counterblows | ε application

Player Information
Name: Zero
Age: Over 18
Contact:

arrpee, zero#8942 on Discord
Current characters: Tim Wright (

postictal), The Drifter (

hyperlit)

Character Information
Name: Agent Washington
Series: Red vs. Blue
Appearance:

Washington, like a frustratingly large amount of the main cast, has a largely unknown appearance to the viewers, despite the fact that there is a reliable visual reference for pretty much every other Freelancer. What we do know about him is that he has blonde hair, and that's about it. Until canon goes to disprove this appearance, I'll be substituting it with my own 'cause them's the breaks and god I hope I never have to retcon this. For consistency I'll go with this particular interpretation because I can: average-middling height, dark olive skin spattered with freckles and spiderwebbed with thin white scars, gene-aug blue eyes, and violently blonde hair. Looks in constant need of a nap, with dark circles beneath his eyes. He's scarred pretty much all over, but most prominently, there's a raised lump of keloid tissue on the back of his neck.

He's often seen in his armor, which...varies depending on the engines they're shooting the show in. As of the last episode of S13, it looks like this - dark gray with yellow highlights.

Age: Vague. I'll go with mid-30s.
Canon Point: A month or so into their "retirement" post-S13
Canon History:

Thank fuck there's a wiki tbh.

As a note, Red vs. Blue's linkage to the Halo universe is...about on par with a shrug and a wiggly hand gesture. Like, it definitely takes place in Halo's universe, but it's possible that contradictory information has occurred. It is not made the least bit apparent to us how much of the world building from Halo we can be taking to supplement character backgrounds. What we do know is that there are aliens that have been confirmed to be Halo's Sangheili, and the characters reference a "Great War" that resembles the conflict of the Human-Covenant War. Character models are all similarly based in the Halo universe, most resembling MJOLNIR power armor. Project Freelancer contains a lot of similarities to SPARTAN-II program that allowed for things like gene augmentations and body mods - Freelancers were subject to a lot of this level of advanced technology and experimentation.

Basically, there's enough to the Red vs. Blue universe to assume that it could reasonably take place within the Halo universe, but not definitively so. Mostly I just take Red vs. Blue's canon as hard canon and then supplement it with Halo's asides when there are significant gaps, mostly for the sake of my own sanity so that I'm not spinning up entire backstories of my own accord.

Personality: OKAY I'M REALLY SORRY BUT THIS IS GONNA GET LONG. Wash has been through A Lot over a pretty lengthy period of time and I'm going to try and chart this in as linear a fashion as I can and I am so sorry

϶ background

Wash's real name is David. If he has a last name, we're not given it. "Washington" is a callsign given to him by Project Freelancer, a Special Ops research program built around the mission statement of ensuring the survival of the human species, so it seems to have started up during the Great War with the aliens. Freelancer specializes in alternative combat solutions and armor enhancements, as well as study of A.I. implants and their effects in combat. Freelancer devotes a lot of their resources to "simulation troopers" who are basically soldiers cribbed from the worst of the worst in the military and stuck in stalemate situations in case Freelancer agents ever need some live test subjects (and also as a cover story for when Freelancer needed to break the law, which was often, because they could just blame injuries on the sim troopers lol). Much of the main cast is comprised of sim troopers who don't find out they're sim troopers until later in the game, and also they are all idiots. The series calls them "the Reds and Blues" so for convenience, I'll refer to them as such here.

϶ project freelancer

For a long time, Project Freelancer had Wash's undying loyalty, in part because of his history. Washington was enlisted in the Great War and became Army Corporal who disobeyed direct orders from his Staff Sergeant to save the lives of his platoon. While he succeeded, it was at the cost of his freedom, as in the process he injured his commanding officer and was facing court martial until Project Freelancer gave him an out. He has an undisclosed number of sisters, and a long, long history of anger. His mother called it a "long memory." His old third-grade bully would call it nearly losing an eye after David put his head through a mirror. It's known that Wash's psych profile mentions that he used to wet the bed semi-regularly as a kid, which implies...maybe not the best situation growing up.

It was clear to Freelancer that Washington has nowhere else to go. Between court martial and Freelancer, Wash took Freelancer, and he was intensely grateful for it, which won Freelancer his blind loyalty for a not-insignificant span of time. In spite of his psychological warning signs - or perhaps because of them - Project Freelancer inducted David into its ranks and assigned him the callsign of "Washington."

For a highly trained killer who worked with a dysfunctional team of other highly trained killers, Wash was easily one of the most good-natured, even if he was a bit neurotic and kind of a dork. He kept cat pictures and a rubber duck and a skateboard in his locker, and liked to snack in his armor. He was unfailingly loyal to Freelancer and rarely questioned command decisions. While Wash was generally regarded as one of his team's worst fighters, it was arguably in his most "lackluster" qualities that he excelled.

As it turns out, Project Freelancer's downfall was its supreme lack of teamwork. Agents were pitted against each other in "rankings" on a communal leaderboard as opposed to a standard chain of command, until the team devolved into ruthless competition as agents fought against one another for attention from the Project's Director. Washington was one of the few agents to maintain a consistent albeit low position on the leaderboard, simply because he was reliable: he would show up to missions, do his job with a minimum of personal hang-ups, and not get bogged down in any authority issues or in trying to one-up his teammates. He was rather gullible, extremely loyal to a fault, and an easy target for the other Freelancers, but he nonetheless expressed nothing but concern and respect for every one of them. When they needed someone to meet with the Project's higher-ups, Wash was usually the pick, because he could be trusted to be diplomatic without allowing a personal agenda to interfere. That being said, he wasn't beyond criticizing the people he trusted: when the Project's Director allowed for live rounds on the training floor and risked the death of one of his agents, Wash immediately called him out on it...though he was also swiftly cowed into submission when the Director argued that there would be no rules in actual combat, shutting Wash up quite efficiently.

϶ the epsilon incident

Wash's attitude would undergo a drastic shift after he was implanted an A.I. fragment. This was standard procedure for a lot of his teammates, but Wash was unfortunate enough to get the fragment Epsilon, whose trait was "memory" - specifically, the memory of being relentlessly tortured with countless no-win scenarios, until the A.I. from which he and all the other fragments originated, Alpha, started frantically shearing off parts of himself just to keep going. Many of the fragments would go on to be subsequently "fixed" so they wouldn't remember being part of the Alpha gestalt, and then paired with and implanted into Freelancers to function as partners. Where Wash was concerned, this didn't work out so great, mostly because within mere seconds of implantation, Washington was hit with a flash-flood of all of Epsilon's memories of Alpha's torture, many of them traumatic, and then got to witness the very singularly agonizing experience of feeling an A.I. fragment try and commit suicide in your own head, as that was precisely what Epsilon attempted to do.

Wash suffered what basically amounted to a complete psychological break in the operating room. He was certified Article Twelve, unfit for duty. He spent much of his time in recovery dealing with the fallout of having Alpha/Epsilon's memories merged with his own, struggling to separate "Washington" from "Alpha." The Alpha's purpose and the origins of the A.I. fragments, you see, were highly confidential to almost everyone, even Freelancer's top agents. As Wash began to piece together the narrative of what happened to Alpha, as well as the fact that the Alpha was an A.I. that was literally based off the Project's Director, he realized that by the Project's standards, he knew far too much - and therefore they could never find out exactly how much he knew. He became deeply paranoid and distrustful of having another A.I. in his head, due to the very legitimate concern that he wouldn't be able to hide what he knew from another program. His rage toward the Project began here in earnest; gone was the idealistic faith he had in Freelancer and all it intended. In its place, an ugly tumor of resentment began to simmer away.

It wasn't simply justice for the wrongs committed to him that he wanted; he was outraged over what was done to Alpha, and by extension, to Epsilon. Despite the A.I. fragment being the reason Wash carries a lot of very painful memories, he still wanted justice in the A.I.'s name in addition to everything else. He wanted justice for all his fellow agents, those who went missing or died in the field or worse. Above all, he wanted the Project to burn. And, as we learned from his way of handling his old school bully, Wash knew how to play the long con like very few could. That long memory of his wasn't just useful in charting each and every wrong the Project committed - it was useful in separating Washington from Alpha, even if he emerged a much colder, more ruthless person because of it.

϶ recovery one

The Project wasn't done with him just yet. The same people who certified him unfit for duty happily recertified him once they realized they had a use for him. Wash was explicit in that he felt he could never work with another agent or A.I. again, and thus, he was considered trustworthy for a new job, with the callsign Recovery One.

In the time Wash spent out of the action, Project Freelancer had decayed almost entirely: Epsilon had been allegedly decommissioned (actually just placed in storage), multiple agents had gone rogue and taken their A.I. fragments with them, and countless more personnel were MIA. The unit heavy, Agent Maine, had absconded with multiple A.I. fragments that were amassing into a conglomeration known as "the Meta," and was devoted to hunting down all the other fragments to reunite them.

Wash was tasked with more or less picking up the pieces Freelancer left behind - recovering old bits of tech, weapons, and A.I. fragments that got away - as well as attempting to pin down the Meta's whereabouts. Given his experience with Epsilon, the Project doubted he would want to steal an A.I. of his own. And all the while, Wash would spend his time as Recovery One carefully locking all of his fury and righteous outrage at Freelancer - what they had done to him, to Alpha, to all of his fellow agents - behind a mask of professionalism as he played the role of the loyal recovery agent. The glimpses we got of him in the field paint a sobering picture: when he encountered old co-workers and teammates, he was curt and impersonal, even dismissive in the face of their grief and panic over the Meta as it hunted them down. Old figures from his past barely recognized him. When one of his old teammates betrayed him, he shot her in cold blood with very little prompting.

The earnest, slightly dorky rookie who sipped out of curly straws and snacked in his helmet, who was easy to mock and faithful to a fault, who was perhaps one of the nicest Freelancers on the team - was gone. He no longer gave second chances, and he no longer paused to consider sentiment.

϶ the recollection

Wash's simmering desire to make Freelancer pay came to a boil when he managed to recover the largely-amnesiac Alpha and encourage him to help take down both the Meta and Freelancer in one fell swoop. He also displayed a fair amount of his characteristic cunning by conscripting the rest of the Reds and Blues to help bring down Freelancer Command through a varying admixture of threats, warnings, and incentives. Pursued by the Meta, Washington led a charge straight into Freelancer's facilities with the expectation that he could eliminate Freelancer, the Meta, and himself in one fell swoop. In an attempt to prevent the destruction of Freelancer, the Project's Director challenged this, positing that his assistance may allow Wash to survive his two-man assault on Freelancer Command itself.

"I'm sorry," Washington replied coldly, "did something about my actions indicate I expect to survive?"

The Director learned exactly how much Wash knew, and in an instant confirmed what Wash had always feared - that his knowledge of the Alpha would make him a target to Freelancer - by immediately trying to kill him. Wash didn't expect to survive his assault, and plainly didn't terribly mind if he happened to die, as long as he took Freelancer with him.

Except he didn't die. He was imprisoned by the UNSC following his extraction from the shell of Freelancer Command. From a cell, he waited for the Reds and Blues to turn in the Epsilon storage unit as evidence so that Freelancer's remaining personnel could face justice for their crimes. For varying reasons, they didn't, and eventually this news would come back to him. Meaning that he got a bullet to the chest, languished in prison, risked everything he had, sacrificed every tie to Freelancer and every remaining resource, for a group of morons that couldn't even fulfill his final wish and submit evidence to the people that would bring Freelancer to actual, proper justice.

This did not make Wash happy.

The latest in a long string of betrayals, he vowed, would be the last. His desire for straight vengeance had devolved into a desperation to simply get out. His temporary alliance with the hapless Reds and Blues no longer mattered to him, and nor did his desire to get back at Freelancer. He didn't even care that he had to work with the Meta to get Epsilon back. Washington had reached his lowest point. After years of being betrayed by the people he trusted, the institutions he put his faith in, he was finally ready and willing to bite back.

So he got out on a deal with one of the UNSC higher-ups: if he could return the Epsilon unit to them, he would buy his freedom out of this entire mess. When the Reds and Blues weren't willing to relinquish the Epsilon unit, the ensuing conflict wasn't pretty.

Yet, despite the fact that Wash had been working against them up until that point, upon the Meta's defeat and Epsilon's temporary departure from the narrative (it's complicated), they more or less immediately took the injured, betrayed, and bereft Wash under their wing. They gave him armor, hid his identity from the Freelancer personnel that came to investigate, and helped him fake his death so no one would come looking for him. They more or less made him the new leader of the Blue team - perhaps because they could recognize that he was, once again, someone who didn't have anywhere else to go.

϶ the blue team

For someone who'd spent most of his life being taken advantage of, when one small group of people doesn't immediately backstab you, it turns out this goes a long way. In that act of unconditional kindness - refusing to hold Wash's betrayal against him, taking him in, and all in all treating him like one of the gang - they had completely upended his cynical worldview. Wash's cold, clipped, businesslike veneer started to chip and flake away. Later seasons would see him repeatedly relying on the Reds and Blues, trusting them, putting his faith in them, and even standing up to old friends and allies on their behalf. This would culminate in him putting a gun to the head of his old boss when she all but threatened to make the Reds and Blues comply with her own assault on Freelancer. In that solitary act, Wash had come to realization about himself.

He no longer wanted vengeance. He didn't want to perpetuate that cycle of trying to mete out some punishment to Freelancer or to all the people who had hurt him in the past. He'd decided that his friendship with the Reds and Blues was more important than his past, and what's more, he was done being the source of their problems. He was well and truly one of them now.

In the years that followed, the Reds and Blues helped Wash begin to heal from the massive psychological damage that was inflicted on him over the years. Some of his more playful and goofy characteristics once more began to surface. It would be more common to see him joking around with the Reds and Blues as opposed to merely snarking in the background of their antics. He essentially became the de facto leader thanks to being the only one with actual combat experience, and he took that responsibility well in stride. He wasn't above being annoyed when the Reds and Blues' varied neuroses got in the way of the mission, but he'd learned to work around those barriers and even use them to their collective advantage.

The end of season thirteen sees Wash in what is possibly the healthiest state of mind he's ever been in since Project Freelancer. The Reds and Blues had something that Project Freelancer could never achieve - genuine teamwork and unwavering faith in one another. Pair this with some truly unconventional and unpredictable tactics along with the fact that they might be the worst and stupidest soldiers Wash has ever encountered, it was the enemy's consistent underestimation of them that would allow them to triumph every time. While Wash could still deliver some truly scathing criticisms of the Reds and Blues when they got too far out of line, he'd learned to accommodate their quirks. One particular villain attempts to strip away Wash's resolve by challenging his Freelancer past with his allegiance to the Reds and Blues, a psychological attack that may have once cut Wash deeply. Instead, Wash calmly and repeatedly refutes each claim, and plants precious seeds of doubt in said villain's mind that would later have him turning down a road of redemption himself.

While he's no longer hellbent on vengeance, it's worth noting that Washington's sense of personal accountability and justice have remained. He still judges himself harshly for the actions he took against the Reds and Blues. In his initial betrayal of the Reds and Blues, he shot Donut and Lopez (with the expectation that this would kill them, even if this turned out not to be the case) and was fully prepared to turn Epsilon over to the authorities. The assault on Freelancer at the end of season eight sees him saving Donut's life and muttering, "okay, we're done here," as if that would be enough to rebalance the scales, but as late as season twelve, he's still having flashbacks to the moment where he put a bullet in the nicest member of the Red Team, indicating a heavy sense of lingering guilt. While working in Freelancer, he was complicit in a great deal of terrible acts of war, which is what motivated him to try and tear the Project down so intently for so much of his life.

He might be better off than he once was, but it's not clear if Wash will ever come to forgive himself for any of what he's done.

Abilities: All of these are within normal human limits and passive ftr, but I'll note them down regardless!

Combat, Resiliency, and Military Training: Wash's endurance and survivability is within normal human limits, but he is a highly skilled killer and he's very good at what he does. Even if he was considered the worst among the Freelancers, this mostly meant that he was more an average, jack of all trades type who lacked the specialities of his teammates. Wash is brutally adept at hand-to-hand combat as well as possessed with sharp reflexes and a sense of resourcefulness and cunning to make up for the fact that he's often physically weaker than most of his opponents. When backed into a corner against seemingly insurmountable odds, Wash can quickly think his way out. It's this guile and ingenuity that's allowed him to last as long as he has.

Agility and Marksmanship: He can fire a battle rifle round into the scope of someone's sniper rifle in the brief second it takes for them to shoot a grenade out of the air. He's very good at handling knives, and has been known to take down small-to-middling combat aircraft with nothing but a battle rifle and his own wits.

Long Memory: Even before Epsilon's breakdown, Wash could recount and categorize very specific instances over a great period of time. This isn't really superpowered - he's just very good at holding grudges - but he's also able to retain and access all of the memories Epsilon dumped into his head without much difficulty, so it's fair to say he's got a pretty sharp sense of recollection.

Inventory:

Power Armor: So it's not really clear how advanced power armor in Red vs. Blue is compared to Halo's gear. It seems to equivalent to standard-issue military fatigues in the future since literally every character with a military background has it (and quite a few don't, I imagine to save on animation costs). Durability is pretty inconsistent in the series, running off of rule of whatever's funniest. One of the staples of Wash's character is that he operates without advancements, A.I. implantations, or armor mods, so I'm just gonna go with a blanket generalization that it's the kind of power armor that allows him to fare in extreme temperatures without being like, stupidly overpowered. It appears to be waterproof and airtight (one character does drown in the series, but only after suffering multiple puncture wounds to their armor), but regardless, it'll obviously require one of those nifty tech sigils to keep functioning.

I'll be borrowing some of these descriptions in part from the Halo wiki, though I doubt literally all of this is applicable to what appears to be standard-issue armor, so anything listed on the wiki that isn't included here is nerfed/nonexistent.

Quick rundown of the abilities it is implicitly or explicitly shown to have without A.I. involvement:
Heads-Up Display: Includes a biocomm that basically just tells him if any part of him is broken or critical. There's also a comm link (both text and audio) to other people with said armor, but for simplicity's sake let's just say that's broken or water-damaged and therefore nerfed. There was also a voice amplifier mod in here, but that too will be nerfed.
Bodysuit: Beneath the armor is this. He doesn't have any other clothes, so don't take this away please. It's lightweight, flexible material (titanium nanocomposite), sturdy enough to add a thin layer of protection, and maybe some heat regulation so no one's sweating to death in their suits.
Mag-Clamps: Magnetic strips to hold his weaponry. Most prominently, there's one on his back to keep his rifle.
Energy Shielding: It seems like most everyone has a very light variant of something like this, which basically means it can eat a couple rounds before they'll have to rely on the armor to take the brunt of it. I'll limit it to being able to eat one small attack per day before it's gotta recharge.
Pressure Seal: Keeps the suit airtight so a hard vacuum of space or being underwater won't fucking suffocate him.
Automated Biofoam Injectors: The only explanation I can think of that half the people in this damn series survive what they do tbh, so this is cribbed from Halo mechanics. It's an automated system that injects a fast-acting medical foam sealant into an injury when it detects it. It's purely a stopgap measure, as it more or less just makes sure the wound doesn't worsen until you can get ahold of actual medical attention. This is a limited resource, too, so once he runs out, he's gonna have to ask for more. I'll put his current stock at...three injections' worth of biofoam before he runs out and needs to request more; that's about equivalent to three minor injuries or one big one.
Force-Amps: In the armor's arms and legs. The reason he can clear big jumps and the like while wearing armor. Also the reason that people in full-body armor can smack each other around without breaking their bones. It doesn't add any actual artificial strength, but simply allows someone to operate at their standard physical capacity despite the weight of the armor.
Grav-Boots: A form of armor enhancement that allows Wash to cling to surfaces where gravity is reduced or when he's at inconvenient angles. It seems to only work on smooth, metallic surfaces, but for simplicity's sake, I'll just say we can nerf it outright.
Lockdown System: Armor lock is used semi-frequently in the series to immobilize characters wearing the right kind of armor, as well as keep them from death when critically injured (ssssomehow). RvB makes no attempt to go into how this works so I'm fine to nerf it fully.

x1 Battle Rifle: I'll go with the BR55 Heavy Barrel Service Rifle model since it's one of the simpler ones.

x3 BR55 Magazines: The maximum that can be carried in Halo's engine is 4 magazines. Magazines each contain 36 rounds. 3 mags allows Wash a total of 108 rounds. When he runs out, he's gotta ask the Storyteller for more.

x1 Magnum: I'll say it's the M6D model, again for simplicity.

x3 Magnum Maganizes: Each magazine has 12 rounds, so this gives him 36 rounds total.

x3 Frag Grenades: Most everyone carries this in the series. I'll send Wash in with 3.

x4 Combat Knives: Felix threw like, four of these suckers at Wash and he caught them all, so right now he has 4 of them.

x1 Ka-bar: Standard-issue military combat knife. Just the one.

Sample

Thread Sample: no i didn't singlehandedly account for 70% of the comments on this months' tdm. I suggest reading this thread in particular, as it contains the most characterization of Washington at his current canon point.