Witchy Willows: Application

[aintthatabitch]

Player Name: CHARLIE
Contact: nirnroot
Other Characters In-Game: Lance (voltron)

Character: Epsilon
Series: Red vs Blue
Canon Point: end of s13
CRAU?: NNNNOPE

History: wiki!

Previous game history: n/a

Personality:

The most important thing to remember about Epsilon is what he is. Epsilon is an A.I., but not a full one. He's a fragment, splintered off of the Alpha A.I. unit; a being with a whole human consciousness. From convoluted, and horrible experiments, the Alpha was used to procure A.I. for further experimentation within Project Freelancer, the program for which Alpha was created. They tortured him, put him through horrible things, until he did what any human mind would be forced to do to survive: he cast his pieces away. His logic, his deception, his creativity and ambition, his trust--and eventually, down the line, his memory.

Epsilon is, at his base, the amalgamation of memories from Alpha, and therefore the Director of Project Freelancer, from whom the Alpha was mapped. He began as what they had experienced, both the Director's loss and the Alpha's torture. Needless to say, he hasn't always been the most stable person, but he's come a very, very long way from where he began.

The Alpha and the Director were doomed to their obsessions. For Epsilon, due to his trauma and locking away all of his memories, that was simply the feeling of obsession itself; he'd had no context to begin. From that, without the selfishness of his memories holding him back, he learned how to let go. And when he did finally remember everything, after knowing what it meant to free himself from those shackles, he realized what he could become again. Facing down his future, Epsilon came to the conclusion that he would be better. Instead of denying what happened, he compartmentalized it; it wasn't him. It wasn't Epsilon, he was an unfortunate byproduct of the actions of the versions before him, and their past did not make his future.

From that point on, Epsilon has brought himself into the person he is now. He's still selfish, still self-centered, but he's confident in the way that Alpha and the Director could never lay honest claim to. Epsilon cares more freely, even if he's uncomfortable admitting it. He keeps an eye on everybody's wellbeing, he takes a little more pride in taking care of everyone, and he's more comfortable talking to people honestly about things that concern him. He's learned better communication, even if he's still nowhere near stellar at it, or at many other things.

For instance: if it's about Epsilon, it's off limits. He'll talk shit out all day with somebody he cares about, even if he complains about it, but if it comes to him and how he's doing, he avoids talking. Usually it's a hand-wave and a quick "whatever," edging into deflection with humor when it's serious and he knows he has to face it. He doesn't like the spotlight being on his issues. In fact, he has a pretty love-hate relationship with the spotlight in general.

Anyone who talks to him for five seconds knows he likes hearing himself talk; give him a one-liner and he'll turn it into a monologue. If he doesn't know you, he honestly doesn't care about you, and if he does know you, he knows what's best for you. He's inherited the classic Leonard Church Brand Ego (tm) from his predecessors, but just like those before him, it's mostly skin-deep. He's all bravado, and while he genuinely believes he's better than he used to be, Epsilon still doesn't hold himself above people he cares about. It's led to a pretty serious martyr complex; he's ready at the drop of a hat to put himself on the line for his friends, often leaving them scrambling to catch up so he doesn't die. At least that trait extends to most of Blue Team.

Epsilon has been through many things in his life. He carries the burden of two lives before him, as well as the things he's done himself, and all in all, he's made something worthwhile out of it. He's created a path before him that stands apart from his past, a found family that never stops having each other's back even if they can't stand each other most of the time, and all of that, he thinks is worth dying for.

And in the end, it is.

Previous Game Development: n/a

Skills/Abilities: He's an A.I., so he can jump between computer systems at will, and hack into shit. Mostly just your average cyberterrorism stuff, but he's going to be stuck in a human body, so instead he gets... being good at math.

Network Sample: TDM thread with Alpha

Third Person Sample:

There he is, time all but frozen for the milliseconds it takes him to record his final words. The door's breaking in, and his team? They're ready, for once. They're prepared to go down swinging, all together, in true sim trooper form. God, and he wishes he could see it. He wishes he could watch them do what he knows they're about to do. He wants to see their victory, and the next one, too, and the one after that. Saying goodbye is hard--no, impossible in a setting like this, where he knows he has to leave them and there's no time to hear their reactions. He knows he can't help them if he stays himself--if he stays at all.

And Church, well... he hates goodbyes.

'Ain't that a bitch?'

He takes a deep breath into lungs that have never actually existed for him... and he breaks.

He pulls himself apart, picks away at every memory within him. Flashes of faces flake off of him, angry and happy and sad and forgiving, stuttering images and worn-out clips in a dark bunker where no one will ever find him, petty arguments in a box canyon that make his voice sound like he's hitting puberty again for all the shrieking. It feels almost like a burning, not quite pain, but not quite nothing. It's more than he's felt in a physical sense in so long that it almost chokes him.

He says goodbye to Chorus, and her people's settling struggle. He says goodbye to the Reds, who always gave him something to be thankful about, even if it was just that his own team wasn't that fucking pathetic or loud. He says goodbye Tucker and Caboose, who've kept him toeing the line between sanity and insanity like a tightrope walker, and who always knew how to be the worst best friends in the best worst ways. He apologizes to Carolina and to Wash, for seeing him from his start to his end and for not even having the chance to look at them before he goes.

'No, Tex. No, I'm not gonna say I love you.' Because fuck, it hurts to think that. 'I'm gonna say I forget you.'

Everything he has, he puts into one mind. One goal. Power the suit. Save them. Save Chorus. Don't look back, and don't be sorry anymore.

It falls to pieces around him, all that he used to be. All that he is to them, all that they are to him becomes nothing. He fissures, and falls to pieces with it, until there is nothing left of Epsilon, and the door hits the ground in front of the Reds and Blues. Tucker's armor enhancements burst to life.

'I forget you.'

He's gone.

It's dark.

But not the black he thought he was embracing. Not death, not nothingness, not a lack of self like he'd intended.

He wakes to a shitty attic room in an old house with a stained glass window. He doesn't know why, but he feels pain. Real pain, no burning, a sharp one at the front of his head. A headache. Him. He raises his hand up to put it on his forehead, and realizes as he does so that it's... skin. There is skin on that hand. There is no armor on him, there are no visors. He's in a body.

Immediately he sits up, and finds himself staring face-to-face with a very confused college-age girl with a book and several candles lit around her. In fact, the candles kind of appear to be everywhere. She says something to him about who is he, and oh my gosh she's so sorry, and Church can barely hear her because he's looking down at a body that is very much here and also very much not fucking clothed.

He doesn't understand. He's supposed to be dead. Also a computer program? Definitely not a naked dude who could probably stand to work out with a slightly itchy beard apparently--oh shit wait he's naked in front of a girl he doesn't know.

He's not sure what combination of words comes out of his mouth. He knows he means to say "can I ask you where I am," and also "do you happen to have anything I can cover up with," but he's pretty sure what actually comes out is something along the lines of: "What the FUCK IS HAPPENING, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHY THE FUCK AM I NAKED?!"

Nailed it, apparently, because the poor girl shoots straight up and hauls ass to her bed to throw a bundled up blanket at him, shouting apologies and probably almost crying. He covers up like you'd expect a guy to do when he's been caught fooling around with someone, desperate and panicked and very a little pathetic. It takes her a moment to find clothes, probably something from a brother or a boyfriend or even a father, but it doesn't matter--they fit. He's got a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and he'll make it work.

He gets dressed covered by the blanket while she explains where he is and how he got there. Church tries to listen, but he's getting goddamn 'Nam flashbacks to getting pulled out of the Epsilon unit. The difference between then and now is that he doesn't see the sense in screaming about it at a girl who just gave him clothes. That said, he does get a little snippy with his "oh, this is just perfect, where am I supposed to go?" that earns him a set of directions to the downtown shelter.

He gets halfway there before he has to sit down because his legs are burning. It's not that horribly far a walk, and he knows that. He's marched further, stood longer, but this body... it hurts.

He flashes back to the unit again, and finds a bench to sit on to catch his breath.

At first, he puts his head in his hands, leaning over his knees. He can actually feel the current of blood in his veins, especially his legs. He remembers that feeling from the unit, too, but it's different this time. He's not being guided by some overarching sense of obsession, there's no peace to be made, he's just... Church. He's Epsilon. Sitting on a bench, in what they've told him is another reality, and he's... alive. Not just functioning, he's alive.

His fingers card through his hair, and he takes a deep breath, only this time, he feels it fill him from his chest down into his stomach, and something sad deep within him stirs.

'Well, I like to have someone to talk to. I get lonely sometimes.'

Years. The fragments spent years trying to do this, and why him? Why is it him, why wasn't he allowed to just... stop and rest? Sigma, for all he burned on his way, he didn't want power, he didn't want to stop existing, he just... wanted this. He wanted to be human. And Theta, Delta, Gamma--all the rest of them, they just wanted to be whole again. Epsilon, though, he'd only ever wanted to be left alone.

He feels a pain in his chest and he actually shakes with an incredulous, silent laughter, concerning a passerby who walks a bit further away from the bench on the sidewalk than he had been before.

"Man," Church mutters to himself, letting the weight of it all crash down on his shoulders. He killed himself for those assholes. For his team, for the Reds, for Chorus. He killed himself to save them from the very pieces of shit that set the whole thing in motion and here he sits, in another goddamn reality that he's so sure has to be the afterlife or something because it can't be real. He can't be fucking human now.

But he is. It makes sense, right? That if anybody was gonna get put through this fucking bullshit, it'd be him. It always has been. Always will be.

"Same old fucking shit, isn't it."