hwd: application
✢ The Player
Player Name: Merry
Age: 31
LJ: takethegamble
AIM: merryiscontrary
E-mail: kccaelumi@gmail.com
Other Characters: Thor/Bigby
✢ The Character
Character Name: Brian Gamble
Fandom: S.W.A.T. (2003 Film)
Canon Point: Post-movie
Age: 28
Appearance: Brian is a well-built young man, broad in the shoulders and near the peak of physical shape, muscled without being either thick or lean. He stands around 5'10" with short, dirty-blonde hair and grey-blue eyes. He wears a small silver hoop in each earlobe, another in the cartilage of his left ear, and has three tattoos. The first is his last name, 'GAMBLE,' down the backside of his right forearm. The second is an eagle with its wings spread upward on the inside of his left forearm. The last is a coat of arms on his left shoulder.
Abilities / Powers: Brian is a highly trained police officer, recently part of the elite Special Weapons And Tactics squad. SWAT team is trained to perform high-risk operations that fall outside of the abilities of regular officers. SWAT officers must pass stringent written, oral, and psychological testing to ensure they are not only fit enough for the job but also psychologically suited. However, emphasis is placed on physical fitness so an officer will be able to withstand the rigors of tactical operations. Brian has undergone and passed numerous specialist courses that have made him a fully qualified SWAT operator. He has been trained in marksmanship for the development of accurate shooting skills, as well as training in explosives, snipers, defensive tactics, first-aid, negotiation, rappelling and roping techniques and the use of specialized weapons and equipment. Brian has also had training in special ammunitions, including flash bang and smoke grenades, tasers, and the use of crowd control methods. Of primary importance is close-quarters defensive tactics training, as well as close-quarters combat techniques. This sort of specialization necessitates the ability to adapt and make quick, informed decisions both alone and as part of a team.
Inventory: *Camo BDU pants
*Wellco Jungle Combat Boots
*Black tshirt
*Black tactical vest
*Long-range Walkie unit
*MTM Night Ops Black Vulture watch
*Glock 9mm, 6 rounds + 2 clips (15rds/ea)
*M4 AR Carbine (M4A1) with M68 Close Combat Optic, 18 rounds + 2 magazines (30rds/ea)
*1 M-18 smoke grenade
*Two lengths of zipcord
*Utility cording
*A license to kill
Personality: Brian isn't a complicated guy. His first and last rule is: every man for himself. It may have been different once, when he was younger, but he's been let down over and over after giving friends and jobs everything he had and the failure has hardened him. Maybe there was always a reckless streak in him, maybe he's always jumped the gun, always flaunted the rules-- but if friends were friends, they should have stuck by him. If he had the good record at the job, he should have kept it. Brian tends to look at the world through a very narrow viewpoint... his own. He's transparent with people and he expects them to react to that transparency and change according to him; when they don't, he's quick to drop them.
Brian is a very smart and talented man, but those things only contribute to making some of his bad habits worse. He can't put himself in other people's shoes; he absolutely lacks the ability to empathize with others. So when he gets bored (which he inevitably does) or gets angry (which happens often), it is hard for him to step back and look at the situation from another angle. He'll only wind himself up and make poor choices out of frustration.
Despite loving to take chances-- gambles, if you will-- with an almost adrenaline-junkie-like glee, risk aversion is the name of the game. Brian plans his life out. All his chances are calculated and when the odds are low, he always bets on himself with an unfailing sort of pragmatic egotism. When Brian turns his back on things out of fear, he does it because it takes the risk out of the equation. Brian would rather be the one to walk away, to make that choice, than to have to deal with loss and the possibility of having been the one wrong. He's scared of being alone, and scared of accountability. He's scared of the true consequences of his actions.
Brian wants stability. He wants a sort of easy perfection that does not truly exist; it is why he ended up on the wrong side of the law, thinking that a lack of boundaries would give him the means to score big and get away. But even if he had succeeded, he would have never been happy-- his life would have been a meaningless float from one sunny place to the next. It is why he talked a member of his old SWAT team into flipping-- it was never about making the job easier, it was about getting to share it with someone. Brian's lonely and he tries to hide it, tries to fill the voids in his life with money and 'somedays.' It'll never work but he has to believe it will because he doesn't have anything else.
History: Film History
*Headcanon: Brian grew up in Orange County, CA, son of middle-class SoCal parents. He excelled in his education until he hit high school and grew bored with the system and the lack of challenge presented. His average grades would keep him out of well-ranked colleges but by that point, Brian wasn't interested in higher education. He fought constantly with his parents over his "lost potential" and really had nothing in common with the people who raised him other than their mutual love for Brian's younger brother, Tom. Two years Brian's junior, Tom was bright, an achiever, and despite Brian's lack of motivation in school, looked up to his brother. When Brian was a senior and Tom a sophomore, the brothers got into a collision with a drunk driver and Tom was killed. Brian had been driving and though he was not at fault, shouldered the blame. All civil communication between he and his parents ceased with the death of his brother and at the end of the school year, Brian joined the Army.
He served his two years in the Calvary, 6th Squadron, 1st Stryker Brigade, 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas and then walked with his pay. He hit the ground in Los Angeles, just north of where he grew up, and got a job as LAPD. He spent three years working beat shifts until he got partnered with James Street. The two hit it off right away and quickly distinguished themselves as a team. Two years later they were pulled into SWAT where they spent the next three years becoming two of the best officers in the elite forces before the opening events of the movie occurred.
After Brian made the choice to leave the force rather than be busted back, and losing his best friend over the decision, there were a few anger management issues that he took out on the right kind of folks in the wrong parts of town. Showing his skills earned him respect and he ended up charming a few high-placed individuals with control of some high-priced illegal operations. Brian quickly realized that with his working knowledge of the police force, rising through the criminal ranks would be a safe bet and enjoyable challenge.
Which is where he was when the movie events concluded and had him facing-off against the SWAT team members that he used to serve with. In the end Brian had to face down go up against his old partner and friend James Street and was killed, decapitated under an oncoming train.
First Person Sample: [There is an angry screech of feedback as the screen lights up; the feed jumps before rocking back and forth and falling still. Recording the ceiling as it is, the obvious assumption is that it had been knocked to the floor by the man who is now jerking into an upright position on the bed, just visible in the corner of the picture. He grabs at the front of his black tactical vest as if he'd just taken a round to the chest and the rip of velcro is loud in a room otherwise silent except for his panicked, thin breathing.] Fuck me. [His hands raise from the half-open vest to his neck. The laugh he looses is startled, slightly maniac.] Daylight. What the--
[The quick motion off the bed is fluid, trained-- a booted foot misses the screen by inches and makes the feed jump. The legs mostly blocking the frame pivot now and hands reach out, upending the cheap dormitory bed in a single heave and crash. The booted feet and camo BDU pants head toward the door and out of frame... but stop. Come back. Then a face drops clearly into view for the first time as the man hunches down over the phone and he may look familiar to Arkham.
Young, fresh-faced. But very familiar.]
Couldn't even fuckin' kill me, Jimbo? Pussy to the end, my friend. This is my disappointed face.
[He flashes a smile that even bends his eyes down before the feed cuts to blackness.]
Third Person Sample: "Wait, are we talking about the sexy sort of shanking or the jail sort of shanking, because--"
But whatever the rest of that sentence would have been was lost with the doors busting open and Sleeping Beauty roaring his way out onto the patio. Oh, shit, his head is bleeding. "Fuck me," Brian said, sliding to his feet. "Look, man, it's just a flesh wound, right? I'll buy you a beer and we'll all be sympatic-oh!" He ducked a chair that the brawler sent at him and turned-- tight and precise-- to Kenzi. The other boys were bunching up in the door behind Sleeping Beauty and all that mumbling they were doing wasn't about how they wanted to make friends.
"Give me your foot. Gimme your goddamn foot." And that was an order, said in a brisk command that meant now. Her boot in hand, Brian slung her up toward the top of the fence. Good thing she weighed all of a buck-nothing. He spared just enough time to salute those mother fuckers and dodge a wild punch before he leapt himself-- off the low retaining wall and almost as high as he'd tossed Kenzi. In a fluid move he'd leapt down the other side and into the alley. Hands out-- Kenzi caught-- and they could both run.
At the mouth of the alley he slowed to look back-- and laughed at the meatheads still trying to scale the fence and falling all over each other. "Crap," he breathed out, not winded in the slightest, grinning. "If you're a Russian bride, I think I'll get you a green card. This is the most fun I've had in a month."