<strong>Rico, as Souxie leaves</strong><br/><br/>Tiago leaned back into his chair, hands places calmly on the arms of the chair, a placid smile on his face as he listened, without a word, to her petty tirade. Not saying a word. Not really needing to. He had said his piece, and only a fool said more than that. And he observed. Studied her reactions to everything he said, even going so far as to insult him here and there, when talking to her dog. A woman is what she wears, he mused. Petty. Shallow. Got too irritated too quickly. Too easily drawn out. A good leader would have seen his words for the test of her that thy were, and responded either in similar tone, sharp, fast, cunning, and to the point, or used brute force, battered any opposition to the ground, daring anybody else to do the same. Instead, she had stooped to petty name calling. Having worked with... well, with wasn't quite the right word, but instructed by her, he was starting to find such attitudes predictable. Maybe he should start being charming to her, maybe find out what sort of reaction that caused.<br/><br/>He usually judged the way that he would have been judged. The BOPE, even though only a special police force, had an average approval rate of 5%, lower than the Israeli Mossad. The trainers never removed a person from the training. A person had to quit. Three months of training. The first two were hellish, constant physical, verbal, and psychological abuse, running long hours in the blindingly hot sun of Rio, weight lifting, obstacle courses, all supported on not enough weak food, five hours of sleep, if you were lucky, and, if you had it, pure determination. Then after a full day of physical exercises, came the long, tedious hours of study in tactics, weaponry, strategy, and loads of other stuff. If you fell asleep during class, you were woken up with a baton prod to the ribs, handed a live grenade with no pin, and made to endure the rest of the class with the grenade in your hands. On average, 60% of the 100 applicants dropped out in the first two weeks, and made to bury their caps with a cross over them. RIP indeed. The last month was easier, comparatively speaking, with the theoretical classes done, going on to practice, running the trainees through the favelas, making them work for their approval. By then, only 5-10 men were left.<br/><br/>In Tiago's opinion, a girl like her would be among the first ten dropouts, if ever made to endure something like that. Meaning the bunch that thought that they had too much self esteem to go through something like that, but in reality, found their egos too fragile to be so roughly handled. Those that dropped out after the first week, or month, he couldn't bring himself to hate as much as those that dropped out in two or three days. They tried, they had the determination, but they just weren't build for this line of work. He would know. He had trained 3 classes of a hundred men and women each. Of course, she would never subject herself to that sort of test. It would probably muss her hair up too badly.<br/><br/>Tiago, oddly enough, liked playing these little games with himself. There was no leverage to be had over him. He was strong minded, willed, and in body, he didn't have any loved ones, no children, no wife. Torture, both psychological and physical? Hell, he had written the damned books on those. Death held no fear for him. One would have to get very, very creative indeed to have him shaking in his boots. Her? Hell, he would start with the dog and work his way down.<br/><br/>He turned to his two comrades, smiling a bit," Well, now we know why she keeps a stud like that around," He smiled and shook his head at his little joke, and put his mind to work," If we had more personnel, I would suggest that we have one truck, or something like that, mounted with 2 .50 Cals, with two gunners, a driver, someone to handle the smaller guns and ride shotgun, and another person to help with the loading and handling of the cannons, as well as toting some small arms him or herself. But, since it's just us ducklings, I would say a smaller vehicle, like a tracker jeep or something with one mounted gun, one driver, one gunner, and one person to handle comms and smaller weapons. We carry similar guns that load the same kind of ammo, so we can swap clips of sidearms and heavier shit, grenades, grenade launchers, RPGs... the whole nine yards, since travelling light really isn't an option," He looked around," What do you think?"