Balance Application

[unrecovered]

	Agent Washington: Killing me won't make you feel better - it'll just prove my point!
	APP HMD PATH Kia

Player Name: Kia
Age: 30
Contact: kiaxet
Timezone: PST
Other character currently in game: N/A

Character name: Agent Washington (Wash for short)
Age: Mid to late 30s (canon never specifices)
Canon: Red vs Blue
Canon point: Post season 13, during that 10-month vacation
History: Memory is the key


Three key adjectives: perseverent, protective, paranoid

Influential Events: (This should list out at least 4 major events that have been crucial to this character's development. Explain how this event has changed your character, and don't focus heavily on the history of events. We're looking to see your interpretation, here!)
1. Freelancer
Project Freelancer was a special military program exploring the idea of pairing AI with soldiers in the field, in order to make more effective soldiers in pursuit of staving off an alien genocide. Wash was one of the skilled soldiers recruited into the project and one of the most talented agents Freelancer had to offer once the program hit its stride. He gave the project his everything; in turn, it literally drove him insane.

Freelancer’s AI experimentation was a bit immoral in the same way the sun is slightly warm, and it culminated with the project implanting a fragment of Alpha, an AI tortured into insanity, into Wash’s head. The Epsilon AI retained Alpha’s memories of its torture, and when Epsilon tore itself to pieces inside Wash’s head, it took Wash’s sanity with it. Given that this coincided with the physical downfall of the Project, including the ship it was housed on literally crashing and burning, Wash was left to put himself back together, in the care of the leaders of the fallen Project, people whose sins he now knew in horrifying detail. Recovery left him exhausted, untrusting of the world around him and damn well nearly everyone in it.

2. Fucking Up
Once he’d managed to cobble his sanity back together, Wash spent a good amount of time as a Recovery agent - picking up the pieces of Project Freelancer and returning them to sender, or taking out rogue agents - and got betrayed More Than Once in the process, picked up a group of nearly useless simulation soldiers (the Reds and Blues), and nearly died more than once. But it would all be worth it, because once the evidence he’d gathered was turned in to the authorities, he’d be a free man, right?

...or the evidence, in the form of one mostly amnesiac Epsilon unit, could instead by kept by a Blue who wanted a new friend, and lacking that evidence, Wash could be court martialed to hell and back.

It’s when he found out why the evidence never made its way to the authorities that he made a bad decision and doubled down on it. Turns out you can only experience so many betrayals before committing one of your own. To hell with the Reds and Blues - he’d tear them apart himself if it meant getting out of this mess.

3. Forgiveness
Going after the Reds and Blues to retrieve the Epsilon unit did not work out how Wash had planned. A mostly wild goose chase ended in yet another betrayal from a rogue agent he’d partnered up with, the complete loss of the Epsilon unit, and Wash getting beaten to within an inch of his life. The Reds and Blues could have left him there to die; after his betrayal, they would have been completely justified. Hell, they could have just killed him themselves; it’s not like he could have done anything about it.

Instead, they took him in - faked his death, hid him from the world while he recovered, and made him one of their own. It was an act of compassion for someone who absolutely did not deserve it, and it stuck with him. They gave him a home, insomuch as a military base is a home; friends who would forgive him his foibles and fuckups; and a sense of stability and trust he’d been missing for years. Wash started believing in second chances when he received one of his own.

4. Full Circle
A sense of stability is subject to change, and it flipped pretty thoroughly when Carolina - top ranked Freelancer, Wash’s former squad leader, presumed super dead - showed up and recruited Wash and the Reds and Blues to her mission: obtain and revive the Epsilon unit and exact revenge on what was left of the fallen project. As things were wont to do around the Reds and Blues, it absolutely did not go as planned, but the long search for clues gave Wash time to think: about his relationship with a former friend being eaten alive by her own rage; about his new friends, none to thrilled with Carolina but on this mission nonetheless; and his role between the two groups.

The situation hit its first turning point when Carolina, enraged by what she saw as a betrayal, pulled her gun on one of the Blues, at which point Wash pulled his gun on her, essentially picking a side. He chose to protect his new friends, kicking his old friend and current threat out of their lives.

Or so he thought. It turns out that neither he nor the Reds and Blues could rest easy knowing that friends - because that’s what Carolina and Epsilon were, regardless of their recent behavior - were off on their own, running headlong into danger. It was stupid, and it was reckless, but it turns out you can get things done a lot more easily working with a team you can trust, even if that team consists of a new bunch of idiots and an old friend with anger issues. Second chances were one thing; trust was another; and an exercise in both was what Wash needed for the lesson to sink in.

(Getting there in time to help Carolina and Epsilon win a pitched battle certainly helped.)


Link to Samples: Sample 1; Sample 2

Chosen path: Fighter
3 Abilities: Improvised Weapon; Second Wind; Know Your Enemy
Why this path?: It was a toss-up between Fighter and Ranger, given that Wash’s history as a soldier leans towards the former and his skill as a marksman the latter, but it was definitely the “veteran soldier” description that pushed Fighter to the forefront. Also, I’ve discovered that it’s easier to integrate Wash in a setting if I play to his strengths, and Fighter aligns with most of those.

blurb code by photosynthesis