Memento Eden Application/Important OOC Info
Name: HotAndCold
Personal LJ: My RP journal is hotandcoldrp.
Contact info: AIM: DecepticonAF e-mail: decepticonaf@aol.com
Character Name: Sergeant Dexter Grif
Character Series: Red Vs. Blue: Blood Gulch Chronicles and a touch of Red Vs. Blue: Reconstruction
Age: Not explicitly stated in canon. I'd estimate 26.
Background: It's never made very clear in the series how much Halo canon applies. There's a reference to Master Chief blowing up the Covenant Armada in the first episode, but it's also directly preceded by Grif saying that he "signed up to fight some aliens" when it would later turn out that he was drafted for the civil war, so it's anybody's guess how much that line still means anything. (Especially given how an Elite shows up later in the series, but none of the characters seem capable of identifying it as an Elite.) As such, I will be purposefully vague about how much Halo canon actually applies. Which means the most I'll probably mention in-play is that Master Chief exists at all and maybe that the war with the Covenant happened. >.>
So! On to the actually useful stuff! (I also ask that you bear with me here, as even if the episodes are only about 5 minutes long, 100 episodes and then some is a lot of ground to cover, especially with my natural bent towards verbosity.)
Dexter Grif was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2530. 7 years later, his younger sister, Kaikaina (AKA Sister), was born. 7 years after that, their dad skipped out on them. 4 years after that, their mom left to join the circus as the bearded fat lady, leaving Grif to take care of Sister on his own. He accomplished this mostly through odd jobs that he never kept for very long and a number of dubiously legal schemes, until 2551, when the commands of the Red and Blue forces discovered that there was a one-person discrepancy between the two teams. To make sure there wasn't any unfair advantage, a universal draft was held to draft a single person. Grif was the not-so-lucky winner. Understandably upset at being the first and only person drafted in the last 400 years, (to say nothing of how he had to leave behind his quite frankly moronic little sister to fend for herself) Grif promptly decided to do as little as humanly possible in the hope of getting court martialed or otherwise dismissed from the army. To make matters worse, Red Command stationed him at Blood Gulch, a box canyon at the ass end of the universe and the single most worthless piece of land in the war, giving the Sergeant there orders to get Grif to quit so they could obtain a new draftee. Things quickly settled into a comfortable status quo at Blood Gulch: Sarge heaped abuse on Grif; Grif's fellow private, Simmons, sucked up to Sarge so much he could've won an Olympic gold medal in ass-kissing; Grif and Simmons shared a love/hate relationship and many long conversations about anything/everything; and they all did remarkably little fighting with the Blues in the base across the canyon.
The real trouble began when a new rookie for each side came to Blood Gulch while Sarge was at Command getting orders. In an effort to not actually have to deal with Donut, the Red Team's new rookie, Simmons and Grif sent him on a fool's errand to the non-existent "store" to buy "elbow grease" and "headlight fluid". Incredibly gullible and easily confused, Donut wandered over to Blue Base, thinking it to be the store. Disappointed at their lack of elbow grease or headlight fluid, Donut instead took the Blue's Flag at the prompting of the Blue Team's rookie, Caboose, who had mistaken Donut for the Blue's imaginary General. Following this, a battle promptly broke out, resulting in Church, the Blue Team's de facto leader being killed by Caboose in the Blue Team's tank, Sheila, and said tank being broken by an air strike when Sarge returned from command. The Blue Team promptly hired a Freelancer named Tex (who coincidentally happened to be Church's ex-girlfriend) to assist in getting their flag back from the Reds. Tex succeeded in getting the flag back, as well as critically wounding Donut and knocking out Simmons and Grif before Sarge and Lopez, the Red Team's robot, cornered her and forced her to surrender. In an attempt to free Tex, Church, now a ghost, possessed Sarge and used him to take Tex out of Red Base, where Caboose, not realizing that Sarge was being possessed by Church, promptly sniped him in the head. Grif quickly administered CPR and, in defiance of all logic, this actually saved Sarge's life. Upon recovering, Sarge quickly congratulated Simmons for a job well done, but, when Simmons pointed out that it was Grif who had actually saved his life, Sarge, with equal quickness, criticized Grif for the poor choice in matching treatment to injury.
Meanwhile, Donut had been sent back to command for treatment of his injuries, and returned shortly. Grif and Simmons promptly welcomed him back in the fold by making fun of his new pink armor, despite Donut's protests that it was a lightish red instead. Donut also brought a speech unit for Lopez, which Sarge ended up partially shorting out during installation, causing Lopez to speak only in Spanish, which none of the Reds were capable of understanding. Meanwhile, Tex was working on repairing Sheila in order to finish her job of killing all the Reds. Church, wanting to make sure Tex stayed in Blood Gulch long enough for him to free her from the evil A.I. in her armor, possessed Lopez in an attempt to warn the Reds of this, but couldn't cross the language barrier. The warning became moot, however, when Tex approached the Red Base in Sheila and Donut, eager for revenge for his previous injuries and current humiliation, threw a plasma grenade at her, scoring a direct hit and killing her. Unfortunately, Omega, Tex's A.I. didn't stick around in Tex long enough to be killed when she was. Possessing the ability to jump across radio signals, he jumped into Caboose and started calling himself O'Malley (a portmanteau of "Omega" and "Alison," Tex's birth name).
Three months passed without event, until Medical Officer DuFresne arrived in Blood Gulch as a medic for both teams. He approached the Blues first and was promptly nicknamed "Doc," under the logic that "DuFresne" was too difficult to remember. Just as Doc was finishing up his check-up on the Blues and about to go over to see the Reds, the Reds attacked. The Reds gained a clear upper hand, until they ran out of ammo, since Grif had fallen asleep in his helmet at their last meeting and missed his assignment to carry extra rounds into battle. Rather than reveal this to the Blues, the Reds made a gamble and offered the Blues a chance to surrender. The Blues weren't fooled, but accepted the offer anyway, refusing the demand to hand over Lopez, whom Church was still possessing, lacking a body of his own, and offering Doc as a hostage instead. In turn, the Blues demanded that the Reds admit that they sucked. The Reds negotiated that they only admit that one of them sucks. Negotiations continued for two hours, until finally, Grif was forced to "admit" that he sucked, that he was a girl, that he liked ribbons in his hair, and that he wanted to kiss all the boys, in return for the hostage, Doc.
While the Reds returned to their base with Doc, and Grif sought vindication for his decision to give Sarge CPR for a gunshot wound to the head, the Blues attempted to activate Lopez's repair function so they could fix Sheila. Instead, they unwittingly activated the remote control sequence for the Red's jeep, the Warthog. Through sheer coincidence, Church caused the Warthog to pick Doc up before ramming Sarge into the side of the base and very nearly shooting him to death before the Blues managed to deactivate the remote control sequence, as well as control of Church/Lopez's legs. Fed up with how useless Doc had turned out to be, Grif and Simmons attempt to return him to the Blues, catching Church and Tucker in a rather compromising position as the latter attempted to repair the former's legs. When the Blues refused to take Doc back, Grif and Simmons simply left him in the middle of the canyon before returning to their base (but not before Grif stole his wallet).
Figuring that Lopez would be able to repair his own legs and Sheila on his own, Church de-possessed Lopez, who promptly ran away from the Blues back towards the Reds. The Reds saw Lopez, painted a cobalt color to match Church's original armor, approaching and the Blues chasing after him, and interpreted it as an attack. Sarge and Simmons went out in the Warthog to fight back, leaving Grif and Donut to guard the base. Lopez, appalled that his creator would attack him, used the remote control for the Warthog to cause it to self-destruct. His resolve broken, Lopez agreed to repair Sheila for the Blues. The task was shortly completed, but before Church could follow through on his plan to re-possess Lopez, Tex, now also a ghost, beat him to the punch and possessed Lopez first. Her demand was simple: she'd noticed that O'Malley had taken up residence in Caboose's head, and if Church wanted Lopez back, he'd have to go into Caboose's mind with her and help her kill O'Malley. Church readily agreed, and it was left to Tucker to convince the Reds to turn their radios off so that O'Malley would have nowhere to go once chased out of Caboose's head.
Meanwhile, the Reds had come to terms with the fact that they would never get Lopez back and determined that they needed a new mechanical member of their team. Rather than ask for a new robot from Command, Sarge decided to simply turn one of his already existing soldiers into a cyborg. While Grif and Simmons protested this as a horrible idea, Donut immediately volunteered Simmons for the job. As preparations for turning Simmons into a cyborg got underway, Donut suddenly recalled leaving a cup holder, along with a jazz CD of his out in the overturned Warthog, and Sarge sent Grif and Donut out to fetch them, just as Tucker was approaching with Sheila and Lopez. Tucker failed to figure out how to stop Sheila in time, and, while Donut managed to run away in time, Lopez and Grif were both sent flying when Sheila collided with the Warthog, critically injuring Grif. Using a terrible love song between Lopez and Sheila, Tucker managed to get the Reds to turn off their radios just in time as Tex and Church vanquished O'Malley from Caboose's mind. Unfortunately, Doc had been overlooked in the plan, and O'Malley jumped to him instead. Afterwards, Sarge blazed forward with his scheme to turn Simmons into a cyborg, and moved the spare body parts into Grif, to replace the ones that were damaged by the tank and/or a lifetime of incredibly poor health choices, such as frequent drinking, smoking, and a diet consisting mostly of Oreos and Ho-Hos, with the exception of Simmons's spleen, which was instead inflated into a ball for entertainment purposes.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
Simmons was also particularly displeased to find that Grif stubbornly refused to change his bad habits afterwards, as well. Sarge soon received word from Command that Lopez had been implanted with secret instructions for the next phase of operations. While Sarge wanted to launch an immediate assault on the Blues, Grif suggested that they perform some recon first, and Sarge sent Grif and Donut out on recon. Donut quickly managed to get himself taken hostage by the Blues. Church possessed Donut and used his body to negotiate a deal with the Reds: in exchange for the return of Donut and Lopez to the Red Team, Sarge had to build a pair of mindless robots for the Blue Team (one for Church to use as a body and one for Tex). Lopez, meanwhile, had broken away from the Blues, along with Sheila, in order to form their own robot army. Sarge built the pair of robots for the Blues, not knowing their intended uses, but made some modifications: the robot that would be Tex's was implanted with a listening device, and the robot for Church was implanted with a 10 megaton bomb, as well as a protocol to punch Grif anytime someone said the word "dirtbag".
The Blues, Reds, and ‘Bots all met in the middle of the canyon. Offended by the presence of the two new robots, Lopez attacked, causing Sarge to believe he'd been double-crossed and to attempt to call in an air strike. However, Tucker was still listening into the Red's radio frequency and was shocked to discover that the Blues and Reds shared their contact at Command, Vic. Coming to the obvious conclusion that Red and Blue were a false distinction, Tucker attempted to stop the battle that was beginning. Unfortunately, he was wounded when Doc/O'Malley arrived on the scene soon thereafter. A fight broke out, and O'Malley abducted Lopez before disappearing through the Reds' teleporter. The Reds and Blues then reached a truce and agreed to go after O'Malley, each team leaving behind one of their men to make sure neither side attempted to take over the canyon in the other's absence. The Reds left behind Donut, and the Blues left behind Sheila (as well as Tucker, who was too wounded to go, and, coincidentally, Tex, who took over her robot once everyone departed). Simmons reprogrammed the teleporter to take them to O'Malley, and the Reds and Blues went through in groups: Sarge and Caboose, then Simmons by himself, and lastly Grif and Church. Unfortunately, the teleporter had been sabotaged by O'Malley, and the groups were all split up.
Grif and Church were landed on Sidewinder, a snowy planet where Church had been stationed previously, before Tex slaughtered all the Blues (save Church). They were promptly captured by the remaining Reds at Sidewinder and thrown into the brig, where they remained until Church, through the magic of complicated time travel paradoxes, freed them, but not before Caboose managed to remotely activate the countdown on the 10 megaton bomb in Church's gut. Church and Grif were promptly reunited with their teams (including Donut, Tex, and Tucker), and a fight broke out with O'Malley soon thereafter. O'Malley activated Lopez's latent weather control device (by finding D batteries for it), but was soon defeated when Simmons teleported the Grunts, immortal Red and Blues based off Halo online multiplayer players, from Beaver Creek to Sidewinder. Unfortunately, before Church's bomb could be defused, he was struck by lightning from Lopez, fusing the detonator and making it impossible to deactivate the bomb. The bomb exploded, but, rather than killing everyone, simply blew them 800 years into the future (allegedly, at least. More on that later.), as an in-character reason for the sudden switch between Halo and Halo 2 as the game engine used for filming the series.
The Reds and Blues, now sans Church, regrouped in the Future. They managed to find a broken Warthog, which Sarge repaired in short order. Simmons and Grif took it out on patrol shortly thereafter, and managed to crash it in a ditch in an attempt to re-enact a scene from The Dukes of Hazzard. They freed it from the ditch with Sarge's help and it promptly began to pick up a radio transmission from Tex, saying that she'd found O'Malley at a fortress. The Blues and Reds rejoined with Tex outside of O'Malley's base, where Tex explained her plan to infiltrate the base and plant a bomb to kill O'Malley. Once they discovered that Lopez, now just a head, was also in the base, the Reds protested this plan, until Tucker talked them into hiring Tex to help them find Lopez. An agreement thereby reached, the Reds and Blues launched a coordinated attack on O'Malley's forces. During the attack, Tucker fell into a hole, where he found an energy sword. O'Malley was successfully chased out of the base, and the teams found a computer with a recording from Church in the past, warning them not to destroy the base, not to touch the sword, and not to bring the sword into the building. Just as the recording got to that last part, Tucker brought the sword into the building, which promptly locked down, trapping the teams in the building with the bomb, the timer of which had already automatically activated. Luckily, through some complicated time travel paradoxes (the same ones as before, actually), Church arrived and got the base's computer, Gary, to shut the bomb down.
Freed from their imminent doom, Grif and Simmons proceeded to hang out in the Warthog, Simmons listening to the radio while Grif was "monkeying about" in the back, until Simmons came across a distress signal on the radio. They promptly held a secret meeting with Sarge to discuss this, and then another secret meeting including Donut. They decided to follow the signal without the Blues, and Sarge sent Grif back into the base to distract the Blues while they made their escape, intending to strand Grif. However, Grif found the Blues gathered around the bomb (which had turned out to be sentient), trying to calm it down, and quickly returned to the rest of the Reds, much to Sarge's disappointment. The Reds made their escape in the Warthog just as O'Malley launched a counterattack on the fortress. They followed the distress signal, only to find that it terminated in Blood Gulch.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
Eventually, the rest of the Reds were able to get him to leave his position standing on the cliffs of the canyon screaming in despair by sniping at him, in the literal sense rather than the metaphorical. The Reds approached their old base, worried that someone/something may have taken up residence in their absence. While Sarge was speaking with his men, Sheila rolled past behind him. Sarge refused to believe this, however, despite Simmons's insistence on the truth of it, as Donut was considered too gullible to be a reliable witness and Grif claimed not to have seen Sheila. Simmons continued to insist that there was a tank, and Sarge soon declared him insane and demoted him from his prize position of second-in-command, even going so far as to exile him from the team. Sarge held auditions to select a new second-in-command from the choices of Donut, a skull, and a wrench. Grif was deemed ineligible for the position, and came in 5th place of the competition, with 4th place being reserved for any late entries that would be superior choices to Grif, "such as a turd, or a turd farmer". Meanwhile, distraught at the sudden turn of events, Simmons fell in league with Sheila, painting his armor (mostly) blue and launching an attack on his former teammates. Grif, annoyed at the new status quo of Donut being his immediate superior, managed to talk Simmons into returning to the Reds, until Sarge interrupted their conversation, reinforcing the reasons why Simmons left in the first place and mistakenly assuming that Grif had switched sides as well, until Simmons took Grif hostage. Sarge was suddenly faced with a terrible conundrum: the only way to escape Donut's relentless suggestions would be to rescue Grif.
A rescue operation was soon launched, and Sarge quickly managed to corner Simmons, but Church chose that moment to arrive on the scene (the rest of the Blues had ended up going on a quest with an alien), knocking Sarge out. Simmons remained with Church a short while longer, pretending to be a new Blue (although it turned out that Church had not fallen for this act in the slightest), but not much time passed before Simmons returned to the Red fold. Before he was fully accepted back onto the team, however, Sarge forced him to undergo an impromptu trial, with Grif acting as the defense and Sarge as both the judge and the prosecution. Grif quickly negotiated that if Donut found out they were holding a trial, he would want to be the bailiff (wearing a uniform that featured hotpants), so Simmons's sentence should be commuted in favor of time served and that he should also have to pay a hefty fine to both Sarge and Grif. Sarge quickly agreed to the terms and the deal was done.
Meanwhile, the Blues, save Tex, returned from their failed quest, and Tucker fell ill soon thereafter. Possessing neither the skill nor the willingness to deal with the illness, the Blues opted to call in Doc, even though Doc was still possessed by O'Malley. O'Malley arrived shortly, bringing Lopez with him before leaving him out in the middle of the canyon, where the Reds managed to find him. They attempted to access the secret instructions that Red Command had stored in Lopez (remember those?), only to find that Lopez had translated them to Spanish. In order to translate the instructions, Sarge proceeded to steal Andy the talking bomb from Caboose. Unfortunately, the secret instructions turned out to be absolutely useless, as they were the same generic "try to win" commands they always got. As Sarge tried to cope with the disappointment, Church attacked the Reds with Sheila. Simmons, Grif, and Donut attempted to negotiate a surrender with Church while Sarge called for reinforcements, but negotiations were interrupted when Caboose radioed Church with the news that O'Malley had vacated Doc when Sarge called command and that Tucker had just given birth to an alien baby. Church promptly returned to the Blue Base and Donut rushed after him, eager to see the baby. Sarge warned Donut to wait for the reinforcements to arrive, but Donut dismissed the warnings, reasoning that any ship coming from Earth to Blood Gulch would take days, weeks, months, or even years to arrive.
A ship landed directly on Donut immediately thereafter.
The Reds thought Donut was lost forever, until they heard tapping from the ship, which they assumed to be Donut attempting to send a message in Morse Code, even though none of the other Reds knew any Morse Code, as it was outdated. Sarge quickly formulated a number of mad schemes to get the ship off Donut, while Simmons presented a few reasonable strategies. Sarge, of course, ignored all of Simmons's suggestions and drove off in the Warthog to go fetch a levitation ray. In his absence, Church returned from Blue Base and called dibs on the ship, using Sheila to fend off the protests of Simmons and Grif. However, Sheila abandoned Church shortly after Sarge's return, allowing the Reds to regain ownership of the ship. Sarge then implemented his new plan to enrage Donut so he could physically lift the ship off himself. Predictably, this plan failed, and just as Sarge was admitting his defeat and preparing a retreat, the ship opened, and out strode Grif's sister.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
He immediately demanded that Sister turn around and get back on her ship and go home, even going so far as to threaten to knock her out and throw her back on the ship personally, an incredible effort for do-nothing slacker Grif. Sister refused, explaining that she was scared and lonely without him and had joined the Army in an effort to be with him again. Her presence 800 years in the future was theorized by Simmons to be explainable by her using the light drive to travel between Earth and Blood Gulch instead of the hyper drive, causing her to unwittingly exploit Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Further conversation revealed that Sister had been sent to replace the team's dead commanding officer, while one of the already present soldiers was supposed to be promoted. Sarge protested this news, on the grounds that he was alive and well. Grif countered with the idea that Sarge always claimed that Command was always right, and if Command was wrong about Sarge being dead, then maybe they were wrong about other things, such as the Blues sucking. Distraught over the very idea, Sarge quickly agreed that he was dead, and a funeral was held in his honor soon thereafter, which Grif treated more like a roast than a funeral.
Sarge was buried alive, and Simmons promptly took over command of Red Team, going mad with power in record time. When Grif protested that Sarge wasn't actually dead, Simmons asked Sister what Sarge had died of, getting the confusing answer of "Aspirin overdose" back. When Simmons said that he was going to call Red Command for confirmation, Sister asked him why he was calling Red Command instead of "our guys," meaning Blue Command. It was then that Grif decided to share with Simmons the fact that Sister was colorblind. It turned out that Sister was supposed to be on Blue Team, to replace Captain Flowers, who had been accidentally murdered by a time-traveling Church, who had not been aware of Flowers's allergy to Aspirin. Simmons promptly panicked and went to dig up Sarge, while Grif took Sister over to the Blues, warning her to be careful and not to embarrass the family. Simmons soon returned, distraught by the discovery that Sarge was nowhere to be found in his grave; instead, its bottom opened up into a large underground cavern. Grif immediately protested any plans to explore this cavern, on the terms that it might be infested with bats, which Grif apparently had an intense fear of. Grif quickly made up several repeated justifications for reasons to not explore the cavern, but Simmons insisted, eventually just pushing Grif into the hole, nabbing a screenshot from his helmet visor of Grif flailing for future use as a desktop wallpaper.
Meanwhile, Sarge had found Donut in the caves, as Donut had fallen into them when the ship landed on him. Donut had failed to radio this news to the rest of the team as the fall had broken his radio. When Simmons called Sarge over the radio in order to touch base and work out a plan, Donut continually answered the questions Sarge asked Simmons, not realizing that the conversation was taking place over the radio. The plan was simple: Simmons and Grif would stay put on their peninsular outcropping, and Sarge and Donut would find them. Unfortunately, Simmons and Grif were attacked and shot with tranquilizers before Sarge and Donut found them. Their assailants, an alien and O'Malley possessing a resurrected Captain Flowers, with Andy translating between the two, abducted Grif for questioning, despite the fact that Grif had no relevant information, since they were seeking information about Tucker and his new alien baby, Junior. They quickly abandoned him when they heard the other Reds approaching, however. Grif explained what happened to him to the rest of the Reds as well as he could, given that he was still partially under the influence of the tranquilizers, causing him to identify the alien as a bat-monster, for instance. The Reds decided to track Andy down to confirm this and find out what was going on, eventually coming across a large surveillance system. Sarge sent Grif out to keep looking for Andy while the rest of the Reds continued to investigate the monitors, which eventually showed the interior of the Blue Base, with Sister's armor on the ground, very clearly without Sister in it. Sarge quickly came to the conclusion that Sister had been disintegrated by the Blues and Simmons followed it with the conclusion that they couldn't tell Grif this, just as Grif returned from his search. Sarge promptly told Grif that Sister had been vaporized.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
Simmons attempted to reassure Grif as best he could, until the image on the monitors shifted to another angle of the inside of Blue Base, revealing that Sister wasn't dead, but merely naked.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
Grif proceeded to yell at Sister for embarrassing the family and at his teammates for daring to look at his sister naked, until Sister eventually reclothed herself and the Blues met on top of their base for a meeting. While the Reds couldn't make out what the Blues were saying, due to the lack of audio on the surveillance system, they did manage to glean that the Blues were launching an attack on the currently abandoned Red Base. The Reds quickly decided to launch a counterattack and take Blue Base while it was abandoned, and, on their way out of the cavern, Sarge decided to call for reinforcements first. The transmission to command caused an echo in the caves, which Simmons followed back to the monitoring system. When Simmons approached the monitor, Vic abruptly cut off his conversation with Sarge but failed to cut off the connection before Simmons began talking to Sarge over the monitors. Now cut off from Command, the Reds continued their journey out of the caves and encountered Andy the bomb, who had been abandoned when O'Malley learned enough of the alien's language to no longer need Andy for translation. However, Sarge decided against taking Andy with them, leaving him in the caves.
As the Reds finally returned to Blood Gulch's aboveground, they noticed that the Blues at Red Base had been taken hostage by the freelancer Wyoming and had just switched their plans from "take over Blue Base" to "take back Red Base" when the Blue's tank (now being controlled by Wyoming's A.I. instead of Sheila) rolled by, causing them to switch their plans again back to the original "take over Blue Base". As Blue Base was still abandoned, this was easily accomplished. They remained there as Wyoming executed a few time loops in his fight with the Blues, until this resulted in the Blues fighting against a horde of Wyoming duplicates. The Reds were initially content to sit back and watch the Wyomings do all their work for them, until Grif pointed out that the Wyomings were doing all their work for them, something that Sarge wouldn't tolerate, and the Reds soon joined the fray in the Warthog. Between the Blues and the Reds, the Wyomings were soon all defeated, save one. This final Wyoming revealed O'Malley's plan to the Blues: that Junior was part of a prophecy to save the alien race and that humans could take over the aliens by O'Malley possessing Junior. After hearing this plan, Tex began broadcasting on an open radio channel, telling O'Malley to come and get her.
Church refused to let Tex give in that easily, and began broadcasting on an open channel as well, in an effort to make it more difficult for O'Malley to locate Tex. The Reds not being privy to these plans, Simmons jumped on the radio to tell the Blues to get off the radio and stop running down the batteries on the Reds' radios, only for O'Malley to jump into him instead. He made a few boisterous claims about world domination and attempted to assassinate Sarge before Tex literally beat O'Malley out of him. O'Malley then jumped to Caboose, causing Tex to have to possess him to get O'Malley out of him. Church instructed the Reds that if he wasn't out of Caboose's mind in 5 minutes, then the Reds would have to disable the ship that Sister came in, which was now being operated by Sheila, so Tex wouldn't be able to use it to escape with Junior and O'Malley. As soon as Church possessed Caboose, the Reds went off to blow up the ship, going back into the caves and fetching Andy, whom they promptly planted on the ship. Church and Tex got O'Malley out of Caboose, and O'Malley then jumped to Donut, before being beaten out of him by Tex, with this process being repeated on Sarge before O'Malley jumped to Grif, who fell asleep inside his helmet, causing O'Malley to have to jump again, this time to Doc, then to Church, and then finally to Tex, who boarded Sheila along with Junior and the second alien. As they took off, Sarge radioed Andy and gave him his orders to explode. Andy gave a 10-second countdown, and, at the end, there was a warp and then an explosion shortly thereafter. Afterwards, the teams returned to their respective bases and things finally returned to normal in Blood Gulch.
However, this did not last forever. Eventually, orders came from Command that the bases at Blood Gulch were outdated and something that hasn't been made clear in canon yet happened to Donut. The rest of the Reds were ordered to move to Rat's Nest. Sarge, however, refused his relocation orders, not wanting to leave Blood Gulch as long as a single Blue remained in the canyon. The Blues were also relocated, save Sister (Command doesn't know Sister is in Blood Gulch, if Sister is to be believed), although they were apparently all split up. When Sarge went AWOL by refusing his relocation orders, Grif was promoted to Sergeant. It's unknown what the canon reason for Grif being promoted over Simmons (who, as a Private First Class, already outranked just regular Private Grif) is, but I personally theorize that it has a lot to do with the fact that Grif never painted himself blue and never attempted to murder his commanding officer, both of which Simmons had done. Regardless, Grif, now a Sergeant, and Simmons, still a Private, were relocated to Rat's Nest, where they proceeded to do very little for the next 14 months.
The contents of that last paragraph and other evidence in Reconstruction (namely, all these Freelancers that shouldn't be alive 800 years later running around) imply that the 800-year time skip was not actually 800 years. My personal explanation is that it was 800 days instead.
It's some point in that 14 month period at Rat's Nest that I'll be taking Grif from.
Personality: Grif has a personality akin to that of a college frat boy, despite the fact that he probably never went to college. He frequently uses the word "dude" without a hint of irony. He once suggested thoroughly pimping out the Warthog with spinners, hydraulics, the whole nine yards. Grif is scathingly sarcastic and quick to point out any logical errors in the plans of others, in no small part because Sarge's plans frequently involve the incredibly unnecessary and needlessly gory demise of Grif himself. Grif is not particularly intelligent (numbers in particular trip him up), but he does possess a notable degree of cleverness. He has little to no respect for the law or authority. He frequently mouths off to Sarge and falls asleep inside his helmet at team meetings. His reintroduction into Reconstruction features he and Simmons about to be executed by their own men for the crime of selling all their ammo to the other team. He also confesses to Simmons at this execution that he'd stolen Simmons identity and ran up several credit cards at pawn shops and peep shows. He has a flair for the ridiculous, frequently coming to outrageous conclusions and then running with them. Following his arrest and detainment on Sidewinder, he claimed to have been "all institutionalized and shit," and when Simmons pointed out that Grif had been arrested for no more than 5 hours, Grif retorted that "time moves slower on the inside. It was like 7 or 8 hours to me!" Following the time skip, Grif explains the lack of other people around with a story of a large, elaborate apocalypse featuring nuclear weapons, plague, zombies, and a meteor strike.
He is incredibly lazy, and won't do any work at all if he can help it. "Helping it" usually involves talking somebody else into doing it for him. His profile on the Season 4 DVD even states that if a job can be done in double the amount of time and at a fraction of the quality, then Grif is the man to do it, and if he's asleep or hungover, he can always get Simmons to do it for him. He is also fat and incredibly unhealthy, given his diet of mostly junk food and alcohol, along with his smoking habit. He only seems to show any real initiative in matters concerning his sister, of whom he is incredibly protective. He's a slob, drinking milk straight out of the carton (much to Simmons's annoyance) and refusing to pick up after himself. He has an intense fear of bats, to the point where he freaks out at the very mention of the beasts. He curses freely. Grif is a coward, and if he can avoid any situation that could possibly end in harm coming to him, he will. He has occasionally shown signs of possessing a philosophical streak, such as in the first episode, when Simmons asks if he's ever wondered, "why we're here" and Grif answers with some philosophical musing on whether or not there's a God, only for it to turn out that Simmons was asking in the literal sense of why they were in Blood Gulch. Grif is also occasionally spiteful, as when Simmons asks the question again later, Grif responds with, "No. I never, ever wonder why we're here. Semper Fi, bitch." (This is despite the fact that Grif is enlisted in the Army, not the Marines.) However, he doesn't seem to hold any truly malicious grudges, given that despite the abuse he receives from his teammates, he's still willing to help them in times of need, such as giving Sarge CPR when he was shot in the head, or attempting to cheer him up when it turned out that the secret instruction stored in Lopez were useless, or talking Simmons into coming back to the Reds after he painted himself blue. All in all, Grif is a pretty laid-back, easy-going guy.
Item Lost: Memories of his sister (Face, name, and relation)
Memory Recovered:
1% spent on Sarge. (Genderswap Event)
1% spent on Donut. (Genderswap Event)
1% spent on Simmons. (Genderswap Event)
3% spent on getting run over by Sheila and subsequent surgery. (Halloween Event)
2% spent on Grif's early life, up until right before his mom joins the circus. (Christmas/Various Winter Holidays)
3% spent on the Blues and the Red vs. Blue war. (Christmas Gifts)
1% spent on naming the Warthog. (Christmas Gifts)
1% spent on misc. childhood stuff. (Age Event)
2% spent on The Best Surrender of All Time. (Chinese New Year's)
1% spent on the Warthog bugging out and attacking Sarge. (Tanabata Ball)
1% spent on Donut's performance as Officer Hot-Pants. (Christmas Gifts)
5% spent on everything up through episode 9. (Chinese New Year's, Age Event, Superpowers Event)
3% spent on episodes 26-29. (Memory Raffle)
25% spent, 0% unspent
Inventory:
-1 suit of orange MJOLNIR Mk. VI armor
-14 casual shirts
-7 turtleneck shirts
-7 sweaters
-1 formal shirt
-1 formal tunic
-14 casual pants
-1 pair of suit pants
-1 pair of sneakers
-1 pair of flip-flops
-1 pair of boots
-14 pairs of underwear (boxers, fyi! :D)
-15 pairs of socks
-1 decorative belt
-1 pair of mittens
-1 skateboard
-1 fruitcake
-1 sniper rifle equipped with 4 sniper rounds
-1 magnum pistol equipped with 8 bullets
-An effectively never-ending supply of cigarettes
-1 cigarette lighter
-2 parrots, named Polly and YOU STUPID FUCKING BIRD, Fucker for short
-1 cage for said parrots
-1 Warthog Puma jeep
Job: Commentator
Housing Assignment: Ari Apartments Room #602 (w/ Danny)
Personal LJ: My RP journal is hotandcoldrp.
Contact info: AIM: DecepticonAF e-mail: decepticonaf@aol.com
Character Name: Sergeant Dexter Grif
Character Series: Red Vs. Blue: Blood Gulch Chronicles and a touch of Red Vs. Blue: Reconstruction
Age: Not explicitly stated in canon. I'd estimate 26.
Background: It's never made very clear in the series how much Halo canon applies. There's a reference to Master Chief blowing up the Covenant Armada in the first episode, but it's also directly preceded by Grif saying that he "signed up to fight some aliens" when it would later turn out that he was drafted for the civil war, so it's anybody's guess how much that line still means anything. (Especially given how an Elite shows up later in the series, but none of the characters seem capable of identifying it as an Elite.) As such, I will be purposefully vague about how much Halo canon actually applies. Which means the most I'll probably mention in-play is that Master Chief exists at all and maybe that the war with the Covenant happened. >.>
So! On to the actually useful stuff! (I also ask that you bear with me here, as even if the episodes are only about 5 minutes long, 100 episodes and then some is a lot of ground to cover, especially with my natural bent towards verbosity.)
Dexter Grif was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2530. 7 years later, his younger sister, Kaikaina (AKA Sister), was born. 7 years after that, their dad skipped out on them. 4 years after that, their mom left to join the circus as the bearded fat lady, leaving Grif to take care of Sister on his own. He accomplished this mostly through odd jobs that he never kept for very long and a number of dubiously legal schemes, until 2551, when the commands of the Red and Blue forces discovered that there was a one-person discrepancy between the two teams. To make sure there wasn't any unfair advantage, a universal draft was held to draft a single person. Grif was the not-so-lucky winner. Understandably upset at being the first and only person drafted in the last 400 years, (to say nothing of how he had to leave behind his quite frankly moronic little sister to fend for herself) Grif promptly decided to do as little as humanly possible in the hope of getting court martialed or otherwise dismissed from the army. To make matters worse, Red Command stationed him at Blood Gulch, a box canyon at the ass end of the universe and the single most worthless piece of land in the war, giving the Sergeant there orders to get Grif to quit so they could obtain a new draftee. Things quickly settled into a comfortable status quo at Blood Gulch: Sarge heaped abuse on Grif; Grif's fellow private, Simmons, sucked up to Sarge so much he could've won an Olympic gold medal in ass-kissing; Grif and Simmons shared a love/hate relationship and many long conversations about anything/everything; and they all did remarkably little fighting with the Blues in the base across the canyon.
The real trouble began when a new rookie for each side came to Blood Gulch while Sarge was at Command getting orders. In an effort to not actually have to deal with Donut, the Red Team's new rookie, Simmons and Grif sent him on a fool's errand to the non-existent "store" to buy "elbow grease" and "headlight fluid". Incredibly gullible and easily confused, Donut wandered over to Blue Base, thinking it to be the store. Disappointed at their lack of elbow grease or headlight fluid, Donut instead took the Blue's Flag at the prompting of the Blue Team's rookie, Caboose, who had mistaken Donut for the Blue's imaginary General. Following this, a battle promptly broke out, resulting in Church, the Blue Team's de facto leader being killed by Caboose in the Blue Team's tank, Sheila, and said tank being broken by an air strike when Sarge returned from command. The Blue Team promptly hired a Freelancer named Tex (who coincidentally happened to be Church's ex-girlfriend) to assist in getting their flag back from the Reds. Tex succeeded in getting the flag back, as well as critically wounding Donut and knocking out Simmons and Grif before Sarge and Lopez, the Red Team's robot, cornered her and forced her to surrender. In an attempt to free Tex, Church, now a ghost, possessed Sarge and used him to take Tex out of Red Base, where Caboose, not realizing that Sarge was being possessed by Church, promptly sniped him in the head. Grif quickly administered CPR and, in defiance of all logic, this actually saved Sarge's life. Upon recovering, Sarge quickly congratulated Simmons for a job well done, but, when Simmons pointed out that it was Grif who had actually saved his life, Sarge, with equal quickness, criticized Grif for the poor choice in matching treatment to injury.
Meanwhile, Donut had been sent back to command for treatment of his injuries, and returned shortly. Grif and Simmons promptly welcomed him back in the fold by making fun of his new pink armor, despite Donut's protests that it was a lightish red instead. Donut also brought a speech unit for Lopez, which Sarge ended up partially shorting out during installation, causing Lopez to speak only in Spanish, which none of the Reds were capable of understanding. Meanwhile, Tex was working on repairing Sheila in order to finish her job of killing all the Reds. Church, wanting to make sure Tex stayed in Blood Gulch long enough for him to free her from the evil A.I. in her armor, possessed Lopez in an attempt to warn the Reds of this, but couldn't cross the language barrier. The warning became moot, however, when Tex approached the Red Base in Sheila and Donut, eager for revenge for his previous injuries and current humiliation, threw a plasma grenade at her, scoring a direct hit and killing her. Unfortunately, Omega, Tex's A.I. didn't stick around in Tex long enough to be killed when she was. Possessing the ability to jump across radio signals, he jumped into Caboose and started calling himself O'Malley (a portmanteau of "Omega" and "Alison," Tex's birth name).
Three months passed without event, until Medical Officer DuFresne arrived in Blood Gulch as a medic for both teams. He approached the Blues first and was promptly nicknamed "Doc," under the logic that "DuFresne" was too difficult to remember. Just as Doc was finishing up his check-up on the Blues and about to go over to see the Reds, the Reds attacked. The Reds gained a clear upper hand, until they ran out of ammo, since Grif had fallen asleep in his helmet at their last meeting and missed his assignment to carry extra rounds into battle. Rather than reveal this to the Blues, the Reds made a gamble and offered the Blues a chance to surrender. The Blues weren't fooled, but accepted the offer anyway, refusing the demand to hand over Lopez, whom Church was still possessing, lacking a body of his own, and offering Doc as a hostage instead. In turn, the Blues demanded that the Reds admit that they sucked. The Reds negotiated that they only admit that one of them sucks. Negotiations continued for two hours, until finally, Grif was forced to "admit" that he sucked, that he was a girl, that he liked ribbons in his hair, and that he wanted to kiss all the boys, in return for the hostage, Doc.
While the Reds returned to their base with Doc, and Grif sought vindication for his decision to give Sarge CPR for a gunshot wound to the head, the Blues attempted to activate Lopez's repair function so they could fix Sheila. Instead, they unwittingly activated the remote control sequence for the Red's jeep, the Warthog. Through sheer coincidence, Church caused the Warthog to pick Doc up before ramming Sarge into the side of the base and very nearly shooting him to death before the Blues managed to deactivate the remote control sequence, as well as control of Church/Lopez's legs. Fed up with how useless Doc had turned out to be, Grif and Simmons attempt to return him to the Blues, catching Church and Tucker in a rather compromising position as the latter attempted to repair the former's legs. When the Blues refused to take Doc back, Grif and Simmons simply left him in the middle of the canyon before returning to their base (but not before Grif stole his wallet).
Figuring that Lopez would be able to repair his own legs and Sheila on his own, Church de-possessed Lopez, who promptly ran away from the Blues back towards the Reds. The Reds saw Lopez, painted a cobalt color to match Church's original armor, approaching and the Blues chasing after him, and interpreted it as an attack. Sarge and Simmons went out in the Warthog to fight back, leaving Grif and Donut to guard the base. Lopez, appalled that his creator would attack him, used the remote control for the Warthog to cause it to self-destruct. His resolve broken, Lopez agreed to repair Sheila for the Blues. The task was shortly completed, but before Church could follow through on his plan to re-possess Lopez, Tex, now also a ghost, beat him to the punch and possessed Lopez first. Her demand was simple: she'd noticed that O'Malley had taken up residence in Caboose's head, and if Church wanted Lopez back, he'd have to go into Caboose's mind with her and help her kill O'Malley. Church readily agreed, and it was left to Tucker to convince the Reds to turn their radios off so that O'Malley would have nowhere to go once chased out of Caboose's head.
Meanwhile, the Reds had come to terms with the fact that they would never get Lopez back and determined that they needed a new mechanical member of their team. Rather than ask for a new robot from Command, Sarge decided to simply turn one of his already existing soldiers into a cyborg. While Grif and Simmons protested this as a horrible idea, Donut immediately volunteered Simmons for the job. As preparations for turning Simmons into a cyborg got underway, Donut suddenly recalled leaving a cup holder, along with a jazz CD of his out in the overturned Warthog, and Sarge sent Grif and Donut out to fetch them, just as Tucker was approaching with Sheila and Lopez. Tucker failed to figure out how to stop Sheila in time, and, while Donut managed to run away in time, Lopez and Grif were both sent flying when Sheila collided with the Warthog, critically injuring Grif. Using a terrible love song between Lopez and Sheila, Tucker managed to get the Reds to turn off their radios just in time as Tex and Church vanquished O'Malley from Caboose's mind. Unfortunately, Doc had been overlooked in the plan, and O'Malley jumped to him instead. Afterwards, Sarge blazed forward with his scheme to turn Simmons into a cyborg, and moved the spare body parts into Grif, to replace the ones that were damaged by the tank and/or a lifetime of incredibly poor health choices, such as frequent drinking, smoking, and a diet consisting mostly of Oreos and Ho-Hos, with the exception of Simmons's spleen, which was instead inflated into a ball for entertainment purposes.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
Simmons was also particularly displeased to find that Grif stubbornly refused to change his bad habits afterwards, as well. Sarge soon received word from Command that Lopez had been implanted with secret instructions for the next phase of operations. While Sarge wanted to launch an immediate assault on the Blues, Grif suggested that they perform some recon first, and Sarge sent Grif and Donut out on recon. Donut quickly managed to get himself taken hostage by the Blues. Church possessed Donut and used his body to negotiate a deal with the Reds: in exchange for the return of Donut and Lopez to the Red Team, Sarge had to build a pair of mindless robots for the Blue Team (one for Church to use as a body and one for Tex). Lopez, meanwhile, had broken away from the Blues, along with Sheila, in order to form their own robot army. Sarge built the pair of robots for the Blues, not knowing their intended uses, but made some modifications: the robot that would be Tex's was implanted with a listening device, and the robot for Church was implanted with a 10 megaton bomb, as well as a protocol to punch Grif anytime someone said the word "dirtbag".
The Blues, Reds, and ‘Bots all met in the middle of the canyon. Offended by the presence of the two new robots, Lopez attacked, causing Sarge to believe he'd been double-crossed and to attempt to call in an air strike. However, Tucker was still listening into the Red's radio frequency and was shocked to discover that the Blues and Reds shared their contact at Command, Vic. Coming to the obvious conclusion that Red and Blue were a false distinction, Tucker attempted to stop the battle that was beginning. Unfortunately, he was wounded when Doc/O'Malley arrived on the scene soon thereafter. A fight broke out, and O'Malley abducted Lopez before disappearing through the Reds' teleporter. The Reds and Blues then reached a truce and agreed to go after O'Malley, each team leaving behind one of their men to make sure neither side attempted to take over the canyon in the other's absence. The Reds left behind Donut, and the Blues left behind Sheila (as well as Tucker, who was too wounded to go, and, coincidentally, Tex, who took over her robot once everyone departed). Simmons reprogrammed the teleporter to take them to O'Malley, and the Reds and Blues went through in groups: Sarge and Caboose, then Simmons by himself, and lastly Grif and Church. Unfortunately, the teleporter had been sabotaged by O'Malley, and the groups were all split up.
Grif and Church were landed on Sidewinder, a snowy planet where Church had been stationed previously, before Tex slaughtered all the Blues (save Church). They were promptly captured by the remaining Reds at Sidewinder and thrown into the brig, where they remained until Church, through the magic of complicated time travel paradoxes, freed them, but not before Caboose managed to remotely activate the countdown on the 10 megaton bomb in Church's gut. Church and Grif were promptly reunited with their teams (including Donut, Tex, and Tucker), and a fight broke out with O'Malley soon thereafter. O'Malley activated Lopez's latent weather control device (by finding D batteries for it), but was soon defeated when Simmons teleported the Grunts, immortal Red and Blues based off Halo online multiplayer players, from Beaver Creek to Sidewinder. Unfortunately, before Church's bomb could be defused, he was struck by lightning from Lopez, fusing the detonator and making it impossible to deactivate the bomb. The bomb exploded, but, rather than killing everyone, simply blew them 800 years into the future (allegedly, at least. More on that later.), as an in-character reason for the sudden switch between Halo and Halo 2 as the game engine used for filming the series.
The Reds and Blues, now sans Church, regrouped in the Future. They managed to find a broken Warthog, which Sarge repaired in short order. Simmons and Grif took it out on patrol shortly thereafter, and managed to crash it in a ditch in an attempt to re-enact a scene from The Dukes of Hazzard. They freed it from the ditch with Sarge's help and it promptly began to pick up a radio transmission from Tex, saying that she'd found O'Malley at a fortress. The Blues and Reds rejoined with Tex outside of O'Malley's base, where Tex explained her plan to infiltrate the base and plant a bomb to kill O'Malley. Once they discovered that Lopez, now just a head, was also in the base, the Reds protested this plan, until Tucker talked them into hiring Tex to help them find Lopez. An agreement thereby reached, the Reds and Blues launched a coordinated attack on O'Malley's forces. During the attack, Tucker fell into a hole, where he found an energy sword. O'Malley was successfully chased out of the base, and the teams found a computer with a recording from Church in the past, warning them not to destroy the base, not to touch the sword, and not to bring the sword into the building. Just as the recording got to that last part, Tucker brought the sword into the building, which promptly locked down, trapping the teams in the building with the bomb, the timer of which had already automatically activated. Luckily, through some complicated time travel paradoxes (the same ones as before, actually), Church arrived and got the base's computer, Gary, to shut the bomb down.
Freed from their imminent doom, Grif and Simmons proceeded to hang out in the Warthog, Simmons listening to the radio while Grif was "monkeying about" in the back, until Simmons came across a distress signal on the radio. They promptly held a secret meeting with Sarge to discuss this, and then another secret meeting including Donut. They decided to follow the signal without the Blues, and Sarge sent Grif back into the base to distract the Blues while they made their escape, intending to strand Grif. However, Grif found the Blues gathered around the bomb (which had turned out to be sentient), trying to calm it down, and quickly returned to the rest of the Reds, much to Sarge's disappointment. The Reds made their escape in the Warthog just as O'Malley launched a counterattack on the fortress. They followed the distress signal, only to find that it terminated in Blood Gulch.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
Eventually, the rest of the Reds were able to get him to leave his position standing on the cliffs of the canyon screaming in despair by sniping at him, in the literal sense rather than the metaphorical. The Reds approached their old base, worried that someone/something may have taken up residence in their absence. While Sarge was speaking with his men, Sheila rolled past behind him. Sarge refused to believe this, however, despite Simmons's insistence on the truth of it, as Donut was considered too gullible to be a reliable witness and Grif claimed not to have seen Sheila. Simmons continued to insist that there was a tank, and Sarge soon declared him insane and demoted him from his prize position of second-in-command, even going so far as to exile him from the team. Sarge held auditions to select a new second-in-command from the choices of Donut, a skull, and a wrench. Grif was deemed ineligible for the position, and came in 5th place of the competition, with 4th place being reserved for any late entries that would be superior choices to Grif, "such as a turd, or a turd farmer". Meanwhile, distraught at the sudden turn of events, Simmons fell in league with Sheila, painting his armor (mostly) blue and launching an attack on his former teammates. Grif, annoyed at the new status quo of Donut being his immediate superior, managed to talk Simmons into returning to the Reds, until Sarge interrupted their conversation, reinforcing the reasons why Simmons left in the first place and mistakenly assuming that Grif had switched sides as well, until Simmons took Grif hostage. Sarge was suddenly faced with a terrible conundrum: the only way to escape Donut's relentless suggestions would be to rescue Grif.
A rescue operation was soon launched, and Sarge quickly managed to corner Simmons, but Church chose that moment to arrive on the scene (the rest of the Blues had ended up going on a quest with an alien), knocking Sarge out. Simmons remained with Church a short while longer, pretending to be a new Blue (although it turned out that Church had not fallen for this act in the slightest), but not much time passed before Simmons returned to the Red fold. Before he was fully accepted back onto the team, however, Sarge forced him to undergo an impromptu trial, with Grif acting as the defense and Sarge as both the judge and the prosecution. Grif quickly negotiated that if Donut found out they were holding a trial, he would want to be the bailiff (wearing a uniform that featured hotpants), so Simmons's sentence should be commuted in favor of time served and that he should also have to pay a hefty fine to both Sarge and Grif. Sarge quickly agreed to the terms and the deal was done.
Meanwhile, the Blues, save Tex, returned from their failed quest, and Tucker fell ill soon thereafter. Possessing neither the skill nor the willingness to deal with the illness, the Blues opted to call in Doc, even though Doc was still possessed by O'Malley. O'Malley arrived shortly, bringing Lopez with him before leaving him out in the middle of the canyon, where the Reds managed to find him. They attempted to access the secret instructions that Red Command had stored in Lopez (remember those?), only to find that Lopez had translated them to Spanish. In order to translate the instructions, Sarge proceeded to steal Andy the talking bomb from Caboose. Unfortunately, the secret instructions turned out to be absolutely useless, as they were the same generic "try to win" commands they always got. As Sarge tried to cope with the disappointment, Church attacked the Reds with Sheila. Simmons, Grif, and Donut attempted to negotiate a surrender with Church while Sarge called for reinforcements, but negotiations were interrupted when Caboose radioed Church with the news that O'Malley had vacated Doc when Sarge called command and that Tucker had just given birth to an alien baby. Church promptly returned to the Blue Base and Donut rushed after him, eager to see the baby. Sarge warned Donut to wait for the reinforcements to arrive, but Donut dismissed the warnings, reasoning that any ship coming from Earth to Blood Gulch would take days, weeks, months, or even years to arrive.
A ship landed directly on Donut immediately thereafter.
The Reds thought Donut was lost forever, until they heard tapping from the ship, which they assumed to be Donut attempting to send a message in Morse Code, even though none of the other Reds knew any Morse Code, as it was outdated. Sarge quickly formulated a number of mad schemes to get the ship off Donut, while Simmons presented a few reasonable strategies. Sarge, of course, ignored all of Simmons's suggestions and drove off in the Warthog to go fetch a levitation ray. In his absence, Church returned from Blue Base and called dibs on the ship, using Sheila to fend off the protests of Simmons and Grif. However, Sheila abandoned Church shortly after Sarge's return, allowing the Reds to regain ownership of the ship. Sarge then implemented his new plan to enrage Donut so he could physically lift the ship off himself. Predictably, this plan failed, and just as Sarge was admitting his defeat and preparing a retreat, the ship opened, and out strode Grif's sister.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
He immediately demanded that Sister turn around and get back on her ship and go home, even going so far as to threaten to knock her out and throw her back on the ship personally, an incredible effort for do-nothing slacker Grif. Sister refused, explaining that she was scared and lonely without him and had joined the Army in an effort to be with him again. Her presence 800 years in the future was theorized by Simmons to be explainable by her using the light drive to travel between Earth and Blood Gulch instead of the hyper drive, causing her to unwittingly exploit Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Further conversation revealed that Sister had been sent to replace the team's dead commanding officer, while one of the already present soldiers was supposed to be promoted. Sarge protested this news, on the grounds that he was alive and well. Grif countered with the idea that Sarge always claimed that Command was always right, and if Command was wrong about Sarge being dead, then maybe they were wrong about other things, such as the Blues sucking. Distraught over the very idea, Sarge quickly agreed that he was dead, and a funeral was held in his honor soon thereafter, which Grif treated more like a roast than a funeral.
Sarge was buried alive, and Simmons promptly took over command of Red Team, going mad with power in record time. When Grif protested that Sarge wasn't actually dead, Simmons asked Sister what Sarge had died of, getting the confusing answer of "Aspirin overdose" back. When Simmons said that he was going to call Red Command for confirmation, Sister asked him why he was calling Red Command instead of "our guys," meaning Blue Command. It was then that Grif decided to share with Simmons the fact that Sister was colorblind. It turned out that Sister was supposed to be on Blue Team, to replace Captain Flowers, who had been accidentally murdered by a time-traveling Church, who had not been aware of Flowers's allergy to Aspirin. Simmons promptly panicked and went to dig up Sarge, while Grif took Sister over to the Blues, warning her to be careful and not to embarrass the family. Simmons soon returned, distraught by the discovery that Sarge was nowhere to be found in his grave; instead, its bottom opened up into a large underground cavern. Grif immediately protested any plans to explore this cavern, on the terms that it might be infested with bats, which Grif apparently had an intense fear of. Grif quickly made up several repeated justifications for reasons to not explore the cavern, but Simmons insisted, eventually just pushing Grif into the hole, nabbing a screenshot from his helmet visor of Grif flailing for future use as a desktop wallpaper.
Meanwhile, Sarge had found Donut in the caves, as Donut had fallen into them when the ship landed on him. Donut had failed to radio this news to the rest of the team as the fall had broken his radio. When Simmons called Sarge over the radio in order to touch base and work out a plan, Donut continually answered the questions Sarge asked Simmons, not realizing that the conversation was taking place over the radio. The plan was simple: Simmons and Grif would stay put on their peninsular outcropping, and Sarge and Donut would find them. Unfortunately, Simmons and Grif were attacked and shot with tranquilizers before Sarge and Donut found them. Their assailants, an alien and O'Malley possessing a resurrected Captain Flowers, with Andy translating between the two, abducted Grif for questioning, despite the fact that Grif had no relevant information, since they were seeking information about Tucker and his new alien baby, Junior. They quickly abandoned him when they heard the other Reds approaching, however. Grif explained what happened to him to the rest of the Reds as well as he could, given that he was still partially under the influence of the tranquilizers, causing him to identify the alien as a bat-monster, for instance. The Reds decided to track Andy down to confirm this and find out what was going on, eventually coming across a large surveillance system. Sarge sent Grif out to keep looking for Andy while the rest of the Reds continued to investigate the monitors, which eventually showed the interior of the Blue Base, with Sister's armor on the ground, very clearly without Sister in it. Sarge quickly came to the conclusion that Sister had been disintegrated by the Blues and Simmons followed it with the conclusion that they couldn't tell Grif this, just as Grif returned from his search. Sarge promptly told Grif that Sister had been vaporized.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
Simmons attempted to reassure Grif as best he could, until the image on the monitors shifted to another angle of the inside of Blue Base, revealing that Sister wasn't dead, but merely naked.
Grif was incredibly upset by this discovery.
Grif proceeded to yell at Sister for embarrassing the family and at his teammates for daring to look at his sister naked, until Sister eventually reclothed herself and the Blues met on top of their base for a meeting. While the Reds couldn't make out what the Blues were saying, due to the lack of audio on the surveillance system, they did manage to glean that the Blues were launching an attack on the currently abandoned Red Base. The Reds quickly decided to launch a counterattack and take Blue Base while it was abandoned, and, on their way out of the cavern, Sarge decided to call for reinforcements first. The transmission to command caused an echo in the caves, which Simmons followed back to the monitoring system. When Simmons approached the monitor, Vic abruptly cut off his conversation with Sarge but failed to cut off the connection before Simmons began talking to Sarge over the monitors. Now cut off from Command, the Reds continued their journey out of the caves and encountered Andy the bomb, who had been abandoned when O'Malley learned enough of the alien's language to no longer need Andy for translation. However, Sarge decided against taking Andy with them, leaving him in the caves.
As the Reds finally returned to Blood Gulch's aboveground, they noticed that the Blues at Red Base had been taken hostage by the freelancer Wyoming and had just switched their plans from "take over Blue Base" to "take back Red Base" when the Blue's tank (now being controlled by Wyoming's A.I. instead of Sheila) rolled by, causing them to switch their plans again back to the original "take over Blue Base". As Blue Base was still abandoned, this was easily accomplished. They remained there as Wyoming executed a few time loops in his fight with the Blues, until this resulted in the Blues fighting against a horde of Wyoming duplicates. The Reds were initially content to sit back and watch the Wyomings do all their work for them, until Grif pointed out that the Wyomings were doing all their work for them, something that Sarge wouldn't tolerate, and the Reds soon joined the fray in the Warthog. Between the Blues and the Reds, the Wyomings were soon all defeated, save one. This final Wyoming revealed O'Malley's plan to the Blues: that Junior was part of a prophecy to save the alien race and that humans could take over the aliens by O'Malley possessing Junior. After hearing this plan, Tex began broadcasting on an open radio channel, telling O'Malley to come and get her.
Church refused to let Tex give in that easily, and began broadcasting on an open channel as well, in an effort to make it more difficult for O'Malley to locate Tex. The Reds not being privy to these plans, Simmons jumped on the radio to tell the Blues to get off the radio and stop running down the batteries on the Reds' radios, only for O'Malley to jump into him instead. He made a few boisterous claims about world domination and attempted to assassinate Sarge before Tex literally beat O'Malley out of him. O'Malley then jumped to Caboose, causing Tex to have to possess him to get O'Malley out of him. Church instructed the Reds that if he wasn't out of Caboose's mind in 5 minutes, then the Reds would have to disable the ship that Sister came in, which was now being operated by Sheila, so Tex wouldn't be able to use it to escape with Junior and O'Malley. As soon as Church possessed Caboose, the Reds went off to blow up the ship, going back into the caves and fetching Andy, whom they promptly planted on the ship. Church and Tex got O'Malley out of Caboose, and O'Malley then jumped to Donut, before being beaten out of him by Tex, with this process being repeated on Sarge before O'Malley jumped to Grif, who fell asleep inside his helmet, causing O'Malley to have to jump again, this time to Doc, then to Church, and then finally to Tex, who boarded Sheila along with Junior and the second alien. As they took off, Sarge radioed Andy and gave him his orders to explode. Andy gave a 10-second countdown, and, at the end, there was a warp and then an explosion shortly thereafter. Afterwards, the teams returned to their respective bases and things finally returned to normal in Blood Gulch.
However, this did not last forever. Eventually, orders came from Command that the bases at Blood Gulch were outdated and something that hasn't been made clear in canon yet happened to Donut. The rest of the Reds were ordered to move to Rat's Nest. Sarge, however, refused his relocation orders, not wanting to leave Blood Gulch as long as a single Blue remained in the canyon. The Blues were also relocated, save Sister (Command doesn't know Sister is in Blood Gulch, if Sister is to be believed), although they were apparently all split up. When Sarge went AWOL by refusing his relocation orders, Grif was promoted to Sergeant. It's unknown what the canon reason for Grif being promoted over Simmons (who, as a Private First Class, already outranked just regular Private Grif) is, but I personally theorize that it has a lot to do with the fact that Grif never painted himself blue and never attempted to murder his commanding officer, both of which Simmons had done. Regardless, Grif, now a Sergeant, and Simmons, still a Private, were relocated to Rat's Nest, where they proceeded to do very little for the next 14 months.
The contents of that last paragraph and other evidence in Reconstruction (namely, all these Freelancers that shouldn't be alive 800 years later running around) imply that the 800-year time skip was not actually 800 years. My personal explanation is that it was 800 days instead.
It's some point in that 14 month period at Rat's Nest that I'll be taking Grif from.
Personality: Grif has a personality akin to that of a college frat boy, despite the fact that he probably never went to college. He frequently uses the word "dude" without a hint of irony. He once suggested thoroughly pimping out the Warthog with spinners, hydraulics, the whole nine yards. Grif is scathingly sarcastic and quick to point out any logical errors in the plans of others, in no small part because Sarge's plans frequently involve the incredibly unnecessary and needlessly gory demise of Grif himself. Grif is not particularly intelligent (numbers in particular trip him up), but he does possess a notable degree of cleverness. He has little to no respect for the law or authority. He frequently mouths off to Sarge and falls asleep inside his helmet at team meetings. His reintroduction into Reconstruction features he and Simmons about to be executed by their own men for the crime of selling all their ammo to the other team. He also confesses to Simmons at this execution that he'd stolen Simmons identity and ran up several credit cards at pawn shops and peep shows. He has a flair for the ridiculous, frequently coming to outrageous conclusions and then running with them. Following his arrest and detainment on Sidewinder, he claimed to have been "all institutionalized and shit," and when Simmons pointed out that Grif had been arrested for no more than 5 hours, Grif retorted that "time moves slower on the inside. It was like 7 or 8 hours to me!" Following the time skip, Grif explains the lack of other people around with a story of a large, elaborate apocalypse featuring nuclear weapons, plague, zombies, and a meteor strike.
He is incredibly lazy, and won't do any work at all if he can help it. "Helping it" usually involves talking somebody else into doing it for him. His profile on the Season 4 DVD even states that if a job can be done in double the amount of time and at a fraction of the quality, then Grif is the man to do it, and if he's asleep or hungover, he can always get Simmons to do it for him. He is also fat and incredibly unhealthy, given his diet of mostly junk food and alcohol, along with his smoking habit. He only seems to show any real initiative in matters concerning his sister, of whom he is incredibly protective. He's a slob, drinking milk straight out of the carton (much to Simmons's annoyance) and refusing to pick up after himself. He has an intense fear of bats, to the point where he freaks out at the very mention of the beasts. He curses freely. Grif is a coward, and if he can avoid any situation that could possibly end in harm coming to him, he will. He has occasionally shown signs of possessing a philosophical streak, such as in the first episode, when Simmons asks if he's ever wondered, "why we're here" and Grif answers with some philosophical musing on whether or not there's a God, only for it to turn out that Simmons was asking in the literal sense of why they were in Blood Gulch. Grif is also occasionally spiteful, as when Simmons asks the question again later, Grif responds with, "No. I never, ever wonder why we're here. Semper Fi, bitch." (This is despite the fact that Grif is enlisted in the Army, not the Marines.) However, he doesn't seem to hold any truly malicious grudges, given that despite the abuse he receives from his teammates, he's still willing to help them in times of need, such as giving Sarge CPR when he was shot in the head, or attempting to cheer him up when it turned out that the secret instruction stored in Lopez were useless, or talking Simmons into coming back to the Reds after he painted himself blue. All in all, Grif is a pretty laid-back, easy-going guy.
Item Lost: Memories of his sister (Face, name, and relation)
Memory Recovered:
1% spent on Sarge. (Genderswap Event)
1% spent on Donut. (Genderswap Event)
1% spent on Simmons. (Genderswap Event)
3% spent on getting run over by Sheila and subsequent surgery. (Halloween Event)
2% spent on Grif's early life, up until right before his mom joins the circus. (Christmas/Various Winter Holidays)
3% spent on the Blues and the Red vs. Blue war. (Christmas Gifts)
1% spent on naming the Warthog. (Christmas Gifts)
1% spent on misc. childhood stuff. (Age Event)
2% spent on The Best Surrender of All Time. (Chinese New Year's)
1% spent on the Warthog bugging out and attacking Sarge. (Tanabata Ball)
1% spent on Donut's performance as Officer Hot-Pants. (Christmas Gifts)
5% spent on everything up through episode 9. (Chinese New Year's, Age Event, Superpowers Event)
3% spent on episodes 26-29. (Memory Raffle)
25% spent, 0% unspent
Inventory:
-1 suit of orange MJOLNIR Mk. VI armor
-14 casual shirts
-7 turtleneck shirts
-7 sweaters
-1 formal shirt
-1 formal tunic
-14 casual pants
-1 pair of suit pants
-1 pair of sneakers
-1 pair of flip-flops
-1 pair of boots
-14 pairs of underwear (boxers, fyi! :D)
-15 pairs of socks
-1 decorative belt
-1 pair of mittens
-1 skateboard
-1 fruitcake
-1 sniper rifle equipped with 4 sniper rounds
-1 magnum pistol equipped with 8 bullets
-An effectively never-ending supply of cigarettes
-1 cigarette lighter
-2 parrots, named Polly and YOU STUPID FUCKING BIRD, Fucker for short
-1 cage for said parrots
-1 Warthog Puma jeep
Job: Commentator
Housing Assignment: Ari Apartments Room #602 (w/ Danny)