FUBAR [Jack]

Brody barely looked up as Dunham approached him, being preoccupied with trying to stop the watering in his eyes and making sure there was no residual trickle of blood. Admittedly, the elbow he'd gotten in the face the day previous had broken it, and not even for the first time; the wonders of Capitol science made it appear as if it had never happened. But it was still very tender, and very prone to bleeding again; the visor had prevented it from being much worse, of course, but it still sort of hurt.

He could admit that he was caught slightly off-guard when Dunham asked if he'd broken his nose; most recruits tended to avoid instructors to avoid being yelled at, and didn't pay any more attention to their lives any more than they had to. Brody in particular knew he was a difficult taskmaster with how high he set his standards, so his surprise wasn't entirely unfounded. His first thought was that Dunham was stroking his own ego managing to land a good blow, but his tone expressed genuine concern, or at least curiosity. His eyes snapped over to Dunham at his informality though, raising an eyebrow threateningly. Dunham seemed to catch himself, tacking a 'sir' onto the end of his question.

"Nothing that can't be fixed in a day." He replied nonchalantly. "I'm sending you back to uniform issue later today to get refitted for a helmet. You'll know it fits if putting it on gives you a headache, at least until you break it in."

He idly wondered if the civilians issuing uniforms realized that while they were hurrying to dress a division, they were potentially getting some of them injured by simply throwing oversized protective equipment at them to save time and get rid of less-popular sizes.

"Go trade with one of the recruits and get back on the mat."

The riot control continued into lunch, at which point Brody let them go to the mess hall while he put away the training gear. Normally, crowd control took place for a couple of hours, but with this accelerated program they had Dunham on, the days were going to be longer to make enough room for all of the evolutions they were going to have to get through in the meager couple of weeks he'd been given. This on top of the fact that he was going to have to bring his charge back up to peak physical shape while he really wasn't in the condition to do so, Brody was genuinely wondering if Dunham was going to make it. The kid had work ethic, so far as he had seen, and he was strong. It seemed more than anything he needed to use his head.

This was going to be an interesting few weeks.