[hider=Brennan Griese][center][img]http://i.imgur.com/oBJ38oL.png[/img][/center]

[color=0072bc][b]Name:[/b][/color] Braonán Ailill Griese ("Brennan")

[color=0072bc][b]Age:[/b][/color] 24

[color=0072bc][b]Gender:[/b][/color] Male

[color=0072bc][b]Race:[/b][/color] Human

[color=0072bc][b]Nationality:[/b][/color] Atlesian

[color=0072bc][b]Appearance:[/b][/color] [hider=Brennan][img]http://i.imgur.com/o8U32SZ.jpg[/img][/hider]

With none of his taller or broader former teammates around to dwarf him in comparison, Brennan’s proportions make him a somewhat intimidating public figure. A few inches above six feet and athletically broad, Brennan himself is very handsome, with a strong jaw, bright red-gold eyes, and a perpetual hysterical laugh never far from his lips. Ever professional, he tends to wear black pants or jeans with white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up. He will always either wear suspenders or a slim-fitting black vest. His coal-black hair is long, but not unruly – half the time it tends to be pomaded backwards lustrously, and half the time he lets it hang free over his eyes. 

Surprisingly, given his brash demeanor and lavish wealth, he’s not one for much gaudy ornamentation. The only concession to jewelry he wears is a slender silver chain on his neck, from which hangs a single Claddagh ring barely visible through an unbuttoned collar. 

[color=0072bc][b]Personality and Ethics:[/b][/color] The Ubermensch, in his boundless and cruel wisdom, sees lesser man as naught but a plaything to be guided along by the hypnotic cadence of his voice and the crack of his hellish whip.

[color=ff7e9d]“Brennan, if you don’t tell them the truth, I will. And you don’t like my truth very much.”[/color]

Though a prodigious fighter in his own right, most of Brennan's talent comes from being a natural showman and psychological warrior. Loud-mouthed and utterly without fear, he has a forceful personality to command other forceful personalities. Brennan honed his commanding presence through years of asserting himself over other privileged Atlesian youth, delegating them tasks and expecting them to be performed with the utmost precision. Resistance to his orders is combated by irreverent disdain instead of loud tirades, but usually he will be the first to remind you that "he told you so" in the event that going against him didn't work out well. 

On the other side of that coin is an always-running silver tongue, capable of joking and charming to the point where Brennan has even made hardened tsun[s]deres[/s]namis capable of rolling their eyes and smiling against their will. Through most of his school years, there is very little that he took seriously besides competition with his teammates and those he considered his rivals, which he often communicated through an endless stream of banter with anyone who would listen. Put simply, Brennan Griese is a hyper-competitive jock, a savvy tactician, and a keen business mogul rolled all into one, fiercely proud of his pedigree outside of battle and utterly dismissive of it inside it. 

His period of captivity in Vacuo, however, has sharpened his edges somewhat, leaving him callous and even ruthless when on bounty or retrieval missions. Brennan cares little for the well-being of targets that prove themselves anything less than strictly honorable over the course of a mission, and his long-held sense of chivalry on the battlefield has grown shaky after his kidnapping challenged his rich kid's naivety. Though this sense of pragmatism is something to be sought after in a leader, it can be a marked change to those who only recognize the charismatic Atlesian hero from his psychotically-cheerful Vytal Festival days. His disdain towards charity can also be seen as a bit cruel by some people, though [i]this[/i] grievance is only skin deep; in reality Brennan is an open-handed and generous person, though he takes care to cover his tracks with all charitable contributions and will often "blame" the donations on others.

[color=0072bc][b]Aspirations:[/b][/color]
>Be the first man in space
>Cut award-winning documentary - “Four Years of Making BANK”
>Name a wing of Bastion Academy after himself
>Pave Vacuo in solar panels
>Kill 9,999 Grimm before Umeko
[s]>Build Umeko a mobile suit[/s]

[color=0072bc][b]Fears:[/b][/color] 
>Kawaguchi’s recent stomach bump (!!!)
>Noel's awful puns
>Clowns
>World war
>World peace
[s]>Losing Kawaguchi or Noel[/s]

[color=0072bc][b]History:[/b][/color] Brennan’s father was only one generation removed from their fortune, but it was clear he had forgotten where it came from. Brennan’s grandfather had initially gone into business as a founding partner of the Schnee Dust Company, but foresaw a coming monopoly on the Dust market and the coming problems with the use of Faunus labor. Therefore, he sold every last share at top dollar and came out with enough money to float him through the rest of his life; a series of sensible investments in property and budding tech firms with interests in Aura and Dust only compounded the fortune, until it was clear no Griese would ever have to worry about money again.

As you can imagine, this had made Brennan’s father complacent, a trait not shared by his rowdy, implacable only son. A talented little scrapper (to his father’s chagrin) from an early age, Brennan seemed to have determined his path even before he quite knew what the Huntsman path was, and went away to Sanctum Academy in Mistral for combat training at the age of 12. When he returned to Atlas after four years, though, he took a couple drop years to begin taking a hands on role in some investments of his own.  Finally, at the age of 19, he enrolled in Atlas Academy to seek out a career as a Huntsman and engage himself in higher study.

Pleasantly, he found himself on a team with three other members of the Atlesian business elite - Albert Morgan, the king of Atlesian banking, Noel du Acier, head of one of Atlas' top weapon forges, and Kek Tarik, whose railway empire was responsible for much of Remnant's transit. Though at first their squabbles over leadership and their natural competitive edges had led them to all eschew each other, once the question of leadership was truly decided and began to work as a unit, BANK (as they had been first colloquially, then officially known) became an inseparable juggernaut, often able to discern strategies and fight alongside or independent of each other with mere near-telekinetic glances. At the head of this specialized team was Brennan Griese himself - and Griese, through the course of his chaotic first year as an Atlesian student, led his team on a hellish blitzkrieg through the ranks of the Vytal Festival tournament that year in Vale. Along the way, he finally found himself a worthy rival in the form of “The Nip,” Umeko Kawaguchi, who Brennan ravenously cheered on in the hopes of crushing her himself before the eyes of the world. The two eventually met in the final match of the tournament, which finally ended in an unprecedented double knockout Brennan remembers little of. Apparently it was ratings gold, though. His mug was beaming at RSPN viewers all the way into his second year of Atlas after that.

But while TSUN had a comparatively tame education in Vacuo, Brennan’s life only became wilder and more fraught with danger as the next four years rolled on. Not only were the missions Atlas assigned more severe and dangerous for their trainees (many of whom had undergone training at the elite combat school Bastion Academy, which demanded seven years of excellence before graduation to Atlas as opposed to four), the four members of BANK each came from prestigious families that had made their own enemies throughout Remnant. It was a few weeks after the start of his junior year, while on a nighttime Fury Road reenactment through the wastes of Vacuo, that Brennan was ambushed and held ransom for months by a splinter group of ex-Faunus slaves and Dust miners. 

Though kidnappings of board members and rich children were usually buoyed by begging and the promise of hefty ransoms, Brennan Griese proved a colossal disappointment to the desperate Faunus who had ambushed him. Though subjected to endless physical beatings and protracted ransom videos (usually cut short by improvised limericks and animal control puns) Brennan stuck to his Atlesian training and only gave up the most basic of information about himself - “Brennan Griese, 21, Team BANK, I was on TV” - when the camera was off him. Finally, the most charismatic student Atlas had churned out in three generations baited one of the Faunus into releasing his restraints in an attempt to resist his latest beating. Perhaps the terrorist assumed that months of starvation, dehydration, and lack of training had reduced the Atlesian mogul to a deflated windbag. Perhaps he assumed it would be an excuse to kill the hostage - who had not brought in, nor would he likely ever bring in, money from his aloof father - and free up space to try again with some Atlesian who was less of a black sheep amongst their family. Whatever the case, he released Brennan and challenged the young man to put his fists up.

Not smart of him.

A train managed by one of his teammates, Kek Tarik, found Brennan on a Vacuuan railroad track four days later. He was covered in blows, his famous Trustbuster gloves were tattered on his hands, and he was visibly malnourished, but the Atlesian hometown hero had only one complaint:

[color=0072bc]“Here I thought Tarik kept the fookin’ trains roonin’ on time. He and me are gonna hafta have some words.”[/color]

And then one more, upon his return at Atlas:

[color=0072bc]“Shut up, Noel.”[/color]

Though Brennan’s flippant demeanor showed no change, and though the kidnapping was largely covered up - to this day, Brennan has ensured with surprising ruthlessness that no word of the kidnapping ever reaches Vacuo or the student he holds dear there - those who were close to him before his kidnapping can easily recognize a change in the one-time plucky young playboy. To replace his destroyed gloves, he cajoled Umeko Kawaguchi into surrendering one of her precious five RX-78 prototypes and modified it, replacing weapons that were once meant for playful sparring with weapons specced for destructive power. Once returned to Atlas, he threw himself twice as hard into his training, and graduated with top honors alongside his team the following year. Brennan, unlike his teammates, had no pressing business interests to immediately return to, but eschewed the role of Atlesian Specialist anyway, mostly due to his family name and his inability to be objective after his kidnapping.

Though he strongly considered returning to Vacuo and [s]ripping up every little cell of Faunus that couldn’t fit in a litter box[/s] working alongside Kawaguchi, he was nonetheless convinced by his old team that perhaps a change of scenery would be best. Thus, Brennan has returned to Vale, the place where he drew the eyes of the whole world five years previously, with his best friend and teammate Noel du Acier in tow. 

[color=0072bc][b]Semblance:[/b][/color] Brennan has been able to effectively manipulate and control friction since his early days as a Vytal Festival prizefighter, and years of training at Atlas has only heightened his prodigal skill with his Semblance. Brennan Griese is capable of propelling himself forward along any solid surface without pause, as well as freeze anything in its tracks. This can make him downright terrifying when wearing Trustbuster II, as he can speed directly in a room and leave an entire squad rooted to the floor, while he himself zips around and clears them out with sheer volleys of firepower.

[color=0072bc][b]Combat Style:[/b][/color] Brennan is at his best when he's allowed to be punishingly quick and strike punishingly hard. Between the sheer amount of firepower produced by Trustbuster II and how effectively he can use Veblen Good to rip an enemy apart, he is most effectively used whenever he's put on point man duty - or, in the event that a threat is more long-range, he will be of much more use hanging back and coordinating his fellow Huntsmen's movements and actions.

[color=0072bc][b]Weapons:[/b][/color] [i]Veblen Good[/i] - Brennan’s trademark monofilament whip has remained in his care ever since the day he designed it at Sanctum Academy. The weapon that brought him all the way into the final round of the Vytal Festival as a first-year remains largely unmodified, aside from some retrofits to make it compatible with his Trustbuster upgrade. Its monofilament design allows it to open up stinging cuts on any surface or person that isn’t protected by Aura or some form of force field, but remains just as capable of grabbing onto an object as it is of ripping one apart. Veblen Good is also capable of being energized with several varieties of Dust or being converted into a targe-like shape, which, when imbued with Dust, creates a powerful shield capable of tanking most physical or projectile attacks on its energized surface.

[i]Remnant Expansion (Prototype) #78 Unit 5 Grimm-Use Non-Demanding Armament Machine ver. Trustbuster II[/i] - Trustbuster II is a spiritual sequel to its predecessor - a pair of Dust-woven gloves worn by Brennan for close combat - in the loosest sense of the term, in that the weapon is Dust-powered and dual-wielded. Other than that, Trustbuster II is a far cry from any sort of fashion statement like the first Trustbusters. 

Heavily modified from the fifth and final prototype of the Remnant Expansion series of weaponry, Trustbuster II consists of two fully automatic shotguns, each capable of emptying 666 rounds from twenty-five shell cylinders in sixty seconds. Both weapons are also capable of discharging all twenty-five rounds at once in beam form for several seconds when powered by Dust, generating a massive concussive shock of whatever Dust type is currently used to power Trustbuster II.

The prototype's original accompanying shield repurposed as a slim energy-powered ammunition backpack, fitting snugly on Brennan's back and using Veblen Good as a wired-beam connection to both shotguns. The weapon is still capable of performing its intended function and guarding Brennan's back from enemy fire, though his Semblance leaves him agile enough to be able to turn around at the slightest hint of enemies at his rear; thus, the shield's ammunition and energy storage features account for most of its usage.

The Trustbuster II's main drawback is its sheer bulk, which often weighs Brennan's arms down and leaves him incapable of hand-to-hand fighting, a specialty and favored means of combat for the young Atlesian. For this reason the Trustbuster II does have a [i]second[/i] transformation: two large weapon lockers, similar to those used by Beacon Academy students, which can be summoned from Brennan's Scroll and dropped to his location inside of sixty seconds. The door of the locker will split off and convert into the ammo backpack/shield, while the thrusters and spare parts convert themselves into the weapon's firearm apparatus and connectors for Veblen Good.

[color=0072bc][b]Non-Combat skills:[/b][/color] [color=0072bc]“Noel, what’re my skills again, lass?”[/color]

[color=ff7e9d]"Your charming personality and dashing good looks! Sir!"[/color]

Brennan has a surprisingly deep skill set for someone who only had to start taking care of himself at the age of nineteen. Though not as good a cook as Noel, he can order a pizza or whip the tsundere up a plate of breakfast as well as any lad worth his salt, and he's even got himself an eye for decorating and design. This knack for Feng Shui has even spread to fashion; Brennan has modeled for two of the past three Atlesian Accessories fall/winter collections, a part-time gig that was borne purely out of gatecrashing Kawaguchi's photoshoot during winter break in their second year.

Apparently the photographer recognized their chemistry. And they even cleaned up most of his bruises in Photoshop.

Brennan has also run the public speaking circuit once or twice, and wouldn't mind going into politics if only he got to actually maul his opponents on the debate stage. A return to the private sector is similarly unlikely, so an entire wealth of business knowledge and salesman's acumen goes untapped inside the mad Atlesian's brain.

[color=0072bc][b]Deficiencies:[/b][/color] There is only one Brennan Griese to save mankind at the moment. Junior year kidnapping has added a somewhat aggressive edge to what was once simply a charming, if coarse, hypercompetitive streak. Occasional nightmares. Currently [s]being supported by[/s] supporting a person sized anchor named Noel du Acier, a woman with no psychology degree and no willingness to acknowledge the fact. In combat, almost entirely useless at long ranges - Trustbuster II is a weapon designed to obliterate at mid-range and Veblen Good is capable of shearing apart most Grimm and hammering on Aura at close range, but neither is particularly effective against, say, a sniper.

[color=0072bc][b]Miscellaneous:[/b][/color] Griese rules, Kawaguchi drools. Brennan is still an intense sports guru and, secretly, will mentor Atlesian kids during the summers who want to make it into a combat school - even setting up a fund to spay their expenses abroad in case they don’t want to devote a decade of their lives to Bastion and Atlas. Hates being publicly acknowledged as charitable - that’s Noel’s gig. Really loves milk. Based on the life of American robber baron John D. Rockefeller.[/hider]