixture of flesh and bone. Kinsley wasn’t done either, she continued her melee assault to free Brown. 

Kinsley’s assault didn’t go unnoticed. In the momentary lapse in the ghoul’s attention, Patty seized the opportunity to turn the tide. Managing to pull one of her legs free, she raised it as high into the air as her suit of power armor would allow her and slammed it down, shattering the skull of one of the ghouls into a fine red paste. One-by-one the rotskins fell as she regained control of her rifle and fired off what remained of her microfusion cell into their twisted and obscene bodies.

When the fighting was over, the mangled corpses of ghouls lay on the ground in a heap of flesh, bone, and ash - utterly unrecognizable from people they used to be. Patty took a deep sigh of relief and glanced around - with the quiet din of battle fading she could hear a comforting sound.

[i]Bark! Bark! Bark![/i]

“Chowder’s still… kicking…” Patty said, trying to catch her breath in the space between words.

She took a long breath in and cleared her throat, turning to look at Kinsey. A sense of respect overcame her as she noticed the bloodied pipe in her hand. Beneath the helmet a grin of satisfaction crossed her face.

“Nice fucking chops, doc,” she laughed, “keep it up and we might make a knight out of you yet.”

Kinsley let the gored pipe drop from her grip, and became aware of a painful throbbing in her leg. As she looked down, she made out that she had been cut by something. It couldn't have been the deformed hands of the ghouls, it was too clean and precise for that. It was then that Kinsley noticed that there was a piece of torn metal protruding from the entry way. She'd sliced herself in some part, before or after, the assault. Hard to tell now, only that it stung. A bleeding laceration six inches long to her calf. "Well then…" she remarked at it.

She didn't hear Chowder, but she gave a ghost of a smile upon hearing he was alright and still out there. Hopefully wearing out the rest of the nightmarish creatures so that they wouldn't return. 

"No interest in that title, Brown.. " she said wearily, looking up at her colleague with respect in her eyes too. "We should check on other Brown and Algarin…" The stinging in her leg was hot, and the blood sticky. It would be worthwhile to take a quick breather to take stock, patch up, and plan their next move. [/indent]