Agent Washington

Agent Washington is a completely and totally sane special agent from a Super Secret Military Ops Program of the Alien-and-Idiot-Infested Future. They arrived in-game on pending and currently live in (pending).

age: 32. Ish.

origins: Red vs. Blue (canon)

app link: voila.

hmd: here!

played by: Larissa (elenen )

contact: captain slippery (AIM), palazzo (plurk)

Setting
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away-- no, wait a minute, that's not how it goes. Let's start again: welcome to Blood Gulch, a box canyon that's home of the most useless, inept, and generally idiotic soldiers in the galaxy. This one, as it happens, is about five hundred years in the future. There's a good level of technology -- space travel, power armor, artificial intelligence, the works -- but people are still generally assholes, especially after you get to know them. Essentially, Red vs. Blue is an extension off of theHalo universe, which itself can be summarized as "there's a guy in kickass green armor who saves the world from aliens intent on wiping out humanity a couple times over." Of course, there's more to it than that, but as far as RvB is concerned? That's pretty much all you need to know.

Actually, RvB focuses on a different war entirely: a war between the Red and Blue armies (imagine that) that's locked in an epic stalemate. Given that the soldiers on both sides spend more time arguing with each other than bothering to fight, chances are it's going to be a while until they manage to advance the war any further.

That's all right, though, because as it turns out, there is no Red vs. Blue war at all. Instead, the troopers in Blood Gulch, whose stories form the bulk of the first five seasons, are (unknowingly) simulation soldiers for Project Freelancer. Project Freelancer was but one of many attempts during the war effort against the aliens and focused on creating special agents, each paired with an artificial intelligence and a pretty sweet suit of armor and different enhancements. The Red and Blue bases exist as testing grounds for these agents, whose only apparent purpose is as guinea pigs. Nothing of note happens there unless Freelancer Command orders it or sends a Freelancer to the outpost, which in the case of Blood Gulch sets off a wild and crazy chain of events.

However, there's a darker side to Project Freelancer, one very few are aware of. The backbone of the program is the artificial intelligence units assigned to the different agents. Things don't go exactly according to plan, considering some of the A.I. decide they're not that interested in following orders and others end up driving their partners stark raving mad. Eventually, the implantation experiments halt completely, and agents leave the program left and right, some for their own purposes and some to look for the Alpha. The Alpha, they say, is the original A.I. in Project Freelancer, the only one they could get their hands on. As the project was looking at a larger scale than one soldier (they can't all make Master Chiefs), the only option was to copy it. Each A.I. had a certain longing for the original, which ended up in making their partners go after it.

One problem, though: the A.I. aren't copied off of Alpha. Copying an A.I. isn't possible, so the Director of Project Freelancer did the next best thing: he tortured the Alpha until it developed a split personality and was forced to shed different aspects of itself to survive with any semblance of sanity intact. And then they stuck those fragments into soldiers and told them to go fight a war. No wonder the agents didn't take it well. One in particular, Agent Maine, is influenced by his A.I. to reassemble the Alpha by way of killing off Freelancers and taking their equipment and A.I. for himself. Maine becomes the Meta and a big enough problem for Project Freelancer that, following the war, the project comes under scrutiny from higher-ups in the military. As a result, the truth of what was done to create the project's A.I.s comes to light, and things come crashing down around them.

And as for Alpha? Well, they hid him in a little canyon called Blood Gulch as one of the simulation soldiers, thinking nothing would ever happen to him. Guess they never considered what sending a tank to a canyon full of idiots meant.

Personality
Don't cross him, and he won't have to cross you. Sounds simple, right? All you have to do is exactly what he tells you, and if you have any problem with that, you can just keep it to yourself. Don't ask any questions, either, because chances are you won't get a straight answer.

Shame it never works out that way.

Once upon a time, Agent Washington was a soldier in the Freelancer Project and one of the chosen few to receive an experimental A.I. Given that he got stuck with an A.I. that was more or less doomed to lose its mind and kill itself while inside his head, it's a safe bet to assume he's got a few screws loose. As far as he's concerned, though, he's completely, totally sane, thank you for asking. While it's unclear exactly how crazy he went, Wash didn't lose it entirely. He manages to hold it together enough to do his job and doesn't immediately come across as someone who might have spent quality time in a mental institution. (Whether he did or not isn't made clear, but it wouldn't have been without merit.)

Wash's most defining feature is probably his sense of purpose. No matter what his goal, Wash will stop at nothing to achieve it, with little regard for what happens to others along the way. To say that he comes across as cold is a bit of an understatement. Wash doesn't take shit from anybody, and he gives out only what information he deems necessary, expecting his orders to be followed immediately. He doesn't have any problem deceiving others of his intentions for the sake of his goals, no matter if it's his superiors or the people he's working with. For most of the series, this serves as his M.O., because not telling your "allies" your plans is totally the best way to get something done. After he gets himself out of prison, though, Wash doesn't have the same need for secrecy and has free reign to go after what he wants directly.

The only problem is that no matter what Wash tries to do, he always seems to end up on the bad end of things. Whether it's being shot by his own partner or getting sent to jail because his evidence has conveniently vanished, things generally don't end up the way he planned them. For a long time, Wash let himself trust people even in spite of this, but eventually he gave up. What's the point when people just end up betraying you in the end?

But as easy as it is to say that that Wash gets betrayed at every turn — shot in the back and left for dead, locked up for trying to reveal the truth about the Director, and so forth — there's another element to the situation. It's not just individuals that screw Wash over, it's the very organization he works for that has no qualm with using him for their own purposes. Project Freelancer is more than happy to certify him unfit for duty, but when they need to use him they let him right back out. And if they see a chance to manipulate him into a situation that ends up with him shot in the back, well, it just tidies things up. It's too bad for them that Wash doesn't go down all that easily. If nothing else, Wash is a survivor. He might not come out quite as well off as he was beforehand, but he'll pull through just about anything with enough of his sanity intact that he can keep on going.

While Wash starts out wanting payback against the Director and Project Freelancer for what they did to Alpha, Epsilon, and his fellow Freelancers, it becomes a lot more personal in time. However altruistic his motivations may be, the fact is that he's been screwed over too many times, and he's done putting up with it. After all the time he spent being careful not to betray what he knew, he's stopped bothering hiding what he wants. The direct approach might be more dangerous, but it gets results. That said, when in an unfamiliar situation, he'll still try to find out whatever he can before taking action. He doesn't like being out of control of a situation, nor when things don't go just as he's carefully planned them.

Wash is the kind of person who demands respect not by asking for it, but by assuming it will be given and refusing anything less than that. While he comes across as cold, he has a dark sense of humor and is something of a deadpan snarker, though usually with more deadpan than snarking. His version of compassion is allow his partner, South, a minute to mourn her brother's death, only to give her a matter of seconds to decide whether or not to accept his mercy. (All bets are off, though, when she shoots him in the back.) And despite how hard he is on people, Wash trusts them (or at least gives them the benefit of the doubt that they're not going to turn on him), and that serves both as his downfall and his saving grace. More often than not it screws him over, but it means that even when he gets put through the wringer, he's not entirely heartless.

Abilities & Weaknesses
While Wash is neither the best soldier in Freelancer nor any match for a SPARTAN, he's no pushover. He's a trained, capable soldier, and most of all he's resourceful. He has a tendency to survive incidents that should leave him for dead, including being shot in the back, being in the middle of explosions, getting hit by a jeep, and so on. He generally tries to think his plans through, but sometimes he doesn't see every alternative and ends up worse off than before.

Wash has the capacity to endure a good amount of mental trauma, given he survived an A.I. committing suicide inside his head without going completely nuts, but he is not the most stable of individuals. If properly triggered, he could go off the deep end again, but it'd take a bit to get him to that point.

Character Relationships
Developing.

Free Space
Tbd?