Idiot's Guide to Halo/Red vs Blue

[guntogold]

OKAY KIDS.

To start with, a couple notes on how Halo and RvB interact. Halo has a huge specifically detailed canon that comes with expanded universe stuff like novels etc, while Red vs Blue is not strictly part of the Halo universe. It's a loose spin-off and limited by the available tools within the Multiplayer modes of the game, so as Chief's CR chart mentions, aspects of RvB are absolutely NOT canon to Halo because the writers at RT just decided to make shit up for their own story. See: Tucker having an alien baby. Canon for RvB, not canon for Halo. Also all the RvB characters wearing that armor. In Halo canon the MJOLNIR armor can ONLY be worn by genetically enhanced supersoldiers cos it'll kill normal humans.

In other words, a lot of RvB has to be taken with a grain of salt, because the writers quite literally will put something in the first season that they later totally retcon or never bring up again because they're trying to be more serious in later seasons.


Halo

SO ANYWAY starting with Halo. This is a super handy chart if you don't want to put up with my rambling, and I will assuredly be leaving things out / compressing them. The RvB wikia is sometimes incredibly useless, but the Halo wikia is amazing and useful as a field guide to whatever the fuck us spacemen are rambling about now with our rampancy and AIs and Covenant moonspeak.

- A damn long time ago, there were some aliens called the Forerunners. They had a civilization and awesome technology and considered themselves protectors of life in the galaxy. Then they came into contact with a parasite species, the Flood, that devours and assimilates all biomass it encounters, and things got very Resident Evil very quickly. With the Flood spreading out of control, the Forerunners built a last ditch failsafe: the Halo Array, a series of massive, planet size rings, maintained by AI Monitors, that when activated would destroy all life in the Milky Way galaxy and thereby starve the Flood out of existence. The Halo rings were activated, and goodbye Forerunners.

- Except, for whatever dipshit reason, the Forerunners still had samples of live Flood parasites on the Halo installations themselves, having been studying them for some sort of weakness, so the samples survived.

- All that remained of the Forerunner civilization was their artifacts, including the Halo rings, that lay dormant and misunderstood for a long fucking time. Then a race of aliens called the San 'Shyuum (or Prophets) come along and figure out some Forerunner technology and get all powerful and shit and decide the Forerunners were gods, and that all of their artifacts/tech were left behind as gifts to their heirs. The Prophets build a religion out of a 'Great Journey' mentioned in Forerunner writings, never figuring out that this is a euphemism for suicide-by-Halo. They dominate some other alien races, notably the Sangheili (or Elites), and convert them to their religion through force and promises of godhood after the Great Journey, and so create the Covenant Empire with the Prophets in leadership positions and the rest of the races as cannon fodder. Their mission: acquire Forerunner artifacts and complete the Great Journey, which they take to mean as activating the Halo Array.

- MEANWHILE, BACK ON EARTH. In such and such year humans start colonizing space.

- War breaks out in the colonies. Everyone knows that humans can't go two seconds without a war with somebody so there are wars between the Inner colonies, Outer Colonies, and Earth etc. The United Nations Space Command (UNSC), more or less a military government, is formed and commissions the SPARTAN supersoldier program to, obviously, create supersoldiers to quell these Insurrection uprisings.

- THIS. IS. SPARTAAAA. Brig, what the hell is so special about SPARTANs that even characters in panfandom games should take note of? I'm glad you asked. SPARTANs are like 7 feet tall, even the girls, and built out of concrete muscle and cybernetic implants, that's what. Their neural implants let them 'sync' with AI programs (aka put them inside their brainsss via an implant slot at the back of their skulls) and link directly into their armor, which costs as much as a starship and functions as a computer in its own right. It is super special armor that only superhumans can wear because wiki said so, and is called MJOLNIR armor. SPARTANs are meant to embody the term "one man army." Also, they have tragic backstories, because all supersoldiers in any fandom ever always do, and not all of the UNSC forces think that they are super cool heroes. Some consider the SPARTANs monsters or freaks, and even a younger Master Chief got cornered by jackasses once and attacked. This is a wiki page. It has moar.

- OH SHIT GUYS, WE JUST RAN INTO SOME ALIENS OUT HERE IN THE FAR REACHES OF SPACE. While searching for Forerunner artifacts, the Covenant run into humans for the first time on the planet of Harvest, and there is some bullshit about how humans themselves are actually Forerunner artifacts because they're somehow descended from the Forerunners idek, but the Prophets that find out about this decide that humans are a threat to their religion and their ideas about the Great Journey. Since. You know. The Prophets believed that they were the heirs to the Forerunners, and would get to be gods, and here are these fleshy meatbags with Forerunner DNA and they, much like Miguel and Tulio, are not gods. The Covenant response: Kill Them All.

- War.

- Lots of war.

- 28 years of war. The Covenant enjoy glassing planets, aka hitting them from orbit and turning their surfaces into volcanic quagmires that will never support life again. The space colonies are chewed up and before the end of the war twenty-three billion humans are dead. The SPARTAN supersoldiers that are deployed against the Covenant are effective, but there are too few of them.

- Reach falls. This is Pearl Harbor for the future. Reach was the largest UNSC military installation that is not Earth, and also the training grounds and "home" to the SPARTAN II soldiers who were taken there as children. The Covenant glasses the planet and earns the hatred of every SPARTAN living.

- This shit sounds pretty desperate. Luckily, a plethora of experimental projects of varying degrees of horrible spring up, all hoping to produce the key to winning the war, and this period of mad scientists and the military running amok is about where the background of RvB starts. Notable figures would be Dr. Catherine Halsey, who is actually around before this stuff because the SPARTAN II project is her baby. The Smart AI Cortana who is Master Chief's partner through most of the games was created from Dr. Halsey's personality. Chief is in love with Cortana, but Halsey is more of a mother/teacher figure as she was an adult when he was still a child. Halsey showing up as a total babe in Halo Legends is bullshit okay.

- Some stuff happens. Aka the first Halo game. OH JESUS FUCK GUYS, WE WERE SO BUSY FIGHTING THE COVENANT ON THIS SUSPICIOUSLY RING SHAPED WORLD THAT WE DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE THE FLESH-ASSIMILATING ZOMBIE PARASITE THING WE JUST LET OUT OF CONTAINMENT AND NOW IT'S EATING EVERYTHING AAAAAskfjlfsdlwhargarbbl.

- Luckily, the Goddamn Master Chief is your playable character, and every time you die like a complete idiot falling off a catwalk edge or getting shot while trying to teabag a dead Covenant, you can try again until the day is saved. The Halo Array is not fired despite Master Chief being a gullible dupe and nearly getting talked into it by one of the still active Forerunner Monitors, and some other shit happens I can't remember, and idek Cortana's naked. First game ends.

- RED VS BLUE EPISODE ONE STARTS.

- Other stuff happens. Like Halo 2 and Halo 3.

- Eventually, the war with the Covenant ends. One of the races that had made up the backbone of the Covenant military, the Sangheili, breaks away under the leadership of the Arbiter, who figures out that the Prophets are all lying sacks of lies and teams up with Master Chief to Save The Universe From A Larger Threat aka the Flood and the remaining Prophets who want to activate the Halos. A Sangheili fleet joins the battle to defend Earth from the Covenant and the Flood, and humans and the Sangheili remain allies, if slightly strained, even after the battle is won. Since Chief is MIA at the end of Halo 3, Arbiter has no reason to stick around without that fine ass and takes himself and his Separatists back to their homeworld, probably to face an entirely new shitstorm with the remaining Covenant Loyalists, wherever the hell they disappeared off to.

- THE END.

- Wait not yet. Lots of significant events that happen in the games, like Earth being attacked and the Flood infestation and the secret of the Halo rings, aren't mentioned in RvB. Does this mean that the Flood and all that other stuff doesn't exist in RvB? Haven't the faintest goddamn clue, but it does mean that I'm not going to go through the rest of the game plot here. For RvB purposes, there is a war against aliens, and for a long while it wasn't going that great, and lots of secret experimental projects cropped up to help win it.


Red vs Blue

- Back at some unspecified time during or possibly even before the Covenant war, a young man named Leonard L. Church falls in love with a young woman named Allison. This woman, who was presumably a soldier, dies. The young man chooses to honor her memory not by becoming a soldier but vowing to contribute to the war effort some other way. He becomes a scientist, Dr. Leonard Church, and devotes his life's research to AI programs.

- What the fuck, AI programs. How does that help the war. In Halo canon, AI programs come in two versions: Smart AI and Dumb AI. Smart AI are full replicas of a living person and have to be created using a real brain, which is destroyed in the process. To avoid killing whoever you're trying to make an AI of, the brain in question is flash-cloned, creating a temporary clone of the organ which can be destroyed during the translation process with no harm to the original person. Entire humans can be flashclones but they degrade quickly and die, as most of the SPARTAN II soldiers know well. Anyway, while Dumb AI are capable only of pre-programmed tasks, Smart AI are capable of learning and adapting, carrying the entire bulk of human knowledge in their files etc and are much more human-like. Cortana, arguably the most famous AI in the Human-Covenant war, was the operator AI for a UNSC battleship before she ended up in Master Chief's helmet, and she also takes the controls for an entire space station defending Earth during a Covenant attack. Smart AI are very, very, very valuable pieces of military equipment, in other words, since they're trusted with top secret information and are capable of hacking anything they want, and it's only desperate circumstances that allow even Master Chief to carry Cortana around with him.

- Okay, so AI are a Big Deal. Dr. Church founds Project Freelancer, and becomes known hereafter as The Director. Freelancer's goal was to train and equip enhanced soldiers (not of the genetically enhanced 7 ft SPARTAN caliber but still high quality special ops with cybernetic implants) that would be partnered with an AI in battle and given special equipment, like cloaking technology or energy shields, things that in Halo proper seem to be only available to SPARTANs. It's unknown so far exactly how Freelancer relates to the UNSC or ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence), if they were a private defense contractor or what, exactly, but the Project is apparently given a long leash by whatever military authority is supposed to be in charge of it.

- Minimal direct supervision is never a good idea with scientists, especially those with a chip on their shoulder. The Director acquires the Alpha AI. The Director intends to outfit a group of soldiers, obviously, not just one or two, but unfortunately he's got only one Smart AI, designated Alpha. Much like Cortana is a digital replica of Dr. Halsey, Alpha is a digital replica of the Director himself. Due to the difficulties in creating AI from flashcloned brains (it's very expensive and the success rate is like 1 in 20), the Director is unable to create or get permission from the UNSC to create more copies. With a single AI and dozens of soldiers to outfit, this is a problem. The Director decides to get creative and illegal.

- The Alpha AI is subjected to torture in order to fragment it, as in deliberately inducing MPD via trauma. The Alpha is subjected to simulation after simulation of horrific scenarios; anything that would cause the maximum amount of mental stress. Since the Alpha is a complete digital replica of the Director, the scenarios involve things like watching friends and loved ones get hurt, impossible tasks, situations where it was somehow the Alpha's fault when awful things happened. Alpha breaks just like a human mind would under such stress and splinters into fragments. Each fragment, which is some piece of the Alpha's psyche such as Rage, Deceit, Logic, Memory, etc, is then harvested. The fragments are all named after Greek letters, so Beta, Theta, Gamma, etc. The order of their creation isn't clearly defined, as wiki/canon contradicts itself as to whether Epsilon was created first or last, while 'Epsilon' would mean 'fifth.' Anyway, the usable fragments are given to Freelancer Agents (who were all told that these fragment AI were somehow legit copies of the Alpha, since torturing and experimenting on AI is extremely illegal), the unusable ones stored in Freelancer Command in a huge vault that is basically a prison/asylum for crazy AI.

- This sounds like a stupid idea. It is. All smart AI are in danger of a state known as rampancy, which usually sets in after seven years and is characterized by an AI 'going bad;' refusing to follow commands, having delusions of supremacy, and/or becoming so occupied with its own thought processes that the rest of its vital systems shut down because it stops paying attention to them. Rampancy is comparable to insanity in humans. AI with something so traumatic in their creation, like the Freelancer series all created from the Alpha, were probably doomed from the start to go rampant. The Director, however, decides to risk it, and allows the fragments to be synced/inserted/implanted (THESE WORDS ALL MEAN THE SAME THING) in the heads of his Freelancer Agents via their neural interface slot in the backs of their heads. These men and women were in fact volunteers, and knew that they were probably getting into risky business when they signed on, but they had no idea just how risky.

- Insertion sounds kinda... It's very intimate. The AI shares its host's head and their thoughts and emotions and vice versa. As Tex states: "Whatever they think, we think. Whatever we know, they know." AI are capable of influencing their hosts, as implied by Wyoming developing a fondness for stupid knock knock jokes because his AI likes them. There are obvious dangers in such a close connection, such as when a human host becomes unable to separate his/her own thoughts from their AI's. Extraction of/de-syncing with an AI is also apparently very dangerous, and can result in brain damage if the proper process isn't followed. Syncing with an AI can also be very difficult for a human mind, causing nausea, disorientation, and other unwanted side-effects, and some minds are simply unable to accept an AI.

- Also, fragmenting the Alpha creates a "byproduct" AI. Whether deliberately or accidentally, one of the AI fragments that emerges is not a personality fragment like Rage or Logic, but an entire collection of memories of Allison, the Director's lost love. This AI is not the 'real' Allison or created from a flashclone, but is instead the Director's and Alpha's memory of Allison. This Allison exists only as the Director remembers her, which is both a blessing and a curse. For the Director, no doubt it was as though a ghost had come back from his past. For Allison, it means that she can only function as the memory of her dictates. She can be tough and strong and exceptionally skilled, but eventually she runs into the fact that the Director remembers her as a failure, someone whose ultimate fate is to die. Nevertheless, the Director chooses to set this AI up as though she were a normal human, a volunteer for his Project, essentially picking up where the original Allison left off. How this is accomplished is unknown, since canon never states how Allison was given a flesh body or how she was kept from discovering her true nature, but presumably the Director's attachment to her and his access to the funds and technology already involved in the Project provide him the means to "resurrect" the woman he'd lost and give her a second chance at life. It's entirely possible that Allison simply wakes up one day in Freelancer HQ, believing that it was perfectly normal for her to be there and with a chain of fabricated memories leading up to her present situation, and goes about her 'new' life without ever questioning its discrepancies.

-As a highly skilled Freelancer, Agent Texas, Allison is given the Omega AI as her partner. Omega is an exceptionally aggressive AI, the personification of Alpha's rage, but takes a particular shine to Tex for reasons that can only be speculated on. Together they consistently out-perform many of the other Freelancer-AI pairs, and Tex is known to be a particular favorite of the Director, receiving "special treatment." Neither she nor the other Freelancers seem to know the Director as Leonard Church, so presumably the Director's real name was kept concealed. While most humans and AI have difficulty synchronizing, their minds refusing to accept each other, Tex is able to sync effortlessly with Omega since she herself is an AI. For a time, she is the best the Project has to offer.

- Known Freelancer Agents and their AI partners:
Agent Texas (Tex), real name Allison, black armor, invisibility/cloaking tech. Partnered with the Omega AI, nicknamed O'Malley, personifies Rage.

Agent Washington (Wash), real name David, grey armor with yellow highlights, unknown tech. Partnered with the Epsilon AI, unknown nickname, personifies Memory.

Agent New York (York), real name unknown, gold/bronze armor, healing/rapid regeneration tech. Partnered with the Delta AI, nicknamed D, personifies Logic.

Agent Wyoming, real name Reginald/Reggie, white armor, time manipulation tech. Partnered with the Gamma AI, nicknamed Gary, personifies Deceit.

Agent North Dakota (North), real name unknown, gray armor, unknown tech. Partnered with the Theta AI, unknown nickname, unknown personification.

Agent Carolina, everything unknown. She was outfitted with two AI at the same time (hence the designation Carolina rather than North or South Carolina) as part of an experiment, and was driven insane. She has some so-far-not-explained connection to York, possibly as a mission partner or bff, or romantically.

Agent Maine, real name unknown, most recognizable in his white armor, unknown tech. His original AI partner was Sigma. He becomes known later as the Meta.

Yeah so there's about 48 Freelancers, each codenamed after a state, except Florida because apparently something happens to Florida in the RvB future. Not all the agents are rated for insertion, and there aren't enough fragment AI to go around, so there is fierce competition for the chance to get an AI partner despite the hazards. Agent South Dakota, North's twin sister, is another known Freelancer but never got an AI from the Project in this period, and the twins were considered an experiment.

- Several AI fragments, including Omega, start to show signs of rampancy. The fragments are all extremely interested in their original, Alpha, although they don't understand precisely why, and they look at him almost like a god or a mythical figure. Some of them even influence their partners into trying to investigate the Alpha and find where it is located, apparently to little success. Also at some point the Omega AI (and possibly others) develop the very alarming ability to move between armors via wireless signal, able to 'possess' anyone with reception and take over their bodies, no longer dependent on their physical chips being inserted into someone's head. This is noted as an ability that Omega 'inherited' from Alpha. When an AI 'jumps' out of a human mind like this it can cause psychological damage. Tex's AI, Omega, who had already exhibited hyperviolent traits, uses his ability to only partner up with Tex, either killing/damaging/abandoning any other soldier that the Project tries to assign him to. On the other hand, Tex and Omega are the most capable and deadly pair in the Project, so this behavior is apparently allowed, until...

- The Epsilon incident occurs. Unknown to the Project authorities, one of the fragment AI (Epsilon) comes away with full memories of how the Alpha had been tortured. The remaining core of the Alpha essentially has self-induced amnesia because it gathered up all the memories of being an AI, being tortured, etc, rolled them into a ball and ejected them as a fragment, Epsilon, who represents Memory. Epsilon is given to Agent Washington, and either at the moment of their first synchronization or over a period of time, Epsilon's memories bleed into Wash, revealing the extent of the Project's dirty secrets. Epsilon is unable to handle the memories of the trauma and commits virtual suicide inside Wash's mind and drives him mad, or at least temporarily mad, landing Wash in some kind of psych ward/confinement while the remains of Epsilon are extracted and ostensibly erased. The Project then goes into lockdown, ordering a recall of all active AI so they can be deleted. Some of the AI resist and the Project begins executing Freelancer Agents with their AI still jacked in. Tex is specifically targeted during this purge but fights her way out (and kills a lot of people) and escapes with Omega. Other Agents also escape, notably York and Wyoming. Note: Canon is a little fluid on this because Tex specifically mentions the lockdown and says ALL the AI are recalled for deletion at that time, but in later seasons there are apparently Freelancer Agents (like North Dakota) who are still active and still have AI and don't appear to be escapees. So, whatever. Wiki speculates that some of the AI were re-evaluated and deemed not dangerous to their hosts.

- Tex goes after the Alpha. After "comparing notes" with some of the other Freelancers who escaped, Tex apparently finds out that the Alpha was being tortured and experimented on, and convinces some of the other escapees to help her try to rescue him from where he's being kept at the Freelancer base on Sidewinder. She is unsuccessful, arriving too late, and the Alpha doesn't recognize her/doesn't want to be rescued/some fucking thing/this retcon makes no goddamn sense. Tex arriving at Sidewinder and physically encountering the Alpha implies that she knew all along that Alpha = Church, which in turn implies that she knew all along that she herself was an AI, which is neither confirmed nor denied for the entire first five seasons because it's all a retconned plot device introduced in Season 6. So, we're still stuck not knowing exactly when or where Tex figured out the truth about Church, or if she ever did, or if she knew the whole time and was simply the victim of unplanned scripting. Either way, Freelancer Command moves the Alpha to Blood Gulch and Tex apparently gives up on the rescue thing FOR NO GOOD REASON, since Church is awful coherent and thinking he's a human and totally knows who Tex is in Season 1. But I guess she has other problems to worry about.

- Tex becomes a 'freelancer' as in a mercenary. She's presumably hiding from the Project but supports herself with mercenary work and has also vowed to destroy Omega, knowing firsthand just how psychotic and evil he is. Problem is she kinda has no idea how to do that when he can jump in and out of bodies at will, including her own, and while he's in her head he can kinda TELL that she wants to kill him. Whatever. This doesn't have to make sense. Despite her vow to destroy Omega, when she first appears in RvB Season 1 an unspecified time later, she's still got him jacked into her head. She also seems strangely unconcerned about Church being poor abused Alpha when she runs into him for the "first" time onscreen, which, POORLY PLANNED SCRIPTING.

- Cue Episode 1 of Red vs Blue Somewhere in space, in a little box canyon called Blood Gulch, a team of Red soldiers and a team of Blue soldiers sit in opposing bases and try to capture each other's flags/kill each other with varying degrees of enthusiasm. They are simulation soldiers owned by Freelancer, basically warm bodies that are supposed to field test equipment and give Freelancer agents a chance to practice against live fire. None of the Blood Gulch crew seem aware of that, though, to the point of Red's Sarge honestly believing there's a civil war between a "Red army" and a "Blue army" and Grif saying that he doesn't know why the fuck he's there when he signed up to fight some aliens. In the beginning, the two teams don't know that Red Command and Blue Command are the same person, employed by Freelancer, and they're all a bunch of morons anyway and bicker all the time etc.

Red team includes:
-Sarge (the cliche drill sergeant, red armor)
-Grif (the slacker, orange/gold armor)
-Simmons (the nerd, maroon armor)
-Donut (the ambiguously gay rookie, pink armor)
-Lopez (Spanish speaking robot/engineer, brown armor)

Blue team includes:
-Captain Butch Flowers, deceased before the first episode
-Church (the bitchy one with the sniper rifle, light blue armor, who takes over for Flowers as Blue leader)
-Tucker (the pervert, teal armor)
-Caboose (the retarded rookie, blue armor)
-Sheila, the AI for their tank. Note: Sheila may in fact be another smart AI, ie a digital replica of a real person, as Wash describes her as a rare "smart tank," and Halo canon states that only smart AI are capable of running starships which Sheila is shown to do.
-A late addition to Blue team is Sister who is Grif's younger sister and accidentally signs up for the wrong color team because she's colorblind. Her armor is yellow.

- Wait. There was already someone in this story named Church. Yeah, and that was the Director. Since the Alpha AI is a digital replica of that man, Alpha is technically also Leonard L. Church, complete with memories of childhood and a high school girlfriend named Allison. After the Alpha was fragmented, the core piece remained behind and retained a human personality, having dumped all the memories of the torture into Epsilon. The Project had been keeping Alpha in a secure facility but after some Agents tried to break in (led by Tex, in fact), the Director moved it to a remote location: a little box canyon in the middle of nowhere. Alpha is stuck inside a body (possibly a flashclone), presumably programmed with a few fake memories to cover any holes, and apparently intended to go on living as a nobody simulation soldier. This Church believes that he grew up with a normal life, met a girl named Allison, became her boyfriend, watched while she went off to join the marines and then volunteer for Project Freelancer (and also broke off their engagement at some point). Church was inspired by her to join the military himself, and ended up a simulation soldier. Obviously this does not jive with the Director's memories, so some are presumably fake. Also the Church in Blood Gulch is probably in his 20s/30s, while the Director is in his 40s/50s at the same time. Church/Alpha (and everyone else) seems to willfully deny and/or overlook any kind of evidence that points to him being an AI. As in, everyone in Blood Gulch eventually becomes fully aware of the Omega AI having the ability to possess people and jump in and out of bodies, but when Church exhibits the same ability (his human body gets killed by Caboose being a dipshit), he and all the others accept the moronic explanation that he's now a ghost. From that point, the body Church wears is a robotic one that he possesses.

- Wait, so does Tex know that Church is the Alpha? Canon does a great job of not telling us shit about what Tex knows or doesn't know. Tex may have known from the beginning that she was an AI and simply never reacted to it, but it seems more likely that she had no idea. The only one who reacts to "what was done to her" is Epsilon Tex, aka the Tex personality harbored inside Epsilon's memories that becomes a new character in her own right in later seasons. Tex never refers to the Alpha or even the Director during the entirety of Seasons 1-5, nor does she seem to think that Church is in any immediate danger from Project Freelancer authorities. Her concerns are immediate threats like Omega and Wyoming, who also seem to be unaware of what Church (and Tex) really are. Alpha and Tex being AIs and Epsilon and the Director's evil deeds are all plot devices introduced in Season 6, and it's ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that they simply don't exist in the earlier seasons and so are never referenced in any way that makes coherent sense.

I-V. The Blood Gulch Chronicles. Seasons 1-5, including the Out of Mind miniseries that takes place between Seasons 4 and 5, featuring Tex and York. With the exception of Out of Mind and some of the later seasons, this is fluid canon, as the writers were still changing their minds and retconning things every two seconds, but the important things we can come away with are:

- Church "dies" and becomes a ghost, meaning he can possess people, which is STRANGELY SIMILAR to Omega's ability to do the same thing. When not in 'spirit' form he occupies a robot body (built by Sarge) with the same armor that he had before.

- Tex dies and becomes a ghost, meaning she can possess people, which is STRANGELY SIMILAR to Omega's ability to do the same thing. When not in 'spirit' form she occupies a robot body (built by Sarge) with the same armor that she had before.

- Nobody finds this strange. Even Church and Tex appear to accept that oh okay, they're ghosts now. And definitely not AI.

- The Omega AI is evil and wants to rule the world and shit but he's pretty stupid, so his evil plans don't work very well. His biggest advantage is, guess what, his ability to possess people. He spends the majority of his time possessing Doc, a pacifist medic who isn't Red or Blue. If you've seen a Very Potter Musical, it's very Voldy/Quirrel. His intelligence seems to be tempered by whoever he's possessing at the time.

- Wyoming is another former Freelancer who is now a bounty hunter, and he's evil. And so is his AI, Gamma. They work with Omega. And are evil.

- Tucker finds an energy sword (common to the Elite/Sangheili in Halo) which is apparently a super special DESTINY sword in RvB, which makes him the Chosen One. Or something. The sword only activates for him, anyway. He also gets impregnated by an alien, Crunchbite (an Elite/Sangheili but never identified as Covenant, only able to speak in "blargs" and "honks" despite the Elites in Halo speaking English) and has an alien baby named Junior that apparently is/will be very important to the alien religion. Wyoming, Tex, Omega and Gamma try to kidnap Junior at the end of season 5 so they can use him to enslave his own species/take over the galaxy/end the war.

- Needless to say, they fail. Wyoming ends up dead, Tex's ship piloted by Sheila explodes and crashes, and as far as the rest of the teams know at that point, Omega and Gamma and Junior and Tex and Sheila all blow up and die.

VI. Red vs Blue: Reconstruction (season 6): Has a miniseries prequel, Recovery One, featuring Wash, South, Delta, and York's dead body.

- The Covenant war is now over. Freelancer Agent Washington (you remember him, right?) has been dug out of the psych ward by Project Freelancer and now works as a Recovery Agent, designated Recovery One, whose job it is to respond to distress beacons activated by the armors of dead/dying Freelancers and make sure that their very expensive AIs and special equipment are brought back to the Project. The Freelancers are told that their armor going offline aka them getting killed will automatically delete their AIs, but this isn't true. Wash is first shown responding to the beacon in York's armor (despite York being an escapee and apparently the Project having a way to track him all this time WHATEVER CANON WHATEVER) and Wash recovers both Delta and York's special tech, his healing unit. Although Wash was certified Article 12 (Unfit for Duty) after the Epsilon incident, the Project restores him to active duty because he loudly and frequently declares a distrust of AIs after his experience with Epsilon, and refuses to ever sync with another AI. The Project decides they could use someone who is guaranteed not to steal a recovered AI and run off it (a sensible fear, apparently, because this is exactly what Agent South Dakota aka Recovery Two ends up doing, taking off with Delta for a while until Wash kills her and gets him back).

- The Project also has a little problem they want Wash to investigate. Something is hunting down Freelancers and stealing their equipment and AI. The Project (apparently after all this time) is now being investigated by the UNSC, and the string of murders (5 within 1 month) is not helping. The culprit turns out to be a former Freelancer, Agent Maine, who has gone insane and started 'eating' the AI fragments, driven by the will of his AI, Sigma, to re-assemble/find Alpha and collect all the fragments and become complete. As the Meta, Maine cannibalizes the armor of those he kills, acquiring their armor enhancements and making himself more powerful.

- An incident occurs at Freelancer outpost 17-B "Valhalla." A black ship crash lands in the area (it's Tex's ship from Season 5, of course), and the Valhalla Blues, having no fucking clue what's going on, investigate. There is no one left alive on the ship, apparently, so they take the bodies/equipment back to their base. Except then they start killing each other and destroying their own radio equipment. And then attack the Reds for their radios. And then something else shows up and slaughters the rest of them, leaving only one survivor to report to the Project what he'd witnessed.

- So what actually happened? Turns out one of the bodies on the ship was Tex's, with Omega still apparently active, and in a rage he started possessing the Valhalla Blues and causing them to massacre each other. His hunt for working radio equipment was him trying to escape the location, as he travels on radio waves. The Meta (the something else) then appeared, acquiring Tex's cloaking tech from her armor, Wyoming's time manipulation tech from his helmet, and devoured Gamma, Omega, and Tex, integrating them into his mind. The Meta slaughters the remaining survivors minus that one witness, and later ambushes and kills two Recovery Agents sent to investigate the area, and then vanishes for parts unknown. Wash is now the unlucky SOB tracking him down. YOU CAN SEE ALL THIS IN THE BADASS TRAILER HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHw19Ug_OBU

- Long story short, Wash collects some of the Blood Gulch Reds and Blues (Church, Caboose, Sarge, Simmons, and Grif) to help him stop the Meta. Church wants no part in this bullshit but does want to find out what happened to Tex, as she never re-appeared after her ship went down. Along the way, Wash decides to be a dumbshit and lets Caboose of all people sync with and carry Delta around, rather than sync with Delta himself. The Meta corners Caboose and knocks him out, and then proceeds to absorb/eat Delta in the most hideous scene ever ohmygod. York-and-Delta fans promptly flip tables and call Wash filthy names.

- Turns out Wash doesn't just want to stop the Meta, though, he wants to bring down the corrupt Project. Wash, having synced with Epsilon and therefore given access to his memories, is apparently the only Freelancer with full knowledge of the Alpha experiments, and pretends to have a prejudice against AI so no other AI will be assigned to him and become aware of his memories and his plans, which could be reported back to the Project authorities. Wash tells the Reds and Blues that they are going to break into Freelancer Command in order to steal the Alpha AI because that will somehow help them stop the Meta's rampage, but after breaking in he reveals his goal all along had been Epsilon, who hadn't been deleted but kept in storage. When Church goes WTF DUDE HOW IS THIS GOING TO STOP THE CRAZY PSYCHO SERIAL KILLER I THOUGHT WE NEEDED THE ALPHA, Wash calmly informs him that...

- Church is the Alpha. Church doesn't believe him, understandably, so Wash throws up his hands and says fine here you and your little gang of morons take Epsilon in his storage container and escape and give him to the authorities as evidence so Freelancer will be shut down, I'll stay here and GIVE MY LIFE to EMP Command and the Meta, wiping out the files of the former and hopefully the AIs in the latter. The Reds and Blues steal some jeeps and are set to take off with Epsilon, while Wash tries to get Church one last time to help him and get revenge for Tex and everyone else who had been hurt by the Director's evil deeds.

- Wash goes to set off the EMP by himself and gets shot (badly enough to set off his own beacon) and cornered by the Meta, spurred on by the Director via radio who now knows that Wash is no longer his dog. The Director orders Meta to kill Wash. ALL SEEMS LOST but Church suddenly appears in his AI form, having apparently accepted his true nature and synced with Wash. Meta freezes, recognizing the Alpha and no longer obeying the Director, and Church jumps into the Meta to distract him/hold him still while Wash sets off the EMP.

- Wouldn't an EMP kill Church, if he's an AI. Yes, yes it would. It would also destroy Delta, Omega, Gamma, Theta, Sigma, Tex and whoever else the Meta had absorbed. Which is what happens. Word of God confirms that these characters, or at least these versions of these characters, died in the EMP burst. Epsilon is taken out of range of the blast by Caboose, and survives intact.

- So what happens in the end. The Director of Project Freelancer is arrested and put on trial by the Chairman, a UNSC member who had been heading the investigation against the Project during the events of Reconstruction. Presumably, he is one of the authorities that Wash had intended Epsilon to be brought to, so Epsilon's memories could be used as evidence of the Project's crimes. Due to the Reds' meddling around with the computers in Freelancer Command, all records of the Blues have been erased, so when Caboose goes careening off with Epsilon, no one official knows to even look for him, and Caboose decides to keep Epsilon and make him into an awesome robot best friend. The Reds are picked up by UNSC personnel, determined to be idiots with no punishable connection to what happened at Freelancer Command, and sent to a new outpost, Valhalla, to carry on with their 'training exercises.' Caboose also eventually shows up there because he just does, carrying Epsilon with him.

VIb. Red vs Blue: Relocated Another miniseries, taking place a short while after Reconstruction. All you really need to know is this:

- Nothing important happens except that Donut shows up and you find out Tucker has been somewhere else (Sandtrap) all this time and is in trouble and needs to be rescued. Gee.

VII. Red vs Blue: Recreation is a direct sequel to Reconstructed and Relocated, and is basically a "middle act" for setting the stage for the final season. It begins where Relocated left off, with Donut's arrival mentioning something "under the sand" at Sandtrap.

-That sounds like a plot point. And it is. Donut recovers eventually to visit his buddy Caboose at Blue base, to share the message with him. Epsilon overhears and--

-Wait, what? Ah yes, you see, Epsilon might be a little storage container lying around on the floor but it seems he wasn't dormant at all. As in, has probably been awake the entire time he was in storage at Freelancer Command. In addition to picking up the detailS about Sandtrap, Epsilon has also been listening to Caboose's complete lies stories about his adventures with Church while stationed at Blood Gulch.

-Hold on, that sounds like it can only end in disaster. Yep. But it's going to take a little to really hit home. Caboose first takes Epsilon over to the Red base's holo-chamber to open him up, where Epsilon uses the voice and likeness of Delta in order to convince him to go to Sandtrap, mentioning that some Freelancer agents were once assigned there but left without doing anything. Mystery, go. Off to Sandtra--

-It's dangerous to go alone! Take this! That's right. Through a rather convoluted discussion, the Reds decide that their best chance at restoring the Red army's former glory is to get the Blues reinstated (the Blues were deleted from Command's records, remember), which means rescuing Tucker which means accompanying Caboose on a dangerous, possibly deadly mission. So they go. And when they get there and rendezvous with Tucker they learn that the supposed dig team (comprised of humans and aliens and led by a human named CT (aka Freelancer Agent Connecticut) are in fact a band of pirates who have killed the original dig team and are now waging an all-out assault on lonely Tucker for control of an ancient alien temple.

-Meanwhile, Wash is wheeling and dealing with the Chairman to get out of a UNSC maximum security prison, where he's been since the end of Reconstruction. So much for anyone being grateful for his sabotaging Freelancer Command. Instead, they lock him up for destruction of military property etc, while the rest of the Reds get written off as idiots and given the bases in Valhalla without any punishment. Anyway, the Chairman wants Epsilon, the "missing piece of the puzzle." Having gotten a call from Caboose on his private channel, Wash had discovered that Epsilon hadn't been erased by the EMP blast but was still in Caboose's possession. Wash then goes to the Chairman, who may or may not be Corrupted By Power now and doesn't seem to be the good guy he was before, and insists that his record be cleared and sentence lifted if he successfully retrieves Epsilon. The Chairman agrees, and Wash leaves for Valhalla.

-Back in Sandtrap, Tucker reveals he spent his year away becoming a badass. He's been holding the pirates off single-handedly before the rescue team's arrival, and, he explains, since the end of the war he and his half-alien mpreg-baby Junior have been serving as liaisons with the UNSC to bolster human-alien relations. No one, so far, has questioned just how Junior survived the crash or what happened to him, and Junior himself has yet to make an appearance, but no one very much cares because pirates! everywhere! And Caboose has gone and somehow accidentally installed Epsilon into the body of a very powerful Forerunner monitor, which finally wakes up sounding and acting like none other than Church.

-It's alive! Church is aliiiiive! Only not exactly. In this case, it's Church as Caboose knew him at Blood Gulch, and he's simply reconstructed his "memories" based on Caboose's stories, which are, of course, full of holes and hilarious contradictions. For instance, Epsilon insists that he is Caboose's bff because that is the relationship Caboose always wanted with the real Church, who in reality treats Caboose with as much annoyance as he does everyone else. Caboose left Tucker out of a lot of his stories, so Epsilon doesn't 'know' Tucker very well. Epsilon also thinks Sarge has a pirate voice (and therefore a pirate ship), and thinks Donut is actually a girl because Caboose labeled pink armor as "girl." Epsilon also seems to have no knowledge of being tortured by the Project, as those details lie in his longterm memory which he claims has been locked down. But our heroes don't have much time to explore the finer details of all this, because the pirates break into the temple.

-Meanwhile, back at Valhalla, the Meta shows up again. Yes, the Meta. Who should have been erased or incapacitated or arrested or something, but instead survived the EMP. He's just crazy Agent Maine now, without AIs in his brain to talk to him or help run all his special equipment, but he's as bestial as ever and chases the Reds throughout the canyon.

-The pirates break into the temple and attempt to kidnap Epsilon. The aliens turn on their comrades because Epsilon's body is a religious icon to them. Fighting happens. Epsilon escapes CT's grasp and kills him with laserface on the roof of the temple. The aliens start gathering around ominously.

-MEANWHILE, the Meta is cornering the Reds in Valhalla. All hope is lost, it seems, and then Agent Washington shows up! HURRAY! Except he addresses the Meta like a fellow operative, telling him to stand down, and then shoots Lopez and Donut. Yes. Wash just killed Donut.

-What the fuck! Wasn't Wash a good guy before this? Apparently the writers decided that making him a complete asshole, and also an idiot, was a great idea. ICly, he apparently became very bitter in prison and lost all resemblance to the Wash of Reconstruction and has resolved to kill people that stand in the way of his freedom.

VIII. Red vs Blue: Revelation yadda yadda final season.

-Still in Sandtrap. The aliens have formed a congregation and are worshipping Epsilon as a god, which he thinks is pretty cool. The Reds don't quite know what to do with a floating alien bowling ball that acts like a teenage, retarded Church and now has religious fanatics as devotees, but they also don't much care because they get a call from Simmons (who is back at Valhalla with Doc being menaced by Meta and evil!Wash) and figure out something is wrong on the homefront.

-Epsilon starts having alarming flashbacks. Even though his longterm memory (which would contain the memories of torture and would probably make him crazy if he accessed it again) has been shut off, he's seeing visions and shit, including the image of a figure in black armor (Tex) entering the Blue base at Valhalla. When the Reds head back home to Valhalla, Epsilon follows them.

-The Reds re-combine and attack Meta and Wash, who are now Definitely Bad Guys. They have some success until Meta turns the tables and stomps them. Fortunately, Epsilon shows up right about then, having no clue what is going on, and Meta seems to recognize that Epsilon is one of his coveted AI fragments because he stops attacking the Reds and starts chasing Epsilon. Epsilon was apparently never told anything about the Meta and is unconcerned, and floats off to lead Meta away from the battered Reds.

-After all this time, Epsilon finally sees Washington and reacts instinctively and violently, suddenly overcome by rage and firing his Monitor body's powerful laser. He doesn't hit Wash but brings down a wall between them, and then promptly freaks out, claiming that he has to go back and "can't let him find her first." The him is probably Wash, and the her is obviously Tex. Who is dead. So this is all very suspenseful. Epsilon then "passes out" from the energy drain.

-The Monitor body is brought back online briefly, but glows green instead of blue and speaks as Epsilon-Delta, the memory of Delta that Epsilon carries. Epsilon-Delta explains that all of the AI fragments still exist in some form inside Epsilon's memories, although Epsilon isn't aware of that, and that the encounter with Wash jarred loose the locks that are keeping all the bad shit in Epsilon's mind sealed away. Epsilon-Delta warns that Epsilon "may pursue certain memories" and that he will "start the cycle again," aka will probably dig up his own past and go psycho from it all over again. Epsilon wakes up and seems oddly coherent and serious, and asks Caboose to accompany him to "the facility."

-EVERYONE GOES TO THE FACILITY. It's a super secret Freelancer facility that has more of the Director's super secret stuff, and Epsilon navigates it like he's been there before, pretending to be the Director in order to unlock doors and open files and get the cooperation of the AI in charge, FILSS (aka Phyllis aka Sheila). Epsilon gets increasingly creepy and single-minded and opens a room filled with dozens of identical armored bodies. Church bodies. They are presumably all robotic, freestanding in the middle of a room, but Epsilon makes his way to a glass chamber as the back of the room, possibly a cryo chamber.

-Hey guys Tex is back. The body is the cryo chamber or whatever seems to be a robot body, and Epsilon is able to implant his memory of Tex, Epsilon-Tex, into the black armored body and re-activate it. This Tex only has access to Epsilon's knowledge of the Blood Gulch crew, evidenced by the fact that she doesn't seem to know Tucker's name. She's pretty pissed about life in general and thrashes the Reds + Tucker just for being there, but is finally deterred by Epsilon, who has transferred himself into one of the humanoid spare Church bodies. She's not happy about Epsilon 'bringing her back to life' against her will, and treats him pretty much the same way the original Tex treated the original Church. She also seems to be suffering from Epsilon's amnesia issues, trying to access her personnel file from the Freelancer records, but of course it doesn't exist or has been erased. Wanting to know "what's been done to her," she heads to Sidewinder, the snowy and isolated Freelancer base that the Project had once used to store Alpha.

-A bunch of goddamn stuff happens. Shit gets super complicated but the basic gist is that the Meta is trying to eat Epsilon-Tex, Wash still wants Epsilon as his get out of jail free card, and the Reds and Blues have finally come to realize that they've been jerked around by Freelancer since forever and they're not even real soldiers, just low level washouts recruited as cannon fodder for the Project to run tests on. They decide to join the fray anyway, and it comes down to everyone vs Meta and Meta is still winning. Epsilon-Tex becomes trapped in a jury-rigged storage unit that, once locked down, can't be accessed again and would trap any AI inside it ~forever~. Epsilon dives inside to try and find Epsilon-Tex before the lock closes, but doesn't succeed. He's stuck inside there, replaying his memories of Blood Gulch and living a dream life as the original Church from Season 1, waiting for Tex to show up so they can be together. This is his hideous bittersweet happy ending. Wash fakes his death and ends up becoming one of the Blues, escaping the notice of the authorities, the Meta is put down for good, and the Reds and Blues all go home to their silly bases.

THE END.