♜ Application for luministi
Player Name: Jchan
Player LJ: vampydirector
E-mail and/or AIM: vampwrite@gmail.com / vampwrite
Timezone: EST
Current Characters: The Tenth Doctor (bit_impossible)
Character: Agent Washington (aka "Wash", aka "Recovery One", aka "David (Last name unknown)" )
Fandom/Series: Red vs Blue
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Used:
The machinima series known as Red vs Blue as well as the mini-series associated with it (not the PSAs or extra vids, though. Those aren't part of the canon.). Wash appears in a mini series called "Recovery One" set before the start of Reconstruction (season 6). Also, part of his past is revealed in Season 9 (set before the start of the series proper), so those events will be used for his history as well.
Age: Unknown, probably early to mid-thirties
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Appearance:
Tall and wears gray (or steel) Mark VI body armor with yellow trim. The armor covers him from head to foot, like so, and as a Freelancer agent, he's been equipped with an armor enhancement that...hasn't been revealed yet. However! He inherited a healing unit from another agent, York (sadly deceased). He is also typically armed with a battle rifle, a small handgun known as a magnum, and a long, standard issue knife (amongst other things). He carries these weapons on his person at all times and more on these later. Underneath that armor are years-old scars from bullet wounds, knife wounds, and lord knows what other injuries he's sustained. The latest healed one is a gunshot wound to the back that he sustained from his last partner, Agent South Dakota.
Personality:
Wash is very complicated, which...actually feels like an understatement. He is cold and very professional, and presents himself in a manner that is very clear--on the surface. But as he doesn't make it a habit of showing what's under that surface and in the inner depths of his mind, he technically is being clear with the people he works and interacts with. However, one should not mistake his professional courtesy as him being friendly. He has a job to do and would prefer to get it done and over with, and he definitely isn't there to hold anyone's hand or anything. He doesn't truly trust someone at all; that sort of sentiment has led to him being betrayed many times in the past. (He says at one point, "For as long as I can remember, I've been lied to, taken advantage of, shot in the back and left for dead.") A small part of him still does, deep down, and wants to give the benefit of a doubt, but he's still on guard at all times. By now, he expects that sort of betrayal from people he works with, and when he is betrayed, it hardens him and makes him just that much more bitter about it.
If you dick around with him, you might not like what you get in return. Of course, depending on how badly you dick around with him, you could just get a sarcastic remark, but even in that short amount of time, he's probably already written you off as an idiot. If you continue to mess with him and piss him off? He won't hesitate to put you in your place, or just punch you to get you to shut up--and that goes for annoying or irritating him, too. If you don't listen to him, he will make you listen one way or another. But if you earn his ire, or--god help you--betray him in any way? Man, there's a reason why Agent South worried about Wash running into her again. Let's put it this way: their meeting ends when he shoots her point blank in the head, then instead of taking care of her body as he normally would have done as a Recovery agent, he shoots it again, throws a plasma grenade at it, uses a flamethrower on it for a minute, and then covers it with a number of fusion coils and such, then shoots those from afar to blow it up in a spectacular explosion. Only then does he deem the task done, even if in the past all he had to do was activate the armor's built-in destruction mechanism. He justifies his actions there (well...the shot to the head, anyway) as a preventative measure. Her actions would have slowed him down and, more than likely, resulted in his being shot in the back. Again. Or someone else getting hurt. If it would negatively effect his mission, he would do whatever it took to make sure that didn't happen, and in that case, killing her was the right action. (Even the logic A.I., Delta, thought so. And one wonders why Church called the Freelancers cold motherfuckers. Protip: it's because they are.) If it came down to it, he'd do the same to anyone who would severely hamper his progress during a mission, regardless of his own feelings of vengeance and anger.
Beneath all the bitterness, there is a man who buries the truth of what he knows in a neat little corner of his mind so he can reveal it all when the time is right. He is anything if not incredibly patient. Everything that he knows, he'll only reveal about ten percent of it if pushed, none if he's not, and he'll never reveal his real intentions or knowledge about something until the very moment he absolutely has to. He plays a long game; a very long game, and doesn't care if he has to tell a little white lie or twist the truth a bit along the way. Or he'll avoid the subject altogether, possibly afraid of exposing what he knows--but what most likely is the case is that he simply doesn't care to beat a dead horse. He's heard everything already and just wants to move on from it, focusing on what's important at that point in time.
What's interesting about Wash compared to the other freelancers in the past (that we've met, and aside from the Meta) is that he isn't driven by the "What's in it for me?" mentality. He's been playing this long game with Command, the Director--all of them--to get revenge for what was done to him, his friends, and the Alpha. He isn't in it for any monetary reward or anything. He even plainly states that the current situation (with going to investigate and hunt down the Meta) isn't ideal and doesn't feel like risking things for Command, he's more than willing to since doing this will offer him an avenue towards exacting his vengeance on the project and those who betrayed him (like Agent South). He does what he does to accomplish his goals/missions and really doesn't like it when things or people prevent him from doing so. He really doesn't like to be slowed down while he's in the middle of a mission. It jeopardizes his mental timetable and besides, any meddling in his affairs means that he's that much farther away from accomplishing his objective--and more importantly, it gives the object of his mission that much more time to escape him. If someone isn't listening to his orders, he's more than likely to take things into his own hands and just do them rather than continue to waste time and argue--unless he absolutely has to.
Because of everything that has happened to him, he'd very much rather go it alone when he can, but unlike others who might try to go that route, he knows that that mentality won't get the job done. See, Washington is incredibly smart and perceptive, picking up on things that others haven't or probably haven't noticed, either through listening or observing what's going on around him (but he tends to lean towards the aural observations than the visual). He has quite a lot of common sense, but even he can be bested at times. He certainly isn't perfect and he tries to learn from his mistakes; the keyword being "tries". He doesn't always, unfortunately, as one would note from his past encounters with people (that or he's just had a shitty selection of people to hang out with). On occasion, he does show genuine concern when people are hurt and he does care enough to make sure they are looked after properly--but that's also him being a professional and looking after his fellow soldier. He'll even explain what something is to keep his fellow soldiers up-to-date on things they really ought to have known in the first place. But...that's okay. He doesn't quite seem to mind catching people up on information so that they're all on the same page. He'll even easily team-up with people and offer them assistance without a single thought, but like many things, that goes back to his being a trained soldier.
Probably the biggest and complicated facet of his personality is his mental state, the stuff he keeps beneath that professional veneer. He maintains that he's better and completely sane, though the profile Command has on him says otherwise--and as others have seen first-hand. One doesn't do what he did to a dead body without having some sort of mental instability. Work long enough with the guy, and you just might see that slightly unhinged part of him come through even while he maintains a normal exterior. At one point in time, he did have trouble distinguishing his thoughts from that of the ones left behind by Epsilon even long after it had been removed, and that's probably still there to some degree. He's basically managing two completely different sets of memories, and that isn't an easy thing for the human mind to handle. He can get a little one-track minded, but then again, focusing on a very dangerous enemy that's tracking down fellow Freelancers and indiscriminately killing simulation soldiers for no reason tends to do that to a guy. Sometimes, his mind does drift away in the middle of situation and he gets lost in his own thoughts--but more so because he's remembering or maybe even trying to sort things out in there. Who knows... He has a lot of things going on in his mind, some very heavy things that he probably would need a first-class therapist to help him out with. It doesn't help that he also has one hell of a memory. He's quietly vindictive and holds grudges for a very, very long time. At least fourteen months pass between when he's shot by South and when he meets with her again. Those feelings are as fresh as they were from day one; possibly even more so. And he hasn't forgotten a single thing he learned from Epsilon either, though that incident happened a long time ago.
Above all, though, Washington is a survivor. He survived the mental breakdown of his AI, survived his own, survived the war, and so many, many other battles that have left him scarred physically and mentally. But he doesn't show any angst about what has happened to him over the years; in fact, he's the type who would feel better after exacting his revenge--just like he did for a moment after he'd taken care of South. Wash actually meets each new challenge with a many layered response--but angst isn't really anywhere near it. He's professional first and foremost, and then he's sarcastic--but this is interchangeable with annoyance. It usually goes hand-in-hand with one another, and there's this undertone of coldness. He could be warm, cordial, and pleasant if he wanted to be, but the mood never strikes him. It misses by a mile, really. Every now and then, one might see a peek of a man who can joke with his comrades about things, but they are only ever just glimpses, but it does show what he once was before everything; before the war, and before Project Freelancer--and maybe he can get there again someday. For now, though, what you see is what you get, and maybe if you're lucky, you'll catch a brief moment of him genuinely caring and being a good man before he once again puts you back at arm's length.
Strengths/Abilities:
He is a fully trained soldier, and a damned good one at that (even if there are ones in the program who were even better than him.) He's fast and agile, and not only is he very skilled in hand-to-hand combat, but he has many years of weapons experience as well, ranging from the battle rifle, shotgun, sniper gun, magnum hand gun, and knives. Really, anything that could be used as a weapon, he's proficient at. He's a skilled fighter no matter what side he chooses to fight with; right or southpaw doesn't matter to him. It's safe to say he's received martial arts training of some discipline, or disciplines, along the way. He's also physically strong--well perhaps not as strong as Tex, but he can heft huge guns with ease and not break a sweat or show any strain in his voice or demeanor. Besides, he has to carry many things on his person at all times, like his various weapons (as well as plasma grenades, a flame thrower, etc), as well as tools he'll need for his Recovery duties. And never mind the armor itself. That stuff's heavy, but it needs to be in order to do its job.
He has wonderful aim with a firearm as well as a high accuracy rating, and is top notch in battle strategies and improvisation while in the middle of a fight. (i.e. Using sending an explosive barrel into a gravity lift that propelled it at the Hornet--but he shot it so it would explode right before it hit, sending the Hornet to crash into the ground. Oh, and he exchanged gunfire with it while he was doing this and start to finish, it took him less than a minute to take it down.) He's also very skilled at infiltration techniques and isn't afraid to make a big noise to distract (as it also serves as his signal to his teammates). Even in that armor, he can seemingly disappear in a snap without making a sound. In a general fight, he can hold his own very well and is efficient--but he also fights smart. If he's got an enemy attacking him for no provoked reason, he won't kill them outright even though he easily could. He can judge how much of a fight someone will give him (like he gives Sister ten seconds, and even that's probably being too optimistic an estimate.)
Part of his Freelancer training, he was trained to modify AI storage units, as well as maintain them in case they were damaged. The tools he carries also have come in handy to remove armor enhancements that he normally would have brought back to Command as part of the Recovery process.
Now for his armor! His head-to-foot Mark VI battle armor comes with many standard features, the first and most obvious being a ventilation/oxygen system that enables him to breathe (and one would assume it'd recycle or take care of the carbon dioxide emitted with each breath. But other equipment, that we know of, consists of a motion tracker that can track the movements of people and things in the area; a voice amplifier, which is like a glorified megaphone, a radio communications system that can be used for suit-to-suit communications or contact others from a very long distance. The radios can get damaged and jammed, but they're pretty strong radios and don't seem to have a range limit. There's also a computer system built into the helmet that houses the biocomm, which can check on a whole squad's vital statistics (current health status, heart rate, blood pressure, and brain activity) during combat in real time (but it doesn't work on dead people or robots). At the same time, it displays such information like mission time (days/hours/minutes/seconds), recon footage that can be used to record what he sees and hears and can be played back at the same time as it's recording, and also displays certain battle stats, such as how close or far a ricocheted bullet had been detected from his current position down to a hundredth of a meter and the type of caliber the bullet was. The computer system is also linked to information from Command that he'd need in any situation, such as having to give the secure codeword for different Red and Blue outfits (no matter how stupid the codeword might be.) It's what he can use to gain clearance as well as trust from the simulation troopers.
As a Freelancer, he was granted the use of an armor enhancement, but at this time, we haven't exactly learned what that was. However, he has a healing unit from Agent York that was his armor enhancement until his death. Wash procured it when he recovered Delta, and it's because of this that Wash was able to survive being shot in the back, as well as numerous other physical wounds he's sustained since then. Needless to say, he can recover pretty quickly with it. (Like he can be caught in the middle of an explosion and maybe like...ten minutes later can get up and get into a full-on brawl and be fine.)
The armor itself is very durable, or at least Wash's seems to be (combined with his own physical strength and durability), and can help Wash compensate when he's wounded. The armor isn't perfect and does have its weaknesses, but for the most part, he can get hit by a speeding armored vehicle and still manage to cling to the front then climb up to beat some ass.
Weaknesses:
Despite all his strengths, Wash is still human. This means he can still get sick, injured, and yes, can be killed (despite his ridiculous tendency to survive things that'd kill just about everyone else.)
Also, while he is very proficient in battle strategies, he can walk into a trap. He'll recognise the signs of, say four traps, but miss the fifth.
One big weakness, though, and he'd vehemently deny it, is his own mental state. Hell, even official records question his sanity (though it should be pointed out that if it weren't for the program and the incident with Epsilon, this probably wouldn't have been an issue to begin with.) But nonetheless, he's fine right now, but it wouldn't take too much for a psychic or something to get in there and find that vulnerability (well, that is if they weren't chased off by the heavy stuff going on in his head, anyway) and exploit it. As strong as he is, he isn't trained to fend off any psychic attacks.
History:
- **As a note, this contains HUGE spoilers about the series, especially for S6 events, plot revelations, and S9 events.**
That...was the idea, anyway. The project had only been allowed the use of only one artificial intelligence unit and they were left to do their experiments from there for years. Unfortunately, the one AI wasn't enough for what the Director hoped to study and experiment with. After all, how could you only use one AI with a whole bunch of soldiers when it was meant for implantation? It wasn't physically possible. But the Director found a way, and along with the creation of different armor enhancements and a recovery system that could alert the project so their creations wouldn't fall into the wrong hands, he was soon implanting these AI into these soldiers.
Of course, development wasn't as fast as that. One did have to test the armor enhancements and recovery beacons before giving out the most expensive and valuable parts of the project, and so, along with testing these and recruiting top soldiers into the program, they also took the worst soldiers (based on their enlistment tests) and set that group up as simulation troopers in various outpost bases. Each outpost was divided in half and some soldiers were set to fight for the Blue army and the others for the Red army and they were told to fight against one another in a fake civil war--and they were none the wiser. These soldiers were wholly committed to fighting for the Red (or Blue) army and took occasional orders from Command (either acting as Red Command or Blue Command depending on who was calling), but largely didn't have a lot to do but wait around and occasionally fight each other. With those training grounds in place, Project Freelancer could explore one of many scenarios and send in their Freelancer Agents for practice.
Of course, that's not all they did. Nope! They had other training opportunities aboard the mobile command center frigate, the Mother of Invention RT-636 (or just Mother of Invention for short), and for the longest time, Project Freelancer ran things from there. They had their own training arenas and all that fun stuff, plus from there, the agents could be deployed on missions on and around Earth. The majority of Wash's missions were successes, though some did fail from time to time, but they weren't normally his fault. For those missions, they were typically partnered up with one or more agents, and one always could tell how the missions went whenever the ranking board was updated. Oh yes, the agents were constantly ranked against each other, further perpetuating the environment of constant competition--but young Washington (which he had by then become to be known as, having been given that name by the Director) thrived in it. In his own way, his friends and all the others were almost like family to him, and he regarded the Director as a man they should all be thankful to because of everything he'd done for them (so a bit of a father-figure in a way, even if the Director is a dick.)
Around this same time, Wash was starting to get involved with the higher-ups (the internals, as the agents called them). It was being kept on the down-low, and Wash wasn't supposed to talk about it. See, in addition to the alien hostiles, there were plenty of insurrectionists in the colony worlds and on Earth, and a particular group on Earth was starting to become a real problem. There were even rumors that they'd somehow gotten a contact within Project Freelancer, so he was looking into those behind the scenes and when his other duties weren't a priority. He'd still be looking for the mole long after the next string of events.
After Agents North and South Dakota's mission to the Bjørndal Cryogenics Research Facility for an important data file, and Wash's failed mission with Agents Connecticut (CT), Carolina, and Maine (though what the mission was for, we're never told, and it seems like only Connecticut failed in her duties), a new recruit showed up and man, she was a badass. This recruit was called Agent Texas, and she had moves and technique that none of them had ever seen. It says something when three top agents have the shit beaten out of them over and over, and many of the regular soldiers (and other agents including Washington) all go to watch this training session. The unfortunate agents were numbers 2 and 3 on the ranking board--Agents New York and Wyoming, respectively--and Agent Maine was close to the top at that time. (And Wash himself was number 6 then.) The training session ended badly, however, when live ammo entered the equation. Agent York wound up in the hospital for some time after a grenade went off next to him--but Texas' actions with special paint rounds which covered the majority of it and locked down York's armor so the blast wouldn't be too lethal. Unfortunately, it cost York his left eye as his helmet visor wasn't covered with the paint. The incident was a blatant violation of protocol, and Wash did not like that Wyoming and Maine got away with it--nor that the Director commended their ingenuity.
But time went on, and Wash was bumped to fifth in rank, and then came one of the most important missions to date. The data file from the cryogenics facility led them to a location on Earth in the middle of a metropolis. It was here that two teams were deployed to retrieve two very specific and crucial items. One was something they dubbed "the Sarcophagus" and the other was the 'key' to open the Sarcophagus. They had to be retrieved around the same time or else one would lock down and it'd never open ever again. So, Wash was on Team A, which found itself infiltrating a 110-story high building to find the Sarcophagus--they had no idea how big/small it was at the time either, just that it had certain markings on it--with Agents Carolina, York, and Maine. (York pulled himself out of hospital to go on the mission since he's the best locksmith and they'd need a locksmith for their part of the mission. Wash was going to do it--he'd received training for it, but it's not his speciality--but then York arrived.) They found the Sarcophagus all right and got it to the roof for extraction, but by that point, their infiltration of the building hadn't gone unnoticed. Carolina and Wash were forced to face off with one of the insurrectionists (because yes, they were involved in this caper too), a flame throwing beast of a man that Carolina finally took out with a grav hammer to the face since not any of their bullets worked against him.
And just when they thought they had everything relatively under control--Maine was taking care of some soldiers downstairs, and Wash, Carolina, and York were up on the roof--when they came across Tex setting something up. Turned out she'd been covering their tracks in the form of explosions of the sites. Unfortunately, before their ride out of there could arrive and Tex could explain what was going on, the other insurrectionists in the building arrived, surrounding them. Thankfully, the Director always had a plan for the building and using the Mother of Invention and the device Tex was setting on the roof, a MAC round was sent from outer space, striking the building from top to bottom and forcing it to collapse in on itself thanks to the gaping hole now in it.
Cue epic skydiving music! Yes, skydiving! There was no other way off the building and their transport had just gotten to them when the building was shot to hell, so that's how they got out of there! Or rather, only Wash and the Sarcophagus did (with a bit of help from Tex who'd taken a jetpack from one of the insurrectionist soldiers). The others would be stuck retrieving the other half of the package since Team B (North, Wyoming, and CT) had failed somehow and it was up to the remaining members of Team A and Tex to retrieve it in an epic highway fight that Wash was not a part of.
Nope, it was during this mission that they were able to test the recovery beacon technology when Maine was severely wounded during that highway battle. (For the record, he got a sniper shot in the chest when a sniper was about to shoot Carolina, was shot up the jaw, shot multiple times in the throat, was still able to fight after that, but was then thrown from a back of a speeding flatbed truck, bounced a bit on the ground at high speeds before being struck by another truck and then thrown over a fence and off the highway--no doubt to land hundreds of feet down on the ground at high velocity. And yes, he did survive all this (go Mark VI armor!) but would later lose his ability to talk.) So, Wash was sent to find him and they got him to a nearby medical facility in space before they could get him back to the Mother of Invention. Life continued on like normal for the agents, with missions continuing and Wash still investigating the mole. He did come across some suspicious behavior, but...it wasn't anything yet that he could really use to bring as evidence to the internals--and besides, it was a friend whom he'd caught. (And whatever becomes of the insurrectionists and this plot line we'll (hopefully) discover in season 10.)
But thanks to whatever was in the Sarcophagus, it was around this time that Project Freelancer was really kicking into high gear. They, like many other projects, were looking for the best way to end the war. The suits had their enhancements but no way to fully control them, the missions were (obviously) becoming more and more dangerous, and the Alpha AI was there, but... That wasn't enough. Once the Sarcophagus was put to use, the AI's--yes, plural--were just starting to be produced, word of their use and impending implantation into the top Freelancer Agents spread throughout the project. But these soldiers weren't made aware of certain aspects about their AI when they were rated for implantation and soon implanted with one. The AI's they received were mere fragments and not full smart AI like the one the project had been given initially. They were told that the AI were just copies of that particular AI, the Alpha. The subsequent AI were known as Beta, Delta, Gamma, and so on and so forth, and these AI became obsessed with the idea of the Alpha, wishing to see it and wondering where it was. This led to a rumor that the project had only been able to procure one, a rumor that really was true, but none of the soldiers knew that, and likewise, people outside of the project only thought Project Freelancer was only using one AI for the longest time! Sadly, that was just one of many things like that.
Now, when the AI were implanted, it happened in groups. Wash was not in one of the first groups. The agents competed for who would get implants first. Some were successful, like Agent New York and Delta, Agent Wyoming and Gamma, and even Agent Maine (who had healed from his injuries) and Sigma. Others...sadly, were not despite the algorithms designed to safeguard the mind from the unstable emotional patterns of an AI. Some agents started to go crazy, or in some cases, the AI did, and they were considered failures. One such failure was Agent Carolina who was implanted with two AIs at one time (and was probably the first of the agents to receive an AI at all), and though Agent North Dakota did well with Theta, his experiment with his twin sister, Agent South Dakota was ultimately seen as a failure. She had been in the implantation group behind Wash's, but ultimately was unable to receive one.
The incident with Washington and his AI, Epsilon, was probably the worst and most well known accident within the program. See, what happened when an agent was implanted with an AI, the two minds merged in a sense. What one knew, the other knew instantly, and it wasn't possible for the agent to keep something from his or her AI partner (though Omega did manage to keep some things from Agent Texas, but she's a special case). When Washington was implanted with Epsilon, from that moment, he knew exactly what had happened to it and the truth of what was going on in Project Freelancer.
Everything goes back to the Alpha. Artificial intelligence programs like the Alpha were based on a real, living person (and in this case, it was later revealed to be based on the Director himself) and since the program only received the one, they had to get...creative with what they were given. Logistically, you can't copy an AI. Just can't. To get the AI that were used for the program, they used several means of torture, via showing it scenario after scenario of stress and danger to get the Alpha to fragment itself off to protect itself, and as it did, each fragment took away a personality trait; they were the compartmentalized emotions being shed from the Alpha. Like Gamma had its deceit, Delta was the logic, Sigma was the creativity, Omega was the rage, and Epsilon... Well, Epsilon was the last to be fragmented, and it contained Alpha's memories so it wouldn't go completely insane with what had been done to it. So when Wash got Epsilon, he too knew most of what had happened to the Alpha--granted, he got flashes of what happened to the Alpha, but Wash was a smart guy; he could fit two and two together. And he never said a single thing or let on that he knew. He knew for years, but Command had their suspicions--just never any proof that he knew.
But that, however, isn't the infamous incident. Nope. Over time, Epsilon grew insane--it was meant to go insane--and Wash had to experience things first-hand as its mind unravelled inside his, and as it went insane, so did he, but he tried to fight it. He had trouble distinguishing his thoughts with Epsilon's, and there was nothing he could do to stop it until one day, Epsilon seemingly killed itself in Washington's head (that's what people were told, anyway) and Epsilon was removed, leaving Wash to think they deleted it. Needless to say, that was the last straw for Wash's own mental state, and he was certified Article 12--unfit for duty--after that point.
They suspended the use of implants after that point when more and more agents started to go crazy, resulting in the rest of the agents not getting any--and some were rather bitter about it and were hostile towards Wash for losing out on those precious assignments (though once he recovered his mind, Wash didn't care about that or feel bad they lost out). The project recalled agents to have their AI removed and deleted, but some agents didn't comply--and some AIs themselves didn't want to be removed and began resisting. The decision soon came down that both the agent and the AI were to be killed if that was the case. Somehow though, some agents did end up escaping with their AI and left the program (ones like York, Tex, North, etc.) At one point during the resistance, some Freelancers tried to get to Alpha after it had been moved from Freelancer Command. They broke into a secret storage facility where it was being held and almost had it, but ultimately that failed.
But Project Freelancer still continued despite everything. After all, it still had the armor enhancements and such to use, and it still had active agents out in the field, so the need for the Recovery force was still great. And they still had all those stored AI in Freelancer Command, so they eventually went back to using them and rating agents for implants. There still was a war to be won, after all. And during all this, Washington was slowly recovering from his mental break and overcame what had happened with Epsilon--mostly. Even when he was asked to join the Recovery force and was uncertified, he still had problems distinguishing his thoughts from the lingering ones of Epsilon's. But he refused to have another AI put into his head ever again. To Command, that made him seem like he could be trusted not to use the AI he recovered for his own purposes, but in reality, he was afraid that if another AI was implanted in him, he wouldn't be able to hide what he knew about Project Freelancer.
And so, Wash joined the Special Operations Unit known as Recovery. The Recovery force was meant to recover intelligence programs from dead or dying agents so they wouldn't fall into enemy hands (or the wrong hands), and Wash was the ideal candidate, earning him the call sign of Recovery One. Time passed and all that fun stuff, then during the time of one month, he was ordered to the sites of three separate dead Freelancers, and he noticed a disturbing pattern. Each of them had been listed as Level One alerts, meaning they had an AI to be recovered, but no AI was found. The agents were all dead, and they all had their armor enhancements taken.
And then Wash was ordered to yet another site and picked up the AI known as Delta from a dead Agent York. He later learned that York had died in an unrelated incident to the ones he'd been investigating, and revealed to Delta that the protocol all agents and AI were told was false. The AI wasn't destroyed upon the deactivation of an agent's armor, but merely shut down and encrypted until a Recovery agent could come and retrieve it. It was all due to finances. Turned out that recovering an AI was much cheaper than outright destroying it as the agents had originally been told, but sadly that was again one of many things the agents were told that wasn't exactly true. After destroying (re: exploding) York's armor--which was the standard protocol for handling a dead agent's body--Washington had meant to return to Command with Delta in a portable storage compartment he used for transporting these AI, but he received yet another Level One assignment and went off to his next assignment.
There he encountered Agents North and South Dakota, but while North had been killed and had his AI/armor enhancement removed, South had been left alive for some reason. Regardless, Command deemed the mission Level Zero, making the recovery of Theta his top priority and he was ordered to clean up the site--which meant cleaning up any survivors. Since South was his only lead in this investigation into the thing going around killing these Freelancers, he faked her death and had Delta put in false information about South's death into Command's active register of Freelancer agents. He also knew that this thing--later known as "the Meta"--had already taken out four different Freelancers, all of whom had even better battle ratings than Washington, so instead of returning to Command, he was going to partner up with South to take down what he felt was now following them. He figured since he now had Delta, the thing had gone after the Dakotas and left South alive as bait for him to slow him down--and Wash was going to use that to his advantage. For the most part, that plan worked. He had Delta implant into South, waited for the Meta to arrive to their location, and from there, well...
The fighting with the Meta had grown dangerous and by the time South was operational with Delta in her mind, Wash had already been shot twice, but he was still doing fine. He's made of tougher stuff. However, he made the decision to have South flee and take Delta back to Command while he distracted the Meta. South protested, but ultimately gave in to Wash's order, and when Wash left cover to give her some cover, she shot him in the back and left him for dead as well as using him as a bargaining chip with the Meta to get her freedom. She lied and said that she'd put a charge on Wash's "dead" body and that the Meta had a choice between getting that or going after her, and it went for the easier option. But for some reason, the Meta left Wash alone in the end, and the only reason why he lived was thanks to York's healing unit.
Wash, though, had played right into the secondary mission Command had given South (aka Recovery Two--although he had no idea that she was part of the Recovery force). They fully expected him to fake her death and go after the Meta with her help. Wash didn't suspect a thing the entire time. But South went further and betrayed Command as well as Wash: she fled with with Delta and effectively went rogue instead of going back to Command to be properly rated for her own AI. Sadly, it wasn't the first time he was betrayed--and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
But more time passed and Wash healed from his wounds, recovered physically and mentally, well, enough to be functional--even if Command's profile on him didn't agree. About fourteen months passed in the time that he was shot to when he was activated again to pursue leads about the Meta, and during that block of time, the war ended. From out of nowhere, a Pelican ship had crashed in Outpost 17-B. Agent Tex had been on-board, as well as Wyoming's helmet, and the AI Gamma and Omega (though he didn't know about Wyoming and Gamma until later). The Blues of Outpost 17-B got possession of the ship first, but Omega began pulling the same shit it did in Outpost 1 (aka Blood Gulch), and soon the Blues were seemingly turning against one another, ripping out their radios and destroying both comm towers in their base as well as the Reds'. And then the Blues began killing each other. Soon, the Reds weren't safe from the same "infection", but by the time it reached them, an invisible and very dangerous force arrived and just began killing everyone.
It did, however, miss one Red soldier, Private Walter Henderson, who later recounted the tale for the Counsellor and Washington. Everyone was thought dead, so finding this soldier there even after two other Recovery agents (Recovery Six and Nine) were killed was a great surprise, as well as a boon for the project. The story was very similar to what Wash had encountered and he knew the thing and "the Meta" as it had called itself in a message left on the wall of one of the bases was one in the same. They also knew from the description that it had been Omega that was running amok, since it had inherited the trait of jumping from suit to suit, and ultimately had been snatched up by the Meta, making it even more powerful than the last time Wash fought with it.
If it hadn't been for the chance to run into Agent South again, he might not have considered going on the mission, but he did and soon found himself at Outpost 1, the last known site of Omega's location before the crash. The Counsellor had said the soldiers there had the most experience with the program. The only problem was...when he did arrive, he learned that there was only a useless and crazy female soldier (Sister) left in Blue base and an even crazier Red sergeant (Sarge) who was technically AWOL for disobeying his relocation orders (Wash formulated no opinion on Lopez), and learned that everyone else had been sent to various other bases.
Thankfully, Sarge proved a little more useful, and Wash was able to get the relocation orders of one soldier who had been infected with an artificial intelligence, and therefore had the most experience. Only...when he arrived at Outpost 28 (aka "Rat's Nest"), he learned that the soldier had been tied up under the orders of Lieutenant Miller, who seemed way too happy to hand this particular soldier over to Wash after he learned who Wash wanted to take away for the secret mission. That soldier turned out to be Private Caboose, who...wasn't exactly all there and was very unique to say the very least, but managed to accidentally kill one of his teammates just as he was being released. Unfortunately, Caboose was the only person who could help him--much to his chagrin--so Wash was stuck with him.
Not too long later, they turned up at Outpost 48, the location where Private Church had been transferred to. Caboose, as luck would have it, had seen the relocation orders despite Church's attempt to hide where he was going, and led Wash right to him. They were greeted with some very piss-poor sniper shots, but after some talking and the mention of the downed Pelican, Wash had both Church and Caboose now as allies. Granted, many things about what Caboose and Church had said in passing didn't exactly add up, like Caboose saying he accidentally killed Church and Church being left in a derelict base all on his own, as well as his supposedly having dated Agent Texas in the past, but Wash didn't have the time to focus on those thoughts. His mind was very much set on finding out whatever he could that could help him stop the Meta, so he brought Caboose and Church to Outpost 17 to investigate the crash set--but the Recovery forces there wouldn't let him in, even though he had clearance.
That didn't stop Wash, however, and he set up some distractions to get the two Blues over the barricades set up so they could investigate the ship in peace. It turned out that they had transferred their tank's training program to the ship, so they were able to activate the ship's logs from the crash and heard Tex's final moments before the ship hit. Wash related to them what had happened after the crash and learned Church and the rest had experienced the exact same thing as those in Outpost 17. (Church also revealed that he had heard of Wash before: "That guy who went nuts".) Just after Wash denied Church of seeing Tex's body held in Blue base, his Recover beacon started to go off.
It was for Agent South.
They commandeered two vehicles from Outpost 17 and travelled as quickly as they could back to Outpost 48 where South was being attacked by the Meta. She had been following Wash, but was drawn into a battle with the Meta before she could follow him further. It's during the ensuing battle that Wash learned that the Meta had Gamma and Wyoming's armor enhancement: a time distortion unit. So even though they managed to wound it, the Meta got away for the time being. Wash, however, couldn't pursue it just yet. He had a duty to perform, after all, and South was injured pretty badly (both by the Meta and Caboose, who had shot her to keep her from fleeing, though this technically was an accident as he was trying to help.) Delta, thankfully, was unharmed and was transferred to Caboose for safe keeping, but there was still the issue of what to do with South. She couldn't walk well and would only slow them down if they took her with them, but upon Delta's revelations that she was going to turn him over to the Meta to save her own skin and had even set up her own brother in similar fashion, Delta advised Wash that she shouldn't be allowed to slow their progress.
And so he shot her.
And then after asserting that he wasn't crazy, proceeded to take care of her body in a slightly less orthodox manner than he normally would've: first, he shot her again with his rifle, threw a plasma grenade on her body and waited for that to explode before he torched it with a flamethrower, and then finally blew the shit out of it with a bunch of explosive fusion coils and shot those from afar. Only then was he satisfied with the job, and notified Command of South's passing, telling them that Caboose accidentally killed her. By that point, however, they learned that the Meta had stolen one of their cycles and had no idea where it could be now, so Wash was at a bit of a crossroads until his Recovery beacon began to go off again. This time he learned that it was for Agent Maine, which had surprised both him and Command. Reluctantly, Wash realised he knew who the Meta was. A beacon wouldn't have started to go off unless an agent was hurt and according to Delta, who had received biocomm data along with the ID of the agent in trouble, the Meta was running out of power to run all of its suit's various equipments along with being injured. Wash confirmed that Agent Maine and the Meta were one in the same, but not where the Meta would be found. The signal was jammed before he received the coordinates, but thanks to the power issue, Church knew where the Meta would go to gain more power.
So they made their way as quickly as they could to the wind-power facility/outpost that both Church and Caboose were familiar with, and found their missing cycle along with the dead bodies of the soldiers who had been occupying the outpost. Wash knew that they only had one chance to stop the Meta from recharging and he wasn't taking any chances of them screwing anything up for him, so he split up from Church and Caboose while he went up along one wall and had the other two go up the other side with Delta. Between Church and himself (mainly himself), they managed to wound the Meta further, but were interrupted by the Reds from Outpost 1. Wash and Church had no idea why they were there (neither noticed that Caboose had disappeared), and for a while, he wondered if the Reds (Sarge, Simmons, and Grif) were working with the Meta--and to be fair, the Meta was the one who had tricked the Reds into thinking Wash had reassembled the Blues to come and take them out.
The Reds arrival, however, served as the perfect distraction, as they immediately got into a fire fight with Wash and--well, just Wash actually, as Church's aim was shit and Caboose was missing, a fact that increasingly worried Wash the more the pointless fight went on. He discovered that Caboose had been injured, but that didn't tell him whether Delta was still there or not. It wasn't until the power began fluctuating in the compound that he finally had enough and called for a cease fire. He said he was a special agent from Command, and even gave the Reds their secure codeword (there's a database of them that he could access), and that finally quieted the Reds down. So much so, in fact, that it made Church wonder if they really were working for the Meta--that is, until Grif ran past with a thrown Warthog rolling after him. It pretty much clinched it for Wash right then that they weren't.
But Wash had wasted enough time and knew that they'd missed their window to stop the Meta from charging up. As more and more things were thrown after the Reds (who had been sitting out in a courtyard area of the base), it only proved that the Meta was just bound and determined to kill everything. So when two of the Reds ran into their cover, Wash left Church with them to distract the Meta while he went to check on Caboose. Unfortunately, Delta had been taken while Caboose was knocked out, but he had a spare healing unit and set that on him while he checked in with Church. Things weren't doing much better there, so Wash grabbed a turret near where he found Caboose and silently jumped down behind the Meta and began firing every last bullet at it. He got quite a few shots in before the Meta activated the time distortion unit and retreated, leaving behind a very angry Washington who had no choice other than ordering the Reds to stay and aid him since there was no way he could take it out with only Church and Caboose's help. Reminded of him, Wash went back to check on Caboose and found him healed but still sort of knocked out and in a weird coma-like state. He couldn't fully revive him. It was completely possible that something happened when Delta was removed, but he couldn't know for sure, not without seeing in Caboose's head.
Wash knew that was the extent of what he could do for Caboose, so he went off to call Command for them to send someone to extract Caboose from their location so he could get the proper medical attention as none of the Reds knew of a medic nearby (which...was a lie, but Wash didn't know that or why they lied). However, just as he heard his name being called by one of the Red soldiers, Simmons, he was brought to Luministi.
Canon Point:
During RvB: Reconstruction (season 6), or more specifically, during Chapter 11 after he goes to call Command to extract a wounded Caboose. (Time-wise, it's around 3:48 in the Chapter 11 video.)
First Person Sample:
[he groans, slightly disoriented from...whatever that was that's making him blink furiously. considering everything he's been through, it bothers him slightly that he can't pinpoint exactly what has happened to him or why. he isn't in pain--well, not any more than he was in before, anyway. he knows his suit is managing and tending to the wounds he sustained in the fight with the Meta, but Caboose needs--]
Wait a minute! Caboose! This isn't--[he glances around at the unfamiliar surroundings] Where am I? Where are those guys? [he seems to be alone, but then he spots the vidscreen on the wall and frowns slightly at it and the man within as he begins to speak. meeting higher-ups like this seems to be the norm these days.] Excuse me, sir, but my name is Agent Washington. I'm on special assignment... [but he stops, realizing the man isn't listening to him whatsoever. he sighs slightly. another long-winded politician, huh? so he waits as Caligin speaks, all the while checking his motion trackers and biocomm data--but he doesn't find Caboose, Church, or any of the Red soldiers who were just with him. that...doesn't put him at ease. not one bit.]
"Accommodations"? Mayor Caligin, I can't stay. I don't even know how I got to Luministi in the first place. I need to return to my men; one of them is injured--[but the man in grayscale doesn't stop or notice that he's even spoken. he feels a flicker of annoyance, but he keeps that out of his voice]--but, you're a recording, aren't you? Figures. [he lets out a slight grumbling sigh] Then I'll just have to come and meet you in person, won't I?
[resolved to meet this "Caligin", he heads out of the bedroom and stops short when he sees the lavish welcome basket waiting for him.] You have got to be kidding...
Third Person Sample:
It didn't take long for the two Blue soldiers to begin bickering again once they'd started the trek from Outpost 48 for a second time that day. He had had half a mind to tell them to just wait there, but he knew very well--and quite begrudgingly so, he'd add--that he needed their help in bringing down the Meta.
Even if both soldiers lacked any professionalism.
And sense of aim.
...And any standard combat training techniques that couldn't be classified as "dumb luck" coupled with "too stupid to die in a normal combat situation". The fact they had survived their encounters with the Omega AI and Tex for years in the first place completely baffled him on a level he didn't care to reflect on at that point in time. Or ever. Probably was best that he never did.
Really, the whole thing irritated him greatly. He knew intimately how useless most of the simulation soldiers were that he's encountered in the past, but these two and the others he encountered back in Outpost 1 were a different brand of special, he felt. Maybe it was why they had been sent to the most backwater, remote outpost in the entire program. But as the soldiers continued on, he couldn't help rolling his eyes. They didn't pay him enough for this shit! Then again, if he was in it for the pay, he never would have signed up in the first place. He saw now why the Counsellor didn't consider these soldiers experts in their experience with the Omega AI. The only thing they seemed to be experts in was arguing about the most ridiculous things he'd ever heard two people argue over in his entire life.
"I think I've been here before!" chirped one soldier more happily than he would've thought possible. There was a child-like innocence to that soldier's observations--but then again, he had to remind himself this was the same one who managed to get another soldier shot and killed while he was being untied and released from the brig. Perhaps he shouldn't be walking in front of them...
"Of course you have. We were just here an hour ago!"
"...That rock is staring at me."
"Rocks don't have eyes! Even if they did, they'd have more important things to do than stare at you, like make a wall or keep out idiots like you." He was beginning to understand why this soldier had hid his reassignment orders from the other. Were he in his place...well no, he wouldn't ever be, and even if he was, he would have taken every precaution not to allow his the location of his new assignment to be seen.
"Now it's drooling at me!"
"Caboose, that's just the water from--"
He decided that moment was a very good time to mute those two so he could concentrate on the path in front of him. It was either that or get a headache and he didn't want to wait for the medicine to kick in. Besides, his motion tracker was on so he could monitor the two soldiers behind him that way, though he was still having second thoughts about walking in front of them. Then again, if he was behind them, they ran the risk of ruining the trail and botching things more than they've already done. He was certain the tracks would lead them straight to the location where the Meta was going. The wind-power facility was the only logical place for it to go now that he had evaluated the map of the surrounding area around Outpost 48. It was the only place that could supply the Meta's fluctuating systems with enough power to stabilize it--and make it even more powerful than it already was.
A tiny pit of dread began to grow in his stomach at the thought. His small group was barely enough to fight the Meta the first time, but if they didn't succeed--no. They had to succeed. Simple as that.
In the distance, he could already see the giant windmill he'd read about in the outpost's schematics. The huge blade churned slowly, but despite their speed, he knew with each revolution those blades made, it meant even more power the Meta had on hand to drain away.
Reluctantly, he turned his radio back on, not eager to return to that nonsense, but from his motion tracker readouts, they had started to lag behind for some reason. No doubt it was because a tree had started to wave at them or something equally ridiculous. "Come on you two," he said in a stern enough voice to cut into their argument, the subject of which he purposefully tuned out. His hands tightened around his battle rifle just a bit; the anticipation of the impending fight began to build with every step. "We're almost there."
Did you read the rules? Yep!