Application/Important OOC Information
Player Name: AF/HotAndCold
Personal Journal: hotandcoldrp
Contact: AIM: DecepticonAF e-mail: decepticonaf@aol.com
Character Name: Agent Washington AKA "Wash" AKA Recovery One AKA David. Dude's got a lot of aliases.
Canon: Red vs. Blue
Age: Never explicitly stated. If I had to guesstimate, I think I might say 33.
Background: Once upon a time, in the 26th century, humans were at war with the Covenant, a coalition of a few religiously fanatic alien species who'd all decided that the very existence of humans was an affront to their religion, and so were trying to eliminate them. Fun times, most certainly. The UNSC, Earth's government, sponsored a number of projects to try and find the way to win the war. One of these projects was known as Project Freelancer, with the aim to test soldiers with aggressive A.I. Unfortunately, the UNSC was only willing to give Project Freelancer a single A.I., called the Alpha, which was, in fact, a duplicate of the mind of the Project's Director himself.
The Director, however, felt that time was too short to run only one experiment at a time; he needed more than one A.I. if he was to have any hope of coming up with a solution before humanity was exterminated. As a duplicate of a human mind, a smart A.I. like the Alpha couldn't be copied, but it could be split by torturing it into having a Multiple Personality Disorder and then harvesting the fragmented personalities into individual A.I., and the Director proceeded to do exactly that to the Alpha. The fragmented personalities that could be used in combat were given the names of Greek letters as well: Beta, then Delta, and so on. The ones that couldn't, along with the remnants of the Alpha itself were put into storage, since it was cheaper to store them than it was to delete them.
Of course, the A.I. were not the only part of the Project Freelancer experiment. There were also the soldiers-the titular Freelancers. There were apparently 48 of them, each named for one of the United States of America-Florida was apparently no longer a state at the time and North and South Carolina shared their Freelancer. Agent Washington was in the first group to be implanted with A.I., and he received the A.I. known as Epsilon. Epsilon's fragment of the Alpha was not a personality trait, but rather, its memories of the torture it endured at the Director's hands, and, context would suggest, certain memories of being the Director himself.
Epsilon went insane not long thereafter, unraveling itself in Wash's head, casting off its memories and passing them to him. This, understandably, drove Wash pretty nuts himself. The Epsilon A.I. was removed and Wash thought it was deleted, but it was, in fact, merely put into storage instead, as, again, it was cheaper to store it than delete it. After this, no other Freelancers were implanted with A.I. and the Project seemingly dissolved not long thereafter.
However, while the Freelancers were incredibly competent soldiers, they were not invincible, and eventually some of them started dying, prompting the need for their A.I. to be recovered to keep them from falling into enemy hands. For this, the leaders of Project Freelancer needed someone that they could trust not to steal the A.I. for themselves. Enter again Agent Washington. Ostensibly, Wash would never let another A.I. in his head because of how traumatic Epsilon's demise was. In reality, though, it was because he was afraid that if he was implanted with another A.I., it would find out about the memories he'd gotten from Epsilon and also find out that he'd decided to take Project Freelancer down. The Director and the Counselor didn't suspect that, however, and Wash was redclared sane and given the new codename of Recovery One.
Just prior to Wash's actual introduction to RvB, there was a string of suspicious deaths: Freelancers who still had A.I. were being killed and their A.I. and armor enhancements stolen before Wash could get to them. In the middle of this string was Agent York, who died of completely unrelated causes. Wash recovered the logical Delta, York's A.I., but before he could return to Command, another Recovery Beacon activated. There he found Agents North and South Dakota, North dead and South unconscious. North and South were twins, and North had been implanted with an A.I. while South was not. Wash questioned South, but didn't get anything particularly useful out of her.
Command ordered Wash to dispose of her, but instead he recruited her in his fight against the Meta, the thing that'd been killing the Freelancers. He had Delta implant itself in her, and while his plan was that he'd fight off the Meta while she escaped with Delta, she had a different one. She shot Wash in the back, set his armor to explode in 100 seconds, and confronted the Meta with a choice: it could attack her and take Delta, sure, but then it would lose its chance to get whatever Wash's armor had. The Meta went after Wash, letting South escape. What, exactly, happened to Wash next isn't entirely clear: maybe the Meta did take Wash's armor enhancement, maybe he recovered before it could. What Wash's original armor enhancement is was never stated; I suspect that it's one that needs an A.I. to run it, anyway. Regardless, Wash had also taken York's armor enhancement when he recovered Delta, and that was a healing unit, so he managed to survive the encounter and return to Command either way.
Over a year later, the war against the Covenant had ended and Wash was informed of an incident involving the Meta at the Red/Blue outpost of Valhalla. Here, the Meta had acquired the Omega A.I., so Wash was sent to Blood Gulch, Omega's last reported location before Valhalla, to talk to the soldiers there. When he got there, however, he found the canyon almost entirely abandoned. He spoke with the two human soldiers remaining and was directed to find Caboose at Rat's Nest. The Lieutenant at Rat's Nest gleefully handed over Caboose and Wash very quickly found out why: Caboose was one of the dumbest people alive, and a danger to himself and others (mostly others).
Regardless, Caboose did have knowledge of Omega, and enthusiastically lead Wash to somebody who had more: his old teammate, Church. Church was not at all happy to see them, as he hated Caboose and hated Freelancers on principle, as his old girlfriend, Tex, had been a Freelancer and, in fact, Omega's partnered Freelancer specifically. Church initially refused to go with Wash and Caboose, but when Wash told him that Tex's ship had crash-landed in Valhalla, he agreed to go with them to see it.
Unfortunately, they were not allowed into the Valhalla area to get to the ship, so Wash snuck past the guards and blew some stuff up as a distraction to allow Church and Caboose to get in the area. There, they approached the ship and had its onboard A.I. replay the recorded log of the crash. Afterwards and before they could try to get into Blue Base to see Tex's corpse, Wash received the transmission of a Recovery Beacon and was informed that it belonged to none other than Agent South Dakota.
South was locked in battle with the Meta, keeping it away from her with her armor enhancement, a domed energy shield. She was running out of power very quickly, and she prepared to abandon both Delta and her armor enhancement to be taken by the Meta to cover her own escape. However, just as her power ran out, Wash and the Blues appeared on the scene, attacking the Meta. Wash instructed the Blues to keep South from escaping, so Church told Caboose to "help" her. Caboose promptly shot her on accident. The Meta used the time-altering powers it had taken to escape the battle, and Wash and the Blues regrouped to deal with South.
Wash had Delta transferred to Caboose. When South said she couldn't walk on her own in her current state, Wash suggested she started crawling, until Delta interjected, explaining what South was planning to do before Wash's arrival on the scene and that in his time with South, he learned that South had set North up to be killed by the Meta in a similar manner. Wash noted the obvious trend shown by these and by South's shooting him in the back, and, acting on Delta's advice, promptly shot South in the head, much to the shock of the Blues, Church in particular.
Wash cleaned up the body and reported that Caboose was responsible for the death (Command already had a keyboard shortcut for Caboose's team-kills: Ctrl+F+U). Soon thereafter, Wash once again received a Recovery Beacon transmission. Command confirmed that it belonged to Agent Maine-better known as none other than the Meta itself-but before they could pass along the coordinates for where to find it, the transmission was jammed. However, realizing that the Meta's armor was bugging out and it needed to, in a pretty damn near literal sense, recharge its batteries, the Blues had a pretty good idea of where in the area it would probably go: the windmill-laden Zanzibar.
When Wash and the Blues arrived at Zanzibar, they found that the Meta had already slaughtered the local Reds and Blues. They infiltrated the base, and Wash engaged the Meta once more in combat. It defeated him, and went to escape, but Church managed to score an incredible ricochet sniper shot and peg it in the ankle. However, before Wash and Church could pursue it, they were interrupted by the arrival of the Reds who had been stationed at Blood Gulch, whom had been tricked by the Meta into tracking down and attacking Wash.
While the Reds attacked Wash and Church, the Meta collected Delta from an unconscious Caboose and recharged its armor on Zanzibar's generators. Wash confronted the Reds and managed to convince them that he was, in fact, from Command and not secretly a Blue by giving them their secure codeword ("The codeword is... codeword?"). However, Sgt. Grif, one of the Reds, was having none of this, and decided to approach one of the local Reds for help, attempting to give orders the Meta, who had changed its armor color from the regular white to red. The Meta was having none of that, though, and promptly threw a Warthog jeep at a swiftly retreating Grif.
Wash instructed the remaining Reds and Church to keep the Meta distracted while he tended to Caboose. Once he established that the Meta had taken Delta and that Caboose apparently wasn't going to be waking up any point soon, he returned to the battlefield, wielding a Gatling gun he'd taken off a nearby turret. The Meta once again used its time-altering capabilities to escape the fight, and Wash's motley crew once again regrouped around an injured teammate. Wash explained that Caboose was comatose and went to radio Command, instructing Church and the Reds to prep Caboose for evac, unless they had a way to see inside Caboose's head and figure out what was wrong.
Unbeknownst to Wash, they did: Church was, in fact, deceased, thanks to none other than Caboose himself, and, after instructing Simmons, one of the Reds, to keep Wash distracted, he possessed Caboose, taking a trip inside his head. There, he encountered a recording left by Delta, instructing him to deliver the following message to Wash: "Memory is the key." Frustrated to have received nothing more than a riddle for his trouble, Church left Caboose's mind, only to find that Simmons, it turned out, was really bad at distracting and Wash was right there staring at him.
The Reds and Blues then messily tried to explain how Church was a ghost, arguing pettily the whole time, until Wash got fed up with them and told them to stop. He sent the Reds off to assess the local vehicles and told Church to get back in his robot body, arguing with Church while he tried to deliver Delta's message. He eventually did manage to pass the message along, and Wash mused on it for a bit before coming to realize what Delta had meant. He announced to the two teams (Caboose having miraculously recovered earlier) that they were going to Command, and when the Reds informed him that they wouldn't be capable of getting him two functional Warthogs in the time frame he wanted, they turned back again to Valhalla.
There, the Reds convinced Wash to let them handle the acquisition of a second Warthog, proceeding to get in a fight with a group of guards in their own Warthog while Wash and the Blues spectated. When it became apparent that the Reds were not likely to win on their own, Wash left Church and Caboose on their own as he went to drag the Reds' collective ass out of the fire. The Reds, however, managed to destroy the enemy Warthog. When Wash angrily asked them where they were going to get another vehicle now, a Hornet ship rose up behind him and fired on them.
It was around then that Wash noticed Church possessing a local guard and sneaking into the Blue Base to see Tex's body. Aggravated, Wash followed him in, rescuing him from an actual guard and then chastising him for distracting him in the middle of a mission like that. They left the base, to find the Reds still fleeing the Hornet. Wash quickly and efficiently took the ship down himself. The Reds and Blues regrouped, and Wash polled them for ideas on how to infiltrate Command, giving the very limited explanation that they needed to get in there to unlock the Alpha.
The Reds declared that they wouldn't be coming. When Wash tried to order them to come, they explained that "Freelancer" was not a rank, much less one high enough to hand out orders like that, and that the other Freelancers that they'd had experience with had never given out orders, but instead offered to trade favors. Wash agreed to trade them a favor, and after some discussion among themselves, Sarge declared that they wanted Grif demoted, much to Grif's and Simmons's surprise. Wash agreed immediately, and Grif was once again a Private.
The Reds' compliance thereby assured, they returned to the issue of how to infiltrate the base, until Caboose of all people came up with the solution: Command's guards wouldn't be able to see inside a tank. And so they went to Command, Wash and Church (possessing a guard) in a Warthog and the Reds and Caboose in a tank.
Inside one of the buildings at Command, Wash elaborated a bit on his plan to the group. He would take Church as a fake hostage down to the facility where the A.I. were stored, while the Reds and Caboose would wait and then start causing trouble once it was discovered what Wash and Church were doing and all the guards in the base started running towards them. Wash took Church to the A.I. storage facility successfully, but not to find the Alpha there. Instead, the A.I. that Wash removed from storage was none other than his own A.I., Epsilon.
There, Wash finally explained his logic to Church. Delta had told him "Memory is the key." So Wash had remembered his first encounter with Delta, at which point he explained to the confused A.I. that it was cheaper to store it than delete it, which led him to realize that Epsilon had not been deleted like he'd thought it was, but instead was simply stored. He also explained to Church that the Alpha had never been copied, merely split, and that the fragment that was Epsilon was the Alpha's memories, and memory is the key.
Confused, Church asked where the Alpha was. After all, wasn't that what they were there for? No, Wash explained, the Alpha wasn't kept at that facility at all. It used to be, but some of the Freelancers had organized and tried to break in and free it, at which point it was transferred elsewhere. Elsewhere being a backwater canyon in the middle of nowhere that nobody ever went to. And then a different secluded base all by itself for 14 months. There's no such thing as ghosts, Wash reasoned. The Alpha was none other than Church himself.
Church didn't believe him. They argued briefly, until alarms started going off. They grabbed Epsilon and left, returning to where the Reds and Caboose were waiting. They weren't there for long when the Meta arrived on the scene, engaging the local forces in battle. While the Meta and the locals were both distracted, Wash took the Reds and Blues down to the motorpool and explained a plan to them: Caboose and the Reds would escape in a couple of Warthogs and take Epsilon to the authorities so the Director could be taken down. Wash and Church would go back into the base and set off its final failsafe, a powerful E.M.P., which would shut down the A.I. the Meta'd collected.
Church initially refused, still adamant that he was not the Alpha, but when Wash explained that the leader of the group of Freelancers that had tried to free the Alpha way back when was no other than Tex herself, Church finally agreed. He left his robot body in the Warthog Caboose was driving and transferred himself to Wash's armor. At this point, the Meta had defeated Command's forces, and followed Wash into the base while Caboose and the Reds escaped, just as planned.
At the heart of the base, Wash spoke with the Counselor and then the Director over a P.A., the latter of whom revealed that Wash's real name is David. Wash continually tried to deflect their queries, in no mood to talk to either of them. When Wash successfully accessed the console controlling the E.M.P., the Director realized that Epsilon had inherited the Alpha's memories, and he let the Meta into the room, instructing him to kill Wash. The Meta fired, hitting Wash in the chest.
The Meta demanded to know where to find the Alpha and the Director and Counselor told it that it had been moved away and it would be taken to see it after Wash was dealt with. Wash, however, offered a counterpoint: the Alpha was right here. Church promptly materialized next to Wash, to the shock of the Meta. Church transferred himself to the Meta, buying Wash the time he needed to set off the E.M.P.
And it's right after the E.M.P. goes off that Wash gets landed in the Netherworld, still bleeding.
Personality: Wash is, basically, :| incarnate. He's incredibly serious. I mean incredibly serious. Not "serious for a Red vs. Blue character," serious period serious. Wash is not a joker and on the rare, rare occasions that he seems to exhibit any sort of sense of humor, it's deadpan and scathing. Generally, though, Wash is very focused on his job and has no time for comedy. (Though the universe does sometime see fit to play jokes on him.) He's very direct and straightforward. He speaks tersely and to-the-point and frowns upon beating around the bush in general. Whenever the Reds and/or Blues fall into their usual aimless bickering, Wash stops them and pulls them back onto the original train of thought. He has half a dozen different ways to say "let's get going".
Wash is of above-average intelligence. While he's no super-genius, he is noticeably smarter than many of the people he interacts with. He's shown to have a good head for strategy/tactics and he comes up with some pretty decent plans. He's also a pretty damned competent fighter, taking down a Hornet in a matter of moments. Interesting to note, however, is that Wash is, at the absolute best, the 7th highest battle rated Freelancer: Delta states that the 4 Freelancers that the Meta took down prior to the start of the Recovery One miniseries were all of higher battle rating than Wash, it's safe to assume that Maine was also of a higher rating considering that he killed said higher rated Freelancers, and Tex was not killed by the Meta but was the best of the Freelancers. In all likelihood, Wash is even further down the list than that.
What Wash lacks in the department of being a pure force of fucking nature on the battlefield, he makes up in drive. Wash is hella driven. I mean hella. Once he decides to do something, he does it, come hell or high water. Even if it takes years, even if it's not his main focus for a while, eventually he'll get it done. He strongly implies that he was planning to take Project Freelancer down from pretty much the moment he got Epsilon's memories. That's at least 5 years in between deciding to do something and successfully pulling it off. And he never wavered in his determination to give the Director that figurative kick to the pants.
Wash's reserves of compassion are... limited, but existent. He allows South a minute with North's corpse before he cleans it up, and he expresses commiseration when Church encounters Tex's body at Valhalla, but, well. The exchange with South goes like this: "I have to take care of your brother now, South. You might not want to watch this part." "Can I have a few minutes alone with him first?" "You can have one minute." "I guess I should say thank you." "I guess you should get busy. Your minute's already started." And the encounter with Church includes the line, "We've all lost people, Church. What's important is that you remember her. And what's even more important is that you don't slow me down while I'm in the middle of a mission!" Wash understands the basic human feelings of love, loss, regret, etc., but he doesn't seem to be too good at expressing them or feeling them quite right, as his mission always comes first with him.
Well, not only that, but the fact that he is, well, quite literally ex-insane might have something to do with it. Or a lot to do with it. Some may even argue the "ex" part there. Wash went insane when Epsilon did; he outright states that he has difficulty distinguishing between thoughts that were his and thoughts that were Epsilon's as it unraveled. He was certified Article Twelve after that: unfit for duty. And he undoubtedly was at the time. He's recovered fairly well, though. Enough to be fit for active duty once more, certainly, but also certainly not enough to ever be a civilian again. He just doesn't have the social skills for it any more. He's kind of defensive about it, though, as shown in his interactions with Church right after Wash kills South. ("You don't need to treat me like that. I'm not crazy, okay? I'm totally, completely sane. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go blow up this dead body.")
Wash is a skeptic. (He's going to have so much fun in the Netherworld! 8D) It's his refusal to accept the easy answer of Church being a ghost that leads him to the correct conclusion that Church is actually the Alpha. This is a repeated point of contention between him and the Reds and Blues, Church in particular. Wash has a pretty set idea of what he considers plausible and what's just plain dumb and it irritates him to no end when something deviates from that standard, which, unfortunately for him, happens all throughout Reconstruction, from the moment he first encounters Sister in Blood Gulch, to his very last scene of the series, where the computer terminal in Command activates an "Emp," invalidating his argument that it's correctly pronounced "E.M.P." His very last line in the series is "Emp? You have got to be fucking ki-"
Basically, Wash is a very serious guy in a very irreverent world and he hates it. Or, even more basically: :|
Class Title: Recovery One
Possessions: -A set of MJOLNIR Mk. VI armor
-A battle rifle
-A pistol
-Possibly an unspecified armor enhancement. Canon never says exactly what Wash's armor was designed to do or whether or not said enhancement was taken by the Meta after the Recovery One miniseries or not. Regardless of whether or not he has it, he never apparently uses it, which leads me to believe that it's either something completely useless and negligible (the unlikely option) or it's something that would be useful, but requires an A.I. to run (the option I'm more likely to bet money on). ...Basically this bullet point is useless but I've never not been one for full disclosure, so. 8| Let's admit it, you stopped reading as soon as you saw a full paragraph here that started with an italicized "possibly".
-A Mongoose (which is actually an ATV, but frequently referred to in canon as a motorcycle)
-Delicious Cake x2
-Gold Bar x4
-Tickets x3
-Liquor x4
-Game Console x4
-Gift Card x3
Rooming Assignment: Outside the castle in a super-sized dollhouse in a tree. He's... not happy.
Job: Bank Guard. Salary: 20000HL/day
Personal Journal: hotandcoldrp
Contact: AIM: DecepticonAF e-mail: decepticonaf@aol.com
Character Name: Agent Washington AKA "Wash" AKA Recovery One AKA David. Dude's got a lot of aliases.
Canon: Red vs. Blue
Age: Never explicitly stated. If I had to guesstimate, I think I might say 33.
Background: Once upon a time, in the 26th century, humans were at war with the Covenant, a coalition of a few religiously fanatic alien species who'd all decided that the very existence of humans was an affront to their religion, and so were trying to eliminate them. Fun times, most certainly. The UNSC, Earth's government, sponsored a number of projects to try and find the way to win the war. One of these projects was known as Project Freelancer, with the aim to test soldiers with aggressive A.I. Unfortunately, the UNSC was only willing to give Project Freelancer a single A.I., called the Alpha, which was, in fact, a duplicate of the mind of the Project's Director himself.
The Director, however, felt that time was too short to run only one experiment at a time; he needed more than one A.I. if he was to have any hope of coming up with a solution before humanity was exterminated. As a duplicate of a human mind, a smart A.I. like the Alpha couldn't be copied, but it could be split by torturing it into having a Multiple Personality Disorder and then harvesting the fragmented personalities into individual A.I., and the Director proceeded to do exactly that to the Alpha. The fragmented personalities that could be used in combat were given the names of Greek letters as well: Beta, then Delta, and so on. The ones that couldn't, along with the remnants of the Alpha itself were put into storage, since it was cheaper to store them than it was to delete them.
Of course, the A.I. were not the only part of the Project Freelancer experiment. There were also the soldiers-the titular Freelancers. There were apparently 48 of them, each named for one of the United States of America-Florida was apparently no longer a state at the time and North and South Carolina shared their Freelancer. Agent Washington was in the first group to be implanted with A.I., and he received the A.I. known as Epsilon. Epsilon's fragment of the Alpha was not a personality trait, but rather, its memories of the torture it endured at the Director's hands, and, context would suggest, certain memories of being the Director himself.
Epsilon went insane not long thereafter, unraveling itself in Wash's head, casting off its memories and passing them to him. This, understandably, drove Wash pretty nuts himself. The Epsilon A.I. was removed and Wash thought it was deleted, but it was, in fact, merely put into storage instead, as, again, it was cheaper to store it than delete it. After this, no other Freelancers were implanted with A.I. and the Project seemingly dissolved not long thereafter.
However, while the Freelancers were incredibly competent soldiers, they were not invincible, and eventually some of them started dying, prompting the need for their A.I. to be recovered to keep them from falling into enemy hands. For this, the leaders of Project Freelancer needed someone that they could trust not to steal the A.I. for themselves. Enter again Agent Washington. Ostensibly, Wash would never let another A.I. in his head because of how traumatic Epsilon's demise was. In reality, though, it was because he was afraid that if he was implanted with another A.I., it would find out about the memories he'd gotten from Epsilon and also find out that he'd decided to take Project Freelancer down. The Director and the Counselor didn't suspect that, however, and Wash was redclared sane and given the new codename of Recovery One.
Just prior to Wash's actual introduction to RvB, there was a string of suspicious deaths: Freelancers who still had A.I. were being killed and their A.I. and armor enhancements stolen before Wash could get to them. In the middle of this string was Agent York, who died of completely unrelated causes. Wash recovered the logical Delta, York's A.I., but before he could return to Command, another Recovery Beacon activated. There he found Agents North and South Dakota, North dead and South unconscious. North and South were twins, and North had been implanted with an A.I. while South was not. Wash questioned South, but didn't get anything particularly useful out of her.
Command ordered Wash to dispose of her, but instead he recruited her in his fight against the Meta, the thing that'd been killing the Freelancers. He had Delta implant itself in her, and while his plan was that he'd fight off the Meta while she escaped with Delta, she had a different one. She shot Wash in the back, set his armor to explode in 100 seconds, and confronted the Meta with a choice: it could attack her and take Delta, sure, but then it would lose its chance to get whatever Wash's armor had. The Meta went after Wash, letting South escape. What, exactly, happened to Wash next isn't entirely clear: maybe the Meta did take Wash's armor enhancement, maybe he recovered before it could. What Wash's original armor enhancement is was never stated; I suspect that it's one that needs an A.I. to run it, anyway. Regardless, Wash had also taken York's armor enhancement when he recovered Delta, and that was a healing unit, so he managed to survive the encounter and return to Command either way.
Over a year later, the war against the Covenant had ended and Wash was informed of an incident involving the Meta at the Red/Blue outpost of Valhalla. Here, the Meta had acquired the Omega A.I., so Wash was sent to Blood Gulch, Omega's last reported location before Valhalla, to talk to the soldiers there. When he got there, however, he found the canyon almost entirely abandoned. He spoke with the two human soldiers remaining and was directed to find Caboose at Rat's Nest. The Lieutenant at Rat's Nest gleefully handed over Caboose and Wash very quickly found out why: Caboose was one of the dumbest people alive, and a danger to himself and others (mostly others).
Regardless, Caboose did have knowledge of Omega, and enthusiastically lead Wash to somebody who had more: his old teammate, Church. Church was not at all happy to see them, as he hated Caboose and hated Freelancers on principle, as his old girlfriend, Tex, had been a Freelancer and, in fact, Omega's partnered Freelancer specifically. Church initially refused to go with Wash and Caboose, but when Wash told him that Tex's ship had crash-landed in Valhalla, he agreed to go with them to see it.
Unfortunately, they were not allowed into the Valhalla area to get to the ship, so Wash snuck past the guards and blew some stuff up as a distraction to allow Church and Caboose to get in the area. There, they approached the ship and had its onboard A.I. replay the recorded log of the crash. Afterwards and before they could try to get into Blue Base to see Tex's corpse, Wash received the transmission of a Recovery Beacon and was informed that it belonged to none other than Agent South Dakota.
South was locked in battle with the Meta, keeping it away from her with her armor enhancement, a domed energy shield. She was running out of power very quickly, and she prepared to abandon both Delta and her armor enhancement to be taken by the Meta to cover her own escape. However, just as her power ran out, Wash and the Blues appeared on the scene, attacking the Meta. Wash instructed the Blues to keep South from escaping, so Church told Caboose to "help" her. Caboose promptly shot her on accident. The Meta used the time-altering powers it had taken to escape the battle, and Wash and the Blues regrouped to deal with South.
Wash had Delta transferred to Caboose. When South said she couldn't walk on her own in her current state, Wash suggested she started crawling, until Delta interjected, explaining what South was planning to do before Wash's arrival on the scene and that in his time with South, he learned that South had set North up to be killed by the Meta in a similar manner. Wash noted the obvious trend shown by these and by South's shooting him in the back, and, acting on Delta's advice, promptly shot South in the head, much to the shock of the Blues, Church in particular.
Wash cleaned up the body and reported that Caboose was responsible for the death (Command already had a keyboard shortcut for Caboose's team-kills: Ctrl+F+U). Soon thereafter, Wash once again received a Recovery Beacon transmission. Command confirmed that it belonged to Agent Maine-better known as none other than the Meta itself-but before they could pass along the coordinates for where to find it, the transmission was jammed. However, realizing that the Meta's armor was bugging out and it needed to, in a pretty damn near literal sense, recharge its batteries, the Blues had a pretty good idea of where in the area it would probably go: the windmill-laden Zanzibar.
When Wash and the Blues arrived at Zanzibar, they found that the Meta had already slaughtered the local Reds and Blues. They infiltrated the base, and Wash engaged the Meta once more in combat. It defeated him, and went to escape, but Church managed to score an incredible ricochet sniper shot and peg it in the ankle. However, before Wash and Church could pursue it, they were interrupted by the arrival of the Reds who had been stationed at Blood Gulch, whom had been tricked by the Meta into tracking down and attacking Wash.
While the Reds attacked Wash and Church, the Meta collected Delta from an unconscious Caboose and recharged its armor on Zanzibar's generators. Wash confronted the Reds and managed to convince them that he was, in fact, from Command and not secretly a Blue by giving them their secure codeword ("The codeword is... codeword?"). However, Sgt. Grif, one of the Reds, was having none of this, and decided to approach one of the local Reds for help, attempting to give orders the Meta, who had changed its armor color from the regular white to red. The Meta was having none of that, though, and promptly threw a Warthog jeep at a swiftly retreating Grif.
Wash instructed the remaining Reds and Church to keep the Meta distracted while he tended to Caboose. Once he established that the Meta had taken Delta and that Caboose apparently wasn't going to be waking up any point soon, he returned to the battlefield, wielding a Gatling gun he'd taken off a nearby turret. The Meta once again used its time-altering capabilities to escape the fight, and Wash's motley crew once again regrouped around an injured teammate. Wash explained that Caboose was comatose and went to radio Command, instructing Church and the Reds to prep Caboose for evac, unless they had a way to see inside Caboose's head and figure out what was wrong.
Unbeknownst to Wash, they did: Church was, in fact, deceased, thanks to none other than Caboose himself, and, after instructing Simmons, one of the Reds, to keep Wash distracted, he possessed Caboose, taking a trip inside his head. There, he encountered a recording left by Delta, instructing him to deliver the following message to Wash: "Memory is the key." Frustrated to have received nothing more than a riddle for his trouble, Church left Caboose's mind, only to find that Simmons, it turned out, was really bad at distracting and Wash was right there staring at him.
The Reds and Blues then messily tried to explain how Church was a ghost, arguing pettily the whole time, until Wash got fed up with them and told them to stop. He sent the Reds off to assess the local vehicles and told Church to get back in his robot body, arguing with Church while he tried to deliver Delta's message. He eventually did manage to pass the message along, and Wash mused on it for a bit before coming to realize what Delta had meant. He announced to the two teams (Caboose having miraculously recovered earlier) that they were going to Command, and when the Reds informed him that they wouldn't be capable of getting him two functional Warthogs in the time frame he wanted, they turned back again to Valhalla.
There, the Reds convinced Wash to let them handle the acquisition of a second Warthog, proceeding to get in a fight with a group of guards in their own Warthog while Wash and the Blues spectated. When it became apparent that the Reds were not likely to win on their own, Wash left Church and Caboose on their own as he went to drag the Reds' collective ass out of the fire. The Reds, however, managed to destroy the enemy Warthog. When Wash angrily asked them where they were going to get another vehicle now, a Hornet ship rose up behind him and fired on them.
It was around then that Wash noticed Church possessing a local guard and sneaking into the Blue Base to see Tex's body. Aggravated, Wash followed him in, rescuing him from an actual guard and then chastising him for distracting him in the middle of a mission like that. They left the base, to find the Reds still fleeing the Hornet. Wash quickly and efficiently took the ship down himself. The Reds and Blues regrouped, and Wash polled them for ideas on how to infiltrate Command, giving the very limited explanation that they needed to get in there to unlock the Alpha.
The Reds declared that they wouldn't be coming. When Wash tried to order them to come, they explained that "Freelancer" was not a rank, much less one high enough to hand out orders like that, and that the other Freelancers that they'd had experience with had never given out orders, but instead offered to trade favors. Wash agreed to trade them a favor, and after some discussion among themselves, Sarge declared that they wanted Grif demoted, much to Grif's and Simmons's surprise. Wash agreed immediately, and Grif was once again a Private.
The Reds' compliance thereby assured, they returned to the issue of how to infiltrate the base, until Caboose of all people came up with the solution: Command's guards wouldn't be able to see inside a tank. And so they went to Command, Wash and Church (possessing a guard) in a Warthog and the Reds and Caboose in a tank.
Inside one of the buildings at Command, Wash elaborated a bit on his plan to the group. He would take Church as a fake hostage down to the facility where the A.I. were stored, while the Reds and Caboose would wait and then start causing trouble once it was discovered what Wash and Church were doing and all the guards in the base started running towards them. Wash took Church to the A.I. storage facility successfully, but not to find the Alpha there. Instead, the A.I. that Wash removed from storage was none other than his own A.I., Epsilon.
There, Wash finally explained his logic to Church. Delta had told him "Memory is the key." So Wash had remembered his first encounter with Delta, at which point he explained to the confused A.I. that it was cheaper to store it than delete it, which led him to realize that Epsilon had not been deleted like he'd thought it was, but instead was simply stored. He also explained to Church that the Alpha had never been copied, merely split, and that the fragment that was Epsilon was the Alpha's memories, and memory is the key.
Confused, Church asked where the Alpha was. After all, wasn't that what they were there for? No, Wash explained, the Alpha wasn't kept at that facility at all. It used to be, but some of the Freelancers had organized and tried to break in and free it, at which point it was transferred elsewhere. Elsewhere being a backwater canyon in the middle of nowhere that nobody ever went to. And then a different secluded base all by itself for 14 months. There's no such thing as ghosts, Wash reasoned. The Alpha was none other than Church himself.
Church didn't believe him. They argued briefly, until alarms started going off. They grabbed Epsilon and left, returning to where the Reds and Caboose were waiting. They weren't there for long when the Meta arrived on the scene, engaging the local forces in battle. While the Meta and the locals were both distracted, Wash took the Reds and Blues down to the motorpool and explained a plan to them: Caboose and the Reds would escape in a couple of Warthogs and take Epsilon to the authorities so the Director could be taken down. Wash and Church would go back into the base and set off its final failsafe, a powerful E.M.P., which would shut down the A.I. the Meta'd collected.
Church initially refused, still adamant that he was not the Alpha, but when Wash explained that the leader of the group of Freelancers that had tried to free the Alpha way back when was no other than Tex herself, Church finally agreed. He left his robot body in the Warthog Caboose was driving and transferred himself to Wash's armor. At this point, the Meta had defeated Command's forces, and followed Wash into the base while Caboose and the Reds escaped, just as planned.
At the heart of the base, Wash spoke with the Counselor and then the Director over a P.A., the latter of whom revealed that Wash's real name is David. Wash continually tried to deflect their queries, in no mood to talk to either of them. When Wash successfully accessed the console controlling the E.M.P., the Director realized that Epsilon had inherited the Alpha's memories, and he let the Meta into the room, instructing him to kill Wash. The Meta fired, hitting Wash in the chest.
The Meta demanded to know where to find the Alpha and the Director and Counselor told it that it had been moved away and it would be taken to see it after Wash was dealt with. Wash, however, offered a counterpoint: the Alpha was right here. Church promptly materialized next to Wash, to the shock of the Meta. Church transferred himself to the Meta, buying Wash the time he needed to set off the E.M.P.
And it's right after the E.M.P. goes off that Wash gets landed in the Netherworld, still bleeding.
Personality: Wash is, basically, :| incarnate. He's incredibly serious. I mean incredibly serious. Not "serious for a Red vs. Blue character," serious period serious. Wash is not a joker and on the rare, rare occasions that he seems to exhibit any sort of sense of humor, it's deadpan and scathing. Generally, though, Wash is very focused on his job and has no time for comedy. (Though the universe does sometime see fit to play jokes on him.) He's very direct and straightforward. He speaks tersely and to-the-point and frowns upon beating around the bush in general. Whenever the Reds and/or Blues fall into their usual aimless bickering, Wash stops them and pulls them back onto the original train of thought. He has half a dozen different ways to say "let's get going".
Wash is of above-average intelligence. While he's no super-genius, he is noticeably smarter than many of the people he interacts with. He's shown to have a good head for strategy/tactics and he comes up with some pretty decent plans. He's also a pretty damned competent fighter, taking down a Hornet in a matter of moments. Interesting to note, however, is that Wash is, at the absolute best, the 7th highest battle rated Freelancer: Delta states that the 4 Freelancers that the Meta took down prior to the start of the Recovery One miniseries were all of higher battle rating than Wash, it's safe to assume that Maine was also of a higher rating considering that he killed said higher rated Freelancers, and Tex was not killed by the Meta but was the best of the Freelancers. In all likelihood, Wash is even further down the list than that.
What Wash lacks in the department of being a pure force of fucking nature on the battlefield, he makes up in drive. Wash is hella driven. I mean hella. Once he decides to do something, he does it, come hell or high water. Even if it takes years, even if it's not his main focus for a while, eventually he'll get it done. He strongly implies that he was planning to take Project Freelancer down from pretty much the moment he got Epsilon's memories. That's at least 5 years in between deciding to do something and successfully pulling it off. And he never wavered in his determination to give the Director that figurative kick to the pants.
Wash's reserves of compassion are... limited, but existent. He allows South a minute with North's corpse before he cleans it up, and he expresses commiseration when Church encounters Tex's body at Valhalla, but, well. The exchange with South goes like this: "I have to take care of your brother now, South. You might not want to watch this part." "Can I have a few minutes alone with him first?" "You can have one minute." "I guess I should say thank you." "I guess you should get busy. Your minute's already started." And the encounter with Church includes the line, "We've all lost people, Church. What's important is that you remember her. And what's even more important is that you don't slow me down while I'm in the middle of a mission!" Wash understands the basic human feelings of love, loss, regret, etc., but he doesn't seem to be too good at expressing them or feeling them quite right, as his mission always comes first with him.
Well, not only that, but the fact that he is, well, quite literally ex-insane might have something to do with it. Or a lot to do with it. Some may even argue the "ex" part there. Wash went insane when Epsilon did; he outright states that he has difficulty distinguishing between thoughts that were his and thoughts that were Epsilon's as it unraveled. He was certified Article Twelve after that: unfit for duty. And he undoubtedly was at the time. He's recovered fairly well, though. Enough to be fit for active duty once more, certainly, but also certainly not enough to ever be a civilian again. He just doesn't have the social skills for it any more. He's kind of defensive about it, though, as shown in his interactions with Church right after Wash kills South. ("You don't need to treat me like that. I'm not crazy, okay? I'm totally, completely sane. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go blow up this dead body.")
Wash is a skeptic. (He's going to have so much fun in the Netherworld! 8D) It's his refusal to accept the easy answer of Church being a ghost that leads him to the correct conclusion that Church is actually the Alpha. This is a repeated point of contention between him and the Reds and Blues, Church in particular. Wash has a pretty set idea of what he considers plausible and what's just plain dumb and it irritates him to no end when something deviates from that standard, which, unfortunately for him, happens all throughout Reconstruction, from the moment he first encounters Sister in Blood Gulch, to his very last scene of the series, where the computer terminal in Command activates an "Emp," invalidating his argument that it's correctly pronounced "E.M.P." His very last line in the series is "Emp? You have got to be fucking ki-"
Basically, Wash is a very serious guy in a very irreverent world and he hates it. Or, even more basically: :|
Class Title: Recovery One
Possessions: -A set of MJOLNIR Mk. VI armor
-A battle rifle
-A pistol
-Possibly an unspecified armor enhancement. Canon never says exactly what Wash's armor was designed to do or whether or not said enhancement was taken by the Meta after the Recovery One miniseries or not. Regardless of whether or not he has it, he never apparently uses it, which leads me to believe that it's either something completely useless and negligible (the unlikely option) or it's something that would be useful, but requires an A.I. to run (the option I'm more likely to bet money on). ...Basically this bullet point is useless but I've never not been one for full disclosure, so. 8| Let's admit it, you stopped reading as soon as you saw a full paragraph here that started with an italicized "possibly".
-A Mongoose (which is actually an ATV, but frequently referred to in canon as a motorcycle)
-Delicious Cake x2
-Gold Bar x4
-Tickets x3
-Liquor x4
-Game Console x4
-Gift Card x3
Rooming Assignment: Outside the castle in a super-sized dollhouse in a tree. He's... not happy.
Job: Bank Guard. Salary: 20000HL/day