splendorocity app
Player Information:
Name: Roy!
Journal: royali
Method of Contact: Best done over AIM @ 'vonnerdyce' or plurk at the same!
Previous characters: Exactly zero! Newbieism, I has it.
Character Information:
Full Name: Private Leonard L Church - also known as the Alpha AI.
Series: Red Versus Blue.
Canon point: Post Reconstruction.
Age: Never stated canonically? If one takes into consideration his 'human' perception of himself, probably mid-to-late twenties. As an AI, uh, significantly less than that. Probably around seven or eight, given the fact that the Alpha could probably be considered rampant.
Species: He is a motherfucking ghost. That is totally a species. DON'T LIE.
Appearance/PB: In his standard robo-body, Church looks like a mini-Spartan. According to Tex, he's probably a little above average height (circa season one, her comment re: Church-possessing-Sarge 'you're a little short to be Church...'). In his ghost/AI form, he's white/transparent. Though the creators of RvB have specifically stated they never want the Blood Gulch crew to have appearances, it can be theorized that Alpha!Church bears a passing resemblance to Director!Church, who is Caucasian-ish and possessing of black hair. In a Tony Stark goatee. (... goatee optional). I may or may not be going the way of kickbancaboose and using
James McAvoy. CANNOT UNSEE.
Appearance upon arrival:
History:
Previous RP memories: Nyet.
Bringing someone along?: Nope. Church is his own AI. Oh yeah.
Character History: Wikia Link So a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was this total bag of dicks named Doctor Leonard Church. And he had a chip on his shoulder about the Great War (assumption being made: Human-Covenant conflict, given that RvB is tenuously set in the Halo 'verse. Halo events are canon to RvB, RvB events are not in fact canon to Halo) and thought it was a GREAT idea to create this magic bullet called Project Freelancer. To, you know, defend the known universe. Fuck shit up. Et al.
Project Freelancer was at its core an experimental thing, meant to pair specially selected 'agents' with 'dumb' AI units. This gestalt was meant to boost their efficiency in battle, give them the capability to use the armour abilities that Spartans sort of take for granted, that sort of thing. In effect, it was supposed to make a normal human capable of near-Spartan-esque feats of strength and badassery.
But Project Freelancer was only ever cleared to use a single 'smart' AI. And that single AI? Wouldn't go very far. Sure, whoever was paired with it undoubtedly would have go on to be pretty hardcore themselves, but the Director's plan was not to make one hardcore badass. It was to make many hardcore badassii.
And, well, the Director? Sort of has a lot of intense, inward-directed loathing.
So he did a Thing. He created that AI from his own brain scans - effectively making a digital pseudo-replica of himself, in the same way that Cortana is a digital pseudo-replica of Doctor Halsey (WHY IS IT ALWAYS DOCTORS...). And he then proceeded to torture the everliving shit out of it, theorizing that an AI's internal processing matrix would splinter, would 'fracture' the same way a human's can in situations of intense physical or emotional distress. Effectively, he wanted to force a form of MPD on it.
And, well. He succeeded. The Alpha began to disintegrate, to fragment itself off, the self-preservation instinct a very human manifestation. It sloughed off its anger, its logic, its deceit, shedding pieces of itself like a snake stuck in time-lapse photography. Finally, at the last it let go of its memories. Good, bad, ugly, every minute of torture, every instance of being confronted with its own failure.
That AI was the last, and for good reason. Epsilon, as it was called (don't even ask about the number/naming scheme of the AI. Omega, for example, is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, but was Omega the last fragment created? [ALL SIGNS POINT TO: NO]) was paired up with a Freelancer agent - codename Washington - and proceeded to go crazy inside his head. After that, no one else received an AI, and it's not too far a leap to assume also that the Alpha's torture was certainly drawing to a middle at that point. Why continue torturing it if the fragments it was producing were no longer viable as anything more than scrap coding and pretty flashing lights?
So the Alpha was shoved into cold storage. But the fragments never stopped yearning to be reunited with it. They are the fucking Borg or something, man, I don't even. Eventually, the AI collective were managing to convince their Freelancer counterparts to go looking for it.
On one memorable occasion, Agent Texas - then paired with the Omega AI, one of three who were aware of the torture (the others being Gamma and Epsilon) - managed to break into the facility where he was being held. Ultimately, the assault she spearheaded failed, and the Alpha was moved well beyond the reach of the Freelancers.
TO BLOOD GULCH.
Blood Gulch - a box canyon in the middle of nowhere - has no strategic importance whatsoever. The warring sides - the Red army and the Blue army respectively - literally had no more cosmic purpose in life than to serve as a field test for Freelancer agents preparing for active duty. They were largely chosen by their incompetence and general failure as anything approaching appropriate 'soldier' material.
The Alpha, now implanted in an artificial body and going by 'Leonard Church' (why the Director would have let him use that name when it was a hugely obvious trail of breadcrumbs back to him the world may never know.) certainly fit the bill for these prerequisites. And so, for several years, Church was able to live in relative anonymity. Oh sure, he had a couple unfortunate run-ins with things like his bitch of an ex-girlfriend, one of the aforementioned fragments (namely: Omega. Or O'Malley. Or Sir-Laughs-A-Lot-Like-A-Fucking-Idiot. You know. Normal stuff) time travel, creating millions of copies of himself while time travelling and a crazy alien race, but for the most part, he got to lie pretty low.
After the incidents of SO5 - namely, Tex stealing the new Sheila!ship and disappearing into the great blue yonder, Church was reassigned to an outpost in the middle of nowhere. An assignment that put him mysteriously by himself. Is that the Director's hand at work, I see? Perhaps taking note of the fact that his bouncing baby AI was getting a little too involved in things? HMM.
So Church spent fourteen months all by his onsies, before Caboose decided to drag him back into the fight alongside the Freelancer Agent Washing(tub)ton. Said fight, primarily against the Meta, eventually lead to Washington revealing Church's sordid past. Surprise, you're an AI that's been horribly abused and traumatized and locked up and mistreated and torn into bitty pieces by your own raging insanity!
Except that, for Church, denial is totally nothing like a river in Egypt. He's a fucking ghost, got it memorized?
Personality:
CHURCH: I learned a very valuable lesson in my travels, Tucker. No matter how bad things might seem--
CABOOSE: They could be worse.
CHURCH: Nope. No matter how bad they seem, they can't be any better, they can't be any worse. Because that's the way things fucking are, and you better get used to it, nancy, so quit your bitching.
Red Versus Blue, S03.
There is one very important lesson you need to know about Church before we tumble down this particular rabbit hole. Are you paying attention yet? Yeah? Good. He hates you. No, really. He doesn't give a shit if you are white or black or purple or an alien or a colony of mold growing on that shit that got left in the fridge for six months that Caboose then proceeded to fucking eat-
He fucking hates you. And your little dog, too.
Now that we've covered that, it's time to move on.
Church is the attending tenured professor of the school of 'apathetic irritation'. It's his default state. He doesn't give a shit about anything and manages to get pissed off about everything, all at the same time. One would think that apathy would lead to a state of non-expression, but that is not so with Church. Nearly all the energy he has is expended in anger, irritation, hatred, frustration, an inability to hit the broad side of a barn with a fucking sniper rifle and so on and so forth.
He's an asshole. Probably the sort of asshole that takes candy from small children. He frequently (loudly) tells people that he hates them, that they're retarded, that he hopes they die, etc. He's a real awesome guy to be around, let me tell you. In season 06, his reaction to finding out Caboose has been (perhaps gravely) injured by the Meta is to take a hopeful pot-shot at him. Unfortunately, there's this pesky thing called sun, and it was totally in his eyes.
Now, here's where the dichotomy of his character really comes into play. Someone he knows gets hurt? To their face, he'll generally tell them he hopes they fucking die. However, on his own, he'll do things like, oh, you know, call up comedic arch-enemies to save their lives... (see: Tucker and his Spontaneous Alien Pregnancy). Or, you know... go into their brainspace to try and rouse them from a coma (see: Caboose post-Delta-removal). He'll ask other people if they're going to be okay, in that way where if it ever gets back to the original person that he was even remotely interested in their wellbeing he will probably shoot himself in the head.
And then there is the matter of Tex. Agent Tex to you, Allison only occasionally to Church. Church sort of hints that if not for her infidelity, her tendency to steal money out of his wallet, and that little thing called cross-fraternization, they'd have gotten married. (... it should be noted that all of these memories are either fabricated entirely or from the Director's own memories of 'his' version of Allison. Either way, they are real to the Alpha!Church, and it's probably safe to assume that his own 'feelings' for Tex have evolved past the point of being a 'shadow' of the Director's own feelings). Church frequently drops everything in an attempt to help her, nevermind that she shows on more than one occasion that she is more than equal to the task of beating him into the next (day, week, year, decade...). Tex is a catalyst for a lot of the choices Church makes over the course of Red Versus Blue, for better or worse.
You see, Church isn't nearly as apathetic as he thinks he is. As he wants everyone else to think he is. He's not exactly a Crouching Jackass, Hidden Woobie, but there's a lot more going on with his ~feelings~ than he's ever willing to admit. If anyone ever bounced him onto a psychiatrist's couch he'd spend the entire time telling him that Rorschach blots looked like 'your mom' while denying every accusation of mental fuckupedness to which one could possibly ascribe him.
But that doesn't change the fact that yeah, he gives a shit. It's accidental, incidental, and totally balls. He fucking hates that he cares, even if those feelings are limited to 'would not cut rope while Tucker is dangling off cliff-face by it. ... Correction: would not completely cut rope'. What're you gonna do, braid his hair and put him in a dress? Jesus.
Perhaps it's this predilection for 'giving a shit while pretending he doesn't' that makes Church a pretty damned decent leader. He adheres to the adage of THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS, FUCKTARDS. So when shit starts to hit the fan, and he's lacking in someone else he can shove the duty off onto? He'll step up to the plate and Be a Leader. Of course, he spends the entire time going WHY GOD WHY ME, because he's a whiny, selfish, self-centered little bitch, but hey. It should also be noted that if someone (... especially someone he had particular reason to dislike) ever asked him to lead something, he'd probably tell them to eat a bag of dicks out of sheer spite.
Oh yeah, there's that thing. Spite. Church is spiteful, stubborn, prideful, crass. Abrasive. Contrary. He's alternately the cranky old man that chases kids off his lawn with a shotgun and a bottle of tequila and the eight year old in one of those dumb caps with the imitation helicopter spinning thin on the top. He can go from SRS BSNS to 'holy fuck our suits have a voice amplifier? THIS MAKES ME THE VOICE OF GOD!!' in three seconds flat. The fact that he can be at his core a complete and utter cynic yet still show curiosity and amazement at what the world has to offer is another of those patented Church Contradictions From Hell.
In summation;
Life sucks and then you die. In his case, more than once. In fact, in his case, more like several dozen times. It doesn't change the sentiment. Life sucks big, hairy donkey balls. With syphilis.
But you know what? He's okay with that. Because hell, you can't change it one way or another. Might as well just buckle up for the ride.
At the point I'm taking him from, that being post-Meta-integration, Church knows full well that he's an AI. But you will never catch him admitting it, either to himself or others.
Extra:
Character Abilities: Managing to miss someone point-blank after emptying an entire magnum magazine into them has got to be some kind of superpower. But being a leader is sort of an ability, right? Oh, and he can sort of possess people. MINOR DETAIL...
It's never really mentioned whether or not he needs an open AI slot or a radio/transmitter to possess someone. One would assume not, because he seems to be generally capable of bouncing into people whenever it suits his purpose, but hey. If a limitation is needed, this can totally be it. :D
Possessions: One shiny robot body, his sniper rifle and an entire can of WHAT THE UNHOLY FUCK.
Anything else: The aforementioned possession, as one might wonder, seems like the perfect chance to god-mode! THIS IS OF COURSE SOMETHING I WILL BE EXPLOITING AT EVERY POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY. GIRD YOUR LOINS, SPLENDOR.
No, actually. I'm kidding. Any bodyhopping that Church may or may not do will be done with full and direct capitulation and knowledge from everyone involved.
Samples:
Action/Communication thread/post sample: Here!
Log/Prose sample:
The concept of time as he knows it disafuckingppears at warp, t-minus crazy and counting. One second and he's the motherfucking Casper and the next he's nowhere, everywhere all at once. The world rises up around him and he falls into it, disturbs it no more than the whisper of rain against an ocean. It envelopes, encompasses, dissuades one from any thoughts, individual or insipient.
He tries to breathe. Realizes too late that AI - fuck that - that ghosts don't need to breathe. Breathing is for those squishy motherfuckers who need the steady supply of oxygen at approximately twenty thousand decilitres per annum just to keep their heart beating, the pump of blood to their brain-
No, that's not - that wasn't what he meant to think. He really doesn't give a shit about how much air people suck into their lungs. Really doesn't care if they breathe at all. They can fucking choke on it for all the many-splendored fucks he gives. What could a guy ever possibly do with that knowledge, anyways? Sign on to Jeopardy? Yeah, well, he doubts they're in the business for spooks. Unless he can get slotted in on a Halloween novelty special to answer trivia like 'what is the circumference of the earth'.
(00110100 00110000 00101100 00110000 00110111 00110101 00101110 00110001 00110110 00100000 01101011 01101001 01101100 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 - cut that the fuck out.)
He has a memory of falling to his knees, hands bright with blood. Allison's blood - but it's always Allison here, and never Tex. Tex is a ghost, like him, and ghosts don't bleed.
(Neither do AI. And doesn't that sound like the punchline to the worst knock-knock joke in the world.)
There's pressure all around him, variegated, shot through with striations in all the colours he can't name. "Fuck off," he snarls, and the pressure abates. The memories fall quiescent, the sense he gets from it is almost one of apology. He can yet feel it, pressing at the edge of his - he can't even in good faith call it consciousness - but for now, still. He's never been aware of so much while knowing so little. It's almost like (watching as the world burns) (falling so far you stop being afraid of what'll happen when you land) (drowning, feeling the press of an embolism sliding through your veins as you surface too fast in a storm)
You're back, one voice says, and he has the impression of incandescent, electric ultraviolet. A feeling of contentment rests against his side, curled into his negative spaces like a lover, and is gone. Alpha. You've come home.
The Meta's mind doesn't really register. It's buried so deeply beneath the myriad fragments that it's more like scenery. Angry scenery. Scratch that. Fucking furious, 'I will tear your guts out and use them to play skip-rope' type scenery. Church knows that feeling. He's angry every goddamned day of his life. But this is a deeper, older anger, so far down it's like it's taken root beneath the world.
He knows, the whisper continues from further away. We all know.
Odds of survival, nominal. May I recommend immediate compartmentalization, pending--?
He knows all that. He knows all of it. He knows that the rate at which an EMP (E.M.P, not EMP, what the fuck was he even thinking?) blast travels; that there's no hope of survival. Not even for someone - some thing that can think at the rate of several trillion computations per minute. He could shunt himself off into the processing matrix of the Meta's suit, port for a hard reset. But that wasn't what they'd agreed on. He's here. He's got to stay here. Got to buy Washington all the time he needs.
He needs to end this.
He's going to die. The thought inspires no panic, no fear. He's surrounded by, awash in projected light. Home ain't so bad after all.
"You've always been a fucking idiot, Church."
Allison. Tex. The lines blur and cross, he has to struggle to grab the one that matters most. He comes away with an image of a woman in black armour, visor catching the refraction of light from the cold snow of Sidewinder. And he grins. Well, really, it's more of a leer, but there's genuine humour in it, too.
"Nice of you to show up, bitch."
Curtain call. Fade to black. There's pain, at the edge of his perception, travelling like it might through a nervous system that exists only because he imagines it does. And in his mind, Tex is looking like she wants to hit him.
But he has no memory of her landing the blow.